Cheat and Charmer (36 page)

“Twenty dollars,” she said in heavily accented English.

“Okay,” he said, taking her elbow.

The hotel was empty, and the girl sniffled from the sudden warmth and took a handkerchief out of her coat pocket to wipe her nose. No one said anything, neither the concierge nor the bellboys. The elevator man, though, nodded as if he recognized the girl, and after an initial flutter of embarrassment Jake calmed down. This was France, he told himself. Men took women to their rooms, paid them, and had sex with them, and nobody gave a damn one way or the other. He remembered now a scene in Mike’s first novel,
The Confession
—which Jake had competitively devoured after Mike and Veevi had gone back to Paris following their visit in 1946—some wartime interlude with a French prostitute who had been “affectionate and skillful.” He’d wondered at the time if Mike had meant cocksucking, the one thing that Dinah didn’t like and wasn’t good at.

Jake’s mind wandered back to Bonnie, in L.A. She was married now to some muscle-bound stuntman who probably kept her well supplied with healthy orgasms. He smiled at the girl in the elevator, and she smiled back
shyly and said nothing. Had he really given Felicity a good time the other night? She was so aware of what she was doing, so smart, and had such good manners that he couldn’t tell (“Oh, that was marvelous, darling”) whether she had faked it or not. What was he doing now, taking this cold, sniffling girl with raccoon eyes to his room? And what about Dinah? If he were home right now he’d pace the house, raid the icebox, and then go back to their room. Instead of getting into his own bed, he’d get into hers and he’d put his arms around her still body and put his face against her warm neck and fall into a deep sleep. Who were these people he had eaten and drunk and danced with tonight? Who were they kidding? How did any of them manage to write anything with all that booze flowing down their throats?

Once they were inside the room, the girl stood waiting at the door, and he pulled the money out of his pants pocket. Then she disappeared into the bathroom and emerged wearing only panties. She beckoned to him with a crooked finger, whereupon she took a washcloth and soap, unbuckled his trousers, fished his cock out of his boxer shorts, and washed it; she wasn’t especially affectionate, but she wasn’t unfriendly, either—just businesslike.

He was dying to ask her all kinds of questions, but without French he felt paralyzed. He might have made jokes, or learned something about her, or at least charmed her enough to make her like him, but none of this was possible. How could he ask her for a blow job? He didn’t know how to say it in French, and the thought of demonstrating with gestures struck him as unseemly. So he took her to the bed, and she reached over and turned down the light. She got on top of him. What followed was done with detachment and haste. There wasn’t much pleasure, but he didn’t fail, and was pleased with himself.
“Merci beaucoup, mademoiselle,”
he said afterward as she got up and went to the bathroom to dress. Perhaps it had worked because she was French? He wondered if he would tell Sandy Litvak about it, and then remembered that his analysis was finished. As the girl was leaving, he gave her some more money and she thanked him and slipped away.

It was about four in the morning. In a thousand years, he told himself, he could never find anything romantic or tender about this exchange, but it hadn’t been sordid, either. And he hadn’t failed, he repeated to himself. He’d got it up and kept it up, which was a far cry from what had happened at Queenie Boardman’s so long ago.

He got back into bed and pulled the covers up to his nose. Was she out there walking the street again, in her white coat and high heels, with her bangs hanging limply over her eyebrows? He didn’t have the energy to get up and look. It didn’t take him long to admit to himself that he had had her because he was feeling competitive with Mike, Ben, and Hunt, all of whom had been in the war. Albrecht had killed Germans and fucked French prostitutes, whereas he, Jake Lasker, because of his deaf ear and flat feet and glasses, had missed out on the action and been declared 4-F. In any case, he’d been ordered by Irv Engel to write all-star comedy musicals for the boys overseas. He heard Sandy’s voice saying to him, “Why do you need to compete with Michael Albrecht anyway? Or any of those guys?” Jake couldn’t think of an answer, and he fell into a heavy sleep where there were no questions and no answers, and woke exactly at ten to eight.

