An Inconvenient Woman (43 page)

Faye Converse, who was exhausted from her barbecue lunch party, rested after Cyril Rathbone finally left her house to investigate the screams coming from next door. She knew nothing of Jules Mendelson’s heart attack, which had taken place there. She had removed her makeup and hairpieces, put
on a caftan and a turban, and settled down with a goat cheese pizza, fetched by Glyceria from Spago, to watch
The Tower
, her greatest flop, on the All-Movie channel.

“You know, Jack Warner used to say to me, ‘You don’t have the right kind of looks for costume epics, Faye. Leave those to Olivia de Havilland.’ But I insisted. I said, ‘No, Jack. I want to play Mary, Queen of Scots, in
The Tower
. It’s a part I was born to play.’ The son of a bitch turned out to be right, of course. God, I hated Jack Warner.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Glyceria.

“You know I sued him, don’t you?”

“No, ma’am.”

Then the doorbell rang.

“He said I was box-office poison.”

The doorbell rang again.

“Whoever it is, I’m not home,” said Faye to Glyceria.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Glyceria.

“Imagine someone ringing the doorbell at this hour,” said Faye.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Glyceria.

“I really should have guards so this sort of thing can’t happen,” said Faye. “Dom and Pepper Belcanto have guards now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Glyceria.

“And the Marty Leskys keep a police car parked in their driveway.”

The doorbell rang again.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” asked Faye.

“I didn’t know if you was finished talking, ma’am,” said Glyceria.

When Glyceria opened the front door, she was astonished to see Flo March, her friend from next door, standing there.

“Oh, thank God, Glyceria. I thought nobody was at home. I rang and rang,” said Flo.

“What are you doing here, Flo?” asked Glyceria. She looked behind her into the house to see if Miss Converse was watching.

“I have to see Miss Converse,” said Flo. “It’s very important.”

“She won’t see nobody tonight,” said Glyceria. She looked behind her again. “She’s watching herself on TV, and she don’t like to be disturbed.”

“It’s very important, Glyceria,” repeated Flo.

“You won’t tell her I go over to your house and drink coffee, will you?”

“Of course not. Please, Glycie.”

Glyceria looked at her friend. She thought she looked tired and drawn. Her usual ebullience, which Glyceria called bounce, was missing.

“You okay, Flo?” she asked.

“Please tell her I’m here, Glyceria.”

“But she just told me she didn’t want to be disturbed.”

Flo cupped her mouth with her two hands. “Miss Converse,” she called out in as loud a voice as she could muster, after the exhaustion she felt from the last five hours. “Miss Converse, please.”

“I’m going to be in big trouble,” said Glyceria.

Faye Converse entered the hall of her house. “What’s going on here, Glyceria?” she asked.

“Miss Converse, this is Miss March from the house next door. She says she has to see you. She says it’s real important,” said Glyceria.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Converse,” said Flo. “It’s about Astrid.”

“Oh, Astrid,” said Faye Converse, throwing up her hands in the air. “That wretched little dog has run away again. She’s been nothing but a problem from the beginning. She bit off Kippie Petworth’s finger, and she tripped my great friend, Rose Cliveden, who broke her leg. And she runs away all the time. Have you found her?”

“I killed her,” said Flo.

“You what?” asked Faye.

“I ran over her in my car. I didn’t mean to. I was going down my driveway. Someone had a heart attack in my house and the ambulance came to take him to the hospital. And I was following in my car. And the little dog jumped in front of my wheels, and I ran over her,” said Flo. She started to cry.

The telephone rang in the library.

“Whoever it is, I’m not home,” said Faye to Glyceria.

“I loved that little dog,” continued Flo. “You don’t know how much I loved that little dog, Miss Converse. I wouldn’t have hurt little Astrid for anything in the world. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

Glyceria looked from one woman to the other and then left to answer the telephone.

Faye Converse listened to the young woman. She noticed how pretty she was, even though her mascara had run and her lipstick was smeared. She noticed that her suit was a Chanel, even though it was ripped and had threads hanging off it. She noticed that her knees were scraped. She noticed that she wore large yellow diamond earrings, like the ones in the Boothby catalog that Prince Friedrich of Hesse-Darmstadt had sent her. “You poor darling,” she said. She walked over to Flo and put her arms around her. “This is very nice of you to come and tell me yourself that you ran over my dog. That could not have been a pleasant chore for you. I can be frightful at times, which I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“You’re not mad?” asked Flo.

