The Rothman Scandal (6 page)

“Look who the cat dragged in. Dolores Blearman. God, she looks awful. Tom left her, you know.”

“Oh? Another woman?”

“No, darling. Another
man
.”

“Well, it's either one or the other, isn't it? Dolores! How marvelous you look.…”

“Him? I forget his name. He's really nothing but a gofer for Helmut Newton, but they say that in the darkroom he can salvage some of Helmut's worst shots.”

“Darling, you can
imagine
what else goes on in Helmut's darkroom, can't you?”

“Photographed her through
gauze?
It had to be more like burlap, darling, or linoleum—to block out all her stretch marks. Look at that neck. It's one
solid
stretch mark. She looks like a turtle.”

“Well, if she had as many dicks sticking out of her as she's had stuck into her, she'd look like a porcupine.”

“There's Dodie Applegate, getting drunk again. The
Washington Post
trashed her last novel. They called it ‘clitorature.' Don't you love it?”

“Alex's June cover? I hear it was a desperation move, darling—desperation city. Herb Rothman told her, ‘Get me five million, or you're finished.
Finished
.'”

“Speaking of finished, there's Portia Perlman.…”

“Well, none of us are getting any younger, darling, including our hostess. Oh, Alex!
Darling!
You're looking marvelous tonight!”

Lenny moved slowly about the terrace, listening here, listening there, as the noise of the party rose, as the pink-coated waiters scurried about, as a few pale stars began to appear in the evening sky, as the lights of the city began to come on, and the clothes-pinned tablecloths swelled and billowed and slapped in the breeze like spinnakers. Lighted candles guttered from the centerpieces.

In the northeast corner of the terrace, Lenny overheard an interesting conversation.

“Has Alex Rothman had her face lifted? I'd say yes.”

“Hmm. How old
is
she, anyway? Forty-six? Forty-seven?”

“Let's just say she's a few years older than her friend Mel Jorgenson, darling.”

“Doesn't she look pleased with herself tonight? No wonder her husband killed himself.”

“She actually did kill a man once, you know. With a gun. Bang-bang. It was years ago, but it was in all the papers.”

“Oh? Was it a lover?”

“No one knows, exactly. But there were the usual rumors.”

“Is it true that if a woman wants to get ahead at Rothman Publications, she has to fuck Herb Rothman?”

“What a ghastly thought, darling. But it's certainly not true of Alex. She and Herb loathe each other.”

“Well, perhaps that's why?”

“I always assumed it was
Ho
Rothman she was fucking. She's always been Ho's little pet.”

“But now they say Ho's a complete vegetable. Herb's getting ready to take over everything.”

“Well, one thing's certain—she slept her way to the top one way or the other. She
must
have, considering her background, which is from Nowheresville.”

“They say before she met Steve Rothman she was a disc jockey in Kansas City.”

“Worse, darling. She read the weather.”

“Still, you've got to admit she looks—
all right
.”

“You'd look all right, too, darling, if every designer in the world gave you free clothes.”

“Are you implying that I
don't
look all right—darling?”

“Well, one thing I happen to know. She's in deep trouble—in spite of all this nonsense about five million circulation, and the ridiculous ad in this morning's
Times
. As everybody in this business knows, circulation can be
bought
. But meanwhile, Vinnie, who does my hair, also does Pegeen Rothman's hair, and Vinnie told
me
that Pegeen told
him
that Herb was absolutely furious with what Alex did with the June cover. He was also furious about the ad in this morning's
Times
.

“Oh? I didn't know that Herb and Pegeen spoke to each other anymore.”

“Oh, they speak. It's just that they don't have much to say to one another.”

“That's a big difference, of course.”

“Anyhoo, Herb hated the June cover. He said it was just another of Alex's gimmicks. He says Alex is getting to be just too gimmicky an editor, and all her gimmicks are beginning to seem old hat. He's definitely looking around for someone younger.”

“Well, I think that's only fair. Alex has been in that spot for much too long. It's high time she moved over in favor of someone else. I always thought Mona Potter should have that job. She was promised it, you know, until Ho and Alex jewed her out of it.”

