Scruples (59 page)

Although Wells Cope entertained frequently and any of the women in his carefully culled circle of friends would have been delighted to lunch with Melanie, she never telephoned them. Woman-talk had never interested her, even in high school. She had no talent for intimacy, even superficial intimacy. Her life was reduced to studying with her drama coach, who no longer could spare her more than two hours a day, taking a modern-dance class, and waiting. Everything would change, everything would begin to happen for her, she promised herself, when her picture was released, not really sure what she meant by “everything,” except that she had come so far, so rapidly, that some wonderful change must be in store for her.

When Melanie’s picture came out in the early spring of 1977, not a single critic failed to fall in love with her. There had not been such a personal triumph for an unknown in many years. Five of the most important critics in the United States were not amused to find that four of their detested colleagues also thought that Melanie Adams was “The New Garbo.” She read the reviews in a burst of glory. Wells Cope gave a thrilling dinner party. Nothing changed. There were dozens of messages of congratulations from people she had known in the past. She reread the reviews from all over the country. But nothing changed.

“But what did you expect?” Wells asked in mild exasperation, the strongest emotion he permitted himself outside of the cutting room. “It wasn’t a coronation, just the first step in your career. It’s business as usual out here for someone like you who makes her first mark. If you want to feel that your life has changed, go back to New York and visit the girls at Eileen Ford’s or, better yet, go home and visit your parent—they’ll treat you like a celebrity in Louisville, but here? All you’ll get are requests for interviews—and maybe somebody will recognize you in the street or in a store, but otherwise—you’re just the new girl in town, Melanie. What did you imagine actresses do between pictures? The best of them? They wait and they take classes. If they’re married they can fix up the house or be with the kids, and wait. If they’re on television they can do game shows and wait.”

“I can always take up needlepoint,” Melanie muttered, tears of chagrin and deception in her eyes.

“Good thinking, you’re on the right track,” said Wells absent-mindedly, turning back to his open script.

Melanie ran her film dozens of times in Wells’s projection room. Now that she wasn’t before a camera, the woman she saw on screen could have been another actress. She couldn’t merge again into that figure on the screen. She found herself still sitting in the projection room, just Melanie being—what? She began searching her eyes in the mirror again. More and more often she fell into daydreams of being another. She wished she had been born looking like Glenda Jackson. Melanie was sure that she would have become totally
there
, a complete person, strong and arrogant and absolute, if only she had had to build herself up from scratch, had to overcome bad skin and an ugly body. If she looked like Glenda Jackson, she would know who she was.

The failure of her first film to fill the inchoate, questing need she had harbored all her life made Melanie more greedy than ever to see what she could get from other people. Trying to manipulate Wells was hopeless. No matter what she did or said, he was endlessly patient with her. It was his form of love, but their sex life, as elegant as a saraband, which had first been so soothing, and his lack of curiosity about her began to make her feel that she existed less and less.

It was then that she started to make tentative phone calls to Spider. His remembered passion, so insistent, so probing, so demanding, began to seem like an answer to her questions. Spider had never let up on her, never stopped trying to find out who she was. Perhaps, this time he could tell her.

Her timid knock sounded twice on Spider’s door before he brought himself to open it. Melanie stood there, innocently proffering her towering beauty, waiting, eyes downcast, for him to invite her in.

“Oh, cut out the nonsense, Melanie,” Spider said roughly. “Don’t act as if I intended to bar the door in your face. Come on in—we have time for a quick drink.”

“Spider, Spider, you sound so different,” she said. He had forgotten the sweetly painful impact of her voice. Possession of a voice like that, he thought savagely, should be limited by law to ugly women. He gave her a vodka and tonic, automatically remembering what she drank, and motioned to the far end of the long couch in his spare, white living room. Surrounded by a landslide of objects all day, Spider chose to live in as empty a space as possible. He pulled up a canvas folding chair just far enough away from Melanie to esablish an uncomfortable distance between them. She moved considerably closer on the couch. Short of moving his chair again, Spider was locked into position. He waited in silence.

“Thank you for letting me come over—” her voice trailed off. “I had to see you, Spider—maybe you can explain things to me.”

“Explain!”

“I’m so confused about things—and you used to ask me all kinds of questions about myself—maybe you could figure out what’s going on.”

“Lady, you’ve come to the wrong place. Go to couch canyon over on Bedford Drive and you’ll find dozens of good men who have trained for years for the chance to help you find out what the fuck is wrong with you, but I’m not an analyst, and I’m not about to start practice now. If you need advice on your wardrobe I’ll be glad to help, but otherwise, you’re on your own.”

“Spider, you were never cruel.”

“And you?”

“I know.” She was silent, looking gravely at him with no hint of plea in her eyes, an absence of coaxing, which in itself was consummate artistry. The silence lengthened. She refused, mutely, to play on his emotions with words. She knew she didn’t have to.

“Ah, shit! What’s the problem? Wells Cope? Your career?”

“No—no—not really. He’s as good to me as he could be to anyone and he’s looking for another property for me as hard as he can—I can’t complain about that. It’s just that nothing seems to have turned out the way I thought it would. Spider, I’m not happy.” She said the last three words in genuine astonishment, as if she were just discovering the fact for herself, putting words to her feelings for the first time.

“And you expect me to tell you why you’re not happy,” Spider said flatly, finishing her thought.

“Yes.”

“Why me?”

“We were happy once—I thought you’d remember why.” She was simple, sad, wondering, denuded of her mystery, a state that she conveyed as if it were a last surrender.

“I know why I was happy then, Melanie, but I was never sure about you.” Spider’s voice was harsh. He didn’t want a victory now.

