Once Is Not Enough (59 page)

She put her hand to his lips. “David, it is good to see you. And I am sorry about that night.”

He grabbed her hands and kissed them. “No. I’m the one who is sorry. I didn’t really mean any of those things I said. I—” He knew his face was burning. “I didn’t believe what I was saying about Heidi Lanz. I didn’t really think she was in here.”

“None of that is important,” she said. “Heidi—” She smiled. “I knew her so very long ago, when I first came to America. I haven’t seen her in years, except reruns of her old pictures on television.”

“Of course. And I had seen her that day at “21” and she just came to my mind and—”

She put her fingers across his lips and smiled. “Please, David. None of that is important. Heidi, or—”

“You’re right,” he said. “Nothing is important. Except us.”

She stood up and crossed the room. She smiled at him, yet there was a sadness in her eyes. “No, David, we are not all that important. I have lived a very selfish life. I have always meant to do so many things, but always felt there was so much time. Dee’s death taught me differently. We never know just how much time there is. Jeremy Haskins, my old friend, is close to eighty. Every time I hear from London I hold my
breath. Yet who would have thought Jeremy would outlive Dee?”

He came to her and tried to take her in his arms, but she broke his embrace. He held her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Karla, that’s why I’m here. For just that reason. We’ve talked about the age difference between us. But now it all seems so stupid. All that matters is being together, having one another.”

“No, David, that is not all that matters.” She turned away. Then she pointed to the couch. “Sit down. I want you to listen to me. Yes, we have had our wonderful times. But that is past. Now I will tell you about what does matter. I will tell you about a girl called Zinaida, . . .”

David crumpled his empty package of cigarettes. He stared at Karla as she stood against the mantel. Several times he had felt tears come to his eyes as she recounted her struggle to raise her child. Her quiet composure as she told him about the rape of the nuns at the convent only added to the horror of the scene. When she had finished, she said, “So you see how unimportant anything between us really is. Until now I had coasted, letting others take care of Zinaida. But now it is all different.”

“Did Dee know about your child?” he asked.

Karla hesitated. Then she managed a smile. “Of course not. Why would Dee know? Actually we weren’t that close. I was just one of the silver frames on her piano.”

“If she knew, she might have left something in her will.”

Karla shrugged. “I have enough money. But only if I change my life style. I have put this apartment up for sale. That should bring me a good sum of money. And there is a marvelous little Greek island called Patmos. Not many tourists go there. It is quiet, and I am going to buy a house there and live with Zinaida and the Harringtons.”

“Bring her here,” David begged. “We can all live together.”

“Oh, David, you do not understand. She is very beautiful. But she is a child. She would think nothing of skipping along the streets. Or bursting into tears at Schwarz’s because you would not buy her all the toys she wanted. She is a child. A
thirty-one-year-old child! I am a very private person. And you know how I have to fight for whatever privacy I get. It would not be fair to Zinaida to expose her to the photographers who would chase her. Her life would become a mockery. But on Patmos . . . we can swim together, walk together, play together. No one will know me there. We will have complete privacy. Jeremy has sent a man to arrange things. I leave tomorrow to select the house.”

“Karla . . . marry me! Please! You have enough money to support Zinaida. I make enough so that we can live and . . .”

She stroked his face gently. “Yes, I am sure you do. And we would have a wonderful year together.”

“Years,” he corrected her.

“No, David. A year at the most. Then you would see your lovely little January marry. You would think about the ten million dollars, you would think about the life style you could have had . . . No, David, it would never last. My place is with Zinaida. I must teach her so many things. Especially that I am her mother. She is so very lost. And your place is with January. I saw her today. She is also lost. She needs you very much.”

“I need you,” he said.

She opened her arms and for a moment he held her close. He covered her face with kisses. Then she broke away from him. “No, David . . .”

“Karla . . .” he pleaded. “If you are sending me away, then please, let me be with you for the last time . . .”

She shook her head. “It would only be harder for both of us. Goodbye, David.”

“Are you sending me away again?” he asked.

