Til the Real Thing Comes Along (36 page)

R.J. shuffled through the rack a little more quickly. The clothes had a mothball smell that reminded her of her mother’s closet
in the apartment in Pittsburgh. Maybe if she didn’t stQp and look closely at the dresses, Frieda Seltzer
would understand that she wasn’t interested in the history of each one; but as fast as she went, Frieda had a story—Debbie
Reynolds on consignment; Jo Anne Worley, an angel on this earth; Ethel Merman, the greatest talent of our day. R.J. paused
to examine a long green-and-black silk dress that looked as if it was a small size.

“Cindy Williams,” the woman said. “She’s your size and your coloring,” and then she added hastily, “and I’ll let you have
it for forty-five dollars if ya like the way it looks on you. If s a stunning item,”

R.J. held the dress up in front of herself. Forty-five dollars. To have something new, albeit used, to wear on her date with
David. Maybe she should try it on. It was either that or go back to her writing table.

“I’ll try it.”

Frieda Seltzer stood outside the tiny dressing room talking nonstop. It was obvious that today was not one of her busier days
and she was lonely for the company. R.J. stopped listening to most of it, trying to decide, when she finally got her sweat
pants and sweat shirt off and slid into what Frieda alleged was Cindy Williams’s dress, if she looked okay, nine gray hairs
notwithstanding. Of course with the right makeup and…

“Picture it with makeup and hair and the right shoes,” Frieda Seltzer said from outside the dressing room, as if she’d been
reading R.J.’s thoughts. “Come out, I’ll take a look.”

R.J. took some lipstick out of her purse and applied it just to give her a better idea, and when she came out of the dressing
room to look in the three-way mirror, she stood on her toes to see what effect high heels would have on the length.

“I don’t cany no shoes. People are funny about wearin’ one another’s shoes. Especially the shoes of someone dead. Did I mention
that I do a lot of estates? That can be spooky. People get weird in those situations. I been in this business a long time.
I seen a lot I had Vilna Banky; I had Mary Pickford; I had lily Daniels.”

“Not bad.” R.J. thought about the dress. Cindy Williams had a bigger bust than she did, but maybe if she just shortened the
straps.

“All of ’em of course were long before your time,” Frieda said.

“I remember Lily Daniels,” R.J. said, just to be polite, as she turned to catch a glimpse of how the back of the dress looked.
“I loved her,”

“Oh, honey, my absolute favorite in the world, so you can imagine when I got the call how I ran. And the call didn’t come
from the husband, mind you. Quite the contrary. The call was from the other wife, who he married after years of being a widower.
And you want to know what? All those years later, Lily’s clothes were still sitting in the closet like he wished she would
come home. And I guarantee you he did wish that Everyone knew that she made a life for him, and when she died he dosed up
like an oyster. Well, the new wife went crazy when she saw them clothes. She picked up the phone and called me and said, in
so many words, get this garbage outa here. Of course to the husband’s face, she made it look like she was doin’ him a favor,
movin’ out the sad memories. Hey, you’re a smart girl, you get my meaning, but the husband, I forget his name, some rich guy,
not in show business, do
you
remember?”

R.J. said she didn’t, and twirled a little in Cindy Williams’s dress to see how it would look when she and David were dancing.

“You can imagine his loving Lily so much he wouldn’t even throw away her clothes. And you should have seen the items. All
soft and beautiful and feminine the way she always was. And Mrs. Number Two, if you’ll excuse me, a bitch of the first order.
Making snide comments about the clothes being cheesy and Lily having no taste, and making nasty remarks about her being an
actress. Even after her death this horrible woman was jealous of her memory. Well, of course I didn’t argue with her—it wasn’t
my place-but she wasn’t fit to kiss Lily Daniels’ hem.”

“Forty dollars,” R.J. tried. She had never negotiated for anything in her life.

“Sold,” Frieda Seltzer said. “You won’t be sorry.” R.J. went into the dressing room to change, and Frieda Seltzer kept talking
about Lily Daniels’s clothes and how the second wife insisted on cash that minute, which she swore she was going to give to
charity, but Frieda had been positive it was a lie and that the woman was keeping the money for herself. She was still rambling
when R.J. handed her the dress and a check, and emerged a few minutes later in her
sweat clothes, hoping she’d made the right choice about the dress and that David would think she looked good in it.

