Sapphire and Shadow (A Woman's Life) (2 page)

“Is this for a special occasion, Mrs. Whitney?” The manager peered into the dressing room to satisfy herself that all was going well. The dressmaker looked up at her for a moment, then continued to flit about Johanna, working with unobtrusive hands.

“My husband and I are invited to a production party,” Johanna said absently. A party used to mean a few intimate friends, or even better, just the two of them. Now it meant a host of people she didn’t know and didn’t want to know but was expected to be nice to for Harry’s sake. She hated attending them.

“It must be so exciting, being the wife of such a famous director.”

“Must be,” Johanna answered softly.
But you can’t tell by me.

Damn it, she loved him, didn’t he realize that? Didn’t that cocaine-addled brain of his remember the same things she did? The same wonderful memories?

No, she knew better. All Harry remembered was the last trade figures on his films. And the figures weren’t good anymore. That was all that mattered. Johanna balled her hands into clenched fists.

The dressmaker looked at her oddly, a pin suspended between her fingers and the fabric.

Enough
, Johanna thought.
I’ve got to get out of here
.

“What are you doing?” the plump woman asked, clearly upset as Johanna suddenly started shrugging out of the gown. Pins scattered and the dressmaker muttered something to herself, her accent making it almost impossible to understand the fast, soft flow of words.

“I don’t have time for a fitting,” Johanna said suddenly. “I just remembered an appointment.” There was no appointment, she just wanted to get away, to get out, to breathe. “Let me pay for this and I’ll make arrangements to come back for another fitting.”

The manager folded her hands before her and nodded. “Very good, madam.”

I’m not
“madam,” Johanna wanted to cry.
I’m Joey Lindsey from Connecticut and I want my happiness back.

But she said nothing. Composure, control, had been drilled into her from early on. You had everything when you had control. Now she simply slipped on her own clothes and hunted through her purse for the American Express card she carried, the card that had replaced a good many old, familiar things in her life with expensive new ones she hardly noticed after they arrived from the store. Image. It was all part of the image, part of what Harold wanted. It had nothing to do with them, with her.

“Anything wrong?” Discreetly the store manager, who towered over Johanna by five inches, looked down into the chaotic gray leather purse that Paul had purchased for her last birthday and tried to pass off as a gift from Harry. Paul, she thought, was loyal to the way they had once been.

“I can’t seem to find my charge card.”

The manager shrugged slightly. “Madam needn’t trouble herself. It can be taken care of when she returns for the next fitt—“

“Damn it, don’t you get tired of talking to people as if they weren’t in the same room with you?”

Johanna turned and looked into the mirror that ran along the west wall. She didn’t know who looked more surprised at her outburst, the boutique owner or her.

“I’m sorry. I think I’m a little overwrought.”
No, I’m a lot overwrought. And I never used to be.

The other woman nodded benevolently. “No need to explain. As to the card…”

Johanna wanted no favors because of Harry. “Wait, let me call my hotel suite. I’m sure I must have left it there. My husband can bring it over.”

If he’s straight
, Johanna added silently.

Chapter Two

“Damn it, it doesn’t last long enough. Why doesn’t it last long enough?” Harold Whitney ran a thin, nervous hand over his haggard face.

Before him, on the glass top of a coffee table in a suite on the twelfth floor of the Hyatt Carlton Tower Hotel, were two short, narrow white lines.

“How much of this shit do I have to put up my nose before things get better?”

It was a rhetorical question meant for him, not for the blond-haired man standing behind him. But since he was the only other person in the room, Paul Chamberlaine felt a need to respond. The answer was blunt, direct. It was the only way Paul knew how to operate, unless it came to matters involving Johanna. In the fast-paced, double-dealing world of filmmaking, she was his only weak spot. He would have gone to great lengths to shield her. She was the reason he was still here. He looked at Harry with barely suppressed loathing.

“I don’t think there’s enough coke in the country to do that.”

“Ever the optimist.”

Harry took the reed straw in his shaking hand. A little more and it would be better. Just a little more and then things wouldn’t look so hopeless, wouldn’t feel like they were closing in on him, wouldn’t haunt him the way they did these days.

