West of Paradise Page 11

  “I’m going with Wilton,” she said.

  “Thank you,” said Wilton. “Can Winston come, too?”

  “Look.” Mel turned to Wilton. “She’s new in town. She doesn’t understand how it works. If she goes with me, I can close the deal right there, when he’s up, feeling good after the screening.”

  “I’m going with Wilton,” Kate said stubbornly.

  “You’re going to make me go with my wife?”

  “I guess if you’re going…” Kate said.

  “Why don’t the four of us go together,” said Mel. “I’ll pick you up at seven-fifteen tomorrow. What’s the address? The place with the rats?”

  “We’ll meet you at the screening,” Kate said.

  “It was nice meeting you, Nell,” said Wilton.

  * * *

  “What a jerk,” said Kate after he was gone.

  “He means well, I think,” said Wilton. “They’re all jerks. You just have to find the one with the best intentions.”

  “But why would a man like Victor Lippton do business with someone like that?”

  “Because he represents you. And you don’t have to hold Victor Lippton in such high regard. He has this incredibly beautiful and cultured wife, and he’s forking a lunatic.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She’s my customer. Or she was. I had to get rid of her. She was calling me twelve times a day, in between calls to her astrologer. I had to put my phone on call block so she’d leave me alone.

  “And he’s just as crazy as she is, or he wouldn’t be involved with her. He started to call me, too, to find out where she was, when she wasn’t where she said she was, because she was trying to drive him crazy. I had to call block him, too.”

  “The most powerful man in town,” said Kate, smiling, admiring.

  “Not for me,” Wilton said. “All he did for me was keep my line busy so my customers couldn’t call. I don’t have the time he does. I have to earn a living.”

  * * *

  The beautiful wife of Victor Lippton shopped only on Rodeo Drive, except for an occasional charity buy she threw to Barney’s. The department store was flawlessly constructed, an architectural masterpiece, its interior as well appointed visually as the banks designed by David Foster and I.M. Pei in Hong Kong, where her father had been king, at least until the handover, and Money was God, as opposed to America, where Power was God, and her husband was emperor. It touched Chen spiritually that Barney’s, though it was so airy and light it could have been a cathedral with counters, might be going under. So she went there to pick up something pricey for the next evening’s event, knowing that she by herself could not save the chain, but tales of her buying there could send those who marked her movements into copying them.

  Chen bought a gold lace Ralph Lauren, naked as lingerie, the costliest dress they had in stock, even though it wasn’t one of a kind. And because the evening would probably be cool, and the nude look somewhat chilly, she bought a gold brocade Chanel jacket, tight through the shoulders, just covering what she had of breasts.

  “And what is the name on the account?” said the saleswoman.

  “Victor Lippton,” said Chen.

  The woman watching her waited until Chen was on the escalator going down. She picked out the same two items.

  “And the name on the account?” another salesgirl said.

  “Victor Lippton,” she answered.

  * * *

  Because Wendy could no longer use her title, she stood in Bullock’s Westwood puzzling over what monogram to put on her towels. Shopping for household things was totally alien to her. All her very young life she had lived at boarding schools, or in the home of her parents, or in the castle of her husband, where linens were provided. She had never been aware they weren’t automatically part of the landscape, like grass.

  When the marriage ended, she had no idea that anyone might actually come to her aid. Her parents had moved to a condo in Nice, which they’d bought from selling her childhood photos. A naked one in the bathtub had been peddled in a packet with the telephoto nude of Jackie Onassis on her private Greek island, first printed in Hustler under the heading “The Billion Dollar Bush,” reissued with a black border to commemorate her passing.

  So when the call had come from Samantha Chatsworth, who’d been, the few times they’d met, extremely warm in an English way, inviting Wendy to come to Los Angeles, she’d gratefully accepted. At the time she had thought it would be just for a visit. But everyone had been so kind, she’d stayed. Besides, it was warm. She’d spent most of her winters huddled, all the more since the indignity started to set in. She welcomed the improbable, almost constant sunshine of California, and the existence of undeviating, unsalaried loyalties, like Samantha’s.

