Lovers (61 page)

Victoria turned on her back and thought of the men she’d dallied with in California. Each one of them had added another layer to her erotic authority and her sexual creativity. They had served her well. Whenever she and Angus were together, he drowned himself in her body in a way that was so unbridled in his lust that on occasion he frightened her. She
owned
this man. He belonged to her. The time had come to have him on her terms. His life with her mother was a painful farce, he’d told her that on a thousand occasions. She’d waited as long as she intended to. It was the moment to claim her own.

With her new success, it didn’t matter, Victoria calculated, that many of Angus’s accounts still wouldn’t leave Caldwell and Caldwell with him, in spite of the endless
time he’d spent laying the groundwork for the change. There was more than enough profitable billing for both of them here in Los Angeles. Equally important, there was a real need for Angus in top management at FRB.

Victoria’s job was far too big for one person, although she’d worked hard and long to hide that fact from Archie and Byron. The two of them were busy hiring people for all the new creative work they’d won, but on her side of the business she still, as always, kept the number and influence of her own assistant account supervisors to a minimum, so that Angus would find his place in top management ready for him.

It was early on a Saturday morning. Victoria had been awake before dawn. Angus and her mother would be out in Southampton for the weekend, Victoria thought, looking at the clock on her bedside table, but it was still so early that her mother wouldn’t have appeared downstairs for breakfast yet.
Now!
The hated bonds of years flew into bits in her flush of success and impatience. She sat up in bed, picked up her phone, and dialed the Southampton number.

“Mr. Caldwell, please, Joe Devane would like to speak with him,” she said to the maid who answered the phone.

Within a minute, Angus was on the line.

“It’s me. What room are you in?” she asked.

“The library, what the hell—”

“Don’t interrupt. You’ve read about my getting Beach Casuals, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“Angus, it’s been almost two years. I won’t wait any longer. I’m through with being kept on hold, this is not a life I can endure. There’s no reason for you to stay where you are anymore, I need you here.”

“The timing is wrong, you’re in too much of a rush—”

“The timing will never be better. I’m coming to New York next week. We’re having an informal meet-and-greet Tuesday morning with Harris Reeves, and then I have a short meeting with Joe Devane that afternoon. We’ll be
spending the next three days with Beach Casuals. That gives you plenty of time to tell her.”

“I … listen, I—”

“If you don’t tell her, I will.”

“You don’t mean that, Victoria—”

“Don’t try me. Good-bye.”

Angus Caldwell hung up the phone without another word. He shut the library door and closed himself in, still hearing Victoria’s voice in his ears. This was the day he’d postponed and postponed, hoping—no,
believing
—that something would keep it at bay. She’d meet somebody out there, or she’d outgrow him, lose interest … God knows what thoughts he’d entertained, but he’d never convinced himself that this moment would really come.

Suddenly, unable to endure being shut up indoors with his fearful musing, Angus Caldwell walked quickly out of the great house, which had been built a few hundred yards back from the ocean. He walked down across the perfect greenness of the lawn and onto the sand, stopping only when he reached the lapping waves that were gentle this morning.

Angus Caldwell looked about him in every direction, and surveyed the gauzy, opaline morning mists lifting quickly over the ocean as the pearly blue light of another superb autumnal Southampton day grew brighter. As he looked up and down the wide beige beach, he named to himself the residents of each magnificently tended mansion, set well apart from one another behind clipped green privet hedges, on a stretch of coast that had no equal in the world. Each neighboring home belonged to a good friend, in each of them he was the most welcome of guests, just as he was at the Maidstone Club and the Meadow Club, membership in which created the special knowledge of an absolute privilege that could only be found in Southampton, a privilege that none of the other, lesser, new-rich Hamptons could ever match.

Angus took deep gulps of air, the clean tonic salt air of the Atlantic, and looked at his own weathered, shingled,
white-trimmed mansion, a landmark house of deep bay windows and wide porches and intensely comfortable, deliberately casual rooms, to which he took a helicopter each Friday night with longing anticipation—the same anticipation he felt on Sunday night when the time came to return to his vast, art-filled, elegant Fifth Avenue apartment, knowing that a good week’s work awaited him. He felt, with each pulsing beat of his heart, how much it meant to him when the elevator door opened and he entered the magnificent reception room of the agency where he and Millicent had been in charge of hundreds of employees for so long. He relived the ritual of each morning’s progression down the corridor to his own office, interrupted many times to speak to many people, never abusing his keen awareness that everyone in sight depended on them for their livelihood. Angus Caldwell scanned the vast horizon of the Atlantic Ocean and contemplated his half-ownership of an agency that would soon bill a billion dollars a year. He and Millicent were good bosses, he reflected as he bent to pick up a piece of driftwood; they’d honestly earned every one of the millions they’d made.

