An Inconvenient Woman (64 page)

Trent Muldoon was standing by the window, running his fingers over the shattered plate glass, when Flo walked into the room, followed by Lonny. She was barefoot, wearing only a terry cloth robe and dark glasses, and her hair was uncombed.

In her years of being tutored by Jules Mendelson, she had developed an eye for style and an understanding of manners and good taste. Even with her head and heart pounding, even without looking in the mirror of her bar for verification, she knew exactly how she appeared to Trent Muldoon at that instant, as he looked up at her from the shattered window. She knew that she presented a picture without style or taste, and that Lonny Edge, the porn star, standing behind her with only a towel wrapped around his middle, detracted even further
from her diminished image. She put her hands to her head in a vain attempt to bring some kind of order to her hair.

“I can explain that,” she said, about the window, before he had a chance to speak. “This box was delivered to me, in the middle of the night. Like a corsage box. And I opened it, and there was a lot of wrapping paper inside, you know, like pink tissue paper, and at the bottom of the box was this gun, and there was a note, and the note said, ‘Put it in your mouth and fire it,’ I swear to God. In my whole life, I’d never held a gun in my hand, and I didn’t know what to do with it, so I aimed it out there to the door and fired it, just to see if it was loaded; and as you can see, it was, and the door got shattered. Now, it’s being fixed. I can assure you of that. There is a new plate glass window on order.”

She looked at him. She knew how she sounded. She looked at Lonny. She knew how he looked. She wished she had never asked Lonny to come to share her house with her.

“I’m very sorry about this, Miss March, but I’m afraid that I have to instruct my business manager to go ahead with eviction proceedings,” said Trent. “It’s been four months since you paid the rent, and my house has been not only neglected, but destroyed.”

“Hey, please, Trent. Or, Mr. Muldoon, I mean. Give me a break, will you. Don’t make me move. I love this house,” she said, trying not to cry. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have had it looking all spick-and-span, the way it’s always been. I’ve been going through some bad times. I’m getting straightened out. You’ll get your rent, and the plate glass window will be fixed. I swear to God.”

Trent moved across the living room without answering and walked out of the house.

“Hey, Trent.” She ran after him, calling out, “Listen, please. Look at all the money I put into this house. You have to see the closet space. It was designed by Nellie Potts. She’s the best decorator in Beverly Hills. It cost thousands. And the wet bar. I put in the wet bar and the mirrored walls.”

She stood at her front door and continued to talk to him as he got into his Ferrari and closed the door and started the motor and backed out of her driveway, which was not going to be her driveway much longer. “How can you kick me out of here, Trent, when I’ve increased the value of your house? Please. Just give me three months. I need three months to get
my book finished. Please. Please. I spent a fortune on your lousy house.”

Trent Muldoon was not hard-hearted. He knew what it was to go through a bad spell, and he felt sorry for Flo March. But an instinct told him that she was not going to have a comeback, as he was, if the picture he’d just completed in Yugoslavia turned out to be the hit the Italian producer told him it was going to be. He knew panic and desperation when he saw it, and Flo March was panicky and desperate.

When the eviction notice was served, Flo became too paralyzed with fear of what was ahead of her to be able to find a place to move. She had thirty days to vacate the premises, but it was only at the end of three weeks that she began to look for a new place.

“Don’t mention my name, Lonny, when we look. Nobody wants to touch me with a ten-foot pole,” said Flo.

She disliked every apartment or condo she saw, when she compared it to what she had on Azelia Way. “If I have to live in a dump, at least I’d like to live in a dump in a better neighborhood,” she said about each one she saw.

Each day she cursed herself for spending so much money when she had money. Driving with Lonny Edge in his car to look at places that she could not afford and would not have liked to live in if she had been able to afford them, she repeated over and over again the litany of her expenses. “The curtains alone cost me forty thousand dollars, and the closet with all the built-ins, that was another forty. Right there, there’s eighty thousand. Do you want to know what I spent on mirrors?”

“Hey, hey, hey. You’re sounding like a broken record, Flo. You’ve told me all this a hundred times. I’m sick of hearing it,” said Lonny.

“I know. I know. Listen, Lonny,” said Flo.

“Yeah?”

“Can you get me some Valium? My nerves are jangled. I need to calm down.”

“I thought you couldn’t have any pills in AA.”

Flo ignored what he said. “Could you get me some, Lonny? After the move, I’ll calm down again.”

“Sure.”

