Winning is Everything (32 page)

A few beads of sweat popped out across Ron’s forehead. “Well, as J. Paul Getty used to say, ‘If you can count your money, you’re not really rich.’ Ha. Ha.”

“Do I make myself clear?” asked Edward Kramer, belching a perfectly chiseled ring of cigar smoke into the air.

“I’m not sure, sir …”

“What I’m saying is, none of what I’ve achieved means anything if I’ve no one to leave it to.”

Ron wiped his forehead. “Are you talking about an heir, sir?”

“Goddamn right I’m talking about an heir!” huffed the gross grocer. “I lost my son years ago, and you can be goddamn sure I’m not leaving this world until I’ve had some time to play with my grandson.”

“Have you discussed this with Casey?” Ron asked.

“Casey?” Kramer asked as he weaved in place, and for the first time Ron realized he’d been carrying on a conversation with a drunk.

“I … really don’t know what to say, Mr. Kramer.”

“Well, tell me this, then. Do you love Casey?”

Love? This is it,
Ron told himself. “Well, Mr. Kramer … truth of the matter is…” Ron looked around at the oak paneling on the walls. At his host’s six-hundred-dollar suit. At his glass of one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old Napolon brandy. At his future.

He dared not tell Edward Kramer he’d always promised his mother he’d marry a rich girl. So instead he said, “Mr. Kramer … I love your daughter, Cassandra, more than anything in the whole world!”

There! He’d said it. He had actually laid his cards on the table.

And the strange part was that, for the very first time, he thought he actually meant it!

67 

That night Ron woke up to find Casey tucked up against him. Tenderly he leaned over and kissed her, and then, rigid with excitement, he eased his way deep inside her. She sighed as she awoke, and he moaned as he slowly thrust back and forth. Gone was the need to call her derogatory and debasing names, to be constantly moving around from one creative position to the next. Gone was the desire to conquer, to impress, to win over. All Ron felt was an outpouring of affection.

“I love you,” he whispered to her for the very first time.

It felt better than anything Ron had ever experienced. As he reached his climax, he screamed out her name from the incomparable joy he was experiencing.

Drained as never before, Ron lay on top of Casey for a long while. As he finally drifted off to sleep, he felt a tear running down his cheek.

It was, he knew, a tear of happiness, of liberation.

He served her breakfast in bed.

“A simple offering for Milady,” said Ron, carrying in a trayful of early-morning goodies.

Casey stretched her arms and sat up in bed. “What’s all this?”

“Just a small token of my affection. Bulgari was closed or else I would have tossed a sapphire necklace in with the scrambled eggs.”

Ron laid the tray on Casey’s lap.

“Good-bye,” he said, kissing her on the lips.

“Where you going?”

“To work,” said Ron, adjusting his tie in the mirror.

“So early?” asked Casey. “On Saturday?”

“That’s the idea,” said Ron with a smile. “Thanksgiving weekend. The office should be deserted. I can get a lot done.”

“Come ‘ere.” Casey patted the bed with her hand.

Ron walked over and sat at the edge of the bed.

“Won’t you have some coffee with me?”

“Had some in the kitchen with Priscilla while she cooked. Eat that croissant before it gets cold.”

“I want to get away!” said Casey, pouting like a little girl. “I’m sick of all this cold weather. I hate winter!”

“Winter’s not due for another four weeks,” said Ron. “Better get used to it.”

“I don’t want to get used to it,” the Princess pouted. “I want to go away. Sharon Anderson’s family has a house in Bermuda. She and her fiancé are going there next weekend and have invited a houseful of people. I think it would be fun to join them.”

“Bermuda?” asked Ron, enticed.

“Right off the beach near Hamilton. I understand it’s quite lovely.”

“But the time …?”

“Oh, it’ll just be a long weekend. You call in sick Friday morning. We return Sunday night. You only miss a day of work. If I can tear myself away from my shrink, you can get away from the agency, no?”

“Bermuda?” Ron repeated. “You know I can’t afford it.”

