The Renewable Virgin (16 page)

Kelly accepted that. ‘Besides, Leonard would have no reason to kill Rudy. They were friendly. They weren't even working together—they never did, so far as I know.'

‘Yes, they did—about a dozen years ago,' I told her. ‘When Rudy was writing scripts for that well-known production team, Pinking and Zoff.'

Her head swiveled towards me. ‘Pinking and Zoff? You mean Leonard was a
producer
? Wow. And in business with Nathan Pinking?'

‘That's right.' The news so surprised her that she was quiet the rest of the way to the detention cells.

Inside the building, we waited in the interview room while Fiona Benedict was being brought up. Kelly began to have second thoughts. ‘I'm not sure this was such a good idea.'

‘Too late now,' I said as the door opened and a matron escorted Dr. Benedict in.

She stopped cold when she saw Kelly. ‘What do you want?' Not a very auspicious beginning.

Kelly stood up, hesitated. ‘I, ah, I wanted to see if you were all right. If you needed anything.'

‘Nothing.' Fiona Benedict's eyes narrowed and she forced herself to say, ‘I suppose I should thank you for sending Howard.'

Well, yes, I suppose you should
, I was thinking, but Kelly said quickly, ‘That's all right, glad to help. Is there anything else? Anything you want that I can bring?'

The dislike on Dr. Benedict's face was so naked that I wasn't surprised when Kelly flinched. I doubted that she'd ever been looked at like that before in her entire life. ‘The role of Lady Bountiful doesn't suit you,' Dr. Benedict said contemptuously. ‘Not convincing, not convincing at all.'

‘Wh-what do you mean?' Kelly stammered.

‘Little Miss Innocence. You forgot to bat your eyes.'

Kelly looked as if she didn't believe what she was hearing. ‘Why are you talking to me like this?'

‘What are you doing here?' the older woman snapped out. ‘Did you come to crow? Go away, Kelly Ingram, go away and don't come back. I don't want to see you or your kind ever again. You and your flashy looks and your cheap obviousness—'

‘Now, wait a minute!' Kelly said hotly, stung into defending herself. ‘Who the hell are you to call me
cheap
?'

‘Oh, I'm sure you put a high price on yourself,' the older woman said heavily. Her shoulders slumped. ‘You sell yourself and then you sell out the rest of us.'

Kelly glanced at me; I shook my head—I didn't know what she was talking about either. ‘What are you saying, Dr. Benedict?' I asked.

‘Look at her, Marian,' she said bitterly in reply. ‘So pleased with herself. So willing to adjust to whatever demands a man might make of her. But she's never tarnished and she's always fresh and ready for more. The ideal woman—a renewable virgin. What a role model for young girls!' She took a couple of steps towards Kelly. ‘We're
all
teachers—don't you understand that? You go on that asinine show and teach schoolgirls to be exhibitionists. You teach them that their function in life is to display their bodies and never think at all. You're telling them the only worthwhile goal in life is to attract male attention. Yes, I call that
cheap.'

Kelly was outraged. ‘It's only a
role
I'm playing, for crying out loud!'

‘And if you don't do it, somebody else will? That's the rest of the argument, isn't it? The same rationalizations women have always used. You made your choice long ago—you're selling yourself, and there's no way you can pretend you're not.'

Kelly looked as if she'd been slapped in the face; you could almost see the fingermarks on her cheek. I decided to interfere. I stepped between the two of them and said, ‘Fiona, that's enough. You're being unfair. Don't take it out on her.'

She looked me straight in the eye for a long moment and then without speaking turned on her heel. The matron opened the door and they were gone.

Kelly sank weakly into the nearest chair. ‘How can she hate me that much? I never did anything to her.'

‘It wasn't really you she was telling off. It was Richard Ormsby.'

‘Ormsby? But I don't even know him!'

‘You're both attractive, successful television personalities. Dr. Benedict attacked you because you were the handiest representative of a world she feels threatened by. And it's the world her son chose to live in, don't forget—that's mixed up in it too.'

‘But all that business about selling myself—'

‘Well, she couldn't very well blast you for writing bad history, could she? That's really what's bugging her. She sees it as a form of prostitution.'

