The First Wives Club (56 page)

And so, she was making the film. That was decided. Their talents combining.

She had never had so much fun working with anyone. Not even with Truffaut.

They did combine well, and Elise was delighted to find out how much she still knew about moviemaking, and how much Larry depended on her.

She’d broken her mother’s rule, she was bankrolling the production.

Maybe it was a mistake.

Maybe Larry was a mistake. But she also knew his eye was good, and his vision sure. The film would be small, tight, perfect. As long as her performance held up, it couldn’t fail to be a succes d’estime. But Elise was hoping for more. Much more.

Now she held her arms out and surrounded Larry’s shoulders, hugging him tightly against her. He moaned. She moved her hands down his broad back, into the hollow before the swell of his buttocks, and then over them, clutching them, pushing him more deeply into her. “So good,” he murmured into her ear. Still, he hung back. She had already come once, earlier, but he moved his hand to just above where he entered her and began to stroke her again. It was almost too much, too sensitive.

She shivered, just the tiniest movement, but he stopped immediately.

“No?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “Could we stop a minute?”

Larry’s eyebrows raised. “Are you all right?”

“Of course, darling. It’s just that I’m so happy. The first day of casting went well, didn’t it?”

He smiled, relieved. “Isn’t that a cause for celebration? And I’ve got something here for you.” He moved her hand down to his hardon.

She closed her hand gently around him. This was good, so good, but she simply had to talk.

”Larry, I want you to know that no matter what happens, no matter if the film fails, even if I become a laughingstock, or if you wake up one day and have to leave me because I’m an old crone, I want you to know that no one has ever made me so happy, or been so kind.”

“And you’ve made me happy. And you’ve made Mr. Happy happy. And that makes you happy. Happy all the time.”

”Why does a man name his penis?” Elise asked with a smile, looking down at Mr. Happy.

“Well, what am I supposed to call it, Hey, you’?”

Elise laughed. “Sometimes you are incredibly stupid.”’ “Thank you.

All just a part of the Larry Cochran service, ma’am. And speaking of servicing …”

He was inside her again, now kissing her mouth, his tongue echoing his long, slow strokes. Elise held herself tight around him. She knew this man, his kindness, his talent, even his silliness. God, she loved him so much!

“Never talk about leaving me,” he said. “Never leave me. Please.

Never leave me.”’ His voice was deep, a moaning whisper. “Promise,” he begged.

“Never,” she promised. “Never.”

Bill watched as Phoebe snorted the last line of coke off the glass coffee table. Copies of ArtNews and Rolling Stone, an old paint rag, and the remainS of last night’s Chinese takeout littered the table’s surface. She had been excited when she called him last evening at work, excited and a bit incoherent, but when he got down to the loft, she had been almost comatose. Then, after mumbling to him for several hours, she had risen at midnight. since then, she’d been almost manic.

They’d hit every bar and club in SoHo and come back, at last, to the loft. Christ, it was almost dawn. She said she was snorting just a line or two to wake herself up. Then they were going off to her studio so he could see her new work.

He was worried. For weeks now she’d been more and more agitated about her work, but also more and more secretive about just what it was.

“It’s a breakthrough. A real breakthrough. I think that with Leslie’s help I’ve finally torn away that bullshit separation that media puts between art and life.

I mean it. This is important.”

Bill hoped so, because he was nervous. Phoebe was still adamant about the rehab, and he had to take her side, but now he wasn’t sure that this permission therapy was working. He wondered sometimes what that Rosen woman was up to. There was no question that Phoebe had become stranger and stranger, the drugs, the sex, the moods-they all seemed to be spinning out of control and he was spinning, too. Phoebe’s family had cut off all communication and had already started an action to assign a conservator. And money was tight. Elise had spitefully sold off his collections for a dollar, and he could do nothing legally because of the wording of the divorce settlement he had so quickly signed. Phoebe, the job, his finances, were all too much. Yet he loved her. He could never give her up. She needed him.

But lately, since she’d started this permission therapy with Dr. Rosen, she’d only wanted anal sex. Bill had been delighted, at least at first. It was so forbidden, so very, very sexy, and when Phoebe stripped and leaned across the bed, her knees on the floor, begging him for it, he’d been thrilled to oblige. He’d been hard as a pipe.

