Valley of the Dolls (56 page)

“Maybe
I’d
like London, Lyon. Did that ever occur to you?”

“Anne, I’m a writer—maybe not the best, but I work at it. You’re not the eager twenty-year-old girl who typed up my manuscripts. You’d be bored in time, and you’d grow to hate it.”

She turned and ran out of the room. She raced down the hall and rang for the elevator. Perhaps he’d come after her. If he did—The elevator opened. She turned and looked back at his closed, silent door, then stepped into the elevator.

She walked slowly back to her apartment building. When she got there, she deliberately walked past the entrance. She had to think this out. Lyon loved her, but he was offering her no future. Kevin needed her, and was offering her a lifetime of devotion. Kevin put things into contracts, with all the riders she wished—but what good was a contract that paid off in a devotion she didn’t want? She was always forcing Lyon’s hand, crowding him. So what if he didn’t ask her to come to London? She could always follow him. London wasn’t the end of the world. But that would be begging—Lyon would hate that. “Love has to be given”—not pursued.

She returned to the entrance of her building. Kevin was up there, and he needed her. How could she hurt him for just a few weeks of happiness? But suddenly all the wasted years with him came to mind—and all the years just like them that would follow—after Lyon left . . . But Lyon was here now—and she had the chance to be with him. Yes, that was the solution. Don’t crowd Lyon—take the few weeks he had to offer and let it end. Then if Kevin still wanted her, all right—they’d be as he said, two rejects. But meanwhile, there was Lyon. And she was going to be with him—every second, every minute—as long as she could!

She turned and walked quickly. Then she began to run. She never stopped running until she reached Lyon’s hotel. The elevator ride was agony. He opened the door—he threw his arms around her and held her close. She clung to him. “Lyon, as long as you are here, I’m here. No questions, no tomorrow—just every second that we can have together now is what will count. I love you.”

He held her face in his hands, looked into her eyes and said quietly, “We’ll make every moment into an hour. I love you, Anne.”

She met with Kevin the following day. He looked haggard. She tried to explain how she felt, that she had to see Lyon. After he left, if Kevin still wanted her . . . If not . . . well, she would understand.

Kevin stared at her silently. Then his face became splotched with color. He paced up and down her living room. “Why, you’re as decadent as your English stud!” His anger seemed to flood him with strength. He slammed out of her apartment, shouting that he would make her pay for this humiliation.

This time Kevin did not call back with tearful entreaties. In the days that followed he took childish pains to appear everywhere with a variety of well-known glamour girls. Kevin, who hated nightclubs, now sought the most prominent ringside table and made a delayed entrance with the most flamboyant-looking girl he could find. The moment a new starlet arrived in town, her name was linked with Kevin’s. There was an inside joke around that Kevin read
Celebrity Service
and rushed to meet the planes to book a date with the newest arriving celebrity.

His final and most desperate act was his attempt to cancel Anne’s contract with Gillian. Since he still sat on the board of directors, he insisted he had a right to protect the image of the company he had created. He claimed Anne was “over the hill,” that the Gillian Girl should be younger, fresher, a new face.

His protests forced a board of directors’ meeting. It was an unfortunate move for Kevin. He was outvoted, and Anne received a new two-year contract with a ten-thousand-dollar raise. And it was an exclusive television contract—another victory for Anne, who had been fighting against continuing with the strenuous schedule of newspaper and magazine advertising.

Anne was aware of Kevin’s actions, but she could never hate him. She felt nothing now but pity—and a heavy sadness that it had to end this way.

In the weeks that followed, the excitement of her relationship with Lyon surpassed any emotion she had ever experienced. Lyon enjoyed her casual fame, the instant recognition by fans, but she played it down and concentrated her attention on his work. How was the series coming? She listened to his ideas on the way he hoped to present them. He didn’t want to pan television in America, but he wanted to do the articles in a tongue-in-cheek style. She read his copy and often offered valuable suggestions.

Although they maintained separate residences, Lyon spent every night at her apartment. One night he said, “I shall pick you up at seven, but first I must go to the closet for a change of clothes.” From then on they jokingly referred to his hotel room as The Closet. But as the weeks passed, she knew his assignment was drawing to an end. He hadn’t mentioned leaving, but she knew the time was slowly running out. She felt the desperation closing in on her—heavy and oppressive.