“My dear, I said someone
younger
. Someone younger wouldn't be Mona Potter.”

“I don't care what you say about Mona. Mona's always been very nice to me.”

“Hmm …”

“She'd be nice to you, if you treated her properly—if you know what I mean, darling.”

“Anyhoo, things are going to change around here when Herb gets in the saddle, wait and see.”

“How old is Herb, anyway?”

“Let's just say he's past the company's mandatory retirement age. But of course if you own the joint, I guess you can change the rules any way you want.”

“They've certainly changed the rules when it comes to Lenny Liebling. What's his secret, d'you suppose?”

In a lowered voice: “I've heard he's Herb Rothman's gay lover.”

“Herb? Gay? With all his women?”

“Beards, darling, nothing but beards. To protect the family's reputation.”

“So it's Herb and—Lenny.”

“Shhh, darling! He's standing right over
there
.…”

Wearing his bemused, supercilious smile, Lenny moved away from this pair.

In the corner of the terrace, he spotted young Joel Rothman in conversation with the young woman in dark glasses and the glossy helmet of short, jet-black hair, who had just identified herself as “a visitor from England.” Joel was the only other blood Rothman at the party. Joel was Alexandra Rothman's son, soon to be eighteen and fresh out of Exeter. Though his horn-rimmed glasses gave him a slightly owlish look, he was a good-looking boy—tall and slim, with thick blond, slightly windblown hair.

“I know all about you from your grandfather,” Lenny heard the young woman say. “I know you're the apple of his eye. Some day, you're going to take over the whole Rothman empire.”

Joel ran his index finger around the inside of the collar of his white shirt. “I wish people wouldn't call it an empire,” he said. “It's just a family business like any other.”

“Your grandfather says you have the makings of a fine journalist.”

“He just means I have certain pet peeves about the way the English language is used nowadays. I wrote my senior paper on this at school.”

“Oh? Tell me about that.”

“For instance, just the other day in the
New York Times
, Paul Goldberger, in his architecture column, wrote, ‘This building is quite different than other buildings this architect has designed.' Doesn't Goldberger—doesn't anybody editing the
Times
—know that it should be ‘different
from
'? And it annoys me to read, also in the
Times
, that the Helmsleys live in ‘a twenty-one-room estate.' Don't they know that estates have acres, not rooms? And if you listen to the radio, you'll hear all kinds of mistakes. ‘Babysitting her grandchild,' instead of with, or for. A chaise longue called a chaise lounge. A bedroom suite called a bedroom suit. ‘Upon graduating high school,' instead of
being graduated from
. The other day I heard an announcer say that some society woman had eloped with her male
masseuse
. A masseuse is female, of course. More and more I hear people saying they feel
nauseous
, when they mean nauseated. I also hate it when I hear people say, ‘My sterling,' or ‘real gold,' or that somebody has ‘his very own private plane.' And, over and over again, if you listen to radio giveaway shows, you'll hear the announcer say, ‘Con
grad
ulations!' I could go on and on about this, but I'm probably boring you stiff, aren't I?”

“No! It's fascinating—and true!”

Joel Rothman blushed easily, and he was blushing now. “Anyway, that's what I wrote my senior paper on.”

“Fascinating.”

Joel smiled. He had a nice smile, and his teeth were white and even. “I heard a good one the other day. Two women were talking in Bloomingdale's, and I heard one woman say, ‘Well, the way prices are anymore, and for no more than you're going to use it, why buy it?'”

“Which should have been—?”

“‘The way prices are nowadays, and for as little as you're going to use it.' And I've almost given up on ‘hopefully,' as when the weatherman says, ‘Hopefully, it won't rain over the weekend.'”

She laughed—a light, merry, almost tinkly laugh. “Hopefully, you got an A on your paper,” she said.

“I did—gratefully.”

Now they were both laughing.

“Actually, I put my paper together from things I'd already put down in my journal,” Joel said. “So it wasn't a lot of work.”

“Ah. You keep a journal?”

