Almost Perfect (2 page)

That encounter with Simon Daniels was indeed positive, thinks Stella, noting too her uncharacteristic lack of guilt at having (to some extent) bad-mouthed Prentice. Her lack of fear. She even experiences a sort of relief—as though Simon had indeed been a shrink instead of an interviewer.

Driven through unfamiliar streets, in the broken back seat of the Yellow Cab, to Stella the city itself seems suddenly strange, almost foreign. She could be almost anywhere at all, she thinks, anywhere thousands of miles from San Francisco.

She could be in New York, in the late Sixties, racing toward an interview with Liam O’Gara, the director, with whom over the course of several years, the years of her own late teens, she had a momentous love affair. For several years and over several continents. Stella, in those days looking barely older than a child, used to fly with Liam to Rome and to Lisbon for a couple of days, to Edinburgh and at last to Mexico, where Liam had managed an actual job for her. On the set of
Black Hacienda
, Liam’s last great film, Stella worked in Oaxaca and Morelia and in Zihautanejo, in the crumbling, beautiful Hotel Catalina, where the last scenes of the film were shot and where Liam and Stella played out some of their own final hours, among all that brilliant flowing bougainvillea, over too many, too sweet margaritas.

Stella’s divided life, in those days, was mad; she was wrenched, almost crazed, by the contrast between her daily “normal” life in a dingy West Side apartment—grubbing along on sparse newspaper assignments and taking classes at Hunter, shopping for bargains, skipping meals—and her precipitous first-class flights to Liam, wherever he was, to Liam and his entourage, all that talk and drinking; some drugs; exotic food flown in. The passion and the sleeplessness (like many geniuses that Stella had read about, Liam had almost no need for sleep). The endless talk, the strange wild presents: flowers, impossible jewelry, brilliant dresses. The love. A queen of nowhere, she had felt herself to be: a small half-Mexican, half-Anglo princess of nothing. Liam’s street child. His waif. Then rushing back to her grubby jobs and her classes.

Sheer unreality, though, was helpful in the end; Stella suffered, but what she felt was in a sense literary, an aesthetic pain. She suffered and watched herself suffering, and both were quite apart from her daily life. She broke with Liam, and after a year or so of solitary pain, she had what she thought of as “relationships” with a couple of other men. Not love affairs.

But now, in the taxi that hurries through darkened streets, under freeways, skirting monumental abutments, passing dingy south-of-Market hotels and derelict bars and bright seedy restaurants, despite the generally drab ambiance of the city at night, Stella feels a suddenly recovered sense of adventure, as though she were indeed in a country where Liam was, perhaps even Mexico. Rushing to meet him. Running late, out of breath. She suddenly misses Liam, as she has not missed him for years.

When at last the cab stops, she is surprised, though she quickly sees exactly where they are: on Pacific, where the old International Settlement used to be (Stella once did a feature for the Sunday paper on this particular bit of San Francisco history). Near Jackson Square. But they have stopped at a building that looks to be boarded up. However, this is the right address; getting out of the cab, Stella sees that indeed there is a door, cut into the boarding. And as she looks more closely, she sees a tiny card, rather casually tacked above the knob:
R. FALLON
.

And a button. She rings, and hears an inner buzz. And then no sounds at all.

And then, as she is about to turn and leave, she hears very
heavy fast footsteps, clearly a man’s. The door opens, and a very out-of-breath, very large man stands there, staring down at her—as she looks up to rumpled blond hair that is haloed by the light. His shadowed face is almost invisible. A tall man in a bathrobe, and barefoot, who is saying, “Jesus Christ! I forgot. Oh God!”

A very deep voice, very attractive—perhaps self-consciously so? Somewhere Stella registers vanity.

“I forgot!” he tells her again. “But do you want a drink? I can’t talk now,” he adds. “Too disorganized.”

Angry, and confused (does he mean have a drink now instead of the interview?), Stella tells him that it’s perfectly all right. She is tired, is happy just to go home (that much at least is true).

“Can I drive you? My car’s right here. I could dress—”

No, she can very easily get a cab on Broadway. And she starts away from him, even as his deep, rounded voice is saying, “Will you call me? At least let me buy you a drink?”

In a pig’s eye, is what Stella thinks, as she turns to wave, intending a definitive farewell.

