Til the Real Thing Comes Along (40 page)

“Nice meeting you,” R.J. made herself say, catching a bemused look on the older man’s face just before she and David turned
to walk away.

Too much Bellini too fast, she thought, as the Paris twilight blurred past her, with David guiding her by the elbow.

“Nice folks,” he said, “aren’t they?”

She didn’t answer. He didn’t notice.

“Now this place we’re going for dinner is really corny, but it’ll be good fun and romantic and… R.J., what’s wrong?”

“Is there a reason why you haven’t introduced me to your father?” she blurted out and was immediately sorry that she had.

“Yes, there is,” he said. “Because up until now it didn’t apply.”

“Huh?”

“It wasn’t appropriate. It didn’t matter. I don’t bring women I’m seeing by to meet him.”

“Women you’re seeing?” Oh, R.J., stop. This is Paris.
This is perfect. Don’t become a nagging shrew because of something some other person said.

“That’s who you were,” he said, and took her in his arms. And when he felt her resist he said, “It’s good luck to kiss in
sight of the Eiffel Tower.” He was changing the subject.

“David.”

“As soon as we get back to town,” he said, now kissing her forehead, “I’ll take you to have dinner with Dad.”

Ah, so he wasn’t keeping them apart. Not worried about bringing her home to his father after all. And she was going to get
what she wanted. What she asked for. Now she really had something to worry about.

“H
ow was Vegas, Pats?” R.J. asked as Patsy plopped her rhinestoned purse down at the end of the writers’ conference table. It
was the first time Patsy had ever been on time for a read-through. She and R.J. were alone in the room.

“Well, it woulda been fun if or suckhole Freddy woulda stayed home.”

“You two crazy kids fighting again?” R.J. hated to think of the havoc the fight between Patsy and Freddy would wreak on this
week’s script. The writing staff she had now was hard-working and inspired. A lot of new writers with good ideas who were
making the long days seem easier.

“When ain’t we? What did
you
do while we were gone?”

“I went to Paris,” R.J. said.

“Paris, France?”

“Yep.”

“With that good-looking redheaded dude who’s always hangin’ around?

“Uh-huh.”

“See? What’d I tell ya? You met somebody. Well isn’t that great? ‘Cept for one thing. It ain’t gonna last. Nothin’ personal…
but men are such a buncha dogs. All they do is walk all over us and we let ’em. And the truth of the matter is if we didn’t
have a cunt they wouldn’t walk across the street to talk to us. Well, fuck ’em all. Especially Freddy
Gaines. And none of ’em are any different. This guy of yours is good now, but the minute he’s through with you, honey, all
you’ll see is dust where that boy was standin’.”

“I don’t think so, Patsy,” R.J. said. “This man isn’t like that. I think he’s really special and loving and there for me.”
God, it felt good to be able to say that. To believe it. Even for now.

Patsy laughed a bitter laugh that made R.J. feel bad for her. But these days she felt bad for everyone who didn’t know the
joys of the kind of love she had. That sweetness. Tomorrow night was the dinner with David’s father. She felt like a character
in a fairy tale who had to get through the big test, like climbing the glass mountain or slaying the dragon, before she could
truly win her love.

“It’s early yet, honeybunch. Talk to me in six months,” Patsy said as the rest of the writers came pouring in the door for
the read-through.

She had bought a white silk skirt and a white lace blouse for the trip to Paris, and decided she would wear them with pearls
to dinner with his father.

“Dinah,” she said into the telephone. She was ready an hour before David was scheduled to pick her up. “I have terrible stage
fright. I’m more nervous than I ever was for anything in my life, and all I’m doing is going to have dinner.”

“Will there be any other people there?”

“A man named Fred Samuels, who works for Mr. Malcolm, and I think a few other friends. Di, tell me something I can take with
me. Some thought I can hold on to, to calm down.” God, she must be desperate to be asking Dinah, who would probably say, “You
might as well be calm because he’ll hate you, no matter what you do.”

“Well,” Dinah said, and R.J. knew she was stalling, trying to come up with some straw for R.J. to grasp. “Think of it this
way,” Dinah said, vamping until ready. “The reason you should be calm is that you and the old boy have a lot in common.”

That made R.J. laugh. “Thanks, Di. I knew I could count on you.”

“No, now wait,” Dinah said. “I mean it. Don’t laugh.
You really do. I told you, I’ve read lots of articles about him, and what you have in common is that you’re both examples
of the American Dream.”

R.J. could tell by the lilt in Dinah’s voice that she was getting caught up in her own improvisation now. “You see, he worked
his way up and so did you. He was an orphan, Arj. In that Rainbow orphanage in Chicago. “Til he was a teenager. It’s why he
named his company Rainbow Paper. No parents and no money and he worked his way up. So did you. Only he used business and you
used jokes.”

R.J. was twisting her long pearls into a knot and then out of the knot and then into the knot again.

“So I’ll just walk right in there and say: ‘Hi there, Mr. Malcolm. I’d like you to know that we have the American Dream in
common,’” R.J. said, twisting the pearls again.

“I can guarantee you won’t have to tell him that,” Dinah said

“You mean because it’s written all over my face?” R.J. laughed.

“No. I mean because he’s tapping this call,” Dinah said.

At least that brought a smile to R.J.’s face. She was still wearing it when she opened the door for David.

“Your pearls are all twisted.”

“Just nervous,” she told him, hoping he’d say “That’s ridiculous—why would you be nervous? My father will love you.” But he
didn’t say a word, all the way to Hancock Park, and R.J. untwisted the pearls and then twisted them again, and David moved
the radio dial from station to station. They pulled up to a gate and David pushed a button somewhere in his car and the gate
opened. The house was big and brick and grand, and R.J. was glad to see several cars parked outside. Maybe it was a big party
and…

A man wearing a short white jacket answered the door, greeted David, smiled at R.J., and led them into a high-ceilinged living
room that seemed to R.J. the size of a hotel lobby. R.J. spotted Rand Malcolm immediately in the group of three men and two
women who were sitting and talking at the far end of the room. There was no mistaking the man’s relationship to his son. Despite
his age, he was chisel-jawed and handsome, and though the once-strawbeny blond hair was now white, it was still thick and
wavy. But there was something else that was immediately obvious, and that
was the way the focus of everyone in the room was on him. Every person’s body was positioned to face him.

“How’re you doing there, fella?” he called out in a deep resonant voice, spotting them now, and R.J. was conscious of the
tapping sound her high heels made as they moved across the hardwood floor toward the group.

The men all stood. R.J. noticed that David’s father stood a little more slowly than the rest and held on to the arm of the
sofa when he did.

“David,” one of the women said and kissed him, then turned to R.J.

“This is Mrs. Spencer,”. David said, “and this is my stepmother, Eleanor, and this is Senator Spencer, and our good friend
Fred Samuels, and my father. This is R.J. Misner.”

“Pleasure,” Rand Malcolm boomed, or maybe he didn’t boom but it sounded like a boom to R.J., whose mouth was dry and who hoped
this wasn’t the whole party. Eleanor Malcolm was a bony woman in her late fifties. She wore a black suit, and she smiled a
smile that was only on her mouth, not in her eyes. R.J. remembered the story the woman in the used-clothing store told about
Lily Daniels’s clothes.

“Would you like some shampoo?” Mr. Malcolm asked R.J., who stood frozen, staring at him. He couldn’t have said that. Shampoo?

“Pardon?” she said. Then she realized he was gesturing over her shoulder where the man in the white coat was standing holding
a tray of filled champagne classes, offering one to R.J. Ahhh. Shampoo. Instead of champagne. Hah. A joke. God knows, she
hadn’t expected him to open with a joke.

“Thank you,” she said, and took a glass from the tray. The men were all still standing. Why didn’t they sit down? Oh, God,
they must be standing because
she
was She’d better sit. So she sat, and when she did, they did.
Oy vey,
she thought, then had to stop a laugh at how funny blurting that out would have sounded. Like the Joke about the Jew who was
trying to pass, and when he said
Oy vey,
he always followed it with “whatever that means.”

“Well,” came a voice. It was Mrs. Spencer. She was trim and neatly dressed. R.J. remembered seeing her picture in the
Los Angeles Times.
“Mai how was Japan?” R.O. didn’t hear the answer. She was trying to take in this man. Rand
Malcolm held a red swizzle stick, shaped like a golf dub, between his thumb and forefinger, and answered in gruff short bursts
of sentences. David was talking quietly to Senator Spencer, and Fred Samuels, a bright-eyed man with a big toothy smile, sat
himself down next to R.J.

“So, David tells us you’re a writer. What do you write?”

Uh-oh, R.J. thought. She remembered David mentioning this man. His father’s right hand. Maybe he’d been given the assignment
to check her out.

“Mostly television,” she said.

“Which shows?” he asked.

“I write for Freddy Gaines and Patsy Dugan,” she said. Perfect, she thought. Evoke the image of Patsy and her sex-queen reputation
and her well-known foul mouth and now they know you work for her. Not to mention Freddy the child molester.

“I love Patsy Dugan,” Fred Samuels said, grinning a real grin now. “Isn’t she back with her ex these days? She’s so funny.
Only I guess you’re the one who’s really funny, because you write the things she says. Now I think that’s terrific.”

“What is?” Rand Malcolm asked.

“R.J. writes for Patsy Dugan,” Fred Samuels said.

“Who in the hell is that?” Malcolm asked.

“Oh, you know, Mal,” Eleanor Malcolm said. “The one Johnny Carson always makes fun of because she’s so well endowed.”

“I watch three things on television. Football, the news, and that show on opposite the news… I switch over when the news gets
too stupid. The one about the bar and the fat guy who runs it”

“Joey’s Place,” R.J.
said.

“Funniest goddamned show in the world,” Rand Malcolm declared. “About people who hang out at this seedy restaurant, and one
of them’s an investment banker who’s always losing money—I love it. What do
you
write?” he asked, looking directly at R.J.

“I’m the head writer for Patsy Dugan and Freddy Gaines’ variety show. I write and supervise the comedy sketches.” Compared
to his big voice, hers sounded like the squeak of a mouse.

“Any money in that?” he boomed. She felt like Dorothy talking to the Wizard of Oz.

“Quite a bit,” she answered. Maybe that was a trick question. From the corner of her eye she could see smiles on the faces
of the Spencers and Fred Samuels. David was out of her line of vision, but she could feel his eyes on her. How was she doing?

“David,” Eleanor Malcolm said, standing and coming to David’s side. “While everyone’s chatting, why don’t I show you those
chairs I have for you that were your mother’s? They’re perfect for your apartment”

David excused himself and he and Eleanor left the room. R.J. felt very alone.

“Like what kind of money?” Rand Malcolm wanted to know. She had just said
quite a bit.
But what was quite a bit to her, what seemed like a fortune because it was getting her bills paid and letting her finally
have some savings, was probably a joke to these people. Besides, he couldn’t possibly mean for her to tell him exactly…

“Well I’m the head writer. I worked my way up to that and—” The American Dream. “So I get more than all the other writers
on the show.” There. That ought to satisfy him. He couldn’t possibly want her to tell him exactly…

“How much money is that?” Yes, he certainly did want her to tell him. Exactly.

She couldn’t believe the conversation had taken this turn. What could she say? Her mind raced and she blurted out, “Enough
to give me a tax problem this year,”

The others laughed. Rand Malcolm didn’t.

“And what do you do with it?”

“With… ?”

“The money? Do you own a car? A house?”

“Yes. A car and a house.”

“What kind of mortgage?”

“No mortgage. It’s paid off. So’s the car.”

“Smart girl,” he said.

She breathed for what felt like the first time since she’d walked in. She didn’t mention that her husband’s death had meant
mortgage insurance, which was why the house was paid off, and the car was so old when she got it, it had been paid off for
years. This was really the third degree. She managed to take a big swig of champagne and then another, and then realized that
that was a stupid thing to do. Clearly she needed to be on her toes with this man. This was worse than she’d imagined.

“Do you have any savings?” came the next question.

“Yes,” R.J. said. This was getting to be a little bit funny. Maybe because of the champagne.

“What are you saving for?” he asked.

“My son’s bar mitzvah,” she answered, and then there was a big long pause during which she almost burst out laughing. Well,
she thought, now the beans are on the table. I write jokes for Patsy the sex queen, I’m a Jew, I’ve got a kid. The only thing
we haven’t covered yet is politics.

“What does your father do?”

“My father died about twenty years ago. He was an immigrant, and he became a social worker in a settlement house.”

“Commie?”

“Socialist.” That did it. Every last bean.
And,
she wanted to add, he wouldn’t have liked
your
politics either.