An American Love Story (20 page)

They tried nicknames for each other, seeking to find ones that fit. Monkey and mouse for her, doggie and lion for him, the kinds of thing that make you want to throw up. “You’re my magical monkey,” he said. “With the little red hat, and the cymbals, dancing.”

“Who’s the organ grinder?” she asked with an edge.

“The monkey is dancing because it’s such a beautiful day,” Clay said.

Finally she became the monkey, and he named her apartment in New York The Monkey House. Affectionately: “How’s the monkey?” Worried: “Where’s the monkey?” He said it with such tenderness and whimsy that Susan became very fond of it, and started collecting toy monkeys.

She went home to New York again in the fall for a change of scene, and Clay came to see her. Laura had taken Nina to the house in East Hampton for the weekend to watch the leaves turn, and Clay didn’t tell her he was back. He stayed at Susan’s and left some clothes there. On Sunday he took Susan to the apartment in The Dakota to see how his family lived, proudly pointing out the antiques, the paintings. Susan was more interested in the family photographs. Genteel in their silver frames on top of the grand piano in the living room; Nina on a horse, Nina at a ballet recital, Laura at various years of her married life, always thinner and thinner.

Clay’s room was masculine, workmanlike, and isolated at the other end of the apartment from the big beautiful room he had once shared with his wife. When he was sorting out some papers Susan took a quick guilty glance into Laura’s closets. Her clothes were very expensive, but so tiny they belonged on a child. Did she wear them? Where did she go? Susan didn’t ask. She was nervous and anxious to leave, but Clay seemed to enjoy the intrigue. “This is my apartment,” he said. “I paid for it. I have a right to bring anyone here I want.”

She was glad when they left and went to dinner, and that night he called Laura who was back in New York and told her he would be coming in from California the next afternoon.

Just before Christmas, Clay took Susan to Tiffany’s and let her
choose anything she wanted. His taste ran to the kind of heavy conventional jewelry a matron would wear, and she timidly told him she preferred Elsa Peretti and Angela Cummings. He bought her a beautiful gold ring that fit the third finger of her left hand. She bought him cuff links (one article,
TV Guide
).

He brought two brightly decorated felt Christmas stockings to her apartment, and hung them on the shutters because she didn’t have a fireplace, and they filled them with inexpensive little presents for each other. On Christmas day he was with his family and Susan was in a restaurant with Jeffrey and the other waifs and strays that always spent Christmas together. This year Jeffrey had a new lover, but Susan knew it wouldn’t last because Jeffrey drove every lover away. The beaming man, not knowing he was soon to be driven away, had lovingly made Christmas cookies for every one of Jeffrey’s friends.

Susan told Jeffrey about Clay. “That’s a good relationship for you,” he said. “A nice older man.”

“He’s not so much older,” Susan said. “When I’m eighty he’ll be ninety-one.” She was joking, but still, it was the first time she had talked about the future.

Right after Christmas, Clay went back to California, and Susan went with him. They had New Year’s Eve together in the bungalow, with a bottle of champagne and some caviar when the ball fell down the side of the building in Times Square and on his television set, and by the time it was midnight in Los Angeles they were asleep. It was the first New Year’s Eve she could remember when she wasn’t either trying to have a good time at a party or miserable at home; she thought this must be the way normal people lived, and it was wonderful.

Then it was spring again, and their first anniversary—a year since Clay had first told her he loved her, a year since they had first made love and her heart had cracked open. She was surprised it had lasted this long. Nothing had ever lasted a year for her before.

Dana sent flowers and Clay was annoyed, treating it as an intrusion. Susan thought his reaction strange. She wondered if he was embarrassed, was being possessive, or really disliked Dana that
much. Perhaps it was all three: she and Dana shared things she couldn’t share with him, and married men didn’t celebrate anniversaries with women who were not their wives. She put the flowers where he didn’t have to look at them and they spent the afternoon in bed, and then went to Chasen’s for dinner.