  Samantha stood beside her now, along with the bodyguard the royals had given Wendy, as Los Angeles was a lunatic place, and the last thing they needed was a martyred dumped duchess. “Definitely the right color,” Samantha was saying, looking at the lush weave of the royal blue.

  “But what shall I put on them?” Wendy asked. “I’m not allowed to use the family name. I assume that includes the initials. And I don’t want to go back to my maiden name.” She tried not to think about her parents, tanning in the south of France, negotiating with Robin Leach for a tell-all interview, a piece of intelligence she had picked up from watching Hard Copy, which she promised herself she would never do again. “What shall I put on them for a monogram?”

  “Why not just W, for Wendy,” Samantha said. And the fashion magazine, she didn’t add. Because if her plan materialized, the darling once duchess would be the queen of the fashion world, which she already was, but in a reluctant way. It was Samantha’s plan to make it aggressive, unmistakable, marketable. Her allegiance was to East magazine, but she wouldn’t have minded a leg up with Fairchild publications. One had to look to one’s later years, especially when one hadn’t been given stock in one’s own corporation, which even the drudges at Time, Inc. had gotten. “And woman,” she added. “Because that’s what you’re becoming. A symbol for womankind.”

  “I hardly think so,” Wendy said.

  “But it’s true, dear. You’re an inspiration to us all. Put on the planet to guide your fellow feminines, who might, without your presence, and the discernment you practice, not know how to conduct themselves.” She was laying it on a little heavily, but the girl was understandably still shockingly insecure, and it was Samantha’s chosen task to bolster, if they were to make money. “Cast out into the storm by a wicked landlord…”

  “Oh, you musn’t say that about him,” Wendy said.

  “You see, that’s what I mean. Even after the way you’ve been treated, not a nasty word. You are a living example of loving kindness. A true Christian. Practically a Buddhist.”

  “I’m supposed to be on my lunch hour,” said the salesgirl.

  * * *

  They ordered the towels with the monogrammed W, and went back out to the subterranean parking lot where their car was parked. A young woman with long legs got out of a black Saab and greeted Samantha.

  “How are you, Miss Chatsworth?” she said.

  Samantha hadn’t the least idea who she was. She smiled an automatic smile.

  “Kate Donnelly,” said the young woman. “We met yesterday at the funeral.”

  “Sad,” said the ex-duchess. “He was kind.”

  “Did you know him well?” Kate asked her.

  “Oh, you’re the granddaughter,” said Samantha, connecting. The garage was one of those gray, underground, cement-poled places that gave those with collective racial fears flashbacks to the concentration camps where they’d never actually been. Tunneling up at one side into the sunlight, the rest was minimally lit, as though there were no real security problems thus far in this area of Los Angeles, at least. In the shadowy, obfuscated environs, the girl looked rather sallow, as Wendy looked less lovely than fame had made her. “This is…”

  “Wendy.” The once duchess hel
d out her hand, her own name having been clarified for her with the decision about the towels. She would be simply Wendy, only Wendy, as Madonna was only Madonna, only the virtuous version. The one who struggled for the good of her fellow Ws.

  “It’s an honor,” Kate said, and lowered her head a little, the upper-body version of a curtsey.

  “Thank you.” Wendy smiled. “For me, too.” Now that she had bought her own towels, Wendy coveted a little more of what she considered independence: the spontaneity that Americans had. Not coming from set rules of behavior or prepared dialogue, but saying what seemed real, doing what felt open, like the hearts and hearths around her.

  “We’ve got to be going,” said Samantha briskly.

  “Wen … dy…” Kate said charily, not sure it was right to address her so, even though she had implicitly been given permission. “You’re so keyed in to style. What should I buy for a screening at a studio? They said informal, but I’m not sure what that means here.”

  “Have you got gobs of money?” Wendy asked, with unaccustomed bluntness, setting aside her protective coloration, the drab skipping about things that came with her former territory.

