An Inconvenient Woman (55 page)

Flo’s Tape #23

“Jules always separated his married life from his life with me. He didn’t like to talk about Pauline with me, and I respected that in him, but I picked up a lot about her over the five years I was Jules’s mistress, in bits and pieces, and put them all together. You talk about a privileged life. She had a privileged life, all her life. When she was sixteen, for instance, she was at this fancy girls’ school in Virginia, I can’t remember the name, where all the girls rode horses, and she was such a good rider and jumper that she entered the horse show at Madison Square Garden in New York and got a blue ribbon or whatever they give for the first prize. Stuff like that. She seemed to do everything just right. The only mistake she ever made was marrying that first husband of hers, because she was destined for bigger things than him
.

“Listen, I have to be practical. She was the perfect wife for Jules. It’s too bad we couldn’t have worked out some kind of arrangement between the three of us, like they do in those European marriages. I would have settled for that in a minute. Everyone always said what a wonderful woman she was. I guess she was, until she heard about me. I suppose if I were in her shoes, I would have hated me too
.”

I
n a short time, the news of the financial plight of Flo March reached the ears of Cyril Rathbone. Other people’s plights—divorce, job loss, cancer, AIDS, bankruptcy, arrests, suicide, adultery, and perversion—were Cyril Rathbone’s fortune, and while he listened to these tales of woe, as reported to him by informants, he always said such concerned things as, “Oh, dear, how sad, how frightfully sad,” but his mind was working at the same time on the manner in which he would report the news in his column. As he once said to his great friend Hector Paradiso, “What is the point of a secret if it is kept a secret?” Such sadnesses were the mainstay of his column, far more than his reportage of parties and openings and social doings. They were the very reason people tore to his page of the magazine first.

In the case of Flo March, however, his plans were more grandiose, going far beyond mere mentions in his column, because the names in her plight, Pauline and Jules Mendelson and the glittering group of greats and near-greats with whom they moved, were so celebrated. The girl, poor silly creature, was sitting on a gold mine and couldn’t be made to realize it. Although Flo had not been a waitress for five years, Cyril never could resist referring to her as “the former waitress Flo March,” as if that explained her inability to understand the power of her position. A book deal and a miniseries flashed through his mind. He even visualized her appearing on “After Midnight,” the late-night Amos Swank show, all done up in one of her Chanel suits, telling about the mean Pauline Mendelson, who was doing her out of her rightful inheritance. Such an appearance, he knew, would guarantee that her book, if she could be induced to participate in one, would soar to the
top of the best-seller lists across the country. The possibilities for promotion were staggering.

It was the great star Faye Converse, who cared about Flo, her neighbor, but didn’t want to get involved in her situation—“After all, I hardly know her, poor thing, I only met her on that night she killed my dog”—who told Cyril that Flo rarely rose from her bed, and that unopened bills were piling up in great stacks on the floor of the front hall. “I don’t think she can afford to stay on in that house much longer.”

“But how do you know such things?” asked Cyril, disguising his delight over the report with a somber tone.

“Glyceria, my maid Glyceria, is devoted to her,” said Faye about her neighbor. Faye Converse, who always told interviewers she didn’t like gossip, lowered her voice to a whisper and looked about her, although she was alone at the time, in her own house, and whispered into the telephone, “I think she drinks.” Then she looked about her again and said, “She is positively catatonic, poor thing.”

Later that day, Cyril called Flo March and left a message on her answering machine saying that it was a matter of utmost importance that she call him. He felt sure that he would hear from Flo. But she did not return his call.

Instead, in a stroke of luck that he took to be a sign from above, as he called it, he ran into her. Cyril Rathbone put a great deal of stock in signs from above. “It was meant to be,” he often said, in psychic tones. Or, “There are no accidents.” Early the very next morning Flo walked into the Viceroy Coffee Shop, where he happened to be having breakfast. She stood timidly inside the door, unsure where to sit. She was, she thought, incognito, wearing large dark glasses, with her red hair completely covered by a scarf, but Cyril picked her out right away, encompassed as she was in an air of melancholy.

“Is Curly here?” she asked the cashier.

“Curly? I don’t know no Curly,” said the cashier.

