An Inconvenient Woman (34 page)

“Hellohowareyou?” said Madge White, staring at the young woman.

Flo, confused, nodded but did not speak. Flo could see by the haughty look on Madge White’s face that she understood the situation, and she shrank from the look.

A car horn honked at the delay caused by the Bentley’s blocking the departure area. There were cars with impatient occupants backed up behind, waiting to be parked.

“Your car, sir,” called out the parking boy again, but neither Jules nor Flo moved toward it.

A taxi pulled up next to the Bentley. As an arriving couple got out of the cab, Flo called out, “I’ll take that cab,” and ran toward it.

Jules, upset, called out after Flo, “I’ll be happy to drop you off, Miss March.” He wondered if Madge White noticed the concern in his voice.

Flo, in the cab, looked back at Jules. There were tears in her eyes. “No, no, I’m sure you and Mr. Lord have important things to talk over, Mr. Mendelson,” she said. She turned to the driver. “Beat it. That Bentley is going to follow me, and I don’t want to be followed.”

“Where to, lady?” asked the driver. He was aware that the young lady was highly agitated, but he did not want to become involved in her drama.

“Please. Please. Move quickly,” she pleaded. She gave her address on Azelia Way in Beverly Hills.

“Do you want to take Laurel Canyon or Coldwater Canyon?” asked the driver. He spoke with a heavy Middle Eastern accent.

Flo looked out the rear window of the cab and saw that Jules was shaking hands with Madge White and getting into his car. She knew immediately that he would go to Azelia Way to find her, and she did not want to be found by him. “No, listen, driver, I changed my mind. Take me to the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Strip,” she said. “Take Laurel Canyon. You can go quicker on Laurel.”

The Chateau Marmont was where Philip Quennell lived.

Flo’s Tape #15

“On the afternoon of the day that Pauline left for Northeast Harbor to visit her father, Jules was, as always, in my house at the regular time, about a quarter to four. He didn’t tell me she had gone away, by the way. I only knew that when I read it in Cyril Rathbone’s column. Anyway, we’d done it a couple of times, and he was lying on my bed talking on the telephone, just like he always did, conducting a little business before we did it again. For a guy his age, he could go more times than most guys half his age.

“But that day he needed his little agenda book that he always carried with him, that told him where he had to be at what time, and listed the sixty or seventy telephone numbers that immediately affected his personal and business life. By the way, he had me in there under Red, as in red hair, in case Pauline or Miss Maple or someone was looking through it, I suppose. Anyway, that day he was talking to someone important, I forget who now, maybe Myles Crocker from the State Department, and he signaled to me without stopping his conversation to get him his agenda out of his suit jacket.

“Well, I got the little book out and, naturally, being curious, I started flicking through it to see what fancy dinner parties he was going to that week. And that was when I saw that he had several appointments with Dr. Petrie. Dr. Petrie, in case you never heard of him, was one of the eminent heart specialists of Los Angeles. I happened to know that because Jules had attended a testimonial in his honor. Kind of a cold chill went through me. I wondered if he was okay, healthwise.

“Later, I said to him, ‘You okay, Jules?’ He said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, ‘Your ticker?’ He said again, ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, ‘I saw in your agenda you had some appointments with Dr. Petrie.’ When Jules got mad, his face got red and he became very silent. That’s what happened then. He got mad. He said it was because I shouldn’t have pried into his book, that it was bad manners.

“You see, I always thought the merry-go-round was never going to stop, but I should have begun to see the signs that day.”

O
n the afternoon of the evening that Jules and Flo dined together at a restaurant in the San Fernando Valley, another encounter took place on a street in Beverly Hills that also caused a disruption in a relationship. Camilla Ebury, the rich and pretty young widow who was having an affair with Philip Quennell, had begun to experience feelings for him that she had never felt for her late husband, and thoughts of marriage were beginning to form, although she knew almost nothing of her lover’s life before she met him at the Mendelsons’ party. She only knew that he was not a fortune hunter. On his part, Philip was enjoying an extremely pleasant relationship, but, for reasons of his own, he did not think of it in terms of permanence. He was merely a transient figure in the city where Camilla was entrenched. It was his intention, as it had always been, to return to his home in New York when he finished the screenplay for the documentary he was writing for Casper Stieglitz. By that time, he felt sure that the furor that had been caused by the book he had written about Reza Bulbenkian would have died down.

As with many women of her position, much of Camilla Ebury’s time was taken up with good works and cultural activities. She worked long hours for the fashionable charities of the city, the Los Angeles Orphanage Guild, the Colleagues, and the Blue Ribbon Four Hundred, and her name was often listed on the committees of charitable events. She felt that it was the obligation of people born with money to devote a portion of their time to helping those less fortunate. She was also a splendid tennis player and a first-rate golfer and was often involved in tournaments. She had her own tennis court at her home in Bel Air, and she and Philip often played early in the morning before he went back to his room at the Chateau
Marmont, where he worked on his screenplay. Several times a week she played golf at the Los Angeles Country Club on Wilshire Boulevard.

“All you people look alike at this club,” Philip had said one Sunday evening, looking around the dining room.

She knew what he meant. “Well, we all know each other,” she said. She had belonged to the Club all her life, as her father and her late husband had before her, and she knew the names of most of the members and most of the help. Every Sunday evening she and her daughter, Bunty, went to the Club for the buffet supper, just as she had gone with her father when she was a child, and Philip had started to accompany them.

“No show folk.”

“No.”

“No ethnics.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Watkins, remember.”

“Tokens.”

