The Devil Tree (15 page)

“As a young girl, making love with you, Jonathan,” Karen said, “I had already discovered that if you were quick and violent and deep inside me, I would come only once, as fast as you, breathlessly and disheveled, but from the very depth of me. By myself, or with a man—or woman—bent on foreplay and kissing, I can climax on and off for hours, but I never lose control of myself.” She paused. “I’ve been conditioned to take my pleasure only from pleasing others. When a man asks me how he can make it good for me, what I want him to do to me, or how I see him in my fantasy, I get a mental cramp and can’t tell him. After all these years, I’m still not brave enough or abandoned enough to use a man for my pleasure, or even to satisfy myself as he watches—one of my biggest turn-ons in fantasy. To please a man, I usually fake my orgasm, and while I may be repulsed by my own cowardice, I despise him more for abetting my fakery.”

•   •   •

Recently Susan was out of town, and Karen went to a movie with a married couple she knew casually. Afterward she invited them to her apartment for a drink.

Left alone with Karen for a moment, the wife, a shy, stolid woman with a willowy figure, innocently confided to Karen that her marriage was threatened: her husband had
told her that he slept with other women during his business trips away from home and that on occasion he went alone or with a woman to swinging clubs.

Over drinks the husband, a jovial, well-built man, jokingly made passes at both Karen and his wife. Then he asked Karen whether he and his wife could make love in one of the bedrooms, and Karen coolly offered them Susan’s room. When Karen was about to leave them there, the wife gently embraced her, saying, “Stay with us. We’re free-minded.” Karen hesitated. “Yes, please, join us,” said the husband, seconding the wife. “You don’t have to do anything; we don’t mind being watched.” Curious to know her own reaction to being in bed with people she hardly knew, Karen consented. They all undressed and a bit clumsily crawled into Susan’s double bed. The couple started to fondle each other, and then Karen became aroused by the sight of the wife being forcefully taken by her husband. When, from under her husband’s bulk, the wife reached out her hand, searching first for Karen’s breasts, then sliding down, Karen gave in to her own need and kissed the woman on the mouth, then on the nipples and belly, then forced herself between the man and the woman. Encouraged by his wife and Karen’s excitement, the husband started to stroke Karen’s thigh; then, with her quiet consent, gently impaled her, then alternated in his thrusting between Karen and his wife as the two women lay absorbed in him and each other. All through the night the initiative seemed to spring from the wife, and eventually Karen became aware that the woman had a marital plot: by bringing about Karen’s seduction, she sought to become a necessary partner to her husband’s need.

As I listened to Karen’s clinical account of the incident—by her own admission, only one of several such incidents—I wondered: was I, as her lover, chosen by her to be the one from whom she had no secrets, or was I simply another lover?

•   •   •

I received a note from Helen Howmet: “Dear Jonathan, In case you haven’t seen it yet, the enclosed article might interest you. Love to you, Helen.”

The article was a feature story from a Manhattan-based society weekly, and it claimed that Cyrus Rawleigh, “the youthful Texan who owns Rawleigh Gas and Oil,” and Karen, “a top-paid U.S. cover girl,” had become “on-and-off” globe-trotters, enjoying each other in chic resorts as well as on secluded islands. Accompanying photographs showed Karen and Cyrus Rawleigh dancing in Saint-Tropez, tanning themselves on the Rawleigh yacht in the Bahamas, and lounging cozily on the patio of his San Antonio ranch house.

At a time when the gossip sheets list single models and actresses along with heiresses and women executives as the nation’s most eligible bachelorettes, Karen has been a consistent front-runner in the matrimonial sweepstakes conducted by society editors. Described often as an “all-around certified beauty,” and “the perfect companion for the man who has everything,” this year she was also selected by all the major gossip columnists to be the newest member of their Eligibility Hall of Fame.

When asked why her name is most often linked only with those of millionaires, Karen supposedly answered, “Maybe because they make me determined to remain independent, career-oriented, and sane enough to be self-centered.” By now I had learned to take all such verbal crap with a large dose of salt. However, looking at the pictures of Karen with Rawleigh, I was alarmed by her pose: it was the pose of a woman in love.