“Sad but not mad,” said Faye. “She was a strange little dog. Did you ever hear of someone called Hector Paradiso?”

“I knew Hector,” said Flo.

“Everyone seems to have known Hector. She was Hector’s dog,” said Faye.

“I know,” said Flo. “Some people say she’s the only one who knew who killed Hector.”

“I thought Hector committed suicide,” said Faye.

“Two schools of thought on that,” said Flo.

Faye looked at Flo. “Is your house on that side or this side?”

“That side.”

“Was that you who was screaming earlier?”

“Yes, I screamed. My friend had a heart attack.”

“What a terrible day you’ve had. I hope your friend will be all right.”

“Thank you.”

“There’s a call for you, Miss Converse,” said Glyceria.

“Who is it?”

“Mr. Cyril Rathbone.”

“Oh, God. The son of a bitch is probably calling to tell me
The Tower
is on the All-Movie channel.”

“He says it’s important.”

“Would you excuse me?”

“I better get back to my own house.”

“No, no. Stay a minute. You’ve been so kind. Come in and have a drink.”

“Oh, no, thanks. I don’t drink.”

“Or some pizza. You must be exhausted. We have goat
cheese pizza from Spago. Have you ever had pizza from Spago?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll stay?”

“All right. May I use your ladies’ room?”

“Yes, in there. I hope it doesn’t still stink. Pepper Belcanto threw up all over the walls this afternoon, and poor Glyceria had to clean it up.”

The bathroom smelled of hyacinth air spray from Floris. Flo washed her face and combed her hair. She came out of the bathroom at the same time that Faye, aghast, hung up her telephone. Cyril Rathbone had just told her that Jules Mendelson had had a major heart attack in the house next door, which belonged to his mistress, whose name was Flo March, and that there had been a showdown between Flo March and Pauline Mendelson in the intensive care unit of Cedars-Sinai only a short time before. Faye did not tell Cyril that the very same Flo March had killed her dog, Astrid, and that she had just invited her to stay and share her goat cheese pizza from Spago.

Jules remained in the intensive care unit for three nights and two days before he was moved to the finest room in the Mendelson Wing of the hospital. There were nurses around the clock. Dr. Rosewald had flown out from New York for conferences with Dr. Petrie. Dr. Jeretsky had come down from San Francisco. Dr. de Milhau had come in from Houston on the Mendelson plane. The prognosis was not promising. On several occasions Flo March, wearing a nurse’s uniform, had managed to get into the room and talk to the patient.

The weather was vile. It rained all day long. Persistent downpours, sometimes torrential, were interspersed with thick mists that obliterated the city below. Pauline nodded yes when Dudley asked her if she would like a fire in the library. Even the pink and lavender roses she had cut in her garden and carefully arranged in the blue-and-white Chinese cachepots the day before could not dispel the gloom of the day. She played Mahler on the compact disc, the Ninth, her favorite, and tried to read the seventy pages of the Princess de Guermantes’s evening reception in
Remembrance of Things Past
, which was always her favorite passage, but she could not concentrate.

Pauline moved over to her desk and picked up a piece of her blue notepaper. She wrote to her father. “Jules very unwell. Doctors mystified. He has suffered a serious heart attack. He’s brave but naturally extremely low. I’ll keep you informed. It was lovely seeing you, Poppy. Thank you for still being the best father in the whole world. Love, Pauline.”

Dudley came into the room to tell her that Sims Lord had arrived at the house.

“Oh, finally,” said Pauline. Seeing Sims Lord was the point of her day. “Show him in.”

When Sims walked in, Pauline was struck, as she always was, by how handsome he was.

“Hello, Pauline,” he said.

“Are you soaked through?” she asked.

“A bit wet, yes,” he said.

“You are good to come all the way up here to the top of the mountain on such a terrible day. Come over here and sit by the fire. What will you have? Can Dudley make you a drink, or bring you a cup of coffee, or tea?”

“No, thank you, Pauline. I was in Westwood at the Regency Club when you called, and I’ve just had lunch.”

“Thank you, Dudley,” said Pauline.

Pauline sat on a corner of the sofa opposite the chair on which Sims was seated.

