An Inconvenient Woman (6 page)

Flo’s Tape #2

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There’s something you’ve got to understand. I never for a moment expected Jules Mendelson to divorce his wife and marry me, and he never gave me any line like that either, in order to keep me hanging in there. If he had any complaints about his wife, he never talked about them to me. The thing is, the Mendelsons had an ideal marriage, like a great partnership, except that he was in love with me, as well as being in love with Mrs. Mendelson. He just loved us in different ways
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Jules was a guy who’d had his own way all his life. And he thought he could have the two of us, and he could have as far as I was concerned, but it just didn’t work out that way
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You see, I had no intention of letting happen what happened between us. You’ve certainly seen enough pictures of Jules; he was never going to win any prizes in the looks department. And I’d never gone out with a guy that age before. There’s something about power that’s very sexy, you know, and what Jules lacked in the looks department, he more than made up for in the power department. When Jules walked into a room or a restaurant, people turned around. My friend, Glyceria, who was Faye Converse’s maid, told me that in her time, women used to think Henry Kissinger was attractive. It’s another version of the same thing, you know
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And he was good to me. He wanted to improve me. He once said to me, ‘You’ve got to start reading the newspapers, not just the gossip columns.’ And then he started asking me about stuff in the news, like Gorbachev, and Bush, and the deficit, and stuff like that, and he could explain things to me so that I could understand. If you should happen to have any questions about the European currency after 1992, for instance, I’ll probably be able to help you out, because he talked about that all the time. And he wanted me to wear nice clothes, and he began to buy me classy gifts, like this ring here with the sapphire and the diamonds, and these yellow diamond earrings. When I was seeing that putz Casper Stieglitz before I met Jules, all that he ever gave me was black satin underwear from Frederick’s of Hollywood. And pretty soon, I started to fall in love with Jules
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T
he night before, Philip Quennell and Camilla Ebury had made love for the first time, as well as the second and the third, each time experiencing increased acts of intimacy. Awakening later than Camilla, Philip lay in bed without moving and watched her as she brushed her hair, with a raised arm and long hard strokes, at the same time gazing into her dressing table mirror with an intent stare. The strap of her nightgown had fallen from her shoulder, and her concentration on her hairbrushing was complete.

“When I was a child, my nanny—Temple she was called, short for Templeton—made me brush my hair one hundred times each morning, no matter what. I used to hate it, but it became a habit, and now I find that my day is imperfect if I don’t do it the first thing. Of course, I don’t think about my hair when I brush it. It is for me a time for thinking,” said Camilla.

“How did you know I was awake?” asked Philip.

“I could see you in the mirror,” she said.

“Nice back,” he said.

“Hmmm?”

“Nice back, I said.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s a good look the way your strap has fallen off your shoulder.”

“I’m experiencing shyness, if you can believe it.”

He smiled at her.

“Do you always sleep with your pearls on?”

“Always. They belonged to my uncle.”

“The place card changer, that uncle?”

She laughed. “Uncle Hector, although I never call him uncle. Hector Paradiso.”

“As in Paradiso Boulevard, on the way to the airport?”

“Yes. The Paradisos were a Land Grant family. Hector’s great-grandfather, or great-great, I’m not sure, I never get it straight, was one of the founders of the city, way back when. My mother was his older sister.”

“Now let me get this straight. On your father’s side, according to Pauline Mendelson, you’re natural gas, and on your mother’s side, you’re from a Land Grant family. Right?”

“Right.”

“You’re what’s called well connected, where I come from.”

“I cover all the bases, at least in Los Angeles.”

“I know it’s none of my business, but why did Uncle Hector have a pearl necklace?”

“It belonged to his mother, my grandmother, whom I never knew. When Hector was in the army, he wore it under his uniform. He claimed the pearls brought him luck. After the army, he gave them to my mother, and when Mummy died, they came to me. I almost never take them off, except when I bathe, of course, or go swimming—the chlorine in the pool is terrible for them—or when I wear Mummy’s diamond necklace, which isn’t often, because it’s a bore to get it out of the bank and then back the next morning, because of the insurance.”

Philip laughed.

She looked at him, confused. “What did I say that was funny?”

“Rich people stories always strike me funny,” he said.

Her hundred strokes finished, she stood up and walked toward the bed and pulled the bedclothes off him. “Time to get up,” she said. Looking down at him, she spoke again. “Oh, heavens!”

Philip, embarrassed, smiled bashfully.

“Is that because of me or because it’s morning?” she asked.

“Both,” replied Philip. He reached up and flicked off the second shoulder strap, and her nightgown slipped down to her waist. “Nice front, too,” he said, quietly.

She folded her arms in front of her breasts but did not turn away.

“Don’t do that,” said Philip. He reached up and took down her protective arms and stared at her breasts. With his first finger he lightly touched the tip of her nipple and then
moved his finger in a circular motion. “Perfect,” he said. The night before, at the Mendelsons’ party, he had thought she was attractive, but not quite beautiful. Now, seeing her, he revised his opinion.

“That’s really nice,” he said.

“What’s really nice?” she asked.

“Your modesty.”

“Listen, Philip, I don’t want you to think I’m in the habit of picking up men at parties and bringing them home,” said Camilla. “I’m not.” She wanted to say, “This is the first time since my husband died,” but she didn’t, although it was true, because she knew it would sound like a protestation.

