Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (136 page)

'Like Coyote?' Daliah laughed.

It was then that the telephone rang.

Daliah jerked upright as though she had been struck. She
looked over at Cleo, sudden panic flashing in her eyes. 'Will
you get it, Miss Cleopatra, honey?' she asked shakily. 'I've
got a feeling that that's Jerome.'

'And if it is?'

'I don't care how much he yells, threatens, or tries to sweet
talk you, I don't want to talk to him. Period.'

'Consider it done.' Cleo squared her shoulders and marched
off to answer it. A few minutes later: 'He says to tell you
you've got to talk to him!' she called out grimly across the
loft. She was holding her hand over the mouthpiece. 'He says
you're contractually bound to him.'

'Maybe he doesn't know it yet, but contracts are made to
be broken.'

After Cleo hung up, Daliah asked, 'Did you tell him I'm
packing my things?'

'Should I?'

'Next time he calls, you might as well. Maybe then he'll finally get the message that I'm dead serious.'

Cleo raised her eyebrows. 'White Woman, honey, from the
way he sounds, I think he already knows that.'

Daliah packed in silence.

Thirty minutes passed and then the phone rang again.
Daliah gritted her teeth. 'Why doesn't the prick just leave me
alone?' she growled angrily.

'You can't 'spect people to do that when you're beautiful, smart, and one o' the biggest box office stars in the world,'
Cleo said reasonably.

'BS,' Daliah mumbled. She felt her pent-up tears beginning
to spill down her cheeks, and struggled to keep them back.
'Don't
you
start giving me that shit,' she said in mock anger.

This time after Cleo hung up, she came back grinning. 'There!' she said triumphantly, clapping imaginary dust off
her hands. 'Ah think that's done it. We won't be hearin' from
him
again tonight.' Her big dark eyes glowed with satisfaction.

Daliah was mystified. 'Why, what did you tell him?'

'Oh, a l'il bit o' this, and a l'il bit o' that,' Cleo said vaguely.
'This time I decided to let him have it. Now we'll be able to
enjoy some peace and quiet.'

But Cleo was wrong. It wasn't even an hour after she'd hung
up on him for the third time that the door buzzer gave off the
shrill, steady blast of someone leaning on it.

Daliah froze and her face went white. 'That can't be him!'
she exclaimed. 'He's in France.'

' 'Course it ain't him,' Cleo reassured her. 'Takes six or
seven hours to fly here.' She strode over to the intercom and
pressed the 'talk' button. 'Who's there?' she said into it.

'It's Patsy Lipschitz,' a disembodied voice squawked back.
'Let me in. I've got to see Daliah.'

'Just a moment,' Cleo said patiently.

Instantly the unrelenting buzzer sounded again. And again.

Cleo punched the 'talk' button once more. 'Hold your
horses. I'm gonna see if Daliah's in.'

'She's in,' the voice accused brashly. 'Now let me in.'

Cleo looked questioningly at Daliah.

'Shit.' Daliah flung some packing paper on the floor in dis
gust.

'Can I let her up?'

'Might as well,' Daliah shrugged. 'If I know Patsy, she'll
keep leaning on that buzzer all night long, or until we let her
up. Better yet, take the freight lift down. She's liable to have a heart attack if she's got to climb the stairs.'

Patsy Lipschitz was Daliah's agent, a gargantuan woman
who wore voluminous dresses and whose sweetly puffy
features hid a brain which was the envy of financial computers;
moreover, she was blessed with a bazaari's natural gift for tough negotiations as well. The rumour mills had it that she was a notorious lesbian, but as far as her relationship with
Daliah was concerned, she was all business.

'Will do, White Woman,' Cleo saluted smartly, slid the freight lift cage door aside, got in, and rattled the door shut
again. A moment later Daliah heard the rheumatic whirring
and clanking of the lift as it descended, as well as Cleo's cheer
ful calls as she passed each floor: 'Lingerie . . . Better
Dresses . . . Bargain Basement!' Then the whole process was
repeated as it rose back up, Cleo continuing to chant imagin
ary store departments. '. . . Notions . . . Menswear . . .
Credit Department!'

Patsy didn't even wait until Cleo slid the cage door completely aside. She caught sight of Daliah from inside the lift
and started right in on her.

'Whaddya mean, you're refusing to have anything more to
do with Jerome?' she yelled out. 'He called and said you've
left him and are packing your bags!'

Patsy was bicoastal and shuttled between New York and
Hollywood with the ease that other people commuted
between Manhattan and Westchester, but she had come to show business via Brooklyn, and the world of Erasmus Hall
High ran deep in her blood. She was loud, brash, and
obnoxious, and Daliah often wondered why someone hadn't
sent her to charm school; more often, how she had survived so long without having been shot. Right now she wondered
about the latter. Obviously Cleo did too, for she made herself
scarce.

