"I'm surprised Ferris let you out of the house this morning," Elena said.
Marian picked up the paste-board. "Did Bernice do any work on the slogan that's supposed to go with this?"
"I've got her worksheet right here." Elena understood that the subject was being changed. She began to dig among the papers she'd spread out on the bench.
Marian studied the logo. She didn't want to be dealing with dark blur of thoughts that was stirring just below the verbal levels of her mind.
"To me the annual report isn't right, Mari." Elena said, handing Marian the last of the worksheets. "It needs to be snappier, so they can get through the statistics faster. Maybe we ought to rewrite the page that describes the future — I've got a feeling Paul Sheldon is going to be giving us trouble."
"But Elena, the meeting's just a formality — a gesture to the family friends. And Paul — he's like an Uncle — I can't imagine him voting against us. How
FRE
operates has always been up to me." Marian could see that her reasoning wasn't changing Elena's opinion. "Why don't I take these papers home with me and look them over tonight?"
"Good! Shall we have lunch?" Elena didn't wait for a reply, she buzzed Nancy and gave instructions. Then, with the exaggerated sigh of an out-of-breath athlete who isn't at all tired, Elena sat down. "Are my eyes bloodshot? I was up all night! Dear Dennis, I can't begin to tell you what it's been like!"
"What has it been like?" Marian asked. A part of her was looking down on the scene — the figure in beige, so colorless and stiff like a statute — Elena the rose, so vivid and vibrantly alive.
"Heaven, sheer heaven. And Hell. Dennis stays in my place Fridays till Tuesdays. We've started living together on a trial basis."
"What happens after Tuesday?" Marian said — her asking the questions was part of their routine.
"We take a few days off. Tuesday till Friday is when we can see other people, if you know what I mean?"
"I think I know what you mean." Elena's ability to be madly in love with one man, while continuing to date others always made Marian feel as if she were of another generation, even though their ages weren't that far apart.
As Elena explained the Heaven aspects of her Dennis which had to do with the quantity and quality of their lovemaking, Marian was off in space again, watching as Elena's lips formed words. She didn't want to hear about lovemaking. Not today. She didn't want the litany to start again, the thoughts like sundown shadows creeping back into her mind.
Elena went on to describe her Hell with Dennis which had to do with his fanatical enthusiasm for jogging.
A voluptuous Reubens physically, Elena was certainly capable of a mile or so around the park. Her description of jogging a la Dennis — a ten-miles-a-day at six-a.m. routine — was really quite humorous.
"...So I jump out of bed into my jogging suit. It's going to be the death of me," Elena was saying as Nancy arrived with lunch in paper bags. "That's why I ordered a sinful lunch."
The corned beef on white bread, Elena explained, was a rebellion because "Dennis makes me eat veggies, no red meat allowed. He has me slaving over a cutting board, with chopper and strainers preparing the fresh vegetables — one of these days you've got to see my kitchen, Mari."
"One of these days" was a pretend aspect of their relationship. There never yet had been one of those days — they both knew there wasn't going to be, but they always spoke as if it were imminently possible.
"It all comes down to nourishment, Mari — " Elena was saying.
'Mari' was Elena's nickname from the early days, when she could only pronounce Marian's name like a foreigner, in three stiff syllables. Of course the name stuck — Elena abbreviations, Elena ideas and styles always caught on. Whatever the reason — veggies or heaven with Dennis — Elena at thirty-three was even more stunning and delightful, younger looking and even more energetic than she'd been at twenty-eight, the day Charles had introduced "Her Highness, Princess Elena D'Ortega of Bogota, Colombia!"
"...Alexy says living with a man fulfills my parental loss needs — " Princess Elena was saying.