“Sure you can,” said Casey, buttering a croissant. “It’s just plane fare. Once we’re there, it won’t cost anything. Oh, maybe if we go out to dinner … but I can spring for our share. Tell you what … you pay your air fare one way, I’ll pick up the rest. All right?”

“All right?” Ron said hugging her. “You are the best thing’s ever happened to me.”

“Then I can call Sharon, tell her to expect us?”

“Sure,” said Ron. “I’ve taken off so much time lately, another couple of days ‘in bed with the flu’ can’t hurt. I’ll start packing my Bermuda shorts right now.”

“No!” said Casey. “Right now you get up from the bed and stop spilling my coffee. Soon as I hear that front door slam, I’m finishing breakfast and heading back to my pillow for another three hours’ sleep.”

“Princess …” Ron kissed Casey’s nose as he stood to leave.

“Prince …” Casey kissed thin air.

Ron was about to leave the room when Casey asked, “Oh … by the way—what exactly did Daddy talk to you about upstairs in his office?”

“Oh … Ron shrugged. “This and that. Mostly he told me about your brother, Alan.”

Ron blew Casey a return kiss and left the room.

Bermuda?
thought Ron as he hurried down the hall toward the elevator. Moonlight on the ocean. The perfect place to propose marriage.

Alan?
thought Casey as she took a sip of coffee. That’s the same “private” discussion Daddy’s had with every boy I’ve ever brought home.

68 

Wearing a dark blue bathrobe and a pair of furry muckalucks, Phyliss Dodge opened her apartment door and let Kip in. “About time!” she scolded lightly. “Where’ve you been?”

“I worked the luncheon shift today, so we could go out tonight, remember?” said Kip, taking off his coat.

“I’ve got Abe Lastfogel calling. Got three movie deals falling apart. Got the world crumbling around me, and you expect me to remember a waiter’s schedule?”

“Phyliss, I—”

“Listen, hon, who has time? Right? We should’ve been on our way twenty minutes ago, and look at me, I haven’t even bathed yet.”

The ringing of the telephone interrupted Phyliss’ complaint.

“Damn!” she screamed, then said to Kip, “Can you believe it? We’ll never get out of here. Do me a favor, hon … answer it. Just say ‘Phyliss Dodge’s’ and take a message. I’ll jump into the bathtub, start to get ready. You don’t mind, do you? Of course you don’t. Well …? Don’t just stand there looking gorgeous. Answer it!”

Kip went to the phone and Phyliss hurried off to take a bath.

“Phyliss Dodge’s,” said Kip, picking up the phone on the fourth ring.

Fifteen minutes later, Phyliss came out of the bathroom, again wearing her blue robe and a matching towel wrapped turbanlike around her wet hair.

“Can you believe I don’t have one emery board left in the house?” she asked as she frantically opened and shut desk drawers. “Who called?”

Kip picked up a yellow pad and read what he had written down. “David Merrick’s office. Pat Newcomb. Mike Nichols. Paddy Chayevsky … and from the Coast, Ted Ashley, David Janssen, Joanne Woodward.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all? You were only gone fifteen minutes, and you’re not even at work!”

“You know what I don’t like about the Christmas season?” said Phyliss, now searching madly for a pack of Marlboros. “It’s all so fucking
busy!
Who has time to work when all you’re supposed to do is go to parties and be jolly and giving? My life is coming to an end,” she complained, lighting up a cigarette. “I can’t find an emery board anywhere. I’ll have jagged nails. Get me David Merrick … No, forget it. I’ll speak to him tomorrow. What is it on the Coast, if it hasn’t finally fallen into the ocean—a little after four? Get me Joanne Woodward!”

Without waiting for a response, Phyliss turned and hurried into her bedroom.

A minute or so later, Kip stood in Phyliss’ bedroom doorway. “Joanne Woodward!” he said in a projected voice he hoped was loud enough to be heard above the rackety whirring of the hair dryer.

“WHAT?” Phyliss shouted back at him.

