Seidel, Kathleen Gilles (10 page)

The group knew that Jill didn't work, but two of the other women, married to successful men, didn't either. No one had thought to explore the difference. But Cathy was single and self-supporting. That was a difference that would have interested her. Enough people at the studio remembered Cass's fixation with real estate that Cathy could have gotten the general picture easily.

Yet she hadn't mentioned it. She had changed the subject, conspiring with Jill to hide Jill's wealth. You weren't supposed to do things like that in group, but Jill didn't care. She already had all the attention she could stand.

After ninety minutes of having her popularity and influence dissected, Jill had learned one thing—why most of her friends were actors, writers, and directors. The majority were so overwhelmingly self-absorbed that they never asked her difficult questions about herself.

She was going to be surrounded by these people this evening. Her longtime friend Susannah Donovan was starring in a movie premiering tonight, and the benefit afterward was for a school of therapeutic horsemanship at which disabled children supplemented their physical therapy by learning how to ride. Jill liked this cause. Her Phillip-Wayland fantasies had been important to her; how much more it must mean to a wheelchair-bound child to be John Wayne for an hour. So, when she was reconstructing her calendar, Susannah was one of the first people she called. She bought tickets to many benefits she didn't go to; this one she wanted to attend.

As it was nearly the first of May, the benefit had a Kentucky Derby theme. The school's colors were emerald and white, and the balcony running around three sides of the hotel ballroom was hung with deep swags of emerald and white bunting. The waiters, wearing racing silks of those colors, were passing trays of mint juleps. A small orchestra played Stephen Foster songs, and clustered at the edges of the dance floor were masses of potted plants and a few bales of hay. Saddles, riding tack, and horseshoes hung from white trellises. Red Kentucky Derby roses cascaded out of silver loving cups in the center of each table. As favors at each place setting, the men received silver-plated lapel pins shaped like horseshoes; the women got bracelets made from miniature snaffle bits.

Jill picked up the little box her bracelet was in and held it up questioningly to her friend Mina sitting across the table. "Please," Mina mouthed.

Mina and her husband Bill had two tiny daughters. The couple regularly took home Jill's party favors so that neither one of the children had to be conned into believing that a horsehead tie tack was as glorious as a snaffle-bit bracelet that jingled when you moved your chubby little arm.

Bill was sitting next to Jill. She handed him the bracelet. He slipped it into the pocket of his dinner jacket, patting the pocket so his wife would know where to find it in the morning.

"Thank you," he said. "It will be well loved. It will be lost, but until then it will be well loved." Then he stopped, shaking his head. "What's become of us? I used to be a kid from Des Moines. Now we give a two-year-old a silver bracelet to lose."

"It's only plate," Jill said.

"But still... oh, well, I suppose you were given the Taj Mahal to lose."

"Hardly. My mother might have done something like that, but my father and governess made those decisions." Before coming to America to look after Jill, Alice had taken care of a little boy who was now a Duke. Henry and his sisters had never gotten new toys. If a set of wooden soldiers had been good enough for your grandfather, went that household's philosophy, then it was good enough for you. Alice had seen no reason to deviate from that principle just because Jill's father was never in the financial straits that Henry's father always was.

Dinner was pleasant. This was one of the few tables in the room where all were capable of enjoying themselves even if no one took their pictures. That's why Jill liked these people. After dessert some of the women at the table excused themselves to go to the ladies' room. Jill went with them, but lost track of them in the crowded rest room. She returned to the ballroom alone, threading her way out of the thicket of askew chairs and chattering people. She was almost back at her table when she heard a familiar voice calling her name.

She turned. It was her friend Payne Bartlett, America's latest heartthrob and one of Jill's oldest friends. They had known each other since the days when their rosy little bottoms had been lined up on the same changing table and slathered from the same tube of diaper rash ointment.

Like Jill, Payne had grown up in the business, his father having alternated between being a studio executive and an independent producer, always successful in either capacity. Unlike Jill, Payne had decided to play on their fathers' field. He had a remarkably successful on-screen career, playing sweetly troubled youths and stirring the hearts of the nation's fourteen-year-old girls.