One thing about Elena that had never changed over the years was Alex the Shrink — he was a permanent part of the girl, like skin and hair. Just at that moment, the sun was giving the hair a moment of peak color — Elena's red mahogany locks were lustrous fire. Her hands — she always talked about Alexy with extravagant gestures — they were the smooth hands of a lady who had them done at
Armand's
once a week, yet Marian knew from the Bogata stories — Elena could shovel manure, sort coffee beans and drive a truck — run a farm as skillfully as she handled the sophisticated mechanisms of the fund-raising business on the twenty-ninth floor.
A thought popped into Marian's mind. She'd had it before. It had been in the back of her mind for a long time — how easy it would be for Elena to run the East Coast office, if someday, sometime there was a branch office or if someday, sometime, "Mari" decided to take a sabbatical.
"How is Ferris? He hasn't been here for ages."
"He's fine."
"You're so lucky, you've got the perfect man, Mari."
"Yes."
"Ferris lets you do your thing. He does his thing!"
"Yes."
"You are so beautiful, so elegant together!"
"Yes." Nodding, agreeing, wanting to find a way of changing the subject, Marian got up, buried her face in the rose blooms. She didn't want Elena to know she was on the verge of tears.
"Mari, did I say something?"
"No, of course not Elena. When I got back I...well...I've been under a strain, Ralph has a medical problem."
"Oh Mari, is it serious?"
"It could be very serious." The tears were coming. She tried to control herself, she didn't want office grapevine whispers about Mari having a nervous breakdown.
Elena put an arm around Marian's shoulder. "Have you talked over any of this with Ferris?"
"No, I couldn't. I didn't want to worry him," Marian mumbled into her handkerchief.
"Alexy could recommend a therapist? Is there anything I can do, Mari? Don't worry about anything here...I can handle the preliminaries for the new client, and Mrs. Beth Weidman. Handling a Senator's wife is a snap! Did I ever tell you about me and my Senator?"
Marian looked up. "You and your what?"
"I've got stories you haven't heard — I never told anyone about my dishonorable Honorable Senator, not even Alexy!"
"Oh Elena, you are too much!" Marian blew her nose hard. ...
Look at me, cracking up over one teeny infidelity...look at her, how many faithless lovers and heartbreaks she's had, yet she always survives, she's like a cat with nineteen lives...
"It's my diet! Mari, you have simply got to do something about your acid alkaline balance."
"My what?" Marian started laughing.
Many women have different faces and different facets, most women can change color and style to suit their men, but Elena had more faces more facets than it was possible to count. "It's more than my acid and my alkaline that's off. Oh Elena, if I could only be a bit more like you!"
"All you need is lettuce, carrots and celery!" said Elena.
++++++++++
Chapter 14
"It's over, Myra," Andrea's telephone was on her pillow, cradled against her ear. "Ferris is a faithful husband, and he's got a very nice smart wife whom he loves."
"It's
not
over darling, you and he were made for each other, it's all in the stars, it's fate. And if she's such a nice smart wife, why does she go out of town and leave him? And if he loves her, why did he screw you?"
"It was just a fling. We're still friends, Ferris promised to let me know if there are any more commercials, but it's finished Myra. Ferris made it very clear."
"You've got love troubles that's all." Myra was in the middle of an ugly divorce. She knew what love troubles were. "This is just a crisis because his wife came back. Don't be blue darling, we'll think of something."
"I guess I am a little blue," Andrea admitted, sighing deeply into the phone.
"Of course you are, it's very depressing," Myra nodded sympathetically. "Everyone's depressed, it's the planet Mars. This is a very bad time for Scorpio men, and the moon's in Pisces — you and Shelley both have to be very careful, that's why I kept her home today, she's getting the sniffles. You both are very vulnerable right now darling!" Myra sighed deeply. She was a Taurus. The fact that daughter and best friend were both Pisces was the cosmic influence. Myra's horoscope had warned her — a Taurus woman always had to watch over her loved ones.
"Andrea darling, you still haven't told me what happened. Start at the beginning, when you opened your door and Ferris came in." Myra tucked the phone under her chin and lit up a cigarette.