Kip walked over to Phyliss’ dressing table and turned the hair dryer switch to Off. “Joanne Woodward is on the phone …”

“Well, why in hell didn’t you say so? Where?”

“Line three,” said Kip, handing Phyliss the phone.

“You must say so right away!” said Phyliss with an impatient growl. “Sandy always tells me what line a call is on!” She yanked the phone away from Kip, pressed down line three, and said in a voice calm and oh-so-sweet, “Joanne … darling!”

Kip wanted to tell Phyliss that he was not Sandy, but she was too busy waving him away so she could talk in private. He wanted to walk out of the bedroom and Phyliss’ life, but he just wasn’t ready to do that. Not yet. There were all those things Phyliss had promised. That upcoming screen test at Columbia Pictures. That interview with Mike Frankovitch. The supposed meeting with Billy Friedkin.

Kip felt abused, mistreated, as he walked back into the living room to again tend to the ringing telephone lines. He pressed down on a blinking telephone button and said in a businesslike manner, “Phyliss Dodge’s!”

69 

Gary looked up from the screenplay he was reading and saw Nora Greene standing in the doorway to his office. “Hi.”

“Mind if I come in?” asked Nora.

“Mind? ‘Course not. Please … have a seat.”

Nora inspected the walls as she walked toward Gary’s desk. “Mmmmm,” she observed. “Real cute. Movie posters, Lichtenstein graphics, the same lousy-quality reproductions of the Utrillo views of Montmartre; sure looks like the Olympus story department to me.”

“Have a seat,” said Gary. “What brings you down here to peasantsville?”

“Slumming,” said Nora, taking a seat. “Wanted to see how you’ve set up your office, wanted to be the first to congratulate you.”

“Congratulate me?” asked Gary. “What for?”

“Oh … nothing much.” Nora pretended to stifle a yawn. “Just that you’re about to become a published author, that’s all.”

“Come on,” said Gary. “What’re you talking about?”

“You really want to know?” Nora asked teasingly. “Well, it’s like this. After I read your World’s Fair journal, I did something I didn’t tell you about.”

“What was that?”

“Well, I … went ahead and had it typed up, got a couple of Xerox copies made.”

“But why?”

“Oh … mainly to satisfy my own curiosity,” said Nora. “You see, I thought what you’d written was good. So, I went ahead and sent a couple of copies to an editor or two I know around town, to get a second opinion.

“Well, you little Charles Dickens, seems others feel you are gifted too, and one of the editors, a fellow named Michael Reese who works as a senior editor at Gyro Press, a small but distinguished house, just called me a little while ago to say he’d like to publish your journal under the title
A Season at the Fair.
There’s a fair amount of rewriting he wants done, but he thinks he can get it out on his spring list. Now, then … what do you think of that?”

Gary got up from his chair, raced around to the other side of his desk, and embraced Nora. “This can’t be happening!” he shouted. “It can’t! I mean, I just kept that journal to give me something to do. To practice, that’s all.”

“Well, there you are,” said Nora. “You know what they say about how to get to Carnegie Hall?
Practice! Practice!
Obviously it works for the typewriter as well as the piano.”

“I can’t believe this is happening to me.” Gary hugged Nora again. “Will I be making enough money for us to be able to take a year off and travel around the world?”

“Well …” Nora stroked Gary’s hair. “I think you may be able to get us to Atlantic City for lunch. This is a small house and Reese means to publish it as a small book. I think we’re talking in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars.”

“Two thousand?” Gary repeated, momentarily deflated. “What the hell,” he said as his spirits resumed flight. “I’ll be a published author, won’t I? I’ll have a real book with
my
name on it in the bookstores. Isn’t that what counts?”

“That’s what counts,” said Nora, kissing the top of Gary’s head. “This may not become your entrée to fame and fortune, but you know something …? It sure is going to be a fine, small step in that direction.”

Sharon Anderson greeted Ron and Casey at the Bermuda airport. Sharon’s grandfather had been an enormously successful financier and Sharon was spending her life doing her damnedest to spend the interest from his accumulated fortunes.

