The Rothman Scandal (70 page)

Alex smiled. “Dear old Lulu,” she said. “That sounds like her.”

“I never gave up. I kept on looking for you. Then, just the other day, I saw your picture in the
Daily News
. Alexandra Rothman, and the president of France was kissing your hand.”

“Yes,” she said. “But we can't turn back the clock, Skipper.” The words sounded trite and foolish.

“I'll try, if you'll try. Let's try.”

“No, no,” she said again.

“What matters most is that of all the women I've ever loved—and there've been a few—no one ever made me feel the way you did, Alex. No one, before or since.”

She started to move away from him, but he reached out and seized her hand. “Do you remember the idea I had for the little bar? You were going to help me decorate it.”

“Oh, yes. It was going to have a piano player—a fat man in a derby hat and red suspenders … or was that just my imagination? There were going to be stained-glass windows. You were going to call it El Corral.”

“And do you know something? I got as far as buying the stained-glass windows. Oh, Alex, I've never felt about anyone the way I feel about you. Do you remember that first afternoon at the Dairy Queen?”

“Oh, yes,” she said with a sudden shudder. “Look. I really don't want to cry. I'm not going to let you make me cry.”

“I don't want to make you cry. I love you. Do you remember I said I wanted to fox you up?”

“Yes …”

“And I could have foxed you up that first day, couldn't I? I could tell it. I could feel it in the air. I could even smell it—that's how bad I knew you wanted me. But I didn't do it then, did I? I wanted to marry you first. That's how special you were to me. That's how much respect I had for you.” He spread the fingers of her hand. “I wanted you to wear my wedding ring first. I gave you a ring. I see you have a new ring now. Do you still have my ring?”

She nodded mutely.

He studied the back of her hand. “But that was the day I put my brand on you,” he said. Slowly, lazily, he drew the letter
S
on the back of her hand with his fingertip. “Look. It's still there.” And suddenly she saw the scarlet welt fly up—
S
, for Skipper. “And then I licked it with my tongue, to make it heal real fast.” He lifted her hand to his mouth, and licked the back of her hand.

“Skipper—it never healed!”

“I've never loved anyone the way I love you, Alex. No one's ever made me happier. I love you, Alex. I need you, Alex.” And suddenly he was covering her mouth with urgent kisses, and unbuttoning her pink Brooks Brothers shirt, and it was happening to her all over again. “Take off his ring first,” he commanded, and she twisted the sapphire from her finger and dropped it to the floor, where it landed with a soft plop on the rug, and then it was the way it happened that first night in the motel room in Wichita, with that noisy feeling of a tempest building inside her, with the dizzying sound of wind pounding in her ears, and a bright crimson light behind her eyes, and she was powerless again, and found herself returning his fierce, drinking, thirsty kisses, and heard herself cry out, “Oh, Skipper, why did you have to leave me? Oh, Skipper, love me … oh!… yes, do that … and that … oh, fuck me … fuck me …”

When it was over, and they lay together breathlessly on the sofa in the boathouse, he said, “I've never made love to a woman wearing nothing but three strands of pearls. That's another first.” He touched the pearls. “Beautiful,” he said.

She laughed softly. “I guess I was in too much of a hurry to take them off.”

“You're so lovely,” he said. “Are you happy, Alex?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Do you love him, Alex?”

“Yes.”

“In the same way?”

“No,” she admitted.

“Good,” he said. “That's all I wanted to know.”

“But—”

“But what?”

“But this is what I want to keep. What I have now.”

“Because he's rich?”

“Perhaps that's part of it. There are other reasons, too.”

He drew his fingertips across her lips. “You say you're happy, but there are little sad-lines around your mouth.”

She laughed. “Just wrinkles,” she said.

“And around your eyes—little sad-lines that weren't there before.”

“More wrinkles.”

“May I come back again?”

She raised herself on one elbow. “Please don't,” she said. “If you really love me, please don't. Please don't complicate my life any more than it is already. If you really love me, promise me that. Please. It's important, Skipper.”