‘Marian, do you think I'm selling myself?' While I was floundering for an answer, she went on, ‘I am going to judge the Miss America contest. It's all set. I'm going to do it.'

I started to say
Oh, Kelly
in exasperation when I realized what she was telling me. Any other woman in her place—myself included—would have been furious, striking out at her accuser, indulging in a long process of self-justification. But Fiona Benedict had said
selling yourself
and Kelly Ingram had thought
Miss America
. A natural link. I always knew Kelly was more self-aware than most glitter girls. She understood the prostitutional aspect of meat parades.

Now if she would only turn her back on it.

But right then she didn't look up to making any decisions at all. ‘Come on, let's get out of this place,' I said. ‘It's beginning to depress me.'

In the car Kelly asked me to come home with her. ‘You're through for the day, aren't you?'

I said I was. ‘Where's Ted Cameron?'

‘Los Angeles. Soothing his Aunt Augusta. Wouldn't you know he'd have an aunt named Augusta?'

I knew of Augusta Cameron; she was the head of Lorelei Cosmetics—one of those
grandes dames
who seem to be the natural rulers in the realm of fashion and cosmetics. ‘Why does Aunt Augusta need soothing?' I asked.

‘Oh, Ted says every couple of years she gets it into her head she could do a better job of running Cameron Enterprises than Ted and he has to go out and calm her down.'

I was hungry and announced the fact. When we got to her apartment, Kelly called the restaurant at the top of the building and ordered dinner to be sent down. While we were waiting I turned on the news and heard something that made me forget all about food.

And that was that Richard Ormsby had been shot.

It had happened while the Englishman was leaving the NBC studios in Rockefeller Center. His assailant had stood behind a barely open stairwell door and fired at Ormsby from there. No one saw his face. His aim had been perfect: his victim died on the spot. The killer had done his damage and made his escape before witnesses were fully able to realize what was happening.

Richard Ormsby was as dead as they come. And all the time Fiona Benedict had been locked up in a detention cell on Sixty-seventh Street, where we'd left her not more than forty-five minutes earlier.

CHAPTER 11

KELLY INGRAM

Ted gave me the news on Thursday, just after noon. I always knew the end of the world would come on a Thursday.

Look at me, making jokes, ha ha ha. I don't know what else to do so I make a joke about it, how else do you stay away from the funny farm when the sky falls on your head? And it fell, all right, oh
wow
did it fall. Crash, bang, BOOM, noisier than the sound track of a science fiction movie, jokes again.
It has to be this way
, he'd said. Sez who?
Why
does it have to be this way? Where's that written down?

No explanation, no answer, no real reason. Just
we're going to have to stop seeing each other, Kelly
. Stop
seeing
each other? Good God, I'm not a character in a 1940s movie, wasn't even born then. And the worst part was he didn't mean it, I mean he
meant
it, we
would
have to stop ‘seeing' each other, but he didn't want to mean it, he didn't want to say it. Ted did not choose to end the affair. He was being forced to end it.

Doesn't that sound stupid? Paranoid, even. Woman gets dumped, thinks up elaborate explanation to save face.
Are you going back to your wife
, I said.
I don't have a wife
, he said.
You've got two
, I said.
Ex-wives
, he said,
and I'm not going back to either one of them
, he said. Then
why
, Ted? Why?

But he had no reason. Just:
It has to be this way
. It was as if he wanted me to know something was wrong, otherwise he'd have made up a believable excuse or tried to make me think he wasn't interested any more or
something
. But there was nothing like that; just
Goodbye, Kelly
, like that. Was he really saying
Help me?
Am I looking for excuses?

He made sure we were in my apartment when he told me—so
he
could leave, I guess, rather than put himself in the spot of having to tell me to go. After he'd gone, I just sat there and stared at the wall until I realized I couldn't see anymore, it had gotten so dark. Wednesday he ordered the tickets for our trip to Scotland, Thursday morning he went to a meeting, Thursday afternoon we were through. So all right, Sherlock, figure out where the change came. I didn't know who or whom his meeting was with; he always told me when I asked but this time I hadn't, damn it. But something had happened that Thursday morning to make me
persona non whatever
, and of course I had to wonder if it had anything to do with the blackmail. Damn Marian Larch, if she'd given me a name when I asked for one maybe all this could have been avoided.

