Scruples (55 page)

“As bad as that?”

“Worse. But
Street Lamps
made a lot of money for me later on.”

“What happened to your money, Vito?”

“Whenever I had it, I spent it, living well and having a marvelous time. For my sins, I have often invested in my own pictures—unfortunately, they were often the ones that didn’t make money. I don’t regret a penny—I’ll just make more.” There was no way to doubt him, Billy thought, no way at all.

After the film, Vito took Billy to a late supper at the Moulin de Mougins, which is given three stars in the
Guide Michelin
.

“The food will be simply awful, so don’t expect much,” he warned her cheerfully. “During Festival time the chefs lose all their ability, the waiters become more surly than ever, the headwaiters look as if they would like to refuse your tips, though they never go that far, and even good wine turns to vinegar.”

“Why on earth?”

“I don’t think they approve of movie people.”

As Vito drove her back to the hotel, Billy found herself wanting badly to know when she would see him again. Since he didn’t say anything, she finally ventured a question.

“Would you like to come out here for lunch tomorrow?”

“Sorry, but I’m going to be busy all day. Two men are arriving here tomorrow and I have to see both of them.”

“Oh.” Billy couldn’t remember a time in her adult life when anyone had refused one of her lunch or dinner invitations. Not since she had married Ellis Ikehorn, and that was fourteen years ago.

“Well, what about the day after?”

“That depends. If I see both of those men tomorrow, I think I can make it. But I won’t come here. Susan might join us. She reminds me of the headwaiter at the Moulin de Mougins. I’ll take you to the Colombe d’Or. I’ll call tomorrow night to let you know if it’s on or off.” He took it entirely for granted that she wouldn’t make any other plans in the meanwhile, she thought wrathfully. Nor would she. Fucking conquistador! That knowledge made her even more angry.

“I may not be here,” she lied.

“Que sera, sera
, as they say in the old country.”

“Balls. That song was written for
The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

“My God! A Doris Day fan!”

“As it happens, yes,” she said, caught out.

“Ha! One more thing we have in common. Goodnight, Billy.”

“Curt?”

“Oh, shit, Sue, I was almost asleep.”

“I’m worried about Billy.”

“What now, for Christ’s sake?”

“She’s spending almost all of her time with Vito Orsini. I haven’t laid eyes on her for the last week except when she flies in to change for dinner.”

“So what?”

“How can you be so dense? He’s after her money, of course.”

“So what?”

“Curt!”

“Sue, you’re acting like a nervous mother. Billy’s old enough to watch out for herself. She needs a good fuck. That’s probably all there is to it. And who wouldn’t be after her money?”

“You’re revoltingly crass. I should have known better than to marry anyone from Bayonne, New Jersey. Mother warned me.”

“I think you’re the one who needs a good fuck. Good luck. Goodnight, Sue.”

“Vito?”

“Yes, darling?” They were lying naked, in tousled splendor, in Vito’s bed at the Majestic. Billy could feel her heart expanding. It was as if a small, dry, pale paper flower had been dropped in a bowl of red wine and allowed to soak up as much of the intoxicating liquid as it could hold, until it turned into a great, round, red poppy, moist with morning dew. She was feline and slumberous with direct, most excellent sex.

“Vito, will you please marry me?”

“No, darling, unfortunately no.”

“But why not!”

“You have too much money.”

“I just knew you’d say that. It’s absolutely, totally ridiculous!”

“Not to an Italian.”

“You’re an American, damn you.”

“But I’ve got Italian ideas, Italian pride. I’d have to be master in my own house. How would that be possible? Even if we signed twenty prenuptial agreements that I would never touch your money, we’d still be living in the style to which you’re accustomed, on your money.”

“Vito—I can’t
stand
not having you!”

“ ‘Having me’—darling Billy, you even think in the wrong terms. I do love you, which is my problem, not yours, but I don’t think of myself as someone you can
acquire.”

“Why do you put me in the wrong?”

“Because you are. Turn over and kiss me. What are you waiting for? That’s better. Much better. You don’t have to stop.”

Billy wouldn’t have stopped even if she could have. She had never been in love like this before. Vito was a blinding encounter. It was utterly different from her youthful dreams of glamour with her French count, an infatuation that was based almost entirely on her own self-discovery. And Ellis, whom she had loved so dearly, had been so protective, so gentle, so much older than she that there had been no bite, no well-matched struggle in that love. It had been like falling into a feather bed. Vito—Vito drove her crazy, as in some witless teen-age song. He wouldn’t bend to her will, he wouldn’t give an inch on any of his convictions, he saw through her, even worse, he understood her. He was only seven years older than she, but he condescended to treat her like a girl! She bit him. Gently. She knew already that if she bit him too hard he’d bite back.

Vito, staring out to sea while he felt the lovely little nips and nibbles of her inflammatory mouth, was seriously worried. So far he’d managed to conceal his romantic nature from Billy. He’d realized, as soon as he met her, that she was extraordinarily spoiled and would surely take any advantage she could in any game she played. He certainly didn’t intend to fall in love with her, but he hadn’t been able to prevent it. Her insistent beauty was like a trumpet note, the line of her long throat, the curl of her ear, the heaviness of her hair, the striped irises of her eyes—no woman had ever pleased him so. Still, he might have saved himself if he had not quickly seen through her airs and graces to the lonely woman they concealed. Understanding her had been his greatest mistake because understanding made her vulnerable and, therefore, lovable. She was becoming more and more real every day, less and less the “rich, young widow” of his scenario. His heart felt bruised with tenderness and pity and the reluctant dawning of an imminent recognition. She had the most perfect sensuality he had ever known—no holding back, no modesty, no self-consciousness. They were truly well mated. But she was too rich.

