Scruples (34 page)

Wells Cope was considered the luckiest producer in the film industry. He had been chief of all production for a major studio until six months ago. During his three-year tenure, the studio had had five major box-office hits as well as the average inevitable number of failures and break-evens. However, the grosses from the successful pictures, which all happened to be special projects and pets of Cope’s, had boosted the studio’s earnings and the price of its stock high above that of the competition. Cope decided that if he was ever going to make any money for himself, this was the time to leave, since the history of the survival of a studio production head is somewhat less reassuring than that of a Mafia hit man.

With a combat-trained, elite shock squad of lawyers and accountants, he worked out a deal that would make him an independent producer, with the ability to call on the studio for financing for his own projects, yet able to keep a much greater profit participation than his salary and pieces of the net had given him in the past. A sweetheart deal, people said enviously. He was, quite possibly, the most envied man in an industry that drinks envy for breakfast and dreams envy at night.

There is a great deal of cross-pollination between the movie and fashion worlds. Models act, actresses model, movies promote new trends in design, fashion magazines give editorial attention to moviemakers. And the top people in both worlds often work together in ways that concern only themselves.

“Wells, it’s Harriet. What are you doing with yourself on this glorious weekend?”

“Frankly, my dear, I’m in hiding. Nobody knows I’m in town. I couldn’t take the idea of going out to Malibu for one more beach and fireworks party—too many ex-wives floating around there. Right now I’m still in bed with twenty-five scripts, none of which I’m panting to read, and some disgustingly soggy French toast. These lousy long weekends are un-American—fuck leisure.”

“I agree entirely—it’s obscene. Listen, there’s something I wanted to see you about. Business. I was thinking of flying out this afternoon and going back Monday. Would you be free for a while?”

“Not just free—rhapsodic! Thank God there’s someone in the world who’s minding the store this weekend. We’ll have an orgy. I’ll call Bob at The Wine Merchant to send over some big pots of fresh beluga and tell my chef to do his pompano in a paper bag. I remember that’s your favorite. Harriet, you’re a blessing.”

Wells Cope, wearing a Dorso sweater, pale beige twill trousers, and black velvet evening pumps embroidered in gold, sat with Harriet on the deep, gray velvet couch in his vast living room. Pictures of Melanie were spread all over the Lucite coffee table and some of them lay on the twelve-thousand-dollar Edward Fields rug. Air conditioning kept the room at a cool 70 degrees, a wood fire blazed in the grate, and the butler had left a decanter of cognac on a side table and gone to bed. Although it was early July, it could have been any season in the year in any place in the world where there exists a climate of total luxury.

Cope looked at Harriet shrewdly through his blue-tinted glasses.

“She’s unreal. Fucking unreal. Glamour seeping out of every pore. I didn’t know they still grew girls like that. She’s like one of the great stars of the thirties when they were young. But I still don’t quite get it, Harriet. This issue won’t be out for another six weeks. You don’t have to worry about losing her to us until then. Why are you showing me these pictures now? You could tie her up for the next six months if you wanted to—or rather, if Eileen Ford let you.”

“Because I know perfectly well that everyone will be after her and, inevitably, someone will get her. I’m resigned to losing her for the magazine sooner or later, but I want to be the one to decide to whom. She has a lot of faith in my advice, and I believe you’d be the best for her. Or, we can put it this way, Wells. I want to do someone a favor rather than look like a loser.”

“And I’ll owe you?”

“You’ll owe me,” she agreed. “I probably won’t ever collect, but it’s nice to know it’s there. You’ll honor the obligation and most wouldn’t—and we go back a long way.”

“So we do.” He was wondering what the old dyke had been up to. She was acting like a fucking stage mother. This wasn’t Harriet’s style at all. But so what, if he got the girl.

“I suppose it’s absurd to ask if she can act?”

“That’s for me to know and for you to find out,” Harriet answered. When she got what she was after, she was capable of a little show of schoolmarmish high spirits.

“I intend to. Next week. Could you possibly call her for me and arrange to get her on a plane as soon as possible?”

