Destiny (104 page)

Stephani rolled a joint with her small pink nimble fingers—such nimble fingers. He took it and inhaled it.

"You're worried, Lewis," Stephani said. She put her arms around him and drew him down beside her on the bed. Lewis felt the drifting and the lifting begin in his mind. Grass sometimes made him feel as if he were high in the sky, suspended from a beautiful balloon, looking down on the world from a serene height.

From this height, it seemed to him that Stephani might come to see she could not go to the party: to attend would be a serious lapse of taste. But no, that was ridiculous. Such a thought would never have occurred to her.

Stephani saw things with the sweet amorality of a child. In this she sometimes reminded him of Thad, and—just as with Thad—that way of

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looking at life relaxed him. No more rules; no more codes; good-bye Boston. Up in his balloon, Lewis giggled. Stephani liked Helene. She loved Helene. She almost worshipped Helene. Apart from the one indiscretion of the beach party, they had been very careful. There had been no gossip, and it was Stephani, almost more than Lewis, who cared about this.

"We won't let her know. It's our secret. We won't ever hurt her. You're hers really, Lewis. I know that. ..."

Now, gently, she began to stroke him. Slow gentle Uttle marijuana touches. They whispered up over his thighs, over his pubic hair, over his stomach. So slow. So easy. Lewis shut his eyes.

She was wearing a petticoat of pale peach silk, which Lewis had bought for Helene five years before, a hundred years before, in London. It was several sizes larger than the ones she usually wore because when he bought it, Helene had been pregnant. He had found it in the back of a closet, folded away, forgotten.

Lewis's mind sighed. He turned and nuzzled his mouth against her breasts. He loved her breasts. They were heavy and milky and full. He could feel the softness of her nipple growing hard as he touched the peach silk, the peach lace; he sucked; he suckled. He could smell the scent of her skin, and moaned a little. Very faintly, too, there was the scent of lavender, and he loved that because it was the scent of his childhood. Only two women he had ever known had placed small muslin bags of lavender among all the folds of silky satiny lacy things they wore next to their skin. Only two women. Helene and his mother. He slipped his hand between her thighs, where she felt so wonderfully, so sweetly, warm and damp. Drifting; drifting; he could open her with his fingers, hke the petals of a flower.

He wanted so to be inside her, and when he was inside her, it was dark, and safe. Moving through inner space, swimming through the galaxies of her womb. The scent of lavender in his nostrils; darling Helene. Pulsing and dreaming. He fell asleep in Helene's arms. He slept serenely for a long time: a lifetime; a minute. Then he woke, screaming.

The man at the gates invaded his dreams; he clung to the gates, and rattled them. He cried out again and again, in the most terrifying voice: Let me in, let me in. . . .

Lewis clutched at Stephani; he was sweating and trembling. Stephani fetched some water and bathed his forehead. She made him stand up and walk around the room. She made him eat something, and the nightmare receded.

"You had a bad trip," she said soothingly.

Later, when Lewis had recovered, and she was sure he was all right, they watched television together. Hours of afternoon soap operas, which Stephani loved, and Lewis found soothing. In the middle of one of these

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programs, Stephani suddenly clasped his hand. She looked up at him, her eyes wide. "Oh, Lewis," she said. "The party. What shall I wear to the party?"

She wore a long white dress with a fishtail skirt, covered in beads and sequins. She had washed the rinse out of her hair, and returned to the normal platinum. It blazed at Lewis across the room; he felt a simultaneous relief and disappointment: she had come as Stephani Sandrelli.

He was standing on the far side of the room when she made her entrance, drinking from two glasses of champagne. First pink, then white; it amused him. Next to him was Homer, Helene's East Coast agent, and Milton, her agent here. They were both staring at the spectacle.

"Can you believe that, Milton? I mean—can you believe it?"

"Homer. I cannot. I seriously cannot. This is 1964, right? Not 1954. Or did we just go through a time warp?"

"Some things, Milton, never change. Even in Hollywood. Especially in Hollywood. Some things are eternal."

"I remember Marilyn in a dress like that." Milton shook his head sadly. "Tighter, even. She couldn't go to the John. It was sewn on. Frank said—"

"Ah, but Marilyn was luminous, Milton. Luminous."