Everybody was always trying to get a piece of him, dig a segment out of him. Paul, Johanna, the production company. Those shitheads in Hollywood. Why couldn’t they all just leave him the hell alone? Why couldn’t they have a little faith in him? He could work another miracle. He had done it before, taking a nothing film and making it into the blockbuster of the year, to be cheered by the public and critics alike.

He could do it again. He would do it again. He just needed another hit to make it all clear to him, that was all.

Paul lit a cigarette and exhaled slowly. He had given up smoking twice this year. Working with Harry always made him start again. He watched the man he had once admired lean over the coffee table, hovering over the crooked white lines.

“That garbage is destroying your brain.”

Harry snorted. “A hell of a lot you know. This is the only thing that keeps my brain going.”

Paul debated throwing in the proverbial towel, packing up and going home to Denise, to his kids and to his sanity. It was getting to the point where he didn’t know why he was staying on, why Johanna was staying on. The man on the sofa bore little resemblance to the man they had both once known, both once loved.

“If you believe that, you’re in worse shape than I thought.”

Harry was sick of people talking at him, telling him what to do, what not to do. Who the hell did they think they were, anyway? “Don’t knock it until you try it.”

“I don’t have to try pointing a gun to my head to know it’s suicide to pull the trigger.”

“Nice line. Save it for your next script.”

Paul crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray on the table with an irritated movement. “I’d like to save you for my next script.”

Harold looked up slowly at him and malevolence spread across his face. All the support that Paul had given him through this difficult project was totally forgotten. This latest slight encompassed his whole being. He didn’t remember that Paul had come to his rescue and taken a cut just to help out. He remembered only that Paul had written the last film he had produced. And it had sunk like a lead balloon.

“Write a good one and we’ll see.”

It was everyone else’s fault he was going through this. He blamed everyone else for the awful spate of bad luck he was having with his films. It was just bad luck, that’s all. Nothing more. He hadn’t changed. He was still as capable as ever.

God knew, he tried, but everyone kept failing him. Paul, Johanna, Sam, everyone. And they all expected so much, so damn much out of him. A pound of flesh wasn’t enough anymore. His soul wasn’t enough. He had nothing left to give and still they cried: more, more, make it better.

Well, he would, he’d show them. He’d show them all. Harold B. Whitney wasn’t meant to be a has-been, a failure. He was a genius.

The white powder went into the straw and exploded inside his nose. For a moment, just for a moment, he was at peace and yet vitally alive. Bits and pieces of projects flashed through his brain. All star-studded, all wonderful. He was wonderful. It was going to work. It was going to be all right.

It was going to be more than all right.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard a bell ringing, but couldn’t place it, couldn’t place himself. All he wanted was for the rush to go on, to take him spiraling to lands that lesser people only dreamed of. To places that were getting harder and harder to reach.

“It’s Johanna.”

Harold blinked. Reality was calling him. With extreme difficulty, he tried to focus his mind. “Where?” He looked around the suite. It swam before him, but he didn’t see her.

“On the phone.” Paul held it up.

“She wants to talk to me?” His tongue felt thick and he didn’t want to talk. He wanted to feel. There were things to do, projects to conquer. And he was equal to all of it!

Damn, Johanna was always interfering with his life, his space. Johanna had left in tears this morning. She was always leaving in tears these days. Woman was all water, no substance.

“No,” Paul covered the receiver, instinctively feeling that Johanna wasn’t going to want to hear this, “she wants her charge card.”

“Why, is London for sale?”

Harold laughed hysterically at his own joke, his voice cracking. The sound of his laughter filled his head and reverberated back. The room sounded as if it were full of laughter.

Laughter at him.

No, damn it, they wouldn’t laugh at him. He’d pull this off. He had to pull this off. And then they’d all come crawling back to him. As they should.

Paul shook his head. “She’s at a boutique on Regent Street and she forgot her wallet.”

“So? What does she want from me? I’m not her errand boy.”

