An Inconvenient Woman (13 page)

“Have you ever seen an older guy and a young girl in a restaurant together? And they’re making forced conversation because they have absolutely nothing to say to each other once they aren’t in the feathers? Well, Jules never wanted that to happen with us. That’s why he was always teaching me things. And let me tell you something, I wanted to learn.
”

P
hilip Quennell was still unused to the streets of Beverly Hills, and he had difficulty finding the small cul-de-sac called Palm Circle where Casper Stieglitz, the film producer, lived. “Sunset to Hillcrest, right on Hillcrest to Mountain, left off Mountain to Palm Circle, the last drive on the left by the cul-de-sac,” said Bettye, Casper’s secretary, over the telephone to Philip, who wrote down the instructions on a Chateau Marmont scratch pad. Then Bettye added, as if it would simplify things for Philip, “It’s the old Totie Fields house.”

When he buzzed the intercom at the gate, a red light went on on the closed-circuit television. “Philip Quennell to see Mr. Stieglitz,” he said, looking up into the camera.

“Proceed along the driveway past the tennis court to the front of the house and enter by the front door,” said a voice, English in inflection, but not English.

The wooden gates, less grand by far than the gates at the Mendelsons’ estate, opened slowly and laboriously, as if they needed a caretaker’s attention. As Philip drove by the tennis court, he heard screams of laughter and saw two extremely pretty girls, one blond, one brunet, in extremely short shorts and angora sweaters, playing what appeared to be an extremely amateurish game of tennis.

“That shot was
not
in, Ina Rae, and you know it wasn’t, you big cheater,” said the blond girl.

“Fuck you, Darlene,” said Ina Rae.

Ina Rae’s language was greeted with more screams of laughter.

At the front of the house was a courtyard, with cobblestones, smaller by far than the Mendelsons’ courtyard. He pulled his car around a center island with a birdbath and a great many geranium plants to the front of the house. Looking
up, he could see that the house had once been Spanish, but the arches had been squared off, and a mansard roof replaced what had once been a red tile roof, giving the Spanish house a French look. The front door opened, and a butler, rather informally clad in dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, stood in the doorway. He wiped his hands on a long green apron.

“Excuse my appearance, Mr. Quennell,” he said, in an extremely friendly manner, “but I’ve been doing the silver. Messy job.”

Philip nodded.

“If you’ll follow me,” said the butler. “My name is Willard, sir. Mr. Stieglitz is in the pool pavilion.”

They crossed through a hall to the living room, which looked to Philip as if it had been decorated by a studio set dresser. Large paintings with white backgrounds and various colored dots lined the walls. Philip glanced at them.

“Mr. Stieglitz is quite the collector,” said Willard.

“Yes,” replied Philip.

They went out a pair of French doors to a terrace. He followed the butler around a swimming pool at the edge of the terrace to the pool pavilion, where the butler pulled back a long sliding glass door.

“Mr. Quennell is here, Mr. Stieglitz,” he called in. He then stepped back so that Philip could enter first. Inside, the large room was in total darkness, except for the light let in by the open door and a small lamp at the far end of the room. Heavy curtains were drawn tight on all the windows. For a minute, the darkness blinded Philip after the bright sunlight outside, and he stood in the room, unsure which way to look.

“Could I get you a drink?” the butler asked.

“No, thank you,” said Philip. “It’s very dark in here. I can’t see a thing.”

“This is Mr. Stieglitz’s projection room as well,” he said. “He’s been watching a rough cut. He keeps the blackout curtains drawn.”

“I see.”

A toilet flushed. “Mr. Stieglitz will be out directly,” said the butler, with an English affectation. “Would you like coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

“Perrier, Diet Coke, anything like that?”

“No, nothing, thank you.”

“Sit down.”

Philip sat in a deep chair. On a massive coffee table in front of him were bowls of gumdrops, small candy bars, chocolate pretzels, and a variety of nuts. There were also dozens of scripts in cardboard covers of varying colors.

The toilet flushed again. The door opened. Into the projection room walked Casper Stieglitz. He was dressed entirely in loose black velour, both shirt and trousers. On his head was a wide-brimmed plantation-type hat with a black ribbon around it, pulled down on his forehead to just over his eyebrows. His face was very tanned, as if he spent a great deal of time under a sunlamp rather than in the sun. He wore black-rimmed, thick-lensed dark glasses, through which it was impossible to see his eyes.

