Four Blondes Page 6

  They lived together for a year and a half, and then he bought a five-thousand-acre ranch in Montana. He wanted to get married and live there and raise cattle. He wanted to be a cowboy. Janey thought it was another joke. She told him he was the only twenty-three-year-old in the world who was dying to get married and have kids. But he was serious.

  “I can’t move to Montana and live on a ranch,” she screamed. Her career was starting to take off. She’d just gotten the part in that movie.

  She was convinced if she moved to Montana, her life would be over. Everything she had would be wasted.

  At first, he used to call her on the set. “I got up at four A.M. I had my lunch at nine!” he would shout excitedly. “We rounded up four hundred head of cattle.” But by the time she’d finished shooting the movie and it was a hit and she thought she was going to have a career as an actress and then realized she wasn’t, he had married his old girlfriend from high school.

  “Janey! Smile!” a photographer said. Janey complied, leaning her head on Harold’s shoulder. Harold patted her hand. “Why don’t you get married?” she said.

  Harold shook his head. “You know I don’t want to get married until I’m at least sixty.”

  “You’ll be nearly dead by then.”

  “My father didn’t marry my mother until he was sixty. And she was twenty-five. They were very happy together.”

  Janey nodded. She’d heard this story before, and what Harold didn’t point out was that his father had died at seventy, and Harold had grown up a frightened little boy raised by his mother and two aunts in a crabbed Fifth Avenue apartment: the result being that Harold was an anal retentive who spent an hour a day on the crapper and still saw his old mother every Sunday. It was so stupid. If only men like Harold would do their part and behave sensibly—i.e., get married and have children—then women like Janey wouldn’t have to worry about how they were supposed to support themselves and—ugh—make a living. Didn’t Harold realize that there really wasn’t any profession in which she could make as much money as he did, short of becoming a famous movie star, no matter how hard she tried?

  “We could be married and have children by now,” Janey said. “Do you ever think about that?”

  “Children!” Harold said. “I’m still a child myself. But think about what I’ve said, won’t you?”

  Janey nodded.

  “I won’t be able to lend you money forever,” he said quietly.

  “No. Of course not,” Janey said. She picked up her fork and concentrated on her lobster quadrilles. Rich people were always like that, weren’t they? They’d help you out a couple of times and then, no matter how much money they had and how meaningless the amount would have meant to them, they cut you off. They didn’t want to be used.

  And then there was the Swish Daily incident.

  Janey was in the designer showroom, getting fitted for his runway show, when suddenly he came in, looked at her, and screamed, “Oh my dear! Those hips!”

  The fitter, a nondescript woman of about fifty, looked at Janey and shrugged. Janey tried to laugh, but the fact was that she had gained about ten pounds in the last year and hadn’t been able to lose it.

  “What are you talking about?” Janey said, turning sideways in the mirror to hide her discomfort, but it was no use. Swish came rushing up, knelt down, and put his hands on either side of her thighs.

  “This is going to be a prob-lem,” he said.

  At that moment, Aleeka Norton arrived in the showroom. She threw down a Louis Vuitton handbag and called across the floor, “Hey, Swish, leave her alone about her hips, huh? She’s a woman, for Christ’s sake. That’s the problem with you fags. You don’t know women.”

  “Hello, darling,” Swish said. “I hope you’re not getting fat on me too.”

  “Oh shut up, Swish,” Aleeka said. “Why don’t you try eating pussy sometime? Then we’ll talk about hips.”

  Swish giggled and the fitting continued as if nothing had happened, but Janey was scared. She’d been pudgy as a child, and she’d heard stories about girls who got into their early thirties and suddenly put on weight and couldn’t take it off, even if they’d never had children. Afterward she found Swish in his office, where he was pretending to study fabric swatches.

  “I’m not over, am I?” she asked. She was usually never this frank, but on the other hand, she usually didn’t have to be.

  “Oh my dear,” Swish said sadly. “Of course you’re not over. But your type of figure . . . that nineties, fake-titted thing . . .”

  “I could take out the implants,” Janey said.

  “But can you take out everything else?” Swish said. He put down the fabric samples and regarded her frankly. “You know what it’s like, Janey. You’ve seen these new girls. They’ve got hips the size of swizzle sticks. I think Ghisele is a size two. And she’s five-eleven.”

  “I get it,” Janey said.

  “Oh listen, Janey.” Swish came out from behind the desk and took her hands in his. “We’ve known each other a long time. You were in my first fashion show. Remember?”

  Janey nodded. The show had been held in an art gallery in SoHo. “It was so hot,” she said. “And we were late. We kept the audience waiting an hour and a half. And then they loved it.”

  “They went mad,” he said. “And the funny thing was, none of us knew what we were doing then.” He let go of her hands and lit a cigarette, turning toward the large window that overlooked Prince Street. A bus had pulled up outside and was unloading tourists.

  “You know, in some ways I really miss those days,” he said. “There was everything to look forward to. It was like a big amusement ride, wasn’t it, Janey?” He stubbed out his cigarette. “We didn’t know then how nasty people could be.”

