An Inconvenient Woman (47 page)

The Bistro Garden, where she sometimes lunched with Nellie Potts and stared at the society ladies she knew were friends of Jules and Pauline, prepared her cheese soufflés with suitable instructions as to how many minutes they should be in the oven. “Thirty minutes at three-fifty,” said Kurt, when she picked them up, and she repeated and then wrote down his instructions. Kurt also told her that the vinaigrette dressing
should be added to the crisp endive-and-lettuce salad they had also prepared “just minutes before sitting down,” and even told her how long the rolls should be heated. She wrote down everything he said, as if she were taking a course from him. She chilled the white wine from the Bresciani auction. She drove to the bakery at the Farmers Market to pick up the mocha cake, which was Jules’s favorite, that she had ordered for dessert.

In the hour before Jules was scheduled to arrive at her house, she changed her clothes three times. More than anything, she wanted Jules to be proud of her that day in front of Sims Lord. She could always tell from the look in Jules’s eye whether she was overdressed or perfect. She decided against wearing her yellow diamond earrings, as being too elaborate for daytime. She decided against wearing one of her Chanel suits, as being too dressy for lunch in her own house. She decided against wearing black, as being too downbeat for what she hoped would be a happy occasion for Jules. On her third try she knew she had found the right look for her that day. She wore beige slacks and a beige cashmere sweater and a gold chain belt, and only her sapphire-and-diamond ring, which she told Jules when he gave it to her that she would never take off, except when she bathed.

When she heard the Bentley come up her driveway, she rushed to the front door and opened it wide. Olaf, dressed in his white T-shirt and white trousers, was driving. Sims Lord, upright and aristocratic-looking, was seated in the backseat and stared out at her. She felt a momentary chill. If she had known the word
imperious
, she would have used it to describe him. Jules was slumped down in the backseat next to Sims Lord, his head barely showing. Flo saw him raise his hand weakly and wave to her.

Olaf greeted Flo, hopped out of the car, and went around to open the rear door. He reached in and placed one strong arm under Jules’s legs and another behind his back and picked him up and carried him across the driveway to the house. Flo, instantly aware that Jules was embarrassed for her to see him being carried, turned back into her house. She was unprepared for the sight of her lover. His shirt collar looked several sizes too large for his neck. His face was drawn and gray-looking, with dark circles under his eyes. He appeared to her to be thirty or forty pounds lighter than when she had last seen him
in the hospital, but she knew it was not the kind of weight loss that she should compliment him upon.

“Is there a particular chair where you want him to sit?” asked Olaf, still carrying Jules.

She had not thought about a particular chair for Jules to sit in until that moment, but she acted as if it had been one of her main concerns of the morning. “Yes, there, on the sofa, I thought,” she said. “On the corner where he can lean on the arm, or even lie back if he wants to. Let me place this pillow behind him first. Is that all right, Jules?”

Jules nodded his head. After Olaf placed him in that location and arranged him so that he was comfortable, Jules looked over at Flo and smiled at her. For an instant he looked like his old self, as his broad smile eradicated the weariness of his face. Both Sims Lord and Olaf noticed it and looked over at Flo. Jules’s eyes traveled around the room and rested on Flo’s luncheon table. He smiled again and nodded in appreciation at the work she had done, which he knew she had done just for him.

“Oh, Jules, it’s so good to see you again,” said Flo. She moved over to where he was seated and knelt by him. “I’ve missed you so. You have no idea how much. I didn’t realize myself how used I had gotten to you.”

“I’ve missed you too,” said Jules. His voice caught. He sounded as if he was going to cry, but he stopped himself.

“Sometimes it drove me mad how often you telephoned me each day, twenty times, or however much it was, but you know, I miss all those calls.”

He smiled at her again. “You know Olaf?”

“Oh, yes, I know Olaf,” said Flo. “He was so kind when he came here the other night. But, of course, I don’t know Mr. Lord. Hello, Mr. Lord.” She rose from her kneeling position and put out her hand to Sims. Although he was handsome and appeared to be friendly, he seemed chilly to her. She noticed his ice-blue eyes and his prematurely white hair. She noticed his splendidly cut gray suit and his blue English shirt with his initials on the breast pocket.

“Please call me Sims, Flo,” said Sims Lord, shaking her hand. The picture that Sims had in his mind of Flo March was different from what Flo March turned out to be. He had imagined her to be pretty, but common. He had imagined her to be interested only in Jules’s money. He was unprepared for her to be beautiful, and beautifully dressed. He was unprepared for
her to be living in such an elegant manner. Mostly, he was unprepared to find the relationship between Jules and Flo was so affectionate.

