Scruples (66 page)

“Ah, Billy, that’s not fair. You were Ellis’s child bride for seven whole years. You never really became an ordinary wife because when he was well he simply did everything to please and protect you and make you happy. His own life’s work became second to you. And then, after all, once he was incapacitated, you could hardly be an ordinary wife either. I’m not criticizing you, love, but you never had to learn to play by the rules of the game.”

“Game? Rules? You sound like one of those books about dressing up in black leather tights and waiting for your husband with six ounces of gin on the rocks in one hand and a humble request for a raise in your household allowance in the other. Not that from you, Jessie, I just don’t believe it.”

Jessica shook her head at Billy in amusement mingled with pity. Why wouldn’t Billy deal in realities? Leather was beside the point, and, anyway, David was freaky about Fernando Sanchez’s satin teddies. “The game,” she said slowly, “is called being successfully married. The rules are all the compromises you need to make to get there.”

“Compromises,” cried Billy, stung. “Compromises are all I’ve been doing since we got married. One fucking compromise after another. Little Billy, meek and mild. Believe me, you wouldn’t recognize your old friend if you’d seen me up in Mendocino being The Producer’s Perfect Wife.”

“And hating every single second of it.”

“Just about, all except the. times when we were alone together at night. The only time I think Vito knew I was really there was when we were making love. I wonder if he’d even recognize me if he couldn’t see my pussy—the rotten son of a bitch.”

“Well then, get a divorce if it’s that bad.”

“Are you out of your mind, Jessie? I’m absolutely mad about him. It was hard enough to get him—I’m not about to let him get away. I couldn’t live without that fucker.”

“Then start compromising. Gracefully, willingly, graciously, and with a whole heart.”

“Oh, God, that’s just asking too much! No, come off it, you sound like those neurotic put-upon Brontë sisters all rolled into one. Haven’t you heard of Women’s Lib? Why the hell shouldn’t he do some of the compromising?”

“He already has. He married you against his better judgment and is willing to live your way knowing that ten tenths of all the people he meets probably think of him as some sort of kept man, and he hasn’t let that bother him or forced you to make changes in your life-style.”

“Oh, that.”

“It’s a lot, Billy, especially for someone like Vito with all that Italian male pride you talk about so much.”

“I suppose you’re right. All right, you are right. But still—” Even Jessica couldn’t really understand, Billy thought bitterly. What compromises was she really thinking about? The usual New York-Easthampton-Southampton banking crowd’s discreet infidelity, the times one or another had too much to drink at a party, the real but hardly earthshaking irritation over an annoying habit David didn’t even know he had? After all, for all her bitching, what was David doing now? Mucking about in boats, with his children as any normal man would do during a summer’s vacation instead of concentrating his whole mind, soul, and will on making a piece of film come out right. And anyway, what else could Jessie expect, since she got seasick?

Jessica looked at Billy with an almost maternal glance, compounded with tenderness, foreknowledge, and a reluctance to hurt. Poor Billy, she thought, dissatisfied already, and yet how can anyone tell you the truth about what goes on in the heart of any marriage that endures? Who can teach you about the times when the well of love seems to run almost dry and you just have to keep going on faith, the moments when both of you wonder what wonderful
other
thing might have happened if you hadn’t met each other? Who can really explain about learning to communicate your true feelings to each other in spite of the traps of words and gestures—the days, even months, when communication somehow fails? And that wasn’t even taking into consideration the unescapable problems of a grande dame mother-in-law and the strange difference that becoming the father of five children makes in a man who was a passionate ten. No, she really couldn’t help Billy. Even the best of friends can’t help each other on the earthquake-quicksand landscape of marriage, except in superficial ways—by letting the other know she wasn’t alone.

Jessica walked over to kiss Billy on the top of her head. “It’s just post-honeymoon depression. Everybody has it,” she said. “You wait, in a few months you won’t even remember this. Listen, let’s have something incredibly fattening for dinner and fast tomorrow, or at least till lunchtime. We both need it.”

