An Inconvenient Woman (15 page)

“Pauline, I must talk to you,” said Hector Paradiso, grabbing her arm.

“Naughty you, moving the place cards, Hector,” she said to him, still walking toward the library. “Why in the world did you do that? Jules will be furious.”

“I felt wasted where you seated me,” said Hector.

“I won’t be angry if you promise to dance with Rose. I think you hurt her feelings.”

“But Pauline, there’s something I must tell you.”

“Not now, Hector.” She walked into the library and closed the door behind her, shooing him off when he tried to follow her into the room. As always, she looked up at the van Gogh painting of the
White Roses
over the mantelpiece, and it brought her a momentary sense of calm. She picked up the telephone. “Hello? Hello? Kippie, it’s Mother.”

Kippie had been calling from the house of Arnie Zwillman, although he did not tell his mother that. Even if he had, his mother might not have known who Arnie Zwillman was, although Jules Mendelson, Kippie’s stepfather, certainly would have. Arnie Zwillman, in the eyes of people like the Mendelsons and their friends, was undesirable, which might have been part of his attraction for Kippie Petworth. Arnie had once owned a hotel in Las Vegas called the Vegas Seraglio, and the insurance money from the conflagration that razed the Vegas Seraglio was the basis of Arnie’s original fortune. If
someone wanted to incite Arnie’s ire, which could be formidable, he had only to describe Arnie as the man who burned down the Vegas Seraglio for the insurance money. A lot of people had done that, and a lot of those same people were sorry that they had. On most other occasions, though, Arnie could be, as many of his friends claimed, “as nice a guy as you’d ever wanna meet.”

Arnie always said, when a guest admired his house, that it was the old Charles Boyer mansion, although anyone who had ever seen the house when Charles Boyer lived in it would have been hard pressed to recognize any of the architectural elements, for sliding glass doors had replaced whole walls, and floor-to-ceiling mirrors had covered the French boiserie, and a steam room and spa were now where the old library had been. Turquoise, pink, and orange, the favorite colors of Gladyce Zwillman, who had been Arnie’s fourth wife, dominated what Gladyce always called her decor. Now Gladyce was gone, and Adrienne Basquette had moved in and hoped she could retain Arnie’s attention and affection until the legalities of Gladyce’s severance could be worked out and she could become the fifth Mrs. Arnie Zwillman.

Adrienne heard the chimes and went to the door and turned on the outside lights. The door was bullet-proof glass, fifteen feet high, with a wrought iron design in front of the glass for privacy and safety. Through it, Adrienne could see a handsome young man with blond hair, and blood coming from his mouth. He’s adorable, she thought to herself. Women always thought Kippie Petworth was adorable.

“Where’s Gladyce?” he asked, when she opened the door.

“Where have
you
been?” asked Adrienne, in a tone of voice that let him know that Gladyce had been out of the picture for some time.

“France,” he answered.

“Ooh, la la,” said Adrienne. “Your mouth looks yucky.”

“Feels yucky too,” said Kippie. “Arnie in?”

“Who shall I say is calling?”

“Kippie,” said Kippie.

“He’s expecting you?”

“Ask him and find out.” He smiled a smile he knew was beguiling, without opening his mouth. One of his front teeth was missing.

Adrienne closed the front door and left him standing
there for a few minutes. He looked to see if anyone was watching and then spat a mouthful of blood into a terra cotta container holding a bonsai tree by the side of the front door. When Adrienne returned, she opened the door wide and indicated that he was to come in.

“Arnie will be out in a minute,” she said. “He’s taking a sauna. Can I get you anything?”

“A box of Kleenex,” said Kippie.

“What happened?” she asked, pointing to her own mouth as a way of inquiring what was wrong with his.

“Could you get me some Kleenex and then we can chat?” asked Kippie, impatiently.

“You act like a spoiled brat,” she said.

“I am a spoiled brat,” he answered.

She went into a powder room off the hall and returned with a turquoise container holding pink Kleenex. “Don’t drip on Arnie’s carpet, for God’s sake,” said Adrienne. “Arnie will freak out.”

Then Arnie Zwillman came into the room. He was deeply tanned, wore a terry cloth robe, and was slicking back his full head of wet silver hair with a comb. A diamond ring glistened on his pinkie finger. Kippie had once described him as handsome, in a Las Vegas sort of way. For an instant he stared at Kippie, taking him in.

