Cheat and Charmer (84 page)

“Right, then. Take me with you. I guess I could stand being back over there if we had each other.”

This was the hard part. He swallowed. He now pretended to search for the lines he had prepared and rehearsed so often.

“Gracie, darling. You know, this situation we have—this arrangement—well, this is something a lot of guys like me get themselves into. And it always comes to this point. A friend of mine was once in this predicament. I said to him, ‘Do you love your wife?’ ‘Sure I love my wife.’ ‘Do you love the girl?’ ‘Of course I love the girl.’ Then I said, ‘Do you love the girl enough to give her up?’ You know, give her a chance to find the right guy to settle down with and have a family? And I’ve had to ask myself those same questions. They’re tough questions, baby, because I do love you. You know I love you. But my wife has had a tough time, what with the death of her sister and my being away so much. Frankly, I’m very concerned about her. We’re going to start fresh in Europe. I can’t give you what you want, and it isn’t fair to pretend I can when I’ve got responsibilities to her and the kids.”

He waited. He didn’t want to have to listen to her; he just wanted it to be over with.

“You waited till the last day of shooting to tell me.”

“Well, I didn’t want us to have to work together, see each other every day. It would be too painful for both of us. We’ve been together—what is it, three, almost four years now. And then, you know this business. I wasn’t absolutely sure I could get things going over there. I couldn’t talk about it until I was sure I had a project lined up. But I’ve got one now.”

“Oh, what is it?”

“Better not go into that now. You know, don’t want to hex it.” He winked, trying to make her feel that if she could share its superstitions, she belonged to show business as much as he did.

He had expected tears. But she only looked thoughtful. “But the apartment. My acting lessons. My—expenses. What am I—?”

“I’ve thought it all out, baby. Don’t you worry.” He took out an envelope. “You’re still on salary at the studio, though that ends next week—I’m aware of that. Here’s enough dough for three months. Should cover everything. I had a meeting with Irv Engel today, and I told him all about you. I reminded him that he met you when he visited the set, and I told him you’re going to call him for an appointment to talk about your future. And I have a referral here from my agent, Reg Pertwee, who gave me the number of someone named …”

He reached into his jacket pocket.

“Why did Pertwee give you a referral? I want
him
for my agent.”

“Be realistic, honey. He doesn’t handle unknowns.”

“If you’d given me a speaking part in the picture, I bloody well wouldn’t
be
unknown!”

She glared at him and he stayed calm, though his left foot was jiggling in its loafer. “We talked about that at the time. Your American accent needs work. You’ve been doing that work, and you’ve made progress. I know how much time you’ve put into those lessons. But you still have a way to go.”

“I thought you were going to call up all your producer and director mates for me when we reached this point. Don’t think I didn’t know it was coming. I bloody well did know. I’m not a fool, you know.”

He got up while she was speaking and went into the kitchen and came back with a handful of Ritz crackers and a bottle of root beer. A sound came through the open window—a colliding, scraping sound, as of an aluminum pool chair being dragged along a concrete deck. “Shit!” he heard a man say in annoyance.

“You know, honey,” he said, munching the crackers, ignoring what she had just said, “I think you’re going to do awfully well out here. People will notice you in the picture. I’ve given you a number of close-ups.”

“But I’m dancing. The camera’s on me for all of a second and a half.”

“Not true,” he said. “I let it linger long enough to really show your face. You make a real impression. I’m not worried about you at all.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and her lower lip trembled. “Look, Jake, I think I’m being one hell of a good sport about this.”

“I think you are too, sweetie.” He sat down and brushed the crumbs off his shirt front, took a swig of root beer, and puffed out his cheeks in a controlled belch. “In fact, one helluva good sport.”

“We’ve had some nice times together, eh, guv?”

“The nicest.” His voice was husky, and his eyes glistened. “You’ve been a real friend, Grace. You’ve seen me through some very tough times.”

“Can I still come to the cast party?”

