An Inconvenient Woman (36 page)

When Camilla Ebury walked in, Flo March knew without being told who she was. For two days, she and Philip Quennell had told each other their stories.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Camilla. “I’ve come into the wrong room.”

To Flo’s eyes, everything about Camilla Ebury was perfect. Her blond hair was parted in the middle and held back by two gold barrettes. Her pearls were real. Her green-and-white-print dress was silk. Even her perfume had a refined odor. She looked to Flo as if she were on her way to a committee meeting at the Bistro Garden for a fashionable charity. Flo was certain she would say, under the right circumstance, “Hellohowareyou,” the way Madge White had said it the other night.

Camilla backed out the door to look at the room number, although she immediately recognized the blue-and-white-striped dressing gown that the girl in the leather chair was wearing as belonging to Philip. She saw it was the right room. “I’m terribly confused,” she said. “I seem to have made a mistake.”

“No, you haven’t. I’m Flo March,” said Flo.

“Hellohowareyou.”

Flo smiled. “You’re Camilla, aren’t you?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

Flo looked at her. Unlike her own pretty face, Camilla’s pretty face revealed no struggle in life. Things had been placed there for her, in profusion. She had remained unspoiled with her privilege, but she also took it for granted.

Camilla said, “I think perhaps I’d better go. This was stupid of me to come here.”

“Now, I bet you think that he and I have got something going between us, don’t you? Well, you couldn’t be more wrong,” said Flo. “Phil’s a friend of mine, that’s all. No more than that. I needed a place to stay for a few nights, and he gave me one.”

Camilla looked at Flo, not sure whether to believe her or not.

“It is possible for a man and a woman to be friends without
having something going on between them, even for a cute guy like Phil. I didn’t used to think that, but I do now. Besides, I’m spoken for, which I told him the first day we met, and he told me he was spoken for too, and I guess you’re the one.”

“He said that, that he was spoken for?” asked Camilla. There was surprise in her voice.

“Yeah,” said Flo. “He did.”

“I’m such a fool,” said Camilla. “Twice now I’ve told him I didn’t want to see him anymore, and I didn’t want him to go either time.”

“You sound like you’re in love with the guy,” said Flo.

“I am.”

“Want my advice?”

“Yes.”

“Hang out here for a while. He’ll be back soon. I was just about to get dressed and get out of here.”

She got up and opened the closet door. From inside, she took out her black-and-white Chanel suit. “He’s gone to a meeting at Casper Stieglitz’s to turn in the first draft on the documentary.”

“Oh.” Camilla watched Flo, fascinated. The suit was obviously for evening, not morning, but she saw the Paris label in the jacket as Flo dressed in front of her. The clothes and the woman did not match. She was pretty, very pretty, and there was humor and even kindness in her face, but there was a sound in her voice that bespoke a different background from Camilla’s, and a harder kind of life.

“Are you an actress?” asked Camilla.

“I once had an audition for a miniseries. That was my total experience as an actress,” said Flo. “Needless to say, I didn’t get the part. Ann-Margret got it. They said they wanted a name.”

“I was just wondering, that’s all,” said Camilla. “It’s none of my business.”

“I’m hard to get a bead on, I know,” said Flo. “I don’t seem to fall into any of the identifiable categories.” She pulled on her jacket. She stepped into her shoes. She picked up her bag with the long gold chain and put it over her shoulder. “Well, I guess I’m all set. When you see Phil, tell him thanks. Okay?”

Camilla nodded.

“I bet he looks real cute in his Jockey shorts,” said Flo.

“He doesn’t wear Jockey shorts. He wears boxer shorts,” said Camilla.

“You see how little I know the guy?” She went out the door.

Jules was sitting on one of Flo’s gray satin sofas, in earnest conversation with Trevor Dust, the private detective who had been recommended by Sims Lord. There were photographs of Flo on the tabletop, the eight-by-ten glossies that she’d had taken when she was still working at the Viceroy Coffee Shop, as well as more recent snapshots taken by her pool. There were also several of her Chanel suits spread out on the sofa, to show the detective how she was dressed the last time she had been seen.

