Once Is Not Enough (9 page)

Well, he’d probably meet her now. Maybe he had already.

So the big new project was Deirdre Granger! In a porcelainmuted way, Dee was beautiful. But she seemed bloodless and fragile. Could Mike really love her? She seemed so cold, so unable to give affection. But maybe that was the fascination. Mike always loved a challenge.

She sat at the window until the first hint of light filtered through the darkness. She watched the black sky turn gray. She knew the sunlight was beginning to creep over the tall apartment buildings on upper Fifth Avenue. Everything was so silent—that intermediate time between night and morning.

She put on a pair of jeans, a sweater, and sneakers and slipped out of the apartment. The elevator man’s greeting was a cross between a yawn and a nod. The desk clerk looked up with weary disinterest. A man in coveralls was mopping the floor of the lobby. He stopped to let her pass.

New York was still shadowy. Empty, desolate—a vacant city. In the gray morning light the streets seemed curiously clean. She walked to the Plaza and stood for a moment looking up toward the corner suite. Then she cut across the street and walked into the park. A bedraggled woman, wearing a man’s overcoat, was poking into a trashcan. Her legs, swollen to twice their size, were swathed in dirty rags. Drunks were sleeping on benches, empty liquor bottles smashed on the ground at their sides. Others slept in fetal positions on the grass. She walked quickly—to the Zoo, back toward the Carousel. The sun worked its way through the smog and fought to clear the sky. Two young men dressed in sweatshirts jogged by. Pigeons began to cluster on the grass, searching for breakfast. A squirrel came right up to her, cupping its paws, its bright little eyes demanding a nut. She shrugged and held out her empty hands and it scampered off. Three black girls on bicycles waved, holding up their fingers in the Peace sign. She continued to walk. The sleeping drunks began to stir. A woman
came into the park carrying an elderly dachshund. She placed it on the ground gently and said, “Come on, Baby . . . make ca-ca.” Neither the woman nor the dog looked at January. The dog performed—the woman praised it, picked it up, and left the park.

The drunks were pulling themselves to a standing position now. Those who staggered were helped by others. Suddenly the park became alive with dogs: a professional walker with six dogs of assorted breeds, a man with a schnauzer, a woman with rollers in her hair and a fat cocker on a leash. The park that looked like velvet in the darkness last night was now harsh and dirty. The sunlight seemed to spotlight the beer cans, the broken bottles and sandwich papers. A wind stirred the trees, and the sighs of the leaves dropping to their death seemed despairing and gentle against the belching snorts of the huge buses. There were sounds of horns, riveting, blasting—the monolithic monster was awake.

Babies were coming into the park now. Babies in strollers, pushed by young mothers who looked pale and weary. Sometimes an elderly dog tagged jealously along, attached to the stroller, thinking of fonder days when
he
was the main concern of the family. There were other carriages where an infant slept while a two-year-old perched perilously on a jump seat as the mother trudged them toward the playground.

And then the Fifth Avenue brigade entered. A stream of large English prams, with pure silk initialed blanket covers concealing the tiny babies inside. Nurses in stiff uniforms wheeled these sparkling carriages to nearby benches, where they gathered and talked while their tiny charges slept.

January glanced at them enviously. Those tiny bits of life . . . yet each one felt at home in this park. They belonged in this city. Each one had an identity, a name, a home.

She walked with no real direction and found herself heading toward the wishing hill. It was such a small hill. But it had seemed like a mountain when she was little. When she was five she had climbed to the top of it triumphantly, and her father had raised her arm in victory and said, “Now this is your own hill. Close your eyes and make any wish . . . and it will
come true.” She had silently wished for a doll. Then he took her to Rumpelmayer’s for hot chocolate, and as they were leaving he bought her the biggest doll in the place. From that moment on it became the wishing hill.

But now the hill seemed so bare and ugly. She kicked through dead leaves as she walked to the top. She sat down, drew her knees up to her chin, hugged them, and closed her eyes. Oddly enough it seemed as if the sounds of life around her were suddenly intensified—the noise of the traffic below, the barking of dogs in the distance. . . . Then she heard leaves crackle, and she knew someone was approaching. All the stories of violence she had heard rushed to her. Perhaps it was someone with a knife. She didn’t move. Maybe if she just kept her eyes shut it would all be over. Quickly and painlessly.

“January . . .”

Her father was standing beside her. He held out his hand and she struggled to her feet.