“Oh, yes. I write in it whenever I have a little bit of private time—which isn't often these days.”

“It seems unusual to me for a chap your age to keep a journal. I should think a lad your age would spend his private time thinking of ways to conquer the fair sex—handsome fellow like you. Do you plan to be a writer?”

Joel's blush deepened. “Well, I come from a publishing family,” he said.

“Oh, yes indeed, I know. And a very distinguished one it is. In fact, I feel a bit out of place here,” she said.

“Out of place? Why?”

“All these famous people. I'm just a nobody. In fact, I wasn't even invited, and I really didn't want to come. But your grandfather insisted on bringing me.”

“You're not a nobody,” he said. “Nobody's a nobody.”

Lenny turned to the man standing next to him and, with a raised eyebrow and a slight nod in the younger couple's direction, mouthed the words, “Does she have a name?”

“Name's Fiona Fenton,” the man whispered. “
Lady
Fiona Fenton. Friend of Herb's. From London.”

“I see.”

“Is this chap a friend of yours?” Lenny heard her ask, indicating the big stocky man in the brown suit who stood just behind Joel, and Lenny cocked his ear to hear how Joel would handle this particular question.

Joel gestured with his thumb over his right shoulder. “That's just Otto,” he said, blushing even more deeply.

The woman named Fiona Fenton extended her right hand in Otto's direction, but Otto did not return the gesture and simply stared impassively into space. Otto's job was not to socialize with the party guests. Otto's job was to keep his hands free at all times, for use on the beeper that was clipped to his belt or, if the need arose, for the service revolver that was strapped in a harness across his chest, and bulged under the buttoned jacket of his brown suit.

“I have a bodyguard,” Lenny heard Joel mumble. “That's why I have no privacy.” Lenny turned away now, and moved on to other conversations.

Joel and his mother had had words about Otto just that morning, before Alex left for the office. Four years earlier, Herbert Rothman had received a crudely written note in the mail demanding ten million dollars in return for the life of the youngest male Rothman heir. Normally such a note, and such a demand, would not be taken seriously. Men in Herbert Rothman's position received such threats fairly routinely, and routinely turned them over to the FBI and forgot about them. But, it turned out, one of the grandsons of Henry Ford II had been similarly threatened and, from England, Buckingham Palace had reported the same threat to Prince William, the heir to the throne, demanding the same sum translated into British pounds. The FBI had decided to take the case very seriously, that an international kidnap or extortion ring was at work, and Interpol was brought into the case. Herbert Rothman was advised to hire someone for Joel's protection, and Otto Forsthoefel, a former Pinkerton man, was chosen for the job.

That morning, at the breakfast table, Alex had said to Joel, “Well, Buster, have you decided what you want for a birthday present?” Ever since he was a baby, Alex and Steven had called him Buster, and how that got started she no longer remembered.

“Yes,” he answered darkly.

“Let me guess,” she said, squeezing the last polyp of her grapefruit into her spoon. “A Porsche? A Mercedes? A BMW?”

“I want to get rid of effing Otto. That's
all
I want, Mom.”

She frowned and put down her grapefruit spoon.

“Mom, do you know what it's been effing
like
with effing Otto following me around all the time? Do you have any
idea?
Do you know what it's been like at
school?
Do you know they kicked me off the effing soccer team? I was a quarterback, but in our big game with Andover a guy illegally body-checked me, and I ended up on my ass. Effing Otto ran out on the field and made them stop the
game!
And we were
winning
, for Chrissake! Do you know that I wanted to go out for hockey this winter, but I couldn't because effing Otto doesn't know how to effing
skate?
Do you know how the guys at school tease me about effing Otto? Do you know what the
girls
call me? ‘The Boy in the Bubble!' Dammit, Mom, nobody's going to kidnap me, nobody's going to murder me. Nobody's even
tried
. If you ask me, Mom, those effing letters were nothing but an effing hoax to begin with, until the effing FBI got into the act. But I'll tell you this, Mom. I'm not going to effing Harvard with effing Otto following me around, and that's effing final!”