You’re not her husband lately, either
, Paul was tempted to say, but let it pass. He had been with Harold’s production company for eleven years now, coming in when Harold had been riding the high, heady crest of success and adulation. He had seen the man once thought of as a boy genius descend into his own private hell, dragging his family with him. The fawning cheers had turned to ill-concealed smirks and Harold had sought inspiration and solace in drugs, in starlets eager for attention, giving him the attention he sought so desperately. He sought support in everything except the right things.

Paul gave up. He turned from the pathetic sight on the sofa and spoke quietly into the receiver. “I don’t think he can talk right now, Johanna.”

She kept her smile in place. She knew that the boutique owner was straining to hear. People loved gossip the world over. She shielded the phone with her hand and turned her back.

“Is he stoned, Paul?” The question was whispered.

Paul felt for her. “He’s his usual self.” Though silence met his statement, he heard the pain, the defeat. “Look, exactly where are you? I can bring the card over to you.”

“You don’t have to—“

“Look, I want to get out of this hotel room.”

He looked over to where Harold sat, nodding and humming to himself. His legs were moving up and down, as if some unseen puppeteer was pulling strings.

Poor damn fool, he thought. Harold was humming the theme from his first picture, the one that had been such a rousing success. The one he could never match.

“I don’t know of anywhere where I can find a beautiful woman to talk to me for a few minutes. Have a little pity, fair lady.”

Johanna laughed. Paul could always make her laugh and she was grateful to him. “I left my wallet in my room on the bureau. The shop’s on Regent Street, near Piccadilly Circus.”

“I’ll be right there,” Paul promised.

“And Paul?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” He rang off and went to get her wallet.

Harold raised his bleary eyes in Paul’s direction when Paul walked out of the second bedroom. “So, she’s made you into her errand boy instead, huh?”

Paul didn’t miss the trace of jealousy in Harold’s voice. He made light of the situation. “Can’t leave her stranded.”

“Why not? You’re leaving me stranded. Everyone leaves me stranded.”

He had heard this refrain before. There was no point in commenting. Harold was beyond hearing anyway. Paul pocketed Johanna’s wallet and crossed to the door.

“You don’t want her to be embarrassed in public, Harry. Think of what it would look like in the press, the wife of Harold Whitney without funds.”

Harold sank back in the sofa. “She’s always buying things.”

Paul was tempted to keep walking, but he had never run off from confrontations. “Women who feel neglected buy things, Harry.”

Harold smirked at the watery figure in front of him. “Been reading Cosmopolitan again?”

“Just being a student of human nature, Harry,” Paul said easily. “It comes in handy in my line of work.”

“Yeah? Well, save it for your scripts and leave Johanna to me.”

“I’d like nothing better, just let me know when you’re back in town.”

He hadn’t the strength to raise himself up from the sofa, even though energy seemed to be boiling in his chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Figure it out.” Paul slammed the door behind him. Waste, he hated to see waste. And Harry was quickly disintegrating right before his eyes.

“Ass,” Harold shot out vehemently, then closed his eyes as another wild rush came. He was pathetically grateful and his hand gripped the arm of the sofa as he hung on for the ride.

It was over before Paul reached the elevator.

“Harry in?” The owlish man who stepped off the elevator nodded toward the suite behind Paul. He was Harold’s production assistant. One of many who had come and gone. Garrison Hatheway was determined to stay, one way or another.

Paul got into the elevator and hit the open button as he answered. “Yeah, he’s in. See that he doesn’t hurt himself, Gar.”

Garrison jammed his fists into the pockets of his baggy corduroy trousers. “Oh shit, is he—?”

“Isn’t he always?”

“Hell, I don’t know why I hang around.”

“Same question plagues us all, Gar, same question plagues us all.” Paul lifted his hand from the button and pressed for the first floor. “Guess we’re all hoping for a renaissance.” The elevator doors closed on him. “Most of all, Johanna, I’d bet.”

“Do you want me to come in with you?” Paul asked an hour later as he stood by the suite door again.

Johanna shook her head. She liked Paul’s company, but she couldn’t use him as a shield. Harold was her husband, her problem. She couldn’t solve it by hiding behind other people.