She nodded. “But this time I am sending you away with love.”

He walked to the door. And suddenly she rushed to him and held him close. “Oh, David. Be happy. Please. For my sake . . . be happy.” And he felt the tears running down her face, but he did not turn and look back as he walked out of the door, because he knew his own eyes were filled with tears . . .

Twenty-eight

J
ANUARY HAD BEEN TOO SEDATED
even to remember the memorial service. She knew David had been at her side. But the whole thing seemed like a newsreel without sound. Dr. Clifford, Mrs. Milford’s internist, had given her some tranquilizers, and she had taken triple the amount prescribed. She knew the church had been crowded, and she recalled thinking, “Mike would have liked the idea of playing to a full house.” But she felt oddly removed from the news cameras that flashed when she left the church, or the curious onlookers who called out her name.

She had been amazed at the people who crowded into the apartment at the Pierre, stunned by the fact that she was supposed to greet them as if they were invited guests. And when it had gotten too much for her, she had slipped into the bedroom and taken some more tranquilizers.

And the days that followed were just as dreamlike. Days of serious meetings and signing of documents at George Milford’s office—with David always at her side. Dee had left her ten million dollars! The enormity of the amount failed to arouse any distinct emotion. Could it bring Mike back? Could it take back that evening at Bungalow Five?

Somehow the days dragged by. David took her to his parents’ home for dinner each night. She managed to make some kind of conversation with Margaret Milford, who nervously tried to anticipate every wish. Through it all, she was duly grateful for David. Sometimes she felt as if she were drowning when she was surrounded by all the new strange faces and the battery of press that seemed to pop up everywhere. That was
when she would cling to David . . . find relief in seeing the familiar face. And there was always Sadie . . . waiting when she returned to the Pierre. She slept in the master bedroom now, on the side of the bed that Sadie said Mike used. And Sadie would know, because she had brought Dee’s coffee to her every morning.

Sadie also doled out Dr. Clifford’s sleeping pills each night. Two Seconals and some warm milk. At the end of the week, January found that lacing the milk with Jack Daniels brought instant sleep. And through it all, she called Tom constantly. She was never quite aware when she called him . . . or how many times. She called him when she woke up . . . whether it was in the morning or the middle of the night. Whenever she found herself alone, she reached for a phone and called him. He always consoled her, even though he sometimes sounded harassed or sleepy. A few times he gently accused her of being drunk.

But most of all, she liked to sleep. Because of the dream. It came every night. The shadowy vision of a beautiful man with aquamarine-colored eyes. She had dreamed of him once long ago, when she had first met Tom. It had been a disconcerting dream then, because somehow the man had reminded her of Mike. But once she and Tom became lovers, she had forgotten the dream. And when she was on Dr. Alpert’s shots she never dreamed because she never really fell into a deep sleep. But the dream had come again the first night she took the Seconals and the milk with the Jack Daniels. It had been an odd dream. She was in Mike’s arms and he was telling her he was still alive . . . that it had all been a mistake . . . another plane had crashed . . . he was fine. And then suddenly he fell from her arms and she saw him slip into the ocean . . . down . . . down . . . down . . . and just as she tried to go after him, she was caught by a pair of strong arms. It was Tom . . . holding her and telling her he would never leave her. And when she clung to him and told him how much she needed him . . . she saw that it wasn’t really Tom. He was like Tom . . . and he was like Mike . . . except for the eyes. The most beautiful eyes she had ever seen. And when she woke up she could still see the eyes. . . .

She asked Dr. Clifford for more sleeping pills, and he suggested that she start trying to sleep without them. “If you were a widow or an older woman, who was alone in the world, I might give sleeping pills for a longer time to help you through the loneliness. But you are a young beautiful girl with a fiancé who adores you, and you must start trying to function.”

She spent a sleepless night, and then in desperation, when her head ached and her throat felt thick, she went to Dee’s medicine chest for an aspirin and stumbled into the Comstock Lode. Bottle after bottle of sleeping pills. None of them had Dr. Clifford’s name on the label. Evidently Dee had a “pill doctor” all her own. There were dieting pills (she recognized them because Linda occasionally used them), two bottles of yellow sleeping pills, three bottles of Seconal, a bottle of Tuinals, and several boxes of the French suppositories. She quickly took them all from the cabinet and hid them.