And then, one evening in July, she was suddenly filled with new hope.

They were having dinner in a garden restaurant in the Village. “This was a wonderful suggestion,” Lyon said. He looked at the clear sky and smiled. “This is what I miss about New York when I’m in London—the marvelous weather. We could never be sure of an evening like this—there is always the inevitable rain.”

“It’s the first nice thing you’ve ever said about New York.” She kept her voice light.

“I love you so much I’m beginning to see some of its finer points,” he said. “But how do you feel about rain? We have a great deal of it in London, you know.”

It was happening! He didn’t want to leave her. She had to be careful—she mustn’t force anything. It had to be his idea. She studied the ash on her cigarette. “I’ve never been to London.”

“Think about it.” And that was all he said.

It was all she
could
think about. She discussed it with Henry.

“It would never work,” Henry insisted. “I’ve seen Lyon’s flat. I visited him last year. He thinks it’s a palace, but there’s no central heating, Anne, and only four tiny rooms—a walkup.”

“But I have all the money in the world. We could have the best apartment—”

“Haven’t you had your lesson?” Henry said sternly. “No one pays Lyon’s way—you’d have to live on what he makes.”

“Then I will,” she said with determination. “I’ll live wherever he wants—I can’t live without him, Henry. I’d be happy with him anywhere—even Lawrenceville.”

“What about your contract with Gillian? If you broke it you could never work on TV again.”

“Henry, how much am I worth?”

“Over a million.”

“Then why should I work?”

“And what will you do in London?”

“I’ll be with Lyon.”

“Look, Anne—you’re not a kid about to plunge into a new life. Neither is Lyon. He’s set in his little world over there. You’ll have no friends—he sits at that typewriter all day—what will you do?”

“I don’t know—I only know I can’t live without him.”

Henry was thoughtful for a moment, then he said, “There’s only one solution. You’ve got to keep him in New York.”

“But how? His assignment is finished. And he likes London.”

“Stall for time. Each day that he stays here, he gets more used to New York. Let me think. I’ll call a few guys I know at Barter Publications—maybe we can get him an assignment to write a few articles for their magazines. Only it has to look like an accident.”

“What good would that do?”

“He’d stay on for a while, and time will work for you.”

It was Neely who accidentally came up with the idea. Anne had driven out for her bi-weekly visit, and they were sitting on the well-kept grounds and talking. It was uncomfortably warm, but Neely wanted to be outside. She was fat, but she seemed undeniably well on the road to recovery. She was at Ash House, only one step removed from the outpatient clinic.

“When I get there,” she said happily, “I’ll be able to come to New York for weekends.”

“Neely, do you think that’s wise?”

“Sure. It has to work that way. Geez, you can’t be penned up like this for six months and then suddenly be turned loose. They got to do it gradual. First you get to the out-patient cottage. Then, after a month there, they let you go into the local town one night to a movie or to the beauty parlor. Then, if that goes all right, they try you with one weekend back in New York. You have to come back here on Monday and they check you to see if you’re disturbed. After a while, they let you go home for a week. Then they let you go for good, but you still have to see a headshrinker they assign you to every day. It’s the pressure that hits you on the outside that you have to worry about.”

“You mean your work?” Anne asked.

“No, I mean just pressure. Here, there’s no such thing. If I sleep, I sleep. If I don’t—so what? So I won’t make a gorgeous mosaic ashtray in O.T. and I might be off in my badminton game. And I eat what I please. Geez, I weigh a hundred and sixty, but who cares? And Anne—I sing. Christ, I sing like a fucking canary.”

“Oh, Neely, I’m so glad. I knew you would.”

“The darndest thing happened. Once every month they have a dance. It’s a real camp. The male kooks get all caked up, and we get all caked up, and we meet in the gymnasium—under supervision, of course. I go because I have no choice. If I refuse I get a bad mark. Well, they have a three-piece band, and one night I got up and fooled around a little. It wasn’t great, because the piano player is a schoolteacher from the village who plays melody with both hands. But I sang, and suddenly a real sick kook—a guy all gray, with a nutty look—shuffled over. He was a chronic, and I’d never seen him before—the chronics rarely come. They’re the incurables, the ones who are kept here for life on a custodial basis. Boy, you have to be a rich kook for that—and we have some. Cottage Eve is for the women incurables and Cottage Adam for the men. Naturally, they’re separated from us by twelve acres—in fact, we never see a male kook except at the dances. Well, anyway, this real burnt-out looking male kook shuffled over. One nurse rushed to get him, but Dr. Hall was there and motioned to let him alone. Turned out he hadn’t talked in two years, and the doctor wanted to see what he was up to. So anyway, he ambles over to me—I’m singing one of Helen Lawson’s old numbers—and he just stands there.

