Lovers (33 page)

As she had matured from the girl of sixteen who barely knew her father, to the woman who had observed him more and more closely over the years in his many incarnations, usually over a meal they shared alone together, Gigi had become something of an expert on Vito Orsini, not, she realized, a subject that anyone was likely to grade her on, but nevertheless useful if you were his only child.

“Dad, why are you more interested in this show than you should be?” she attacked blandly, as they waited for the show to begin.

“Zach’s going to direct
Long Weekend
for me this summer.”

“I’ve never heard you mention anything called
Long Weekend,”
Gigi said, ignoring Zach’s name. “Where is it set—in the Congo, in Australia, in Patagonia?”

“In Malibu. A fast forty-five-minute drive from here, or three hours, depending on traffic. Never try to drive to Malibu after Thursday night or come back before Monday afternoon, hence the title of the screenplay and the rationale I gave Zach when he asked.”

“Zach Nevsky?” Davy asked, curious. “What’s he like to work with?”

Vito glanced swiftly at Gigi’s face and got no message at all from her serene expression. She’s even worse than I am, he thought, appalled, she’s a disgrace. She shouldn’t be allowed out on the loose without a warning sign around her neck. And she used to be such a good kid. Living with Billy all those years ruined her, he thought in a heartfelt moment of paternal feeling. This poor boy hasn’t got a clue. Doesn’t he realize he’s absolutely wrong for Gigi, too normal, too nice? One day—and soon—he’ll bore her, just as he’s bored me, in spite of his sense of humor, in spite of his pleasantness. Undiluted worship, even of my own daughter, gets tedious. It’s
unhealthy
, for God’s sake.

“Considering his line of work,” Vito informed Davy, “Zach’s a hell of a good fellow. I can understand why Gigi
and he were planning to get married, even if they did break up over some silly misunderstanding six months ago.”

“DAD!”

“What?” Vito asked, all injured innocence. “You mean Davy didn’t know all about him, so what’s the big deal? You kids, you’re so stiffly compartmentalized—hey, life is a snowball gathering snow, you roll where you roll, and everything you pick up is what makes you what you are.”

“You sound like a bad imitation of a fake New Age guru,” Gigi sputtered furiously. “Or Dershowitz defending a serial killer.”

“Quiet, baby, Maggie’s starting her introduction. I don’t want to miss a word.”

“Oh, fuck Maggie!” Gigi raged.

“Now, now, baby, Maggie’s been fucked good and plenty, you don’t have to feel sorry for her,” Vito said calmingly, infuriating Gigi further.

“When did you start calling me ‘baby,’ you fraud?” she demanded, turning on her father.

“Shhh,” he said, with a finger to his lips. “Let’s have some quiet here.”

For the next hour they watched, mesmerized, talking only during the commercials, as the behind-the-scenes footage unfolded and the interviews took place.

“Wow,” Davy said when it was over, “if the rest of the picture is as good as that, it’ll be the hit of the year.”

“Oh, please,” Gigi retorted, “Melanie was chewing the scenery.”

“Gigi, you’re nuts,” Vito said, “she was fantastic, even I bow down to her. She had every bit as much strength and passion as those scenes demanded. I second Davy’s ‘wow.’ She’ll get an Oscar nomination for certain, with a good chance of winning.”

“I didn’t mean the scenes from the film,” Gig snorted. “They were … convincing—but spare me all the kissy-kissy stuff, the eyes filled with grateful tears while she was so sweetly whimpering to Maggie that she owed it all to Zach, I mean did she really have to cling to his hand and
look at him so adoringly? He’s just a director, for God’s sake, he didn’t create her talent.”

“I don’t think she was putting it on,” Davy protested. “She meant every word of it.”

“Oh, bull, she was sickening. And Zach looking down at her as if Melanie had just given birth to the Christ Child and he was the Three Kings and all the animals rolled into one … it was a
stunt
, that’s all. Now we know she can act lying down as well as standing up, what else is new? Doesn’t every woman have to, sooner or later? I thought that part of the interview was grade-A bathos. I’m surprised Maggie didn’t ask tougher questions. And for
Maggie
to tear up? She should be deeply embarrassed.”

