Once Is Not Enough (38 page)

It had been murder trying to be casual with Linda. “What do you mean
we’re
going to see
Gingerbread Lady!”
she had screamed. “I’d much rather see
No, No, Nanette
. Besides, why did he call
you?
”

“I don’t know. . . . Maybe because there’s always been the three of us. Maybe he thought it would look better if he was impartial.”

“Well, this threesome is going to split into a twosome . . . like after tonight!”

“What about us working together on the article?”

“That’s all changed. As of now, you are off it.”

“But why?”

“Look, January, Sara Kurtz will do all the rewriting anyhow. And when it gets time to go on the road, only two of us are going—Tom and me. I’ll tell him that when the time comes . . . and explain I had to put you on something else. I’ll even introduce him to Sara and tell him I’ll be sending tapes back to her. I’m sure one look at Sara and he won’t want her to go on the road.”

January hesitated. “Linda, let me try to write the story. I really feel I can do it. Let me just go along with you on the tour. I won’t be in the way. I promise.”

“Darling, you’re in the way right now. Unfortunately there’s nothing I can do about it tonight . . . but enjoy it for all it’s worth. Because suddenly three is getting to be quite a crowd.”

They sat in the darkness of the theater. Tom had told them that Maureen Stapleton was his idea of the best actress around. She had seen Maureen in several shows and agreed with him. But this was the first time in her life she couldn’t concentrate on what was happening on the stage. She was too acutely conscious of the man sitting beside her. Although his entire attention was focused on the play, she felt a peculiar sense of intimacy, sitting beside him in the darkness of a theater. Several times when his arm accidentally brushed hers, she had an insane urge to reach out and touch him. His hands were so strong . . . and clean . . . she liked the shape of his fingers. He smelled of something faintly reminiscent. She sniffed, trying to place it. He turned to her. “It’s Chanel Number Five cologne,” he said. “I always use it after shaving. Some people get the wrong idea.”

“No, I like it,” she said.

“Good. I’ll get you some.” Then he returned his attention to the stage.

They went backstage after the show and visited Miss Staple-ton, who joined them at Sardi’s. Tom told her that if he ever took a crack at writing for the stage, he’d write something for her. They began talking about shows . . . past and present. . . making comparisons. January came up with the names of some shows that amazed Tom. “But you couldn’t have been around
then,” he said. “That was probably before you were born.” She nodded. “It was . . . but from the time I was eight, I not only saw every show on Broadway, but I used to sit in this restaurant and listen to talk about shows from the forties.”

She realized they were all into a world that Linda couldn’t enter. January tried to pull her into the conversation. “Linda and I went to school together. She was our star. You should have seen her in
Annie Get Your Gun.”

Linda began to spark a bit, and before the evening was over she was talking to Maureen Stapleton about doing an interview for
Gloss
.

When Tom Colt dropped Linda and January off together, Linda made no attempt to invite him up. “I’ve decided to save it all for the road tour. I think he feels the same way. It’ll all be so natural then.”

The doorbell rang just as the alarm was going off the following morning. January slipped into a robe and looked through the peephole in the door. It was a messenger with a package. She opened the door cautiously, keeping the safety chain on. She signed for it, gave him a tip, told him to leave the package on the floor. She didn’t remove the chain until the messenger had gone down in the elevator. (This was a rule Mike had forced on her—part of the survival kit of a girl living alone in New York.) The moment the elevator door closed, she opened the door and grabbed the package. She took it inside and opened it carefully. It was the largest bottle of Chanel No. 5 she had ever seen. There was no note. She held the bottle to her cheek—he had actually thought of her—and where had he gotten a bottle this size at eight-thirty in the morning? Had he sent two of them? Was the messenger on his way to Linda’s right now?

She arrived at the office reeking of perfume. Linda smelled it immediately. “What have you got on?”

“Chanel Number Five.” January waited for Linda’s answer.

She merely shrugged. “I left a short story on your desk. Read it . . . I like it. Let me know what you think. I may be too close to it. It’s about a girl who has her nose done to hold her boyfriend . . . comes out looking gorgeous . . . and loses him
to a girl who looked like she did
before
the nose job. It’s a funny story . . . and it came in over the transom.”