The detective took off his prescription sunglasses and replaced them with his reading glasses. From a back pocket, he took a spiral notebook and checked his notes. “The taxi driver was an Iranian, named Hussein Akhavi. He’s okay. Checks out. Akhavi remembers a lady answering to Miss March’s description getting into his cab outside the restaurant that night. Said she was excitable, and maybe crying. He was in mourning for the death of the Ayatollah and didn’t want to get involved with this woman’s problems. He said she gave him a Beverly Hills address first, presumably this address, but he couldn’t remember, and then changed her mind and asked him to take her to a hotel on Sunset Boulevard called the Chateau Marmont. She paid him with a twenty and told him to keep the change. But there is no record of anyone by either of her names, March or Houlihan, who registered at the Chateau that night, or since then.”

“Good job,” said Jules, nodding his head. “Now, I’ll tell you what I want you to do. Get me a printout of everyone who was registered at the Chateau Marmont that night, as well as every night since.”

“Beat you to it,” said Trevor Dust. He opened his briefcase and took out an envelope, which he handed to Jules. “Here’s the printout for that night. I had to pay the night clerk for this. I’ll have to get it for you for the subsequent nights.”

Just then, a taxi pulled into the driveway, and Flo got out. She saw Jules’s Bentley and another car of a nondescript variety in the driveway. She used her key and walked into the living room of her house.

“Hi,” she said quietly when she walked into the living room.

“Flo!” cried Jules. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Thinking,” answered Flo.

“But you came back.”

“I got sick of wearing this same outfit,” she said.

Jules rushed to her side and tried to embrace her, but her eyes had caught sight of the other person in the room.

“Who’s your friend here? And what are my pictures doing out like that? And all my clothes? What are you, a cop? Or a private detective?”

“I have been frantic, Flo,” said Jules. “I hired Mr. Dust to try to locate you.”

“I am not having a personal discussion in front of him,” said Flo, pointing to Trevor Dust with her thumb. “Lose the dick, and then we’ll talk.”

“Right. That will be all. Thank you, Mr. Dust. Send your bill to my office,” said Jules.

When Jules walked the detective to the door, Flo went to her bar and took out a can of Diet Coke from the refrigerator. She opened it and started to drink it out of the can, but then she remembered her new Steuben glasses and poured the contents into a water goblet.

When Jules came back into the room, she pointed to her goblet and said to him, “Nice glasses you bought me.”

“Who were you with?” he asked.

“A friend.”

“What friend?”

“Just a friend.”

“Male or female?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

Mad with jealousy, Jules grabbed her arm with such force that the Steuben glass flew from her hand and smashed as it hit the stone floor by her fireplace. She screamed with pain. Instantly, he released her arm.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “Oh, Flo, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

She pulled back from him with fear on her face. “Is that what happened to the girl in Chicago who went off the balcony of the Roosevelt Hotel in nineteen fifty-three?” she asked. “Did you make her so frightened of you that she backed off the balcony?”

“Flo, forgive me,” he begged. He knelt in front of her and
put his arms around her thighs and hugged her to him. “Forgive me. I love you, Flo. I love you. Please forgive me.”

Flo March had never seen Jules Mendelson cry before.

“Is Pauline still in Northeast Harbor?” asked Flo.

“Yes.”

“Good. There’s something I want to do.”

“What?”

“I want to see Clouds.”

“Oh, no, that wouldn’t be wise.”

“Why not?”

“You shouldn’t have to ask that. It’s Pauline’s house.”

“It’s yours too. I just want to look, Jules. I just want to walk through the rooms. That’s all.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It could be disastrous.”

“Who would know?”

“Dudley, for one. Blondell, for two. Smitty, for three.”

“Who’s Dudley and Blondell and Smitty?”

“The butler, the maid, and the guard. And there’re people in the kitchen. The cook, Gertie, and the other—I don’t always remember their names—but they’re there.”

Flo nodded. “Don’t you sometimes have business meetings at Clouds?”

“Sometimes.”

“How about if I’m a business meeting?”

“Oh, come on, Flo.”

