Westlake, Donald E - Novel 50 (19 page)

 
 
          
"Six
weeks later, I married that bitch."

           
Michael O'Connor is at last
surprised by something. "Dori Lunsford?" he says. "I didn't know
you were ever married to Dori Lunsford."

 
          
A
flaw in his impeccable research, eh? I smile at him in triumph—we keep our
secrets, yes we do, when we want, large and small—and I say, "It didn’t
last."

 
          
"I
guess it didn’t."

 
          
I
lean forward slightly, feeling extremely healthy, a sound body in a sound
mind—no, that's the other way around, isn't it? Doesn't matter—and I rest my
elbows on my spread knees, and I gaze into the middle distance of time.
"How different that was," I say, "from my first wedding, even
though they both took place in the same church."

 
          
"Same church?"
O'Connor echoes. "Isn’t that
unusual?"

           
"Very photogenic church,"
I explain.
"Great for the press.
You fellas.
Well,
you
know that. And this time, of course, we didn't have to hire a crowd. We both
had our fans, our agents, household staffs, attorneys, accountants, stand-ins,
hangers-on,
the
whole crowd. The media was out in
force, a lot more so than when Marcia and I tied the knot. We all had to work
our asses off to suppress
those
pictures,
let me tell you."

 
          
"Pictures?"
O'Connor looks bewildered, poor fella;
I'm surprised he doesn't already know this part, being in the journalism racket
and all. He says, "Suppress pictures? What pictures?"

 
          
"Of
the wedding," I tell him.

 
          
Which doesn't seem to help him much.
Shaking his head as
though there's a bee in his ear, he says, "Suppress pictures of the
wedding. Your old wedding with Marcia, you mean? So people wouldn't know it was
the same church?"

 
          
"Oh,
who cares about that?" I ask him. "One of the very few good qualities
of the press is that it has no memory. No, it was the pictures of the wedding
with
Dori
we had to suppress. And a
hell of a job it was, too."

 
          
"I
don't understand," he confesses. "If the whole thing was meant to be
a publicity stunt, why suppress the pictures?"

 
          
"Because
things went a little bit wrong," I explain.

 
          
"What
things?"

 
          
"Well,
we were
both
of us drinking pretty
heavy then," I tell him. "It was the only way we could put up with
each other, or anything else, or get through the day. So, we handled the
ceremony okay, but on the way back down the aisle—or is it back
up
the aisle?—anyway, on our way back
from the altar, Dori's drunk said something that irritated my drunk just a
little."

 
          
The
lovely white chapel in
Santa Monica
had been freshly painted for the occasion, and parts of the gleaming
green grass had been resodded. Hundreds and hundreds of wedding guests and
media people milled about in front of the chapel, held back from the gray
cement walk leading from front steps to street by police sawhorses and
stern-looking, blue uniformed, white helmeted policemen. A red carpet had been
unrolled from the church door down the steps and across the gray cement walk
and the sidewalk to the waiting limo. Organ music and the sound of an expensive
imported choir rang out from within as the ushers opened the twin front doors.

 
          
Jack
and Dori came out, he in tux, she in a different white gown from the one she'd
worn to the Academy Awards, this one showing a bit less cleavage.
Jack and Dori were yelling and screaming at each other, both
red-faced, both waving their arms around.
Jack shoved Dori when they
reached the top step, but instead of falling, Dori swung around and smashed him
across the head with her bouquet. He then took a swing at her, but she ducked
and kicked him in the shin.

           
Ushers and friends, paralyzed with
shock in the first few seconds, at last hurried forward to break up the
newlyweds, both of whom now swung and missed, Jack's overhand right taking out
a flower girl, while Dori's left uppercut sent an usher flying off the steps
and into the crowd below. Jack finally connected with a straight left to Dori's
forehead, driving her back into an off-balance wedding guest, who in his turn
fell backward into two photographers, who shoved him unceremoniously out of the
way. The wedding guest, not taking kindly to this opening of a second front at
his rear, turned around and popped a photographer. So then the second
photographer popped the wedding guest. So then another wedding guest popped the
second photographer.

 
          
Jack
and Dori meanwhile, weaving and staggering in the church doorway, had entered
upon a hair-and-clothes
- ripping
contest, their elbows
and knees doing much damage among those well-wishers who tried to intervene.
And the more people were knocked off the steps into the people below, the more
the fight spread.

 
          
In
no time at all, it had become a general brawl, its turmoil reverberating out
from the epicenter of the happy couple. Policemen and police sawhorses alike
were trampled into the fresh sod as the fight spilled over onto the lawn,
engulfing more and more of the wedding guests and then the media people, and
then the fans, extending even into the two TV remote vans parked just down the
block. The limo driver, seeing which way the wind was blowing and not expecting
his fares to make it to curbside today anyway, decided to get his vehicle out
of the danger zone, but in moving it he made both the car and himself moving
targets, obvious and irritating to the mob at large. Although he locked himself
in, and the crowd never did get at him, the limo itself was never the same
again and shortly thereafter was sold for cash to a Columbian who wanted the
comforts of air-conditioning and television while overseeing the work of his farm
in the uplands.