“I keep singing—I start doing some of my old songs—and suddenly he begins singing with me, in the greatest harmony you ever heard. It was so wonderful I wanted to die. Anne, my spine tingled—this cat could really sing. And there was something familiar about him. We sang together for an hour, and everyone clapped like crazy—even Dr. Hall and Dr. Archer. And when it was over, this kook touched my cheek with his hand and said, ’Neely, you always had it—we both did.’ Then he shuffled off. I just stood there. Then Doc Hall came over to me and said, ’He’s been here two years, deteriorating all the time. It’s been a well-kept secret, but I see you know one another. Please don’t talk about it. We call him Mr. Jones.’ Well, I had no idea who he was, but I’ve gotten cagey in this creep joint, and I can outsmart Doc Hall by now. So I played along. I said, ’What shall I call him? He calls me Neely.’ And Doc Hall says, ‘Oh, you can call him Tony, but stick with the Jones.’”

“Tony?” Anne didn’t understand.

“Tony Polar!” Neely exclaimed. He’s got some kind of a brain illness he was born with. Lucky he and Jen never had a kid—it probably would have gone nuts too.”

The abortion! Jennifer had known! It was a secret she had never revealed. Tears came to Anne’s eyes.

“Neely,” she said. “Jen never told anyone, but she must have known. Please—don’t you tell anyone.”

“Why? He’s not married to Jen. She’s dead—remember?”

“But she died without ever telling anyone. She wanted it to stay a secret. For her sake and his . . . please.”

“Okay, who would care anyway?”

“Well, when you get out of here it might make great gossip. But don’t. Tony just faded from the scene. It’s been rumored that he’s in Europe, but no one knows and by now they don’t care. Let’s keep it that way.”

“Sure,” Neely said agreeably. “But it’s sure no secret about me. I got an offer to do a two-part story for a magazine. They’ll pay me twenty thousand for it. George Bellows is going to get someone to ghostwrite it for me.”

“George Bellows? How did
he
happen to get in touch with you?”

“Well, you’ve seen the columns. They’ve been hinting that I’m fat and can’t sing, or that I’m thin and can’t sing. So I wrote in that they were half right—I’m fat and never sang better. Then I got Doc Hall to let me make a tape here and I sent it to Henry Bellamy and asked him to play it for the press. He musta turned it over to George, because the next thing I knew George came to visit me. And he got me this offer. He wants to handle me when I get out. He’s trying to raise the money to buy Henry out, you know.”

“Lyon says the Johnson Harris office is going to absorb Henry’s company.”

Neely shrugged. “If Georgie can meet the price of Johnson Harris in a few weeks
he’ll
buy the company. He might manage it, if he can con that alcoholic wife of his into parting with some loot. She’s worth millions.”

Anne’s head was spinning. “What alcoholic wife? George isn’t married.”

“George is a cozy one. He was married from the very start—when we first met him. He’s been married to this dame for twenty years. But he did it for the business, he said. He thought she’d conk off in a few years. But even though her liver is shot, she’s still on the scene and controlling the money. I don’t know where he’ll get it—unless he gives her a nudge over the hill in the next few weeks. And if I know George, he’s not above it. I’ve always hated the bastard.”

“At least he got you this offer.”

“Well, he’ll get his commission. I told him I could use the twenty G’s. You’ve been paying my freight here, and I have to pay you back. And I’ll need some money when I get on the outside. But I still hope George doesn’t wind up with Henry’s business. He gives me the creeps.”

The idea began to form when she left Neely. As she drove home it became a certainty. Henry said she needed time, and this would help. She brought the car to the garage and put in a call to Henry. She had to see him for dinner, right away, and they agreed to meet at a small restaurant on Fifty-third Street.