He enjoyed the best life of any man he knew, Angus Caldwell thought, but upstairs Millicent was still sleeping in her bedroom, Millicent, who allowed him all freedoms but the one he craved so persistently. If Victoria were here right now, he would have to find a place where he could have her, where he could find the release only she could give him, for the sound of her voice on the phone had aroused him unbearably, to the point of pain. No, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself, even if he had to throw her down on the beach in full view of the house.

If you don’t tell her, I will, she’d said. When the waves retreated, Angus made a sizable hole in the sand with the toe of his tennis shoe and watched as the returning waves gradually filled it up. He shrugged at this inevitable phenomenon and started jogging down the wide beach, moving smoothly and easily, a man who looked as if he didn’t
have a care in the world except getting enough exercise to prolong his enviable life.

Vito and Zach broke for coffee while the editor looked over the takes of a scene they were working on in the temporary editing room that had been set up in a motel not far from the Malibu Colony location.

“There were a couple of takes in there that looked better to me than what we just saw,” Zach said hopefully. “We can make that last shot substantially better.”

“I know we can,” Vito said. “In fact, the more film you shoot the better this picture looks. There was a day last week when I thought the only thing we could do with this film was burn the negative and hope that the arson squad wouldn’t catch us, but now it’s turned into an interestingly mellow stew, an oddball semi-black comedy mixed with pure sentiment and a sexy dash of madcap romance. I hear Siskel and Ebert now. ‘
A
Valentine to Hollywood—two thumbs up.’ ”

“If you’re right, Vito, it will be because of some lucky breaks and the chemistry of the actors. I haven’t been up to speed, don’t think I don’t realize it. I keep seeing Siskel and Ebert with their middle fingers up, and we wrap on Friday.”

Vito laughed comfortably. “It’s only a movie, as I keep telling you, Zach. Don’t take it so to heart, kid. Each of us has had more than one project that didn’t seem to work out right from the beginning. And sometimes everything can be going great and you’ve produced a stink bomb. Ever see
The WASP?
No, forget I asked! I don’t want to embarrass you.”

Vito laughed again and poured another cup of coffee.
“Long Weekend
started with a jinx on it. The people who live in the Colony were probably getting together every weekend, making little wax figures of us, and sticking pins in them and boiling them in oil. They never wanted this film located here, this place is their own incestuous secret. But they couldn’t beat us, and by now they’ve given up.
Long Weekend
should have been called
Black Mass in Malibu
. In fact, I think I’ll register that title with the Guild tomorrow.”

“Vito, why are you so relaxed? You make me nervous. Ever since I started working with you, every minute has seemed like a matter of life and death, and suddenly I’ve fucked up and you’re taking it calmly—well, relatively calmly. This is not the Vito Orsini I know.”

“One, you haven’t fucked up, we’ve got a picture here. Two, I’m not the Vito Orsini you knew, and you have your sister to thank. When I go home to Sasha, it puts my life in perspective. And if I’m in time to burp Nellie, the pages we’ve shot during the day don’t matter as much as they used to.”

“You really adore that baby, don’t you?” Zach asked curiously.

“What’s not to adore? The only thing I feel terrible about is that I wasn’t there when Gigi was that age. But now Gigi’s such a pain in the ass, such a worry to me, that I’m frankly glad it never worked out for the two of you. Between her flakiness and your flakiness, it would have been a doomed combination.”

“Thanks.”

“Listen, kid, you don’t blame me for wanting to see Gigi settle down with Ben Winthrop, do you? He’s pushing it hard, but Gigi won’t discuss the idea, hasn’t even let me meet him. Sasha says I’m mercenary, but what father wouldn’t enjoy the thought of his daughter marrying a guy who’s young, rich, handsome, and, as far as I know, halfway decent? Sasha says there isn’t a chance in hell of it happening because Gigi’s such a sentimental mess, and even if she did marry Winthrop, he’d be taking advantage of her unstable condition, and what’s more, it’d never last, because she’d only be marrying him on the rebound from you.”