They had started to argue. They were mismatched and
tired of each other. She didn’t want to be seen with him in public and was afraid that he would leave her. She had stopped going to the AA meetings in the early mornings again. She could not bear to see Philip Quennell. She did not want him to know what dire circumstances she was in, or that Lonny Edge was living in her house. She had heard through an AA acquaintance she ran into at the Hughes Market that he was moving back to New York. She tried to call him at the Chateau Marmont to say good-bye, but he had checked out. The forwarding number was at Camilla Ebury’s house.

“Hello?”

“Is that you, Camilla?”

“Yes.”

“This is Flo March.”

“Oh. Hello.”

Flo spoke very quickly, as if she was afraid of being cut off. “Listen, Camilla. I know you’re Pauline’s friend, and I don’t want to put you in a spot talking to me, so just let me talk quick, and you don’t have to say anything. First, thanks for being so nice to me at Jules’s funeral. You didn’t have to do that, and I was very touched, and, second, I need to talk to Philip. I heard from someone he’s moving back to New York, and I have to speak to him before he goes. I think my phone’s tapped, so he better not call me here. Ask him if he’ll be at the meeting on Thursday. We can talk there. Okay?”

“Of course. I’ll tell him,” said Camilla.

“You know I’m not after him, don’t you, Camilla?”

“I know that.”

“It’s just a business thing I want to discuss.”

“I’ll tell him. And Flo?”

“Yes?”

“Good luck to you.”

Lonny Edge was very vain about his body and took great pains to keep in shape. Each afternoon since he had moved into Azelia Way, he drove down Coldwater Canyon to Beverly Park and ran around the track for three miles. Several days in a row, he noticed a gold Rolls-Royce parked in the alley near the completion of the run. Lonny always stared at expensive cars and had curiosity about the people in them. After the second day, he noticed that the two men in the front seat were
looking at him. After the third day, he responded when they nodded to him. On the fourth day he did not think it amiss when they asked him if he needed a ride. He didn’t need a ride, but he got in the backseat of the Rolls anyway. He was used to being picked up, and he missed the adventures of the streets in the expensive neighborhood where he now lived.

The adventure was of a different sort than he expected. But it involved wealth, more money than he had ever imagined would be his. He had only to unlock a door.

“What do you mean, unlock a door?”

“Just that. Leave the door unlocked. Very simple.”

“And then, you do what?”

“Pay a visit. That’s all. There’s some tapes in that house I want.”

“Tapes? You mean, my videos? You don’t have to break in for that. You can buy them at the all-night bookshop on the corner of Santa Monica and Havenhurst for thirty-nine ninety-five.”

“No. Not your videos, Lonny. Audiotapes. Forty hours of audiotapes. Microcassettes. Those little ones.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” said Lonny.

“They’re there. They used to be in a safety deposit box at the Wells Fargo Bank in Beverly Hills, but they’re in that house now.”

“And Flo?” asked Lonny.

“What about Miss March?” asked Arnie.

“Nothing would happen to Flo, would it?”

“Heavens, no. I have no interest in her whatever. It’s just the tapes I want.”

They dropped Lonny back at Beverly Park.

Later, back at the old Charles Boyer house, Arnie Zwillman telephoned Sims Lord. “I saw him. I took him for a ride.”

“And?”

“Lonny Edge has an IQ that hovers around room temperature.”

In the background, Jo Jo, listening, laughed, but Arnie raised a disapproving hand, and the laughter curdled.

It was Lonny who came up with the housing solution. He reported to Flo that he had run into his old landlord from his bungalow on Cahuenga Boulevard. The new tenant had
caused a small fire, and the landlord said that Lonny would be welcome back.

“But I thought the landlord and you parted on very bad terms,” said Flo.

“We did.”

“I thought he accused you of turning tricks in your bungalow,” she said.

“He did.”

“Why would he welcome you back then?”

“I told him I’d given up all that. I told him I’d turned over a new leaf.”

Flo nodded. It seemed to her that there was a beat missing in his story.

“Also, if they go ahead with publishing Basil Plant’s book, I’ll be in the news for having discovered this long-lost masterpiece, and he liked that,” said Lonny.

“But I thought you said it was just a tiny little place with hardly enough room for you,” said Flo.

“It is.”

“Then why would you want me to move in with you?”

“You did me a favor when I needed a place. I’m just returning the favor.”

She missed Jules more and more. She missed having him make decisions for her.