 
          
As
the brawl spread to the street, cars and trucks, blocked in their passage,
disgorged their drivers and passengers to enter into the fray. A school bus
full of bored teenagers on their way back to school from a field trip to the La
Brea tarpits added its own dollop of youthful enthusiasm to the developing
stew.

 
          
Jack
and Dori, both off their feet now, clutched in each other's violent embrace,
kicked and bit and scratched and punched and rolled around on the red carpet
among the feet of the nearer brawlers. Being down there, intent on their
pummeling, each with an earlobe of the other clenched in their teeth, they were
among the last to hear the wail of the approaching sirens.

 
          
"We
were going to honeymoon in
Brazil
," I tell O'Connor, “but the marriage
didn't last that long, so I went with Buddy instead.''

 
          
So
many things startle and perplex this fellow. He goggles at me. “You had the
honeymoon anyway?'' he demands. “
With
Buddy?”

 
          
“Well,"
I explain, “it was never going to be
just
a honeymoon, anyway. It was always going to be a deductible expense.''

 
          
He
doesn't get that part either.
“A trip to
Brazil
?
A honeymoon in
Brazil
?
With or without the
bride?
A deductible expense?''

 
          
He
is beginning to astonish me as much as
I'm astonishing
him. For a media maven, he sure as hell doesn't know much. I say, “Don't you
know what
Brazil
's famous for?''

 
          
“Coffee,"
he says.

 
          
“No."

 
          
“Inflation."

 
          
“No."

           
"Brazil
nuts?"

 
          
"Faces,"
I tell him.

 
          
His
face is one of which they would never approve. He gapes at me with it.
"Faces?"

 
          
"They've
got a clinic down there," I tell him. "It's the most complete
plastic-surgery operation in the world."

 
          
"In
Brazil
?"

 
          
"Absolutely.
Plastic surgery to the
stars; that's where it's done.
Any operation you can think of and some
you probably can't. Everybody goes there."

 
          
"I
didn't know that," he says.

 
          
Feeling
kindly toward him, I explain as gently as I can: "That's because you're
nobody."

 
          
Not
quite gentle enough, perhaps. Looking and sounding snippy, he says, "I'd
always thought there
were any number
of plastic
surgeons right here in
Los Angeles
."

 
          
"Oh,
sure," I say. "Anybody can get hacked away at by those
Bev
Hills
butchers, but if you want to be taken
seriously in the industry, your face and body better say

 
          
MADE IN
BRAZIL
."

           
"I never guessed," he
says.

 
          
"I
tell you, Michael," I say, "I've had a standing reservation forever.
I go down once a year, talk it over with the doctors, see what we want to snip
and tuck."

 
          
"You've
had plastic surgery?" He's peering at me, looking quite surprised at the
idea.

 
          
"Are
you kidding?" I ask him. "At my age, with the life I've led, there's
only two ways I could look the way I do: either a painting in the attic, or a
plastic surgeon in
Brazil
. I go
Brazil
."

 
          
"Gosh,"
he says.

 
          
"You
bet. Every spring, I arrange it so my
time's
free, I
fly on down to
Rio
and take in the carnival, and then go on to
the clinic for the overhaul. Then back I come, feeling great, looking great,
ready for another year of self-abuse."

 
          
"So
that's where you planned to go with Dori Lunsford for your honeymoon."

 
          
"Right.
The doctors could have worked on the both of us
at the same time. Dori was getting a little flabby around the edges; she needed
tightening up.”

 
          
“But
when the marriage ended, you went with Buddy instead.”

 
          
“The
last few years, Buddy's been coming down with me every time.” I chuckle,
thinking of how serious Buddy can be when he puts his mind to it. “He really
pays attention down there.” I say. “Takes notes, talks with the doctors,
observes the operations. Not me; I don't want to see what faces look like when
they're open.”

 
          
“But
Buddy does.”

 
          
“I
kid him sometimes,” I say. “When he's around and not mad at me, you know?”

 
          
“Buddy
gets mad at you?”

 
          
“Oh,
nothing serious,” I say. “He worries about me,
that's
all.
You
know what I mean.” But this
conversation is making me edgy. Some sort of dark cloud is coming up from
between the pieces of patio slate, swirling up, enveloping me. But it's not a
bad cloud, not an evil cloud, no; it's a friendly cloud. It is here to help me,
protect me, save me.

 
          
“Well,
what do you kid Buddy about?” O'Connor is asking me, as the cloud rises between
us. “During those times when he isn't mad at you, what do you kid him about?”

 
          
“That
he's gonna know as much about the plastic surgery as the doctors pretty soon,”
I say, “and I won't have to go down there every spring; I can stay here and
Buddy can do the nips and the tucks.”

 
          
“He's
that interested, is he?”

 
          
The
cloud is obscuring everything. I try to remember what we're talking about.
Brazil
. “I'm about due,” I say, reaching up and
patting the back of my hand against the underpart of my chin, feeling the
looseness there. “I may have to start going twice a year,” I say. “Well, it's
been nice talking to you,” I say, and I enter the cloud.