Judith Krantz (40 page)

“Try to extrapolate, Jazz. I put it to you that you also believe everything else I just mentioned. All for love, and the world well lost—that bit. Naturally you couldn’t help showing how you feel.”

“Just where is this improbable scenario going?” Jazz was suspicious of every word Casey said. It was probably no more than an elaborate pass.

“Would the way you felt about me be a reason for you to love your father any less?”

“Of course not,” Jazz said calmly. “In your heavy-handed way—your
habitually
heavy-handed way, I might add—you’re suggesting that I’m afraid that my father might love me less because he’s got the hots for Red. You’re missing the point—it’s the juvenile way he’s acting that shocks me. My father, the Mike Kilkullen I’ve always known, would never,
ever
have been so obvious about the fact that he was staying at her house tonight. He just about drew a picture, for God’s sake!”

“Were you ever madly in love?”

“Maybe … maybe when I was a kid, years and
years ago. Everyone’s been in love once, for heaven’s sake,” Jazz sputtered. “What does that have to do with it?”

“Did you
behave
as if you were in love in front of your father? Did he ever notice it?”

“I suppose he must have been aware of it.” Jazz suddenly remembered her father, in a white fury, showing Gabe the photograph she had taken of her mother when she was eight, when she and Gabe had come down to inform him that they were taking off for Nicaragua together.

“But didn’t you still love your father just as much as you ever had? One love didn’t cancel out the other, did it?”

“Not … exactly …” Jazz said thoughtfully, ruefully. “Not really, not ever, nothing could.”

“I rest my case.”

Jazz burst into tears, wailing inconsolably, her fists beating on the top of the piano. Transfixed and astonished, Casey put his arms around her and she huddled into his chest, contorted by deep waves of sobs that had in them a mysteriously mournful violence he couldn’t understand. He stroked her hair as if she were a little girl, holding tightly to this grownup woman who had so quickly become a miserable bundle of childlike grief. Casey made the kind of little understanding noises that he hadn’t known he was capable of, and patted her patiently and comfortingly. Eventually her tempest of misery began to die down to individual sobs and sniffs. He didn’t dare ask any questions. He seemed to have done enough harm already.

“I was a total
shit
 … total, total,” Jazz gulped. “It was almost as if Dad didn’t exist … he was lucky if I telephoned to tell him I was still alive … for more than two whole years! I can’t believe the way I treated him … oh, Casey, whatever he does, he’ll never do that to me, will he?”

“Jazz, baby, come on, make some sense. Your father isn’t an innocent eighteen-year-old girl in love for the first time in …”

“How did you know how old I was? How did you know it was the first time? How did you know I was innocent?”

“Ah … I … it’s … 
fuck!”

Jazz rose accusingly from the piano bench and stood furiously, arms akimbo, looking at Casey.

“Haven’t the two of you great, big, strong, silent goatherds got anything better to do than sit around discussing the old details of something that happened to me years and years ago? Which you don’t have any right to know about at all because it’s none of your damn business and he should have known it! Damn it all to hell, now I’m really pissed off!”

“Oh,
damn.”
Casey closed his eyes and beat himself over the head with his closed fist. “Damn it! You don’t understand at all. It just—well, it just happened to come up one night … you know how people get to talking very frankly about themselves and their families when they start to get to be really good friends … and sometimes they say something they shouldn’t have said, in passing, by accident, Jazz, only once, honestly—we never talked about you and Gabe again. I swear it.”

“Gabe. You even know that,” she raged.

“Is Gabe some kind of sacred name? Cool down, Jazz, please. I beg you. Now listen to me. One night when your dad was talking about your mother, he told me how you’d consoled him, kept him company, just about kept him from going mad after her death, even though you were only a little girl yourself—and then he happened to say something about this guy Gabe who came into your life. He said that you grew up all at once in an awful rush, and for a couple of years he was worried sick about you, terrified that you’d always be rushing around from one riot or war to another, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it, he couldn’t stop you any more than he could stop your mother from going away and doing what she had to do.”

“Dad talked about my mother?” Jazz asked in
great wonder. “He never even used to mention my mother … we never … we just never could …”

“Well … he has.”

