An Inconvenient Woman (22 page)

“Oh, Rose,” Pauline had said at the time, not knowing how to deal with the statement. Rose, who liked men, constantly bragged that she had once been to bed with President Kennedy, in the White House, in the Lincoln Bedroom, but some of her friends didn’t believe her. She had been married three times and divorced three times. With Rose’s husbands, one day they just weren’t there anymore. There was never a scandal, and never a blow-up, at least publicly. “Where’s Bakie?” “Where’s Ozzie?” “Where’s Fiske?” people had asked about her first, second, and third husbands, after she turned up at several parties alone, and she always answered, quite calmly, “Out of town.” And then people would hear, not long after, that a quiet and quick divorce had taken place, usually in a Caribbean country. The things that made divorces long and drawn-out affairs, custody and alimony, never figured in Rose’s divorces, because in each case the money was hers to
begin with, and her only child, a daughter from her first marriage, whom some people say had had a lobotomy, was in what Rose always referred to as “a home.”

She had taken to talking endlessly on the telephone, recounting every detail of every lunch and dinner party she attended, and it was impossible to get rid of her, no matter how hard her listener tried to hang up.

“There I was seated between two divine men. Of course, they were pansies, but at my age, what does it matter?
Such
good conversation! I mean, I’m certainly no intellectual, although I do like to read a good book and see a good play, and these two were divine, absolutely divine, so full of fun and mischief. Oh, how we laughed and laughed.”

“I must go, Rose,” said Pauline, on the other end of the line, but Rose seemed not to hear.

“Madge White was there,” Rose continued. “Poor Madge, in that same dark blue polka dot dress. Don’t you hate that dress? I think I can’t look at it again. Do you think she’d be hurt if I sent her over some of my old clothes? She could have them let out. She’s putting on weight, have you noticed?”

“Rose, darling, I must go, really. Jules has come home,” said Pauline, but Rose seemed not to hear. Pauline blew a kiss to Jules, pointed to the telephone, mouthed the word “Rose,” and rolled her eyes. Jules smiled. He walked to the bar table that had been set up by Dudley and poured two glasses of wine. It was their time of day to be together.

“Poor as church mice, the Whites,” said Rose. “But Madge never lets on, that’s what I like about her. Works like a slave in her real estate office and completely supports that husband of hers, who could never make a nickel. He’s a big load of snow, Ralph White, if you ask me. The only deduction I could take on my income tax last year was on one of his stock tips. And that little Madgie’s such a tramp, you know. Lives with who knows what. A Korean, or something.”

“Rose, I’m going to hang up now,” said Pauline. Jules placed Pauline’s glass on the table beside her. “Jules is here. Yes, I will. I’ll tell him. And he sends his love to you. Goodbye, Rose. Good-
bye
, Rose.” She hung up. “Oh, God!” she said. “Spare me.” She took Jules’s hand and kissed it. The unmistakable aroma of another woman’s most secret scent was on his fingers. Stunned, she looked up at her husband, as if he had slapped her.

Jules, unaware, asked, “How’s old Rosie?”

“Oh, fine, drunk, same as ever,” answered Pauline. “Let’s not talk about Rose. I’ve had enough of Rose. She broke her leg at her lunch after Hector’s funeral. Aren’t you glad we didn’t go?” She rose unsteadily from her chair, fearing that she was going to be sick, or faint.

“Look at the colors of the sunset, Pauline,” said Jules.

“Fuck the sunset,” said Pauline. Her wineglass dropped from her hand and smashed on the terrazzo floor of their sunset room. Jules, who had never heard Pauline use the word she had just used in the twenty-two years he had been married to her, stared at his wife, uncomprehending, as she ran out of the room.

When Philip Quennell told Camilla Ebury that he had been to a club called Miss Garbo’s and learned the name of a young man with whom Hector Paradiso left the club on the night of his death, she became silent and aloof. They were sitting in the library of her house in Bel Air. She moved away from him on the sofa. Then she picked up the remote control and flicked off the television set that had been on in the background.

“How would you even know of a place called Miss Garbo’s?” she asked, finally. “I’ve lived here all my life and never heard of it.”

“Casper Stieglitz’s butler told me,” said Philip. “He was there the same night and saw Hector.”

“Wouldn’t you know it would be somebody’s butler who would have a story like that,” said Camilla.

