An Inconvenient Woman (20 page)

“Where?” asked Jules.

“Up Stone Canyon, past the Bel Air Hotel. Elaine says it used to belong to one of Amos Swank’s ex-wives.”

“Bel Air? Oh, no, no,” said Jules, shaking his head at the idea. “Not Bel Air.”

Flo had come to know that whenever Jules said “Oh, no, no” to one of her requests, and shook his head at the same time, it meant that she had inadvertently encroached on his main life, the life that he shared with Pauline. For Jules, a house in Bel Air, where so many of the Mendelsons’ friends lived, posed a danger in that he ran the risk of passing people he knew on the narrow roads of the exclusive enclave. Being
ever protective of that part of his life, he could imagine one of Pauline’s friends, specifically Rose Cliveden, saying to Pauline, “I saw Jules in Bel Air this afternoon.” “This afternoon? I can’t imagine what Jules could have been doing in Bel Air this afternoon,” he imagined Pauline answering. “Up Stone Canyon, past the hotel,” Rose, the informer, would continue. “For heaven’s sake,” Pauline would answer.

“I think it would be better if you looked off one of the main canyons, like Benedict or Coldwater,” Jules said to Flo. Benedict and Coldwater canyons were areas where it was less likely that he would encounter the kind of people with whom he and his wife dined most evenings.

“That’s a nice area,” said Flo, agreeing. She reeled off the names of several television stars who had homes in the canyons.

Finally Flo found a perfect house, hidden from view by overgrown shrubbery, on a small street off Coldwater Canyon called Azelia Way. Elaine said that it was owned by Trent Muldoon, a television star whose series had been canceled and who had overextended himself in the four years of his semi-stardom. “Spend, spend, spend, and now he’s broke, broke, broke,” said Elaine. “Let it be a cautionary tale.”

“This was Trent Muldoon’s house, really?” asked Flo, delighted.

“His wife’s taking him to the cleaners in the divorce, and he needs to get out from under,” said Elaine.

Flo was ecstatic that she finally had a house of her own, with a swimming pool, as well as a Beverly Hills address and a 90210 zip code and a 274 prefix to her telephone number. She could hardly contain herself. When she confessed to Jules that she found Trent Muldoon’s mounted cattle skulls and western furniture depressing, he allowed her to put most of Trent’s furniture, which came with the lease, into storage and redecorate the house herself.

For a time she was never happier, but she was very lonely. Sometimes she felt herself to be no more than a receptacle for the fulfillment of his desires, and she drank a little wine in the afternoons, and very often she smoked marijuana cigarettes.

“Hello?”

“I’m on my way over.”

“Now?”

“Be nude when you open the door.”

As requested, she was nude when she opened the door.

“Drink?” she asked.

“No.” He stared at her body hungrily and ripped off his tie and shirt. “Let’s go in the bedroom.”

There was an absence of endearments in his lovemaking. There was no fondling, and very little kissing. He wanted only to satisfy his imperious urge to be within her lovely body, and to stay within her as long as possible. His lust for her seemed insatiable. At that time he in no way feared that she would become an important person in his life. He thought of her as merely an outlet for his increasingly demanding sexual urges. For Jules, Flo was bracketed in that area of his life only. He was an art collector and an aficionado of splendid living, and her taste was too unrefined for him to experience feelings of love. There were things about her that drove him mad. She pronounced sandwich “samich,” as if it rhymed with “damage.” She moved her lips when she read. She drank soft drinks out of the can. She was uninformed on important matters.

He had never intended to play Pygmalion to her Galatea, but he discovered that when he did correct her, if something she did or said irritated him sufficiently, she was never offended. She even welcomed his corrections, and she never made the same mistake again. At first it amused him that she was so quick to act upon his corrections and suggestions. Then he began to do it in earnest. Her voice improved. Her carriage improved. Her walk improved. Within himself, he was aware that the beautiful young woman was wasted living such a hidden life, but he did not want to change that. A simple call to Marty Lesky at Colossus Pictures would have made it possible for Flo to get a small part in one of the many television series at the studio, or a reading for a film, or any of the things she might have done. And Marty Lesky would have complied. It was the sort of favor that rich men with mistresses did for each other, but he could not bring himself to make the call that might have satisfied Flo’s yearnings to be somebody. He liked her there for him.