“I don’t understand it. How could he talk about her to you, to someone he hardly knows, when he’s not even been able to say her name for years and years to me?” Jazz’s voice was lost.

“He doesn’t say a whole lot, and not often, either, but sometimes he will mention something, something she did or said that was special. My own guess is that it’s because of Red. It doesn’t have anything to do with me. Now that your father’s able to love someone else, he can bear to talk about your mother.”

“Twenty-one years,” Jazz said falteringly. “He spent twenty-one years with only a daughter to love.”

“Yeah, but a real interesting one.”

“But I’m a selfish bitch!” “No.”

“It was
vile
of me to be jealous of my father and Red. I’ve been thinking such rotten, unfair things about them. I’ve been behaving like the worst kind of dog in the manger.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Grow up, Casey, ‘because’ is not a satisfactory answer.”

Casey Nelson stepped forward and put his arms around Jazz again. He picked her up and carried her over to the sofa and sat down with her in his lap, still holding her so tightly that she couldn’t wriggle or even squeak. Then he started to kiss her tear-stained face and lips and he didn’t stop until he felt that he had thoroughly made her understand what “because” meant to him.

“Wow,” Jazz whispered.

“There’s only one thing wrong with you,” he said, and kissed her for another five minutes.

“What is it?” Jazz asked when she could breathe.

“You talk too much.”

Jazz studied his face. She had decided on the night of the Fiesta that this lion cub of a man looked obstinate and generous, and she hadn’t changed her mind. But at close range there was far more to be observed on his blunt features. He had a reckless mouth capable of the most ardent, full-hearted, brimming kisses, kisses of a power that she would never have guessed at. His freckled white skin was so much more … intriguing … than skin without freckles. It made you want to … touch it? Maybe. See how far down the freckles went? Possibly. But it was the furrows of intensity on his forehead that made the tips of her fingers itch. Those furrows were as irresistible in a man as dimples or a cleft chin—particularly since a dimple or a cleft chin had clearly specific limits, and furrows suggest a thousand possibilities for caresses. Of course, he looked like nothing much compared to Sam, but what man did? Just a little touch wouldn’t hurt. Would it?

“Jazz?”

“Hmmm?”

“I’m coming up to L.A. next Wednesday to see my accountants. Could we have dinner together?”

“You mean like a date?” Jazz said, in the ingenuous manner that was as close as she came to a mating call.

“Exactly like a date.”

“Wouldn’t that be sort of weird?” she asked in an irreproachably naive complaint. “You live right here, you’re the Cow Boss, you’re a member of the family—I’m going to be coming back next weekend anyway, and I think the Lakers are playing the Supersonics Wednesday. Isn’t it a little artificial to go out on a date?”

“I don’t want to wait until next weekend to see you again,” Casey said, as deliberately obtuse as she.

He rubbed her level eyebrows the wrong way with one finger, and she shivered in delight. Jazz tightened her arms around Casey’s neck and kissed him with all the imperative witchcraft at her command.

Casey Nelson stood up abruptly, holding her steady by the elbows so that she wouldn’t fall.

“Are you going somewhere?” Jazz asked in a little, larky voice of exemplary virtue and ingenuous wonder.

“To take a cold shower.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not going to try to seduce you under your father’s roof while he’s away.”

“What on earth makes you think that you could possibly seduce me?” Her voice was offhandedly wanton, dangerously gentle. She wasn’t all that easy to seduce, Jazz thought, not under any roof. Not at all. Just let him try and he’d find out how impossible it was.

“Good night, Jazz. Sleep well.”

“Well, Mel, what do you think? Is Gabe humping Phoebe or not?” Pete di Constanza asked, as the two men met outside the entrance to Dazzle.

“You’d have to be pretty desperate …”

“Or pretty horny …” Pete agreed.

“Or generous,” Mel suggested kindly.

“Or ambitious—yeah, ambitious,” Pete said suspiciously.

“Maybe he likes very bony ladies.” Mel shook his head disapprovingly.