I called Karen, and Susan answered. Before calling Karen to the phone, Susan warned me that Karen had just returned from assignments in Alaska and Brazil and was tired and suffering from a throat infection.

Karen sounded friendly. She was anxious to see me, she said, and to have the two of us spend some time together. Filtering any emotion from my voice, I said I would like that very much and that I hoped I could make her as comfortable as she seemed to have been with Cyrus Rawleigh. She was silent for a moment; then she said a bit brusquely that Cyrus was her old and trusted friend. She was indeed comfortable with him, she said, because to Cyrus she was the whole world, not just another bridge to it. As an afterthought, she mentioned that in a week or so she and Cyrus planned to spend a few days in the Canadian Laurentians, where rest and the high altitude should clear up her throat infection. She talked lightly about her forthcoming assignments, the film she was doing, and a Maryland horse-breeding farm she had considered buying as an investment and a means of lowering her taxes. Then, without mentioning Cyrus again, she promised to call me soon and we hung up.

My first impulse was one of jealousy, which soon gave way to conflicting thoughts. What was it I objected to? That she might have fallen in love with another man? But falling in love was her right. That she didn’t tell me about him? Why should she? Was I her lover-confessor? What was it I wanted from her anyway? A weekly mailing of her thoughts? A subscription to her moods? A ticker tape of her sex life?

Determined to calm down, I turned on the TV. Switching from channel to channel, I saw Karen’s famous American champagne ad twice in less than an hour. As her smile and hips flashed wetly across the television screen—the pictorial landscape of America—I thought of Cyrus Rawleigh.
Did he believe he was the sole owner of Karen’s smile and hips?

After Karen’s commercial, Louise Hunter, a young Broadway actress I recalled in
The Financier
, was interviewed about the prospects for a settlement of the two-month-long actors’ strike. She was flawlessly beautiful, with a lean, smooth, sinewy body. As I listened to her tell how the strike had threatened her financial security, as well as that of her actor-husband, I realized what I ought to do. I telephoned one of the secretaries at the company and asked her to invite Miss Hunter to dine with me to discuss her availability for a dramatic assignment.

The secretary arranged for dinner the following evening at the American Mercury, America’s most expensive restaurant.

As the maitre d’ guided Louise Hunter to my table, I noted that she was surprised by my appearance. “With your references, Mr. Whalen, I thought you would be an old corporate goat who wanted to invest in a play—or an actress—for some special reason.” She spoke with the ease and charm of the professionally gifted.

“You were right, Miss Hunter. I want to invest in a very special play, and I want you to be its star,” I said as I took her soft, narrow hand.

“I’m flattered; tell me more,” she said, smiling politely. We ordered drinks and looked at each other shyly.

“It’s the story of a man,” I said. “A young American plutocrat. His mistress, a famous American fashion model courted and admired by many wealthy and powerful men, does not fully reciprocate his love.

“One day he hires a young and beautiful Broadway actress to accompany him on a three-day sight-seeing trip to London, during which her sole task is to pretend that they have just fallen madly in love and are in London to hide from the world—as well as from her jealous husband
and the plutocrat’s mistress. While the plutocrat and the actress dine out, dance, see the sights, and enjoy each other in their hotel, they are followed by dozens of photographers and gossip writers who have been hired by the plutocrat. When the story of their liaison hits the society pages of all the American newspapers, the plutocrat’s mistress realizes that she is not his only love and becomes jealous. That makes for a perfect ending, because arousing her jealousy was the purpose of the trip.”

“Interesting,” said Louise Hunter. “Will this be a theater piece or a movie?”

“Neither,” I answered.

The captain, wine steward, and waiters were hovering around us, and I sensed her growing curiosity.

“What will it be, then?” she asked.

“A happening,” I said calmly. “A real-life psychodrama, financed by me, in which I will be the plutocrat and you will be the actress.”

“Do you know, I was stupid enough to think you were serious,” said Louise Hunter, visibly disappointed.

