The Desert Rose (24 page)

When Harmony mentioned that Ross had called and that he might be able to get her a job in Reno Jessie got quite excited. She thought if Ross and Harmony actually got back together it would be almost as wonderful as a teen romance, though neither of them were teens.

Then Harmony thought of the peacocks, she couldn’t take them to Reno. It was a saddening thought, but then after all maybe there’d be no openings, maybe she wouldn’t go, maybe Ross would decide he wasn’t up to getting back together. She began to lose a little of her optimism—being in a hospital was not cheerful. She held Jessie’s hand while she got a shot and then she cut over to Gary’s and made coffee for him. He was in a very groggy state, too groggy to immediately focus his mind on the question of which show might need a thirty-nine-year-old showgirl.

Harmony drove them to work. Gary said he didn’t feel like being responsible for his actions for a while, just getting the wardrobe ready was going to be strain enough. Then Billy, the sweet young security cop, came up and hugged her practically with tears in his eyes, he had heard she was fired, word had spread, he said they were all sure going to miss her around the casino. It upset her because it reminded her it was really true, she was really fired. It was all she could do to keep from crying again but she managed not to, she didn’t want to look horrible two nights in a row.

VI

I
T WAS
interesting that Mel actually wanted to go shopping for the furniture. Pepper had got used to thinking of him as a creature of his house, she thought he might get a little freaked being on the outside, but that was not the case at all.

“Once in a while I enjoy an outing,” he said, offering her some Chiclets. He had put on a tan suit for the occasion, he looked very trim and nice. Another appealing thing about him was that though it was a hot climate he was almost always cool. He just had his life arranged so he didn’t have to be uncomfortable very much. That was in contrast to Buddy, who had a fair complexion and couldn’t be out in the sun two minutes without sweating and turning red.

A saleswoman was waiting for them when they got to Neiman’s, it was like she had been assigned to them. Her name was Meg and it was obvious she had been assigned to Mel at some point before, they called one another by their first names. Meg had a voice Pepper immediately didn’t like, too educated, plus she was good-looking and not that old, maybe thirty. Pepper immediately wondered if Mel had arranged to have Meg wait on them. She was very well dressed, could have been in
Vogue
Pepper decided.

She took them up to a showroom and showed them a lot of expensive furniture, very modern, Meg talked like she
knew every designer in the world. The stuff interested Mel more than it interested her, after all they were just talking about a couch and a bed. The couch she chose was pure white and about the size of her room at home, it cost four thousand dollars. Pepper was thinking it would freak Gary out if he knew she was buying a four-thousand-dollar couch for her room, but she just acted like so what? She didn’t want Meg to think she was wildly impressed. Mel and Meg were chatting like old friends, maybe he had bought all his furniture from her, who knew? Pepper thought it was boring, she had no big interest in furniture although it was definitely nice to just spend thousands fixing up a room. She chose a bed that was also as large as her whole room at home, it cost two thousand six hundred dollars.

Then Pepper thought that’s that, but Mel kept thinking of things. It was a big room, he said. Before they were through she had picked out a couple of chairs and two chrome tables and several lamps.

Mel was definitely enjoying his outing, chatting with Meg and pointing out pieces of furniture he thought Pepper might want to consider. Pepper decided she was dumb to have ever thought he might be gay—Meg was obviously a girlfriend. The sound of them talking about various designers was making her mad. Meg’s voice alone was enough to make you want to vomit, although it wasn’t making Mel want to vomit, he was perfectly cheerful. After all she wasn’t around the house much, he could be fucking Meg right along for all she knew.

Then Mel said, “How about clothes, Pepper?” She thought fine, maybe this is where we ditch Meg, but it didn’t happen, Meg came right along to the fashion boutique. That was boring but the clothes weren’t. Mel didn’t seem to be setting any price limits so she bought some very expensive outfits, a Valentino and a couple of Missonis, it served him right if he was fucking Meg.

