An Inconvenient Woman (35 page)

“There is no big deal.”

“Look, I was different in those days than I am now. Wilder. Rebellious. My parents sent me away to boarding school when I was only eleven, because they were getting a divorce, and I spent the next seven or eight years wanting to get even with them. What better way than to elope to Mexico? I think of it as a youthful error, no more than that.”

“What’s your secret, Philip?”

“What secret?”

“You have a secret. I feel it. I know it.”

Philip looked away from her.

“And you’re not going to tell me, are you?”

Philip didn’t answer.

“I don’t want to see you anymore, Philip.”

“That’s quite childish, don’t you think?”

She shook her head. “Let me tell you what a fool I’ve been. I was thinking that perhaps you were going to ask me to marry you. I even went to see my lawyers, just in case. My life is run by lawyers, part of an arrangement my father made. If we were even to think of marriage, I was told, they would draw up a prenuptial agreement for you to sign.”

Philip, astonished, laughed. “I wouldn’t have signed it.”

“They wouldn’t have let me marry you then.”

“But I didn’t want to marry you.”

Camilla, startled, blushed. “You didn’t?”

“No. Men should never marry women who are richer than they are. It’s bound to fail. So tell your lawyers to flush their prenuptial agreement.”

“You don’t have to be rude.”

“I’m not being rude. I’m stating a fact. What’s wrong with a love affair? Just a plain and simple love affair. This has been a very pleasant time between us. Don’t just toss it out. I have never been one to believe every romance should end up in marriage.”

“So long, Philip,” she said. “When you’re ready to tell me your secret, maybe we’ll meet for lunch sometime.” She stepped out of his car.

Philip looked at her back. “I caused a girl to be paralyzed when I was driving too fast with too many beers in me. It changed my life forever,” he said. Without looking back at her, he drove out of her driveway.

Philip Quennell had not made many friends in Los Angeles during the time he was there. He had met Camilla Ebury at the Mendelsons’ party on his first night in the city. The mysterious death of her uncle on that same night had intensified their love affair, and he had spent most of his free time with her since then, mixing in her life with her friends rather than creating a Los Angeles life of his own. The rupture that had been caused in that love affair by the unexpected appearance on the street of Terry Sigourney brought to an instant halt any further socializing with the people he had met through Camilla. He had no desire to call on Casper Stieglitz for companionship, as he had developed an intense dislike for the man. Nor did he have any desire to associate with Lonny Edge, even to gain further knowledge of Lonny’s friendship with the
great author Basil Plant, whom Philip revered. He wanted only to finish the writing assignment he had undertaken for Casper Stieglitz, so that he could return to his life in New York.

He was at work in his room at the Chateau Marmont that night, when there was a knock at his door. It was the policy of the hotel to announce all visitors, but no such announcement had been made. When he opened the door, he was surprised to see the pretty young woman he knew only as Flo M. standing there. She was dressed, as he had always seen her dressed, in a Chanel suit, but she appeared to be in an agitated state. The cool, withdrawn, and slightly mysterious manner that he had grown used to when he saw her most mornings at the AA meetings in the log cabin on Robertson Boulevard was not present.

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?” she asked.

“Oh, sure,” he said.

He opened the door wider, and she walked past him into the room. He closed the door.

“So this is where you live, huh?” she said. “I was never in here before. I used to be a waitress at the Viceroy Coffee Shop up the street on Sunset, and all the writers who stayed at the Chateau always came in for breakfast, so I was always hearing about the place. Nice, isn’t it?”

“Why do I think that you haven’t come here at half-past ten at night to discuss the writers who live and work at the Chateau Marmont?” asked Philip.

“Did I know you were a writer? You didn’t tell me that, did you? I think I must have just felt it. I mean, you look like a writer.” She walked around his room, looking at everything. His word processor was set up on a desk and his printer stood next to it on a card table. She leaned down and read the amber print on the monitor. “You’re writing a movie, I see,” she said.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” asked Philip.

“Hell, no. Do you always work in a dressing gown? That’s nice, that blue-and-white-striped dressing gown. What was that, a gift from your girlfriend, I bet.”

“If I didn’t know it wasn’t so, I’d think you were on speed,” said Philip. “You’re talking a mile a minute.”

