The Black Marble (9 page)

The medical bills had been truly unbelievable. That was the word. Until you'd been visited by a relentless cancer and all it entailed—chemotherapy, radiotherapy,
four
years of extensive hospitalization, outpatient nursing—the expense was not to be believed.

It was legally difficult, hence expensive, even to break the trust so that the money could be used. Lawyers had to be paid so that Madeline could pay doctors. She often thought bitterly that a physician like Dr. Corey Dills should have known how “imprudent” a raging disease could be, and how a healthy trust fund could decompose like the bones of Madeline's mother.

Toward the end, Madeline's lawyer tried to persuade her to apply, on her mother's behalf, for Medi-Cal.
Welfare.
A word used in Old Pasadena with words like
leftist
and
Socialist.
It was so unthinkable it would have killed the old woman swifter than the disease. The idea of it sent Madeline Whitfield off on the worst Scotch and sedative binge of her lifetime. She continued to pay for a private room and the best medical care possible until the very end. Mercifully, the old woman's bones mortified before the withering trust fund. But the trust was itself terminally afflicted.
One
more year.

There had been a few humiliating attempts to confront the inevitable. Madeline would never forget fearfully approaching the personnel desk of a women's shop on Lake Avenue.

“May I help you?” She was an overdressed woman with green eyelids.

“Yes, I… this is a résumé. I understand you have a position available. I'd like to apply.”

“A position.”

“Yes, as a saleslady. I happen to have a great deal of time on my hands lately and I … I'd like to keep busy.”

“You'd like to apply as a part-time saleslady?”

“Yes. Or full time, perhaps. Actually, I have a great deal of time on my hands these days and … yes, full time.”

The woman glanced at the résumé and looked up curiously.

“You live in the San Rafael district?”

“Yes.”

“It's lovely up there,” she smiled deferentially. “Some of our best customers live in those big lovely homes.”

“Yes,” Madeline said nervously.

“I see you have a master's degree in history, ma'am,” the overdressed woman said. “And these character references, well, some of the most prominent members of the community!”

“Yes, do you think I might …”

“Tell me, Mrs. Whitfield, have you done this before? Sales, I mean? There's absolutely nothing here about work experience.”

“I haven't been in sales, no, but I think I'd be suitable,” Madeline said, face flaming.

“What kind of work have you done, ma'am?”

“Well, I was married, you see, and … well, I've been awfully busy over the past twenty years. Awfully busy running my home, and of course there was a great deal of charitable work, and so forth.”

“Yes. Tell me, Mrs. Whitfield, have you ever … worked? I mean at a job?”

“Not exactly at a job, but…”

“Yes, well we have a store policy, ma'am. We, uh, only hire ladies with experience. Actually, ma'am, I wonder if you couldn't fill up this spare time in some other way. A lady of your background, I don't think you'd like being a salesperson. I certainly know what it's like to have free time on your hands. When my children grew up …”

“Yes, perhaps you're right,” Madeline said, voice breaking. “One gets restless. Yes. Probably I should just increase my involvement in the Junior Philharmonic.”

“Yes, that's what I'd recommend,” the woman said.

“Yes, I think so. Yes,” Madeline said, stumbling out of the office, forgetting her meticulously typed résumé.

Madeline looked at her watch and realized that she had to pull herself together. Chester would arrive in forty-five minutes to work with Vickie, and Madeline didn't want to be there for the session today. The anticipation was debilitating.

It was not good to let one's fantasies fly unchecked to New York and Madison Square Garden. To the prospect of owning a national champion.

The exclusive Beverly Hills Kennel Club had only twenty-three members. Well, there'd be twenty-four come this spring. How could they refuse to invite her to join? How could anyone in the dog world refuse her anything if … Westminster! Madison Square Garden! Lord!

Madeline scalded her lip with the coffee and decided to get dressed and assuage the tenseness by window-shopping on the west side, to stroll through the boutiques and shops like Theodore's. Not that she was young or brave or slim enough to shop there. Or
rich
enough, since their styles were faddish and you had to be ready to change each season. But it was fun to watch the platoons of voyeurs ogling the nubile young salesgirls who were pantyless and braless, and wore see-through cotton pants and T-shirts.

There was no such shopping in Old Pasadena. In Old Pasadena one shopped for “sensible” clothes, comfortable loafers with low stacked heels in colors to match wool-knit pants and jackets. Scottish plaid skirts would never be out of fashion, nor would cardigans and V-neck sweaters over cream-colored blouses. Sensible.

But if voyeurs went to shops like Theodore's to ogle the salesgirls, most Pasadena Junior Leaguers went there for similar reasons: They squandered money in overpriced west side restaurants, because of (Dare one admit it?)
movie stars.
“Last night at the Ma Maison, I dined next to Barbra Streisand …”

Though Old Pasadena deplored the libertine life-style over the hill—the star worship, the “A” tables at Chasen's, the parties upstairs at the Bistro. Though they would never
live
among them: the celebrities, the Jews, the
nouveau riche—
they were
insatiable
celebrity watchers. A proper Pasadena matron might never so much as glance toward the booth in the Palm Restaurant where Jack Nicholson was sitting, but her pulse was racing. And if in the Polo Lounge Warren Beatty said, “Pardon me, you dropped your napkin,” to a Junior Leaguer from Old Pasadena, she would look at him blandly in
non
recognition, and say, “Thank you very much,” grinding the Neil McCarthy salad thoroughly, with disciplined jaws that wanted to
tremble!