“Should we have champagne or Montrachet?” Clay asked her.

“Both.”

They started with the champagne and got a little drunk. “Will you marry me?” Susan asked.

“Yes.”

“You’d have to get me drunk to get me to the altar.”

He laughed.

“When will you marry me?”

“We
are
married,” he said. “Do you think marriage is any different from what we have?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never been married.”

“Well, it isn’t. A good marriage is just like this.”

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you. We’ll be together forever, until one of us dies.”

She was upset. “Don’t talk about dying.”

“It’ll be me,” he said matter-of-factly. “You know the actuarial tables. But it won’t be for a very long time.”

“Do you think we’ll get married someday?” Susan asked.

“Someday,” Clay said. Then he looked serious. “You don’t want me to get divorced,” he said. “If I could do it to my wife I could do it to you.”

The words struck like steel. She nodded. He was right about what would happen if he left Laura: how could she ever trust him not to do it again? She thought of the way he treated Laura. To Clay,
wife
was a dirty word: a resented impediment, someone who made him irritated, angry, impatient, anxious to be away from her. How much better to be his beloved, the one who could do no wrong.

He ordered the famous cold cracked crab for the two of them to start their meal. He mixed some of the mustard sauce with some of the red sauce, the way she liked it, saying, “Here, should I do it for you?”

“Thank you.”

“It’s time for me to go to Europe again,” Clay said. “I’m going to Cannes first. I’ll get my boring meetings over with the first three days and then you can meet me in Paris. We’ll stay at the Plaza-Athénée. I always get a suite. We’ll stay about a week and then we’ll go to London. We’ll leave from New York; I don’t like to fly over the pole, it’s too tiring. And this way I’ll have a chance to see Nina. Can you be ready on Friday?”

Paris! She was used to him giving her too little notice—he traveled quickly like a spy—but she liked that he assumed she would go with him, that they were together and he didn’t have to ask. They had progressed so far already. “Yes,” she said, remembering. “And we’ll have the gray wine and the tiny strawberries.”

When Clay opened the door to their suite at the Plaza-Athénée it was like a wonderland. He had put perfumed candles everywhere, flickering in the dark with tiny points of light. The hotel was elegant, the suite huge; gilt, velvet, marble, rich shining wood, tall French windows, minute grillwork balconies with pots of red flowers. “Welcome,” he said, as if he owned the city, and at that moment Susan thought he did.

Clay introduced her to his friends in Paris, and they went to wonderful hidden bistros, famous restaurants, and dinner parties in people’s homes. Everyone accepted her completely. They had known for years about his odd relationship with Laura and were glad that he was happy now. Clay had no interest in sightseeing or tourist things, so when he had meetings Susan went by herself, loving to wander around the little streets, walk down the famous avenues. She spent about as much time at Porthault as she did at the Louvre, with no guilt. When they had to leave, much too soon, she protested.

“But we’re going to London,” Clay said sweetly, as one might try to wheedle a child. “You like London.”

London had changed since she was there on her magazine assignment, but she still knew it well. Again he met with business associates, and she was accepted. They stayed at the luxurious Dorchester, in a suite that overlooked the gardens of Buckingham Palace, and there was high tea in the marble lobby, amid show-cases
displaying precious gems. Susan called one
of
her English friends, Andrea, and they arranged to go out to lunch together.

They met in the lobby. “I think I just did something terrible,” Andrea said quietly. Then the manager came over, tall, polite, and stern.

“You are Miss Susan Josephs?”

“Yes.”

“You are not registered here. I will have to take your passport.” He held out his hand.

A streak of panic flew through her. “And do what with it?” Susan asked, feigning calm. Jail, she thought. They’re going to send me to jail or throw me out.

“We have to register all our guests’ passports for the police,” he said. “You are staying with Mr. Bowen?” She nodded almost imperceptibly. “I will return your passport after lunch,” he said efficiently, and walked away with it in his hand.