“Nah, it’s not the bony part that turns me off about Phoebe, I could live with bony, and Phoebe’s not bad looking when you think about it. It’s her attitude,” Pete di Constanza insisted. “I mean how can you
begin
to imagine doing it with Phoebe, she’d be telling you where to put it and how you were doing it wrong, and how you could do it better, and how long you had before she was going to lose interest, and how much she was going to take off your fee unless you got it right … you know.”

“I can’t possibly consider it, Pete, not in such lurid detail—God, man, you’re
perverted
—but face the facts. He’s getting more than twice—maybe three
times—as much of Phoebe’s attention as we are, or Jazz for that matter, and we’re the moneymakers around here. Gabe still hasn’t done any major shoots—he’s been away too long to have really caught on yet.”

“She suddenly doesn’t have the time to make phone calls for me—she’s always on the phone about Gabe.”

“She hasn’t bid out some important shoots for me, she’s too busy getting Gabe off the ground. I almost lost the Campbell’s Soup account last week,” Mel agreed.

“And they have lunch together three times a week,” Pete said. “Not take-out either, but Market Street. I’ll bet she pays.”

“He’s gotta be humping her,” Mel decided. Lunch was conclusive.

“What a price to pay,” Pete observed with gloom.

“We’re the ones who’re paying the price, Pete. For Gabe it may come under the heading of animal gratification.”

“Food photographers!” Pete snorted. “You all think you’re the philosopher kings of the world of commercial photography.”

“You asked me what I thought. No need to insult me.”

“Sorry about that. Just me being macho again. Occupational problem, comes from always working with heavy metal.” Pete gave Mel a fraternal hug and the two men parted ways, content in their old friendship.

“Gabe,” Phoebe said, pausing as she unhooked her bra, “have you ever covered a housewarming?”

“Come on, Phoebe, I asked you to rep me, not pimp for me. Come on, get naked. A broad of your wide experience should know that this isn’t a time to talk business.”

“I will in just a minute, I promise, on my honor,
sweetie pie, but first, about this housewarming, it’s going to be a very special occasion and they’re only going to allow one photographer.”

“So who’s having a housewarming?” Gabe asked without interest.

“I can’t tell you yet, lover, but it will be major news.”

“News? A housewarming? I don’t even do weddings. Cutting the cake, flower girls, throwing the bouquet. Spare me, kiddo. It’s not my style. And don’t call me ‘lover.’ ”

“How do you know so much about weddings?” Phoebe asked suspiciously.

“I went to Monaco once to play blackjack, got trapped into Princess Caroline’s first attempt. What a bummer. Never again. Get me a good funeral, I’ll say yes, but if you don’t stop trying to talk me into a party, I’m gonna lose interest in this other little matter we came here for.”

“One last word, Gabe.
Money.”

“Money?”

“The most you could get for covering any party in the world. Your shots would be everywhere from
People
to the front page of
The New York Times
, with tremendous international syndication guaranteed.”

“So I’ll do it. Now lie down.”

Phoebe complied rapidly. Gabe had just made half her day, now he’d finish the job. Make haste while the sun shines. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Waste not, want not. Gabe was every bit as good in bed as rumor had always had it. No. Better. Much, much better.

Lydia Kilkullen and her two daughters settled into a banquette at La Cote Basque and glanced quickly and without the slightest interest at the menu. No matter what differences of opinion the three women might find on each occasion they met, they were in perfect accord on one thing: lunch was a meal of maximum lack of interest. The need to fuel the body during the day was the only excuse for the existence of lunch—
that and gossip. Anyone so misguided as to eat lunch for pleasure clearly didn’t understand the first thing about upkeep.

For form’s sake, Fernanda, who was paying for this lunch, consulted her mother and sister. Quickly they made their decisions.

“We’re all having the same thing,” Fernanda told the headwaiter. “First, cold asparagus without any dressing, and then the filet of Dover sole, off the bone, dry, no salt, with extra lemon on the side.”

“White wine, madame?” the headwaiter asked.

“A large bottle of Evian, please.”

“Yes, madame.” He had lost any illusions a long time ago. At least these ladies understood that it was proper form to order bottled water. Some clients, tourists perhaps, just drank the stuff from the tap.

“It’s a treat to be with both of my daughters again,” Liddy said. “You both look marvelous.”