An Inconvenient Woman (46 page)

Flo stared at Joel Zircon and said nothing. Slowly she rose, as if to leave.

“But I haven’t gotten to the punch line,” continued Joel. “That very same day, Jules Mendelson has a massive heart attack at the home of some broad he’s schtuppin’ up off Coldwater, and now he’s just hanging on by a twat hair. Is that poetic justice, or what do you want to call it?”

Flo began to walk toward the door. As she opened it to leave, a voice from behind her said, “Miss? You wanted to see me?”

Flo turned and faced Willi. She looked over at Joel Zircon and saw that he was watching.

“Is there a place I could talk to you in private for just a minute?” asked Flo.

“Come in here,” said Willi. “My customer’s in the dye
room in back. Be with you in ten more minutes, Joel. Maybe fifteen.”

“I’m a friend of your sister,” said Flo.

Willi looked at Flo. “I didn’t know Glycie had such ritzy friends,” he said.

Flo opened the bag that hung from her shoulder on a gold chain and took out a letter.

“My name is Flo March,” she said. “I am a very special friend of Jules Mendelson. I know you shave him every morning, even since the heart attack. Would you give him this letter, please? It’s very important. Very. He will be very grateful to you for giving it to him, I promise you.”

Willi looked down at the letter. Only the word
Jules
was written on the front of the envelope. “I take it this is confidential?” he asked.

Flo nodded.

“No one else should see it?”

“Oh, no. Only Jules. No one else,” said Flo.

“Hey, Willi! How the fuck long are you gonna keep me waiting back here?” yelled Marty Lesky from the dye room.

Willi put the letter in his back pocket and patted it. He smiled at Flo, then turned around and went back to Marty Lesky.

That night at dinner at Morton’s, Joel Zircon was able to say to Mona Berg, “I was talking to Marty Lesky today.”

“You were what?” asked Mona, instantly jealous.

“I said I was talking to Marty,” repeated Joel, thrilled with the effect the impressive name had made. “I bet you didn’t know he dyes his hair.”

“Of course I knew,” said Mona.

Later that same night at Miss Garbo’s, after he dropped Mona Berg off home, Joel said to Manning Einsdorf, “I saw Flo March today. Remember her? The waitress. She behaved very strangely.”

The following night the chimes in Flo March’s house rang. She was sitting in front of her television set watching one of Faye Converse’s old movies, drinking white wine from a Steuben wineglass. Expecting no one, she got up and peered through the closed curtains out to the front of her house. Although she could see the lights of a car, she could not see the car. She went to the front hall.

“Who is it?” she called through her front door.

“Olaf.”

“I don’t know an Olaf.”

“I’m one of the orderlies for Mr. Mendelson. I have a message for you, Miss March.”

Flo pulled open the door. Olaf was a very large young man dressed in a white T-shirt and white trousers.

“Come in,” said Flo.

“I just got off my shift, Miss March. He got your note from Willi this morning. I don’t know what it said, but he was very upset. Missus watches him like a hawk, you know, and also that Miss Toomey, the nurse in charge.”

“Yes?”

“I’m the only one who’s big enough to lift him to the bathroom, so I spend a lot of time alone with him. I have to take him on Friday to the doctor for a CAT scan, which they can’t do at the house. He’s going to stop here at lunchtime. He said to tell you that Mr. Lord is going to be here too. He said for you not to worry about anything.”

Flo’s eyes filled with tears. “Thanks, Olaf. When? What time?”

“Friday. Twelve. Twelve-thirty. One. I don’t know. Depends on how long the scan takes.”

“Should I have lunch for him?” asked Flo, eagerly.

“Something simple.”

“Oh, how wonderful. I’ll get all the things he likes. And you? And Sims Lord? You’ll have lunch here too?”

“You don’t have to have anything for me.”

“Oh, no. I would like to. I will. Oh, thank you, Olaf. I’ve been so worried about him.”

“I know all about you. He told me. We’ve gotten very close, and I don’t think he likes that Miss Toomey too much.”

“Come in. Would you like a drink? I have a bottle of wine open.”

“No thanks, Miss March. I have to get back up the mountain. I have the Bentley outside. He wants me to get used to driving it, because he doesn’t want Jim to drive when he comes here on Friday.”