She led Ron and Casey to her open-air jeep in the airport parking lot and then drove them to the Anderson beachside retreat, a modest seven-teen-room mansion resting atop a cliff above a secluded beach.

Ron and Casey arrived just as it was getting dark, early Friday evening. The twelve other guests had flown in over the past twenty-four hours and Sharon announced she was sick of traipsing back and forth to the airport every twenty minutes to be picking up her friends, and was grateful Ron and Casey were finally there, because she planned not to return to the airport again until they all left Sunday.

Sharon’s father had recently installed floodlights on the adjoining tennis courts and so Sharon and her fiancé went from room to room announcing there would be cocktails served on court number one in fifteen minutes, and asked that everyone wear tennis whites, whether planning to play or not.

Ron was delighted to step into his purchased-just-yesterday Saks Fifth Avenue pro-shop whiter-than-white tennis shorts and Lacoste shirt. And although he had never lifted a racket in his life, he at least looked very Pancho Gonzales prancing around his and Casey’s guest room.

Outside, Ron and Casey accepted their rum and Cokes and were introduced to the other guests. The men were stockbrokers and bankers. One was a lawyer and one played quarterback for the New York Giants. Most of their wives or girlfriends had gone to Sarah Lawrence with Sharon and they all seemed to be ex-debutantes who, like Sharon, spent their lives at lunch and charity functions.

The quarterback, Bud Hubbard, walked over to Casey and kissed her on the cheek. He’d gone to her Christmas party nearly a year ago and was happy to see her again.

Casey introduced Bud Hubbard to Ron, who took one look at the jock’s wide shoulders, his Pepsodent smile, his bountiful field of dark wavy hair and immediately hated him.

“Care to play some tennis?” Bud asked Ron.

“No, thanks,” said Ron, who didn’t know ad-in from ad-out. “I think I’ll spend a little time concentrating on getting drunk.”

“What about you?” Bud looked over to Casey. “I promise I’ll go easy on you.”

Casey smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “Sure,” she exhaled. “Why not?”

Casey took a swig of her Cuba libre and handed her glass to Ron. “Here,” she instructed. “Hold this till I get back. I’m going to beat the pants off him.”

“I’d prefer you went after his socks,” said Ron with a forced smile. He pulled up a chair and watched as they volleyed. Casey looked rather cute in her tiny-little white pleated tennis dress, Ron thought as he watched her belting the ball back and forth over the net. She also seemed to be a fairly competent player. Along with everything else, Ron realized—the ballet lessons, the piano lessons, the French lessons, the skiing lessons—there had also obviously been the obligatory tennis lessons.

After a while he got bored watching so he had his drink refilled and went for a stroll around the grounds, searching around until he found a stone bench high atop a cliff, the perfect spot to propose marriage.

“Where’d you go?” she asked him forty-five minutes later, back at their room.

“For a walk,” said Ron, kissing her on the cheek. “Everyone in their tennis whites looked so bright, I got a headache. Who won?”

“He did. But I think he cheated. I wasn’t keeping track of the score, and all of a sudden I was down three games. Anyway, Bud’s a fun guy. He wants us to join him and his girlfriend in their room for drinks in about an hour.”

“You mean we’re going to have après-tennis cocktails too? Sounds excessive to me,” said Ron, getting ready to change.

“So what? We’re on vacation, aren’t we?”

“I guess …” Ron shrugged.

“I’m going to take a shower.” Casey turned around so Ron could unzip her tennis dress.

“Why don’t you shower after?” Ron asked as he placed a warm hand on each of her shoulders. “I can think of something to keep us busy for a while …”

Casey pulled away from him. “I’m too sweaty. I gotta shower now. And if we make love
after
I shower, then I just gotta shower all over again before getting dressed. And we only have an hour. I’d love to catch a twenty-minute nap before then. Aren’t you exhausted from the trip down here?”