Payne himself was approaching twenty-eight and, bored with the sweetly-troubled-youth typecast, he had started his own production company to develop different roles for himself.

He held out his arms. "Jill, sweetheart, a new dress. I don't believe it. What brought this on?"

Jill did tend to wear the same clothes over and over. "My mother. What else?" Jill tilted her cheek for his kiss. "I went out to lunch with her yesterday, and we had such a good time that I broke down and went shopping with her afterward."

"That was nice of you." Payne knew all about Jill's difficulties with her mother. "And nice of her. Your clothes are more interesting when you shop with her. It's a great color. Who is it?"

"Versace. The Princess of Wales has one like it in blue, with a different neck. It's a silk shantung and I could have bought a small Chevy for what I paid for it. That's all I know about it."

Payne laughed. "You don't have to be belligerent about it. Is it fun to wear?"

"Yes," Jill admitted, then softened. "Yes, yes it is."

"Then that should be the end of it." Payne took her arm, leading her through the main entrance of the ballroom. In one corner of the anteroom several rolls of grassy sod had been laid, creating a small green lawn. Three piles of hay were stacked picturesquely next to tubs of rosebushes, and a white board fence formed the back lot line of this mini-pasture.

Jill sat down on one of the bales. The chiffon layer of her golden-yellow dress swirled down with her, coming to rest a few seconds later, falling into drifts around her legs. Payne, formally dressed in a black tie and pleated white shirt, arranged himself elegantly along the fence, one arm stretched across the top rail.

"So, Jill, what are you up to?"

"What am
I
up to?" Where were the reporters when you needed them? Surely Payne asking her about herself was the most newsworthy thing that would happen all evening. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Now, that's not fair," he protested. "You know I'm—"

"And don't feed me a line. I've known you too long."

"Why are you so hard on me?"

"Someone needs to be." Actually, Payne was one of the lesser narcissists of her acquaintances. His recent absorption with his new business she found entirely understandable.

A shadow fell across her skirt. "Excuse me, Mr. Webster—"

It was a photographer. Payne rearranged himself on the fence. The photographer stepped back far enough that Jill gathered she was being included in the picture, so she looked up at Payne with an adoring smile that would, no doubt, come across as brainless. It didn't matter. She would probably be cut out of the picture.

As engaging as she was in person, Jill took truly horrible pictures. Her friends in the business—Payne, Susannah, and the others—all looked better, more vibrant, on film than in person. Not Jill. The camera captured nothing of her personality. At best, photographs made her look vacantly pretty; more often she looked subnormal.

The photographer thanked Payne and moved off. "I'll probably be labeled an 'unidentified female companion,' " Jill grumbled happily.

"Oh, come on." Payne dropped his elegant pose. "That happened to you once. You've been dining out on that story for three years. You should look on the bright side. At least they knew you were female. Now, where were we? Oh, yes. You had just finished lecturing me about how egotistic and self-centered I am becoming and were about to tell me why you were at the old studio on Friday."

So that was what this was about. "How did you know I was there?"

"I saw you. But I was being driven, and you, lowly billionairess that you are, were trudging along on your beauteous gams. Now, what were you doing there? You have to tell me. The thought of all that money walking around unescorted makes me nervous."

"I was just poking around. I found out something odd last week. Apparently my father once took out an option on remaking
Weary Hearts,
and—"

"Wait a minute." Payne jerked away from the fence. "Say that again."

"My dad took out an option to remake
Weary Hearts."

"Your father was thinking about remaking it?"

"I don't know. It's strange. He never talked to any of his people about it, but he renewed the option a couple of times."

"He did?" All the young heartthrob postures had dropped out of Payne's manner. He sat down next to Jill, an intent businessman. His fans would have never believed it of him, but twenty years ago Jill had seen him engineer some shrewd baseball card trades. "Do you have any idea what his plans were?"