“No, Wells, you’ll have to handle that end. Tell her anything you want to but don’t mention my name. I’ll give you her home phone number—say you got it over the grapevine—you’ll think of something. I don’t want
anyone
to know I’ve shown you these pictures. I’ll take the credit when the moment comes. That is a
must
, Wells. I’ve never been more serious. It wouldn’t help me at the magazine if they knew,”

“Harriet, I understand perfectly. I give you my absolute assurance.” He didn’t understand at all, but he knew he would eventually. In any case, Wells Cope hadn’t built his Hollywood career on betraying trusts. Secrecy was one of his major talents.

Harriet flew back to New York on Tuesday. Wells had persuaded her to stay over the extra day to keep him company in his hide-out vacation. His was one of the only houses in the world where a person could grow sick of pâté de foie gras, beluga
malossol, canard à l’orange
, great wines, and private screenings of unreleased movies in just three days. Harriet felt pleasantly cosseted and anxious to get back to work.

On Wednesday morning Harriet made eight phone calls, two of them to women she considered the most important fashion editors in town, besides herself, and the other six to the art directors of huge advertising agencies. She set up lunch dates with them for what was left of that week and all of the following week.

Long before the final lunch Spider was dead professionally.

“But, Harriet, everyone’s heard he’s your new fair-haired boy.”

“No one will
ever
know what I went through with him, Dennis. Talent isn’t enough to excuse everything. He’s simply incapable of being on time—it must be some sort of compulsion. He always kept us waiting around the studio for a minimum of two hours before he finally deigned to show up! More than half the time the models had to leave for other bookings before he got there. And then the retakes! There weren’t more than a handful of shots we didn’t have to retake once, sometimes twice. In fact, although I hate to give that bastard credit, if our art director hadn’t been there to hold his hand every step of the way, we wouldn’t have been able to use him at all.”

“Christ, why did you put up with it?”

“Because if you can possibly hang in there, he
is
good. But now I’m cutting my losses. You can imagine what it cost. I’m so far over budget for every issue I used him for that Lace is frankly ready to kill. He’s usually understanding about these things, but this time it’s way out of bounds. Spider Elliott just has a Stanley Kubrick complex. If I wasn’t such an old hand, I’d probably be out on my ass.”

“Retakes, huh?”

“That wasn’t all. I put up with his screwing the models in the dressing room, but now I find that his latest work is simply unusable. Just plain
bad
. We’ll have to re-shoot all of November with another photographer. It’s all my fault when you get right down to it. When will I learn not to give inexperienced kids a chance? But enough of my horror stories, Dennis. I’m sorry I had to cry on your shoulder, but this has been one of the worst experiments I’ve made in years. Let’s forget it—tell me about what’s going on over at your shop. How’s your new account coming along? I think the ads are smashing—who are you using?”

“Really, Spider, I just don’t understand what you’re getting so upset about.” Melanie’s ice-sweet voice didn’t betray any anger, just a sort of plaintive wonder. “I still don’t know exactly how Wells Cope heard about me, but I checked it out with his office on the coast and there’s no doubt that it’s perfectly legitimate. He just wants me to come out and be tested. They said I’d only be gone about two weeks—that’s not forever—and anyway, it sounds sort of thrilling. You’re acting like he might be a white slaver when you know perfectly well he’s one of the top producers in Hollywood.” Melanie was speaking from Spider’s huge canvas chair, designed for lolling rather than sitting, but she retained her upright, demure poise. “Oh, Spider, I know it’s a million to one nothing will come of it, but all my expenses will be paid and I’ll get to see California, so how can you be so negative?”

“But what if you don’t come back from the Casbah? Haven’t you heard tales of people who went to Hollywood for only two weeks and were never seen having lunch in Ghio’s again?”

“Silly.” His fear and his need had showed plainly through his attempt at a joke. Nothing could have made Melanie more certain that she was right to leave. First, Spider had started making really ridiculous insinuations about Harriet, who had only been trying to comfort her—such insanely sinister hints—she was glad she’d refused to even listen—and now he was actually trying to prevent her from having a screen test. In the beginning, when they were shooting the September issue, she had thought that Spider was the most exciting and unpredictable man she’d ever met—so sure of his talent, able to help her be something she hadn’t known she could be, but lately he was getting just like all the others, wanting too much, wanting more than she ever intended to give. Because she’d let him make love to her, she’d let herself get into this position where he thought he had rights. Rights!

