Best Friends (39 page)

Sally came closer, opened out her arms. “May I have him back now? Are you sated?”

Ezra's little body strained to her voice. I passed him back.

 

 

 

IN MY NIGHTMARE, Aury's sixteen, tall and beautiful.

“I took a vow of abstinence till marriage,” she announces. I think of Aury's precise handwriting, the perfectly aligned shoes on the floor of her closet.

My mind scurries. “You did? Where?” I think of her polite friends, their sober voices on the phone: “Hello, Mrs. Mann, is Aury home?” Her friends would always call me Mrs. Mann.

“At Cathleen's church. You know I've been going to Cathleen's church.”

“Not that abstinence is bad,” I say, talking almost to myself. “I'm abstinent. I haven't always been abstinent, of course. Obviously. Where would you be if I had been?”

“Did you have any respect for my father?” Aury asks, her eyes filled with pain. “Or was he just a lay?”

“Oh, Aury.”

“I thought so.” Her eyes pin me with angry despair. “What was his name?”

For some reason, I start laughing. “I'm not sure.”

“Mommy, what was his name at least? Don't I deserve to know his name?”

“Honey, I'm really not sure. There were . . .” I spread my hands helplessly.

Her perfect mouth falls open, her deep eyes fill. She starts to breathe very fast. “You mean it could have been more than one? More than two? You mean you don't even know?”

Well, a nightmare. But how will Aury handle the knowledge that her parentage wasn't clear? She wasn't yet three years old, but she was already such a particular little girl. She combed her dolls' hair daily with a special comb. She pressed her lips together and crossed her arms when I tried to coax her into the cowgirl jacket Sally bought her. Who's my daddy? she'd say one day, inevitably—or rather, because her speech was becoming as precise as the rest of her: Who is my father? There's always the myth of the father. It had been a lie to think the father wasn't important, and it astonished me to realize that I—princess daughter to my own father, with a best friend forever meshed with her father—once believed that my daughter's father wouldn't matter. In reality, he was no more than a sperm donor, but Aury wouldn't understand that. What child would ever want to?

 

 

 

SID PICKED ME UP in his Mercedes from Sally and Peter's house in Pacific Palisades and drove inland on Sunset to the Beverly Hills Hilton. It wasn't in honesty all that posh a hotel, which made me wonder if this whole breakfast was an elaborate slap in the face. I felt uncomfortable in his car, like a prisoner, and sat with my knees together and pointed toward the passenger door.

His face was lined and sagging, and while the front part of his hair had always been thinning, he had had a burst of hair loss. Now his forehead shone, as if greased. “Sally tell you I'm moving?”

“She did say your house was on the market, did you sell it?”

“The Mulholland house is still on the market, but I've bought a place in Malibu up in the hills. It's smaller. Got a view of the sea.”

Just like Sally said: ocean ocean ocean. “A smaller place. That makes sense with only one of you—” I hesitated, realizing what I was saying, and stopped before the word “left.”

“Eli,” Sid said. “The surviving patriarch.” It took me a second to realize that this must be a Bible reference. But who was Eli?

“He lived on a hill. Eli was the high priest who told Sarah she'd have a child. His sons took over the priesthood, but they drank, they let him down. Thank God for my daughter.”

“And for Ezra,” I prompted. I could still smell Ezra on my blouse.

“Oh, Ezra,” Sid said. “Right.”

We fell into silence except for desultory remarks about weather and scenery until we reached the hotel dining room, which was below the lobby and opened on one side to a patio. We sat in a booth with high-backed seats.

Good Lord, I thought, I hope nobody thinks I'm his girlfriend. I flattened my back against the seat.

Moguls surely did not come here. Second-tier players, maybe. In the booth behind us, the people were talking industry, margins and talent and a “killer promo.” People came and went, extravagantly greeted and released.

“This is Merv Griffin's hotel,” Sid said. “He bought it.”

“Really?” I said, inspecting the menu.