“Belle? Where’s Belle’s station?” asked Flo.

“Belle don’t work here no more,” said the cashier.

Flo had not been to the Viceroy since she walked out of it five years before, when Jules Mendelson took her to Paris, and their love affair started. He had not wanted her to go back there, and she hadn’t, although for a while she kept in touch with Curly and Belle. She stood, undecided whether to stay or leave, and then moved to a stool at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee. The waitress who took her order was new since
she had worked there and did not know her. Cyril noticed that her hand shook when she raised the cup of coffee to her lips. She put it down and took out a cigarette from her gold case with the name
FLO
written on it in sapphires, and her hand shook again when she attempted to light the cigarette with her matching gold lighter. He knew the time had come.

Without a word to Joel Zircon, with whom he was having breakfast, Cyril picked up his cup of coffee and crossed from the booth around the counter to where she was sitting. “Good morning, Miss March,” he said. “What an early hour for you to be up and about. I always imagined you were one of those ladies of leisure who sleeps late and has breakfast in bed on a tray with Porthault place mats.”

She looked up at Cyril Rathbone but did not reply.

He seated himself on the stool next to her. “I heard you ask for Curly,” he said.

“Yes, I did,” she answered.

“Dead, poor fellow.”

“Dead?” She gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

“Oh, yes. AIDS. Terribly sad. He took pills toward the end. What’s that new sleeping pill everyone’s taking? Halcion, isn’t it? That’s what he took. A marvelous decision of Curly’s, don’t you think?” asked Cyril.

“No, no. I don’t think that at all,” answered Flo.

“It’s very important to know when not to exceed one’s span. Curly understood that. All his friends were with him when he did it. I understand it was a glorious experience.”

Flo looked at Cyril Rathbone and shook her head in disagreement. “I hadn’t heard any of that. I’d kind of lost touch. I didn’t even know he was sick. Poor Curly. What about Belle?”

“She went over to Nibblers Coffee Shop on Wilshire Boulevard,” said Cyril. “She didn’t want to stay here after Curly died. They were great friends.”

“I know.”

“This is West Hollywood, after all, Miss March. People come. People go. Nothing lasts.”

“I suppose.” She signaled to the waitress. “Check, please.”

The waitress handed her the check for the coffee.

“Stay, stay. Have another cup of coffee,” he said.

“Thank you, but I can’t. I have things to do,” she said.

“No, you don’t,” he replied. When she looked sharply at him, he smiled at her. She didn’t have anything to do. “Please pour Miss March another cup of coffee, will you, Maureen?” He picked up the check that the waitress had left on the counter. “I know you’re broke,” he said.

“Not that broke,” replied Flo, taking the check back from him with an abrupt gesture.

“It occurred to me that perhaps you had come here at this very early hour to try to get your old job back.”

“Wrong,” she replied. She opened her bag and took out a dollar tip to leave the waitress, as if that proved she was not broke.

“Pretty ring,” he said, pointing to the sapphire-and-diamond ring that Jules had given her. “That should keep the wolf from the door for quite a few months.”

“Oh, no. I’ll never sell this ring,” said Flo, looking at her ring. “No matter what. When I die, this ring is still going to be on my finger.”

“A lovely young woman like you shouldn’t talk about dying, Miss March. You have an extraordinary life ahead of you, if you play your cards right,” said Cyril. Their eyes met. He lifted her hand and gazed at the ring. “A gift from Jules Mendelson, I assume?” he asked.

Flo did not reply. She inhaled deeply on her cigarette and stubbed it out in an ashtray.

“Very bad for you, smoking,” he said.

She stood up, preparing to leave.

“Your plight has been made known to me,” he said, wanting to detain her.

“My plight?”

“Your financial problems.”

“Oh, I see. By whom?”

“Oh, heavens, Miss March,” said Cyril. He spoke in his acquired upper-class English voice that he knew intimidated some people. “A good journalist never reveals his sources. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that it seems so appropriate that we should meet like this, by accident, here at the Viceroy Coffee Shop, where your great romance began. Of course, as we both know, there are no accidents. It was meant to be, that you should walk in here like this. Don’t you agree?”

