Once Is Not Enough (25 page)

Karla shrugged as she exhaled the smoke. “Perhaps it is some inner instinct that is trying to tell me I must stop smoking. I am down to ten a day . . .”

“You’re such a health fiend. All that walking and those ballet exercises—” Dee paused as she lit a cigarette. “Oh, by the way—I made out a new will.”

Karla laughed. “Dee, you’re not ever going to die. You’re too mean to die.”

“I also put ten thousand dollars into your savings account today.”

Karla laughed. “The joint savings account of Connie and Ronnie Smith. Connie puts in . . . Ronnie takes it out. I’m sure everyone in the bank is onto it.”

“They don’t recognize me,” Dee said quickly.

Karla jumped out of bed and did an arabesque. “But can I help it if I am so magnificent that everyone recognizes me!” she said, mocking her own fame.

“You nut.” Dee laughed. “Come back here.”

Karla slipped into a dressing gown and switched on the television set. She climbed back on the bed, sat cross-legged, and worked the remote control, clicking the channels until she came to a movie. It was
Grand Hotel
starring Garbo, Barry-more, and Joan Crawford.

“What time do you have to be home, Dee?” she said.

Dee snuggled against Karla. “No time, especially. He played eighteen holes of golf and will probably sleep through the night. Just in case, I left a note saying I was playing backgammon with Joyce.”

“Who is Joyce?”

“Someone I invented. This way he can never check.”

“Mike Wayne is very attractive,” Karla said slowly.

“I only married him because of you.”

Karla leaned back and laughed. “Oh, Dee, I know the press thinks I am not very bright because I will not give interviews. But you know better than to think I really believe that.”

“It’s true! I told you before I married Mike . . . before I ever met him, that I was going to get married. That I
had
to get married. All last spring when I had David take us around . . . I knew people were beginning to wonder . . . not about you . . . but me . . . like why was I tagging along? You’re famous for wanting to live your own life Everyone knows how you fight for your privacy. But they’re accustomed to seeing me in all the newspapers—at the opening of the opera season,
the ballet, opening nights of certain Broadway shows, especially when there’s a charity benefit. Then there’re the Balls . . . I’m on the boards of three big charity organizations . . . and there are my business affiliations. I’m chairman of the board of two corporations. There are dinners I must attend. I need a presentable escort. I need to make appearances at the proper places with a
man
. A hospital is being dedicated in my name in Spain. Next spring, when I go there, the Monsignor will officiate. Can’t you see? I can’t risk any scandal.”

“Why not donate the money and stay away from all these public functions?” Karla suggested.

“Turn away from the world? The way you try to do?” Dee looked at her. “If I did . . . would you promise to move in with me and stay with me forever?”

Karla’s laugh was low. “Unfortunately, the only person I must be with forever is myself.”

“But you don’t mind being alone. I’m terrified. I’ve always hated it. But it didn’t turn into terror until you came into my life. The first time you disappeared I swallowed a whole bottle of Seconals. I’ll still suffer when you go off . . . but at least I’m not alone.”

“This kind of fear I cannot understand,” Karla said, as she watched the movie.

“Maybe it’s because loneliness is something I grew up with. My parents died so early and I grew up with just banks and trustees and the knowledge that I wasn’t a beautiful little girl, but it wouldn’t matter because I was so very very rich. Do you know what that’s like? To feel that every man you meet only flatters you and acts as if he cares about you because of your money.”

“Dee, that is ridiculous. You are very beautiful.”

Dee smiled. “I have the kind of beauty that comes with money, grooming and dieting. I wasn’t born beautiful like Jackie Onassis or Babe Paley.”

“I think you are.” Karla stared at the close-up of Joan Crawford.

Dee stared at the television screen. “She’s beautiful,” she said. “And her beauty got her money, and men who loved her. While my money got me beauty and men who professed to love me. But I’ve always known it . . . and I never really let
myself feel anything for any man. Basically I hate men. Women are different. And I’ve always picked women who had plenty of money so I would know they wanted me for myself. They all did. But I never really loved any of them. I didn’t think I was capable of really being in love until I met you. Karla . . . do you realize you’re the only person I’ve ever loved in my whole life?”