“Sid,” someone said, “Sid Rose”—and then a tall man about Sid's age wearing jeans and a polo shirt was leering beside us.

“I thought I'd say hello, I don't want to interrupt you and your . . .” He stopped.

“Friend of my daughter's,” Sid said.

“Aren't all the best ones,” the man said, giving me a wink. “You two have fun! See you courtside, Sid.” He looked my way again, eyes twitching. “Pleasure meeting you.”

“He thinks you're my mistress,” Sid said in satisfaction when he left. “Or maybe he thinks you're a hooker, that's even better.” His shoulders, behind his menu, shook with suppressed laughter. I had laid down my menu and was sitting very properly, my ankles crossed and my hands in my lap. Sid put his menu aside and looked straight at me. “You know I'm using tons of condoms in my videos,” he said. “Gay videos, straight videos, bi videos, all of them. I wanted you to know that, especially now that you're doing the work you're doing. I'm doing everything I can to be socially responsible. You know”—he waved his hand—“the ejaculations, we have to show them. But any time there's an insertion, I guarantee, there's a condom on that penis.”

“Is that so?” I said. “Admirable.”

“It's not great for business, either. Nobody likes to be reminded of that . . . plague. But in my earnest opinion, and it's not just mine, believe me, the adult entertainment industry helps prevent the spread of AIDS. It gives people an outlet. Especially now, with the video market. People can sit at home alone and have a sensual life.”

“Maybe the birth rate will fall.”

Sid appraised me for a moment, then decided I was serious. “That's great too,” he said. “I'd love to lower the teen pregancy rate, the abortion rate, all that stuff.”

I nodded. “You should run for president.”

A thin wash of suspicion crossed Sid's face.

The waitress came and we ordered. Sid leaned back and stretched out his arms along the back of the booth. I sensed that whatever he'd brought me here for was about to be revealed. I started biting the inside of my right cheek. “I've been thinking about you and Sally. You have a lot of influence on my daughter, you know that?”

“We're best friends.”

“I know that. She doesn't have other friends, really. She never did. I was her friend, and then she went off to Oberlin and needed someone there.”

The implication was mildly insulting. “We were lucky to be roommates.”

“You didn't think so at first, did you? Lord, I remember all those phone calls Sally made home when she was a freshman. She would
cry.
I almost flew out to Ohio to rescue her myself, but Esther said calm down, Sid, a girl's got to have a life of her own.”

I was startled to hear Sid talk as if he'd known there were too many phone calls. I was startled to hear Esther mentioned as someone who'd offered sensible advice. Maybe I'd underestimated them both.

“Remember that first boyfriend of hers, died jerking off in his car?”

“Timbo.”

“Timbo, that's right. Funny name. I got a guy works for me they call Jumbo. They met in line at the college bookstore, remember? She was buying two of all her textbooks—remember how she always sent a book to me? I got a college education with her, I really did.” Sid smiled wistfully, and to my surprise, I felt a surge of affection. Sally, a married woman with a child, had to a large extent vanished from his life. “Listen, I told Sally after she knew about my magazines, I told her: Sally, kiddo, that guy of yours I could have saved. Timbo could have been reading a magazine sitting in his bathroom, safe as toast.”

I smiled. You could see where Sally got her talent for description. I relaxed in my seat. “Anyway,” Sid went on, “my point is, you and Sally have been through a lot together, you being roommates, that boyfriend of hers dying, that little house you two shared in Oberlin with the dogs next door, your dad dying, that no-good fruit husband of Sally's, et cetera and so on. You two have been through a lot.”

I nodded.

Sid leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. His voice softened. “And she looks up to you. Really. Remember those six months she wouldn't talk to me? That was you.”

I felt my shoulders tense. “That wasn't me,” I said. “That was you. When Sally found out about some of the stuff you put out, she felt betrayed.”

“I was protecting her,” Sid interrupted, his voice rising. “Period. End of story.”

“But at some point, you must have realized she'd find out.”

“About my business?” Sid looked around helplessly. “I hoped she'd never find out. Okay?”