“That’s not what I think at all,” said Philip gently. For a moment they stared at each other. Then Philip reached out and took her hand and brought her down to the bed beside him.

“There’s something I meant to tell you last night,” she said.

“What?”

“I do think that’s an awfully odd place down there for you to have a tattoo.”

Later, Camilla went downstairs to make coffee and brought it back up to the room. She could hear Philip in her bathroom, with the water running. He was standing nude with his back to her, intent on shaving. Although she had spent the night with him, making love in endless variations, and repeated the process in the morning, she felt like an intruder on his privacy as she walked in on him in her bathroom.

“Oh, excuse me,” she said.

He smiled. “It’s all right.”

“I need the Floris bath salts.”

“Come in. It’s your bathroom. I borrowed a razor.”

“What are you using for shaving cream?”

“Just soap. It works all right.”

Passing him, opening the cabinet, her body brushed against the front of him. Philip, always responsive to touch, responded. They both noticed. They both smiled.

The telephone rang in the bedroom.

“What? No extension in the bathroom?” joked Philip. “I thought this was the movie capital of the world.”

“Not the group I’m in,” said Camilla as she walked toward the ringing telephone. “We don’t even speak to the people
in the movie capital. It’s probably Bunty. Did I tell you I had a daughter?”

“No.”

“Age eight. She’s spending the weekend at her friend Phyllis’s family’s ranch in Solvang. Otherwise, there’d be no way you would ever have spent the night here. Hello? Oh, good morning, Jules. What a marvelous party that was. I had such a good time. I was going to call Pauline to thank her, but I thought it was too early.”

There was a long silence, and then Philip heard Camilla say, “No!” There was another silence, and again she said, “No! I simply can’t believe it. How could this happen?”

Again there was a silence, and Camilla said, “Where are you calling from, Jules?”

Philip wrapped himself in a towel, walked into the bedroom, and stood by Camilla. He perceived at once from Camilla’s face that something serious, possibly calamitous, had occurred.

“From Hector’s house.” He was able to hear Jules Mendelson’s deep voice.

“I’ll be right there,” said Camilla.

“No, no, Camilla, don’t come over,” said Jules. He spoke hastily. “There’s no point in that. It would only upset you terribly. I can handle everything here. What you should do is go up to Pauline’s and stay with her, or I could tell Pauline to come to you, and I’ll meet you in an hour or so.”

Camilla was dissatisfied with this arrangement, but, as it was Jules Mendelson who was advising her, she capitulated to his wishes.

“Yes, of course, Jules. Have you told Pauline yet?”

“Yes, I called her,” said Jules.

After she hung up, Philip asked, “What is it?”

“Hector’s dead,” answered Camilla.

“How?”

“Shot, apparently.”

They looked at each other. He put his hand over her hand. “I’m sorry.”

She nodded. “My father, my mother, my husband, now my uncle. What the hell’s wrong with me?”

“Get dressed,” said Philip. “I’ll drive you there.”

“Jules said not to come, that it would only upset me. He said for me to go up to Pauline’s and that he would meet me there and fill me in.”

“Is Jules Mendelson related to your uncle?”

“No.”

“Was he his best friend or something?”

“No. Hector was Pauline’s friend really. I never thought Jules liked him all that much. Why do you ask?”

“You are Hector’s only living relation, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How come Jules Mendelson knows your uncle is dead before you know it? Why would the police call him?”

Camilla looked at Philip. “I don’t know, but it is so like Jules to handle things. Underneath that stern facade, he is an incredibly kind man, who would do anything for his friends. I told you how he helped me when Orin dropped dead in Barcelona.”

“Yes, I understand all that,” said Philip. “But I still don’t understand why the police called him and not you.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she said.

“Don’t you think you should go to your uncle’s house?”

“Jules said to go up to Pauline’s.”

“Somehow you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who stays away just because someone tells her to stay away.”

“I’m not.”

“C’mon. I’ll take you there.”

Flo’s Tape #3

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Once Jules told me he sometimes felt inadequate around Pauline’s family. I couldn’t imagine Jules ever feeling inadequate about anything, but he said he did. Pauline’s father was a great sportsman, and Jules never participated in sports, except to watch football on television. What almost no one knew was that Jules had a little spindly leg, just about this big around. He was very sensitive about it. When he was a child in Chicago, he had one of the last known cases of polio. So he didn’t play golf, or tennis, or any of the things that were important to Pauline’s father
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He also felt that Pauline never really lost her Eastern Seaboard background, even though she had become a fixture of the Los Angeles social scene. He said he thought of her as a permanent visitor. When her sisters came to visit her, as they did several times a year, he told me that he felt like an outsider among them, while they giggled and talked about people they had known whom he had never heard of. He said that sometimes they spoke in French together
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Once he said that if anything ever happened to him, he was sure that Pauline would be gone from Los Angeles within the year
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T
o have the news of a misadventure before anyone else, even the media, was not an altogether new experience for Pauline Mendelson. In times past, because of the prominence and influence of her husband, she had known of certain minor misadventures involving her son and only child, Kippie Petworth, before anyone, even the police. Kippie’s teenage kleptomania had long since come to a halt, but not without several highly embarrassing situations that had had to be covered for, atoned for, and hushed, all thanks to Jules, who was no more than the boy’s stepfather. But, as everyone they knew knew, Kippie’s real father, Johnny Petworth, was hopeless in any sort of crisis, except in cards and backgammon.