“You know, this picture still holds up,” Karla said.

“For God’s sake, will you turn that damn thing off?” Karla turned down the sound and smiled at Dee. “Now, are you happy?”

Dee looked at her. “Know something? I don’t think I’ve actually had a happy day since we met.”

“But I thought you said you loved me.” Karla was watching the movie without sound.

“That’s why I’m so unhappy! Oh, Karla, can’t you understand? As close as we are . . . like right now . . .” Her hand went under Karla’s robe and stroked her body. “Right now, touching you where I am touching you now—I don’t feel as if you really belong to me, or that I’m really reaching you in anything I say . . . or do.”

“You are making me feel very sexy right now . . . and I think maybe I better take my robe off and we make love.”

And once again Dee felt the indescribable perfection of their physical intimacy. And when it was over she clung to her and she said, “Karla, I worship you. Please . . . please . . . don’t make me unhappy.”

“I thought I had just made you very happy.”

Dee turned away. “I’m not talking about just sex. Can’t you understand what you do to me! The times you disappear—”

“But now you know I always come back,” Karla said.

“How can I
know
that for sure . . . any more than I can know when you are going to pick up and go off again? Karla, do you realize that I’ve loved you for almost nine years and yet if we added up all the times we’ve been together, it would be no more than a few months?”

Karla turned up the sound. Garbo was in the midst of her love scene with Barrymore. “You’d get tired of me if I stayed too long,” Karla said.

“Never.”

Karla kept her eyes on the screen. “My sweet little Dee, just as you cannot be alone, there are times Karla
must
go off alone.”

Dee reached over and grabbed the remote control and switched it off. “Karla . . . you know about the sleeping pills I took the first time. Well, I swore to myself that would never happen again. I suffered each time you took off . . . but each time I told myself I was getting stronger . . . that you would come back . . . But last spring, after you took off again, I . . . I cut my wrists. Oh, it was kept quiet. I was in Marbella and I have several friends there who are doctors. But that’s when I knew . . . I had to get married . . . to save my sanity.”

Karla’s large gray eyes looked at her with compassion. “You say things like that—it makes me very sad. Perhaps I should go out of your life for good.”

“Oh, God! Don’t you understand?” Dee clung to her. “I can’t live without you. And I also know that if I cause too many scenes like this, you’ll leave me. That’s another reason I married Mike Wayne. He’s not like the others. I can’t walk all over him, or push him around. I have to play the game of being his wife. I must answer to him. And the discipline of it will keep me from going off the deep end over you. And I know that as long as I act like a wife, he’ll stay . . . because he has no money . . . and because I just created a ten-million-dollar trust fund for his daughter.”

“Isn’t that unlike you?” Karla asked. “Uusually you hold strings over someone’s head.”

Dee smiled. “It’s not an irrevocable trust. I can always change it.” Then she looked at Karla pleadingly. “You must come to Palm Beach. Mike will play golf all day . . . we can be together . . . and we’ll even have nights together . . . like this. The place is so huge he’d never find us—”

Karla laughed. “What was all that talk about appearances? For me to houseguest with a newlywed couple would most certainly cause talk.”

“Not if you come down during the holidays. Everyone has houseguests then . . . and if you stayed on . . . no one would talk.”

“We shall see.” Karla took the remote control from Dee, and
walked over and turned on the set. Then she got into bed and clicked the channels. She came in on the middle of a Cary Grant picture. She settled back happily. “A wonderful man . . . I almost did a picture with him. We couldn’t get together on terms.”