After their lovemaking, when he was spent and satisfied, he began talking to her in a way that he talked to very few people in his life: about his business, about the eventual disposition of his art collection, about an apartment in Brussels on the Avenue Hamoir that he had his eye on for her, when he would have to move there for a year during the statehood of Europe. The prospect of living in Brussels for a year thrilled
her. Then, invariably, he would look at his watch and say, “I have to get out of here,” and rush from her bed and dress and leave to get home in time to have his afternoon glass of wine with Pauline before they dressed for dinner and went out to whatever party they were attending that evening. Often, on the way home from her house, he would call her on the car telephone.

“What are you doing?”

“You mean since you came in me the third time eleven minutes ago?” she replied one day, exasperated. She knew he didn’t like her to be vulgar, except when they were making love, and she used it in retaliation when she felt that he was overcrowding her. Hearing his disapproving silence, she relented. “I’m lying here on my brand-new sets of Porthault sheets that you bought me in Paris, exhausted from your lovemaking, Jules, drinking a glass of wine from the Bresciani auction that you brought over to my house. That’s what I’m doing.” She didn’t tell him that she was also smoking a joint. She knew he wouldn’t have approved of that. He told her once he had no patience with people who took drugs.

In time Flo became stultified by the persistency of Jules’s demanding love in their relationship. He wanted her to be there always for him, in case he should drop in on her unexpectedly, or telephone her, which he sometimes did as often as ten times a day, or more. A busy telephone line could send him into a tantrum. He imagined that there were other men in her life, even though he knew there weren’t. She drank more wine. She smoked more marijuana. Several times she threatened to pull away from him, but such threats did not unnerve Jules. There was no doubt in his mind that he was the most exciting thing that had ever happened in Flo March’s life. He knew that Flo knew that too. He understood totally the power of money. How gorgeous it was. How easy it was to get used to. How terrifying it was to imagine life without it once one had become used to it.

Except in the evenings, when he drove Pauline to parties, Jules stopped driving his blue Bentley, because he felt that someone might recognize it when he drove each afternoon to Flo’s house on Azelia Way. He leased himself an expensive but nondescript Cadillac with darkened windows that he could see out of but passers-by could not see into. One night when Pauline was in New York for a party, he drove Flo back to her old apartment in the obscure neighborhood—at least
obscure to Jules Mendelson—known as the Silverlake district, where she had resided before the recent good fortune that had changed the economic circumstances of her life. She went to pick up some mail that her former landlady told her was there. When they stopped at a red light on Melrose Avenue, Flo looked out the window of Jules’s car at a bag lady on the street, making her preparations for the night. Terror seized her.

“She reminds me of my mother,” said Flo.

“Who?” asked Jules.

“Her.” Flo pointed at the bag lady. “I bet that lady was pretty at one time, like my mother was.”

Jules nodded.

“My mother died in a fire in a welfare hotel.”

“You told me that in Paris,” said Jules.

“You’re going to take care of me, aren’t you, Jules? I can’t die poor like my mother. I just can’t.”

“I
am
taking care of you.”

“No, I mean after.”

“After what?”

“Nothing.”

He knew what she meant, but he could not bear to think of what she meant. They drove on in silence.

Each morning without fail Philip Quennell went to the AA meeting at the log cabin on Robertson Boulevard. He sat reading the newspaper before the meeting started and rarely mixed in conversation with the other members of the fellowship.

A bright red fingernail tapped on the sports page of the
Los Angeles Tribunal
that he was reading one morning. “Think McEnroe will ever make a comeback?” asked Flo.

“Hi, Flo,” he said.

“Hi, Phil,” she answered. She opened her bag and took out the handkerchief he had handed to her at Hector Paradiso’s funeral. It had been laundered and ironed. “Thanks for the loan,” she said.

“That was some funeral,” he said, taking it.

“Did you see Loretta Young?” she asked. “I hope I look that good when I’m her age.”

Philip smiled.

“Who would have thought we would both be attending the same fashionable funeral so soon after meeting?” asked
Flo. “I suppose you were at Rose Cliveden’s lunch party at the Los Angeles Country Club afterwards.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“I read about it in Cyril Rathbone’s column in
Mulholland
,” said Flo. “Poor Rose.”

“Why poor Rose?”