“How can you use the word ‘need’ about something fattening?” Billy asked incredulously.

“Simple. Haven’t you heard that European theory about dieting? If your metabolic system is used to never getting fattening foods, and you suddenly give them to it, your body goes into shock and immediately loses weight. Of course you can’t make a habit of it.”

“You’re positive you’re right about that?” asked Billy, eyeing the small but unmistakable potbelly her friend had sprouted.

“Absolutely. I’d weigh a ton if I didn’t do it from time to time.”

Both women laughed and dropped the subject of marriage for the rest of Jessica’s visit. At the end of the week she returned to Easthampton, reluctant to leave Billy to go back to menu planning but rather shamefacedly lonely for her sunburned mob. She had, in spite of her earlier threats, telephoned them every night and her husband had spent enough time on dry land during her absence to find an Oriental couple who treated David Jr.’s kosher kitchen with respect and even brought their own woks in which to cook for the vegetarian members of the family.

“Billy, darling,” Jessica said, as they both stood outside the Learjet saying good-bye, “I’m afraid I wasn’t much help, but what I told you was the best advice I know. Remember, ‘All government—indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act—is founded on compromise and barter.’ ”

“Now where on earth did you find that little homily—stitched on a pillow?”

“Edmund Burke, if I’m not mistaken.” Jessica smirked wickedly. She had always been proud of her summa cum laude memory for quotations, which permanently kept her one step ahead of her terrifying mother-in-law.

“Vassar girl, get out of here,” laughed Billy, hugging her tiny friend one last time. “Go and sin no more, or some such thing. Remember, I’m the only person in the world who knew you when you weren’t so beastly virtuous and bloody tolerant.”

Back in Mendocino the dailies were over and Vito and Fifi Hill had driven back to Vito’s house in heavy silence, not speaking until they poured themselves drinks and settled into the sagging, slip-covered chairs in the damp living room.

“It’s gone, Fifi,” Vito finally said.

“Even a blind man would know that,” Fifi answered, “just from their voices—”

“It’s been two days. Yesterday I thought maybe she wasn’t feeling well, but today on the set, I’ve been watching—”

“So when don’t you watch?” said Fifi mildly, too sunk in gloom to attempt sarcasm.

“—and hoping they’d come out of it. But we can’t kid ourselves another minute; there’s not one foot of film we can use. So. We’re two days behind schedule now and those fucking kids are giving us turds for performances.”

“I’ve used every trick I’ve ever learned. Nothing, nothing, Vito. Sandra won’t talk, Hugh won’t talk, they say they’re doing their best, she cries, he cries—a firing squad is what we need!”

“A picture, Fifi, we need a picture. I didn’t have time to tell you before we ran the dailies, but right after dinner they both grabbed me, separately, and announced that they weren’t going to do the scenes we’ve set up for the next two days.”

“Weren’t going to do—!!” Fifi rose from his chair like a madman.

“Yeah, the nude scene, the big, fat love scene we
have
to have to make the whole picture add up, the most important scene in the whole fucking thing. They will not, repeat
not
, appear together in a nude scene.”

“Vito! What did you say? What did you do?
They can’t do this!
For Christ’s sake—do something!”

“Fifi, cancel the shoot for tomorrow morning. There’s no point. You and I will go and talk to each of those two moronic kids together. Well get to the bottom of it. We will
fix
it. Worse things happen on pictures and they still get made, you know that.”

“Sure, sure, but when you have a love story and your boy and girl come across like the other is a piece of rotten meat, it’s not like having a shark that doesn’t work or rain when you want sun. Come on, Vito, you know that everything,
everything
in this picture depends on believing that those two love each other more than Romeo and Juliet. And till two days ago they even had me convinced that they did.”

“Fifi, let’s get some sleep. Meet you for breakfast at the hotel. Then we’ll get down to it.”

After Fifi took his gloomy departure, Vito sat down to think some more. If Fifi was deeply worried about the quality of the acting he was getting from those two brats, Vito was confronted with a far graver problem. When Maggie had been in Mendocino two weeks before, she had told him news he had hardly been able to believe.

