Judith Krantz (39 page)

Jazz hadn’t seen Mike Kilkullen in weeks. She had returned four days ago from a trip to Japan, where she had shot three separate portrait and life-style stories for
Connoisseur, Vogue
and
Sports Illustrated
. All three commissions had come in simultaneously, right after Traffic School, for interest in the new Japan was growing steadily as it established its economic presence in the United States.

Vogue
had assigned her to photograph the ten most beautiful women in Japan in their own homes;
Connoisseur
had wanted portraits of the outstanding figures in Japanese literature and art, and
Sports Illustrated
had needed action pictures and informal portraits of the Japanese baseball, golf and swimming champions.

Jazz had taken along both of her assistants, and left Sis Levy to coordinate everything from Dazzle. It had been an exhausting, fascinating trip, and she’d spent every night since her return at home in Santa Monica, trying to arrive at the other side of a massive case of jet lag.

Sam Butler had telephoned her almost every day while she was gone, and he’d met her at the airport and whisked her home. For one glorious hour of fervid reunion, Jazz thought that Sam had invented the quick cure for jet lag, but the next day she’d been totally wiped out, and since then she had functioned in a semi-fog, doing nothing more than shoot two fashion spreads for Barney’s new Beverly Hills store, before she went back to her apartment, falling asleep before dinner, waking up at three in the morning and staying up, unable to fall asleep again until it was time to go back to Dazzle. She’d booked herself out yesterday, a Friday, and arrived at the ranch in the late afternoon, falling asleep immediately after dinner with her father
last night. When she woke up at noon today, she felt rested for the first time since her return.

Earlier this evening, Red Appleton and Casey Nelson had joined Jazz and Mike Kilkullen for dinner at the El Adobe in San Juan Capistrano, a landmark that had been built of adobe bricks in 1778, by far the best restaurant in town and Mike’s favorite. Jazz had been so hungry, after a reviving afternoon galloping around the ranch, that she had barely paid attention to the conversation of her three companions while she devoured the great Mexican food in the restaurant that was uniquely agreeable on a wet night.

Richard O’Neill III owned the El Adobe as a hobby. His historic ranch, the Mission Viejo, was almost as large as the Kilkullen Ranch. Once the O’Neill family and their cousins, the Baumgartners, had owned the Santa Margarita y las Flores, a vast possession of some 230,000 acres, but the Marine Corps had taken over more than half of it at the beginning of World War II, turned it into Camp Pendleton, and never given it back as it had first promised to do. Richard O’Neill, like Mike Kilkullen, belonged to an old family, woven into the fabric of the land, a family that had also married Land Grant aristocrats. They had developed some of their land for residential and commercial use, but they had retained the largest part of it as natural ranchland on which they continued, like Mike Kilkullen, to raise cattle.

Now, in the firelight, Jazz observed that Red Appleton looked subtly different from the way she had looked at the Fiesta. Although she knew that her father and Red had been seeing a lot of each other, somehow Red, like Casey, hadn’t been around on Jazz’s weekends at the ranch during the early fall. Meanwhile, Red had let her hair grow so that, instead of a severe boy’s cut, it now curled whimsically in casual bright wisps around her face. For another thing, Jazz noted, she’d gained weight. For Red to gain weight had to mean something important.

During Red’s years as a great model, she’d always
been as underweight as the métier demanded, a good fifteen to twenty pounds too little for her height, judged by any reasonable calculation. Even after she became a fashion editor, during the period when Jazz had first known her, Red had fanatically maintained her model’s figure, so brainwashed by the discipline of years that she was convinced that if she dared to relax for a single decent lunch or, heaven preserve her, an honest dinner, she’d wake up the next day with a body fit to float overhead among the balloons of the Macy’s Parade on Thanksgiving Day. At the Fiesta, Jazz had noticed that Red was even more willowy than ever—approaching scrawny—as if her fast-track married life had not permitted any time to eat.

But tonight, at the El Adobe, she’d kept pace with the rest of them instead of pushing food around on her plate, and although she was wearing black slacks with an easy cut, and a dolman-sleeved black silk blouse, garments which conceal the shape as much as anything can, Jazz’s eye could spot the fact that Red, like a girl of fourteen, had sprouted new, unmistakable and very becoming breasts. She even had a nicely rounded bottom where once she had only had bones.