“I couldn’t imagine who was coming to call at ten o’clock at night,” said Adrienne, breaking the silence.

“Get lost,” Arnie said in a growl that sounded like “gedloss,” with a toss of his head and a wave of his thumb, indicating for her to remove herself. Adrienne retreated to another room without a word. “Come on in the sauna,” he said to Kippie. “We can talk there, and for chrissake, don’t drip none of the blood on my white carpets.” Moving ahead of Kippie, he straightened two Lucite picture frames and removed a speck of dust from a brass-and-glass end table on the way to the steam room.

“What kind of trouble are you in?” asked Arnie, when Kippie had undressed and followed him into the sauna.

“Who said I was in trouble?”

“Don’t bullshit me, junior.”

“What’s it to you?”

“I can help you out of it, that’s what it is to me.”

“How?”

“You got Judge Quartz for your preliminary hearing, right?”

“Yes. How’d you know?”

“It’s my business to know these things. I knew ten minutes after they busted you. Friend of mine came in on the same flight from Paris. They were looking for what he was carrying, and instead they found what you were carrying.”

“I couldn’t understand why they hit on me like that,” said Kippie. “It was nothing, what I was carrying, a couple of joints, and they acted like I had a shipment from Colombia. You ought to see what they did to my luggage.”

“Assholes picked the wrong guy, that’s all,” said Zwillman.

“My family’s going to kill me.”

“You lose a tooth?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“The cop hit me.”

“Cops don’t usually hit preppy boys like you. Did you pull your rich kid act on the cop?”

“Something like that.”

“Called him a mick or a spic?”

Kippie nodded. “A mick.”

They looked at each other and laughed. “I can read you like a book, Kippie.”

“There were these two big cops the customs agent called. One held me under my armpit here, and the other held me under my other armpit, and they lifted me up so that my feet didn’t touch the floor and carried me through the Pan Am waiting room. Not one of the great looks, you know. This is after they made me take my clothes off and shoved their finger up my ass looking for drugs. I was pissed off.”

Over the intercom in the steam room came the sound of a woman’s voice. “Ready for your massage, Mr. Zwillman,” she said.

Arnie turned to the box and pushed a button. “Okay, Wanda. I’ll be in in a minute. Get the table set up.” He turned back to Kippie. “Wanna massage?”

“No thanks,” said Kippie, who didn’t want to be in the steam room either.

“This Wanda’s good,” said Arnie. “She’ll bring you off if you get a hard-on.”

Kippie shrugged. “Okay,” he said.

“I take it you haven’t contacted Jules and Pauline with your little adventure?” He said the names “Jules” and “Pauline” with an exaggerated pronunciation, in an outsider’s allusion to their grandeur.

Kippie shook his head.

“You better call them from here,” said Arnie. “Just don’t tell them what happened. Don’t tell no one, except your lawyer. I’ll get you a lawyer. Gonna cost you ten grand up front.”

“Are you going to lend me the ten grand?” asked Kippie.

“I bailed you out, sonny boy. There’s a limit to my generosity.”

“Where am I going to get ten grand?”

“Your rich mommy.”

“She won’t. I know it. She said so the last time.”

“Be adorable, Kippie, like you know how to be, and she’ll come through. Then when you go before Judge Quartz on Monday morning, the case will be dismissed. Count on it.”

“What do you want for all this, Arnie? I can’t think you’re doing all this for me because you think I’m such a swell kid.”

“Smart boy.”

“What do you want?”

“An intro.”

“Who the hell could I introduce you to?”

“Your father.”

“My father? My father lives on Long Island, is now married to the former Sheila Beauchamp, and plays bridge all day every day in Southampton, or Palm Beach, or the Racquet Club in New York, or at Piping Rock, wherever he happens to be. What possible reason would you have to want to meet Johnny Petworth?”

“Don’t get snotty with me, you spoiled brat. I’m talking about Jules Mendelson.”

“He’s not my father. He’s my stepfather.”

“All right, your stepfather. I want to meet your stepfather.”

Kippie hesitated. He knew from past experience that he could not promise his stepfather. “My stepfather does not think highly of me,” he said quietly.

“You want to get your case fixed without your family knowing about it, don’t you?”