Phoebe had said something about reenactments, about primal scenes. All well and good, but it was starting to wear on him. The problem was, it was all she wanted, when she wanted sex at all. It was, well, he didn’t know. Obsessive, maybe.

Now, Phoebe rose from the table, her body as thin as a whippet’s. She looked over at Bill, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach and a quickening at his crotch, he recognized that fevered grin. Phoebe continued to stare at him, almost as if she were in a trance, then, slowly, began to pull up her skintight, tiger-striped, spandex dress.

She pulled it as high as her waist, exposing her shaved labia, her thin legs, her sharply jutting pelvic bones. She turned her body but continued to stare at him over her shoulder. Slowly, slowly, she began to bend over, using the low coffee table to support herself. Then she moved her hands to her buttocks and separated her cheeks.

“Do me, Daddy. Do me there.”

Mesmerized, his cock hard against his leg. Bill moved toward her. He bent over her, putting his arms around her. “No!” she hissed, jerking herself away.

“Don’t touch me. Just do me.”

”Phoebe, I—” “No talking,” she hissed. “Do me.”

”Please, Phoebe. Please.” He felt his cock straining to be released.

“Please talk to me. Let’s lie down. Let me hold you.” Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. To his surprise, Bill felt his eyes tearing. The hell with that. He’d give her what she wanted.

“Just do me,” Phoebe hissed again, and so he did.

Aaron woke up, the dream still more real than the form of his wife lying stiffly in the darkness beside him. It was the bird again, the bird that swooped down and picked him up in its sharp talons, soaring high, only to drop him, plummeting through the air. He awoke before he hit the ground.

He stilled his panting, turned to look at Leslie, and wondered just how long she was going to keep up the freeze. After the trust fund losses she had shut him out for weeks. Now, with his plan to take over the firm in shambles, she had again put up the wall.

Aaron felt her warm form near him in the bed. Christ, things couldn’t get too much worse than they were now, could they? He had fucked up his career, his daughter’s future, his new marriage, and his relationship with his ex-wife all in a matter of months. What the fuck was wrong with him? Was he a loser?

Aaron began to sweat. Christ, he wasn’t a loser. Losers were people over thirty who rode the bus, who wore off-the-rack suits, who had to rent dinner jackets and called them tuxedos. Losers had thighs that rubbed together when they walked. They lived in suburbs and boroughs.

They were the bridge-and-tunnel crowd. They picked up their own dry cleaning. They couldn’t get into Nell’s. Christ, they’d never heard of Nell’s. They had receding chins, receding hairlines, protruding bellies. They borrowed money from HFC.

He wasn’t like that. He had made something of his life. His son was in medical school. He’d created Paradise/Loest from nothing. He wasn’t a loser.

He turned to Leslie, rubbing his hand down her narrow back.

Surprisingly, she moaned and turned toward him, though she kept her eyes closed. Her breasts, so beautifully large and rounded in contrast to her small frame, were pressed against the top of her blue silk teddy, her left nipple just peeking over the top of the lace. Gently, cautiously, he ran his hand down, down, into the deep cleft of her cleavage, then he buried his head there.

Oh, to be, safely, on her breast. Aaron felt he could lie there forever. It wasn’t sex he wanted. It was warmth, it was comfort, acceptance.

But Leslie was moving her hands to his thighs, then to his crotch.

Then she jumped back as if scorched.

“What the hell does that mean?” she asked, obviously fully awake and staring at his limp member.

“I don’t know. You’re the sex therapist.” He was empty of desire for her, empty as an oyster shell picked clean of its cargo. And he knew in a moment of clarity that he’d never feel desire for her again.

“And you are an impotent bastard,” she spat.

“Just perfect for a castrating bitch.” He rolled over.

He looked at the clock, 5,33. Predawn. The hour of the wolf. Aaron knew he’d never get back to sleep. He wondered for a moment if her rage at him was so deep that she felt it in her sleep. Whatever, there was no comfort there. Oh, well, he thought, it had been a disaster, he had to admit that. In the dark, Aaron almost smiled at the irony. It wasn’t until he had married a sex therapist that he couldn’t get it up.

.

