The Renewable Virgin (17 page)

It's not wrong. It's just jealousy, homely women have always been jealous of pretty women, that's all it is, plain jealousy. Well, they didn't actually say it was wrong—she said, Dr. Benedict said, she meant what I was doing with my looks was wrong. Hair-splitting. What does she know about it? What does she
know
? With all her college degrees and her easy life, she never had to put herself on display like some prize cow at a county fair, hoping to God some fat-cat producer would see her and like her. She never had to do that. But Marian had said she wasn't really yelling at me anyway, she was just using me as a substitute for Richard Ormsby. Well, maybe.

Would Ted have tuned in to me like that if I'd been homely? No. He would not have. Would
I
have tuned in to him if
he
was homely? Maybe. I don't really know. Men don't have to be beautiful.

But now one beautiful man by the name of Richard Ormsby was dead, and Fiona Benedict
couldn't
have killed him because she was locked up at the time it happened. In a way that was too bad, I
liked
thinking of that know-it-all woman as a villain. But that must have been why she was so cranky and nasty, because she was in jail for something she didn't do. But Marian said she
did
try to kill Ormsby in the CBS studio, so who did kill him in Rockefeller Center, an accomplice? What was this, a conspiracy of historians? Oh, come
on
.

Dear Mom, nothing much happening here, two murders and a little blackmail, write soon. The more scared I am, the worse the joke. I was scared of what was happening to Ted, and I was scared I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. I was terrified that two murderers were running around out there whose paths had crossed mine and could do so again. Or was it only one murderer? Did the same guy who killed Rudy also shoot down Ormsby? Richard Ormsby—a stranger with whom I had no connection at all, yeah,
whom
. Except that a woman who had tried to kill him also hated me. I was even scared of Fiona Benedict.

Now wait a minute, wait a minute, don't go lumping everything together like that. Three different things had happened. Thing number one was that Rudy Benedict had been murdered. Thing number two was that Richard Ormsby had been murdered. And thing number three was that Ted Cameron was being blackmailed, probably by Nathan Pinking but maybe by someone else. There was no reason to think things number one, two, and three were connected with one another. Trouble was, there was no reason to think they were
not
connected, either.

The only link between the two murders that I could see was Rudy's mother. But Rudy's death didn't have anything to do with the competition between two books about some British officer way back in Queen Victoria's day. (I think it was Victoria.) And what did Ted's blackmailer have to do with either death? Nothing that I could see. Ted didn't even know Rudy Benedict; he knew about his murder, but then he didn't know Richard Ormsby either. Was Marian Larch wrong about Fiona Benedict? Maybe she hadn't tried to kill the Englishman at all. But whether she did or not, that was one set of problems and they had nothing to do with me, thank God. The sooner I saw the last of Fiona Benedict the better.

I couldn't make any sense of it. Best leave it to the police to figure out, don't try to second guess the professionals. Marian and Ivan and Captain—what
is
his name?—Michaels, Captain Michaels, that's it; they were the ones to figure out the mess.

Except that I knew something they didn't know. I knew that Ted Cameron was being blackmailed.

But that wasn't connected to the murders, right? That meant there'd be no real danger to Ted if I told Marian he was being blackmailed, right? I was damned sure of that, right? I was willing to risk Ted's neck on my certainty that he had no connection with either murder. Right?

Well, not
wrong
. But not exactly right either. Could the police investigate a case of blackmail without uncovering what it was the victim had done that made him blackmailable in the first place? What did Ted
do
?—it always came back to that. How much did I trust him?

How much did he trust me? He wanted me to know something was wrong, I was sure of it. It wasn't just business problems either, although things were going bad for him there too. Aunt Augusta and Cousin Roger and Nephew Somebody and a few more sisters and cousins whom he reckoned by the dozens were all ganging up on him, he said, making a bigger fuss than usual in their periodic tries to take the presidency of Cameron Enterprises away from him. But if Ted was kicked out as president, that meant he wouldn't be able to keep on paying off his blackmailer and then what? And Thursday morning something had happened to make him break up with me. Why? To protect me? Was something so horrible going to happen to Ted that he wanted to make sure I was in the clear before it all blew up?