  “Not really,” said Kate.

  “Well, then why don’t I just lend you something?” Wendy said, deliberately ignoring Samantha’s scowl. “I’ve got tons of clothes that would be perfect. For hospital openings, visiting orphans, bank celebrations, the occasional ship launch. Worn one time only. We look the same size.”

  “I couldn’t,” said Kate, flabbergasted.

  “That’s right,” Samantha said. “She couldn’t.”

  “But they’ll only go to waste,” Wendy said. “Please. Byron,” she instructed the bodyguard, “give her my address.”

  “But…” Kate said.

  “I’ll expect you around four,” said Wendy.

  * * *

  The company that had loaned Samantha the Silver Cloud had not seen their name in print in spite of all the press around Drayco’s funeral, so they had taken back the limousine, until, they’d said, she anted up. Wendy was still nervous about driving herself in Los Angeles, as she lost concentration a lot of the time and drifted to the wrong side of the road. The bodyguard did not like to act as driver, since that wasn’t what he was hired for. Samantha herself had a ten-year-old 190 E Mercedes, but it needed a new muffler, for which the Benz repair people wanted almost four thousand, just a little less than the Blue Book value of her car. The car still looked good, but as noise-sensitive as Wendy was, Samantha didn’t want her irritated, as irritated as she herself was by Wendy’s imprudence, putting herself at risk, letting someone unknown into her circle, around which Samantha had kept a very tight rubber band.

  The car that waited for them was a Lincoln. The driver was Morton Schein. He had told Wendy he was at her service, and he meant it. “Your carriage awaits without, my lady,” he said, with mocking grandeur, sweeping his hand through the air as he held the back door open for her.

  “Thank you, Morty,” she said, smiling.

  “You’re supposed to say, ‘Without what?’” Morton said.

  “Without what?” said Wendy.

  “Without horses,” he said, and laughed. “An old joke but a bad one.”

  Wendy laughed.

  “Don’t encourage him,” Samantha said, getting into the other side. “You laugh at that, he’ll start telling jokes all the time.”

  “I like jokes,” said Wendy. “Not many of the people I knew told jokes. They just played them.”

  “You mean like shorting the sheets?” asked the bodyguard. “Putting frogs in your bed?”

  “I didn’t know she was French,” said Morton, and turned on the ignition.

  “How could you do that?” Samantha asked Wendy, fuming, not knowing how to show anger to fallen royalty, knowing she oughtn’t to show it at all, but seething inside. “How could you offer clothes and give your address to a perfect stranger?”

  “You knew her.”

  “I only met her yesterday,” Samantha said, as the car pulled up the ramp into the blazing sunlight and they all put on their sunglasses at once. “And I didn’t even remember her.”

  “You said she was Larry Drayco’s granddaughter. She’s just suffered a loss.” Her voice was filled with an understanding of loss, compassion for those who had experienced it.

  “Not his granddaughter. Fitzgerald’s. The American writer.”

  “Then it’s even more meaningful,” Wendy said. “You told me I was put on the planet to guide my fellow feminines.” As questionable as Wendy’s intelligence might have been, as negatively publicized for the purpose of making the house look better than one of its tenants, she had mastered the gift of remembering speeches to the letter, since she’d been forced to make so many of them, and had had so many made to her. “To inspire those who might, without my presence, and discernment, not know how to conduct themselves. Certainly it should be that way with clothes.”

  “I intended for you to have a line of clothing, not to give yours away,” said Samantha.

  “But she seems quite a nice girl, and pretty. I would only have given them to … what do you call it here? Good Will.”

  “You would have been better off,” said Samantha, raging inside, fearful of something she couldn’t quite pinpoint.

  * * *

  “This would be quite comely on you,” Wendy was saying, holding out a beige cocktail dress with subtle gold threads and a chocolate weave through it. “To bring out your coloring.”