Flo, confused, stared at Cyril Rathbone, not knowing
whether to stay and listen or get up and leave. “I guess so,” she replied to his question, not sure whether she agreed or not.

“You are holding so many trump cards, it is a shame for you to fall apart the way you are apparently doing. I have a plan to suggest to you.”

“What sort of plan?”

“Sit down, Flo. I assume I may call you Flo? It seems so formal to call you Miss March.” He stood up and indicated with a flourish of his hand for her to reseat herself. After a moment, she sat down. “Why don’t you take off your dark glasses so I can see your eyes?”

“My eyes are puffy,” she said.

He nodded his head in a concerned fashion. “I heard you were drinking,” he said.

She was frightened of him. She made no reply.

“All that fine wine from the Bresciani auction,” he said. “Rare stuff, I’ve heard.”

“I’ve run out of all that fine wine from the Bresciani auction,” she replied.

“My, you have been drinking. Those gallon bottles of Soave from the Hughes Market must have a bitter taste after the delights of Jules Mendelson’s cellar.”

“What is it you want from me, Mr. Rathbone?”

“So formal, Flo. It’s Cyril, please.”

“What is it you want?”

“What you need first is a good lawyer,” he said. “And not a Waspy frigid-type like Sims Lord. He’s no friend of yours, as you may have discovered by now. He is, in fact, the leader of the opposition. Am I correct?”

Flo, riveted, nodded.

“Next, you need a good agent. And then you need a good writer. I, of course, am your writer. Your Boswell, if you will, your poet laureate. My friend Joel Zircon, over there in the booth by the window, with his head buried in the Hollywood trade papers, scarfing down the bagel and lox and slurping his coffee, can be your agent. You must remember Joel? From your waitress days? He certainly remembers you. Ghastly table manners, to be sure. Eats like a pig. But terribly clever in his chosen career. Mona Berg, the queen of Hollywood agents, increasingly relies on him. He is a young man on the way up. Joel probably even knows exactly the right lawyer for you.”

“But what do I need a lawyer, an agent, and a writer for?” Flo asked.

“For your book, and your miniseries, which I am going to write in your name,” said Cyril.

“What book?”

“
Jules’s Mistress
. You see, I already have your title, Flo. All those bills that are piling up in your front hall, stacks of them, I hear. Now you’ll be able to pay them.”

Flo stared at Cyril.

Rose Cliveden had become habitually intemperate. Among themselves, her friends complained and murmured that something simply had to be done, but no one had the nerve to speak up, as Rose could not bear criticism. Instead, certain of her friends stopped inviting her. Madge White, for one, said Rose spilled red wine all over her Aubusson carpet that had been left to her by her grandmother, and ruined it, absolutely ruined it, and she would never, ever, have Rose in her house again. And Millicent Pond, Sandy Pond’s mother, the matriarch of the newspaper family, complained bitterly that Rose constantly interrupted one of the former Presidents at a dinner at her house when he was trying to explain the present administration’s policy in Nicaragua, and she wasn’t going to have Rose back, even though she’d known her all her life. And Faye Converse, who was tolerant of everyone, was furious with Rose because she dropped and smashed two Baccarat glasses on the marble floor of her lanai, and Faye’s maid, Glyceria, who vacuumed barefoot, cut her toe badly on a piece of broken glass and threatened to quit if Rose came to the house again.

When she dropped a cigarette in her bed and caused a fire in her bedroom, as well as minor burns to her arms and legs, after having drunk ten vodkas at a charity ball, Pauline and Camilla and even Madge, who relented, decided that the time had come for them to intervene in Rose’s life and send her to a clinic in Palm Springs to deal with her addiction to alcohol. Rose claimed that she had no such problem. When the moment came to intervene, all of them became silent and were afraid to say to Rose what they had said about her behind her back.

“I’ve been dying to do that room over, anyway,” said Rose to her friends, not daring to admit how frightening the experience had been for her. “I was so sick of those damn purple violets in the wallpaper and the curtains. No more chintz for me. I’ve had it with chintz.”

“I think we’re getting off the subject here, Rose,” said Pauline. “I called the people at Betty Ford. They’re booked ahead for months, but they will make an exception and take you immediately.”