I was still trying to decide what to do when I got a call from someone who identified herself only as Mimsy and who asked me to come to a meeting in Nathan Pinking's office. I hadn't seen Nathan for a while—I was nervous about facing him. I don't know how to talk to
blackmailers
. But when I got to Nathan's office, I stopped worrying about blackmail because something else had come along, something in the person of Leonard Zoff—who'd probably sent me laxative and toilet paper. Besides, Nathan Pinking and Leonard Zoff in the same room at the same time is not my favorite way to spend an afternoon.

Oh yes incidentally and by the way, there was one other little matter that kept me from feeling on top of the world at that particular moment. It was my birthday. Yep, I'd actually done it—I'd turned thirty. I didn't, tell, a,
soul
.

So there I was, feeling elderly, in a room with two men I didn't trust, not sure how I should act toward either of them—because they were in the middle of grandiose plans to make me rich and famous. That's right, rich and famous:
Kid, I'm gonna make you a star
. They were planning a campaign to put me in the public eye, everything from presenting awards at a boat show on the West Coast to narrating a pop documentary about women's hairstyles.

‘Your so-called agent has been holding out on you,' Nathan snickered to me. ‘Buncha junk lined up for you he didn't tell you about. Afraid you'd kick him out. Guest announcer at a ladies' wrestling match? Haw! Zoff, you've got as much class as a garbage collector.'

‘Don't listen to that shithead, darling,' Leonard said loudly around a cigar in his mouth. ‘As usual, he don't know what he's talking about. I always have something in the works, but I don't tell you about it til it starts to firm up.'

‘Lady wrestlers?' I said dubiously, while Nathan laughed haw-haw-haw.

Leonard gave a long martyred sigh, something he was good at. ‘No, not lady wrestlers. I told you not to listen to that shithead. A new series of specials about women's sports, different host every week, different
sports
every week. The network wants you for one of the segment hosts, nothing to do with
announcing
a wrestling match. Might not even be on your segment. See how that shithead twists everything? Couldn't tell it straight if his life depended on it.'

It made no impression on Nathan, who kept right on haw-hawing. ‘You watch, you'll end up ringside calling the blows,' he told me between guffaws.

Supposedly I'd been summoned so my agent and my producer and I could talk over plans for my future, but after a while it became clear I could just as well have stayed home.
They
were making the decisions, and I would do what I was told. Somehow those two enemies had agreed that one more year of
LeFever
would be my last, whether the show was renewed or not. By then they hoped to have a new series ready for me, if not the result of the TV movie I was scheduled to make, then something else.

Almost casually Nathan Pinking informed me that rewrite work was being done on the script. It seemed the setting was to be changed, damn it. The original plan was to show me as a bright young thing fresh out of law school who's taken into a big, tradition-bound firm where my unorthodox ways stirred things up a bit. The stirring-things-up-a-bit episodes were to alternate with ones in which I benefited from the experience and advice of older, wiser heads. Something for everybody, you see? Rebellion for the young, triumph over rebellion for the old. With a fair sprinkling of steamy love scenes for everybody.

As shallow as it sounded, I was still looking forward to the role because it would give me a chance to do something other than show off the bod. Being ornamental is okay but not if it's the
only
thing you get to do. There are only so many ways you can pose prettily for the camera. I was always asking the
LeFever
director for things to do, sharpening a pencil, piloting a space ship, anything.

So I was sorry to hear the law office setting had been scrapped. The series format would be kept, but the whole thing would be transferred to a hospital setting. (‘Hospitals are back,' Nathan Pinking had announced.) Now Nathan and Leonard were arguing about what my role should be. Nathan suggested brain surgeon.

