Butterfly (67 page)

into a knot on top of her head, a style that Pete Forman said he liked. When she stepped

into the shade of the umbrella and saw the salad plates on the table, she motioned to a

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293

white-jacketed servant who was standing by the beverage cart. “Bring me a sandwich,

please,” she said. “Any kind, so long as it has lots of mayo. And a glass of white wine.”

Maggie cleared away a place setting, set her briefcase down and took a seat. “What a

beautiful day!” she said, looking out over Beverly’s newly acquired estate. The grounds

seemed to go on forever, they gave the impression of isolation.

“I take it Pete’s in town,” Carmen said with a smile.

Maggie winked and opened her briefcase. “From the clipping service,” she said, hand-

ing a thick envelope to Beverly.

Using a silver letter opener, Beverly slit the envelope and carefully withdrew the con-

tents. Danny Mackay was so frequently in the news nowadays that she had to set aside a

full hour each day to keep current.

“His wife had her baby on Sunday,” Maggie said. “It’s another boy.”

Beverly picked up one of the clippings and studied it. “Good News Ministries has

announced that the Houston Cathedral has brought in six million dollars in its first year

of operation, and that Danny’s TV audience has now reached two million.”

“Beverly,” Carmen said after some thought, “isn’t it time now? He’s so popular. So

wealthy and powerful. We could move in on him now.”

But Beverly said, “No. He hasn’t gone high enough. He’s known in America; I want

his destruction to be witnessed by the
world.
”

Maggie pulled more papers out of her briefcase. “Here’s the speech you’ll be giving

before the Performing Arts Council next week, Bev. And this is your itinerary for next

week’s tour of the East Coast. I had to extend your stay in Washington by two more

days—” Maggie spread the items out on the table. “The lobbyists for two environmental

groups are anxious to meet with you, and Senator Davidson insisted on a private confer-

ence with you regarding the new abortion bill he’s going to try to put through. Oh, and

Stanford University is asking you to come and talk again.”

A shout from the tennis court caused Beverly to turn and watch Ann and Rosa

exchange friendly rivalry. Rosa was tall and beautiful, a dusky young woman who could

be mistaken for a princess out of the Arabian Nights. It made Beverly think of her last

conversation with Jonas Buchanan. He was just getting ready to depart for Saudi Arabia.

After exhaustive digging, Jonas had picked up Christine Singleton’s trail again and

learned that, back in 1971, she had gone to Saudi Arabia with a man named Eric Sullivan.

“Your sister went by the name of Rutherford,” Jonas had informed Beverly at their last

meeting. “That was the name of the guy she married and then divorced. The man she

traveled to Arabia with was a consultant for Aramco. Apparently she went along as his

secretary. But there’s something strange about the arrangement. I couldn’t get any infor-

mation on Sullivan. No one would talk to me about him. It makes me wonder if the con-

sultant business was a cover-up for something else.”

“Such as what?” Beverly had asked, alarmed.

“I don’t know. It happened twelve years ago.”

Since there was nothing further Jonas could find here in the United States—there

seemed to be no records of Christine’s return to this country—Beverly decided to send

him to the Middle East to continue the search. She prayed he would be lucky.

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Kathryn Harvey

Maggie, tucking into her roast beef sandwich, said, “By the way. Do you want to hear

something funny? I had lunch with Bob Manning the other day, and he told me the most

amazing thing! It seems that four of Fanelli’s models have been going to bed with cus-

tomers, and getting paid for it!”

Carmen and Beverly looked at her.

“What do you mean?” Beverly said.

Maggie told them what Bob had told her, about Michael and Ron Sheffield and two

others visiting the homes of wealthy Beverly Hills women, and when she ended with

“Isn’t that a laugh?” she was met only with grave expressions.

“Selling one’s body is never a matter of humor,” Carmen said quietly.

“No,” Maggie said, suddenly remembering. “It’s not. I’m sorry.”

Of their intimate circle, Maggie was the only one who knew about Beverly’s and

Carmen’s past. They had confided in her because she was, in their eyes, a sister: she had

been abused by Danny Mackay, as they had. The others—Ann Hastings and Roy

Madison—knew nothing of the secret past of their two friends.

“All I meant was,” Maggie said, “that the shoe is now on the other foot. I mean,

women
paying for sex. It’s a phenomenon of our new liberation, ever since the Pill gave us

sexual freedom. Who would have thought, twenty or thirty years ago, that there would be

a skin magazine for women, like
Playgirl,
or strip joints for women, like Chippendale’s? It

just goes to prove what we’ve been screaming about all along, that women want sex just as

much as men want it.”

The ball went
thwack
and laughter drifted up from the tennis court. The three women

sitting under the striped umbrella enjoying a relaxing lunch watched the two down on the

court, playfully chiding each other. A breeze came up, sending the palm trees swaying,

rippling the blue-green surface of the Italianate pool. The fragrance of gardenias in early

bloom briefly touched the three friends and then went on its itinerant way.

Beverly stared off into the distance. She was thinking of the handsome young models

at Fanelli, and the women who had turned to them for…

For what? she asked herself. What were those women paying for?

“Listen, kid,” Hazel’s voice came echoing down through the years. “You’ve got to do

more than just lie there. These guys come here with their hard-earned money looking for

a little escape. They come here to buy a fantasy, and you’ve got to give it to them.”

“Fantasy,” Beverly murmured.

Carmen looked at her. “What did you say, Beverly?”

“I said ‘fantasy.’ That’s what those women are buying.”

“What women?” said Maggie. “You mean the customers at Fanelli? Bev, they’re buying

sex.”

“Perhaps,” Beverly said slowly, thinking. “But there’s more to it than that. After all,

you yourself just said that this was a different age, that the Pill has liberated women from

the old-fashioned puritanism and double standard of sex. It’s more readily available these

days. So why pay for it?”