“Quite honestly, I didn’t know if you were going to be friendly toward me or not,” said Flo.

“Friendly,” said Jules, answering for Sims. There was no question that orders had been given in advance. When Jules spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper, but he was still in charge.

“That makes me very happy,” said Flo. She smiled at Sims. “I have some marvelous white wine in the fridge. From the Bresciani auction.”

Both Jules and Sims laughed.

“Jules? Will you have some?” asked Flo.

Jules looked at Olaf, as if asking for permission, and then nodded yes.

“Sims?”

“Fine.”

“I have everything, if you’d like something different.”

“No, white wine is fine. Especially that white wine.”

“Olaf?”

“I won’t, Flo. But thank you.”

She went to the bar and uncorked the wine and poured it into three glasses.

Jules looked at Flo, surprised. “Are you having some wine?” he asked. “I thought you didn’t drink anything except Diet Coke.”

“Oh, just this once,” said Flo. “This is the most wonderful celebration, after all. Welcome home, Jules.” She raised her glass in a toast, and the others followed suit. “I just want to put the soufflés in the oven, and then we can talk.”

“She’s perfectly charming, Jules,” said Sims, when Flo had left the room, but there was in the tone of voice of his compliment the slightest trace of condescension, which was not lost on Jules.

Jules, annoyed, nodded. He signaled with a wave of his hand for Sims to open his briefcase. Sims understood and did so, bringing forth the papers that he knew Jules was impatient to see.

When Flo returned to the room, there were papers and pens on the top of her beveled-glass coffee table.

“Lunch will be just a few minutes,” she said.

“Something smells awfully good, Flo,” said Olaf.

“My cheese soufflés,” she said. “What are all those papers?”

“Read them,” said Jules.

Flo took up one of the papers. It was an official-looking document, with Jules’s name across the top, and the address of his office. Then, in the right-hand corner, was her name, Miss Flo March, 844 Azelia Way, Beverly Hills, California 90210. Flo looked over at Jules and then at Sims Lord. Both men were looking at her.

“Read it,” said Jules.

“ ‘Dear Flo,’ ” read Flo out loud. “ ‘I agree to pay you twenty thousand dollars a month for five years, commencing immediately. This money will be paid to you by the thirteenth day of each month from the proceeds of my profit from the Santucci shopping centers in Santa Ana, San Jose, and Santa Cruz. Sims Lord, my attorney and executor, has been authorized to do this. Regards, Jules Mendelson. Witness Olaf Pederson, Margaret Maple.’ ”

Flo looked up from the letter at Jules and burst into tears.

“That’s just over a million bucks,” said Jules, smiling. “You’re an heiress.”

“Oh, Jules,” she said. She knelt in front of him again and put her head in his lap. “I knew. I always knew you’d take care of me.”

Jules lay his hand on her head. “There’s more,” he whispered. Again he signaled to Sims Lord, and Sims passed him another paper. Flo looked up and Jules handed her the paper.

“This house is yours,” he said.

“Almost yours,” corrected Sims, holding up his hand in caution. “The actor who owns this house is in Yugoslavia on a film, and the papers have not been returned, but everything has been tentatively agreed upon.”

“Oh, Jules. I don’t know what to say.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. He turned to look at her.

“I think your soufflé is burning, Flo,” said Olaf.

“Oh, my God!” she cried. She jumped up and ran into the kitchen. “Shit!” she yelled from the kitchen.

When she reentered the room in a few minutes, she carried one of the burned soufflés in her hand. “I just want to show you what it would have looked like,” she said.

Jules, delighted with her, laughed, and Sims followed suit.

“There’s still salad, and hot rolls, and your favorite mocha cake from the bakery at the Farmers Market,” she said.

“Sounds good to me,” said Jules.

Olaf picked up Jules and carried him to the table.

“Jules, sit here by me,” said Flo, tapping the top of the chair to her right, as if she were used to giving lunch parties. “There’s no place cards. Olaf, you there, next to Jules. And Sims, here, on my left. I’m so pleased to meet you finally, Sims. Jules talks of you constantly.”

Sims pulled out Flo’s chair, and she sat down, pleased with her performance, knowing she was doing a good job.

“Your table looks beautiful, Flo,” said Jules, when he was seated. He knew how much it meant to Flo to be having guests in her house. He reached over and touched the out-of-season tulips in the centerpiece. “Pauline always said that there’s no flower that dies as gracefully as a tulip.” The strange remark met with silence, and then Jules said, “I can’t think what made me remember that bit of esoteric information at this time.”