"This is true."

"Also, a truly lovely person. When she wasn't phoning at three a.m., and being a pain in the ass."

"Three a.m.? She phoned you at three a.m.? She never did that to me."

This fact seemed to distress Milton. He shook his head mournfully.

"Three. Four. Five, sometimes. Time had no meaning for Marilyn." Homer gave a sigh. "You remember her smile, Milton? You could forgive her any goddamn thing when you saw that smile. That smile registered on the Richter scale. Just like Helene's." At precisely that moment, peering around the crowded room, Stephani saw Lewis. She, too, smiled. The two agents looked at each other.

"How would you rate that. Homer?"

"Rate it? It doesn't register at all. I would say, Milton, not the smallest tremor. How about you?"

"Short on magic. Homer. Definitely short on magic ..."

They moved away in the direction of the bar. Lewis looked at Stephani uncertainly. Two months ago he would have said she looked like a tramp; two minutes ago he would have said she looked wonderful; now he was not sure what he thought, but he felt distanced. He felt, possibly, that she was not the woman who should be seen on his arm that evening, regardless of

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gossip. For a man like him, she was not, perhaps, the right accessory. He paused, gallantry and snobbishness fighting it out. Stephani had been crossing toward him, but had been waylaid. Seizing his opportunity, and despising himself as he did so, Lewis ducked behind another group of people. He skirted the room carefully, and once sure Stephani must have lost track of him, headed in the direction of his wife.

Helene was standing near the entrance to the ballroom. He stopped a little distance away, just to look at her. She was wearing a dress that had been made for her in Paris, of a blue silk some shades darker than her eyes. When Lewis had first seen this dress being reverently unfolded from swaths of tissue paper, he had not liked it. It had seemed dull and un-feminine. But on Helene, it was another matter; even Lewis, who did not understand women's clothes at all, and had a secret preference for soft fabrics and ruffles, could see the mastery of its cut, the perfection of its line. It was narrow, so that she appeared even taller and slenderer; it left her arms bare, and the curving neckline, stiffened and stitched like two wings, or two sprays of foliage, framed the long, perfect line of her throat.

She was standing between Thad on the one side, and Gregory Gertz on the other, but Lewis did not see them at all. The blue of her dress flared before his eyes; for a moment Lewis felt almost dizzy, as if his mind were impossibly light, filled with haze and ether. In the future, he felt, he would always see her as he saw her then. At a distance, in the blue dress, with her face turned a little away from him, her hand half lifted.

Beyond her, in the ballroom, the music began. Lewis gave himself a Uttle shake. The hubbub of the room returned, and the press of people.

He saw that, around her throat, Helene was wearing a narrow band of sapphires and diamonds, which he had bought her for their first wedding anniversary. He had bought it from de Chavigny in New York, because that was before they went to Cannes, before he realized how much Helene lied. Now, he never set foot in de Chavigny: not in New York, not in Paris, not anywhere.

Still, he had bought it for her, just as he had bought, for Stephani, the necklace of brilliants she was wearing tonight. Diamonds for his wife; for his mistress, diamante. The equation angered him; the memories angered him; there was something he might say to Helene, tonight, when she was wearing that particular necklace. But not now.

He turned around smartly, and avoiding the Lloyd Bakers, who were bearing down upon him, he swerved away from Helene, in the direction of a group of men. There were at least ten of them, and they clearly did not share the opinions of Homer or Milton, for in their center, much admired, was Stephani Sandrelh.

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It was a successful party. Helene looked around the room, it was crowded, but not overcrowded. In the room beyond, where supper had been served, people were just beginning to leave the groups of round tables, decorated with flowers and ribbons. In the ballroom behind her, the first couples were beginning to dance. Some of the most powerful people in Hollywood, and some of the most famous. Her eyes roved over the groups, making sure that no one was hedged in, that no one was alone, or ignored. In one comer, Joe Stein, holding court; in another a very famous female agent, surrounded by delicate young men, who occasionally let out little birdlike shrieks of delight at her latest witticism. Homer, going around introducing people to other people to whom he had already introduced them some ten minutes before. There was a certain electricity in the atmosphere of the room, which she had come to recognize, and it was that which told her the evening was a success.