“How ‘bout we take a shower together?” Ron asked, searching for a compromise.

“Come on, Ron. We got all weekend. Since when did you become such a horny toad!”

“For your information, milady, the Prince has always been a horny toad!”

“That was not my impression these last few weeks,” said Casey as she stepped out of her tennis dress and left it on the floor.

Ron reached out and took her hand. “God, you look sexy in your bra and panties,” he told her.

Casey looked down at herself. “You’ve seen me in them a thousand times …”

Ron sat on the bed and tried pulling Casey closer to him. “Hey, you know what?”

“What?” Casey asked with still another noncommittal shrug.

“I love you.”

Casey smiled at Ron and leaned forward to give him a short kiss on the lips. “Hey!” she said, stroking his cheek. “You’d better shave. You’re real scratchy.”

“I shaved this morning,” said Ron. “Thought you liked it rough.”

“I do.” Casey scratched Ron’s chin. “When it’s just you and me. But we’re having dinner with all these Wall Street types. I want you to look your spiffiest.”

As it turned out, they both looked their spiffiest.

Casey wore a white cotton dress with a scoop neck and enough décolletage to make Ron ask if she wasn’t showing a little too much. Ron wore his Cardin blazer and his best white cotton slacks. When Bud opened the door to his room, he had on khaki-colored shorts, a pair of sandals, and a Hawaiian shirt which was unbuttoned down to his waist, exposing an exceedingly hairy chest.

“Hey, you kids,” Bud said. “You haven’t met Eileen yet, have you?”

He pointed to the terrace off his room, and there, standing in the doorway, was an attractive blond.

“Hi!” said Eileen in a nasaly twang. “Sorry I missed you at the tennis party. I was feeling a little woozy from the flight down here.”

“How do you do,” said Ron. “Hope you’re feeling better.”

“Yeah,” said Eileen. “I think I’m a little better now. That Lomotil is terrific stuff. Dries you up like a prune in nothing flat. What’s worse than a really bad case of the shits, I ask you, huh?”

For a moment no one said a word.

“What, indeed?” Ron broke the pregnant silence with a congenial chuckle.

Bud removed a small jewelry box from his suitcase. “Okay, you kids. It’s cocktail-party time and old Uncle Bud’s about to take care of us all.”

“Oh, good,” said Casey, looking around for some kind of bar setup. “I get so thirsty anytime I’m within a thousand miles of a trade wind.”

“It’s not drinkin’ we’re gonna be doing!” said the Giants’ quarterback, holding up a cigarette. “Anybody know what this is?”

“A skinny Chesterfield that never made it to the cigarette carton?” asked Ron.

“No,” said Bud. “It’s a joint. A marijuana cigarette!”

“Holy shit!” said Ron as he took a step to the door and snapped shut the lock beneath the keyhole.

“Cute,” said Bud. “Marijuana really has a strong aroma, so let’s go out on our terrace. We’ll smoke it there. You ever done this stuff before?”

“Sure,” Casey lied with a shrug. “Lots of times.”

“What about you?” Bud asked Ron.

“Of course not!” Ron was indignant. “It’s against the law!”

Bud snickered and Eileen wheezed and Casey rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

“Not for long,” said Bud. “Truth about grass is just beginning to surface. It’s a lot better for you than alcohol. You’ll see … soon
everyone’s
gonna be smokin’. I bet anything it’ll be legalized in a year or two.”

Bud reached forward and took Casey’s hand. “Let’s go,” he said, and gave her a short yank, propelling her toward the terrace.

They sat in a circle on four cushioned loungers. Bud lit the small cigarette and passed it to Eileen. She took a deep drag, passed the joint to Ron, and went into an immediate convulsion of hacking and coughing, surfacing only once to pronounce, “Man, that’s good shit!”

Ron held the joint in his hand like it was poisonous. “All right,” he asked. “What do I do?”

“Take a deep breath,” said Bud. “Then hold it in your lungs. This stuff is real strong, so you won’t need much. Here, I’ll show you.”