Scruples (33 page)

“But, my darling, you didn’t come, please let me—there are so many things I can—”

“Spider, no, it’s perfect like this. I’m happy, I don’t need to come, I almost never do, just hug me and kiss me and pet me some more—pretend I’m your little baby—that’s what I like best” But even in those long, soft, sweet moments he sensed a turning inward in her, a withholding of communion, a direction of her attention somewhere away from the two of them, lying so closely intertwined that it seemed impossible that they weren’t together. And yet they were not.

After that first time he used every art he knew to bring her to an orgasm, as if that might be the key that would unlock the door between them. Sometimes she achieved a fleeting little spasm, but he never knew that it came from her one recurring sexual fantasy. In her mind she was being made love to by an anonymous lover, lying on a low bed surrounded by a ring of men who were watching her avidly, men with unzipped pants, whose cocks got harder and bigger as they watched her lover work on her, men who concentrated completely on her reactions as she was being fondled. These men whose cocks were now so huge that they were hurting, almost bursting, were making a movie of what they were watching. If she concentrated hard enough on their excitement and their frustration, she was able to come.

Naturally, there had been much speculation in the fashion world about what Harriet Toppingham did for sex. Many people assumed that she might be a Lesbian, but they never turned up any evidence of it, so gradually they added up her uncompromising ugliness, her solitary life, and her immense prestige, and the general impression grew that she was a sort of neuter, interested only in her work.

However, the evidence seekers had all looked in the wrong places, the obvious places, searching for a liaison between Harriet and some young beauty.

They had no means of knowing that Harriet was a member of the most hidden of all major sexual subgroups, an international network of middle-aged and powerful Lesbians, women who range from the late thirties to the early sixties, women in high positions of authority or fame, all of whom know each other or know of each other, whether they live in New York, London, Paris, or Los Angeles. These women include legendary actresses, famous literary agents, brilliant industrial and interior designers, successful theatrical producers, top advertising executives, and creative artists in many fields. They form a loosely connected but supportive group, which has none of the visibility of the highly placed male homosexuals in these same occupations. Many of them have been solidly married for many years, some of them are devoted mothers and grandmothers. Unless you have seen such a woman without her mask you might easily know her for twenty years and not have the faintest suspicion of her strongest sexual orientation.

As a matter of basic self-protection these women keep their Lesbian lives and their working lives severely separated. Their sexual partners are most often women like themselves, at the same degree of power. Sometimes they may be anonymous, absolutely unimportant young girls, picked up in Lesbian bars, but such cruising is always dangerous. For such women of status, the flauntingly open, gay-is-chic, all-the-fun-people-play-together style of life of the fashionable male homosexual is an impossibility that might cost them the respect they inspire and the power they wield. They operate with the same tacit protection that used to be given to a President with a mistress or a congressman with a drinking problem. Of course, some people know about them, certain important and knowledgeable people, but it is considered to be no business of the public’s. Lesbianism, in high or low places, still carries with it a much greater stigma than male homosexuality, and the vast majority of successful Lesbians are firmly determined to remain hidden.

Harriet had made it a rule, when she started in fashion as an assistant shoe editor, never to have anything to do with a model, even if the model was herself a Lesbian on the make. In her twenties her sexual experiences were all with women in their thirties and forties, and gradually, as she grew older, she was accepted into the worldwide network. When Harriet first saw Melanie’s pictures she was involved with an important Madison Avenue copy chief, some two years older than she was. Their affair was an old one, comfortable, unexciting, yet it served a purpose. Those people who assume that “neuter” men and women live without sex are almost always wrong.

Now, after years of iron self-control, Harriet found Melanie’s magically remote eyes and Melanie’s delicate body moving relentlessly through her dreams, waking and sleeping. In the past she had been briefly in love with certain models, but she had never made the slightest gesture toward them, never looked to see if there was any signal she could read. The risk was too great. It was unthinkable that one of the girls whom she could lift to fortune by raising a finger and saying “I’ll use that one” might come to possess the knowledge that would enable her to penetrate Harriet’s secret. She watched the relationship between Spider and the girl and observed, almost as soon as it happened, the moment when he became her lover. She was used to being a spectator of heterosexual romance; she had cultivated a leaden indifference toward it, but this time she felt pain. The pain was unmistakably jealousy, and Harriet, a woman as proud as she was hard, did not know which was worse, the jealousy or the knowledge that she was weak enough to feel it. All that spring and summer she watched them—Spider, brilliant with happiness, Melanie, seeming to save for him those prim, cool, exquisite smiles that held a half-given invitation.

On the first night of every Fourth of July weekend, Jacob Lace, the publisher of
Fashion and Interiors
and the six other sister magazines that made up a publishing empire, gave a party. It was more than a command performance; in the world of fashion an invitation to that party was the confirmation of a patent of nobility. Harriet always attended, abandoning for the occasion her normal policy of staying clear of business socializing. This year Spider had been invited, because of his steady work for
Fashion
, and, of course, he brought Melanie.

Lace lived in Fairfield County on twenty-five acres of green fields and woods, not far from the Fairfield Hunt Club. His house had been built in the 1730s and lovingly restored and expanded over the years. On the night of the party, many thousands of tiny, white lights flickered in all the great old trees and turned every copse into a set from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. People flew in for this party from Dallas and Houston and Chicago and Bel Air and Hawaii. Hostesses on Fire Island and the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard, cursing the publisher, planned their own Fourth of July parties so as not to conflict with his and be left without their key guests, the ones for whom the others came. There were no photographers present taking pictures for the society pages, no society editors taking notes. This was a strictly private party for the elite and potential elite of the worlds of fashion, the theater, the dance, advertising, merchandising, publishing, and designing.