“Of course! But, sweetie, don’t make this too hard on yourself.” In other words, they both knew he was saying that his wife would be there.

He leaned back, scooping up a handful of dolls, whose tiny legs and feet were poking him in the back, and placed them gently in a pile on the floor. Having said all he had intended to say, he was ready to leave, but he didn’t want to seem callous. He covertly glanced at his watch and comfortably gazed at her, reaching across for her hand.

“Oh, Jake, I’m going to miss you, you randy old bugger.”

He had resolved not to touch her. But she snuggled up against him, opening her kimono, placing his hand on her breast and her own on his fly. End-of-affair sex, he reminded himself, could be awfully good—intense and deliberate. And he wanted her to feel appreciated.

An hour later, she told him to let himself out while she stayed in bed and dozed off. “Are you okay?” he asked her.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “But I’m not going to see you out. That might be a bit sticky for me.”

“Me too,” he said, huskily.

“Just go. Now.” God, he thought, she’s being so great about this. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks, honey. For everything. You’ve been terrific.”

Inside his car he felt that he and Grace had experienced moments of real love over the past three years, and that she had been altogether good for him, and he for her. He wanted to keep his nose clean for a while,
but once he was settled in London he’d look for someone just like her and find a way to duplicate the situation. In the meantime, he would try to do what he could for her while he was still here, though of course he hoped she understood that he couldn’t perform miracles—out of bed, that is.

A
Saturday night in late June, and the Laskers’ pool shimmers a bright turquoise. All afternoon and into the evening, the water has been churning and splashing as a storm of young, athletic dancers clad in bikinis and close-fitting trunks jump and dive into the water, toss volleyballs and one another up into the air, and abandon themselves to every possible aquatic combination with which they can entangle their perfect bodies. On the pool deck and patio, more dancers and other guests eat, drink, and dance to rock ’n’ roll music and Broadway songs played by a studio band. The night is warm and balmy, the heavens clear and pricked with stars.

The picture is finished; this is the final cast party for the movie of
My Grandfather’s Saloon
, and, as Jake has just put it at the end of the barbecue dinner, making a speech to the assembled group, a night that brings to a close nearly four wonderful years together—the two years during the run of the show on Broadway and the time it has taken to shoot the picture in L.A. They have been a family and he’s going to miss them very much, he says, but he knows that great things lie ahead for each and every one of them—the most singularly talented bunch of people it has been his privilege and delight to work with. Buzz Keegan, the former ballet dancer who is the show’s original director and choreographer, has made a speech too, thanking Jake for preserving so much of the original stage version on film and wishing him the greatest luck and success at his new headquarters in London. Jake, speaking again, toasts his relationship of nearly fifteen years with Marathon Pictures and its brilliant, generous, visionary head of production, Irv Engel. He lifts his glass to Irv and his wonderful wife, Anya,
and thanks them from the bottom of his heart for their friendship and support.

It’s about nine now, the speeches are over, and it’s time for more fun. Peter Lasker and his sister, Lorna, who are now fourteen and thirteen, respectively, mesmerized by the sight of the young beautiful flesh before them, and uneasily aware of the other’s embarrassed and aroused fascination with it, sit on the patio steps, modestly dressed, each preferring to die rather than put on a bathing suit and take part in the swimming-pool follies.

They roll their eyes at each other, and exchange glances that are comments on comments. Peter knows that Lorna has a crush on a “gypsy” dancer in the show named Tony Romeo, whom she had noticed onstage when she was taken to see the show in New York. Her cheeks had burned to a bright cherry when, during a visit to the set in Los Angeles, her father had introduced her to him by saying loudly, “Hey, Tony, she has a big crush on you. Can you give her a kiss?” She could have killed her father, on the spot. Romeo is a short man in his early twenties, with rippling muscles in his back and arms—the most athletic and absolutely the sexiest male dancer in the show. In New York, Jake had to triple his salary to keep him from being stolen by
West Side Story
and
Li’l Abner
. He is wearing a tight elastic brieflike bathing suit, with a bulge so prominent that Peter jabs his elbow in his sister’s arm and whispers to her in his best Hollywood-brat fashion, “Well, look at that: there’s a garden at the bottom of our fairy.” He’s certain that she won’t know the source, and he’s right; she doesn’t, because the only other kid he knows who reads Shakespeare is his friend Joelly Rosen. But she gets a little bit of his meaning, nonetheless, and says, “Like hell he’s a fairy, and you know it, too. You just wish …” Before they can banter themselves into either a fit of giggles or a loud quarrel, they are struck by a singular commotion.