The telephone was like a sea shell, bringing each the echoes of the other's world. Andrea reached for her matches and her Marlboros.
They didn't speak for a moment.
The sun was striking the mirror on the other side of the room, refracting a warm golden beam, spotlighting Andrea where she lay on her bed. The eye which was always watching Andrea, which recorded the events of her life as one continuous movie, was capturing the picture — the rumpled sheets, the tousled hair, naked shoulders and cleavage of the sultry girl who was putting the match to the end of her cigarette. Andrea drew up a knee so that the hip line would be better defined, pretending that the photographer she'd worked for last week, was taking the shot. "Aldo" was his name. She made a kitty-cat smile for Aldo as she daintily dropped the match in the ashtray.
Myra exhaled a long thin stream of smoke. "What were you wearing? What did Ferris say? Don't skip anything! Did you make love?"
It was one of their rituals, the play by play description of what went on in Andrea's sex life. Sometimes what they shared was more fun, more exciting than what actually went on, in and around the bed.
Andrea enjoyed describing the scene. It wasn't herself she was talking about, it was a girl in a movie. The reel unreeled — the uptight guy, the girl fixing him a martini, showing him the Toy Show script, him sidling up to the subject of the wife being back, the lovers progressing from pillows on opposite sides, to the center of the bed.
"Hold on a sec," Myra's daughter had come quietly to the doorway.
Shelley was eleven but she looked and acted more like nine. Her hands were folded on her tummy. Her head was meekly, politely focused down as she waited for her Mother to finished the conversation with Aunt Andrea.
"Shelley Peterson — you scare me half to death, the way you tiptoe around here! Did you finish your history homework? Stand up straight! You'll get cancer of the lungs if you slouch like that! Go watch the TV. I'll be there in a few minutes."
"Yes Mother," said Shelley obediently. She straightened up, turned on her heels like a little soldier, and marched back into the living room.
Myra waited until she heard the snap of the T.V. being turned on. It was Myra's turn. She lit a second cigarette. "I just had a call from the lawyer. That prick Herb is asking me to reduce the alimony. And you know why? Because I happen to have money from my family. How low can a man get! You know he's claiming we were sexually incompatible on account of me — that impotent cocksucker — he couldn't do it with me, and it's supposed to be my fault? He jerked off every time, Andrea, I'll swear it in court."
"Now don't get all uptight, Myra."
"A wad of Kleenex under the bed every goddamn morning, the maid knew it, she'll testify!"
"I'm sure Herb will settle out of court — "
"If that creep dares to give me a hard time about the alimony, I'll hire a press agent and get it into the columns! Why oh why did I ever marry him? I should have known from the very first night..."
Myra's anguishes over Herb were on the record that Myra played over at least once a day. Andrea let the phone rest next to her ear, watching the sun caress her plants. They were her darlings — the geranium looked thirsty, the philodendron needed pruning, the avocado had sprouted a first leaf and needed transplanting. She was also thinking about Aldo. As soon as there was a lull, she wanted to describe him to Myra.
"Dammit, you've got to fight for him Andrea." Myra was saying.
"Umm?" For a second Andrea wondered whom they were discussing.
"You must be on cloud nine — didn't you hear me?"
"You said I have to fight for him."
"Ferris is the best lover you've had in ages, and he can help your career. And you love him. That is why you're so unhappy."
"I'm not 'so unhappy.'" But Andrea tried the words on like a garment. "Maybe I'm a little low. I think I'm in a rut, Myra."
"We're both in a rut. Listen, why don't we get dressed up and go to Sardi's tonight for a late dinner. Richard Burton's going to be there — according to Freddie it's an eleven o'clock 'table for two' reservation. We'll dress fit to kill, have a great dinner, Freddie's headwaiter friend can put us at good table, and then we'll go on over and tell Dickie how much we loved his last movie."