Was Red letting herself go at last, Jazz wondered, after the discipline of over twenty years? It must be the relief of getting rid of her husband. Or perhaps it was the influence of the good life on Lido Island, that pure platinum spit of land off Newport Beach, where almost every one of the four- or five-million-dollar houses on the bay side had its own yacht landing; Lido Island, where the outboard-motor-powered “cocktail boats” rocked gently next to the yachts, and were used far more often as their owners visited each other each evening, their little boats gaily strung with multicolored lanterns and stocked with what were perhaps the last cocktail shakers in California.

Yes, Red had changed, mysteriously changed, in ways that weren’t limited to her hair or her weight. An expression of … contentment … or was it peacefulness … had replaced the permanent look of underlying tension Jazz had always seen on the face of
her old pal, her old buddy, her dear old Red, who had given her such a lot of work when she was just starting out after Phoebe started to rep her.

Yes, Red looked different and her father looked different. Why not admit it, Jazz asked herself suddenly. Why not admit that they looked different because of each other? Why was she looking for explanations beyond the obvious? On the night when she’d been ambushed with a speeding ticket, on that dismal night when Gabe had had the nerve to show up at her apartment and talk her into letting him move into the studio, on that altogether curious night when the LAPD had lobotomized her, she’d been unable to reach either of them on the phone, but she certainly hadn’t begrudged either of them a little friendly meal together.

But it was one thing to know, as she did now, that they saw each other—you certainly couldn’t say that they “dated,” because they were far,
far
too old to date—on some sort of regular basis, and it was quite another actually to see them together.
Quite another
thing to see them touching each other’s shoulders or arms or hands or knees, as if to emphasize a point in conversation—but with far more frequency than could be considered within the range of normal behavior, unless you happened to be a member of the Yiddish Art Theatre; quite another thing to see them catch each other’s eye and smile privately or, worse yet, not even smile, just exchange a wordless glance for a little too long; quite another thing to catch a tone in her father’s voice when he talked to Red that she, his very own daughter, couldn’t remember hearing before in her whole life; quite another thing to watch Red sneak a look at Mike Kilkullen when he wasn’t looking at her, and
quite another thing
to watch her father mooning at Red when he thought he was unobserved.

Just what the fuck is going on here, Jazz asked herself, getting up from her chair and wandering around the room. Can’t they behave like grown-ups, for God’s sake, if not in front of me, then at least in front of Casey? Have they no shame? What on earth
can make people lose all sense of human decency and carry on like teeny-boppers at their advanced ages? Haven’t they any idea of how ridiculous they look? No wonder Red hadn’t been around when she’d visited the ranch these last few months—if they didn’t have the self-restraint to keep their hands off each other, they probably were so ashamed that they didn’t want her to see them together. God almighty, you’d think that they had invented sex, or whatever it was they still did at their ages. She expected more dignity from her father, more class from Red, more maturity, at a very minimum from them both. He was sixty-five, for Christ’s sake, and she had to be forty-one. Didn’t anybody
ever
become an adult?

Casey put another log on the fire without being asked, looking relaxed and altogether too much at home, Jazz thought wrathfully. He certainly had changed since the night of the Fiesta. Now that he was wearing the most thoroughly broken-in boots she’d ever seen, a flannel shirt that had faded until she couldn’t make out its original plaid, and clean but ancient jeans. Yet his clothes suited him. He looked like a Cow Boss. Everything about him was of a piece now, and he moved with unconscious ease and the same easy grace with which he had danced with her on the night of the Fiesta. Casey might be a city boy and a clever investor, Jazz admitted to herself, but horses and cattle were clearly his game too.