  “No,” Janey said. “We didn’t.”

  “I always wonder if it’s the times that change, or just us getting older. Do you know?”

  “No.”

  He began moving things around on his desk. Janey shifted from one foot to the other. “You’re not over, Janey,” he said. “Not one of us can ever be over unless we decide to be. But take my advice. I tell all the girls this. Go to London.”

  “London?” Janey said.

  “London,” Swish said, nodding. “You get married.”

  “Well. Really—”Janey said.

  Swish held up his hand. “But not to just anyone. You marry . . . a titled Englishman. You know, a lord, a duke, a marquis . . . Rupert and I were just over there in October and it was fantastic.”

  Janey nodded patiently.

  “Lady . . . Janey,” Swish said. “You have the stately home, the title, money, hounds. . .” The phone rang, but Swish didn’t answer it. “Oh darling, hounds are just fantastic, aren’t they? You’ve got to do it. I could do the most fantastic trousseau for you. I could design my whole fall line around it. Lady Janey’s Trousseau. What do you think?”

  “Fantastic,” Janey said. “But I don’t know anyone in England.”

  “Darling, you don’t need to know anyone,” Swish said. He laughed, caught up in his own fantasy. “A beautiful girl like you? English girls look like crap. There’s no competition. You show up in London, and within minutes, you’ll be everywhere.”

  Janey smiled coldly but said nothing. Why was it, she thought, everyone assumed that if you were beautiful, things just fell in your lap? Ever since she was sixteen, she’d been promised this big fucking prize for being beautiful and (later) having tits, but where was it? Where was this fantastic life her beauty was supposed to bring her?

  And now she had to move to another country? “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “You could go this summer. I hear the summer season is very hot in London. Ascot and all that. I’ll make you a hat.”

  “I always go to the Hamptons for the summer,” Janey said.

  “The Hamptons?” Swish said. “You’re not still caught up in that, are you? Darling,” he said, “the Hamptons are over.”

  “I’
m looking for my own house this year,” Janey said. She kissed him on the cheek and went out the door and got into the freight elevator. It was already early April. She was fat. And she still didn’t have a house for the summer.

  When she came out onto the street, she banged her hand against the building in frustration.

  Her nail broke painfully below the quick. She stuck her finger in her mouth. A couple of tourists wandered by. “Are you a model?” one of them asked. They were foreign, maybe from Denmark.

  “Yes,” Janey said.

  “Do you mind if we take your picture?”

  “I don’t give a shit what you do,” Janey said.

  Two days later, she met Comstock Dibble.

  His first words to her were: “They used to make fun of me in school. What did they do to you?”

  “They stole my bicycle,” Janey said.

  He was smoking a cigar. He took a puff and held out his hand, clenching the cigar between his teeth. “Comstock Dibble,” he said.

  “The man who’s going to save the movies,” Janey said.

  “Oh. So you read that shit, huh?” he said.

  “Who didn’t?” Janey said. “It was only on the cover of the Sunday Times Magazine.”

  They were standing in the middle of the VIP room in the nightclub Float, at the premiere for Comstock Dibble’s new movie, Watches. It was crowded and smoky and loud. He shifted the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.

  “I like you,” he said. “I want to get to know you better. Do you want to get to know me?”

  Janey leaned toward him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Yes,” she whispered.

  The next day, a brand-new bicycle arrived at her apartment.

  Janey ripped open the attached card with glee. It read:

  Dear Janey:

  If anyone tries to steal this bicycle, they’ll have to deal with me.

  Regards, Comstock Dibble.

  VI

  Memorial Day weekend again. The grass and trees were beginning to turn a deep green, reminding Janey of every summer she’d had in the Hamptons and, she thought happily, was going to have again. The cottage she’d rented was only a converted carriage house in the back of a Victorian house in the town of Bridgehampton, but it was hers. It had a tiny kitchen, a living room with built-in cupboards that contained mismatched glassware, and two attic bedrooms that were furnished with old photographs and down comforters and feather pillows. It was charming. A steal, the real estate agent said, adding that the only reason it had been available was that the couple who usually rented it had decided to get divorced the week before, and couldn’t agree on which one should get the house.

  “My luck,” Janey said, as her cell phone rang.

  “Is it great?” the male voice asked.

  “It is great.” Janey giggled. She walked toward a little garden framed by hedges that contained white wicker tables and chairs, where she imagined she would hostess small but important dinners that summer. . . . She’d invite Comstock, and Harold Vane . . . hell, she might even invite Redmon. After all, Redmon was a best-selling author no matter what you thought about the rest of him.

  “I told you it would happen, didn’t I?”

  “Yes,” Janey said happily.

  “I told you it would happen, and what happened?”

  “It happened,” Janey said.

  “Who can make your dreams come true?”

  “Oh, Comstock,” Janey said.

  “I’ll see you later,” he said. “You’ll be home? Or will you be out trying to pick up my replacement?”

  “Never,” Janey said

  “I’m losing you,” he said, and rang off.