“Oh, Pepper, you chose beautifully,” Meg said, she was being super-polite but Pepper just ignored it, she felt almost as angry as she had when Denny asked her about the blow job. On the way out they stopped by the cosmetics and Pepper bought three hundred dollars’ worth of shampoos and stuff. She was really angry but it didn’t stop Meg, she hung in there until they got back to the car.

“Bye, Pepper, call me anytime you want to come down,” she said. Mel gave her a kiss on the cheek before he got in and shut the door.

“Well, that was a nasty little performance,” he said. “Why were you so rude to Meg?”

Pepper didn’t answer. She was remembering that he had said he expected her to have boyfriends. No doubt he meant to have girlfriends too.

“You’re certainly beautiful when you’re sullen,” he said. He just sounded friendly and offered her some more Chiclets but she hit the box and knocked them out of his hand. Mel whistled and looked amused.

“Pepper, I’m getting the impression you’re jealous of Meg,” Mel said.

“Sure, did you fuck her?” Pepper asked.

“Why no,” Mel said. “I knew her slightly when she was trying to be a model in New York. Unfortunately she wasn’t beautiful enough, or at least the camera didn’t think so. The camera didn’t love her. She’s bright enough, and has wonderful taste. I helped her get this job.”

“I want to stop at the record store,” Pepper said. She didn’t believe for a minute he wasn’t fucking Meg.

Mel didn’t seem nervous, he was acting like it was no big deal that she was ready to kill him. When they got to the record store she told him she didn’t want him to come in. All she wanted to do was buy a poster of a punk group called The Ten Skunks, she didn’t need millions to buy a poster, plus she was in the mood to let him wait.

“Well, I guess it’s good you’re not armed,” Mel said, when she got back in the car. “I think if you were armed there’s a good chance you’d have done me serious injury by now.”

“So did you call and ask for her to wait on us?” she asked.

“Sure,” Mel said. “It’s her job to wait on important clients. Mostly it’s a boring job but we happen to be important clients with superior taste. I thought it might be a nice change for Meg. I didn’t know you were going to treat her like she had herpes.”

“I hope she does,” Pepper said, she didn’t like it that he was so cool about her being mad.

“Did you know you get a little spot of color right over your cheekbones when you’re angry?” Mel said.

“Right, every asshole I meet points that out to me,” Pepper said, she was trying to remember who else had mentioned it.

Mel laughed out loud, he thought it was all funny. She hit at him for laughing but he caught the blow on his arm. There was no point hitting him in the car, there wasn’t room.

Pepper decided to forget the wedding, she didn’t trust him. He was so rich and such a good planner, she would never know what he was doing, plus she definitely didn’t believe he hadn’t fucked Meg.

“I don’t believe you, she’s too good-looking,” she said.

“Actually, she’s not great-looking, she just dresses well,” Mel said. “Just because she’s good-looking doesn’t mean I’m attracted to her. Are you attracted to every single good-looking man you see, or are there some who are pretty good-looking but leave you cold.”

“Fritz, but he’s gay,” she said. Anyway, it wasn’t the looks, it was the way the two of them had talked, Meg and Mel—as if they had been talking over all the designers
for years. It bugged her, who cared about the stupid designers?

“Well,
I
care about them,” Mel said, when she mentioned that factor.

“I don’t, I’d rather just buy junk than listen to that voice of hers,” she said.

Mel shrugged. “Be as jealous as you want,” he said. “I get turned on by photographing people who photograph well. Meg didn’t, or I suppose we would have got involved. When we get home I’ll show you what I mean.”

In a room behind his office he had a lot of big flat file drawers full of the photographs he had taken when he was doing fashion photography. There were thousands of photographs, many of them blowups. The clothes were not exactly the latest fashions—he hadn’t done it in several years. But the pictures were all organized. It only took him a minute to find the photographs he had taken of Meg and Pepper had to agree that she looked terrible in the pictures.

“So where’s the pictures of the good ones?” she asked. “I want to see the ones you were involved with.”