“The fire feels so good,” said Sims. “Look how your ring picks up the flames.”

Pauline looked down at her engagement ring. “This ring and you came into my life the same week,” she said. “Do you remember?”

Sims laughed. He had been retained as Jules’s lawyer after Marcus Stromm had been fired, the same week that Jules gave Pauline the historic de Lamballe diamond, and the same week that he had married her in Paris, with Sims as their best man. In the years since, his successful career had been both enhanced and obscured by his proximity to the dominant presence of Jules Mendelson. “I certainly do.”

“I’ve grown to hate this ring,” she said.

“Hate it?”

“For years I’ve enjoyed watching people react to it. It is quite blinding. Now it seems fake to me. Like my marriage.”

“Oh, Pauline,” said Sims.

“It’s true. Don’t pretend it’s not, Sims. I understand your loyalty to Jules, but I know you must be aware of all that has
been going on with Miss Flo March, as she seems to be called.”

Pauline stood up. She took the ring off her finger. “I don’t intend to wear this anymore,” she said. For an instant Sims thought she was going to throw it into the fire, but she placed it in a silver box beneath the painting of van Gogh’s
White Roses
.

“Someone could pick that up there,” said Sims.

“I’ll put it in the safe later,” she said, dismissing it. “But, of course, I didn’t ask you to come up here on this hurricanelike day to talk about the de Lamballe diamond, Sims. I know all about the affair. I have met this woman.”

“You have?”

“She was in his room in intensive care when I arrived. She had passed herself off as his daughter. She was whispering in his ear when I walked into the room. That woman is interested in one thing and one thing only, and that is Jules’s money. Imagine, with a man as ill as Jules is, possibly dying, that she should be in there grubbing for money. It’s disgusting, but not surprising. I understand that she has been there on two occasions since I asked her to leave. I understand she dressed herself as a nurse and was able to get herself into his room.”

Sims did not tell Pauline that Jules had told him that he must see that Flo March was taken care of, that the house on Azelia Way must be bought and put in her name, with no further haggling about price, and that a trust should be set up for her that need not be in the will, so as not to embarrass Pauline.

Pauline continued. “There is something that I want you to handle for me, Sims. I want to bring Jules home from the hospital, and I want you to tough it out with the doctors to agree. They never will with me. We all know how tough you can be. Jules always said about you that he was glad you were on his side.”

“Do you think that’s wise, Pauline? Jules is a very sick man. He is not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot,” said Sims.

“I’ll have round-the-clock nurses, male nurses, who can lift him and get him to the bathroom and wash him, and I’ll have the doctors call here twice a day. I want him home.”

“This will all be very expensive,” said Sims.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Sims. This picture alone,” she said,
pointing to the
White Roses
, “is worth forty million dollars, at least. Let’s not waste any time on what something is going to cost.”

“When do you want to do this?”

“As soon as possible.”

Lucia Borsodi, the editor of
Mulholland
, never removed her harlequin-shaped dark glasses, even in darkness. She was credited by everyone in the magazine business for saving, “absolutely saving,” the floundering magazine and turning it into the enormous success that it had become. “She not only has an extraordinary story sense,” a cover piece in the arts-and-leisure section of the
Sunday Tribunal
said about her, “but she has an uncanny sense of timing as well.” It was Lucia, as his editor, who told Cyril Rathbone, to his consternation, that he must hold back on his story about Jules Mendelson.

“It’s too early, Cyril. Don’t jump the gun,” said Lucia.

“But, Lucia,” exclaimed Cyril, almost in tears.

“No, no, Cyril, trust me. It’s the gossip columnist in you that is rushing this story, but it’s a much bigger story than that, as you yourself have pointed out. You simply want revenge on Pauline Mendelson because she has always snubbed you.”

Cyril blushed. If there was any doubt about his motive, the reddening of his face belied it.

“Don’t you understand,” Lucia said gently to the man she had just embarrassed. She understood writers and knew how to handle them. “What you have here is a story unfolding. This is not a complete story yet. You have the inside track. You were there. You saw the heart attack. You saw the girl breathing life into her lover’s mouth. You have the photographs taken at the hospital. You interviewed the policeman who gave Flo March the ticket. You saw Pauline Mendelson arrive. You heard from the admitting nurse that the two ladies had hot words over Jules Mendelson’s dying body.”