An Inconvenient Woman (26 page)

Flo raised her eyebrows. “You can afford it, Jules,” she said.

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is the point?”

“This is a rented house. To spend forty thousand dollars for curtains in a rented house doesn’t make sense. You can’t take them with you when you leave, and that has-been TV star you rent this place from reaps the benefits.”

“You don’t have to point out to me this is a rented house, Jules. And, by the way, the renovations of my closets are going to cost you that much again,” said Flo.

“I don’t believe this.”

“Aren’t I worth it, Jules? Any time you’re dissatisfied
with my services, I shall be happy to make other arrangements,” said Flo, grandly.

“Now, let’s not get into that kind of conversation, Flo. I’m tired. I have a lot of important things on my mind.”

Flo got up from the bed where she had been lying next to Jules. She picked up her terry cloth robe and put it on. “I want you to buy this house for me, Jules,” she said. “Trent Muldoon’s business manager said he’s ready to sell.”

“This is not the time to be talking about buying houses,” he said. “I just told you I’m tired and that I have things on my mind.”

“You keep putting it off, Jules. No time is ever the right time for you. I want something in my own name. I live in a rented house. I drive a leased car. What’s going to happen to me if something happens to you? I’ve gotten used to living like this.”

“You are going to be taken care of. Sims Lord will be making the arrangements,” said Jules.

“You know, Jules, I sit here all day waiting for you to come over. I have no friends, except the maid next door who works for Faye Converse. I have no job. You’re afraid to be seen with me in public, so I almost never go out. I have thirty Chanel suits, and some forty-thousand-dollar curtains, and I’m about to have a couple of hundred Steuben glasses without a monogram on them, but it’s not really a fulfilling kind of life. So, I repeat, I want something in my own name.”

“All right, all right, I’ll buy you the house,” he said.

“Thank you, Jules, and I want the pink slip for the car too, in my own name.”

“I better get dressed,” he said, getting out of bed and reaching around for his clothes.

“Hey, Jules, you have to lose some of that lard around your middle,” said Flo. “Pauline’s taking you to too many banquets. When you bend over to tie your shoelaces, your face gets all red and you get short of breath.”

Jules was both annoyed and touched. He did not like to be reminded of his girth. He had recently been infuriated by a magazine article that described him as a man of ample proportions. But it struck him how different his relationship with Flo was from his relationship with Pauline. With Pauline, he dressed and undressed in his dressing room, as she dressed and undressed in her dressing room, and they did not present
themselves to each other until they were ready to face the world or ready to go to bed.

Flo came over to him and put her arms around his neck. “Listen, it doesn’t bother me. The way I look at it, there’s more of you to love.”

When Jules finished dressing, he walked into Flo’s living room. She was seated on her newly upholstered sofa, reading Cyril Rathbone’s gossip column in
Mulholland
. He was absurdly touched that she moved her lips when she read.

“Oh, la,” said Flo, holding out her little finger in what she assumed to be a gesture of grandeur.

“What?” asked Jules.

“ ‘Pauline Mendelson is opening her orchid greenhouse for the Los Angeles Garden Club tour,’ ” she read. “ ‘Mrs. Mendelson, the elegant wife of Jules Mendelson, the zillionaire, has developed a rare yellow phalaenopsis orchid.’ Is that how you pronounce that?”

Jules turned away. He could not deal with any overlapping of the segments of his life.

“You know, Flo, you mustn’t move your lips when you read,” he said.

“Did I do that?” she asked, slapping her hand over her mouth. “When I was in junior high at Blessed Sacrament, Sister Andretta, my home room teacher, used to say to me, ‘Fleurette, you’re moving your lips,’ and all the kids in the class would laugh. I thought I got over that.”

“Tomorrow I’m going to bring you over some books I think you ought to read instead of all those gossip columns.”

“Not long ones, for God’s sake. My lips will be exhausted.”