“This is the third time I’ve come back to this hill in the past half hour,” he said. “I figured you’d come here.” He took her arm and led her out of the park. They crossed the street and he stopped in front of the Essex House. “They make pretty good coffee here. C’mon, let’s have some breakfast.”

They sat in the impersonal dining room without speaking; the untouched eggs before them. Suddenly he said, “Okay. Yell, get mad . . . but say something.”

She started to speak, but the maitre d’ appeared and asked if anything was wrong with the eggs.

“No. We weren’t hungry,” Mike said. “Take them away and just leave the pot of coffee.” He waited until the waiter left, then turned to her. “Why the park? My God, why? You could have been killed.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.

“Who could! Even Dee had to take an extra sleeping pill. But no one goes walking around New York at dawn. I sat up all night just waiting till morning. I smoked two packs of cigarettes waiting—”

“You shouldn’t,” she said tonelessly. “Cigarettes are bad for you.”

“Look, let’s not worry about my health right now. Christ,
when I found your room empty . . . I went crazy. Dee woke up just as I was calling the police. She calmed me down and said you were probably walking to think things out. That’s when I got the idea of the wishing hill.”

She didn’t answer, and he reached out and grabbed her hand.

“January, let’s talk it out.” When she didn’t answer, he looked at her and said quietly, “Please, don’t make me beg.”

“I wasn’t snooping or intentionally eavesdropping last night,” she said.

“I know. I was just caught off guard. I was angry at myself, not you. I—” He hesitated and lit another cigarette. “I wanted to write to you about Dee—”

“Oh, Mike, why didn’t you?”

“Because until the very end, I didn’t think I’d actually marry her. And when our seeing one another began to break in all the newspapers, I was worried it might leak to you. Thank God for Dr. Peterson and his rules about keeping the world locked out. Because this was something I felt I had to tell you in person. I had intended to tell you on the ride back from the airport. But when you said you had waited so long, that you wanted to be with me alone, well, Christ, I felt you rated having your first night the way you planned it. So I made the phone call and told Dee she had to get out. I figured I’d tell you at breakfast today.”

“When did you fall in love with her?”

“Who’s talking about love?” He looked directly at her. “Look, for the record, the only broad I ever loved in my whole life—or ever will love—is you!”

“Then why?
Why?

“Because I was tapped out. Through!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Through. Finished. After three years of straight flops, I couldn’t raise a dime for even an Off Broadway show. On the Coast they treated me like I had some communicable disease. And then the Clinique gave me the great news. They were releasing you in September. Jesus, here was the moment we had both lived for . . . and I was wiped out. Know where I was when I got the great news? Shacked up with Tina St. Claire on the Coast.”

“You used her in a picture once.”

“Yeah, I used her when she was seventeen. No talent, but beautiful. She still has no talent, but she’s on a television series that’s in the top ten and will keep going for a long time. She’s got a big house filled with servants and hangers-on. That was me—prize hanger-on number one. Why not? She had a nice house, a well-stocked bar, and all I had to do was accommodate Tina.” He paused. “This is a lousy way for a father to talk to a daughter, but there’s no time for a dress rehearsal. I’ve got to give you the script . . . cold.” He stabbed out his cigarette. “Okay, so there I was at the pool at Tina’s, sopping up the sun like a beach boy. A Chinese houseman to bring me drinks, a sauna to relax in. I’ve got everything any man can want except cash. It’s July. And I get the news that you can leave by September. And like I said, I’m just sitting there getting a tan and wondering what to do. And wham! That night, I get the idea from Tina. We’re at an opening. The old klieg light bit doesn’t mean a thing anymore, but they make the effort once in a while, and like a jackass I’m walking down that red carpet with her—as
her
escort—and as she snuggles in the seat next to me, she starts telling me how she wouldn’t know what to do if I ever left. She kept rambling on about how hard men were to find, that she hadn’t had sex for a month until I arrived. Then suddenly she says, ‘We look so great together and I have enough money for both of us. How about getting married? Then at least I’ll be sure of having someone to take me to next year’s Emmy Awards.’”