“Willard, tell those twats at the tennis court to keep their voices down. They’re turning my place into a fucking slum with that filthy language,” said Casper Stieglitz. He sneezed. “Don’t they realize they’re in Beverly Hills? Not wherever it is they come from.” He spoke in a catarrhal voice, as if his nose were stuffed.

“Hello, Mr. Quennell. I’m Casper Stieglitz.”

Stieglitz gave Philip his left hand to shake, at the same time sneezing again and speaking the word “Bursitis,” in reference to his right hand, in a hoarse voice. Philip wondered why he wore a hat in the house.

“You seem to have a terrible cold,” said Philip. He noticed that his nose was dripping.

“I do, yes, I do,” said Casper. He reached into the pocket of his black velour trousers and pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, although the blowing seemed more noisy than nostril cleansing. “I liked your book on that Wall Street guy,” he said.

“Thank you,” said Philip.

“You get any flak from Reza Bulbenkian?”

“A bit, yes.”

“He wanted to break your legs, right?” asked Casper.

“There was such a threat, yes,” answered Philip.

Casper laughed. “I like the way you wrote it, kind of tough, a good style. I thought you’d be an older guy than you are. How old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“Thirty, huh? Thought you’d be older. Now, uh, the picture
I got in mind is quite a different proposition. We have this problem out here in the industry, you know, with drugs.”

“Yes, that’s what my agent told me you wanted to do this picture about.”

“This is not a picture for the theaters, though. You understand that.”

“Oh?” said Philip, surprised. “That’s what I assumed.”

“No.”

“Television then?”

“No, not television.”

“I’m confused.”

Casper Stieglitz laughed again. Philip noticed that his bright gleaming teeth—too even, too large, too perfect—resembled Chiclets. In the minutes that followed, as his eyes became used to the dim room, it occurred to him that Casper’s tight unlined skin was the result of a face-lift, a feeling that was confirmed when he saw the red scars of recent surgery behind his ears. Casper leaned over and put his hand into a bowl of nuts and started eating them as he talked, tossing them in his mouth one or two at a time. “You see, I was falsely arrested on a drug charge a few months ago. There was a shipment of drugs from Colombia that, uh, inadvertently got into the hands of an employee of mine who brought the package to this house under the impression that he was delivering film of some dailies of a picture I have been shooting in Central America.” For a moment he seemed to lose his train of thought. “It’s a long story.”

Philip stared at Stieglitz. “I am at a loss to understand what my position is in all this,” he said.

“That is what I am coming to,” replied Casper, remembering where he was in his story. He sniffed and blew his nose again. “The judge in the case, realizing the terrible mistake that had been made, asked me to make a film on the proliferation of drugs in the film industry that could be shown to groups, like, uh, Cocaine Anonymous, and different places like that, rehabs, et cetera, where they are fighting this terrible battle against drugs.”

“In return for which, no charges are to be brought against you, is that it?” asked Philip.

“It’s ridiculous, the whole thing,” said Casper. “I’m a total innocent bystander in this thing, and, uh, what we thought, my lawyers and I, that rather than have the terrible publicity that such a thing would entail, it would be easier to
just go ahead and make the fucking film, and have a clean slate. Like a, you know, a form of community service. At a very high level, you understand. Do you know about community service?”

“Yes, I know all about community service,” said Philip quietly. “I really don’t know if I am interested in doing that, Mr. Stieglitz.”

“Casper. Call me Casper, Phil. Listen, uh, would you like some nuts?”

“No.”

“Cashews. No? You like candy?”

“No, thanks.”

“Did the fagola offer you a drink?”

“Who?”

“Willard, the butler. Did he offer you a drink?”

“He did, thank you. I don’t want anything.”

“Beer?”

“No. We must talk about this,” said Philip. “This is not what I thought it was going to be. My agent told me this was to be a feature motion picture.”