Cassie had said, in her dour way, before the evening began, that in her experience most parties were a success. "Plenty to eat. Plenty to drink. Can't go wrong. No call for nerves," she had said flatly, partly because she was nervous herself.

Helene had said nothing; she knew that was not true. Maybe it was true in Orangeburg, where parties were, on the whole, simple affairs, gatherings of friends and neighbors. Even there, she doubted it, though, for Orangeburg, too, had its social divisions, its hierarchy. Here in Hollywood, those divisions were viciously observed: the party tonight was a success partly because of its glittering guest list, but mainly because Ellis was a success. The reviews, with the notable exception of Susan Jerome's, had been filled with an ecstatic, and—Helene had felt—extravagant— praise. Ellis was a hit: her party was a hit. It was a simple formula, and one she disliked.

Beside her, Thad and Gregory Gertz were talking. Gertz looked ill at ease; Thad was all beaming amiability. Since Thad knew that she was to make the film with Gertz in the spring—for she had told him—and since Gertz knew Thad knew, it was perhaps the amiability that was causing the unease. As well it might: Thad, in her experience, was most to be feared when he was kindly.

Occasionally, she interjected a remark, or nodded agreement at something one of them said, but she was not really listening to them. Across the room, she had seen Lewis; he started to weave his way to her through the crowd, and then, abruptly, he stopped. He stood looking at her, with an odd, dazed expression on his face. He had been drinking too much, she

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knew it instantly, and she looked away quickly. She had been so careful to invite, this evening, people who she thought might be of help to Lewis. A producer who had once expressed an interest in a previous screenplay; an actress who had Uked the leading role in Endless Moments; a director with whom Lewis had once been quite friendly. Lewis, so far, had ignored all of them; if he went on drinking, he was Ukely to cause a scene.

She at once tensed, and then felt angry with herself. Between her and Lewis there was now an unspoken and uneasy truce; she was not going to spend the entire evening worrying about Lewis, or trying to protect him from himself. She looked back, though, a httle anxiously. Lewis was now moving away; he seemed bent on talking to Stephani SandreUi.

He shouldered his way rudely through the group of men surrounding her, took her hand, and raised it to his hps. He bent over it with exaggerated, ridiculous courtesy. Stephani looked at him uncertainly, and then laughed. Helene flushed; she looked away. How could Lewis be so unkind? It was perfectly obvious that he was taunting Stephani, and it was cruel.

"Long Division,'"' Gregory Gertz was saying with obvious reluctance. "That's the working title, anyway."

Thad looked up at him. He hummed a httle.

'''Long Division. Long Division. Yes, well, you could always do a follow-up, I suppose. They remarry. They have children. You could call it Multiplication. "

"I'm not planning a follow-up," Greg replied stiffly.

"Oh, you should. You should." Thad beamed. His glasses winked and blinked. He was, Helene thought, very angry. He paused.

"I am. To Ellis. I expect Helene told you."

"No, as a matter of fact."

"Well, I am. Next year." He planted his feet a httle farther apart. "Films should be longer," he pronounced. "One hour twenty, one hour forty— what's that? What can you do with that? It's child's play. I want to make longer movies. ..."

"Yes, I noticed that in Ellis. ..."

"Sequels are a way of doing it. Three hours. Four. People balk at the idea now. They won't always. They always balk at the new. The revolutionary."

"New?" Gregory Gertz's eyebrows rose slightly. "Not exactly new, surely. As I recall, a number of people have had that particular idea. Among them Erich von Stroheim. His original version of Greed ran to ten hours, I think. Though, of course, it was never shown. . . ."He touched Helene's arm. "Helene. Would you like to dance?"

There was a small tight silence. Thad looked, for a moment, Uke a fat pressure cooker about to explode. Then, before Helene could move or say a

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word, he did an about-face of military precision, and walked out of the room.

Helene was in no doubt that he was not only leaving the room, he was leaving the party. He looked absurd, departing at an angry trot, and Gregory Gertz laughed. Helene rested her hand on his arm.