At first, after Jules’s compliments on Flo’s table and flowers, conversation lagged. The weakness of Jules’s condition did not allow him to dominate the small party in the way that he usually dominated the conversation at any table where he was seated, with his extraordinary knowledge of international affairs and his very high-level inside information from the business and art worlds. Olaf, who was unused to social life, keenly felt that he was merely an employee asked to sit at the table because of the unusual circumstances, and thought it inappropriate to enter the conversation. And Sims Lord was a reluctant guest, whose chilliness of manner might have made the lunch party a failure, but for the force of Flo’s personality as a hostess. To entertain Jules’s friends in an elegant manner that he could be proud of was a thing that she deeply desired, and she was not about to allow her first chance at it to be unsuccessful, despite her burned soufflés. In a very short time, her self-deprecating account of the events of her morning preparing for her first party had her three guests roaring with laughter. Sims Lord, who greatly liked the ladies, especially ladies who were married to other people in the social groups in which he moved, wondered to himself why none of the ones
with whom he engaged in amorous escapades were as entertaining as Jules’s mistress.

Jules, exhausted, could only nod with pleasure at her stories. When Flo rose from her seat to clear the table, she said, “Wait until you see this cake.” When she was in the kitchen, Olaf was the first to notice that Jules had slumped over in his seat. “You all right, boss?” he asked.

Jules’s head had fallen forward. He shook it slowly. Both Olaf and Sims jumped to their feet.

“Jules, what’s the matter?” cried Flo, when she came back into the room, holding the cake, and saw the two men kneeling in front of Jules.

“It’s all this excitement of coming here,” said Sims to Olaf in a low voice, although Flo could hear. “I think we better get him back up the mountain.”

Olaf, ignoring Sims, was on his feet. He picked up Jules and carried him over to the sofa, where he laid him down and began massaging his chest. Both Sims and Flo stood by and watched. In a few minutes color began to come back into Jules’s face.

“Olaf, I really think we should get him home,” said Sims again. Sims had become edgy and nervous. “We can’t let him collapse in this house again. She’ll have a fit.” The “she” he referred to needed no identification.

Jules, hearing, nodded. “It would be bad for Flo,” he said to Olaf. Olaf picked him up again and carried him toward the door. As Jules passed by Flo in Olaf’s arms, she took hold of his hand and went with them to the car. She opened the rear door of the Bentley, and Olaf put him in the backseat.

“Good-bye, Jules,” said Flo, holding on to his hand.

Jules looked at Flo. His mouth had started to hang open. He looked exhausted. He touched her hand and lifted it to his mouth to kiss, not taking his eyes off her.

“Flo, we have to go,” said Sims.

“Yes, yes, I know. Good-bye, Jules,” she said again. “Please call me later, somebody. I want to know how he is.”

Olaf, seated behind the wheel, nodded to Flo and pointed to himself to indicate that he would call. He turned on the ignition.

“Please, Flo, we have to go,” repeated Sims. There was a note of impatience in his voice now.

Flo pulled back from the car and closed the door. She and Jules continued to look at each other as Olaf backed the
car around until it faced downhill. Then she ran down the steep driveway next to the car until it reached Azelia Way. The car passed her. She watched it until it disappeared onto Coldwater Canyon. She knew that she would never see Jules Mendelson again.

“No one can give a party quite like Pauline,” said Prince Friedrich of Hesse-Darmstadt, in a voice brimming with enthusiasm. The prince was in a position to know, because he was entertained by all the great hostesses everywhere, all of whom fussed shamelessly over him because of his splendid title. Rose Cliveden, who secretly longed for a monarchy, even dropped a deep curtsy to him, although no member of the prince’s family had been near a throne for seventy-two years, and the principality that had borne his name had ceased to exist in the last century. It mattered not a whit to any of the ladies who fussed over him that he hadn’t a cent to his name and needed his job as the head of the jewelry department at Boothby’s auction house in London, if for no other reason than to pay the cleaning and laundry bills on his three dinner jackets and nine pleated evening shirts, which were the mainstay of his life. In social circles, he was considered to be a great asset to any party anywhere, because he knew all the international news that people in society loved to hear, and he had the good sense to leave his wife, whose lineage was equally splendid but who was stout and boring and thought to be difficult to seat, back in London. He had promised Pauline that he wouldn’t say a single word about the billionaire’s party in Tangier that he had just attended until all her guests were there, as everyone wanted to hear.