Warily he lay in bed, afraid to raise his head, expecting the punishment of a hangover. But his head was miraculously clear. He even had a sense of well-being, as if he had been put through Miss Fanny’s ironing machine and pressed and starched by its rollers.

Today he was going to see Paris and give Dinah’s letter to Veevi, and in the evening he would fly back to London and send Dinah a telegram.

Veevi had told him to call her when he woke up, but it seemed too early. He showered and dressed and went down to the hotel lobby and bought a
Herald-Tribune
, then looked for a café where he could have breakfast. When he called Veevi’s number about an hour later, Claire answered and said she was still sound asleep. Christ, he thought, that’s irritating. I could have seen Willie Weil! He left a message with the girl, a teenager now, and included his hotel room number.

It was eleven-thirty when she finally rang. He thought it odd and rude that someone who had offered to show him around Paris would let the whole morning go by without calling, but he said nothing and at twelve-thirty she picked him up downstairs. There were other people in the car—Bill Nemeth, and a woman, Gerry Tuttle, whose husband, Veevi explained, was a foreign-car import czar in New York. They had a Park Avenue apartment and one here in the Sixteenth, which they visited about twice a month. The husband had gone to the Camargues for the weekend to meet Schuyler Gray and buy a horse, so she was here alone.

As soon as Jake managed to squeeze himself into the little car—no easy feat—he turned around to shake hands and make small talk with Nemeth. On the tip of his tongue he had a question about the photographer’s new assignment in Indochina, but Nemeth and the stunning Mrs. Tuttle had instantly thrown themselves upon each other and, like two pythons, were intertwined in a ravenous embrace. He glanced uneasily at Veevi, who had started the engine but was lighting a cigarette. She had an unperturbed look on her face, implying that what was going on in the backseat didn’t remotely engage her interest. She pulled into traffic and Jake put two and two together: Veevi was providing Nemeth and Mrs. Tuttle with a refuge and an alibi.

“Now for the grand tour,” Veevi said with that brief intake of breath that always signaled a laugh. He met her sardonic look, which took him into her confidence and seemed to say, “Can you believe those two idiots in the backseat?”

The grand tour started at the bottom of the Étoile, from which they drove to the Madeleine and then to the place Vendôme, where Veevi pointed out the fancy stores. “Perhaps Monsieur Le Big Hollywood Producer wants to buy his wife some expensive French perfume?”

“With the filthy lucre I’ve made since she cleared me with HUAC?” he said in return, surprising himself with the remark.

“There are worse ways to thank her,” was the cool reply. “Unless she’s still wearing that god-awful Tabu.”

He gave Veevi a sidelong glance of displeasure. Who needs this? he thought. The fact was, he kept Dinah well supplied with Femme and Joy. And he was bringing her a gold bracelet from London, made of antique jeweled necklace clasps strung together. “It’s Sunday, isn’t it?” he said.

“Right you are. Eiffel Tower, then?” she asked, and he knew she was still testing him, trying to find out if he was a cornball American tourist.

“Actually, Veevi, the only thing I’d really like to see is the Louvre,” he answered. “And I’m happy to do it alone if it’s a drag for you.”

“Oh, Uncle J.,” she said, startling him with this new nickname, “don’t be an idiot.” And she went back toward the rue de Rivoli, explaining that she was going to drive through the gates of the Louvre.

“Can you find a place to park?” he said under his breath, indicating to her with his eyes that more than heavy necking was now taking place in the backseat. “They’re having it off,” he mouthed. She shrugged. Jake, afraid he would burst out laughing, wondered what kind of a game Nemeth was
playing. With all the fabled little hotels in Paris, why couldn’t he simply rent a room for a couple of hours to bang Mrs. Tuttle? Why this adolescent clutching and gasping in the backseat of a dove-gray Aronde in the middle of Paris traffic? The car swayed and shook; he was tempted to turn around and yell, “Can you stop for a second till I get a life jacket!” But then he realized the scene was a gift and that the comedy he couldn’t find last night was right here, right now, and that if he moved to Europe he’d find it elsewhere too, and be able to write it—and in his own language at that. In this car, the elements of pure farce were there for the taking. He’d use it all one day—if not in a movie, then in a play; if not in a play, then in a novel. It was a windfall, pure serendipity.

