Almost Paradise

by Susan Isaacs

“Nicky, what kind of a question is that?” They talked to each other in the mirror.

  “It’s a straightforward question.”

  Murray drained his glass. Then he tapped Nicholas on the shoulder. “Can you turn around, so I can figure out which is your right and which is your left? It’s not normal to talk to mirrors.” Nicholas faced him. “Now you’re not reversed. Good.” Murray paused. “Do I like this house? Why not? It’s a gorgeous house. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the human race would clutch their chest and fall on the floor with a major coronary if someone offered them this house.” Murray smiled. Nicholas watched him. “Nicky, why are we going through this?”

  “I just asked you a question. You’re avoiding answering it.”

  “You’re in a mood again.”

  “I’m not in a mood.” Nicholas put his glass of wine on the lowest shelf, threw some cracked ice into a large glass, and poured vodka over it. “You’re the one who’s been having moods lately. Ever since you got here.”

  “So if I’m in a mood, why are you drinking vodka?”

  “Because I feel like drinking vodka.”

  This was happening more and more. He and Murray were becoming like an old married couple, bickering over nothing. He wasn’t sure why. Tension over a thirty-five-million-dollar movie. Maybe just to distract them from a harsher battle. They bickered on and on. I want the right of first negotiation and last refusal on any sequel. Nicky, it’s a trivial point. What kind of sequel would there be on this: William the Conqueror Goes Hawaiian? I want it. You win on a dumb point like this, you lose on a biggie. Murray, I told you…Nicky, you’re losing the forest in the trees if you…

  “So go ahead. Drink vodka.”

  Nicholas took a long drink. The bottle had been in the freezer, and the vodka was syrupy and smooth. “I asked you a question. Do you like this house?”

  “For me, yes. I’d live in this house if I was the kind of person who would live in California. The neighborhood I’m not so sure about. I mean, they wouldn’t burn a cross on my lawn, but they wouldn’t throw a Hello Murray party either. But for someone else, it’s beautiful.”

  “For me?”

  “For you, it’s obviously fine.”

  Nicholas banged his glass onto a shelf. Drops of vodka flew up and landed in clear beads, reflecting themselves in the mirror. “Let’s have it out, Murray.”

  “Have what out?”

  “Whatever’s been bothering you the last six months.”

  “Nothing’s been bothering me for the last six months.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Don’t tell me bullshit, Nicky. I don’t speak to you like that.” Nicholas looked across the room, out the glass doors. The trees and flowers on the terraces blocked his view of the pool. Only a white line, the top of the gazebo’s roof, was visible.

  “For Christ’s sake, Murray—”

  “You want to talk to someone like that, you get another agent. I mean it, Nicky. You say bullshit, I say shit. I’ve taken a lot of shit from you, and not just the past six months. FYI, it’s been the last couple of years.”

  “Murray—”

  Murray’s suit and tie were so dark. He was dressed more for a New York funeral than for a California cocktail hour. His expression was somber, the ends of his mouth drawn down. “Nicky, I love you like a son. You know that. But enough is enough. I’m too old for this. All my life I’ve worked with actors. All my life I’ve seen them screwing up their lives. Okay, fine, it’s a sad thing to watch, but it goes with the territory. They’re artistic, emotional. People kiss their ass and say ‘Go ahead, do whatever you want to do,’ so they do…it happens. And it happens that sometimes I have to take a certain amount of crap. People under tension behave—I don’t know—pretty crappily. But you were always different, Nicky.”

  “Murray, this isn’t necessary.”

  “Then I’ll take my hat, please.”

  Murray’s New York voice suddenly went cold. It hit Nicholas hard and fast, knocking his breath out of him, as if he were a kid tackled by someone twice his size. “Murray,” he said at last, “all right. I apologize. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you off.”

