The Movie (11 page)

Isabelle’s green eyes, so perfectly matched to her emerald earrings, latched onto Jordan Goldman immediately. Dear Jordan, she thought. Tries so hard. But pink Chanel for a blonde! So obvious, so lacking in imagination

….

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The younger woman stood up to greet her and the two women leant forward, planting loud kisses on the air next to their respective cheeks.

‘Isabelle, how kind of you to come,’ Jordan gushed, hoping for exactly the right mix of gratitude and graciousness. ‘I know how busy you must be, with the party in a fortnight.’

‘A nightmare,’ Isabelle agreed. ‘The flowers are giving me all kinds of headaches. You must let me have the name of that man you used at your last dinner.’

Glowing, Jordan promised to look it up for her, while

Isabelle ordered a Caesar salad and mineral water.

‘I’ll have the same. Thank you.’

‘What would we do if they ever ran out of Caesar salads?’ Isabeile joked.

Jordan laughed, too brightly.

There ˘as an awkward silence.

Isabelle looked at Jordan sharply, feeling her curiosity begin to pique. Good Lord, something was wrong! She’d assumed this lunch was just par for the course, a further sign of Jordan’s respect, possibly a bid to get closer to her now that Sam was cooking up some deal with Artemis. Not for one second had she thought Jordan would actually have something to discuss. But there was no mistaking it, that hesitation, the reluctant blush, the way her irritatingly lovely blue eyes kept dropping to the table. And it wasn’t as ifJordan had a job, which meant.., trouble with Tom. They had only been married a year.

Isabelle felt the unfamiliar sensation of excitement. What problem was the little shiksa about to blurt out? How did she expect Isabelle to help? And would she, should she help? Did she want Jordan Cabot to stay married to Tom?

With the lightning speed at which she made every major decision, Isabelle decided that yes, she probably did.Jordan might be annoyingly young and stupid, and disturbingly sexual, but she had paid Isabelle proper tribute. She

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represented no threat. Who knew what another Mrs Goldman might be like, how far Jordan’s successor might try to push it?

Better the devil you know.

‘My dear, I can see that you’ve something you want to

tell me,’ Isabelle said gently, ignoring Jordan’s look of surprise. Oy, she really had no idea how obvious she was. ‘Don’t be embarrassed. I only hope I can help you. What are friends for, after all?’

‘It’s Tom,’ Jordan said, carefully hiding her delight at

being asked what friends were for by Isabelle Kendrick.

‘Is it really? I had no idea. I thought things were wonderful between you two.’

‘It’s Eleanor Marshall,’ Jordan said, bitterly.

, There. It was out. The thing she’d been carrying around for months, wondering what to do about it, if anything, wondering if she was imagining things. She’d thought about asking Isabelle for advice ages ago, but had resisted the impulse until the last possible moment. After all, not only was there a danger in confiding worries about your relationship to anybody, there was the sheer embarrassment. Aider all, how could she, Jordan Cabot, twenty-four and the youngest wife in Hollywood, with her long blonde hair and Baywatch-approved figure, she who had introduced Tom Goldman to such excesses of sexual pleasure that he’d proposed within three months, how could she admit that she was concerned about her husband’s feelings for some flat-chested bitch more than ten years older than she was?

At first she hadn’t even recognized the danger, because

she just couldn’t conceive of it. Tom and she were so great in bed together, or at least she was great for him. She’d worked hard on that. And he’d been working with the Marshall woman all his single life and yet they’d never dated. Plus, Eleanor Marshall was thirty-eight. Practically forty. What man in his right mind would find that

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attractive? Jordan wondered, as she checked out her own supremely youthful body in the mirror every night, rubbing Donna Karan body lotion into every inch of it, the musky, sensual fragrance that drove Tom so wild. Would Eleanor Marshall know how to do that trick in the hot-tub, the one where she lifted herself slightly out of the water and pressed her wet, warm pussy against the centre of his spine, rubbing herself up and down him until he turned round with a growl and screwed her on the spot? No, she would not. The woman didn’t even wear figure-hugging clothes when shecame to dinner, although her figure wasn’t bad. She didn’t even flirt with Tom when they came round to the house. This Jordan was quite sure of; after all, she never took her eyes offthe bitch for a second.

