Destiny (115 page)

In early May, Madeleine insisted that Helene should pose with Cat for the birthday photographs which she always took religiously at this time of year. When, a couple of days later, Madeleine gave her one of the prints, Helene looked at it with a sense of shock. Was this really herself? She looked tired, she thought, and suddenly so much older. She remarked about this to Madeleine, and Madeleine was offended. She became very fierce.

"You are wrong," she said firmly. "Quite wrong. You are beautiful in my picture. Now you do not look so much hke a young girl." She paused. "Maintenant vous etes devenue une femme. ..."

A woman, and not a girl. Helene looked at her own face in the mirror that night, and she could see what Madeleine meant. It was then, she thought afterward, as she looked at her own reflection, that she finally accepted it: Edouard would not write.

The next day, for the first time since the stories appeared, not a single hate letter was received. Helene's spirits rose a little. She began to see that she had coped, that she had not given in, nor gone under, nor run away—and that it was this experience, perhaps, that gave her the strength to accept that the silence from Edouard would be permanent.

She began to feel—not optimism exactly—but a certain vitality and determination, and she began to be impatient to work.

Long Division had now been postponed three times. The new start date was May 19, two days after Cat's birthday. On May 18, Gregory Gertz came to see her. Helene knew, as soon as he came into the room, that something was wrong.

It was mid-afternoon. He sat down opposite her and lit a cigarette nervously. "You may as well know straight out. I've lost the backing from A.I. They're pulling out."

Helene stared at him.

''Now? Can they do that? At this stage?"

Gertz sighed. "They can do anything at any stage, you know that and so do I. You're never safe until the cameras are rolling, and sometimes not then. There isn't a contract in the world that their lawyers can't unravel if

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they set their minds to it. They'll lose their development money, of course." He gave a bitter smile. "I don't imagine that will worry them too much. Overall, they'll drop a million, not much more. I've been a fool. I should have made them really lay out up front, the way Angelini does— that way they're in so far, they can't back out. ..."

He was having difficulty meeting her eyes. Helene could see the tension in his body, and hear it in his voice. She paused, and then she said, "Why are they doing this? You'd better tell me. Is it because of me?"

Gertz looked at the floor. He shrugged.

"Yes. It is. Stein doesn't want you playing the wife. He's insisting I recast." He looked up. "Helene, I told him that was unacceptable. I said, no way. I wasn't going to take that kind of thing lying down. I don't want you to think that . . ." He hesitated. He had just extinguished one cigarette, now he ht another.

"The thing is—apart from the contractual situation—this was a personal thing. I asked you to do it, way back. I really wanted you for this part. I haven't forgotten that. ..."

He paused again, looked down at his hands, which he seemed unable to keep still, and then up again, slightly to one side of Helene's face.

"Of course, a lot has happened since then. The script's gone through several drafts. It's changed a good deal. I'm not saying it would be impossible to recast. In some ways, I suppose you could say there are other actresses it might suit better. I mean, in your case, we always knew you'd be playing against the grain . . ."He paused. "And it did occur to me, in view of your having separated from Lewis, and all those stories in the press . . . well, that you might feel, now, that this wasn't the part for you. An unsympathetic character. A tough woman. A divorcee ..."

He could not look at her now. He stared miserably in the direction of a painting on the wall. Helene leaned forward.

"Greg," she said quietly, "who have you approached? Who have you been sounding out? Fonda? Remick? Someone else?"

Still looking at the floor, he told her. Helene sighed.

"And what am I supposed to do?"

"Stein thought you might want to ask to be released from your contract."

"I see."

"Don't look like that, Helene!" He stood up. "I said I'd put it to you, that's all. I told him he might be right. Maybe you felt you didn't want to do it anymore, but that you thought it was too late to back out. ... I just agreed to ask, that's all."

He glanced down at her face, and then began to walk up and down the room.