I refused to accept it. It was a temporary separation, that's all, forced on Ted by a villainous blackmailer, Nathan Pinking or somebody else, somebody hateful.
Why
was utterly beyond me, I couldn't even begin to guess. But what was happening now was only an interruption of the normal state of things, an obstacle to be overcome, a thing-in-the-way to be removed, the course of true love never did run on well-oiled wheels or however. It was up to me to do something.

Big talk. Do what? Two little words, floating on top: Marian Larch. That'd do it—sic the police on them. That would do
something
all right, maybe put Ted in jail? (What did he
do?
) Didn't really mean it, I was just thinking nasty things—I was hurt and I wanted to hurt back. Yes, Ted, I wanted to hurt
you
. Why hadn't you managed better? You are a
professional
manager, you should have managed your personal business better.

But I didn't want to call in Marian Larch or Ivan Whatsit or Captain Whoosit for another reason, the best reason in the world, and that was it was too embarrassing. I'd be damned if I'd play a woman-scorned role. Because that's what I'd look like if I went to the police for help, a woman scorned who was getting even—with Ted, with whoever was blackmailing him. With the
world
. And I
wasn't
scorned, dammit! Ted was almost crying when he told me it was all over.

But still he did tell me.

Oh Christ, what a mess. Somebody had Ted's life on a string; all he had to do was pull the string and Ted jumped.
Was
it Nathan Pinking? Whoever it was, he'd come between me and Ted—for what reason? For kicks? Just to prove he could do it?
That
sounded like Nathan Pinking, all right. Nathan didn't particularly dislike me, and that Fiona Benedict was the only person I knew who outright hated me. (I think.) But Nathan had invested money in me, I was one of his more promising ‘properties'—why would he want to hurt me? Maybe he didn't; maybe he was just using me to get at Ted; maybe it wasn't Nathan Pinking at all; and maybe I should stop making up fairy tales.

Wish I hadn't thought of that woman. The way she lit into me—my God, so much resentment! Rudy's mother, I mean. As if she'd been storing up grudges against me for
years
, and we'd only known each other a couple of months. The very first time I saw her she accused me of having caused Rudy's death, the old bitch, God, listen to me. I felt like killing her, completely forgot myself. If it hadn't been for Marian Larch—

I don't think I've ever known two women more unalike than Fiona Benedict and Marian Larch. Rudy's mother is awful, just awful—arrogant and disapproving and always looking down her nose at me. At
me!
But Marian Larch doesn't judge everybody by herself, she's friendly and helpful and in her own way a very cool lady, she doesn't get rattled and she always knows what to do. She agrees with Fiona Benedict about one thing, though, the Miss America kind of thing, but she never makes me feel like some kind of worm from under a rock because I don't agree with
her
. But Dr. Benedict makes me feel I could never never never do anything that would please her, not that I want to, please her, that is.

Older people are
always
doing that, it makes them feel superior. If they don't have anything else going for them, they claim
age
automatically gives them answers that are withheld from undeveloped ignoramuses like me. They specialize in being right. No matter what happens, they say in their smug little voices: ‘You don't know yet, wait until you're older.' God, is that infuriating! They can tell you
any
thing, anything at all, and then stop you from disagreeing with them by saying you're not old enough to know. You mean you believe that ridiculous story about the world being
round
? Oh dear, tee hee.
You don't know yet, wait until you're older
. Fiona Benedict had done something like that to me. She'd taken one look at me and decided
no
. Who the hell is she to set herself up as my judge?

I'll tell you who she is. She's a dried-up old prune who's past it, that's who she is. These women who are always saying
Stop making yourself a sex object
, they're always old or ugly or both. I hate to say it, but if Marian Larch was even a little bit pretty, she might not be so quick to turn up her nose at the Miss America contest. I
like
looking the way I look, damn it, and why should I have to apologize for it? Why is it so wrong to be pretty?