“Look, you get paid the same kind of bucks as if you were writing a feature, for a first-time feature writer, that is, which you are. I mean, you never wrote a picture before, and it’s more money than you got for your leveraged buyout book. What we have here is like a documentary, interviewing this law enforcer, and that drug dealer, and so on, and arrangements can be made to get you in on a drug bust, and include that in the picture. It will be a terrific start for you in the industry.”

Philip nodded.

“They’ll show it to the various groups, you know, that deal with the drug problem, and you’ll have a showcase for yourself to show the other studios what you’ve done. Will you excuse me for a second. I’ll be right back. I’ve gotta take a leak.” As he rose, he sneezed again and the partially chewed cashew nuts in his mouth flew all over Philip’s face. “Oh, sorry, man, here,” he said, reaching into his pocket and bringing out his soiled handkerchief. Philip declined the handkerchief with a shake of his head. “I gotta take a leak,” Casper said again and disappeared into the bathroom. The sound of the door locking behind him could be heard.

Philip looked at his sneezed-upon face in the mirror behind the liquor bottles of the bar. Semimasticated nut particles
stuck to his eyebrows and nose. He turned on the water tap to wash his face but noticed there was no bar towel. He went to the sliding glass door through which he had entered the projection room and walked out into the bright sunlight. Retracing his steps around the swimming pool onto the terrace, he reentered the house through the same French door by which he had left it twenty minutes earlier. The butler was nowhere in sight. He opened a door, looking for a bathroom, and found it was another mirrored bar. He opened another door and found a hallway that led to what turned out to be Casper Stieglitz’s bedroom, its massive bed covered with a spread of the prevailing color scheme of orange and brown. Through it were his bathroom and dressing room.

Inside the bathroom, Philip turned on the gold-plated hot water fixture and washed his face thoroughly with a bar of sandalwood soap from a gold-plated soap dish in the shape of a shell. He then dried his face on a brown face towel, elaborately monogrammed with the intertwined initials C.S. in white satin, from a set of brown monogrammed towels on a heated towel stand. Still feeling soiled, he repeated the process.

When he finished, Philip looked at some of the dozens and dozens of framed photographs on the bathroom walls and the walls of the dressing room beyond. In almost every picture Casper Stieglitz, in younger times, was with a different beautiful girl, at awards ceremonies, or industry dinners, or premieres of films. In all the pictures he was laughing, happy, glamorous; they bespoke a life of fame and success. There were photographs showing him having a script conference by the side of his swimming pool and toasting a blond starlet with a glass of wine while lying on an inflated rubber raft in the middle of his swimming pool.

His clothes were arranged in cabinets, dozens of silk shirts hung on hangers, next to dozens of sport coats, next to dozens of suits, next to a variety of styles of tuxedos, in midnight blue, and maroon, and black. An open cabinet showed sweaters, all cable stitch, all cashmere, in the entire spectrum of colors, folded painstakingly one on top of the other. On the counter level there were bottles of aftershave lotions, gold-backed brushes, and a fitted leather case for dozens of pairs of cuff links, as well as an immense silver tray on which dozens of pairs of sunglasses were neatly arranged.

There was a knock on the bathroom door. “You in there, Phil?” asked Casper.

“Yes, I am,” replied Philip. “I’m washing my face.”

“The guest bathroom is off the front hall,” called in Casper. There was an unmistakable tone in his voice that Philip was trespassing. “I’m not keen on people using my bathroom.”

“I had no way of knowing that,” called out Philip. At that moment his eye caught sight of some strange objects on the top of the clothes cabinets. At first they appeared to be hat stands, of the variety used in millinery shops, but then he saw that they were wig stands. He counted them. There were thirty-one, and on each was a full toupee, going from freshly cut hair to long hair in need of a haircut.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” said Philip.

Beyond the dressing room, he could hear the girlish laughter of Ina Rae and Darlene in an adjoining bedroom.

“Where’s the dildos?” asked Ina Rae.

“I thought you brought them,” answered Darlene.

“No, stupid, you were supposed to bring them. Casper’s gonna be furious.”

“How come you need a dildo, anyway?”

“The guy’s got a dick like a Tampax,” said Ina Rae.

Darlene shrieked with laughter.

Philip walked out of the bathroom. Casper was standing there. On his face was an anxious expression, and Philip understood that he was concerned that he might have seen his toupees.