“But it’s true,” said Philip.

“What kind of a place is Miss Garbo’s?” she asked.

“Where rich older men meet young men for hire.”

“I just do not believe such a story,” said Camilla, shaking her head emphatically.

“You didn’t exactly think your uncle Hector was girl crazy, did you?”

“That’s not funny, Philip.”

“What is it you’re afraid of, Camilla? That they’re not going to let your daughter come out at the Las Madrinas debutante ball in ten years because her great-uncle died in a gay murder?”

“What’s that tacky expression I’ve heard you use? Smartass, is that it? Well, don’t be a smartass with me, Philip,” said Camilla.

“I’m not being a smartass, Camilla, and I’m sorry if that’s the way I’m coming off, but let’s be practical.”

“All right, let’s be practical. Why do you care so damn much?” she asked. “My uncle’s death has nothing whatever to do with you. You didn’t even know him.”

“Why do you care so damn little?” replied Philip.

Philip could see that his question had made her angry. Her face turned red, and her voice, when she spoke again, had a harsh tone that he had never heard before. “I don’t care so little,” she said, measuring each word. “We have been through this and through this. My uncle committed suicide.”

“No, he didn’t.”

Camilla looked at Philip for a long time before she spoke. “I understand you called Sandy Pond at the
Tribunal
. Sandy told Jules you’d called him. They seemed to think you were acting in my behalf, so they sent me over the autopsy report. I am satisfied. There is nothing mysterious to me about my uncle’s death. Now I wish you would stop minding my business and mind your own damn business.”

“One thing I’ve noticed about your group, when the chips are down you people all stick together.”

Camilla, stung, rose from the sofa where she had been seated. “I think you should get out of my house,” she said.

“Ah, the classic retort of the rich girl,” replied Philip. “Agree with me or get out. Well, I am getting out, Mrs. Ebury.”

Camilla was unused to people who were not awed by her wealth. From the beginning, Philip had been indifferent to her money, and it had been refreshing for her. She did not want him to leave, but she could not bring herself to say it. Orin, her late husband, who was the father of her child, always did everything she wanted him to do, like a bought-and-paid-for-husband should do, but Philip was different. She knew he would leave her if she did not stop him, because he was in no way dependent on her. But she remained silent and walked out of the library and started up the stairs to her bedroom above.

Philip followed her to the hall and looked up at her as she ascended the stairs. “Jules Mendelson is trying to tell us that black is white, and because he is so rich and apparently so powerful, most people—but not me—seem to be believing him, at least publicly. I just happen to be a nonbeliever in a social system where someone has the power to pick up a telephone
and call a newspaper and say, ‘Don’t print this story,’ and then call the police and say, ‘Don’t solve this murder.’ I realize that the people in your set don’t have a problem with that, but I do.”

Camilla turned where she stood on a step near the top of the stairs, torn between the standards of her group and the strong feelings she had developed for the man who was walking out on her. “I am at heart a nonbeliever in those things too,” she said.

“Good. Then act on them. So long, Camilla. You know my phone number.”

“Don’t you have things to pack?” she asked, wanting to detain him.

“One of the nice things about disposable razors is that there’s nothing to pack when you break up with your girlfriend,” he said. He walked out the front door and closed it behind him.

7204¼ Cahuenga Boulevard, the home of Lonny Edge, was not an easy place to find. Bettye, Casper Stieglitz’s secretary, thinking the address on Cahuenga had something to do with the documentary Philip was writing for Casper on the proliferation of drugs in the film industry, typed out the instructions on how to find the place on one of Casper’s memo pads. Philip drove up Highland Avenue near the Hollywood Bowl and turned right on a small street called Odin. He went under an overpass that led onto Cahuenga Boulevard, a main thoroughfare that had once been bulldozed through a mountain. In the background, from the Hollywood Bowl, could be heard a philharmonic orchestra rehearsing the theme from
Star Wars
, for a concert under the stars that was scheduled to take place that evening. On each side of Cahuenga Boulevard, bungalow dwellings and low-income housing, three- and four-story beige and pink apartment buildings built in the fifties, hugged the mountainsides above. The address numbers at street level for the dwellings above had been vandalized or backed into by vehicles. Occasionally, there was a number intact, in decals stuck on a board with an arrow pointing upward.