'You heard correctly,' Daliah replied calmly as the enor
mous hennaed redhead bore heavily down on her. She stepped
adroitly aside; when Patsy was riled up, she was like a charging
rhinoceros. 'Everything's over between Jerome and me.'

Patsy wouldn't hear of it and waved a fat multiringed hand
negligently. Clusters of diamonds gave off rainbow flashes.
'Dollcake, nothing in this town or this business is ever completely finished. You and I know it's like one big, unhappy,
incestuous family.' Patsy groped around in her giant woven
handbag, came up with a thin cigar, stuck it in her mouth, and
lit it with a Bic lighter. Clicking it shut, she squinted at Daliah
through a cloud of bilious blue smoke. 'Take my advice and
stop packing. Give yourself a few days to sleep on it.'

'I've made up my mind,' Daliah said stubbornly.

Patsy headed for the seating area and parked herself on one
of the four big sofas. She kicked off her shoes and put her feet up on the shipping-pallet coffee table. 'I think it's just a phase
you're going through. You and Jerome have known each other
what now? About seven years?' She glanced at Daliah for
confirmation.

'More like eight.'

'Then you're obviously experiencing the eight-year-itch,' Patsy said definitely. 'It's nothing that a little extramarital
affair won't cure.'

'Jerome and I aren't married,' Daliah reminded her as she
took a seat on a facing couch. 'Remember?'

'But you've been living together all this time,' Patsy said
emphatically. 'Except for semantics, living together for eight
years and being married are basically the same.'

'There's more to it than that.'

'Well, if you feel so strongly about it, move out of his per
sonal life, but keep making movies together.' Patsy's voice
was loud and grating.

Daliah didn't reply. She sat in stunned silence, and despite
her best efforts, a tear slid out of each eye and trickled down
her cheeks. She should have known that Patsy wouldn't under
stand.

'Oh, shit,' Patsy said disgustedly. 'Now you're going
emotional on me. You can't allow your personal feelings to
get in the way of business.'

'I can't help it.'

'You'd better. I don't have to remind you how quickly today's box-office draw can become tomorrow's box-office
poison. Jerome gave you your start in this business. He made
you into the star that you are.'

'I helped him,' Daliah pointed out. 'I did his first picture for
nothing, and that was the one that put him on the map.'

'Yeah, but now you're getting one-point-five mil from him
and everybody else. That ain't exactly bubkas.'

Daliah sniffed. 'I never said it was.'

'Good. Just so you know it.' Patsy puffed away in silence
for a moment. 'Look at it this way, dollcake,' she said at
last. 'This year you've got the Woody Allen movie as well as
Jerome's new one. Plus CBS video's paying you two hundred
thou for the exercise tape, and Jhirmack wants to put
you on a half-mil-a-year retainer for pushing their hair
conditioner—'

'Which I don't use.'

'Never mind that. With hair like yours, they could peddle panda piss and the public would snap it up, 'cause there isn't
a woman alive who wouldn't give ten years of her life to have
a mane like yours.' She shook her head slowly. 'No matter
how you look at it, dollcake, money's money.' Patsy looked over at Daliah through narrowed eyes.
'
That brings your
income to three and three quarters of a mil for just this year
alone. Add the Bob Hope special, and guest-starring for two
weeks in that new Broadway show, and you've got a cool four
mil. Don't piss it away.'

'I'm not pissing anything away,' Daliah said indignantly.

'You will, if you walk out on Jerome.' Patsy nodded
emphatically. 'You'll lose a million and a half. And if that ain't
pissing money away, I don't know what is.'

'Patsy,' Daliah said wearily, 'the only difference between
making four million and two and a half is that I have to pay
more taxes on four than I do on two.'

'Taxes, schmaxes, it's your reputation I'm worried about,
not Uncle Sam.' Patsy stabbed her cigar toward Daliah to
make her point. 'Listen, dollcake, you're under contract to St.-Tessier Productions, and that means you're obligated, period.
If you don't hold up your end of the bargain, word will get out that you're difficult to work with, and you know how fast news
like that can spread in this business.'

'It doesn't have to spread at all, unless someone leaks it.'

'Even if all three of us clam up, news like that still has a
habit of getting out. And then, before you know it, other
producers are going to think twice before hiring you. You wouldn't want that to happen, would you?' Patsy paused a moment for dramatic effect and then lowered her voice to a
grandmotherly tone, and she even smiled. 'When Jerome
called me, we had a nice long chat. He still loves you a lot,
you know.'