“All right. I promise. But just tell me again that it's not the same for you with him—the same as it is with me.”

“That's true. It's not,” she said.

“And tell me that you've never loved anyone else the way you've loved me.”

“It's true,” she whispered. “And I'll never forget this afternoon, my darling …”

“I think you wanted this afternoon as much as I did.”

“It's true,” she said again.

“Perhaps he can give you pearls, but I can give you something better than that, can't I?”

“Yes,” she said, and then they were making love again.

The boathouse was solidly constructed and reasonably soundproof, but now the building trembled. It was the 4:43 commuter express rattling its way out of Grand Central Station on its way to Harmon. That was another thing Aunt Lily Rothman disliked about the boathouse, the vibration from the trains that rumbled by night and day.

That fall and winter of 1971–72 had been one of their best times with Adam. For one thing, he seemed to have come into some money—just how, Lenny felt it unwise to ask. Adam bought himself a snappy green Mercedes 380-SL sports convertible, and he often drove Lenny and Charlie out for weekend junkets in Connecticut and Long Island. He bought himself a number of good-looking sport jackets and slacks and suits, and a drawerful of Turnbull & Asser shirts, and coordinated ties. He was becoming something of a fashion plate. He often took the boys out to dinner at expensive restaurants, and talked of taking them all on a spring cruise to Bermuda. Though he still liked his liquor, he now paid for his own cases of vodka, and had graduated from Popov to Smirnoff Blue Label. All in all, during this period, he was good fun to be with.

He was still not working, and where these funds were coming from was something of a mystery. Perhaps, Lenny decided, Adam had found himself a new patron, which was all right with Lenny, since Adam's new affluence eased the financial strain on the Liebling-Boxer household considerably. Whenever Lenny attempted to find out where the money was coming from, Adam merely shrugged and said, “Friend paid me some money he owed me.”

But as the year 1972 drew to a close, the situation began to deteriorate again. The charges for Adam's vodka began appearing on Lenny's liquor store bills once more and, as had happened before, both Lenny and Charlie began to notice cash missing from their billfolds. On Christmas Eve that year, Adam was arrested for drunken driving, spent the night in jail, and had his driver's license suspended. After that, either Lenny or Charlie had to drive his Mercedes wherever they went.

By March of 1973, Lenny and Charlie had decided that it was time to have a heart-to-heart with Adam, and they had decided to emphasize the financial aspect of their relationship with the young man. They had decided not to say they were losing patience with him, which was beginning to be the case. And they had decided not to lecture him about his drinking, which only made him worse.

“Honestly, Adam, you have simply got to do something to find work,” Lenny said to him. “If you're going to continue to live with us, you've got to contribute to our household expenses.”

“What about all the dinners I took you out to?” he said.

“Those were fine, but that was nearly a year ago. Your situation seems to have changed. It's a matter of money, Adam. You know we love you, Adam, but Charlie and I simply can't afford to go on keeping you like this. Charlie has almost run through his inheritance from dear Aunt Jane, and I, of course, have only my salary. Last month, your liquor bills alone—”

“What about my liquor bills?”

“I hadn't meant to get into that, but last month the liquor bill alone came close to four hundred dollars. You've simply got to start contributing to this little
ménage
of ours.”

“Broadway season's almost over. There won't be any casting until after Labor Day.” His speech was a little slurred, and Lenny suspected that he was already a little drunk.

“What about summer stock? Have you thought about that? Actors are reading for summer stock all over town right now. I know the money's not much, and of course we'd miss you this summer. But summer stock gives you room and board, and a chance to be
seen
. The scouts from all the major studios tour the summer circuit, and—who knows? A job with summer stock could lead to something much, much bigger. An actor has to be
seen
, Adam—he has to be seen and heard performing. If you don't get seen, you might as well not exist as a performer. And you've never looked better, Adam,” Lenny said, though he lied a little here. Adam was becoming a bit jowly, and had noticed this himself in the mirror, and had already suggested that the boys might be willing to spring for a face-lift for him. “You've simply got to do something, Adam,” Lenny said. “It's a matter of money, pure and simple.”