When Philip saw a board with a number in the high six thousands, he found a space, parked his car, and sought out Lonny Edge’s address on foot. The sidewalk was cracked and littered with refuse—beer bottles, used syringes, used condoms—that
homeless people had simply dropped when they searched the trash bins for refundable soda pop cans.

At 7200 Cahuenga Boulevard, there was a wooden stairway in rickety condition, wide enough for only one person to walk at a time. Fifty-five steps above, Philip came onto a courtyard around which were several dozen tiny bungalows of a regional style built in Hollywood in the thirties. Purple bougainvillea bloomed in great profusion, weedlike and untended, covering the roofs of most of the bungalows. In the center of the courtyard was a fountain, its sides cracked and broken, that appeared not to have been used for years. On the ledge lay a half-eaten grapefruit with a plastic spoon and a cardboard container of coffee that appeared to have been abandoned in haste, as if the late breakfaster had been called away to the telephone and forgotten to return.

The door of 7204¼ was open, but the screen door in front of it was closed. The music from the philharmonic rehearsal at the Hollywood Bowl faintly filled the air. A Strauss waltz now, it stopped in the middle of a passage and then started again, repeating the same passage. Philip found the doorbell, but it had been painted over and didn’t work. “Hello,” he called out, knocking on the frame of the screen door at the same time.

“Hey, you’re early, Cyril,” came the reply from inside.

Philip, confused, knocked again.

“Door’s open,” called out the voice again. “I’ll take a quick shower. You’re early, man. I wasn’t expecting you until four, for chrissake.”

Philip could hear the sound of the shower starting. He opened the screen door and walked into the small living room of the bungalow. It was sloppy but not dirty. Clothes were scattered on the floor. A black jockstrap hung on a wall light fixture. The furniture was the furniture of a furnished apartment of the period of the bungalow, serviceable but run-down. An open beer bottle had been placed on top of what appeared to be a manuscript in haphazard disarray on a painted wooden table.

“Make yourself comfortable, Cyril,” called out the voice from the bathroom over the shower sounds. “The gin’s in the kitchen and the ice is in the trays.”

Philip, uncomfortable despite being told to make himself comfortable, sat on a kitchen chair that had been pulled up to the painted table. He had arrived without calling first, because
Lonny Edge’s telephone number was not listed, and he realized that Lonny was expecting a visitor. The telephone rang. It was picked up on the first ring by an answering machine.

“I can’t come to the phone now. Leave your name and number, even if you think I already have it, and the time that you called, and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Wait for the beep.”

“Hi, Lonny. It’s Ina Rae. How they hangin’, babe? Listen, I got us a gig, a four-way at my sugar daddy’s on Sunday night, late. Big bucks. You, me, and Darlene. Remember Darlene? You met her at my place? Blond hair. Loves to rim. Bring your own condoms. Joke, Lonny. Gimme a call, doll. Love ya. And you know the fucking number. Bye.”

Philip watched the answering machine as Ina Rae left her message. How many Ina Raes could there be? he wondered. She had to be the same Ina Rae who had forgotten her dildos at Casper Stieglitz’s and worn the T-shirt that said “Warning, I Scream When I Come.”

The open bottle emitted the strong aroma of beer, and Philip picked it up and moved it away from the area of his scent. From habit, he turned over the top page of the manuscript, wondering if Lonny Edge, the pornographic video star, might be penning his memoirs. The page was wet from the bottle of beer sitting on it. “Chapter Four” was typed at the top. He started casually to read. To his astonishment, the prose style was instantly familiar to him. He felt he knew who the author was, and it was certainly not Lonny Edge. Prior to the accident that had caused him to drop out of Princeton before his graduation, he had been writing his senior thesis on the work of the novelist Basil Plant, who had died in Los Angeles a few years earlier from an overdose of pills while drunk.

Basil Plant always claimed that
Candles at Lunch
, his long-anticipated novel, was finished, although his detractors, of whom there were many, said that his much-publicized writer’s block was a permanent condition, brought on by drink and drugs, and that his writing career was over. Three chapters of
Candles at Lunch
were published in
Monsieur
magazine, causing a scandal that resulted in Basil’s being ostracized by the very people he wrote about. The rest of the book was never forthcoming, although Basil always assured his publisher that the book was finished and would be turned in when he had completed the final refinements. When he died, the
manuscript could never be found, and the first three chapters were ultimately published as a famous unfinished novel. Philip read: