West of Paradise (40 page)

“So it gets back to that. I'm too old.”

“That's not it at all. You're the youngest person I know. But you're famous. Important. If I hung out with you, that's all I'd ever be.
Her
boyfriend.”

“That would be enough for plenty of people,” she said sullenly.

“And already has.”

“You bastard.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “You're making me say things I don't want to say.”

“Then don't say them,” she said.

“But you need to understand. My mother was a today woman before it was fashionable. She didn't mean to be more successful than my father, but she was. And he caved. He couldn't measure up. She never forgave him. She loved him, but she never forgave him.”

“I'm not your mother. And you're not your father.”

“But I could be if I don't become anything.”

“You already
are.
Why do you have to
become?
Why can't you just
be?
”

“It doesn't work like that, and you know it.” He lifted his champagne-filled glass. “Let's just celebrate the moment. To the most beautiful—”

“I can't bear that it's going to end.”

“Don't think about it,” he said. “To the most beautiful woman in the world.”

“Who will be the loneliest,” she said.

“Stop being such a drama queen,” he said, and leaned to kiss her. The umbrella tilted and the hanging palm caught the flame of the candle and started to burn. A high wind whipped it, and in moments the whole thing was ablaze. They were beating it out with napkins and hurling water and, finally, sand. She was screaming and laughing and shouting, “Some romantic dinner!” Finally, they got it under control.

And then she was sobbing, sitting on the sand. He knelt beside her, and held her. “Stop,” he said.

“
I'm
a drama queen,” she wept. “What are you? Making things end. Setting the whole scene on fire.”

“Fire is Shiva,” he said. “The god of destruction. But in Bali fire is transformation.”

“I don't want transformation. I want things to stay the same.”

“They can't,” he said. “They never do.” He smiled, and handed her a Kleenex. “Have you ever made love on the sand?”

“It's very gritty.” She blew her nose.

He lifted her in his arms, and carried her back to the villa. And they made love, like most people, on the bed. When it was over, he soothed her tears and stroked her into silence. He kissed her, and gently ran his fingers over her till she slept.

Then he went outside and lay on the chaise and looked up at the stars. There seemed to be more of them here, as he'd noted from the first night he'd seen the sky of Bali. For all that he knew of constellations, for all that he'd studied, and understood, of skies made darker by city lights, garbage, smog, still the stars in Bali's skies shone brighter, still there seemed to be more of them. Maybe there were bigger and better stars in the southern hemisphere than in the northern. He could pick out Venus, and the Seven Sisters. But besides those he knew, he was sure he could see a different constellation than appeared in any other sky, a great flying unicorn with huge wings and a giant horn. A creature of fantasy, of course, but fantasy was okay in a constellation. It just wasn't good when you didn't know yet who you were.

He went back inside and lay beside her. Her skin had a luminous sheen. It looked pale gold in the moonlight, the glow from the mermaid in the atrium. His hand rested on the silk surface of it, while he lay back and tried to sleep.

Outside, the wind whistled, howled, and whispered by turns. And what it whispered, he could make out distinctly, he was almost sure, was “Fool. Fool. Fool.”

But maybe it wasn't really the wind. Maybe it wasn't even his imagination. Maybe it was Algernon.

And the Winner Is …

“So this is what I've decided,” Lila said. “I'd like you to build a statue.”

“I see,” said Victor Lippton.

He had come to the Park Sunrise out of deference to her still physically compromised condition. She was now in the care of his personal physician, as he wanted to help her get better as quickly as possible so she could get back to New York and resume her normal life and he could resume his. The doctors had taken off her cast, but she was still using crutches. Besides deferring to her incapacity, Victor had been raised well, and she
was
old. In addition, he imagined his secretary was starting to wonder why he was getting so many calls from Lila Darshowitz and, more importantly, why he was taking them. Nobody in the town, the industry, had more power than Victor Lippton, with the possible exception of Norman Jessup, two men who instantly picked up the phone on hearing each other's names. But those were the exceptional calls that they responded to at once, along with those coming from the women they loved: Chen, in Victor's case, Carina in Norman's. Victor had told Alexa not to call him anymore, even on his cell phone. “Don't call me,” he'd actually said, “I'll call you.”

“I have here a list of sculptors who would be acceptable.” Lila handed him the index of names Kate had helped her draw up. This included a few suggestions of her own, culled from all the years of reading her au courant (an expression she knew from
W
) magazines. “But I'd like to interview them before making a decision.”

“Naturally,” Victor Lippton said.

“I have some ideas what I'd like the statue to be. Concepts, I guess you'd call them. I have pictures of him from when he was young. I like to remember him like that.”

“I'm sure.”

“Terra-cotta would be nice. Or bronze. He looked better with a tan.”

“And where—” Victor's coffee went down the wrong pipe, and he sputtered a little, trying not to choke. They were in her boxlike room. He'd brought a picnic basket, prepared by the personal chef who made lunches for him in his private dining room at the studio. Lila had called and said she'd made her decision, was ready to talk, and wanted to “do” lunch. She had been in the city long enough to understand that nobody ate it. There was cold chicken, finger sandwiches, jellied madrilene in little crystal bowls with plastic covers, a bottle of wine which Lila said she'd love to try once she'd finished her presentation. “And where,” he began again, “would you like this statue to be?”

“On the lot of Cosmos,” she said. “Your studio.”

This time he could not control the choking.

“He was the president there once,” she continued, leaning over to pound him on the back, “so it would be, like you say, fitting.”

“I don't—”

“Don't try to talk,” she said. “Don't you hate that, when something goes down the wrong way? But I want a really nice spot for him. I wouldn't be happy with the parking lot. Maybe that lovely patch of grass just below your window, so people could see it from high-line executive meetings.” She looked concerned at his struggle for air. “Maybe if you took a piece of bread…”

“I'll be alright,” Victor said, and waved her offer away. He took an audible gulp of air, swallowed, and got the choking under control.