“Over the transom?”

“Unsolicited . . . no agent . . . by an author I’ve never heard of . . . with a self-addressed return envelope to the Bronx. It’s a pretty dog-eared script, so I gather Ms. Debbie Mallon has gathered a lot of rejection slips . . . it doesn’t figure she’d send it to us before
Ladies’ Home Journal, Cosmo, Redbook
or the others. See what you think.”

January took the manuscript into her office. She sat down and lit a cigarette and began to read the manuscript.

He hadn’t sent Linda any Chanel
. . .

She re-read the first paragraph of the manuscript. She couldn’t concentrate. She went back and read it again.

But maybe he also felt three was a crowd
. . .
and this was like a “kiss-off” present
.

She went back to the first paragraph of the story. She glanced at her watch. Yesterday Tom had called her at home . . . in the morning. It was almost ten o’clock now . . . maybe he had called her again. She should get an answering service. But until now, there just hadn’t been any need for one. Mike always knew where to find her. He usually called her at the office every day after golf. Even David knew how to find her. So if Tom Colt wanted to find her, he certainly would know enough to look up
Gloss
magazine. He had found her home number and she wasn’t listed yet in the phone book. That meant he had to call Information to get it. Maybe he had called Linda. . . and Linda was telling him that January was on another story and too tied up to go along with them.

She stared at the manuscript, “Nose Job” by Debbie Mallon. Probably the girl’s own story. Had to be . . . poor Debbie Mallon . . . poor Debbie Mallon’s unsolicited manuscript . . . being given to her to read. She felt a jolt of conscience. She
must
read about Debbie’s nose or else God wouldn’t be on her side . . . He wouldn’t make Tom call. This was ridiculous! Of course God wasn’t on her side. Why should he be? Why should He help her by making a married man call her? “But it’s just to be with him,” she whispered as she stared toward the ceiling. “Just to maybe hold his hand . . .” Would that be wrong?
. . . She forced herself to read the manuscript . . . “I looked like a parrot but Charlie loved me. And Charlie looked like Warren Beatty. That’s enough to give any girl a complex. . . .”

She forced herself to read on. Debbie was being very clinical about the whole operation. Even to getting all those needles jabbed in her nose. She shuddered. And the chin . . . they were adding something to her chin . . . All this and she was going to lose Charlie at the end of page ten. She stopped in the middle of the operation. Ten fifteen. Maybe he had called Linda. Well, she couldn’t go back to Linda’s office until she got through with Debbie’s nose.

At ten-thirty she had finished the story. She was undecided. But why not give Debbie a break? She put the manuscript back into the manila envelope and walked down the hall to Linda’s office.

“It’s good,” she told Linda as she handed her the story.

Linda nodded. “I think so too. Sara’s got the biggest nose in town, so if it gets by her, we’ll use ‘Nose Job’ in the August issue. We can use a piece of short fiction from an unknown, because that will be the issue we use the story on Tom Colt. I intend to get a lot of good pictures of him on tour . . . Shit, if only Keith weren’t in
Caterpillar
. . .”

“You would want him on tour with you and Tom Colt!”

“Yes . . . but only because I could afford him. Any other photographer is going to be expensive, real expensive. Oh, I know. I’ll call Jerry Coulson. He’s great and he doesn’t know just how good he is yet. I probably can make a good deal with him.”

“Has Tom okayed the pictures?”

“I haven’t asked him. And I don’t intend to. Look, by then we’ll be a big hot romance. Last night in the theater he kept pressing his leg against mine. And he did the same thing in Sardi’s while you all were talking theater.”

“Oh . . . well . . . I guess I’ll go back to my office . . .”

“Sit down. The coffee wagon is due.”

“No. I’ve got the article on Celebrity Cats to do. Do you realize how few celebrities have cats? They all seem to have dogs.”

“That’s ridiculous. Pam Mason has a thousand cats.”

“But she’s in California! Say, do you think Maureen Stapleton has a cat?” (January knew she was talking too fast.)