Morty Cushman lay in the earliest light of dawn, watching the prison window lighten. Around him he heard the snores and the other, more threatening noises. He tried not to identify them, but they were unmistakable.

Deepthroated moans, sex-talk in harsh whispers, the long “Oh, God” of someone’s climax. Morty was disgusted and very frightened. He knew the universal truths, that men confined without women became sexually aggressive with other, less powerful men, and that sex was a marketable commodity in prison. He knew it, but he somehow never really believed it. Never wanted to believe it, least of all now.

But realizing that someone was paying for something terrified him. If his TVs and ghetto blasters ran out, he knew he would have to buy safety some other way. He remembered the crack the trustee had made about having dentures and was grateful for his electronics. But what would he do when they ran out? He tried not to think about that now.

From below him, in the lower bunk, the rattling snores continued in a steady tattoo. Thank God for that. Big Mo was asleep. Morty himself hadn’t slept at all.

He’d cut the deal with De Los Santos. Now it was certain he’d do time.

But not much. Not if he testified against Gil. And he would. He’d sing like a bird to get out of this hell.

So the wake-up bell would sound and then breakfast, which he wouldn’t be able to eat. Morty wasn’t sleeping or eating well here in prison.

And as far as sex was concerned, Morty didn’t even want to think about it.

Is You Ain’t Maibeibi?

since her return from Japan, Annie had felt reborn, suffused with new energy. Mr. Tanaki, his wife, and their son were coming to New York and going to visit Sylvan Glades.

Dr. Gancher’s visit had been a success, and Tanaki was planning a community like it north of Kyoto.

I’ve done good, she thought. And filled with new power, she got an idea. A naughty idea. A wonderful idea. Icing on the Gil Griffin cake.

“You’re not going without me,” Brenda insisted as she sprawled across the sofa at Elise’s office. “What will you do if you get into trouble?”

“What will you do if I get into trouble?” Annie asked. She slipped off her pumps and replaced them with sensible boots because of the slush outside. She appreciated Brenda’s loyalty, but she regretted that she’d told her about her plan, now that Brenda was being so unreasonable, “You two have done so much about Gil. I haven’t. I have no money to put in Maibeibi.

And I feel I have to do something.”

“Are you kidding? You made the Maibeibi thing happen. If it werent for you, Tanaki would have let Gil step on him.”

“Well, I’m doing this myself. Don’t be a nag.”

“Don’t be a martyr. You’re not going by yourself. We don’t do that anymore. You, me, and Elise. We work as a team. Anyway, you need me.

I’m used to fighting dirty. You haven’t figured out all the strategic requirements.”

“Brenda, this is only an act of vandalism, not a war.”

“Not if we do it right. Anyway, Elise would kill us if we went without her. Plus, since her mother died, all she does is work on her movie.

She’s gone from alcoholic to workaholic. She needs a distraction.”

Annie sighed. “All right, all right. But I’m not responsible if something goes wrong. And you watch, that’s all. I do it, and if anything happens, I take the blame.”

“Okay, okay!” Brenda chortled. “So what’s the timing?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. I know that Miguel De Los Santos is seeing Gil then.”’ “Great. That ought to screw up his day.”

Brenda’s voice changed. “So how are things between you two?” she asked, obviously more than a little curious.

“What do you mean?”

”Oh, don’t play coy with me. All those lunches and dinners. Don’t tell me that you’re only discussing business.” Brenda paused. ‘So, you’re dating?”

Annie shook her head. “No, not really. We’re just seeing each other.”

“So you’re seeing’ a Puerto Rican?”

“So? Brenda, don’t tell me you’re prejudiced. How could you?”

“I was raised by Jews and Italians, the most prejudiced people on earth. But hey”—she made an airy-fairy movement—“I’ve risen above.”

She paused again. “So you approve of Diana?”

Annie took Brenda’s hand. “If you’re happy, I’m happy,” she said in her best Jewish-mother accent. “So about tomorrow, we need paint remover. I can get that. And some shirt cardboard. Have you got rubber gloves?”

Brenda nodded. “How will we get in?”

“Just walk in, I guess.”

“You see, you do need me! They’ll never let us walk in. And if they do, they’ll watch us.”

“You’re right.” Annie stopped and thought for a moment. “I’d be too nervous to drive. And I’m not sure I could do a quick getaway.”