  Byron sat nearby, his jacket open so his gun would be easily accessible, as Samantha had cautioned him to do, unable to be present herself, since she did still have a job. The apartment was decorated with upscale rental furniture that Samantha had had an interior designer friend pick out in a day, so Wendy would feel comfortable till the good antiques arrived from home, once the in-laws had conducted the estate sale. She had wearied of the suite at the refurbished Beverly Hills Hotel, where there were always reporters waiting in the lobby for the arrival of Claudia Schiffer, or the reported return of Roman Polanski, incognito, always said to be in the offing.

  “But what if I spill something on it?” Kate was saying.

  “Then you shall send it to the cleaners. It’s yours to keep anyway. I shan’t want to wear it again. I might remember where I’d worn it last.” Her blue eyes misted, the whites showing underneath, melancholy, silent movie portentous. “What’s your shoe size?”

  “Seven,” Kate said.

  “How lucky. Mine, too. I have matching shoes. Well, not matching exactly. That would be, what’s your wonderful American word … tacky?” She was on her knees in the bottom of her walk-in closet. “But coordinated.” She sat back on her haunches, holding them out.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Of course you could. And must. I even have the perfect purse.” She stood now, foraging through her well-stacked shelves of purses. “Bags are very much in again, according to Samantha, largely because of how well I carry them.” She held the appropriate one she had chosen by the handle, at her hip, clutched it to her side, looped it over her arm, demonstrating. “Isn’t that fashionable? A little superficial and trivial of course, but that’s what people think I am.”

  “But you’re not,” said Kate. “You’re so thoughtful. Aldous Huxley said, ‘In the end, all that matters is to be kind.’”

  “Did he say that?” Wendy asked. “No wonder he had to move to California. It must be so reassuring to come from people with genuine gifts, instead of those who give them to restrict you.”

  Kate reddened. Another opportunity to tell the truth. Clear up the misunderstanding with this lovely spirit at least. But explaining was so complicated. And she had already seen what clout the ingenious lie had in this society, as opposed to the pedestrian truth. She had seen her own name brandished across slick trade papers, and from those onto envelopes of sleek invitations. It was as though deceit were the local fairy godmother, transporting you to the ball.

  She
was starting to imagine it might be possible in such an environment to be able to live with a falsehood. Might even be comfortable, like Wendy’s shoes. So “What can I do for you?” was all she said.

  “You can have a happy life,” Wendy said, the corners of her mouth suddenly pulled down, as though weights had been attached to them. “Excuse me.” She ran to the bathroom and shut the door.

  * * *

  When she got home, Kate tried on her new ensemble. It looked wonderful. Wendy had a perfect eye. Kate held the purse on her wrist, clutched it, let it fall from her arm against her hip, as Wendy had demonstrated. She opened the clasp. Inside was a letter. “My dearest darling,” it read, in a masculine hand. “It hurts my heart to see you, and not be able to speak because of all those who might be watching…”

  Kate’s mind raced, imagining who it might be from. She read no further, but folded it over, set it inside an envelope of her own, reached for notepaper.

  “Dear…” She hesitated, and then wrote, “Wendy. I cannot thank you enough for your generosity of spirit and material both. I shall feel proud to be wearing something so lovely, especially remembering its source, and try to sport it with a portion of your grace.” She added a P.S. “The enclosed was in your bag. I return it, unread, in case you need it.”

  She messengered it with an arrangement from her local florist, and her telephone number. She had no expectations that Wendy would ever call.

  * * *

  When Kate was in bed, in the darkness, the rustling started in the pantry again. Sanguine now about it, she went downstairs, and beamed her flashlight on the cereal box. There was movement, chomping, shaking. She took it to the freezer and shut it inside, without thought, without hesitation.

  And in the night when she couldn’t sleep and heard more rustling, she got up and dressed, and went to the twenty-four-hour market on the corner of Beverly. She bought Corn Flakes, Raisin Bran, and Cocoa Puffs, in case one of the rats was a chocoholic. Then she bought a Kellogg’s variety pack, a cellophaned assortment of different cereals, in the event smaller members of the family had individual tastes.