The dream came every night now. Sometimes it was just the eyes. They seemed to be trying to comfort her, trying to give her hope, telling her there was a wonderful world waiting for her. . . . But when she woke up there was just the loneliness of the dark room and the empty bed. Then she would call Tom . . . and talk to him until her speech grew thick and she fell back to sleep.

It was in the middle of the third week that the pills stopped working. She would fall asleep immediately . . . and wake up a few hours later. And then one night she woke up and realized she hadn’t had the dream. Sleep had just been a few dark hours of nothingness. She went to the closet where she kept the pills and took another Seconal and tried a yellow one with it. She felt groggy but she couldn’t sleep. She called Tom. It took several rings before he answered. He sounded groggy.

“January, for God’s sake . . . it’s two in the morning.”

“Well, at least I didn’t get you in the middle of your writing.”

“No, but you woke me. Honey, I’m way behind. The studio is on my back. I’ve got to finish this thing.”

“Tom . . . I’ll be finished with everything in a few days. Then I’ll be back.”

There was a slight pause. Then he said. “Look, I think it’s best if you wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Wait until I finish the treatment. If you come out here, you can’t move in with me now . . .”

“Why not?”

“For God’s sake, haven’t you been reading the newspapers?”

“No.”

“You’ve been plastered all over them. That ten million bucks turned you into an instant celebrity.”

“You sound like Linda. She . . . she . . . she keeps saying . . . I’m—” She stopped. Her tongue was getting thick and she couldn’t remember what she was trying to say.

“January, have you taken anything?”

“Sleeping pills.”

“How many?”

“Just two.”

“Well, go to sleep. Look, I’ll be through with the script soon. Then we’ll talk it over.”

She fell asleep with the phone in her hand. And when Sadie woke her the next day at noon, she couldn’t remember any of the conversation. But she had the feeling that something hadn’t gone quite right.

A few days later, she invited Linda up for dinner. The room service was excellent. Sadie had chilled a bottle of Dee’s best wine. But something in their old relationship was missing. Linda had let her hair grow past her shoulders, picked at her food, and was wearing a body stocking that made her look thinner than usual. “I want to be bone thin,” she said. “That’s my new image. How do you like my glasses?”

“They’re great. But I didn’t know you needed them.”

“I always wore contact lenses. But I like this look better. I’m dating Benjamin James now.” She waited for January’s reaction. When there was none, she said, “Look, darling. He’s not exactly Tom Colt. But he’s won a lot of minor prizes. Actually, he’s considered too literary to ever really make it. His last book of poems only sold nine hundred copies. But there’s a real ‘In’ group that consider him to be a genius. Besides, he’s very good for me right now.”

“Linda, don’t you ever want a permanent man?”

“Not anymore. When I saw your pictures in the papers—” She paused and looked around the room. “When I look at this layout, it only proves my point. There’s only two ways to make it. With money . . . or fame. If you’ve got either of those things, then you can have any man you want. And when I’m famous I won’t really need a permanent man.”

“Why not?”

“Because when I make it, there’s going to be room for only one superstar in my setup . . .
me
. Until then, there has to be the Benjamins who can help. But once I get there, then I’ll take no more shit from any man. That’s the way I want to live—not being part of a man, but being
the
Linda Riggs. And that’s why I wash Benjamin’s socks and cook for him—because he’s bright and he’s in with a lot of cerebral people. I need him for now. Until the convention. In fact I’ll start working for my candidate in September. Then I’ll go all out.”

“For whom?”

“Muskie. Benjamin says he can’t lose.” Then, almost as an afterthought, Linda said, “Now, what’s happening with you and Tom?”

“He’s finishing his screen treatment.”

“You’re going back then, I take it.”

“No.”

“Don’t tell me it’s over. But then you don’t really need him now.”