She opened the doors to his balcony and walked outside. “God, look at all that traffic on Sunset,” she called in.

He followed her out to the balcony. She was leaning on
the rail, looking down. She had taken a cigarette from her gold cigarette case with the name
FLO
printed on it in sapphires. She lit it with her gold lighter, and inhaled deeply.

“What’s the matter, Flo?” he asked. He took the cigarette out of her mouth and threw it over the balcony.

“You couldn’t put me up for the night, could you, Phil?”

“Tight quarters here.”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” she said.

They looked at each other.

“Are you still spoken for?” she asked.

He smiled sadly. “As a matter of fact, I’m not. Why?”

“I’m not spoken for anymore either.”

When Ralph White came out of the men’s room in the steak house in the San Fernando Valley and got into the car the parking boy had brought around, the first thing Madge White said to him was, “Did you see Sims Lord in the men’s room?”

“Sims? No. There was no one in the men’s room. It was empty except for me,” said Ralph. “Why?”

“I can’t wait to tell you what just happened to me,” said Madge.

Jules Mendelson had already left. He had driven his Bentley out of the restaurant parking lot with such speed that Madge thought he would surely have been arrested had a policeman been present to witness his driving. He turned off Ventura Boulevard onto Coldwater Canyon and raced up the mountain, blowing his horn relentlessly at any car not driving at the speed that he was driving, until they pulled over to the side and allowed him to pass. When he reached the top of Coldwater, he slowed down his pace because the Beverly Hills side of the canyon was more closely patrolled than the Valley side. Halfway down Coldwater, he turned left onto the street that led into Azelia Way.

All the time he was driving, he planned what he would say to her. He had not wanted to go out in public. What he most feared had happened. The fault was hers, not his. He would make her see that. At the same time, he could not erase from his memory the sad and hurt look in her eyes when he had pretended he could not think of her name.

He pulled into the secluded driveway of the house that he rented for her. He jumped from his car, leaving the car door open. He rang the bell. When there was no immediate answer, he took out his keys and opened the front door and walked in
without closing the door behind him. The lights were on, as they had been left. The drinks that they’d had before going out were still on the coffee table.

“Flo!” he called out. “Flo! Where are you, Flo?” He went into her bedroom, her bathroom, out onto her patio. There was no sign of her. He walked frantically from room to room. He could not imagine where she could have gone. He knew she had no friends, except the maid next door, and he knew she would never go to Faye Converse’s house to call on Faye’s maid.

From behind the tall hedge that separated Flo’s house from the house of Faye Converse, the dog Astrid, hearing activity, came over to call on Flo. She came in by the open front door, knowing she would be received with great whoops of joy, as she always was when Flo spotted her, and then be spoiled with doggy treats, as Flo always spoiled her.

Hearing the sounds of each other, each thought the other was Flo. Jules ran from the bedroom into the living room, where, instead, he encountered Astrid. They stared at each other, in the same way they had stared at each other in Hector Paradiso’s house on the early morning Hector’s body lay on the floor between them, with five bullets in it, and Jules removed the note that the dying Hector had left, before the police arrived. The little dog began to bark ferociously at Jules, as if she feared that harm had come to Flo as well.

“Get out of here, you little piece of shit,” said Jules to the dog, menacingly.

Astrid held her ground, barking without stop and moving in on Jules.

From Flo’s mantelpiece, Jules picked up one of the two brass candlesticks with dragons crawling up their sides that Nellie Potts had charged Flo several thousand dollars for, claiming that they were antiques from the childhood palace of the last emperor of China. Jules swung the candlestick as if it were a broom, and the little dog, terrified, retreated.

“Get out of here,” Jules yelled, advancing on her until he had backed her out the front door, which he then slammed.

He went to Flo’s bar. Her sets and sets of Steuben glasses were lined up on glass shelves. Taking a wineglass, he opened the small refrigerator under the bar and took out a bottle of white wine from the Bresciani auction and poured himself a glass. When he seated himself, finally, on Flo’s sofa, he picked up the telephone and dialed a number.