These three people, lounging in front of the fire, were the most boring, bovine bunch she’d ever spent time with, Jazz decided, her peregrinations around the living room bringing her to a stop in front of the fire. The backlighting brought out a nimbus of crisp, bright hairs around her head, and her golden eyes shot topaz sparks. She treated them all to a determined smile.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful,” Jazz said, “if there were sixteen different types of men and women, instead of the hideous boredom we’re condemned to with just two? As an example, let’s say that you, Casey, happened to be born a Type Nine. You’d go to a cocktail party and you’d get into conversation with
a girl and pretty soon you’d exchange numbers. She’d say that unfortunately she was a Type Five or a Fourteen—clearly out of the question for you—but that her friend over there was a Type Eight or a Seven or a Ten or an Eleven, or even—jackpot!—just like you, a Nine. Now you’d have the whole range of types from Seven to Eleven to pick from—five different types of girls with wonderfully different and amusing … attachments … diversions … surprises … variations … but each one just enough
alike
so that with a little goodwill and minor adjustments, everybody could manage to get it on. Maybe, if you were particularly broadminded and athletic, a Nine, like Casey, could establish imaginative and rewarding consensual sexual relationships with a range of types all the way from a Six up to a Twelve. At least he could give it a shot. I can’t imagine why the Almighty stuck mankind with so little choice. He did a hell of a lot better with Chinese menus.”

“Hmmm,” Red murmured.

“Brilliant,” Casey observed. “Tallulah Bank-head used to say that she’d had men and she’d had women and there had to be something better—I think you’ve just figured it out.”

“Jazz,” Mike Kilkullen said, “the way I look at it, two is just perfect. The Almighty couldn’t have done better if He’d tried. In fact, I believe He did try, and two was His best shot. Come on, Red, I’ll take you home. You look sleepy.”

“Good night, Red, ’night Dad, I’ll see you in the morning,” Jazz said.

“Don’t count on it, honey. But I’ll try to be back before—well, I may not make it for lunch—but definitely before you have to leave for L.A.”

“Right. Well, I’ll see you when I see you.”

Red and Mike both kissed Jazz quickly, waved at Casey, and left in unceremonious haste. There was an instant of total silence in the living room of the Hacienda Valencia.

“A Nine, huh? Is that what you’d think I’d be?” Casey asked.

“Oh, shut the fuck up!”

“Would you be a Nine too?”

“Stop trying to change the conversation!”

“What conversation?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Oddly enough, I do.”

“You couldn’t possibly. You haven’t got a clue, Casey Nelson.”

He walked over to the music room and sat down at the concert grand that had been Jazz’s great-great-grandmother’s pride and joy, and lazily played a few elegant chords that quickly resolved themselves into “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Casey sang quietly, in a rusty but true baritone.

“Did you hear me?” Jazz said furiously, rushing to the music room, “I said to shut the fuck up, not to do a piss-poor Bobby Short impersonation.”

“Just sending a message,” Casey said, continuing to play. “Since Western Union stopped delivering and I can’t fax you because you don’t have a fax except at Dazzle.”

“Casey,” Jazz said in bewilderment, sitting down on the piano bench next to him. “You’ve been here for months while my father’s been carrying on with Red. Tell me what’s happening.”

“I just did.” He stopped playing and turned to look at her.

“True love? Red and my father? You can’t
mean
that!”

“That’s the way it looks to me.”

“How would you know? What makes you an expert? It’s just a fling. Look at how they behaved—they’re so … so blatant! Why don’t they take out an ad, for Pete’s sake. ‘Hello world! Guess who just rediscovered
their long-lost hormones?’ It makes me want to throw up.”

“Listen, Jazz,” Casey said gently, “let’s imagine that you’re truly in love. Are you in love, by the way?”

“Certainly not,” Jazz said indignantly. She definitely wasn’t what she’d call in love with Sam Butler. She wouldn’t let herself be in love with the love object of tens of millions of women, no way—absolutely not. Only civilians fell in love with actors.

“Well, let’s try to imagine that you’re crazily in love with … oh, just about anybody … for the sake of argument, let’s say that you’ve fallen for me, since I’m the nearest able-bodied male in the neighborhood. Now you’re convinced, by your foolish heart, that I’m the best-looking man in the world, brilliantly intelligent, incredibly sensitive, sexy beyond sexy, a Fred Astaire on the dance floor and …”

“Well, you do dance very well, I’d have to agree with that,” Jazz said grudgingly.