He looked past his daughter. “I realized at that moment that I was at the bottom of the barrel. She was only in her late twenties and she wanted to keep me. I began to feel like the movie
Sunset Boulevard
in reverse. The next day I took my usual spot at the pool and tried to find the answers. I decided if I was gonna be kept it wasn’t going to be for meals and a swimming pool from a Tina St. Claire. If this was the last port of call, at least I’d go down first class. So I began to think. Barbara Hutton was married. Doris Duke I didn’t know about. The Baroness de Fallon was a beast . . . And then I thought of Deirdre Milford Granger. We had met once when I was riding high and she had been good-looking in a faded way.” He
stopped. “Nice story, huh? But at least I’m giving it to you straight. Not the ‘I-met-this-broad-and-fell-madly-in-love-and-I’m-giving-up-my-career-just-to-make-her-happy’ jazz. Oh, no . . . I made her a project. I learned she was in Marbella. I sold everything I owned. My car . . . the Patek Philippe watches . . . the last of the IBM stock. All together it gave me forty-three thousand bucks. It was a big roll of the dice and I was putting it all on the line. I went to Marbella to court the lady . . .” He frowned at the memory.

“I didn’t know that after our first date she had a Dun and Bradstreet on me. She sat back and played it cool while I handed out twenty-buck tips to captains . . . picked up eight-hundred-dollar tabs for groups of her friends in nightclubs. Three weeks of this and I couldn’t even get close enough to kiss her goodnight, let alone even have dinner for two by candlelight. No, we traveled in packs. During the day I mixed drinks for everyone and watched her play backgammon. Then just as I was beginning to get flop sweat, I arrived at her villa at cocktail time, expecting to find the usual crowd, but she was alone. She handed me a drink and said, ‘Mike, I think you’d better get around to asking me to marry you because you only have twenty-six hundred dollars to your name.’”

He smiled at January’s expression. “Yep, she knew my bank balance almost to the penny. Then she said, ‘But first I want you to know that I will never back any of your projects—pictures
or
plays. Now, do you still want to marry me?’”

He lit another cigarette. “Oh, it gets even better,” he said with a grim attempt to smile. “Once the lady let me know how much she despised show business and everything it stood for, I naturally came up with all the stock lines, like ‘Look, Dee, maybe that was what I had in mind when it started, but now I’ve really fallen for you and I wish I had three hits running on Broadway now because then I could ask you to marry me.’” He paused. “Does it make you sick? Because it does me . . . just in repeating it.”

“Go on,” January said. “Did she believe you?”

“Well, at least she didn’t stick to the script and simper and go coy. Oh, she’s nothing if not original. She smiled and said, ‘Well, Mr. Mike Wayne, if you had those three hits, you probably
never would have even gotten a date with me.’” He paused thoughtfully. “I don’t know what it is. She has some hang-up about show business. Maybe way back she was rejected by an actor or maybe it’s just snobbism, but I had to promise not to go back in show business if she’d marry me. So there I sat, with her calling the shots. Before I accepted I told her about you. But of course she already knew all about that too. I explained that your future was the most important thing. And when she agreed, that was it!”

“Where was the wedding?” she asked.

“We got married the end of August, quietly and secretly in London. But the news got out and then the parties in our honor began. Suddenly
Sunset Boulevard
turned into a Fellini movie. Contessas, semi-royalty, top international models, a few real princesses thrown in. It’s a world where the women are all thin, gorgeous, and titless, the men have no asses, and English is everyone’s second language. She runs with that crowd in New York, too. No one plays golf; tennis is the
in
game and gin rummy is for peasants. Backgammon is their game.” He sighed. “Okay, that’s the whole ballgame. Any questions?”

“Just one. Do we both stand in line every Friday and get our allowances?”

Their eyes met and he said, “Where did you learn to hit so hard?”

She fought back tears but held her gaze. “Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Dee supports you—as you said—in style.”

“Real style, honey.” His voice was hard. “But she does it with class. She’s made me a director of one of her companies. Sure, it’s just a title. What in hell do I know about real estate or oil tankers? But I sign things once a week; and everyone in my office acts like I’m needed.” He smiled. “Every man needs an office to go to. You’d be surprised how it breaks up the day. I go there and close the door so my secretary will think I’m busy. Then I read the trades. Wednesday is the big day—
Variety
comes out, so that takes up the whole morning. Then I stop down at the brokerage office in the same building, have a shoe-shine, and on to the Friars Club for lunch and a game of gin. And I get a salary too—one thousand a week. I used to spend more than that on tips—but it’s a great life. I’ve got
the New York apartment, the houses, a chauffeur . . . I’ve got everything any man would want.”