But there was a problem, all the same. It was there in Tom’s eyes, following Eleanor round the dinner table, watching “her when she got up to refill her plate from a buffet. The way he always seemed to be so damn interested in what she was saying, like business was all that mattered. He laughed at all her jokes, as if somehow they were really amusing. OK, it wasn’t a crisis or anything. She knew she could still get him hard for her, even at a table Eleanor was sitting at, by lowering her hand under the tablecloth or flashing him a quick sight of her pantie-less crotch, crossing and uncrossing her legs in a way that revealed her to his eyes only. He needed her sexually. She made him feel like a man; he said so often enough.

So why was Tom so negative to Paul Halfin?

He was never rude. Quite the opposite, in fact; always pressing Paul to refill his glass, or asking him boring questions about investment banking. It was uncomfortably like watching a man who had something to prove. But she, Jordan, she noticed the way his body tensed, his eyes narrowed, and he kept glancing back at Eleanor.

So he had a little crush. She could have lived with that. Only lately, they’d started to fight. Tom was being so

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crass, it was as though he didn’t care about the house or their parties or anything. Except sex. Sex was the only way he communicated with her now. He’d even been refusing to stay on the Pritikin diet she’d put him on! And he was being such a boor. Like that night with the De Veers last week. She’d finished offher cream silk gown with her little AIDS brooch, the one all studded with rubies in the shape of a ribbon, and he’d actually got all angry with her and asked her when was the last time she’d visited an AIDS ward or volunteered at a counselling centre…

Jordan had sobbed that she guessed he wanted her to get

a job, that she wasn’t as good as the women he worked with,just because she wanted to be a homemaker and raise a family.

Tom had melted, all contrite. He wanted a family too.

He knew how disappointed she was not to be pregnant

yet, why didn’t they practise?

She shivered in her pink Chanel. Thank God Tom had

never even guessed at the little white pills she hid in the kitchen cupboards.

So that quarrel had been made up.

But she couldn’t help but wonder why he was getting so grouchy. And he was asking Eleanor and Paul over all the time!

Oh, Jordan Cabot Goldman was very worried indeed.

And she’d never tell Isbelle or anyone else about the final straw, last Wednesday, when she’d been woken by him muttering in his slumber, and had twisted in their black silk Pratesi sheets to see his massive hard-on stiffening from the dream, ready to take him in her mouth, to wake him up in the way he most adored and make that dream a reality, when he’d jerked in his sleep, his back arching a little, and murmured: ‘Eleanor.’

Jordan had been frozen to the spot. He was lying next to

her, twenty-four, a world-class babe, every man’s fantasy

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wife, and he was having a wet dream about some middle aged career spinster with grey streaks in her hair?

She had called Isabelle Kendrick fast thing the next day. ‘Eleanor Marshall?’ Isabelle said now, leaning forward, shocked.

‘Oh, he hasn’t said anything. They haven’t done anything,’ said Jordan, delicately.

‘But you see signs. You’re worried. Oh, my dear, you were so right to come to me,’ Isabelle breathed, reaching across the table and patting Jordan’s hand.

Eleanor.t ILidiculous. Just look at Jordan … but of course, as soon as she’d said it it made all kinds of sense, Isabelle Kendrick thought, her heart speeding up. She’d started recalling all kinds of functions where she’d seen them together. Was it possible they had been at the same studio all this time, and not? But of course it was possible … what-an appalling thought. Eleanor Goldman. Oh, dear Lord, but that would be just too much.

‘I know I must be putting you in a terrible position, Isabelle,’ Jordan was breathing, ‘knowing her for as long as you have…’

The question mark hung in the air, but Isabelle, for once, was not inclined to keep her supplicant on tenter hooks.

‘Well, that’s troe. But it’s a moral question, isn’t it? After all, you are his wife.’ Joydan nodded her coiffed blonde head eagerly, and Isabelle added, ‘And dearEleanor… she works so hard. I’m sure she would not wish any unpleasantness.’