“I don’t know . . .” The phone rang on Linda’s desk. “Maybe that’s Tom. I’ll get Maureen’s number from him.” She pressed the button. “Hello . . . What? . . . Sure, Sherry . . . You’re kidding! I want to hear. Come to my office and tell me.” She hung up. “Don’t leave, January. This will be some real dirt. Sherry said Rita is splitting a gut over something. I’ve put two calls in for Tom already, but his suite doesn’t answer.”

Sherry Margolis, an attractive girl who headed the magazine’s Public Relations, came in. Linda motioned her to sit. “You said Rita Lewis is blowing a fuse over me?” Linda’s smile was almost unctuously complacent.

Sherry nodded. “She asked if you had heard from Tom Colt. She’s a wreck. Seems she arrived at the Plaza to pick him up at seven for the
Today
show and he was still asleep. And he was due on it at eight. He claimed he didn’t know it was for
this
Tuesday. She sat in the lobby almost having a fainting spell until he calmly walked down at ten minutes to eight. She had a car, so they just about made it. After the show, he was talking to Barbara Walters, so she took time out to go to the john. And when she came out he was gone. Someone said he was in the News Room. There was a big commotion going on. She saw Tom using their telephone. She figured he was talking to you. Then he bolted out. She called . . . ran after him, but the elevator door closed just as she got there. She didn’t panic because she assumed he had gone back to his hotel. He knew he had a ten o’clock breakfast interview. But he’s not there, and she’s been cooling it for half an hour with a guy from
Playboy
who’s on his third Bloody Mary. One more and he won’t be able to do an interview if Tom Colt
does
show. His suite doesn’t answer and she even went up and banged on the door. The maid said she had just made up the room and no one was there. Rita kind of intimated that he wound up with you over the weekend and figured
you
might know where he is. . . .”

Linda smiled again. “That’s exactly right. Only tell Rita that I left him safe and sound at the Plaza last night . . . all tucked in.”

Sherry stared with open admiration. “Well, that beats Group Therapy . . . and that’s where Rita Lewis spends four nights a week. I’ll be delighted to give her the message.”

When Sherry left the room Linda looked at January and winked. “This will kill Rita. She’s had her eye on Tom from the beginning. Wait until she gets to Group Therapy tonight and they start telling her she’s not rejected . . . that
they
love her and she’s to be happy with
their
love . . .”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve played that scene myself. Thank God I was able to afford my own private shrink three times a week.”

January shook her head. “Honestly, Linda, I just don’t understand. Why would you want Sherry to think you went to bed with someone when you didn’t? I mean, is there some kind of an honor in having a high score? Is it like a batting average?”

Linda yawned. “When you go to bed with a Leon, you keep it a private matter. But with a Tom Colt you make it a headline.”

Suddenly Sherry came dashing back. “Linda, turn on the television set. There’s an earthquake in California. A real one!”

“Did you call Rita and tell her what I told you?” Linda asked.

“Yes, and she took it beautifully—three gasps and a choked sob.” Sherry had turned on the set. People were pouring in from the other offices.

Within seconds everyone was huddled around the set. They sat stupefied as the newscaster announced that the first violent tremor had hit forty miles away from the downtown area of Los Angeles at five fifty-nine Pacific Coast time . . . eight fifty-nine New York time. It registered 6.5 on the Richter scale and was felt over a three-hundred-mile area from Fresno to the Mexican border and as far east as Las Vegas. News reports stated that the initial shock was equivalent to an explosion of a million tons of TNT.

They switched to all the stations. Bulletins were interrupting regular shows . . . announcements of new tremors . . . fires. In New York, Kennedy Airport was a madhouse.
A roving reporter went around . . . asking questions . . . one man said his house had collapsed but thank God his wife and children were unharmed.

Suddenly Sherry screamed. “There’s Tom Colt!”

The reporter had seen him too. He pushed through the crowd and shoved a hand mike in Tom Colt’s face. “Why are you rushing back to Los Angeles, Mr. Colt?”

“To be with my wife and baby.” He turned away.

“Are they all right?” the reporter asked.

Tom Colt nodded. “Yes, I called her right after I did the
Today
show. The big shot had just hit, and there was another while I was talking to her.”

“Aren’t you here in the east to publicize your new book?”