Pauline Mendelson had not confronted Jules about the other woman’s scent on his fingers after she had kissed his hand and smelled it. Instead, she began to observe him more carefully. There were no telltale signs, nothing so obvious as lipstick traces on handkerchiefs or collars. For the first time since they moved into Clouds twenty-two years before, their habit of meeting in the sunset room each twilight for a glass of wine before they dressed for dinner had been disrupted when Pauline failed to appear for several days following her outburst. When they drove together to and from parties, she had a sense that his mind was elsewhere, although, once having arrived at the house where they were dining, they both automatically fell
into their roles of devoted husband and wife, with never a hint, to even the closest observer, of a masquerade being performed. Several times Pauline awoke at night and saw Jules lying beside her in their bed staring up at the ceiling, but she did not speak. She knew the time was at hand to go to see her father in Maine, but she made no mention of her plans.

She had grown used to her role as the wife of one of the country’s most eminent figures, and she was not unmindful that there was a dearth of replacements for a man of her husband’s importance, even for one of the marrying McAdoo sisters. Caution was the road she chose to follow. Jules, concerned, was aware from the attitude and the coolness of his wife that something was wrong. He even guessed that she may have heard of his involvement, although he had made every effort to keep the affair from being discussed. The very thought of dissolving such a marriage as he had with Pauline was unthinkable to Jules, even though he was in the grips of a grand passion with Flo March.

Under suspicion, facing the loss of a marriage he treasured, he still continued his afternoon visits to Azelia Way, as his ardor for Flo did not diminish for a second. His erotic longings intensified each day; he could not wait for the sight of her alert breasts and ample bush, which were more beautiful to him than her beautiful face. “Be nude,” he would say to her on the car telephone so that not a moment of their time together would be wasted. He wanted more and more of her, and she always obliged. “Don’t use those scents and unguents down there,” he said one afternoon. “Your natural smells drive me mad.” He begged her to talk dirty to him during their lovemaking, and she obliged. “Lower,” he whispered in her ear once. She understood he did not mean the position of her hands on his testicles, but that he wanted her language to be even baser, and again she obliged. Afterward he said to her, “Where in the hell did you learn how to talk like that?”

She lay back in bed smoking a cigarette, looking up into space, and answered in a surprisingly harsh tone. “Don’t go moral on me once you’ve come, Jules. It’s what you begged for.”

He looked at her. He knew she was right. The next day he brought her a jewel, a sapphire ring surrounded by diamonds. She was ecstatic. “Like Princess Di’s,” she said. “Only bigger. I used to think if I ever had a ring, a really good ring, I
would love a sapphire. Did I ever tell you that, Jules? I didn’t, did I? How did you know?”

“It’s the color of your eyes,” said Jules.

She was touched. “You are surprising, Jules. Sometimes you’re so gruff and unsentimental. I didn’t think you ever noticed the color of anything about me, other than my pubic hair.”

Jules roared with laughter. He knew she was inferior to him, both in position and intellect, but he loved her. He loved her madly.

“I love you, Jules,” she said simply.

“Really?” he asked.

She thought of what she had just said. She perhaps venerated him more than she loved him, but certainly love was present. “Really,” she replied.

When he left that day, she walked him to his car. “I’m mad about this ring, Jules. I won’t ever take it off. But you won’t forget about the house, will you? I want to own this house.”

A few days later the two women in Jules Mendelson’s life met by accident in the parking lot of Pooky’s salon. Pauline Mendelson rarely went to Pooky’s to have her hair done. She was one of a few very special clients for whom Pooky happily adjusted his busy schedule, going up to Clouds to do her hair in her elaborately outfitted dressing room. But on the day before Casper Stieglitz’s party, which Pauline never wanted to attend, Pooky was not able to accommodate her in their usual manner on such short notice, and she drove into Beverly Hills to have her hair done at his salon. As she was parking in the lot behind the shop, a red convertible Mercedes backed into the front of her car. It was Flo March, leaving the shop after her appointment.

“I’m so sorry,” said Flo, hopping out of her car and running over to Pauline’s. “That was my fault. But I’m insured. Don’t worry. And it’s not bad. Just a dent.”

Looking in the window, she realized the person whose car she had hit was Pauline Mendelson. “Oh, my God, Mrs. Mendelson,” she said. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I hardly felt it,” said Pauline. She got out of her car and went around to look at the dent. “Don’t worry about it. It was an accident.” The girl looked familiar to Pauline. “Do we know each other? Have we ever met?” she asked.