“Listen, it could be just a stopgap for you, Flo,” said Lonny. “You could put your furniture in storage, rather than rush into some place you don’t like. Then, when you find something, you can move on. It might be just the thing for you, to drop out for a while, and you certainly won’t run into anyone you know from Beverly Hills over in my old neighborhood.”

“Okay,” she said. She had no other choices.

For one whole day Flo and Glyceria stood on a ladder and unhooked all her curtains.

“They’ll never fit anyplace else,” said Glyceria.

“I don’t care. I don’t want Trent Muldoon to have them,” she answered.

“What are you going to do with them?” asked Glyceria.

“Do you want them, Glycie?” asked Flo.

“Hell, no. I’ve only got three little tiny windows in my place,” said Glyceria.

“Then I’ll put them in storage. I think I’ll break the mirrors in the bar before I leave,” said Flo.

“No, don’t break them. He could cause you trouble. I’ll take them off the walls for you,” said Glyceria.

On the last night she spent in her house, the front hall was lined with cartons and packing cases going into storage, and with shopping bags filled with things she was taking with her to the bungalow on Cahuenga Boulevard. Her gray satin sofas and her other upholstered furniture were tagged for the warehouse, as were her Chinese brass candlesticks with the dragons climbing up the sides. Glyceria helped her wrap her Steuben glasses in newspaper, and her Tiffany plates and silverware in the boxes and bags they arrived in. The moving vans were coming the next morning at ten. She had only to pack her clothes. All her Louis Vuitton bags were out and open, but she had not yet taken her Chanel suits off their satin hangers, or emptied the many drawers and shelves in her dressing room cupboards of her blouses and sweaters and nightgowns and underwear and stockings.

Hidden away behind the lingerie that she had ordered from Paris, from the same shop on the Rue de Rivoli where Pauline Mendelson had her lingerie made, was the small brown bag with the thirty-nine hours of microcassette tapes that she had removed from the safety deposit box at the Wells Fargo Bank in Beverly Hills on the morning after Cyril Rathbone had tried to talk her into jumping out the fifteenth-story window of the Valley Studios.

“Here’s your key to my place,” said Lonny. She was relieved that Lonny Edge had, as he put it, “things to do” that evening, and absented himself from Azelia Way. She thought that perhaps he had returned to the nocturnal habits he had said were a part of his past. Men called him at the house, and he had spent several evenings and afternoons away, without explanation, since the decision was made to move into his old bungalow on Cahuenga Boulevard. She noticed that he had a great deal more cash on hand than he usually had, and he exhibited a show of generosity toward her that she was unused to from him. He stopped bickering with her over inconsequential financial matters. When she asked him to go to the Hughes Market to get her things, he went without complaining and paid for even her personal items, like sanitary
napkins and nail polish, without insisting on being reimbursed. Sometimes he brought home pizzas and made her eat.

“I don’t think you should stay here tonight, with the house all upside down like this,” said Lonny. “Too depressing. Go over to my place. I’ll be there after midnight. I’ll bring you back here in the morning before the movers come.”

“Okay, Lonny. Give me that address once again on Cahuenga.”

“Seventy-two-oh-four and a quarter. Up Highland Avenue to Odin. Turn right under the bridge to get to Cahuenga,” said Lonny patiently. It was the third time he had told her the address.

“Right. Right. I’ll remember. I just want to stay here for a while by myself. You know. Memories. There were good times in this house, believe it or not.”

“Sure, Flo,” said Lonny. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

She wanted to be alone on her last night on Azelia Way. Over and over again, she walked through the rooms of the small and elegant house where so much had happened to her. It was not a house with happy memories, but she loved it because it had been hers, or almost hers, and in her mind she relived the joys and sadnesses she had experienced there. She wondered to herself if she would ever again live in the manner that she had lived there. Finally, late, she lay down on her gray satin sofa. She picked up the cushion with Kippie Petworth’s blood, now faded to a dark stain, on the reverse side and placed it behind her head. She meant just to lie there for a bit and rest, to think of her life with Jules Mendelson, as well as the life that was ahead of her. Her sole asset was her tapes. She felt sure that she could get someone to help her put them into book form. The someone she wanted to help her was Philip Quennell. She knew that he would understand both the shortcomings and the greatness of Jules Mendelson. She knew that he was not seeking revenge, the way Cyril Rathbone had been seeking revenge on Pauline Mendelson. The prospect of working with Philip Quennell was pleasing to her. She dwelt on the pleasing thought. She had not meant to fall asleep when there was so much work still to be done, but she did.