"No, none."

"Has anyone been through his papers? Was there anything about it?"

"Not a thing."

With his thumbs pressed to the wings of his cheekbones, Payne rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. He was thinking. Then he dropped his hands. "Jill, will you do a favor for me?"

"Sure. What is it?"

"Did you speak to anyone at the studio about this?"

Jill thought back on her conversation with Cathy. "No. I did raise it with some of the people who used to work for him... and with Ken and Lynette, and my mother. But not anyone at the studio."

"Will you not say anything to anyone else? At least not until I tell you?"

"Of course, but why?"

"You know I have tremendous respect for your father. My dad always said that in that whole crowd, Cass was the best."

Jill did appreciate him saying that. This was what she was used to, Cass being praised, Cass being spoken of as "the best."

Payne went on. "So if he thought
Weary Hearts
was worth remaking, then maybe it is."

Jill blinked. She knew that Payne's new company was looking for material, but... "You'd remake
Weary Hearts?"

"I can't say that. I've known about this for ninety seconds. But I want to think about it. I'd like to look at the movie again, read that old treatment that guy found, see what's what. And I'd rather not have a hundred other people doing the same thing at the same time."

Jill could understand that. She hadn't much cared for having been half a step behind Doug Ringling all week. "I won't say a word," she promised.

Payne gave her arm a quick squeeze. "Then let's get back to our tables. They're about to start the drawing."

Jill had always found it a little odd that people who were worth millions and wore dresses with sticker prices like those of cars had to be enticed to charitable benefits with party favors and door prizes. She was perpetually winning things she didn't want, a Bob Macke dress that she had never worn or a haircut and makeover at a new salon when she was entirely content with the people who took care of her now.

So she paid little attention. Bill, sitting next to her and familiar with her ways, commandeered her evening bag and extracted her ticket. Toward the end of the drawing, he nudged her and passed her the ticket. "You won."

Jill peered up on the little emerald-and-white draped stage where Susannah had been drawing numbers. Susannah was in a beaded gown that must have cost more than a medium-sized Chevy and next to her was a bay horse.

"Oh, my God..."

The people at Jill's table pushed her out of her chair.

Jill did not want to win a horse. If she wanted a horse, she could go out and buy one. People living in hotels did not need horses, especially this horse. He was the strangest looking creature with a thick neck and a deep sway in his back. He was so slab-sided that he was almost rectangular. He was probably part draft horse and part... well, God might know, but Jill didn't.

She stumbled up the stage steps. Susannah had her arms out, her best lead-actress smile in place.

"Jill!" Susannah's voice came out in a little hiss so that it would not disturb her smile. "You have a new dress!"

They embraced, Susannah keeping her face toward the photographers, Jill happy to hide hers in Susannah's flowing hair. "I'm going to murder you," Jill whispered into the auburn mane. "I haven't won that animal, have I?"

"Goodness, no," Susannah hissed back. "They use him at the school." Then she stepped back, dramatically leading Jill to the odd-looking animal, then spoke loudly enough for others to hear. "You get to name him."

Jill was deeply relieved. Now that she was assured that this horse was not going to be part of her life, she revised her opinion of him. He might look funny, but he had a kind eye that spoke of intelligence. His ears were forward, not laid back suspiciously. He looked like a good, solid, blue-collar horse, the kind that you could roll a wheelchair up to. He wasn't going to bolt when you put a C.P. kid on his back.

Pokey,
that was the first name that came to her mind.
Pokey.

No, that wasn't fair. How could you be John Wayne on a horse called
Pokey?
She had an obligation to wheelchair children everywhere to give this horse a thrilling name.
Killer.
No, their parents might not like that.
Warrior. Daredevil.
She needed something dashing and gallant, full of mischief and courage.

"Let's call him Bix," she said decidedly. "Bix Ringling."

"Would you look at this?" Randy Casler folded back the issue of the
People
magazine and handed it to Doug. "Here's a picture of my Aunt Jill."