“No, no, we haven’t,” said Flo. She had become shy and spoke very quickly. “I just know who you are. I recognized you from seeing your picture in the papers and magazines all the time. You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Mendelson.” She felt only fascination for the wife of her lover.

Pauline smiled. “I love your suit,” she said.

“Oh, my gosh, coming from you,” said Flo, thrilled with the compliment.

Then, looking at the Chanel suit, Pauline remembered. “I know where I saw you. At Hector Paradiso’s funeral. Weren’t you a friend of Hector’s?”

Flo began to get nervous. “Yes, I knew Hector. I have to run. Thank you for being so nice, Mrs. Mendelson.”

“Tell me your name. I’ll tell Jules I saw you,” said Pauline.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Mendelson.” She ran back to her car and jumped in. She put her key in the ignition and the car leapt forward. She was bewildered. It had never occurred to Flo March that Pauline Mendelson would be nice.

Although Pauline was in no way the sort of wife who could be bought off with a trinket, no matter how expensive the trinket, Jules made arrangements for a gift for his wife that he felt might thaw the situation between them. He had heard from Pauline’s great friend, Prince Friedrich of Hesse-Darmstadt, the head of the jewelry department at Boothby’s auction house in London, that a certain pair of yellow diamond earrings were coming up for auction that week, and Jules had instructed the prince to bid on them for him.

On the Sunday of Casper Steiglitz’s dinner, Willi, Jules’s barber, who usually arrived before sunrise to shave him, came later in the afternoon to cut his hair. Only the day before had Pauline been reluctantly induced to accompany Jules to Casper’s party. “It would mean a great deal to me, Pauline,” he had said. She read into his voice a need that she did not often hear. She knew that was the moment to confront him about the other woman he was seeing, but she refrained, not wanting to approach that development of their lives in such a sideways fashion. “All right, Jules,” she said, simply.

“Wait till I show you what I’ve bought Pauline,” said Jules to the barber, in a rare moment of intimacy with the man who had been shaving him daily in his house for over
twenty years. He reached into the top drawer of his dressing table and took out a small velvet box. Opening it, he held out a pair of yellow canary diamond earrings, surrounded by smaller diamonds.

“Look,” he said proudly. “She has been looking for earrings to match her canary diamond necklace and bracelet, and I knew these were coming up at an auction at Boothby’s in London last week and had my man there bid for me.”

Willi, the barber, knew nothing of canary diamonds, but he saw they were large and knew they were expensive and made the appropriate exclamations of admiration. Just then, Pauline walked into Jules’s dressing room, wearing a negligee and carrying two dresses on velvet-covered hangers.

“Which of these would be more appropriate for your friends, Mr. Stieglitz and Mr. Zwillman?” she asked, holding them up for his inspection. Jules, who knew better than anyone that his wife’s taste in clothes was second to no one’s, was not unaware of the slight sarcasm in her tone, but he ignored it. “Hello, Willi,” she said to the barber.

“Hi, Miz Mendelson,” said Willi. He continued his work of cutting and trimming, but he was aware at the same time that there was a change in the dynamics of the relationship of the couple he had come to know so well. Jules Mendelson was Willi’s benefactor as well as client, having advanced him the money to buy the small shop on Sunset Boulevard where he cut the hair of the leading figures in the film industry.

“I would choose that one,” said Jules, pointing to one of the two. “You know, Sunday night, not too dressy, don’t you think?”

“I’ve never been to a gangster’s party on Sunday night,” said Pauline. “So I wouldn’t know.”

“Mr. Stieglitz is a film producer,” he said.

“But Mr. Zwillman is a gangster, or so says Rose Cliveden,” replied Pauline. “Rose suggested a corsage.”

“I have a present for you,” said Jules quickly, wanting to change the subject. “Here.” He handed her the velvet box.

Pauline opened the box and looked at the canary diamond earrings. “Very pretty,” she said, without the sort of enthusiasm that such an extravagant gift could be expected to engender. It appeared to Jules that she was about to say something else, and he waited, looking at her in the mirror while Willi continued to cut his hair. “I saw them in the Boothby
catalog Friedrich sent me. They used to belong to a Mrs. Scorpios. What time are we due at Mr. Stieglitz’s?”

Jules and the barber glanced at each other in the mirror. Jules, embarrassed, shrugged.