  “All I want to do is have my say, Nicky. Let me tell you something about you. You were always a man before you were an actor. A real man. With a wife and—let me finish—kids and a house in the country. A good person. Even coming from where you came from, you were for real. Not a snob. Not a the-whole-world-owes-me type. And you weren’t some little two-bit plosher hanging around waiting to be famous so you could treat people like dreck. You were a good man.”

  “What am I now?”

  “A good man still. But an unhappy man.”

  “Murray, I knew that’s what you were getting to. But it’s not true.”

  “You’re happy?”

  “Yes. I know it doesn’t suit your hopes for me, but I’m very happy.”

  “This is happiness, living in some too-fancy House Beautiful house with a girl almost young enough to be your daughter? Ha-ha. Go ahead and say, ‘Sure, why shouldn’t it be happiness, a house with bathrooms the size of Yankee Stadium and a little sweetie with long red hair who could fit on the top of a wedding cake?’ But you’re not happy. I know you’re not.”

  “If I’m not happy, it’s because I’m sad about what happened with the marriage. I’m sad it went bad.”

  “It didn’t go bad. You hit a rocky stretch—”

  “Murray, it went bad. We married too young, for the wrong reasons. The flaws were built into the marriage. She needed someone strong, and I needed someone who could light a fire under me, get me off the path my family had laid out. At twenty, twenty-one we suited each other’s needs. At forty—”

  “Nicky, that’s bullshit. You loved each other.”

  “I’m not saying we didn’t. But the problems were always there. She grew up and didn’t need anyone strong any more. I need peace now. I don’t want any more fires lit under me.”

  “So? What marriage doesn’t have problems?”

  “Murray, it just didn’t work out. And I am sad about it. I’m sad about Jane and sad that the girls feel so strongly about Pamela that they won’t—Forget it. They’ll come around in time.”

  “Maybe.” Murray walked away from him, toward a modular couch shaped like a fat U. He sat in the middle, at the bottom of the U, sinking low and deep. Nicholas came over and sat at an end. “And maybe they won’t come around. Did you ever think that, Nicky? Did you ever think this little sweetie—”

  “Don’t call her a sweetie. She’s a kind, sensitive human being.”

  “Pardon me. Did you ever think that this kind, sensitive human being may poison your relationship with your daughters for good?”

  “I think they’ll come around.”

  “And if they don’t? What’ll you do? Write them off and have a couple more kids with little Pammy?”

  “Murray, I won’t have this!”

  “This little brilliant sweetie who wants to talk all the time about dead French directors and lap dissolves is worth throwing away a beautiful wife and two fine daughters for? Is she? This sensitive little scholar who only wants to get her Ph.D. is schlepping around the world with you wearing emeralds and teeny-weeny custom-made sable coats and she hasn’t seen the inside of a college since—Nicky! I’m not going to stop. You want to know something? When I got out of that car here today, I got out thinking there’s a good shot that when I get back in, I’ll have lost my best client and my dearest friend. You want to know something else? Knowing that isn’t going to stop me.”

  “Murray, it wasn’t only me. You know damn well Jane was having herself a high old time.”

  “What? With that oysvorf psychiatrist? So what?”

  “So what? I wouldn’t cast her as the wronged wife.”

  Murray struggled to sit straight. “Nicky, she was wrong. She was stupid. She was all sorts of things. But what did it mean? She’d been so unhappy all those years and then this guy comes along like
Prince Charming and abracadabra! The spell is broken and she’s grateful and so on and so forth. It wasn’t right. I’m on your side. It was sneaky and dumb. But she’s not Adolf Hitler, Nicky.”

  “I know she isn’t. But it wasn’t a flash in the pan either. I’ll bet she’s still seeing him.”

  “Because you’re not there. Because she’s in limbo.”

  “Murray, it’s gone too far. There’s nothing left to save.”

  “Nicky, the two of you together. Visiting you at that house was like getting an invitation to the Garden of Eden. When she used to—”

  Both men jumped. Pamela stood outside the sliding glass doors, knocking. Nicholas rushed across the room and let her in. She stood on tiptoes to kiss him. “Hi, Murray,” she said.