“Enjoy it honey, in the best of health,” Frieda Seltzer said, and handed her a bag containing the dress and the receipt.

“Thank you very much,” R.J. said, and headed for the door. She had already opened it and the bell had jingled when she could
have sworn she heard Frieda say “Malcolm from Rainbow Paper.”

R.J. turned back in surprise.

“That’s the name of Lily Daniels’ husband. I just remembered. Rand Malcolm. A zillionaire. The man from the Rainbow Company.
You know. That’s the name on every paper plate and cup you use. Even toilet paper, pardon me. That’s the kind of money we’re
talkin’ about, and the second wife sells the clothes to me for cash.”

Oh, God, R.J. thought. Oh, God.

“Don’t you think she shoulda given ’em to the Good Will or the Salvation Army? Some charity. Not that I’m complaining. I made
a fortune from sellin’ them, but still…”

“Thanks again,” R.J. said, and pulled the door shut behind her with a loud jingle. Of course. Lily Daniels. David’s mother.
That’s who he looked like, with those big expressive eyes. My mother worked at this studio for a few years, he said. Rainbow.
The name of the company I work for. This was too much. From the beginning she could tell he was refined, raised in luxury—he’d
told her a little about it—but Rainbow Paper. Really rich. From another world. And she was trying to look good for him by
buying Cindy Williams’s old dress. People in the Thrifty drugstore who passed the shampoo section must have wondered why R.J.,
putting all the pieces together in her head, stood there for a long time, laughing out loud.

“So who do you think was responsible for your first date to begin with?” Dinah said, lifting her suitcase onto the bed. “I
hate unpacking, I hate packing, I hate traveling, and believe me this trip was not pleasure. My mother is falling apart at
the seams. Anyway, when I was leaving for the airport that day, I’m halfway out the door and Jason Flagg calls me. He says
his Mend met my Mend the writer
and wants to call you. I didn’t even ask who his friend was. I was so thrilled that if you had a good time, maybe you’d forget
about Tom Thumb.”

“Forgotten, believe me,” R.J. said. She was sitting in front of a mirror with a trayful of Dinah’s earrings, trying to decide
which pair to borrow to wear with the green-and-black silk dress.

“The pearls,” Dinah said, not even looking at her, moving back and forth between her suitcase and her clothes hamper.

“Di, I’m worried.”

“What’s to worry? This kid’s a friggin’ prince on horseback,” Dinah told her. “Take it for what it’s worth. Use him up, honey.
Use him up, because the romance is certainly not going to go anywhere, and don’t kid yourself that it could or might or should.
There’s no such animal. To begin with, that father—and I know because I’ve read a lot of articles on him—is one tough customer.
And the kid is probably his big hope. The old man probably has political ambitions for him. The kind of stuff that requires
a perfect wife. Not some older left-leaning Jew with a kid who wrote tit jokes for Patsy Dugan.”

“Jesus, Dinah, is that who I am to you?” R.J. flared.

“Not to me, honey,” Dinah said, smelling a blouse she had just taken out of the suitcase, then tossing it into the open hamper,
which was now heaped with dirty clothes. “To me you’re the greatest girl on earth. But I can guarantee you, the old boy probably
already has your phone tapped.”

“That’s nuts,” R.J. said, standing. She didn’t need Dinah’s earrings. She would go home. She’d done her duty. Picked Dinah
up at the airport, after a call early this morning that she’d hoped, as the ringing awakened her, would be from David.

“Arj,” Dinah said now, lifting the empty suitcase and putting it on the top shelf of a closet, “all I’m telling you is don’t
be naive. Tonight you’re going to be a guest at a dub that won’t let a Jew be a member. Well, Rand Malcolm may let you be
a guest in his son’s life… but he sure as hell ain’t gonna let you be a member there either. So don’t make it a big deal.
Have some fun. I met David at the same party you did. He’s gorgeous. Looks like Robert Redford. Go have a good time, and when
he stops seeing you because
he’s marrying the latest twenty-two-year-old debutante, you know what? Wish him well, wish the debutante well, and keep moving.”

“I don’t want that, Dinah,”

“Make yourself want it. Believe me, it’s all that’s available,” she snapped. Something was wrong.

“You seeing Robert tonight?” R.J. tried.

“No,” Dinah said, turning quickly to pick up the clothes hamper.

“I guess I figured since you hadn’t seen him in so long, you’d—”

“Yeah, well, why would I want to see Robert, who only called me once the whole time I was in Florida?”

“One time?”

“That was plenty,” she said, carrying the hamper toward the bedroom door. “Since what he called for was to tell me he’s going
back with his wife.”

“Oh, Di,” R.J. said, able to tell just from her friend’s walk how bad she felt. “Are you okay?”

“Shit, no,” Dinah said, turning and putting the basket down. “I’m dying. I’m out of my mind and dying. And I hurt and I ache
and I sat on the plane coming back, wishing it would crash so that maybe Robert would read the list of crash victims in the
paper and feel bad. Can you imagine? After all the things he said about her, the furry-fingered asshole goes back with her.”
Dinah was blinking furiously, trying to hold back the tears. R.J. put out her arms, and though her friend was seven inches
taller and a lot wider, she fell into the needed hug and put her face down on the top of R.J.’s head.

“I loved that schmucko, Arj. I loved him so berry mush. That’s what we used to say to each other, because I once told him
that one of my twins said that when she was a baby. And then he started saying it to me. I love you berry mush, he always
said to me when we hung up the phone. And now he’s got the nerve to love his wife more berry mush than he loves me.”

“Oh, Di, he couldn’t. Believe me, he couldn’t. I’ll bet he just went back with her because of the kids or because he felt
guilty. But how could he love anyone better than you? You’re the greatest and the most fun and the most darling, and you’re
so special, and I know he loved you. I could see it every time he looked at you.”

“Yeah?”

“Absolutely.”

Dinah loosened her grip on R.J. and walked toward the mirror.

“I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t love me. I’m a big pain in the ass.”

“But he did.”

“Sometimes I caught sight of his face when I was yelling at my kids, and I would have sworn he was thinking: ’What in the
hell am I doing with this bitch?’”

“Di, don’t.”

“So he waited until I was on the other side of the country with my very sick mother, because he was too chickenshit to tell
me the truth. Just like my ex-husband. They’re all like that, you know,” she said, staring at herself in the mirror. Then
she looked at R.J. in the mirror and said, “Except maybe David Malcolm. I mean, wouldn’t that be nice, if he turned out to
be the exception? It would be nice for you and for me.”

R.J. didn’t say a word, and Dinah turned.

“For you, because it’s enough already,” she said. “I’d like to see you have some real joy in your life. And for me because
I don’t even care if I’m not the one it happens to. I just want to know that somebody can find a love that works. So go get
him, Arj.”

The two friends hugged a long sad hug.

I
f David Malcolm knew how good he looked in black tie, he could rent himself out as a lethal weapon. To die, as Dinah would
have said if she had seen him walk into R.J.’s living room. To die. And now R.J. could see how strong his resemblance was
to Lily Daniels.

“You look very pretty tonight,” he said to her, and she was reminded of Barbra Streisand in
Funny Girl
looking at Omar Sharif and being unable to say anything in her infatuation but “Hello, gorgeous.” That thought made her smile.
David smiled back.

“Ready?” he asked.

She took one last look at herself in the mirror. Cindy Williams’s alleged dress had a nice little bounce to it as she moved,
and the colors looked very good with her hair. “Ready,” she told him. Jeffie was spending the night at a friend’s. She locked
the front door of the house and slid into the leathery smell of the front seat of the Jaguar. David held her hand as he drove.

“Why do you suppose,” he asked her as they drove down Sunset toward the beach, “that you’re so tough?”

There it was again.

“I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and wondering why my experience of you continues to be that your dukes are always up
and you’re ready for combat. I’m enormously curious to know why that is.”

She thought for a moment, then answered. “I guess because at bottom I believe that the world is a very difficult
place. I’ve had to put up a fight often enough that I’m conditioned to expect that there are more to come. So I’m in a state
of readiness.”

“But doesn’t that sometimes make you jump the gun? Stand ready for a fight when there isn’t one forthcoming?”

She smiled. “Maybe. But I guess I believe that there will inevitably be one forthcoming.”

“Hey,” he said, in a mock tough voice. “Whatsa mattah? You forgot about Dr. Peale?”

She laughed and he slipped a tape into the tape deck.