  Janey smiled and snapped the cell phone shut. It was tiny and violet and brand-new, the smallest model available. Comstock had given it to her two weeks before (he was paying the phone bill, which went directly to his office), along with a Macintosh laptop and a twenty-thousand-dollar check with which to rent the cottage.

  The cottage had actually only cost fifteen grand, but Janey thought she’d keep that information to herself. After all, she’d need the five grand for expenses and car rentals. And besides, Comstock wouldn’t care. He was the most generous man she’d ever been with—not just monetarily but spiritually and emotionally as well.

  “I’m in love,” she said to Allison, who was sworn to secrecy as to the identity of her swain. If the press got wind of the affair, they’d be all over them in two seconds. They probably wouldn’t be able to walk down the street.

  “He’s not a movie star,” Allison commented. “Don’t you think you’re exaggerating? Just a little?”

  And later: “Oh Janey. How can you be in love with Comstock Dibble? How can you have sex with him?”

  “This is big,” Janey said warningly. “I might even marry him.”

  “But think about your kids,” Allison said helplessly. “What if they looked like him?”

  “Don’t be so old-fashioned,” Janey said.

  She did have to admit, however, that at first her feelings for Comstock were as much a surprise to her as they were to Allison. Never in a million years did she think that she would fall in love with a man like Comstock Dibble (or, correction, a man who looked like Comstock Dibble). But when you thought about it, it made sense. That first night they’d gone out together, he had taken her back to her apartment in his chauffeured Mercedes and then casually invited himself upstairs for a “nightcap.” Janey liked the sound of the old-fashioned word, and she liked the way he shyly took her hand in the elevator. He was wearing a tweedy gray overcoat, which he took off and held folded over his arm when they walked into her apartment. “Should I put this down, or are you going to ask me to leave right away?” he asked.

  “Why would I want you to leave?” Janey asked. “You just got here.”

  “Janey,” he said. He took her hand and pulled her to the large, gilt-framed mirror that hung on the wall in her tiny living room. “Look at you,” he said. “And look at me. You’re a beauty, Janey, and I’m an ugly, ugly man. My whole life I’ve had to deal with this . . . this creature.”

  He was right. He was ugly. But, like everything else about his life, his ugliness had a sort of legendary quality to it that became (in Janey’s mind, anyway) a badge of honor. His face and body were riddled with deep pockmarks—the result of the kind of uncontrollable acne in which it seems the skin is trying to destroy the body—and his red hair was sparse and curly. His one good feature was his nose, which was small, but was unfortunately set off by a large gap between his front teeth. He had a receding chin.

  But spend ten minutes in his company and you forgot about how he looked. Which was what she kept telling Allison. “I don’t think so, Janey,” Allison said, shaking her head. “I couldn’t sleep with him no matter how much time I spent with him.” She paused. “Now that you mention it, I don’t think I would want to spend any time with him, either.”

  “Allison,” Janey said patiently. “He’s a great man. He’s succeeded against all odds.”

  “Oh yes, I know,” Allison said. “I read that story in The New York Times, too. Don’t forget the part about him being a bully and a fraud, and being sued for sexual harassment and arrested for possession of cocaine.”

  “He was framed,” Janey said. “The cops framed him because they didn’t like that movie he made about the ten-year-old cop killers.”

  “That was a horrible movie,” Allison said.

  Janey didn’t care. As far as she was concerned (and as far as a lot of other people were concerned as well), Comstock was a genius. People said he was the most important producer in the business. Movie stars worshiped him. Gossip columnists vied for his attention at parties. Powerful men in Hollywood were afraid of him. He was rich, and he’d earned every penny himself.

  Janey had laughed that first evening and pulled him down to the couch. “Oh Comstock,” she said. “Don’t you realize that, really, we’re the same? We’re like twins. My whole life I’ve had to deal wit
h this creature too. This creature who looks a certain way, who makes people think I am a certain way. All my life, people have told me that I’m stupid.” She turned her head away so that he could see the beauty of her profile. “I’m beginning to think that they’re right. That I am . . . stupid. I mean, if I weren’t stupid, I guess my life would have turned out better.”

  “You’re not stupid, Janey,” he said gently.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You just haven’t been given a chance,” he said. His hand snaked out and intertwined with hers again. “I’m going to help you, Janey. I help people all the time. If you could do anything, and we’re talking wish list here, what would it be?”

  “I don’t know,” Janey said slowly. “I guess I’ve always wanted to . . . write. Aleeka’s writing a novel. . . .”

  “Why do you want to write?” he asked carefully.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I feel like . . . I’ve got so much inside me—so many things that nobody knows about—I observe people all the time, you know. They don’t know that I’m observing them, but I am.”

  “Forget novels,” he said. “You should write a screenplay.”

  After that, it was easy to fall into bed with him.

  All during that first month of summer, Janey felt like calling up everyone she knew and announcing, “Hi, it’s Janey Wilcox. I’ve got my own house this summer and I’m writing a screenplay.” Indeed, when people did call her during the day at her little cottage in Bridgehampton, with the split-rail fence and espaliered roses, she often as not said, “D’you mind if I call you back? I’m right in the middle of a scene.”