“Vito, what if we just lived together? I wouldn’t ‘have’ you that way—couldn’t we—?”

“No, Billy. Anyway, the man is supposed to ask the woman.”

“That was fifteen years ago. Now women can ask for what they want and get it.”

“Not from me, my darling, not unless I want to give it.”

“You’re holding back progress.” Billy felt suddenly shrill, false. She’d never given a thought to the liberation of women, and now she sounded as if she’d been a dues-paying feminist for years. But better to sound absurd than rejected, better to make a bad joke than to admit how she yearned for him to love her, to marry her, like one of those silly besotted nineteenth-century literary heroines she had always sworn she would never be like, long, long ago.

Curt Arvey, a first-rate son of a bitch, was a man who would go a long way to score a point. He was seriously annoyed with his wife, Susan, with whom he lived in a state of constantly fluctuating weights and balances even when they were getting along without an overt struggle. She had taken the tone that this business of Billy and Orsini was all his fault since he was the one who had thought of inviting Vito to dinner. She was acting as if Orsini were a fortune-hunting gigolo, a not too subtle way of reminding Curt that it had been Susan’s money that first got him started. True enough, but it hadn’t been her money that got him to the top, not her money that permitted her now to lead the life she led in Beverly Hills, and he’d be damned if he was going to let her tell him whom he should invite to his own dinner parties and whom he shouldn’t. Arvey telephoned Vito and asked him to come out to the hotel for a late breakfast.

“The grapevine says you have a new project, Vito. Tell me about it.”

“A first novel by a young French girl, another. Françoise Sagan, only much better. I optioned it for peanuts. It’s a love story about—”

“Another love story? Didn’t Mexico cure you of that?”

“Would catching the flu cure you of breathing, Curt? The day people won’t go to see a love story—a good one, Curt—is the day the world ends. I have a strong feeling about this book. It’s selling fantastically well in France and it’s being published in the United States and England—be out this spring.”

“Does it need names?”

“It could survive without them—the lovers are very young—it could be brought in for two million two, maybe two million even, depending on where I shoot it. It doesn’t have to be set in France; it’s a universal story.”

“Romeo and Juliet?”

“Yeah. But with a twist—a happy ending.”

“Sounds good. Go ahead and talk to our business-affairs people and get the deal worked out.”

“Absolutely not, Curt!” Vito went white.

“Why the fuck not!” Curt dropped his napkin in astonishment.

“Billy put you up to this. I’m not about to let a woman finance my pictures—”

“Christ, Vito, you’re paranoid! The day
I
let some rich dame give me a couple of million dollars to have
my
studio make a movie that
we
distribute, that I
personally
have given the go-ahead on, that I have to account to my stockholders and board of directors for—that’ll be the day! I don’t deal that way and you know it—no studio does.”

Vito took a deep breath. “According to you, you didn’t make money with me on those last two pictures we did together.”

“So? We broke even; it helped pay the studio overhead. And we did make money on a lot of dreck I didn’t even enjoy making. At least your pictures were the kind I could run in my screening room and feel good about, class product. And where is it written that every picture has to make money? Breaking even isn’t as bad as we did with some others. Do you realize how fucking stiff-necked you are, Vito? You should have come to me with this project instead of waiting till I called you.”

Arvey was right and Vito knew it. His one major failing as a producer was his deeply ingrained pride. Ideally, a producer of any kind should be eager to do business with Lucifer himself if the Prince of Darkness has money to finance his production, and if he finds Lucifer reluctant, he should return the next week and try again. And again, if necessary. Whether he should also sell his soul is strictly a matter of individual choice. True, he didn’t like or trust Arvey, but that should have had nothing to do with his holding back from seeking Arvey’s financing. His soul was still his own.

“I’ll be in touch with your people as soon as I fly to the coast.” Vito’s matter-of-fact manner was apology enough.

“Staying till the end of the Festival?”

“Yes—unfinished business.”

“I’m glad. But bring it in at one penny over two million two, and I’ll have your balls—oh, and Vito, come out here for dinner tonight if you’re free. Sue will want to congratulate you. She’s going to be tickled pink when she hears the news. She loves a good love story.”

As Curt Arvey watched the door close behind Vito, he allowed himself a mighty, malicious, vindictive chuckle. It was easily worth two million two to show that Philadelphia snob he’d married just who was in charge.

As he drove back to Cannes, Vito found himself plunged into an unprecedented bout of introspection. Normally, at a time like this, with the go-ahead finally given for his next picture, one that he had more hopes for than any he had yet produced, he should have been totally engrossed in making mental lists of potential writers and directors. He felt an expansive elation, but the elation seemed to be somehow mixed up with Billy. Yet what had she to do with it?

He was stuck in the prenoon traffic jam outside of Cannes when it finally came to him that the same impulse in him that took a book or an idea and immediately envisioned what it could be as a film also made him want to mold, shape, and change Billy’s life. He saw the unhappy girl and wanted to make her into a happy woman. The fact that no one saw the unhappy girl under Billy’s facade except himself made the prospect all the more tempting. He was enchanted by her big feet, her long bones. The lusdousness of her body when she took off her ridiculously beautiful clothes astounded him. So much was hidden in her. He wanted to listen forever to the faint Boston accent he thought no one else noticed. He would like to make her pregnant.

If only she were a poor young starlet and he the all-powerful producer who could say “There, that’s the girl, that’s the one I’ll make a star” and change her life—if only, Vito thought to himself, laughing at his potentate fancies, she had been the young Sophia Loren and he Carlo Ponti. Those fantasies had been all right for the young man he used to be, but today he had to deal with facts. With an effort, he turned his mind to the question of the ideal director for his next production.