Maggie shrugged. “To be guaranteed of a good time, I would guess. If the guy wants

to get paid, he’d better deliver.”

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295

Beverly shook her head. “I think there’s more to it than that. I think those women are

looking for a dream, they’re trying to buy a few minutes of happiness, companionship,

maybe even a little flattery.”

She fell silent again. Why
would
a woman pay for male companionship? To receive a

little of the attention her husband or boyfriend didn’t give her? To stave off unbearable

loneliness? To seek some meaning in her life? To believe, if only for an hour, that she was

beautiful and desirable? Or quite simply to have a good time?

All of which reasons, Beverly decided, were valid. We all want to be loved and told

we’re beautiful. We all, at one time or another, look for meaning in our lives or try to dis-

cover what our dreams are. We all have fears and the need for arms to hold us and a warm

body to protect us against the night.

“What did Bob do?” she asked suddenly.

“Do?” said Maggie. “He fired the models. Why?”

“Carmen, Bob Manning says that in the five years Danny Mackay has owned Royal

Farms he hasn’t bothered to inspect the company’s subsidiary holdings. Is that true?”

“As far as I know. He’s too busy buying airline companies and baseball stadiums to

bother with one little store a thousand miles away.”

“And the offices above Fanelli. Are the same tenants still there? The mail order com-

pany, the interior decorator?”

“Everybody wants a Beverly Hills address, you know that. There are people renting

cubbyholes above Fanelli. Why?”

Beverly looked down at the tennis court again, at the sprightly Ann, who she knew

starved to look good in a tennis outfit, and she was remembering when she first met Ann

twenty-three years ago, how unhappy Ann had been at having to attend a Christmas party

alone, humiliated. And how Beverly had arranged for Roy Madison to escort her, and

therefore, by filling Ann with self-confidence and pride, the incident had turned her life

around.

“Fantasy,” Beverly said again, quietly, deep in thought. It had been only a fantasy, a

scene acted out, but look at what it had done for Ann.

Carmen said, “What are you thinking,
amiga?”

Beverly looked at her friends. “I want Bob to rehire those models.”

“What?”

“And then I want the tenants above the store removed. Maggie, you find new locations

for them. Help them make the move.”

“But why?”

“I have a better use for the rooms above Fanelli.”

*

*

*

Beverly asked her chauffeur to pull up to the curb and park. She waited in the air-con-

ditioned comfort of her Rolls-Royce and watched the modest group of people through

the smoky glass of her window. There were maybe twelve, fifteen people attending the

private funeral. Most of them were crying. Beverly, too, felt like crying.

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Kathryn Harvey

When the graveside service was over and everyone began to head back to the limou-

sines, Beverly got out of her car and approached a small woman in black, supported

between two people.

“Mrs. Wiseman?” Beverly said.

The gray-haired woman looked at her with desolate eyes.

“I knew your husband,” Beverly said softly. “He did a favor for me many years ago. I

promised that I would never forget him. He was a great man.”

“Yes—”

“Please, take this.”

Mrs. Wiseman blinked at the envelope held out in the gloved hand. One of the two

supporting her, a man in his forties, took the envelope and said, “I’m sorry. My mother

isn’t well.”

“I understand. I didn’t mean to intrude upon your private grief. I just wanted to give

you this, in memory of your husband.”

They watched her go, a tall blond woman in an ankle-length mink coat stepping into

a white Rolls-Royce. In the backseat of their rented limo, Dr. Walter Wiseman opened

the envelope and withdrew the contents. He said, “My God,” and turned abruptly just in

time to see the white Rolls disappear around the bend.

In his later years, Dr. Seymour Wiseman, plastic surgeon, had espoused the cause of

helping Jews escape from Russia. The strange woman, whose name the Wisemans would

never know, had established a million-dollar foundation in his name for the saving of

Soviet Jewry.

Ann Hastings couldn’t believe her ears. She stared at her old friend Roy Madison in

such disbelief that he had to laugh. “You’re not serious!” she cried.

“Check it out for yourself, if you don’t believe me.”

They were having lunch in a grimy little diner at Venice Beach, a place not yet “dis-

covered” and therefore safe for Roy. Because of his fame he didn’t dare venture into places

where he might be recognized, unless, of course, he was in the mood to be recognized.

Now that he was up for an Academy Award for his latest movie, there were few places the

ruggedly handsome Roy Madison could go without being molested. Except for this grimy

diner on Venice Beach where a curious mix of winos, teenage runaways, and elderly Jews

on fixed incomes ate corned beef hash and french fries.

Ever since their “date” twenty-three years ago, when a very young and unemployed Roy

Madison had changed his image and taken a very young and unhappy Ann to her cousin’s

Christmas dance, the two had been close friends. They tried to get together at least once a

month for the kind of relaxed, shared-secret conversation they couldn’t think of having

with anyone else. Ann usually complained about her sex life and the nerds she was finding

in bars, and Roy usually complained about his sex life and the nerds he was finding in bars.

But today was different, today he had something new and deliciously shocking to tell.

“For real?” she whispered, leaning across the table. “They’re actually going to have

rooms upstairs and everything? I don’t believe it.”

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297

“I’ve known Michael for a couple of years. He isn’t gay, we’re just friends. Anyway, I

was the one who got him the job at Fanelli. He’s telling the truth.” Roy grinned and

popped a greasy french fry into his mouth while Ann sat there just not believing her ears.

“But,” she said, “why would Bob Manning do it? Start up a bordello, I mean.”

“Well, according to Michael, he and some of the guys had already been doing it on the

side, for a bit of extra dough. He said that when Manning found out about it, they all got

fired. And then, three days later they were rehired, and told that they were going to con-