“Arnie, please, man. My stepfather will never come to your house. I know it.”

“I know that, junior. What I want you to do is arrange for both your parents to have dinner and see a film at Casper Stieglitz’s house. I’ll be there too, but that’s the part you don’t tell them.”

“Who’s Casper Stieglitz?”

“The film producer.”

“But my mother and stepfather don’t mix with people like that. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just saying they don’t.”

“Arrange it, asshole. You don’t want your name in the papers, do you, for getting busted on Pan Am flight number three from Paris? I don’t think Jules and Pauline are going to care much for that, with the economic conference coming up in Brussels and all.”

Kippie, abashed, only stared at Arnie Zwillman.

“What’s Piping Rock?” asked Arnie.

“A club,” answered Kippie.

“Where?”

“Long Island.”

“What kind of club?”

“The kind that wouldn’t let you in.”

“As a member, you mean?”

“Not even as a guest of a member. Not even for lunch.”

“How come?”

“You’re not their type.”

Arnie nodded. “Now, you better call your mama and tell her you’re in dire need of ten thousand dollars. I’ll take my massage first.”

As a family, Jules and Pauline and Kippie had met only once during the days that followed. Although Hector Paradiso lay dead in an open casket at the Pierce Brothers Mortuary, life went on as usual in the city, despite the endless speculations as to the cause of his death. The Freddie Galavants decided not to cancel their dinner dance in honor of the visiting Brazilian ambassador. Polly Maxwell saw no reason not to go ahead with the fashion show luncheon at the Bel Air Hotel for the Los Angeles Orphanage Guild, even though Pauline Mendelson, Camilla Ebury, and Rose Cliveden had telephoned in their regrets. And Ralph White, despite Madge’s protestations, refused to back out of a long-planned weekend of trout fishing on the Metolious River in Oregon, but did promise to be back for the funeral at the Church of the Good Shepherd.

It was a particularly busy time for Jules as well. The
economic conference was coming up in Brussels, with all its attendant preparations. A group from the National Gallery in Washington had been promised lunch at Clouds and a tour of the collection, with him as their tour guide, and they could not be put off. And there were the arrangements for Hector’s funeral going on concurrently, in which Jules seemed to have an inordinate interest. It surprised Pauline that he seemed so insistent on lining up former ambassadors and other prominent figures in the city to act as pallbearers, when none of them were known to have been more than acquaintances of Hector’s.

Kippie was mostly silent during those days, saving his conversation for Blondell and Dudley, to whom he was not a disappointment, or hitting a tennis ball against the backboard on the tennis court for hours at a time, or going for several appointments to Dr. Shea to have a new front tooth implanted, or to Dr: Wright to have the forefinger of his right hand attended to, where Astrid, Hector Paradiso’s dog, had bitten off the tip. When Kippie was alone with his mother and stepfather, he strummed on a guitar, which drove Jules mad, but Jules said nothing. There had been a time, before he wanted to become a restaurateur, when he wanted to become a guitarist.

Casper Stieglitz’s secretary, Bettye, had telephoned Jules’s secretary, Miss Maple, that day and invited Mr. and Mrs. Mendelson to a Sunday night dinner and screening of a film to be held at a date sufficiently in the future to ensure an acceptance.

“Tell him no,” said Jules, when Miss Maple telephoned him at home to repeat the invitation. “We don’t even know Casper Stieglitz.”

Kippie looked up from his guitar playing and struck a chord sufficiently grating so that Jules looked up in annoyance from the telephone conversation.

“No, Jules, don’t tell him no,” said Kippie.

There was an authoritative tone in Kippie’s voice that made Jules react to his stepson. He covered the mouthpiece of the telephone with his hand. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“I’m telling you, accept that invitation.”

“What do you know about this invitation?”

“Tell Miss Maple to say yes, Jules,” said Kippie.

Jules and Kippie stared at each other. “Hold off on it,
Miss Maple,” said Jules, and hung up. “Your mother will never go to Casper Stieglitz’s house.”

“She will if you tell her she has to.”

“There’s a beat missing here for me,” said Jules. “Do you know this Casper Stieglitz?”

“No.”

“How do you know about this?”

“I just know.”

“What’s your connection?”

“Someone’s going to be there who wants to meet you.”

“Who?”

“I can’t say.”

“You better damn well say.”