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"Try and see it my way for a moment. Think of the position I'm in. I've been working on this for a year—more. I really need this movie. If Runaways is a hit this summer, and then this one works—well, I'll be in a position to call the shots for once. Really do the kind of work I've always wanted to do. And besides, I have responsibilities—to the writers—to the people who helped me develop the script. Obviously—I want you for the wife. But if that means starting all over again, trying to get backing again —well then, obviously, I have to try and look at this thing unemotionally. I just don't know how easy it would be to start over, I just don't know how people are going to react when I say I want you for the wife. I mean—they could see it the same way as Stein does, and then where are we? I have to . . ."

"It's all right, Greg." Helene stood. "You can do your movie. I'll telephone Milton today and tell him to contact A.I. and get me released. I imagine the whole thing can be arranged very quickly. I'm sure you're eager to start filming. I don't want to feel I might be holding you up."

Color ebbed and flowed in his face. He turned back to her.

"Helene—Jesus. I don't know what to say. I mean—I can imagine how you feel. ... If you want time to think this over—I didn't come here meaning to lean on you, I want you to know that. I can see something Uke this isn't an easy decision. . . ."

"Oh, you're wrong. It's extremely easy. I never work with people I don't respect."

There was a silence. Gertz flushed. "You worked with me on Runaways. "

"Yes. I respected you then. You were very helpful to me."

"And you don't respect me now?"

"Not really. You're temporizing. You're prevaricating. . . . I'm sure you know that." She turned away coldly.

"Greg—you'd better go."

There was another silence, a longer one this time. She could sense the struggle within him. Then he said, "All right. I accept that. You're not wrong. But that's how it's got to be in this place—in most places, come to that. If you want to get anything done, if you want to work, you have to compromise."

"Oh, this is a compromise, is it?" Helene turned around and looked him directly in the eyes. "I see. It feels like disloyalty. If you really want to know what it feels like, Greg, I'd say it feels like a kick in the teeth. However—I've had quite a few of those lately. One more doesn't make a great deal of difference—even from you."

He moved toward the door, and Helene turned away wearily. She

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looked out the window, at the garden, at the clear blue sky. In the distance, over the city, a jet was banking, coming in to land.

At the door, Gregory Gertz stopped, and turned back.

"There's one thing you didn't ask."

"What's that?"

"You didn't ask why A.I.'s doing this, or Joe Stein."

"I'd have thought it was fairly obvious. Why bother to ask?"

"I would." He paused. "Don't ask me, because I can't tell you. Ask Joe Stein. Better still, ask Thad."

"Thad?" She stared at him. "What would Thad have to do with this?"

"Ask him," he said. "That's all."

She telephoned Thad as soon as Greg Gertz had left. He seemed not in the least surprised to hear from her.

"Yes, well, maybe we ought to have a talk," he said, when she'd told him why she was calling. "I was going to call anyway. I'm pretty tied up today. There's a lot going on. . . ."

"Thad—do you know something about this?"

"I might. Just a little bit. I tell you what." His voice brightened. "Come over tomorrow afternoon, and have tea."

It was ten p.m., they had finished dinner an hour before, and now the two senators, one Republican, one Democrat, were loosening up. Across the living room of the Georgetown house Partex owned, and kept staffed for occasions such as this, Drew Johnson caught Edouard's eye, and slowly closed one of his own. Edouard glanced at his watch; behind him, Simon Scher rose quietly to his feet, and made for the door.

"I'll go check on the car. It should be here." The door closed softly behind him. Neither senator seemed to notice his departure. Drew, in a diversionary gesture, was plying them with more Chivas Regal.

The two senators were powerful men, and they had been useful. They had lent their weight where it counted most—on certain vital Senate committees—and, in the case of the Democrat, in the White House itself. Now that the controversial merger had taken place, and in precisely the way Drew Johnson and Edouard had planned it, now that Partex was only one remove from being the largest oil company in the United States, Drew was saying thank you. It was something which he did with ebulhence, and obvious enjoyment: Drew never forgot his friends, just as he never forgave his enemies.