Jordan breathed out as the Caesar silads were set before them, almost overwhelmed with relief. There could be no mistaking Isabelle’s tone. She hated Eleanor Marshall, hated her even worse than maybe she did herseltq. Now she came to think of it, hadn’t she heard stories from some of the other girls? About how Eleanor was always turning down Isabelle’s invitations to sit on committees because she wai

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‘too busy’? As ifshewas the only busy one,Jordan thought with disdain. They all had things to do. Dressing properly required an invesmaent of your time and, of course, they were all so active in charity work, and charity work was very important…

Isabelle hadn’t taken kindly to being blown off. And as Jordan stared at her across the table, she noticed something else - weren’t Isabelle and Eleanor about the same age? That meant, she realized, that Isabelle resented Eleanor for more than just her superior attitude; the fact was that Isabelle had no hold over Eleanor because she simply did not care about the social world. Isabelle resented Eleanor for working, being a working woman, one who now wielded power, real power, in Hollywood.

‘ Eleanor was a queen regnant, not a queen consort, and Isabelle Kendrick just hated her for it. There was no way she was going to allow her to marry Tom as well. It would be the cherry on the cake, a final triumph that Isabelle, resentful and furious, would not allow her to have.

The two women gazed at each other with perfect unlerstanding.

‘Will you forgive me if I speak frankly?’ Isabelle said. ‘Jordan, you must understand that men are … sexual creatures.’ Her tone held up the word to the light as though it were something disgusting she’d discovered on the sole of her shoe. ‘No matter what they have, they always want something, else. No matter how ridiculous.’

Both women thought of Eleanor Marshall and compared her to Jordan. Unfavourably.

‘The thing is, and I know this will be a diflficult thing for you to accept, darling, such a newlywed as you are, but you must learn to turn a blind eye to their little peccadilloes. Men are such simple creatures, they really can’t help themselves.’

Isabelle dismissed unfaithfulness and betrayal with a light laugh, aware that Jordan was hanging on her every.word.

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Good. At least the child was going to see sense; it was never those irritating little diversions their husbands found that were a problem, it was the state of the marriage. After all, everything was founded on, centred on the marriage. A divorced queen was a dethroned queen, something she had realized ten years ago, coldly, precisely, about the same ‘ rime that she’d seen the love draining out of her relationship. That was when her ascent to super-hostess had begun; recognizing that Sam no longer felt for her as a woman, Isabelle had identified a different desire in him, the bearing, rampant, killer ambition that was driving him forward day by day. She had set out to help him sarisfy that need, to become such a social lioness that Sam Ke’ndrick could never divorce her, never leave her, because his business would be hurt by letting her go. Sam continued to screw around discreedy and she continued to throw exquisite parties.

Love and hope had died in Isabelle Kendrick a long time ago, but she was still rich, still stylish, and still accorded respect in this town.

She was still married.

‘What shall I do?’ Jordan asked her. ‘In cases like this, there’s only one answer, dear. Give

him what every wife should. What she can’t.’

‘You mean ‘Yes I do. Give him a baby.’

Kevin Scott was having a bad day. Another one. In fact, it was shaping up to be a very bad week. Ever since that blasted meeting at Artemis Studios on Thursday, his department had been in complete chaos.

‘Ten more Elsie thinks you should take a look at,’ , panted Katherine, his English assistant, waddling into his office. She was waddling because she was weighed down by a pile of scripts, the paper stacking up against her bony torso, her normally pallid face bright red with physical effort.

Kevin gestured wearily to the free corner of his desk not already covered with manuscripts. That made thirty-five he had to wade through by the weekend, and there would be more in by then. Many more. The ones that had made it to his desk were typical in their variety of the hundreds that had only got as far as his subordinates - dogeared, pristine, typed on vellum, covered in dear plastic or leather-bound. Some leather-bound a, nd embossed. Some with spurious gifts attached to them, like little packets of Cuban cigars or a pair of solid gold cuff]inks.

Those were the ones he was always tempted to bin first, but alas, that wasn’t how it worked. Suppose he were to throw away the specimen written on pink parchment, with the Mont Blanc fountain pen attached to it by orange velvet ribbon. With his luck it would turn out to be another Ghost or Jurassic Park. Just because the writer was a vulgar oaf didn’t mean his script was necessarily unusable.