Leonard's mouth dropped open and he almost lost his cigar. ‘I swear to God, Pinking, you must be taking stupid pills,' he said. ‘We've been selling her as a piece of tail for two years and all of a sudden everybody's gonna accept her as a
brain surgeon
? I've spent the last twenty-five years listening to your shit, but that's the biggest piece you ever came up with!'

‘A
sexy
brain surgeon, you Neanderthal asshole, that's the difference—is that too much for you to grasp? Underneath all that brainy efficiency she's still all woman, she's still a garden of delights for the right man. Got that? No matter how intimidating she is during the day, at night in bed things are like always. You think
that
won't go over, hah? Top of the ratings.'

‘We've got a problem,' I said. ‘I can't control what you two say to each other when I'm not here, but I cannot sit here and allow you to talk about me like this.' I turned to Leonard. ‘Do you realize you just called me a piece of tail?'

He was instantly and unconvincingly contrite. ‘Darling, what can I say? You know talking to this shithead always makes me vulgar. You know you're no piece of tail and I know it, don't hold a slip of the tongue against a harried old man. Okay?'

‘Right, right,' Nathan said impatiently. He had more important things to concern him than my thin skin.

So they went on with their arguing, quickly forgetting all about my objection to being spoken of as if I were a whore. Four or five years ago I'd have given my eyeteeth to be where I was now, sitting in the office of an important producer while he and my agent worked out the specifics of my career for me. But there was no good feeling to it, there was nothing good about any of it. I felt like a piece of meat.

A piece of tail
, Leonard Zoff had said.

You're selling yourself
, Fiona Benedict had said.

A prize cow at the county fair
, Marian Larch had said.

Nathan gave in on the brain surgeon, and they eventually settled on resident psychiatrist. By then I didn't really much care. How did I get myself involved with these two? I was legally bound to both of them for another few years, and they were giving me the full star build-up. So what the hell was I complaining about? I'd never had to do any of the things a lot of women had had to do in this business. Leonard had never handed me a list of producers with instructions to sleep with as many as I could. And Nathan had never called on me to put in appearances at
that
kind of party. Strictly speaking, they had both left me alone.

So why was I feeling sick to my stomach? I knew Leonard looked on his women clients as so much meat, why was I so surprised? And Nathan had the same kind of respect for his actors that Sherman had had for Georgia. I was a big girl now, what did I expect—soft music and flowers? Girl Scout cookies?

When it was time to go, I was still caught up in my own thoughts and wasn't aware of the fancy footwork going on until it was over—Nathan had maneuvred Leonard out of the office while I was still inside and had quickly locked the door. Leonard pounded on the door and yelled at me not to sign anything, I yelled back that I wouldn't, and I turned to Nathan Pinking to see what it was all about.

He waited until Leonard had given up and gone away, and then said, ‘I want you to sign an exclusive management contract with me. Dump Zoff, Kelly. The man has no vision, no class. He thinks small time, he can't help it. That business about calling you a piece of tail—that was no one-time thing. He calls you that all the time. You're just not around to hear it. Why stay with a man who thinks of you like that?'

So there it was; Nathan saw Leonard's slip of the tongue as a chance to undercut his old enemy. Marian Larch had said the two men had once been partners; how could they ever have stood each other? Nathan would have signed a trained seal act away from Leonard if he thought it would cause Leonard trouble.

‘Leonard and I have a contract,' I said noncommittally.

‘Contracts can be broken. And where has it got you anyway?' he sneered. ‘Lady wrestlers! You're too classy for that kind of action, Kelly, but that's something Zoff will never see. You sign with me and you'll never have to do those schlock bits again. You won't have to do anything just for the exposure.'

‘Leonard isn't just going to roll over and play dead, you know,' I stalled.

‘There are ways of handling these things,' Nathan said with a knowing smirk. ‘And I'll tell you something in confidence, Kelly—Leonard Zoff is holding on by his fingernails. He talks a good game and brags about all his successful clients, but he's in hock up to his ears. He's gambling on
you
to hit it big and pull him out of his mess.'