The senators, both awarded substantial stockholdings in a Partex subsidiary whose connections with its parent company were impossible to

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trace, were now being rewarded in simpler ways. A fine dinner. Exceptionally fine wines. Chivas Regal. Black market Cuban cigars: "Castro's privates, boys," Drew remarked with a broad smile. "Yessir! Gives me real pleasure every time I light one up. . . .'

Shortly, Edouard knew, it would be time for what Drew called "the entertainment," announced with another wink.

Edouard, who had found the dinner grandiose, and the senators tedious, who was less adept at these occasions than Drew, indeed disliked them, always left at this point. He never participated in such things, but he countenanced them nonetheless, and the fact that he was doing so now filled him with distaste.

It was not simply the question of "the entertainment"—it was far more than that. The disguises of bribery, the necessity for bribery at all, disgusted him, and filled him with self-reproach. When he had been younger, and perhaps more ruthless, he would have argued that the end could justify the means—within reason, of course. But where should the line be drawn? Edouard felt that, in the past few months, he had crossed it, in a way he had never done before. The whole long drawn-out saga of this merger had sapped his energy and, he felt suddenly, his judgment. He sat there, saying nothing, angrily aware that he had compromised his standards in achieving this deal, and he had no one to blame but himself.

"Napalm." The Democrat, one of President Johnson's key men in the Senate, was growing excitable. Throughout dinner he had kept returning to the subject of the war. "Give the Cong a taste of that and it'll be over in six months. Lyndon knows what he's doing."

The Republican senator looked pained; a tightness set in around his mouth.

"History demonstrates . . ."He paused. He had a pinched and pedantic voice, which a liberal quantity of alcohol had failed to slur. "History shows that to be a fallacious argument." He glanced in Edouard's direction. "If you take, for example, the experiences of the French in Indochina, I think you can see that conventional tactics, applied in the face of a highly organized, highly motivated—and let's not fool ourselves, in their terms, they are highly motivated—guerrilla organization—"

"Defeatist talk," the Democrat interrupted him impatiently. "I don't like to listen to talk like that. We've got boys out there in the field. Boys my son's age—younger. Dying for their country . . ."

"My own boy's draft age. You don't need to remind me of that." The Republican took a large swallow of his drink. "Strategically speaking, and I'm talking strategy now, the decision to start bombing is an unnecessary escalation. U.S. involvement should remain marginal. In Saigon—"

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"In Saigon they couldn't piss in a pot unless we told them where to aim. In Saigon they wouldn't have a pot to piss in, if it weren't for—"

"Boys. Boys."

The Democrat held his liquor less well than the Repubhcan; his color and his voice had risen alarmingly, and Drew was quick to intervene, as Edouard, his face taut with suppressed anger, rose to his feet.

"Boys—we going to get off the subject of politics, or what? I got guests coming aren't going to want to listen to doom and gloom. Come on, now. Break it up. Git off your high horse, fella. Have another cigar. . . ."

The Democrat shrugged. He gave a sheepish grin, reached for the cigar box, and missed. The door opened, and Simon Scher's head appeared around it; he caught Edouard's eye and nodded. "Drew. Senators. If you will forgive me . . ." Edouard was already moving toward the door.

All three men rose to their feet. Drew embraced him; the two senators shook hands without great enthusiasm. It was an embarrassing moment, in which mutual dislike was palpable, and it was saved by a diversion.

From outside came the screech of tires as a car came to a halt; doors slammed; female voices and laughter could be heard. The entertainment had arrived. The two senators exchanged quick glances; Drew grinned; Simon Scher and Edouard shpped quietly out into the hall.

They walked out of the house, and down onto the brick sidewalk. The expensive women walked by: three tall willowy figures, a drift of scent on the night air, laughter and sidelong glances from the top of the steps, then the door closed behind them.

Simon Scher was perhaps tempted; he looked back, sighed, and then turned to the waiting Lincoln. Edouard, who was not tempted, felt nonetheless a sudden aching regret, a nostalgia, a longing for female society. To be with a woman; to touch her skin; to stroke her hair—to talk about something other than the manipulations of power and money—just then he wanted that acutely. It was a long time since he had held a woman— any woman—in his arms.