“Dudley, this is Mr. Mendelson,” he said to the butler at Clouds. “I’m very sorry to call you so late. Has there been a call from Mrs. Mendelson? I see. Dudley, I will not be coming home this evening. I am going to stay here in my office. I’m still working, and I have a very early meeting. What? No, no, thank you. That won’t be necessary. There are clean shirts there, here rather, in the office, and linens. But that’s awfully kind of you. Will you leave a note for Willi to come to my office in the morning to shave me there? No, I shouldn’t think Mrs. Mendelson will call this evening. It must be after one in Maine now. I’ll call in the morning, Dudley. Good night.”

When Jules awoke on the sofa at five in the morning, his regular waking hour, he jumped up, furious that he had fallen asleep. He was sure that Flo had come home during the night and gone right into her room to sleep, not wanting to wake him. But she was not there. He went to his office, where he bathed and changed. Willi, who shaved him with a straightedged razor, twice had to stop, for fear of cutting him, when Jules lurched in the chair. Every hour of the morning, he called her number. At lunchtime, he canceled an appointment and drove up to her house on Azelia Way. He had become frantic. He called the police department to see if there had been any accidents reported in a Valley cab. He called the emergency rooms of the hospitals to see if a Miss Flo March, or a Miss Fleurette Houlihan, had been admitted. He went to the Viceroy Coffee Shop. That night he went to Clouds and sat in his library alone, where he had dinner on a tray.

After two days, he called Sims Lord, his lawyer and friend. Sims Lord was not unfamiliar with the fact that Jules was having an affair. It was Sims who had purchased the sapphire-and-diamond ring for Jules to give to Flo, and the mink coat, and several other gifts that Jules did not want to have to purchase himself, for fear of talk. Sims, who was twice divorced, did not have the restrictions on his life that Jules had, and was happy to oblige. He was a Pasadenian by birth and an easterner by education. His clothes were of a cut and conservatism that appealed to Pauline’s New England sensibilities. Handsome, he possessed what Pauline called a wintry look; his hair was prematurely white, and his eyes were very blue. He could be as personable as any man could choose to be, when he chose to be; and as cold as any man could choose to be, when he chose to be; both of these qualities endeared
him to Jules. It was said of Sims Lord that he was a lawyer with one client—Jules Mendelson—which was an untrue statement in that he had many clients, but it was true in the sense that the affairs of Jules Mendelson had occupied 80 percent of his time for two decades.

What Sims did not know was the extent of the passion that Jules felt for the former waitress. He was shocked by Jules’s appearance when he arrived at his office that morning.

“Flo has left me,” said Jules. There were tears in his eyes. There was in his voice a pain that Sims Lord did not know Jules was capable of experiencing. The two men talked for hours. Jules told him everything about the affair.

“If she comes back, I want you to buy her the house, Sims. And the car. I want her to have everything in her own name. In case something happens to me, I don’t want her left high and dry. Nor do I want to embarrass Pauline in any way. It is best to do these things in advance.”

“Where do you suppose she is?” asked Sims, although they had asked the same question over and over.

“I don’t know.”

“Is there any family?”

“None.”

“Listen, Jules. Now, don’t jump on me.”

“What?”

“There’s no other guy, is there?”

“Good God.” The idea of another man touching Flo was anathema to Jules.

“Have you ever thought about hiring a private detective?”

“Would it get out? I mean to the papers, or anything?” asked Jules. “There must be no publicity.”

“No, no. I know just the right guy. Discretion himself. It’ll cost you, but that’s not a concern. His name is Trevor Dust.”

When Philip Quennell went to Casper Stieglitz’s house to deliver the first draft of the documentary on the proliferation of drugs in the film industry, Flo stayed in his room. They had scarcely left the Chateau Marmont since Flo’s arrival, except to attend the early morning AA meetings at the log cabin on Robertson Boulevard, or to go out to dinner at Musso and Frank’s on Hollywood Boulevard, a restaurant that Philip liked, where Jules Mendelson was unlikely ever to go.

There was a soft and tentative knock on the door. Flo was wearing Philip’s blue-and-white-striped dressing gown, sitting on one of the two leather chairs in the room, reading Cyril Rathbone’s column in
Mulholland
magazine. “Come in,” she called out, thinking it was the maid.