“Vito,” she had insisted, “I can’t tell you who told me, but believe me, it’s no mere rumor. Arvey has said that he intends to exercise the Take-over Provision on
Mirrors
if he gets the slightest opportunity.”

“Why, Maggie, why?” As they both knew, the Take-over Provision, which is standard in most contracts, provides that the minute a producer goes over budget he can be replaced by the studio. This provision is almost never exercised, and many hundreds of producers less highly regarded than Vito Orsini go over-budget and over-schedule without more than a few rumbles from the studio.

“From what I could make out, he’s been doing a slow burn about putting up the money for
Mirrors
ever since Cannes. He gave you the go-ahead on it to shove a broomstick up the ass of that bitch of a wife of his, to let her know who ran the studio. He was just showing off, as far as I can understand it, and then when you and Billy got married, he felt he’d been conned. He makes a grandiose gesture to spite his wife and a week later you walk off with one of the richest women in the world and lie’s left with that Philly snob who never let him have a dime without reminding him of it a hundred times.”

“Billy’s money—it has nothing to do with me!”

“Yeah, try telling Arvey that. He thinks you should be financing your own pictures with her dough instead of his studio’s money. I know, I know, you don’t operate that way, but he’s in a rage. He’s a mean, envious man and he’s out to get your balls, Vito, if he can.”

Yes, thought Vito, remembering what Maggie had told him; he should have been much more suspicious when Arvey gave him the green light so quickly. He believed everything Maggie had told him. It fit entirely too well. Unfortunately, it made perfect sense.

The next day, shortly before noon, Fifi Hill and Vito sought out a secluded corner of the Mendocino Hotel and sat amid the Victorian clutter, lace antimacassars, and potted palms, like two defeated samurai, trying to decide on the proper place for ritual self-slaughter.

“It’s insane,” Vito grunted. “Fifi, if Sandra had been stone cold dead, she would have come back to life with what I said to her. I used it all, the truth, but even the truth didn’t work! I told her this was the chance of a lifetime; I told her it would make a star out of her; I told her she couldn’t do this to me and to you; I told her she’d never work again; I told her, her mother would die from the disappointment; I told her she’d be blacklisted with every casting director and producer in the world; I begged, I screamed, I did everything but fuck her. I would have done that, too, but she was like ice.”

“Vito, I was
there
, please spare me.”

Vito paid no attention to the weary director. “And that little cock-sucker Hugh Kennedy, he should have his prick rot off, he was just as bad. ‘Call my agent!’ I’ll call his agent, all right. Doesn’t he know he’s committing professional suicide?”

“He’s not smart enough to figure it out—not one of your brighter people, Vito. And there’s another thing. Even if we could get them to play the nude scene, what good would it do us, in the mood they’re in?”

“Maybe it’s only a lovers’ quarrel. I’m going back alone to talk to Sandra—”

He was interrupted by a timid voice at his elbow. “Mr. Orsini?”

“Dolly, Dolly darling, the only sane person left on earth. Go away, sweetheart, we’re talking.”

“I thought I should tell you. It’s not like I’m a snitch, but I’d tell Billy so she could tell you, only she’s not here, so I thought—”

“What?”

“See, it’s not what you said. I heard you say ‘lovers’ quarrel,’ but it’s worse. I heard it all through the wall—never got around to buying earplugs—it started when Sandra accused Hugh of upstaging her, stealing scenes. And—”

Fifi interrupted. “He was. I caught him at it and warned him, but he kept trying.”

“And then Hugh turned nasty and said she couldn’t act, a lousy soap queen, and he’s a real stage actor, you know, and then she said he had a cock as big as a baby’s thumb but, unfortunately, not as hard, and then he said you wouldn’t even know where her tits were unless you could find her nipples, and she said he had pimples on his ass with pus in them, and he said she was the worst fuck he’d ever had—and her cunt smelled like a fish market—and it got a lot worse. I can’t even repeat most of the things they said—I’d be embarrassed.”