“Oh,
yes
—I
was
. And then I was happy again when I came out here and happy while I was working and then—I wasn’t happy anymore.”

“And now you think you can come back to me and feel happy again, is that it, Melanie?” She nodded her head shyly. “It doesn’t work that way—don’t you even know that?”

“But, it could! I’m sure it could. Oh, I’m not a simpleton; I’ve heard all that stuff about you can’t go home again, but I don’t believe that it is true for everybody—we might be different. I’ve changed, Spider, I’ve grown up, I think; I’m not the same person—you’re the only one I’ve ever felt—
connected
with. Please, please!”

“I’m going to be late for my dinner party, Melanie.” She rose from the couch and walked toward him. He remained seated in his chair. She knelt down on the bare floor and clasped his legs in her arms, resting her chin on his knees like a weary child.

“Just let me stay like this for a minute—then I’ll go,” she whispered in a diminished voice. “Oh, it feels so good to be close to you again, just touching you, just being close—it’s almost enough.” She lifted her head from his knees and looked into his eyes. “Please?”

“Christ!”
Spider picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. As he undressed her, she covered him with hasty kisses on any part of him she could reach, as if she were afraid he might change his mind. As she felt his hands on her naked body, his lips searching all the places he had loved, she moaned aloud with pleasure; as she felt his mouth warm between her thighs she said “Good—good—good” between clenched teeth, and when he entered her, she sighed with fulfillment, her body following his every step of the way. When it was over, they lay together for an exhausted moment before Spider abruptly pushed himself away and sat on the edge of the bed, contemplating Melanie who was sprawled in abandonment. Lazily, she turned and focused on him with a satisfied smile.

“Ah, that was
so good
—God, I feel marvelous all over.” She wriggled her toes and stretched her arms over her head and gave a deep groan of relief. Spider was certain that this time she wasn’t acting. He was too familiar with the after-aura of a sexually pleased woman to make a mistake. Her smile deepened into triumph as she put out her hand to caress his bare chest. “I knew it—I was sure—see, wasn’t I right? We
can
love each other again.”

“Feel happy now?”

“Terribly happy, darling. Darling Spider.”

“I don’t.”

“What!”

“I feel about as happy as if I’d had a good massage. My cock is saying thank you, but
happy
—happy in my heart—no. It was the words without the music, Melanie.” He tightened his hand over hers when he saw the look of fear cancel her smile. “I’m sorry, sweet girl, but I just feel empty, empty and sad.”

“But how can you when you’ve made
me
feel so happy?” Her plaintive voice was the most genuine note he’d ever heard come from her lips since he’d met her.

“That isn’t good enough for me anymore. Melanie, you don’t love me, you just want me to love you.”

“No, Spider, I swear it—I do love you—honestly!”

“If you did, I wouldn’t feel this sadness, this emptiness. When my gut talks, I listen. You love the way I make you feel good, you love the way you walked in here and seduced me, you love the attention, the stroking, the listening, the questions, the talking about Melanie and what isn’t working in her life. But love me? Why, you never even asked how I was. You love what you can take, not what you can give. Look, maybe you really wish you could love me, but it won’t work.”

“How can I convince you—what can I say—how can I make you believe—”

“You can’t. Don’t be sad, darling, but you just can’t.”

She looked at him and she saw that he knew more about her than she did. She needed that knowledge, wanted it for herself.

“Spider—”

“Give it up, Melanie. It’s not going to be.” His voice was implacable, disengaged. Worst of all, it was frankly relieved. Even Melanie could recognize defeat when she saw it, for the first time in her life. The light in her eyes faded as abruptly as a television set being turned off.

“But, but—oh, Spider, what am I going to do now?” she wailed.

He touched the curve from her ear to her chin with a finger so impersonal that it was more final than a blow.

“Go on home, Melanie. Something’s sure to turn up for the most beautiful girl in the world.”

“A hell of a lot of good that does me!”

“Don’t knock it, baby, don’t knock it.”

Jacob Lace’s party was in full swing by the time Josh and Valentine arrived. She had deliberately planned for them to get there rather late in the evening so they wouldn’t be conspicuous. Lost in the crowd, they walked across the rolling green lawns, reveling in the unaccustomed sensation of being out together in public.

But they hardly went unremarked. Valentine, with her air of a young sorceress surveying her rightful domain, her light, dancing step, and her shamelessly romantic dress, looked as if all she needed to be declared Titania, Queen of the Fairies, was a little wand with a star sparkling on its tip. Josh, who was accustomed to a Valentine contained within four walls, cooking dinner, drinking wine, and making love, could hardly believe she was the same person who now passed in the midst of hundreds of celebrated and distinguished people with as much aplomb as if she had been born on center stage.

A short man detached himself from a crowd and ran up to them, throwing his arms around Valentine without a glance at Josh.

“Jimbo!” She laughed in delight.

“I should spank you, that’s what I should do, you sexy, crafty slut.” She just laughed harder, running her fingers through the stranger’s hair, while Josh watched, not believing that anyone in the world could talk to her like that. “We’ve all missed you like crazy, Prince most of all, no,
me
most of all—how dare you run off just to become rich and famous? I may never forgive you. Where’s your gratitude, you wench? Did I ever get even a Christmas card?”

“Jimbo, I never forgot you—but things were busy—oh, as if you don’t know! This is Josh Hillman. Josh, Jimbo Lombardi is one of my former playmates, a very naughty one I’m afraid.” The two men shook hands awkwardly. Valentine still clung to Jimbo’s arm. “Tell me what you’ve been up to, you evil creature. Who have you corrupted lately?”

“As a matter of fact—”

“Tell!”