“You didn’t hear? She fell down and broke her leg at her lunch party. She tripped over Hector’s dog, Astrid.”

“Did you read that in Cyril Rathbone’s column too?”

“That’s where I get all my information,” said Flo.

After the meeting, when they were leaving, Philip said to Flo, “What was the name of that club you mentioned to me where Hector Paradiso went on the night he committed suicide?”

“I didn’t hear you say Hector committed suicide, did I?”

“It seems to be the popular theory.”

“I’m surprised you fell for that line, a smart guy like you. Miss Garbo’s is the name of the club. Some of the guys who go there just call it Garbo’s.”

“Where is it?” asked Philip.

“On a street called Astopovo, between Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose. Somehow I wouldn’t have thought it was your kind of hangout.”

“You wouldn’t want to go there with me, would you? To Miss Garbo’s? I’d like to find out who Hector left with that night.”

“I’d like to, Phil, but I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I told you I was spoken for.”

“Listen, I’m not coming on to you, I swear. I meant as pals only. I didn’t want to go there alone.”

“But I’ve got a jealous fella. He calls me twenty times a day to keep tabs on me.”

“A rejection, huh?”

“Sorry, Phil.”

“Actually, it’s Philip, not Phil. I really don’t like to be called Phil.”

“Oh, sorry. Philip. Sounds classier.”

“You’re sure you won’t come?”

“Pretty girls like me they definitely do not want at Miss Garbo’s after midnight. But I’ll certainly want to hear what you find out. Ask for Manning Einsdorf. He’s the one who makes the arrangements.”

“So I hear.”

“And Phil?”

Philip turned to look at her.

She snapped her fingers. “I mean Philip. A cute guy like you, you better put a padlock on your fly,” said Flo.

That day Philip Quennell placed a call to Sandy Pond, the publisher of the
Los Angeles Tribunal
.

“Will Mr. Pond know what this is in reference to?” asked Sandy Pond’s secretary after Philip had identified himself.

“Tell him I am the author of the book called
Takeover
, about Reza Bulbenkian,” replied Philip.

“Would you care to tell me what it is you’re calling Mr. Pond about?” asked the secretary.

“I wouldn’t, no,” replied Philip.

“It is customary for me to ask. Mr. Pond is extremely busy.”

“I understand.”

“Then you won’t tell me?”

“No. You have only to ask him and to identify me. Then it’s up to Mr. Pond to decide whether he will speak to me, isn’t it?”

There was an icy silence. “Just a moment,” she said.

In an instant Sandy Pond picked up the telephone. “I certainly enjoyed your book, Mr. Quennell,” he said. “Is it true that Reza Bulbenkian threatened to break your legs? That’s what we heard.”

Philip laughed. “There was something like that, yes.”

“I understand from my wife that you’re seeing our great friend Camilla Ebury,” said Sandy Pond.

“Yes.” Philip did not elaborate.

“How can I help you?” asked Sandy Pond.

“I am very curious that your paper hasn’t covered the murder of Hector Paradiso,” said Philip.

There was a pause. “Murder? What murder?” replied Sandy Pond.

“Death, then,” said Philip.

Sandy Pond did not speak.

“You did know Hector Paradiso, did you not?”

“I did, yes. I was a pallbearer at his funeral. A charming man. A great friend of my wife’s. She always said he was the best dancer in Los Angeles. It’s all so sad, so terribly sad.”

“He was shot five times, Mr. Pond,” said Philip. “I was
there at the house a few hours afterwards, with Camilla Ebury. I identified his body for the police.”

“But it was a suicide, Mr. Quennell. I have seen the autopsy report.”

“Don’t you find it odd that someone could shoot himself five times?” asked Philip.

“Apparently he was deeply depressed. The autopsy report goes on to say that he was a poor shot. I will be happy to have my secretary send a copy of it on to you,” said Sandy Pond. His tone of voice indicated that he wished to terminate the conversation.

“But don’t you think even that is a story worth covering, Mr. Pond?”

“Would you explain yourself?”

“A prominent man in the city, who moves in the highest social circles, dines and dances at the home of the Jules Mendelsons, and then commits suicide by shooting himself five times in the torso. Where I come from, that’s a story. Add to that that he was a member of a Land Grant family and has a boulevard named after him, and that’s a front-page story.”