“Oh my God,” Susan said, her heart pounding. “I didn’t know he didn’t register me.”

“Neither did I,” Andrea said. Her pale English face flushed bright red. “I’m so embarrassed. I asked for you at the desk so they could call up and tell you I was here. They didn’t seem to know who you were so I asked for Clay Bowen. I mean, I never gave it a thought.”

“Neither did I.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Never mind,” Susan said. “I’ve seen other couples together who aren’t married to each other. I just hope Clay isn’t mad.”

“Your friend is stupid,” Clay said, that afternoon when Susan told him. He was irritated. She had her passport safely back and no one had mentioned arrest or eviction for carnal sin. A waiter had put little Royal Worcester china dishes of olives and pretzel twigs on the living room coffee table as he did every afternoon before the cocktail hour. “Why did she have to be so stupid?”

“She didn’t know. I apologize … please …”

“Well, next time
you’ll
know.” After that he didn’t mention it again and seemed to be in a better humor. By dinnertime everything was normal.

When they got back to California, Clay put the English hotel bill on the desk in his bungalow. He took a bottle of liquid White-Out from the office supplies he always kept with him and carefully began removing her name from the bill. He bent over his work carefully, applying the tiny brush like an artist. Then he held it out, looked at it, and smiled. “When I have this Xeroxed no one will see a thing,” he said.

She suddenly realized what the point had been. RBS paid for all Clay’s business travel expenses: the hotel suites, the elegant meals, the drinks and champagne. They had paid for her. He had never worried about what anyone thought of their being together—except for the person at the network who watched the money. How could she have been so naive? She simply hadn’t given it a thought. She had been Cinderella and he The Prince.

But RBS had been the prince. They had paid for all the romantic dinners she and Clay had shared here and in New York for over the past year. They were probably paying for at least part of the bungalow too. What did he write on the small white stubs he removed from the bottom of every restaurant bill even though he had paid for the meal with his credit card? He said his accountant needed them. What kind of fussbudget accountant needed double documentation? She didn’t want to think about it. Clay was generous, kind and loving. She had always had some idea what powerful businessmen could do with their expense accounts, and it had made them seem arrogant and even stronger. Now she saw Clay doing it, and it somehow didn’t make him seem arrogant at all, only vulnerable.

It was another little step in her commitment to him.

A year went by, and another. Susan was no longer surprised to see her love affair with Clay lasting, and she was happier and more peaceful than she could ever remember. By now everyone took them for granted. Blooming, she was doing her best work during this period. Little by little he opened out in unexpected ways; sometimes daddy, sometimes baby. She sensed a volcano in him, and secrets.

She went to Rio for ten days to interview a hard to get movie
star on location, and left Clay behind in bed with a cold. The third day she was there he telephoned and woke her up in the middle of the night. He was drunk and pleading.

“Come back,” he cried desperately. “I can’t stand it. I’ll kill myself if you don’t come back.”

She had never heard him like this. “It’s only a few more days,” she said, reassuring him as one would a child. She was groggy from being awakened at four in the morning and annoyed to hear him drunk. He almost never got drunk. “Just a few more days. You can count how few. Go to sleep.”

“I can’t live without you. I love you. I’m going to kill myself.”

“No you’re not.” She finally pacified him and he hung up. Men, she thought, as she tried unsuccessfully to go back to sleep, were helpless infants when they didn’t feel well—or maybe he really did miss her that much.

They went to Europe together every year on his business trips, where Susan bought more Porthault pillowcases to put on a pile of pillows on their bed in the Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow, trying to make it feel more like a home. In Europe, New York, and Hollywood, Clay took her out so openly that it was almost as if he were saying this couldn’t possibly be an affair because if it were they would be hiding. At night they slept pressed together on their sides like two spoons. “Get on my back,” he would say, “and I’ll take you for a ride.”