“No, listen. You go home. You say to Dudley, ‘I’m expecting a Miss March for a meeting.’ Then, at like eight or eight-thirty, I’ll come up. I’ll ring the doorbell. Dudley can let me in. He’ll take me into the library where you’ll be sitting, reading
Time
and
Newsweek
. He’ll say, ‘Miss March.’ I’ll shake hands like I’m meeting you for the first time, and then you can take me on a tour of the house and grounds. With all those people from all those museums going through the house looking at all your art all the time, one little person like me is not going to look suspicious. I want to see that picture with the white roses.”

“I’ve had a postcard made of that picture,” said Jules.

“Well, I’m not interested in the postcard. I want to see the original.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“Forty minutes later, I’ll say good night, thank you very much, Mr. Mendelson, it was nice of you to make the time for me to see your beautiful collection, and I’ll go back out the front door and get in my Mercedes and be off into the night.”

“Why do you want to do this?”

“I’m interested in your life, Jules. Is that so strange? I see more of you than anyone else, but most of your life is closed off to me. You can’t blame me for having curiosity about you.”

“Okay,” he said. “But no false moves. Dudley has eyes in the back of his head.”

“Oh, my,” said Flo, as she set foot in the hallway of Clouds, looking up, looking left, looking right. She was at a loss for words, and she was only in the hall of the magnificent house. The curved staircase seemed to float upward in front of her eyes, with six huge paintings on its green moiré walls. At its base, the great quantities of orchid plants in blue-and-white Chinese cachepots caught her attention. She’s not even here, and the house is still filled with flowers, she thought to herself.

Flo’s expectations of pleasure from her visit to Clouds were so high that she was bound to be disappointed. And she was. She could cope in her imagination with Pauline Mendelson’s house, but the grandeur of the actuality was too much for her even to comment upon. She walked down the hallway behind Dudley, casting glances into rooms as she passed, each more perfect than the last. She had always thought of Pauline in terms of beautiful clothes and pearl necklaces and parties, the way she was presented in the newspapers and in magazines. She had not thought about tables and chairs that were not just tables and chairs, but tables and chairs of an exquisiteness that she, born without prospects to an unwed mother, could not even begin to comprehend. If ever, in the remote corners of her mind, she had entertained the idea that she might become the wife of Jules Mendelson, she knew at that moment that it would never be.

Jules waited for her in the library. She followed Dudley into the room. They went through the charade that she had planned. “Good evening, Miss March,” he said, rising from an English chair and laying aside his magazine.

She looked into the eyes of the man whom she had made love to only three hours earlier, into whose ear she had whispered base things to incite his lust, whose body and desires she
had grown to know intimately, and he appeared different to her in the surroundings of his home. She became shy.

“Good evening, Mr. Mendelson.”

“Have you just arrived in Los Angeles?”

“Yes, today.”

“Did you have a good flight?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take you on a tour of the house and the pictures, if you’d like.”

“Lovely.”

“Would you care for a drink?”

“No, thank you.”

“I’ll ring, Dudley, if Miss March changes her mind. Will you put on the lights in the sculpture garden?”

“Yes, sir.”

Alone, they were silent. She wished she had not come.

“This is van Gogh’s
White Roses
,” Jules said, finally, pointing to the picture over the fireplace.

“Such thick paint,” she said, looking up at the picture. “Didn’t I read somewhere that that picture is worth about forty million dollars?”

“That’s what that article said, yes.”

“My, oh my,” she said.

There was a silence again.

“This room we’re in is the library. It is where we spend most of our time when we are alone,” said Jules, who also felt the awkwardness of the situation. He was used to giving tours of his house to the many museum people who visited Clouds, but he could not think of the appropriate descriptions and comments he usually made to say to Flo.

Flo looked around the room, without moving her position.

“Beautiful appointments,” she said in a whispered voice.

Jules hated the word
appointments
when it was applied to the decorative arts, but he understood the extent of Flo’s discomfort and, for once, did not correct her. Instead, he squeezed her hand and she was grateful.

“I guess I better be on my way,” she said.

“On your way? You haven’t seen anything yet.”

“That’s okay.”

The lights went on in the garden outside. She turned to look through the windows toward the grounds. “You must see
the sculpture garden, at least,” said Jules. “It will look odd if you leave so soon.”