Flo’s Tape #20

“I often wondered why Jules never had children. It always seemed to me that he would have liked a junior, a little Jules, to leave all that money to. He hated to be written about in the newspapers, but he sure liked to have his name on buildings and wings of buildings, and what better monument could there be than a kid to perpetuate your name? I once asked him about it. I thought maybe it was Pauline who didn’t want children, but Jules said no, it was he. Maybe it had something to do with what happened in Chicago, with that girl in the Roosevelt Hotel. Maybe he thought it was in the genes.

“I would have loved to have had his kid. He never knew this, but for the last year I was with him, I wasn’t taking precautions.”

T
he weeks of illness wore on, and the household revolved around the sickroom, the nurse, the orderlies, and the daily visits of the doctors. Since Jules’s heart attack, Pauline had behaved in an admirable fashion that was favorably commented upon by her many friends. Despite the frequent allusions in Cyril Rathbone’s column to a “redhead” who had figured in the scene of her husband’s heart attack, Pauline acted as if she were totally unaware of such a story, although she was certain that everyone she knew must have been reading the same columns, or been apprised of them. She confided in no one. To anyone who called, whether it was her father, or one of her sisters, or a close friend like Camilla Ebury or Rose Cliveden, or even a museum curator who had been entertained in her home, or a high official in public office, she gave minute details of her husband’s condition, as well as assurances that he was doing well. “Yes, yes, he’s home from the hospital already. Isn’t it marvelous? You know, Jules is as strong as an ox. The whole thing was a terrible scare for both of us. And a great warning. He has to lose weight, and now he will. I’ll tell him you called. He will be so pleased. And thank you. We both so appreciate hearing from you.” Callers who had heard rumors of problems in the long marriage ceased to believe them.

After Jules was brought back to Clouds to recuperate, much to the consternation of the doctors in charge of his case, Pauline began to go out to small parties in the evenings again. “No, no, of course I’ll come, Rose. I’d love to come. Jules wants me to go out again. I think he loves to hear all the gossip I tell him the next day. In a few weeks he’ll be up and around again himself. Long dress or short?”

When Prince Friedrich of Hesse-Darmstadt, the head of
the jewelry department of Boothby’s auction house, called Pauline from London to inquire about Jules, he told her that he intended to be in Los Angeles in two weeks’ time, after first attending a billionaire’s party in Tangier.

“I’ll give a dinner for you, Friedrich,” said Pauline. She was very fond of the prince.

“No, no, Pauline. I wouldn’t think of letting you, not with Jules so ill,” replied the prince.

“But you wouldn’t believe how well he’s doing,” said Pauline. “I didn’t mean anything large. Just ten or twelve.”

“It would be marvelous, Pauline.”

“Is there anyone you’d particularly like to see?”

“I long to see Faye Converse.”

“Perfect. Faye just sent Jules the loveliest flowers.”

Flo, lying in bed that afternoon, listened to the telephone ring several times. She thought of letting the machine pick up, but then it occurred to her that it might be Jules calling, and she grabbed the instrument. She worried that Pauline might have heard of their plan for Friday lunch.

“Hello?” Her voice was tentative.

“Flo?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Philip Quennell.”

“Oh, Philip.” Flo’s voice relaxed.

“I haven’t seen you at the morning meetings for quite some time,” said Philip.

“I know.”

“Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes. Things have happened, Philip. You must have heard. It’s been on the news.”

“I have, of course. I understand he’s already gone home from the hospital.”

“Yes. But it was much too early for him to be moved. He wasn’t ready to go back to Clouds yet.”

“Then why did they move him?”

“Can’t you guess, Philip?” asked Flo.

“No, I can’t,” replied Philip.

“It was Pauline. She heard I went into his room dressed in a nurse’s uniform, and wanted to fire the whole nursing staff. That was why she had him brought home.”

“But how do you know that?”

“Mimosa Perez, one of the nurses, told me. The doctors were furious that he was taken home.”

“But certainly he’s being treated at home?”

“Yes.”

“I assume you’re not being allowed to see him.”

“Correct.”

“This must be a very difficult period for you, Flo.”

“Yes.”

There was a long silence.

“Flo?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not drinking, are you?”

“No!” She knew that she had answered too quickly and too emphatically. She knew that he knew too.

“I’m here, you know, if you want to talk,” said Philip.

“You are sweet, Philip.”

“Even in the middle of the night.”

“Thanks. I won’t forget your offer. And I hope that society girlfriend of yours knows what she’s got,” said Flo.

Philip laughed. “Would you like me to pick you up in the morning and take you to the meeting?”

“No. I’ll be back real soon, Philip. Really.”

“Okay.”