Dee lay back and watched Karla’s perfect profile. She saw the fresh scars behind Karla’s ears and suddenly she wondered why Karla had done it. Dee had gone through a face-lift seven years ago. But she had done it to stay beautiful for Karla. She had gone through another a year ago. Again, just to hold Karla. And last spring when she had seen the beginning of the tiny lines under Karla’s eyes . . . the slight slack along her jaw . . . she found herself praying it would happen fast . . . that the magnificent face would fall apart so no one else would want her. And now—during this last disappearance, Karla had gone and done it. Why? She wasn’t interested in going back to work. Every time anyone came to her with an offer she turned it down. Then
why
had she done it? Suddenly she felt weak inside. Could Karla really be serious about David? Until this very moment, she had thought it just flattered her ego to have David hanging around. But now the fear began to take hold, because suddenly she realized it was possible. Karla was a homosexual . . . she had told that to Dee. Once she had said she knew it when she was a little girl. She never elaborated on it . . . but Dee assumed it must have happened in some ballet company. But Karla had also had some well-publicized love affairs with men. And Karla had admitted she had felt genuine attraction toward the men. Dee closed her eyes as a wave of despair hit her. Twenty years ago in Hollywood, Christopher Kelly, the actor Karla almost eloped with, looked very much like David. Maybe there was a certain type man who turned her on. She looked at Karla. Karla tossed her a bright smile and returned her attention to the TV set. She wanted to scream. Here they were . . . lying together . . . yet she didn’t dare ask or pry into Karla’s personal emotions. She had learned that no amount of physical intimacy gave her permission to invade Karla’s privacy. The part of herself she held remote could not be penetrated by tears, threats, or even money. Long ago she had discovered Karla’s pathological
stinginess. The woman was a millionaire . . . yet the nearest thing to a display of devotion came when Karla was the recipient of a large amount of money. But tonight even the ten thousand hadn’t brought more than a polite smile. She seemed preoccupied. Maybe Karla was really in love with David. Her panic suddenly made her forget all rules but she kept her voice even.

“Karla, have you been seeing much of David?”

Karla kept watching the television screen. “Yes”

“I think he likes my stepdaughter.”

Karla smiled. “I think you would like him to like your step daughter.”

“Well, he doesn’t really mean anything to you, does he?”

“Of course he does. Why else would I see him?”

Dee jumped out of bed. “You bitch!”

Karla lay back and smiled. “You will catch cold if you stand without your clothes. And, Dee, you really should take ballet exercises. You need it in your thighs.”

Dee dashed into the bathroom and Karla turned up the sound on the television. She seemed completely engrossed in the picture when Dee came out of the bathroom. Dee dressed in silence. Then she walked over to the bed. “Karla, why do you do these things to torment me?”

“How do I torment you?” Karla’s voice was cold. “You have a husband . . . and so very very much money. You enjoy running people’s lives, controlling them and frightening them with your money. But you cannot control or frighten Karla.”

Dee sank down on the edge of the bed. “Do you know how rotten it is to have my kind of money?”

Karla sighed. “Oh, my poor Dee. You suffer because you wonder whether people really care for
you
. You say that has left a deep scar within you. But we all have scars.” Karla turned off the television set. “Unfortunately—or fortunately—you have never known the scars of working to get to become a star . . . and the harder work of staying there . . . remembering all the time what it was like
not
to have money?”

“But that was a challenge and fun—”

“Fun?” Karla smiled.

“You don’t talk about your early days. But I’ve read everything that was ever written about you. Sure, you were growing
up in Europe during the war. It must have been dreadful. I remember I was about twenty when Pearl Harbor happened. I joined committees and knitted for the English, the Russians-yes, they were our allies then—but we only read about the fighting. There was no TV that brought the war into our living room as it does today. It’s horrible.” She shuddered.

Karla stared into space. “You shudder because TV brings it into your living room. But in Poland we had it walk right into our living room.”

“In your living room?”

Karla smiled. “I was twenty when Germany and Russia were allies. In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland and divided it between them.”

“Is that when you went to London?”

“No . . . first Sweden . . . then London. . . . But this is not bedtime conversation and I am suddenly very tired.”

Dee knew she was expected to leave. Karla was dismissing her. She hesitated. She could walk out and threaten to never see her again. But she’d only crawl back. They both knew that.

“Karla, we’re leaving for Palm Beach next week. Please come down.”

“Perhaps.”

“Shall I send the plane for you?”

Karla stretched out. “I’ll let you know.” (Dee realized she was actually falling asleep.)

Dee leaned down. “I’ll call you tomorrow. And Karla . . . I love you.”