“Don't worry about me,” Adam said. “Don't worry about me, good buddy.”

“I don't think you think I'm serious,” Lenny said sharply. “I am
quite
serious. If nothing else, you can get a job waiting on tables at the Stage Delicatessen—the way other out-of-work actors do.”

“I ain't waiting on no tables!”

“I see,” Lenny said icily, “that you can take the street hustler out of the street, but you can't take the street out of the hustler. May I remind you of what you were before I picked you up? You were a twenty-dollar trick, working the gay bars. But I thought you had a certain look, a charisma, a
presence
that only needed a little polish. For four years now, Charlie and I have tried to apply that polish. We have paid to have your nose fixed, your chin fixed, your teeth fixed. We have paid the hairstylists, we have bought you clothes, we have paid for acting lessons, singing lessons, dancing lessons, fencing lessons, elocution lessons, and karate lessons. We have also fed and housed you in our home. And what have we got in return for this investment? A man with a four-hundred-dollar-a-month drinking habit. The gravy train is over, dearie.”

“You wouldn't dare throw me out!”

“Oh, wouldn't I just? Test me, Adam. Just test me. You'll see how fast I can throw you out. This apartment is leased to Charlie and me. Nowhere in our lease are we required to give you house room.”

“Yeah, throw me out and have to admit to all your fancy friends that you were a miserable flop at turning me into something I never really wanted to be?”

“That's it, of course, isn't it? You never really wanted to be anything but what you are—a drunken bum.”

“Don't call me no bum!”

“But that's what you are, sweetheart! And, on the contrary, our fancy friends, as you call them, would be very much relieved to see us throw you out. Most of them loathe you. You read what Mona Potter wrote about you in her column. If we threw you out, Adam, our friends would congratulate us for finally coming to our senses. They would throw a party for us to celebrate this blessed event. And when you go, where will you find yourself? Back on the street again as a piece of trade. And I lied a moment ago when I said you've never looked better. You're beginning to look
old
, darling. You're going to find it harder to turn those twenty-dollar tricks. At a rough guess right now, I'd say that most Johns wouldn't be willing to pay you more than five.”

Adam started to rise, and Lenny reached for the house phone, and rested a finger against the red panic button that would set off the alarm downstairs. “Are you going to strike me?” he said coolly. “If you do, I'll have Peter the doorman up here so fast with the police that you won't know what happened, and you'll find yourself right back in jail on an attempted murder charge. With your record, it shouldn't be hard to make that stick, and I should imagine your jail sentence would be somewhat longer than the last time.”

Adam sank back in his chair. “I wasn't going to hit you,” he said. “I'm sorry, Lenny.”

“That's more like it,” Lenny said. “A little remorse is called for here. A little remorse, and a little gratitude.”

“Just give me one more chance.”

“All right,” Lenny said. “One more chance. One
last
chance. And with this chance goes an ultimatum. We're giving you exactly six months, Adam, and I think that's very generous. Today is March twenty-fifth. That gives you until September twenty-fifth to find some work that will bring substantial money into this household. If nothing happens by that date, out you go. Is that quite clear, Adam?”

“You used to say you loved me, Lenny.”

Lenny sighed. “Oh, we do, I suppose, in a way. But even love has its limits of endurance.”

“Want me to give you a blow job, Lenny? Let me give you one of my nice blow jobs.”

“Thanks, but I'm not in the mood. Six months. That is the final limit of our endurance. Six months.”

March passed, and then April. “Five months,” Lenny reminded him.

May passed, and June. “Three months,” Lenny said.

Then July. “Two months.”

“Don't worry. I'm already working on a deal.”

“What sort of deal?”

“A big deal. You'll see.”

“Money in it?”