“Well, that’s the way it is. That’s the way it always has been,” she said to Philip, with a shrug. She hated that kind of conversation. “They have clubs too that we can’t get into. Don’t forget that.”

Philip laughed. It was not the first time he had heard her give this rationale.

“Even the Mendelsons couldn’t get into the Los Angeles Country Club, and God knows, Pauline McAdoo comes from about as good a family as you get back east,” said Camilla.

“I bet if you checked into it, you’d find the problem was Jules, not Pauline,” replied Philip.

Camilla didn’t reply. “Here comes Bunty. Don’t continue this conversation in front of her.”

Philip did not play golf, but on this particular day Camilla asked him to join her there for lunch in the Club grill, where all the golfers had lunch, after she had played. He liked the look of her in her visored cap and trim white shorts and pastel-colored sport shirts. Rose Cliveden made her first appearance at the Club since she broke her leg at the lunch she gave there following Hector Paradiso’s funeral. Rose was one for dramatic entrances, and she had herself pushed into the grill in a wheelchair by a nurse, although she was able by that time to navigate by herself on crutches.

“I’m back,” she yelled as she came in, and all her friends in the room rushed over to greet her, and Bloody Marys were
ordered for all. As always, wherever Rose was, a party began. From the arm pocket of her wheelchair, she pulled forth several gifts, handsomely wrapped. One was for Clint, the bartender, whom she had accused of making the Bloody Marys too strong on the day she fell over Astrid, and the other was for her dear friend Camilla Ebury, who was that day thirty-three years old.

“You didn’t tell me it was your birthday,” said Philip, when he and Camilla had settled back at their own table.

Camilla blushed. “I never tell anyone it’s my birthday. Trust Rose to make an announcement. She keeps one of those birthday books. I never know when anyone’s birthday is.”

“What are you doing when we finish lunch?” asked Philip.

“I have an Orphanage Guild meeting at four,” she said.

“Between now and four?”

“Take a shower. Change clothes. Why?”

“You’re coming with me,” said Philip.

“Where?”

“To buy you a birthday present.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to. But I want to.”

A half hour later, Philip and Camilla walked hand in hand down Rodeo Drive looking in shop windows, both feeling carefree, as if they were playing hooky. Philip saw a very pretty young woman coming toward him from the other direction. He was surprised enough to stop in his tracks. The young woman, who had seen him before he saw her, was also surprised, and unnerved, by the unexpected meeting.

“Hello,” said Philip.

“Hello,” replied the young woman.

Camilla, watching the exchange, dropped hold of Philip’s hand.

“What an incredible surprise,” said Philip.

“For me, too,” said the young woman.

“Do you live here?” he asked.

“No. Do you?”

“No. I’m here working for a few months. Where do you live?”

“I’m in San Francisco still. You’re in New York?”

“Yes.” There was an awkward pause.

Camilla said, “Philip, I think I’ll go back to the car.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Philip. “This is Camilla Ebury. Terry—uh, what’s your last name these days?”

The young woman laughed. “Still Sigourney,” she said.

“Terry Sigourney, Camilla Ebury,” he said.

The two women nodded to each other.

“I read your book on that Wall Street guy,” said Terry to Philip.

He nodded. There was another awkward pause.

“Did he really break your legs? I read that.”

“Oh, no. Only a threat that didn’t happen.”

“Philip, I’m going to get a taxi across the street at the Beverly Wilshire,” said Camilla impatiently.

“No, no, wait,” said Philip, reaching out for her hand.

Camilla pulled her hand away from him.

“Listen, I better be on my way,” said Terry. She turned to Camilla. “Does he still have that cute little tattoo, down there?”

Camilla, angry, blushed.

Terry looked at Philip. “Good-bye, Philip,” she said. “If you’re ever in San Francisco, I have a gallery. Bird prints. It’s in the book.” She walked on past them.

Camilla and Philip looked at each other for an instant.

“You behaved like a bitch,” said Philip.

“
I
behaved like a bitch? What about her? What about that tattoo crack?”

“You brought it on, you know.”

“I was jealous.”

“Well, where to next?” asked Philip. “Tiffany’s is across the street there in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, isn’t it?”

“Why do I feel that Terry was something more than a casual acquaintance?” asked Camilla.

Philip didn’t answer for a moment.

“Who was she?”

“A subplot,” answered Philip.

“How sub?” asked Camilla.

Philip paused. “I was once married to her,” he said.

Camilla stopped. “Married to her? You never told me you’d been married.”

“Because I’d almost forgotten I was.”

“How could a marriage slip your mind?”

“I was only eighteen at the time. An elopement to Mexico. There was always a question as to whether it was legal or not.”

“Was it annulled?”

“No, we were divorced.”

“How long were you married?”

“Under a year.”

“Take me home, will you? I have the meeting at four, and I want to get my own car.”

“I haven’t bought you a present.”

“I don’t want a present.”

They drove back to Camilla’s house in Bel Air in silence. When he pulled into the driveway, she picked up her bag so that by the time the car pulled in front of the house, she had already opened the door. As she was about to step out of the car, he reached over and put his hand on her arm.

“Why are you being like this?” he asked.

“I’ve been sleeping with you for how long now? Since the night Hector was killed, and I just realized I don’t know one damn thing about you. Nothing.”

“I never thought credentials were required for a love affair,” said Philip.

She ignored him. “I don’t know if you have a mother, father, brother, sister, or a child even.”

“No to all of the above.”

“Now I find out for the first time that you’ve been married.”

“So have you.”

“It’s not that you were married that I mind. It’s that you simply neglected to tell me an important bit of information about yourself.”

“It was twelve years ago. I was married for seven months. What’s the big deal?”