Jacob Lace’s clever wife had long ago solved the problem of what to feed hundreds of guests by sticking to what she called “traditional American food”—hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, and all thirty-one flavors of Baskin-Robbins. This bicentennial year it was more appropriate than ever. In keeping with her all-American tradition, she had four heavily stocked bars, built inside red, white, and blue striped tents on the lawn and near the pool.

Harriet Toppingham loved to drink. She never drank during business hours, but every night, as soon as she reached the haven of her apartment, she immediately poured herself a double bourbon on the rocks and then another and perhaps another before she sat down to her late dinner, served by her silent cook. She didn’t like wine, and she never drank anything at lunch or after dinner because it might impair her efficiency at work, but those predinner drinks were a necessary habit of twenty years’ standing. She was afraid to drink with people who were not part of her inner circle because she knew that some sort of change came over her when she drank. When she was alone, or with her own kind of women, it didn’t matter—no one had ever seemed to notice—but she felt that it was wiser to take no chances.

She came to Lace’s party by herself, in a chauffeured limousine. Like most New Yorkers, Harriet didn’t own a car. Normally, she would have invited any one of a number of willing male escorts, men she met through her work, but this year there didn’t seem to be anyone she wanted to single out for the honor of coming with her. Harriet, who knew almost everyone at the party, was greeted as a peer by a very few, as a star by everyone else. She moved from group to group with the glitter of a matador, encased in a vintage, shocking-pink-and-black satin Schiaparelli, thickly encrusted with gold braid, a dress that belonged only in a museum or on Harriet Toppingham. She was strolling about, holding a glass of tonic water, when she caught a glimpse of Spider and Melanie, walking alone, holding hands, and gazing around them with fascination. They had met very few of the other guests, and it wasn’t the sort of party at which anyone made introductions—people were on their own. Spider, with his golden tan and his golden hair, was as splendid as a decathlon winner at his moment of triumph. Both he and Melanie wore white, and people turned to look after them when they had passed.

As soon as they saw her, the two of them hurried to greet Harriet; Melanie’s pleasure was frank at seeing a familiar face in this crowd of impressive strangers. The three of them chatted for a few minutes in a way that seemed oddly self-conscious in this nonworkday setting. Then Spider, restless, insisted on taking Melanie off to see the stables, which were Lace’s hobby. As she watched them go, Harriet asked the nearest waiter for a double bourbon on the rocks. An hour later, when the currents and eddies of the huge party brought the three of them together again, near the pool pavilion, Harriet had had two more double bourbons and one ice-cream cone.

“Spider, leave Melanie with me for a while.” She was commanding, not suggesting. “I’m going to introduce her to some people I think she should know and they’ll never get to talk to her with you leaning all over her like that. Go and talk to some of your discards, Spider. God knows, there are enough of them here to fill a brothel.”

Melanie looked beseechingly at him.

“My feet are hurting, Spider, and I do believe I’ve had too much champagne. I’d better stay put with Harriet. But you go on and have fun—I’ll feel better soon.”

Spider turned on his heel and walked away.

“Do you think he’s angry?” Harriet asked. The two women moved inside the pool pavilion and sat down in a corner on a wicker couch with sailcloth cushions. Melanie kicked off her shoes and sighed in relief.

“Honestly, Harriet, I couldn’t care less. He doesn’t own me, even though I know he’d like to. He’s a darling, really, and I am grateful, but there are limits—limits—
limits.”

“I thought you and Spider were head over heels?” Harriet had never asked Melanie such a personal question before. She expected the girl to answer in her usual impersonal way.

“Whatever in the world gave you that idea?” Melanie was shocked out of her passivity. “I’ve never been head over heels—hate that expression anyway—I don’t think I’ll ever be, I don’t even
want
to be. Why, if I gave part of myself away to everybody who wanted a piece there wouldn’t be anything left of me by now. I just can’t say ‘yes, I love you too’ just because someone else feels that way.”

“Still, you are living together—that’s supposed to mean something more than just gratitude, even these days.” Harriet knew she should stop herself from probing like this; she was getting too inquisitive, but she couldn’t resist going just a little farther.

“We are
not!
I’ve never spent a whole night at Spider’s place and I won’t let him touch me in my own apartment. I feel very strongly about that, Harriet—I insist on my privacy! Goodness, it’s awful—dreadful—to think that you thought we were living together—that’s such a tacky thing to do. Maybe everyone does it in New York, but it’s not my style. I’m so ashamed—if you thought so, everyone else must think so too.” Melanie had tears of indignation in her eyes. She had pushed herself away from the cushions as she spoke and now she was bending emphatically toward the older woman. Harriet was dimly aware of danger, great danger, but she didn’t hold herself back. She put her arms around the girl, pulled her forward, and held her close. She brushed her lips lightly over Melanie’s hair, so carefully that Melanie didn’t feel the caress.

“I didn’t really believe it. I never believed it. No one believes it. It’s all right, all right, baby, all right.” For a long moment they remained there—Melanie grateful and comforted, completely unalarmed. Then Harriet knew that she had to push her away before she kissed the girl’s glowing flesh. As she lifted her head from Melanie’s hair she saw Spider hurriedly turn away from the doorway, the beginnings of comprehension openly written on his face.

The following morning was a Saturday, the first day of a three-day weekend for most businesses. Harriet Toppingham let herself into the deserted offices of
Fashion
with her own key and walked quickly through the empty corridors until she came to her office. There she scooped up the September issue of the magazine, one of the three copies that had just come back from the printer’s in rough form for editorial correction, and searched her files for all the pictures of Melanie that had been taken for future issues. She invaded the art director’s office and found some layouts that featured Melanie for the October and November issues and added them to her loot. Then she hurried home and made a person-to-person call to Wells Cope in Beverly Hills.