“Well,” Vito said, getting up to turn off the television, “I’m just glad I signed Zach to direct while the getting was good, ’Bye, kids, I’m off. Thanks for dinner, Gigi. Come and kiss me good night.”

“What the fuck are you up to, you rotten, meddling blabbermouth?” Gigi hissed angrily in his ear after she kissed his cheek.

“Me? I just wanted a home-cooked meal, baby.”

“It’s the last one you’ll get in my house, you revolting old maid!”

“How come you never told me about Zach Nevsky?” Davy wanted to know as soon as the door had closed behind Vito. His eyes had narrowed into two thin question marks, and his beautiful mouth had thinned and aged.

“It’s nobody’s business,” Gigi said. “Especially not my damn busybody father’s.”

“I’ve told you I’ve been in love twice before, but not seriously—I could never have hidden an involvement that almost led to marriage.” He gave a sort of barking laugh that was the opposite of amusement.

“I have a different attitude about that than you do, Davy,” Gigi said with a long look that took him in frowningly, intently, realistically. “What’s past is past. We started
out fresh. I wasn’t interested in your other romances, but you insisted.”

“Insisted?” He faltered at the word, and then shook his head stubbornly. “It’s not insisting to tell someone you love the important things about yourself.”

“I never asked you for details, never ever. But you were the one who was curious, right from that first day, remember? You were the one who asked me all those personal questions—”

“That was Archie and Byron’s idea of a joke, and you know it perfectly well.”

“You were certainly ready to take advantage of it,” Gigi fumed.

“Let’s get back to Nevsky,” Davy said stubbornly, with a meanly calculating look. “How long were you together before you broke up with him?”

“That has absolutely nothing to do with anything!”

“Did the two of you live here? Is that why you have such a big place?”

“Davy! Shut up! I refuse to be tormented with questions!”

He was caught up in an ugly but utterly involuntary mood. “Don’t kid yourself that I believed that story about your ‘need for privacy’—I knew something was going on that you wouldn’t share with me.”

“ ‘Share’! Now there’s a word I loathe and detest! Shall we invite in the neighbors and all get down on the floor and form a circle and ‘share’ our childhood traumas with each other, Davy? Is that what you want?”

“Stop trying to avoid my question.” His voice was distorted by the sticky panic and hatefulness of a jealous lover. “All I want to know is why you never told me about Nevsky. Why did I have to hear bout it from your father? I feel as if a part of … of
everything
 … has been stolen, distorted, alienated … because you never wanted to tell me of your own free will.”

“I still don’t want to! Is that enough to satisfy you?’

“Gigi! Don’t do this! You’re going away tomorrow to
work on The Enchanted Attic, and you know how I feel about that—the very least you can do is tell me about Nevsky.” He grew more and more petty and demanding in his rending distress, unable to stop himself.

“Davy,” Gigi said, “this is getting ridiculous and absurd—demeaning to both of us. You were miffed at Archie and By at the office Christmas party because they kissed me under the mistletoe … they kissed everybody, even you! Each time I’ve gone up to San Francisco for Indigo Seas, you’ve been suspicious of the Collins brothers, the most devoted family men I’ve ever met. You were jealous of Ben from the first time he came to the agency to look over the setup, and you’ve been getting more and more jealous and possessive ever since, even though you know there’s every reason for me to work on The Enchanted Attic since it was my idea.”

“Don’t you belong to me? At least a little, considering?”

“Considering that you want to marry me? I’ve told you and told you I have no intention of getting married. I’m not ready! I may never be! I don’t belong to anyone! It’s intolerable. Don’t ask me questions like that!” Gigi vibrated with her need for freedom, her craving to extricate herself from an ownership she had never wanted.

“I can’t help it,” he pleaded, “it’s not something I can decide to
not
feel, don’t you realize that?”

“I don’t want to mean so much to you! I should never have started this!”

“No,” he flung at her, “
you
shouldn’t have!”

“Oh!” she cried, stung. “You mean it was all my idea? You had nothing to do with it, you went along to be nice to me?”

“I fell for you from the instant I saw you. I didn’t know I could love anyone as much—but you flirted like mad, you know goddamn well you did, you encouraged me right from the start. You let me make love to you
on the rebound
, didn’t you, Gigi? On the rebound from Nevsky.
That was why it all happened so suddenly. And you don’t have to answer me, I know I’m right.”