Mel just grinned and showed her some of the still shots he had done of her the day before, he had already printed a few of them.

“These are the pictures of the one I’m involved with. Don’t you think she photographs beautifully?” he said. There was no doubt she looked about ten times better than Meg. She was beginning to be not so mad.

“We didn’t eat,” she said. “I’m hungry.”

“I was going to take you to the Riviera,” Mel said, “but you were so mad I was afraid you might destroy the restaurant. I like the restaurant and I wasn’t taking any chances.”

“Get someone else the next time we go shopping,” Pepper said. “I hate her voice.”

“There’s nothing wrong with her voice, she just happens to be from the East,” he said.

She decided she wanted to go to lunch anyway, and Mel was agreeable so the Jap took them
to
the Riviera. The waiters treated Mel like he was President or something, it was a little disgusting.

The thing that was bothering her was that she couldn’t keep calm about him whereas he could keep very calm about her. One minute she would be thinking he was great and good-looking and not tight with his money and the next minute she would be hating him because of someone like Meg or because he was just sort of amused that she was so angry. She would decide she was ready to split, forget the marriage, he was just a weirdo, and then the next she’d think how nice it was just to buy three hundred dollars’ worth of shampoos and stuff in about ten seconds, plus the outfits were great and she could be wrong about the girls, maybe he wasn’t interested in anyone but her.

It was just that she couldn’t be sure, he was too far ahead of her in terms of knowing stuff, he wasn’t like Buddy or Woods who would always back down if she got really mad. Mel just waited for her to cool off. She didn’t know if she could live with that or not, she enjoyed blowing Buddy out of the water whenever she felt like it, it might be something she was going to miss.

The waiters made a big production number out of the lunch. All she ate was a trout, but Mel had something that had to be flamed at the table, plus a bottle of wine, and while that was going on who should spot them but Woods’s mother. She was just leaving, with a guy Pepper had never seen.

Woods’s mother was named Gail. She came over looking cheerful and said “Hi, Pepper.” Mel got up and gave her a kiss. Gail seemed to think it was perfectly natural that she and Mel would be having lunch at the Riviera. She didn’t bat an eyelash. The guy she was with was tall and gray-headed. Pepper caught him giving her a look or two, but
she didn’t say anything. She could hardly wait to drop this piece of news on Woods, no doubt Gail was fucking the grayheaded guy.

“So did you tell her about us?” Pepper asked, when they were gone.

“No, we haven’t talked lately,” Mel said. “Gail has perfect legs, you know. She could probably still model if she wanted to.”

“So were you involved?” she asked. She was curious about how many times he had been involved.

“Yep, for about a week,” Mel said. “We couldn’t put up with one another. Gail needs more attention than I can supply.”

“I guess she gets it from that guy,” Pepper said.

“No, he’s just a lawyer for an environmental group she’s active in,” Mel said. “You seem to think all life is romance, Pepper.”

“I gotta go to my lesson,” Pepper said. It was the one thing that hadn’t changed completely in the last few days.

She had worn one of her new outfits to lunch—Madonna was quite surprised when she came in wearing it, it was definitely not the kind of outfit most people wore to dance lessons.

Then Madonna got on her case, she was dancing okay but everything she did Madonna made her do over about twenty times. She stood there looking critical and making her repeat things until Madonna finally got enough.

“Why do I have to do it over?” she asked. “I did it perfectly.”

“Do it over!” Madonna said, she got angry if you questioned her. “You are going to be a lead dancer, you have to work much harder. Bonventre will fire you if you dance like this for him.”

After the lesson she got Woods on the phone and told him about his mother not batting an eye. Woods wasn’t
surprised. He said his mother never allowed anyone to be more sophisticated than she was, she was actually super-sophisticated. He also said he had just bought a record by the most revolting punk group of all, The Bed-Pans, he said they were a total gross-out. Pepper wanted to hear it. Of course the Jap was waiting. She was feeling a little rebellious, Mel was a little too cool, so she told Woods to come and get her and sent the Jap on home.