“I’m in love with a woman—a fashion model—who is not possessive enough about me,” I said. “Your provoking her jealousy is very serious to me—”

“But not to me,” she broke in. “It’s a rather unattractive role.” Her manner was chilly and defiant.

“Maybe so,” I agreed. “But it is about love, and as Yeats says, ‘Love has pitched his mansion in / The place of excrement: / For nothing can be sole, or whole / That has not been rent.’ In any case, if you decide to go through with it, for your three days in London you’ll be paid as much as you probably made in three months in
The Financier”

“But why me?” she burst out. “There are so many professional escorts!”

“You’re well known: these days, to make the gossip
columns, one has to be more than simply rich. You have talent; all I have is money.”

Leaning closer, she looked at me anxiously. “But all this publicity will make everyone think that you and I really
have
been lovers. What then? What about Frank, my husband?”

“Tell him you’re going with me to London on a publicity stunt, to portray a mistress—not to become one! The two of you are actors; publicity is the stuff of your life; and this trip will put you smack in the public eye! Why should he object to that? It’s the truth.”

Lowering her eyes, Louise Hunter demurely pondered what I had said. “There are a few plays I would enjoy seeing in London,” she said.

“Then we will see them together,” I said as the waiter poured more champagne.

•   •   •

To save our energy and make our trip to London more comfortable, I had six seats reserved, three in each row, to be used as beds during the flight. I had learned this trick from my mother, who also always traveled with a basket containing a meal prepared by our French chef. The plane was crowded, and the other passengers, as well as the stewardesses, glanced with obvious scorn at Louise and me sprawled in our private cribs. At one point, accosting me in the aisle, a woman asked me with sarcasm, “What makes you beautiful people so special?”

“Chance injustice,” I answered. “My girl friend’s beauty is her inheritance; my inheritance is my beauty.”

The public relations company I hired had suggested that Louise Hunter, not I, should become the bait for the
British and American press. Through her, they’d assured me, the media would eventually zero in on me.

At Heathrow Airport Louise was photographed and interviewed for British TV and several newspapers and magazines. In the hotel, where we purposely occupied separate but neighboring suites, to maintain the pretext of secrecy, she refused to see the press. However, well alerted by this time to our presence, British photographers trailed our car our whole first day in the city, and we let them catch us at various points. The press particularly enjoyed photographing Louise during our dinner at the Baobab, and later at the Cockpit, a fashionable disco where Louise appeared in a dress that bared more than it covered.

When we danced, I was aroused by the sight of her breasts, by her mouth next to my earlobe, by the brushing of our hips, and I reached for her as if she were my lover. Instantly her manner reminded me that I was asking for more than our bargain called for.

Throughout our London psychodrama, as we held hands, embraced, kissed, and looked into each other’s eyes for the sake of the photographers, the conspiratorial camaraderie Louise assumed helped me to behave as if I were passionately in love with her.

She told me that her husband had proven more understanding of the nature of her assignment than she had expected and that she didn’t think any amount of publicity and gossip about the two of us would change his attitude.

The first mentions of our escapade, accompanied by photographs, began to appear in the New York tabloids two or three days after our return. These were followed by longer, equally gossipy pieces in the media weeklies, and eventually the “people” sections of national magazines picked up the story.

In most of these items Louise was called “the Broadway starlet of
The Financier
” I was variously described
as “an independent investor,” “a partner in his father’s conglomerate,” “the heir to America’s foremost iron and steel fortune,” “the Narcissus of Whalenburg,” and “the Golden Orphan of the Last Tycoon.” Now I understood why the public relations people had guaranteed only the dissemination of the story, not the copy itself, which was phrased by the columnists to give it the appearance of social comment, though what they actually revealed in their pieces was the adulterous marriage of gossip as big business and the American press as a medium of free expression.

What I anxiously waited for finally took place: Karen telephoned me about my London escapade, saying, “I didn’t know you had a penchant for easy drama—or is it easy actresses?”

I pretended not to know what she was talking about. “What drama?”

“It’s all over town. I haven’t been able to open a paper without running into pictures of you drooling over Louise Hunter.”