“Sid, do you hear what you're saying? You're essentially saying what you do is something you should be ashamed of.”

“I'm not ashamed,” Sid said. “Not one iota. But it's an adult business, and Sally was a little girl.”

I frowned and did some quick calculations. “She found out what you did just after she finished law school. Sid, she was twenty-five! You probably have actresses in your movies half that age.”

“I'm not into kiddie porn,” Sid said firmly. “And Sally was my little girl. She still is, in my mind. She'll always be. You wait and see when your daughter gets older.” He drummed his fingers on the table and tossed a glance across the room. “Or maybe it's a daddy thing, I don't know. That's what Esther said.” His gaze abruptly shifted back toward me. “Sally tells me you're living like a nun.”

Where had that come from? I shifted in my seat, feeling suddenly and uncomfortably prim. “I'm not dating, if that's what you mean.”

“You a lesbo?”

“No!”

“Just asking.” Sid smiled. “I'm going to ask you something else now, something I really want you to try to remember.” He paused, hunching over the table, and I bit the inside of my cheek again. “You remember when I phoned you up in Ohio over two years ago? Back in May, eighty-seven. When I told you Sally was taking drugs to her brother and I begged you to make her stop?”

I swallowed. “Yes.”

“You remember that?” His voice had gone wheedling and soft. “You remember it? I called you twice, didn't I? I begged you, didn't I?”

What was he driving at? I thought of Sally at her depositions, touching on the truth and then circling away, approaching and retreating, slipping in an arrow when it was least expected. Her father's daughter. “You asked me to talk with her, sure,” I said. “I remember that. I don't recall thinking you were begging.”

He leaned even farther into the table. “You didn't? You really didn't? Because I was begging you, sweetheart, I was—”

“Sid, you rascal!” a woman's voice said. I almost jumped.

Two attractive people, impeccably dressed, were standing by our table. The woman was blond with a sweeping hairdo, and the man looked like a model for Armani. The woman eyed me and smiled, her gaze sweeping down my entire body. She held out a manicured hand. “Marilyn Thornberry,” she said.

I introduced myself. Sid explained that I was a doctor from Ohio, an old friend of Sally's. “You'll like this, Marilyn,” he said, “she's specializing in AIDS.”

Even the Armani-clad male perked up at this. “Isn't that wonderful,” Marilyn said. “We certainly need dedicated doctors like you. I'm sure you're very big on education, that's so important. I just love what Sid's doing in the condom line. And the dental dams! Safe sex is a sort of mission for me. It's like I tell Fred”—she glanced over her shoulder at her companion—“a condom's nothing more than another piece of equipment!”

A porn star. We were talking to a porn star. I noticed a peculiar glint in her mouth and wondered if her tongue was pierced. “Do you work with Sid?” I asked.

“Oh, all I can. He's wonderful, he really is. All the best people work for Sid. Even the soundmen are professional.”

“That must be reassuring,” I said, thinking of Sally's adjectives.

“Oh, it is. It's like I tell Fred, the only crew we're missing is wardrobe!” She laughed a bit too heartily, as if this were a line she'd rehearsed. There was without question a gold stud in her tongue. She winked at me. “Props, lots of props. You ought to come down to the studio. I'll show you around.”

“That's very generous of you,” I said. “Thanks.” What was Sid doing to me, I thought, why had he brought me here to parade all his seamy friends in front of me?

After the waitress took our order and Fred and Marilyn left—Marilyn looking back over her shoulder and waving prettily with her fingers—Sid asked me again if I remembered how he'd begged me.

“I'm sorry about that,” I said, thinking of Sally and me heading off in her white Volvo to the Chinese place in Encino. It was true, I'd never tried to stop her. I shifted in my seat. “I don't think I behaved well during that period.”

“You didn't behave well,” Sid repeated flatly. I nodded, looking down.

“And you were a mother!” he burst out, his anger suddenly incandescent. “A new mother! I was another parent begging for the sake of his child, and you ignored me.”