“You were very kind to go to all this trouble,” she said, looking in the plaid-lined Nieman Marcus basket. “What's this?” She held up one of the little crystal bowls.

“Chilled consommé madrilene.”

“Really? I've heard about that, but I've never tasted it. I'd like to try it.”

He took off the lid, and handed it to her with a silver spoon. She tasted.

“Beef Jell-O,” she said, making a face.

“Maybe you'd enjoy the chicken.” He held out a piece on a customized plastic plate.

“Thank you,” she said. “So is it agreed?”

“Very well,” he said.

“I think I'd like some wine now,” said Lila. “So how's your windpipe?” she asked him as he poured.

“Fine, fine.”

“And another thing … thank you,” she said taking her glass, and sipped. “Like everybody else, I watch the Academy Awards. Larry felt bad that he never got one. You know, the year his really good picture was up, there was that little trouble…”

“The forgery and embezzlement,” Victor said.

Lila nodded. “So they didn't give it to him. They have that one they sometimes give posthumously?” She pronounced it “post,” like the office, and “hum,” as though it were a song, with emphasis. “That one after what's-his-name, who played Doctor Christian? God, I loved that show.”

“The Jean Hersholt Award?” he managed.

“Did you ever hear that show? No, of course not. That was before you were born. Radio was probably before you were born. What do you think?”

“That's the humanitarian award.” He was barely able to speak. “Let's not make this a complete travesty.”

“What's that?”

“When you laugh at what deserves honor.”

“Well, laughing was what Larry did best.”

“I will not be a party to it,” Victor said. “You can go ahead and expose me.”

“I don't want to hurt you,” Lila said. “Or anybody else. I just want Larry to have the recognition he deserves. How about that Irving Thalberg one?”

“For Lifetime Achievement?”

“You're not eating,” Lila said.

“They would throw me out of the academy for daring to suggest it. Larry Drayco, for God's sake. To even mention him in the same breath as Irving Thalberg…”

“Then maybe he should have his own name,” Lila said, holding out her glass for a refill. “His own award. Maybe you could introduce a new one.”

“The Larry Drayco Award,” he said, pouring a glass of wine for himself, drinking it very quickly. “For spitting in the face of an entire industry.”

“Well, you wouldn't have to put it like that, exactly,” Lila said. “He
was
an original.”

“It's true,” Victor said, and poured himself another wine, and drank it like it was medicine. “He had chutzpah.”

“That he did,” said Lila, and clinked her glass against his.

“And he
was
indefatigable.”

“I don't know what that means.”

“It means when you never give up. I will say that about him. He never gave up.”

Lila took a deep breath. “That's two of us,” she said.

*   *   *

The day of the Norman Jessup–Carina nuptials dawned bright, if not exactly clear. That came as a great relief to the catering staff of the Hotel Bel-Air. They had been up since the early hours of the morning preparing, the Latinos among them running out periodically to light candles so it wouldn't rain. There was a storm front off the coast that they had been listening to reports of with more than trepidation. Though they were prepared to tent the garden by Swan Lake for the ceremony and the vast lawn next to the giant sycamore for the reception, a wedding was never the same when it was soggy. Rain is considered a blessing by Hindus and Jews, but nobody was exactly sure what religion Carina was. They did, however, know that Christian Lacroix was in the hotel, having been flown in from Paris for the final fittings, and he was as close as many of the brides in the area could come to having a pope.

There was a suite set aside just to hang the bridesmaid's dresses. The fashion press had written in advance about the designs. For the bridesmaids, it was mixes of fondant pink, pearl gray, and silver fox. For the matron of honor, Mrs. Victor Lippton, it would quicken to rose pink sashed in mauve and green. The ring bearer, a four-year-old descendent of one of the founders of Paramount, would wear quicksilver velvet, short pants and jacket, and carry a pillow of gray satin, matching his ruffled shirt. The flower girl's dress would be a six-year-old, full-skirted version of the bridesmaids'. She would strew mauve rose petals on the silver carpeted aisle. That would tie it all together esthetically, according to the art director Norman had brought in to orchestrate the affair. The wrought-iron lamps siding the garden, like the stairs leading down to it, would be strung with wide, mauve satin ribbon. Each bow was to hold an arrangement of mauve roses, lilies of the valley, and cymbidium orchids, matching the bride's bouquet, which would trail to the ground, not quite as long as her train, to be held by two boys from a nursery school reputed to be funded by Michael Jackson.

The bride's dress was the very one that Claudia Schiffer had worn at the climax of the St. Laurent collection in Paris, a slightly less glittering occasion. It would be a swirl of white and gray and pale pastels. Everything was so well planned, it would doubtless go without a hitch, except for the happy couple, wrote a local wag who hadn't been invited.

But as coolly organized as the catering staff was, having handled any number of important and splendid weddings, there was a specialness about this one that had everybody slightly on edge. The overflow, anticipated to be close to a hundred, was to observe the ceremony from the balcony of the terrace, where they would also dine. A microphone with a special amplification system had been set up by one of Jessup's production technicians so no one would miss what was said by the man officiating, or the “I do's” uttered by groom and bride. Still, with everything taken care of, there remained some clouds in the sky.

Brides were usually nervous. What the hotel offered for weddings, besides excellent service, an exquisite setting, and first-rate cuisine, was a unique air of tranquility that calmed the most jittery. This morning, however, even the caterer felt a need to pull herself together. She retreated to the herb garden while the bus-boys went to relight their candles, praying that the weather would hold. “Happy the bride the sun shines on,” the caterer repeated, eyes closed, like a mantra. “Happy the bride the sun shines on. Pretty please.”