A maître d' from the Huntington Sheraton Hotel commented wryly that Old Pasadena would dine and drink and dance from seven until midnight, and
grumble
if the check was more than twelve dollars per person. Yet they would gladly
tip
that much over the hill at Matteo's for an “A” table. A restaurateur could get rich off Old Pasadena, they said, if only he could bus in movie stars on Saturday night.

Madeline Dills Whitfield happened to pass the Brown Derby while driving in Beverly Hills that afternoon. She was fantasizing with delicious abandon. She and Vickie would be photographed at the Sign of the Dove in New York. (Did they let dogs in there? Well,
how
could they refuse a champion who had just won at Madison Square Garden?) There was a man with them at lunch. He was a well-known exhibitor from Long Island. He changed variously with her mood. Right now he looked like Paul Newman. Madeline would be pictured with Vickie in
Time
magazine, and the
Los Angeles Times
would do a feature article about the Pasadena dog who conquered New York. Madeline Dills Whitfield would be … well …
famous.

In Old Pasadena, family, money, even power seldom got one's picture anywhere but the society page. It couldn't buy celebrity. In Old Pasadena, Madeline Whitfield would soon be as popular as a movie star.

She was so caught up in it she drove down Vine Street without rubbernecking. No matter, there were no movie stars lunching at the Derby at that moment. But if she had looked she might have noticed a gangly, middle-aged dog handler she'd often seen at shows. He was standing at Hollywood and Vine, thinking about a massage parlor on the Sunset Strip.

He was watching the door of the Brown Derby. He was about to commit a crime on a very holy day. But then, only two waiters in the Brown Derby and
nobody
in a Sunset Strip massage parlor knew it was a holy day, that it was Russian Christmas.

Like so many Big Moments in Philo's life, it all came down to a lost erection. Philo Skinner, ever the gambler, tossed a quarter in the air. Heads I drive to that massage parlor on the Strip and give my last fifty bucks to some pimply runaway bubblegummer with undeveloped tits to go down on me. Tails, I snatch the schnauzer from the Rolls-Royce and get
rich.
The blood was surging in his throat, his temples, his ruined chest. He sucked his twenty-ninth cigarette of the day, and flipped the quarter.

Heads. Later, maybe dejection, depression, regret, but now—relief. Thank God. He hadn't slept five minutes all night. He was suddenly horny as a billy goat.

But she wasn't a pimply runaway. The woman in the massage parlor was a forty-five-year-old professional with lurid eyebrows, who wasn't impressed with Philo's white-on-white leisure suit, and the imitation gold chain dangling on his bony chest.

“I already told you, honey,” she said, all business, “I'll give you the standard massage, the businessman's special, or the super massage of the day. The prices are listed.”

“Sweetie,” Philo Skinner retorted, “I got a picture of General Grant in my pocket, but I'm not about to give him away without knowing
exactly
what I can expect.”

“I'll give you the standard massage, the businessman's …”

“What's wrong with you?”

“Nothing, Officer.”

“Officer?”

“You sound like a cop.”

“A cop.”

“Last vice cop that tossed me in the slam looked about like you. Can't depend on cops being young and healthy-looking anymore. They dig up some ole bag a bones, give him a Lady Clairol dye job …”

“You miserable cunt!”

“Get outta my place of business!”

“Why you old pile a dog shit you got some nerve!”

“Get outta here!” she said, “before I call a
young
cop with a blue suit. I ain't goin for any a your vice cop entrapment.”

Philo Skinner was outraged when he roared through the door onto Sunset Boulevard, as limp as linguini. Lady Clairol! With
her
lousy dye job? That old hound had a lot of room to talk!

And it was anger now, more than fear, even more than the
thrill
of it, which gave him the impetus. An amateur was about to make his irrevocable first step into crime.

Millie Muldoon Gharoujian always had lunch at the Brown Derby on Friday. Just as she always had dinner Thursday at Scandia and Wednesday at La Strada. Millie Muldoon Gharoujian was a creature of habit. It made it much easier to keep her life in order because she had a third-grade education and a 90 I.Q. In her younger days she had a body and bleach job like Harlow which got her out of the uniform of a waitress and into the bed of an Armenian junk dealer who obligingly departed for the Great Scrapyard after his second heart attack, leaving Millie to marry and divorce four young studs in succession and live a hell of a sexy life high up in Trousdale Estates overlooking all the glittering lights of Baghdad. She had owned at various times, in addition to the studs, a pet ocelot, a cheetah, a boa constrictor and a baby alligator named Archie who was accidentally flushed down the toilet. She also had less exotic creatures like a Siamese cat, a standard poodle, and a miniature schnauzer bitch with terrific bloodlines who liked to amuse herself by chewing the hell out of Archie the alligator, who got sick and tired of it and went bye-bye down the john.

The pup's name was Tutu and she later had shown well, twice winning best of breed, until her mistress got bored with dog shows because lots of the young studs around there were geldings. And because Millie got sick and tired of Tutu's handler always sniffing around like
he
was in heat. Millie Muldoon Gharoujian knew a fortune hunter when she saw one. Besides, the dog handler was at least fifty, about twenty years too old for her. Millie was seventy-six.