Spider suddenly scooped her up out of the chair and gently laid her on his bed. “My love, my little love, let me be your slave—only what you want, darling, only what you want,” He was actually shaking in the shamelessness of his passion. Melanie, taken by surprise, realized that it wouldn’t be easy to slip away from Spider when he was this wild. He knew she was taking the first plane tomorrow morning. It seemed simpler to let him have his way.

She lay back, offering herself docilely, while he undressed her and then hastily stripped himself naked, his graceful athlete’s body a shadowy bulk against the faint light of the room. She wouldn’t do a thing, she thought, not a single thing, just lie there and let him have his fun.

Spider bent tenderly over her, all his weight on his knees and his elbows, staring at her composed wide-eyed face. His heavy cock was already so hard that it was horizontal, almost flat up against his belly as he knelt. She didn’t look at it. Slowly, never touching her except with his lips, he kissed her marvelous mouth, outlining her lips with the tip of his tongue as carefully as if he were creating them. When she didn’t open her lips to him, he thought that she was asking him, without words, to suck her nipples. He settled back on his heels, leaned forward, and cupped a small breast softly in each hand. He paid homage to each breast in turn, rimming the nipple with his tongue until it stood up, then sucking it with his mouth for long intent minutes—the silence unbroken except for his suckling sounds. Once he whispered, “Good? Is it good?” and she breathed quietly, “Hmm.” After a long while Spider gently pushed Melanie’s breasts together with both his hands so that the nipples were only inches apart. Holding them firmly, he darted his tongue from one to the other, now sucking, now nuzzling, now nipping her delicately with his teeth, now opening his mouth as wide as possible to take in as much of her breast as he could, the suction coming from his cheeks and throat as well as from his lips. Her breasts were wet and pink and suddenly they seemed bigger, fuller, than he’d ever felt them before. Spider hadn’t felt the touch of her hands anywhere on his body; her arms were still lying at her sides. Playing virgin, he thought tenderly. But she must be ready. He slid down the bed to enter her.

“No,” she hissed. “You said you’d be my slave. You may not put it in me—I forbid you. Absolutely. You may not!”

“Then you know what a good slave would have to do, don’t you,” he said deeply in his throat, on fire at the prohibition. “That thing you’ve never let me do to you—that’s what you have a slave for.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said tonelessly, giving him tacit permission.

He cupped his hands under her buttocks. She hastily laced her hands together over her pubic hair but made no protest. After searching with his tongue, Spider found a tiny space between her fingers and pushed his strong, impatient tongue through it until he reached the silky hair and the warm skin. Still she said nothing. Victoriously, he spread her knees apart, firmly grasped her wrists and pinned her hands at her sides. He slid down further on the big bed and lay flat on his pulsating penis, his head held just above her pussy. The feathers of fine hair barely covered her deliciously white and childish-looking outer lips. He covered her pubic hair with long lappings of his tongue, so that the hair grew wet. Then, using only the tip of his tongue, he traced and retraced the indentation deep between the outer lips and the pinker inner lips, folded secretly inside. Finally his tongue found the furrow between those soft inner lips and pushed upward into her vagina. He curled and pointed his long tongue so that it was as firm as possible and plunged it in deeply.

“No! Stop. Remember your promise—no farther,” she panted, beginning to wriggle away from him in earnest. Still holding her down with his hands he pulled his tongue back and sought the nub of her clitoris with his lips. It was tiny, almost hidden, but he sucked persistently on it once he had found it, stopping only to slowly rub his tongue back and forth across it several times before he resumed sucking. As he sucked he found that rhythmically, unconsciously, he was rubbing his hugely engorged penis on the sheets that covered the bed. Suddenly the silent girl started to make lunging movements toward his mouth as if she wanted him to take her whole pussy in his mouth at once. She pushed it in his face with total abandon, grunting, “Don’t put your cock in—whatever you do—keep your promise, slave.” As he sucked and licked frantically, increasing the pace, he heard her moaning and muted ferocity, as if she could hardly keep from screaming out loud. He forgot his own self so completely that it seemed as if all the world contained was this wide-open cunt, which he was not allowed to enter, only to pleasure. Suddenly she went very still, all her muscles rigid. Finally she was shaken by contractions and she shouted. As he felt this climax, Spider’s cock had been excited beyond endurance from the friction of the sheets as he worked on her. He felt himself shooting sperm convulsively, over the bed, unable to hold back another second.