Call him? He must be crazy, she thinks, as she hurries along toward the brighter lights.

So much for Richard Fallon.

Richard woke up feeling beautiful. No other way to put it, and you could never say that to anyone, but that was how he felt, perfectly rested and smooth-skinned, tight and strong. Beautiful. Great to touch.

And his mirror, that morning in the bathroom, confirms what he felt in bed: he looks … well, perfect. Nowhere near middle-aged. He smiles at himself. This will be a day on which everything will work for him, he can tell, a day that begins so beautifully.

It is also the day that should end with the Stella Blake interview, whoever the hell she is.

*  *  *

Richard is a commercial artist (“Not quite commercial enough,” is his joke), and his studio, in the building where he also lives, is an enormously cluttered two-story brick-walled room. The clutter consists of everything: paintings, vases, wooden sculptures, bronze and marble statuary. Glossy green-leafed plants and feathery ferns. Various chairs, from comfortable broken leather to tiny gilt. Mirrors, several on each wall, some heavy, ornately framed, others plain.

It is an opulent chaos, which, curiously, works; its effect is of an aesthetic whole, a design. “A beautiful accident,” was Richard’s first wife’s description (crazy Marina, with a very mean crazy tongue). “Sort of like you, Rickie.” Only Marina ever called him Rickie.

The center of the room, its focus, is Richard’s worktable, on which there is further chaos: piles of papers; small bottles of ink, in all colors; jars of pencils and brushes. Above the table is an elaborate cut-glass candelabra, refracting light and frequently shedding bright beams on Richard’s light mass of hair.

At the back of the room is a balcony, with stairs leading up to a space that is clear and efficient, surprisingly, with filing cabinets, a drafting table, and various machines: copier, typewriter, computer, adding machine, stereo. Below the balcony, behind a door, is Richard’s living suite: his bedroom and bath, a pullman kitchen—all perfectly functional, all small. The bedroom is smallest of all, a tapestried cave, walls lined with coarse brown linen. There is a queen-size bed, a bureau with mirror, an easy chair, a lamp. “It’s the sexiest room I’ve ever seen,” snarled Marina, furiously, instantly sure that Richard “brought girls there,” as she would put it, which of course he did. Especially beautiful Claudia, rich and married, who after a lot of trouble became his second wife, for a rough two years. Richard will never marry again; it spoils everything, he knows that.

Richard’s clothes are in a larger room, a big closet that forms the passageway to his bath and kitchen, the kitchen where on a tall stool Richard now sits over coffee, still smiling, still pleased with the day. Looking back to the passageway at his clothes, he thinks as he often has before that he has too many, far too many clothes—and he determines (as he has before) that he will get a
bunch of them together for homeless people. Some shelter. He will definitely do that this week.

Presentation time. That is what this day is for him, what he is almost about to get together—and then at the end of the day that interview, which even now he knows he may forget, what with so much else going on. Big clients coming. Big money involved.

Webster Wines.

Three hours later, at almost noon, the hour of the presentation, Richard’s studio is totally transformed. It has become a wonderland of bright glass bubbles: thousands of them—five thousand exactly. He should know; he ordered and paid for them, and they cost the earth, but they are worth it. Tiny glass translucent balls, hung from everywhere in that enormous space, from tiny gilt cornices on mirrors, from tips of philodendron leaves—everywhere bubbles.

And that is the theme of this whole presentation: Bubble time, the campaign for the new champagne from Webster Wines.

“You’re an absolute genius, you know that, Dick?”

“Richard, it’s so beautiful I could cry.”

“Man, you’re really a crazy SOB, but this is super, very very super, I mean it.”

“What a great party! Rich, when you do it you really do it, you know what I mean?”

Along with the champagne, courtesy Webster Winery, Richard has provided small pastry puffs of caviar (“Well, of course, what else but caviar?”), puffs of cheese, and, for the more abstemious, grapes and melon balls. (“It’s all balls, did you notice? Call it bubbles if you want to, but it’s basically balls. Right, Rich?”)

In his pale-gray blazer, smiling his smile, Richard moves through his party, adoring every minute, every overheard or directly spoken word of praise. Each pat on the back, each kiss. He loves this, this makes it all worthwhile, his often lousy work. He loves all this love and praise, it warms his blood. Love vibrates in his chest.