She started to hang up, and then she stopped. “Listen, Philip?”

“Yes.”

“Is it true that Jules got you fired from your documentary?”

“Did he tell you that?”

“God, no. Some jerk called Joel Zircon told me.”

“Well, don’t worry about it.”

“I feel terrible about that. I want you to know I didn’t tell him I was with you those days.”

“I know you didn’t, Flo.”

“He had a private dick trying to locate me.”

“I’m sure.”

“I feel terrible about that. I feel responsible. You didn’t ask me to go to your room. I just burst in on you that night.”

“Jules had it in for me ever since he knocked over his Degas statue of the ballerina.”

“Pauline’s asked us for dinner on Friday night,” said Camilla.

“I can’t believe she asked me,” replied Philip.

“Indeed she has. She’s very fond of you. She asked specifically for me to bring you.”

“Is it a party?”

“Small. Quite small. Only twelve or fourteen, I think. Because of Jules being ill and all.”

“Is Jules up then? Is he about?”

“Heavens, no. Not yet.”

“Odd time for Pauline to be giving a party then, don’t you think?”

“Pauline says he’s almost well again. It was just a terrible scare. She said he’s on his way to a complete recovery.”

“How is Pauline handling all this?”

“A model of good behavior. Everyone thinks so. Class, you know. I’ve always hated the word
class
, but it does say it, doesn’t it? Apparently, that ghastly Cyril Rathbone has been writing such awful things in his column about the red-haired woman I met in your room. Of course, I didn’t breathe a word to a soul that I had met her, and I never read Cyril Rathbone’s column, but I hear about it from everyone. Mainly Rose Cliveden.”

“But why is Pauline giving a party at this time?”

“For Prince Friedrich of Hesse-Darmstadt.”

Philip laughed. “And who the hell is Prince Friedrich of Hesse-Darmstadt?”

“The head of the jewelry department at Boothby’s auction house in London.”

Philip laughed again. “Of course he is.”

“Why is that funny?” she asked.

“It just is, Camilla.”

“Sometimes I don’t understand you, Philip,” said Camilla.

“Sometimes I don’t understand you, Camilla,” said Philip.

On Friday morning, the day of Jules Mendelson’s CAT scan in the Jules Mendelson Family Patient Wing of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, as well as the day of Pauline Mendelson’s small dinner party for Prince Friedrich of Hesse-Darmstadt, Flo March arose early to prepare for her lunch party for Jules and his lawyer, Sims Lord, whom she had never met. She went at seven, the time she usually went to her AA meeting at the log cabin on Robertson Boulevard, which she had not gone to for weeks, to have her hair done by Pooky and her
nails done by Blanchette. Pooky said later to Blanchette that he had never seen Flo so nervous, or so unresponsive to the gossip about the fashionable clientele of the salon, which she usually enjoyed listening to. Because Pooky liked Flo so much, he did not ask her if she was the redhead everyone was talking about in the blind items in Cyril Rathbone’s column.

Flo had never learned how to cook well enough even to attempt the cheese soufflés she planned to serve, but she did know how to set her table in the grandest style. Months earlier, she had cut out of a magazine a picture of a table setting that Pauline Mendelson had arranged for a lunch party at Clouds for a visiting ambassador, and using her new Steuben glasses and her new china and silverware from Tiffany and her new tablecloth and napkins from Porthault, she copied the photograph of Pauline’s table exactly. Petra von Kant, the favored florist of the moment, arrived early to arrange the flowers for the centerpiece. The out-of-season tulips she had ordered from Holland were not sufficiently open to please Flo. “They’re too tight, they’re too tight,” she wailed. “I wanted them to look as if I picked them in my own garden. You promised me they’d be open.” Petra, used to tantrums from her society clients, borrowed Flo’s hair dryer and blew hot air on the tulips until they were open to their fullest. Later Petra told Nellie Potts, Flo’s decorator, that she had never seen a hostess who worried more about the height of the flowers in the center of her table. Petra had no way of knowing that, according to the same magazine article, it was a rule of Pauline Mendelson’s that the flowers in her centerpieces never be so high as to be a deterrent to conversation, and Flo March, in her first outing as a hostess, adhered wholeheartedly to her lover’s wife’s philosophy. “I want people to be able to talk,” she said, as if she were entertaining forty instead of four. She longed to use place cards with names written in calligraphy, but a look she caught in Petra’s eye convinced her, without any words being spoken, that place cards for four would not exactly be Pauline’s way of doing things.