Over by the Ping-Pong table, a man and a woman have entered the vast backyard of the Lasker demesne. The man is stocky, five-nine or so, with broad shoulders and a swagger. Dressed in a dark suit, he has graying hair that, Peter sees at once, he wears in a military crew cut. Moving up to get a closer look, they observe that he has a square-shaped face (“He’s lantern-jawed,” whispers Peter to Lorna. “You could keep a pet cricket inside his head”) and tanned, weathered skin. “Wow, a real tough guy,” says Peter under his breath, noting the man’s cocky stance and his big-knuckled hands, as well as the protective and proprietary arm wrapped around the
shoulders of a voluptuous redhead; she’s wearing an electric blue strapless sheath with sequins all over the place, and matching electric blue three-and-a-half-inch spike heels. The red hair is pulled back in a French twist, and the girl’s lipstick is a hot thick red. Her cleavage is visible, her large breasts squeezed upward, hinting at full nested globes lying cupped within the warm receptacles fastened inside the dress. Accompanying them is that all-around Lasker unfavorite, one Byron Cole, at the sight of whom Lorna turns to Peter, sticks her finger into the back of her mouth, and makes an exaggerated gagging sound.

“Stop that,” Peter says. “Concentrate: who’s the babe?”

Lorna stares. She knows the name of every one of the dancers. “It’s Grace Siddons,” she says.

“And you know what?” says Peter. “That guy was in Las Vegas.”

“What guy?”

“That guy with her. You were asleep, with Gussie. But he stopped at our table at the Flamingo and said something to Mom. Mom said he’s a jerk.”

All of a sudden, before either of them can add a further comment, a human cannonball, all tight muscles and wet black hair, shoots through the air and lands in a horizontal explosion mid-gut on the man in the suit, socking and pounding the guy wherever he can, landing blows on his ribs and shoulders, to which he clings like an enraged squid. The stocky guy opens his mouth and laughs, and, peeling the little dancer off limb by limb, lifts him up under the shoulders, strides over to the wall opposite the Ping-Pong table, and slowly and sadistically rakes the dancer’s naked back along the white stucco wall. He then repeats the motion, the dancer howling and kicking, then drops him in a heap on the terra-cotta tiles.

As Jake and Dinah tear over to the fight, and other dancers pick up the injured man, Peter and Lorna see the girl, Grace, smile mysteriously at their father and at Byron Cole. She moves in closer to the stocky man, who is still laughing with his head thrown back, so that the edges of his crew cut are silhouetted like shark’s teeth against the light. The two Lasker kids hear their father calling their names. “You guys come with me, on the double. I’m taking Tony upstairs,” and they have no choice but to follow, though they are now horrified by the sight of the dancer’s back—a mess of bloody streaks where the skin has been torn to shreds against the coarse sharp wavelets of white stucco.

“Lorna, get Band-Aids. Pete, get the iodine, on the double,” Jake barks in his upstairs bathroom, and they rush into the kids’ bathroom and back
again, in time to hear what the dancer is saying. He’s punchy, gasping, and he dances lightly side to side like a prizefighter in the ring, while Jake instructs Lorna to daub his wounds with iodine-soaked cotton balls. Though her face is one large scarlet moon, and she feels almost sick from the waves in her belly that she doesn’t yet recognize as sexual desire, Lorna does as she’s told and the dancer hisses each time the antiseptic touches his flesh. Meanwhile, he talks nonstop.