Davy’s face contorted with such grotesque suffering, such absorption in his darkened vision, such concentration on his pangs and perceptions of his injuries, that Gigi couldn’t stay in the same room with him for another minute. He was intolerable. If he’d been a snake she’d have stomped on him without hesitation. A proposal of marriage was a handcuff.

“I’ve got to pack,” she said, turning to go into her bedroom, “I’m exhausted and I don’t want to continue this conversation. I’ll try to call you from New York.” She closed the door firmly behind her.

David Melville stood irresolutely in the center of the living room for a minute, and then, afraid of Gigi’s reaction if she should come back and find him still there, went down the stairs to drive home.

Now he knew why she had never let him move in with her or been willing to move in with him; now he knew why she had never let him spend an entire night in her bed and wake up with her in the morning; now he knew why she insisted that he go home to sleep; now he knew why she only wanted to make love on the sofa in the living room; now he knew a million things he had never wanted to know, but had feared without daring to ask himself why.

Gigi was too angry to go to sleep at all that night. She filled a suitcase with jerky movements and then dumped its contents on the carpet in irritation, knowing that she was taking all the wrong clothes for New York. She rummaged through her closets in disgust, finding heaps of other clothes that were just as unsuitable. She tried, without interest, to invent new combinations of old things, turning California dressing into Manhattan dressing, and then jammed a selection of clothes into her suitcase at random, since it didn’t matter what she looked like anyway on a strictly working trip that would be as short as she could make it.

She was so furious, as she got ready to go to bed, that her hands shook as she brushed her teeth. She should have known her father was up to something when he proposed coming to dinner at her place instead of picking a restaurant, something he’d never done, although she’d invited him often enough. He knew perfectly well she wouldn’t want to watch that infernal show of Maggie’s, but he’d been so persistent that she’d been trapped.

But to tell Davy about Zach! It wasn’t a secret, why the hell should it be, but who’d asked her father to get into the act? What was he up to? What right did he have to be up to anything? But Vito never said anything without a reason. Granted, he didn’t know about Davy’s sick jealousy, but he’d talked about her and Zach as if they’d been children. “Some silly misunderstanding” indeed! Patricide had never been so understandable or desirable.

As far as Davy was concerned, it was over. Tonight had been the end. She wouldn’t go through another one of these scenes. It was becoming impossible to remember the Davy with whom she’d had so much fun during those first months at FRB. Now, whenever she stopped at Bagel Central, the big food table in the main corridor of the agency, to trade office gossip with the group that invariably gathered there, he’d trail along as if by accident, and if he found her in conversation with any man, from the latest office boy to Archie himself, he’d join the talk, using all sorts of subtle but unmistakable body language to indicate that there was something more than creative teamwork between them.

She was as furious with herself as she was with Davy, Gigi admitted, several hours after she turned off the lights and fruitlessly settled down. She should never have had a personal relationship with anybody at the agency. Now they’d simply have to find new working partners. They could never work together in the same old easy, compatible way, after tonight. That would mean going to management and explaining enough to persuade Arch and By to break up the most productive team in the agency. But better
to be embarrassed than tormented, she thought, better to be damned as unbusinesslike than to have to deal with a jealous man. He’d get over her; he’d already been in love twice before, by his own admission.

Anyway, what made her so foolish as to believe that such a faithful man existed? Maybe Abelard, but who knows what would have happened to his love for Heloïse if he hadn’t been castrated? No way he wouldn’t have dumped her for another pretty face sooner or later. Some local version of Melanie Adams would have come along, and Heloïse would have been toast. Not even history … just a footnote.

Gigi ground her teeth in disgust at the memory of Melanie, lying in bed, toying delicately with a single rose, the courageous, fragile, exquisite queen of convalescent Sarah Bernhardts, while Zach bent his rough, dark head before her in Magi-like worship.
Pul-eeze!
She knew Maggie was capable of stage-managing anything, but this was too fucking much, over the top, although the public would fall for it, not knowing the players as she did.

Or did she? She’d heard Zach’s mordantly witty opinions on actresses often enough to know them by heart. But he’d always left room for a few rare exceptions. What if Melanie was one of them? Wells Cope had surrounded her with so much mystery that her personality was an enigma.
What if Melanie Adams was what she seemed to be?