And it all could vanish in a breath, he knows that. Like soap bubbles vanishing. It’s all unreal; he is playing with funny money; it could all be dust tomorrow. As he could be dust, lying dead and dirty in an alley somewhere. What he does is as fake, as phony, as what all the others do, all the people in this room, the art directors and the clients, the hotshot moneybags clients; they could lose it all, as easily as anyone. As easily as he himself could lose it all. As Richard Fallon, Esquire.

But in the meantime he might as well enjoy it, mightn’t he?

“Say, Richard man, this is really the greatest.”

“Dick, old man, a lot of the time I think you’re an asshole, but you’re also a fucking genius, you know that?”

“Richard darling, I never saw anything quite so beautiful. You must leave it like this forever!”

Of course all these people are jerks.

On the other hand, a few of them are fairly attractive.

Linda, who wants him to keep his studio like this forever, is not too bad. Hair a little long for her age, and that pink shirt is definitely a mistake, but still, Linda is not too bad.

She is across the room by now and is talking to someone else, some old advertising broad, he’s seen her around. Approaching the two women, Richard smiles, he gleams at them both, and then, as the older woman turns for a moment to someone else, into Linda’s ear he whispers, “Why don’t you ever call me?”

“Call you? Richard, for heaven’s sake, why would I?” But she is blushing.

“Because I’d really like it if you did. Isn’t that a reason?”

She laughs. “I’ll think about it.”

She will, he knows she’ll call. But why did he have to ask her? Most women just call, and call. Even Claudia, to whom he was recently married, still calls.

And some men call.

Like Andrew Bacci, who in fact did call this very morning to say, “You know, we could just put in a little more time together. Hang out. Preferably siesta time, but if not, not. Don’t you ever get tired of women? Of—that horrible word you guys use—of ‘cunt’? I wouldn’t do anything you don’t want, I promise.
I’ll stop the minute you say to. But honestly, kiddo, I think you might like it.”

Andrew is very good-looking, if you like that curly, long-lashed Italian look, and Richard sort of does; he has to admit it. Andrew is young, twenty-something, and smart, very smart. A stockbroker. Funny too. Richard always has a lot of laughs on the phone or having a couple of drinks with Andrew. And as far as that other stuff goes … well, Andrew could be right. He might like it. And that might be a problem.

This quick reverie on Andrew—which, Richard has to admit, has turned him on, it really has—is interrupted by a woman named Margot Carlisle, a dark and extremely chic (there is no other word for Margot’s style) older woman, whom Richard distrusts and almost dislikes and is not at all turned on by. Margot in fact is a good friend of Andrew Bacci’s. For all Margot’s big reputation for sexiness and lovers—she has lived all over the world, known almost everyone and slept with most people—Margot is almost always with gay men, and she seems to like Andrew best of all.

She begins her conversations with a tiny deep-throat laugh, usually. She does so now, the little laugh, before saying, “Darling Richard, you’ve really outdone yourself. This is truly fantastic.” Her manner is somewhat campy, with always too many gestures, eyebrow raisings, like a bad imitation of Garbo.

“Well, dollings,” Richard tells her, Bronx style, “thanks. Coming from you … well, really, thanks.”

Margot swings her sheaf of black hair. “I hear a friend of mine is coming to talk to you.”

“Oh?” His mind is a blank.

“Yes, the dearest young woman. Stella Blake. Quite a brilliant girl, actually. Hardly your type, no style at all. She’s working for some paper. But you be nice to her, Richard. A man I used to know, a big director, wasn’t nice to her at all. Although for a while he adored her.”

“I’m always nice.”

“That’s not exactly what I’ve heard.” Margot smirks.

“Anyway the whole idea seems so dumb. An interview. Christ. I don’t like to talk.”

“It doesn’t matter at all what you say, don’t worry.” Margot pauses to scan the room, plotting her next move, before she turns back to Richard. Then, “I had lunch yesterday with darling Andrew,” she tells him, batting her eyelashes. “He’s absolutely pining.”

“Jesus Christ, Margot. You know perfectly well.”

Giving him a long vamp smile, complicit, amused and knowing, Margot slides into the crowd—as from somewhere Richard hears “Dick, phone for you. A lady, naturally.”