“Sasha’s out of her mind!” Zach exclaimed in bitterness. “Christ, what’s wrong with her? She’s never dropped her sisterly attitude, her sick notion that I’m irresistible to
women. That’s because I remind her of herself, if you ask me. I thought maybe marriage would cure her … but apparently not.”

“You know something, Zach? You and your sister are both menaces to society. Now that I’ve taken Sasha out of circulation, someone ought to keep you locked up. No man ever really got Sasha out of his blood—look at that miserable slime Josh Hillman. And my daughter, one of the most down-to-earth people I know, is still so touchy about you that I don’t dare mention your name in front of her or she gets this little vulnerable hurt look on her face and makes me feel like a thoughtless beast. She’s never even asked me how this shoot is going, just because you’re involved. Talk about a lack of consideration for your father! I invited her to come out to the set to visit, now that she’s not working, and she wouldn’t consider it. On other pictures, she used to bug me to let her see me work, even though I explained how dull it was. She’s not emotionally able to cope with seeing you.”

“Then I certainly won’t come to the party.” Zach’s voice was abrupt.

“You
have
to come, Zach, you know you do. Sasha and I wouldn’t forgive you if you didn’t. Gigi’s mentally ready for that. In fact she’s physically prepared, she’s even stopped living her life in the bedroom, like a recluse, and forced herself to use the rest of the house. I think that’s a good sign. On the other hand, she spends the entire morning reading ‘Dear Abby,’ Ann Landers, Dr. Joyce Brothers, and her horoscope in every magazine she can buy. Does she think she’ll find the answer to her problems with you in those columns? I expect her to start sleeping with a teddy bear any day now.”

“Vito, damn it, I didn’t break up with her, she broke up with me. It’s not my fault that she’s—whatever she is.”

“I know, Zach. None of my former ladies behaved in Gigi’s sloppy, lovelorn way. Hell, even Billy and I get along now. I’m producing my next picture for Susan Arvey, and
Maggie MacGregor and I have a genuinely friendly relationship.”

“You and Susan Arvey! No shit!”

“Sure. What’d you think? I’m reformed now … but I had my day. And a majestic, glorious day it was. Thank God Sasha doesn’t want to know about it or I’d have to tell her, and I suspect that she wouldn’t appreciate the truth.”

“What about Maggie?” Zach asked, fascinated.

“That’s a really long-time thing, started way before Billy. How do you suppose I talked her into doing that special on you in Kalispell?”

“I didn’t think. Or if I did, I figured it was because the situation was so hot. I should have been more suspicious.”

“Not at all, things like that don’t show up to the naked eye, only the informed one. Take it from a reformed and experienced fellow. I see Gigi, and I see a girl who hasn’t got a clue to why she bought the video of
The Way We Were
and watches it almost every night she’s alone at home.”

“The Way We Were?”

“Okay, you’re no Redford and she’s no Streisand, but the theme, Zach, the theme of two people who can’t live together, but who have a love that won’t die—it’ll get to you every time you watch, even if you know it by heart. Twenty hankies. Ever see the picture?”

“Yeah, once … it didn’t make much of an impression,” Zach lied uneasily. He rented
The Way We Were
whenever he felt he had to see it again, about once a week, maybe again on the weekends. He wouldn’t let himself buy it. That way lay enslavement.

The night of Gigi’s wedding reception for Vito and Sasha still held a touch of the sultry heat of the day, which had been unseasonably warm for late October. A full moon, truly orange, a moon that would be called a harvest moon in any other part of the country, hung low in the sky even before the sun had set.

Gigi had rehearsed her party for several nights, darkening the house and putting new bulbs in her small lamps
that now all gave a soft pink glow. With the lamps on, she padded about, placing countless candlesticks and votive lights until she’d achieved an effect that was as festive as it was flattering. The areas of shadow were equally successful—mysterious, alluring, and promising. Everywhere the house issued a significant invitation. All the tree branches and all the vines that could be seen from the various courtyards of the three-story, up-and-downstairs house had been hung with lanterns that glowed in pinkish luminescence, and the balconies had been entwined with strings of tiny white twinkle lights.