“We’re here,” Veevi said, stopping the car. Jake jumped out at once. Together they observed the car from a distance of about four feet. It rocked; it rolled; it shuddered. “What if a cop happens by?” he asked Veevi.

“They could stand bare-assed right here in the middle of the Jardin du Carrousel and nobody’d notice.” She laughed, and her eyes lit up with hilarity.

“Well,” he said, shaking his head and taking her arm, “I’ve never seen anything …”

“Really? Come. I’ll introduce you to Mona Lisa.”

They did the Louvre fast; Jake wasn’t in a hurry, but he wanted to devour the whole place. He stopped quickly in front of everything, enjoying every moment too much to be dampened by Veevi’s clipped remarks. She lived here, after all, and had probably been to the Louvre a thousand times. While drinking in the paintings, he plied her with questions about Nemeth’s backseat antics. “Why doesn’t he just take her to some jazzy little hotel?”

Veevi laughed. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Bill Nemeth thinks everyone knows who he is and that he’d be recognized wherever they went. He’s probably right. And the concierge could make a nice little bundle out of calling the sleazier press photographers.”

“But it’s the danger too, isn’t it?” Jake added.

“Of course. Danger, passion—that sort of thing.” She put her arm to her forehead, fluttered her eyelids, and tilted back her head in a mock swoon.

The dashing Nemeth, whom Jake had envied so last night, now seemed a buffoon of sexual vanity, but for Veevi, Jake thought, he must be a reminder of Mike.

“Why are men such slobs?” he said. “These things,” he added, knowing he was implicating himself and that Veevi was smart enough to get it, “can be done with a little more class, a little more discretion.”

She laughed mirthlessly. “But then it becomes banal. Then it’s not ‘burning with a hard gemlike flame,’ as Knight always says.”

“Ben Knight didn’t make that up, you know. I forget who did, but he’s quoting somebody. That I know,” Jake said. Unlike last night, he was willing to give Knight his due, but not more than that.

“These guys aren’t like dentists in New Jersey,” she said. “They don’t play it safe.”

“But you shouldn’t be a horse’s ass and put someone like Rue Melville at risk. She’s one hell of a handsome dame. And nice, too.”

“Yes, but Bill’s home from some war. She wants to keep him in bed with her night and day until he flies out again,” Veevi added. “He can’t spend every minute with her. And, he likes variety.”

They had come to a stop in front of Watteau’s
Pilgrimage to Cythera
, and as Jake stood in front of it, giving it a quizzical look, Veevi turned to him and put her hand on his sleeve. “ ‘No’ is not in Nemeth’s vocabulary. They adore him,” she said with another acid laugh. “I don’t.”

“What about Felicity Crandell? Does she adore him, too?”

“Oh, sure,” said Veevi.

Jake winced. “Tell me something,” he said, head cocked, scrutinizing the painting. “Are these people coming or going? It looks like they’re leaving. They’ve had a lovely time and some of them are lingering, but the rest are going down to meet that ship that’s in the distance. See it? Of course I don’t know what
Cythera
means. Do you?”

“The island of Aphrodite—you know, Venus. A place for, quote, ‘love.’ ” She smiled at him sadly, and her eyes lingered on his face. “Like it?”

“Crazy about it. Tell them to wrap it up. I’ll take it now.”

She smiled again. “I know you think Bill Nemeth’s a bit of a shit,” she said, pulling him away from the painting, “but it’s his only way of dealing with fear. He’s always in danger when he’s working. He could get killed any day. So he comes here to find relief, and sometimes he has to get away from Rue. He loves her, she’s his girl, but he’s the kind of guy who has to get free of a girl even so. He’ll go back to her apartment and do unto her what he did unto Gerry, and then he’ll show up at Fouquet’s again with Rue and keep his arm around her all night. By the way, want to take me? To Fouquet’s?”