  “Hi,” Murray said from the couch.

  “How do you like the house?”

  “It’s really something.”

  Nicholas looked away from him and down at Pamela. She had wrapped the blue and green striped towel around her. It was so long it hung to the floor, and she looked like a child dressed in her mother’s strapless evening gown. Her collarbones seemed incredibly fragile, like parts from the frailest sparrow. Nicholas put his arm around her shoulder. Her hair was still damp and looked deep orange-red in the dim light. He could smell the flowery fragrance of her shampoo. Everything about Pamela was feminine and delicate. Unlike Jane, Pamela never smelled of mere soap or perfume or sweat. The light scent she wore became part of her essence. When he held her, he was holding an armful of flowers.

  Pamela nestled against him. She’d once told him she did not feel complete unless she was being held by him. I don’t mean that in an antifeminist sense, she’d said. I know, he’d answered, holding her tight. His body could feel her words true: she was always that way with him. Never clingy, always a natural adjunct. After a party, she would cuddle against him in the car and emit a sigh of genuine pleasure and relief; finally, she was a part of him, at peace.

  “Did you see the composite print of Land’s End yet, Murray?” Pamela asked. Murray just shook his head. Nicholas let out a muted sigh. She tried so hard with Murray even though she knew how close he was to Jane, both as agent and as friend. “It’s his greatest work as a director. I envy you the experience. It has all the warmth you associate with Wyler, very human, but with Nicholas’s special directorial stamp: very American, very human, but with an overriding urbanity.”

  “That’ll be nice,” Murray said.

  “And his acting is superb.”

  “Who does it remind you of?”

  Nicholas stiffened. Murray was baiting Pamela.

  “It doesn’t remind me of anyone. Nicholas is sui generis. One of a kind.”

  “I know what sui generis means, Pamela.”

  Nicholas closed his eyes. All he wanted to do was get out of the house, get moving. Run for miles.

  “Oh, Murray. I hope you didn’t think I was being condescending. Honestly, I have this obnoxious tendency to behave as if I’m teaching a freshman—”

  “That’s okay, Pamela. Nicky, I’ll be in LA till Monday. If you decide you want me, you know where to find me. Pamela…” He paused.

  “Yes, Murray?”

  “Take care.”

  “I will, Murray. Thanks for dropping by. Oh, would you like to stay for dinner? It’s no problem. The maid can just throw on another salmon steak.”

  Murray stared at her. “No, thank you. I don’t want to put your maid to any trouble.” Then he turned to Nicholas. He looked old and, suddenly, so listless he seemed almost feeble. He could not get up from the couch. Nicholas went to him and helped him up. The moment he was standing, Murray dropped Nicholas’s hand. “I have a lot of paperwork back at the hotel,” Murray said. “Besides, I’m sure the two of you want some time alone.”

  “Murray,” Nicholas said, “please stay.”

  “I can’t, Nicky. I’m tired.”

  On July 2, the night of his fortieth birthday, Nicholas came home from the suburban London studio where he had been toasted with champagne, drank half a bottle of vodka and about as much wine, and found himself about to pass out at the dining room table. He was unable to keep his head from rolling to the side and was vaguely thankful when it came to rest on his shoulder. His arms dropped over the sides of the chair. Just before his eyes closed, he looked down and saw his fingers curled up, apelike. He knew he was drunk. It didn’t bother him. That was good. He was very tired. He only hoped his face hadn’t gone slack and stupid, the way his father’s had when he was really in the bag. He tried lifting his lower lip to close his mouth, but it wasn’t worth the effort.

  He heard the butler—who had just brought in whatever was to come after the awful pink chilled soup Pamela had ordered—suggest to her that he might help Mr. Cobleigh upstairs. Pamela, obviously not relishing a candlelit dinner for one, agreed. “He’s been working so hard,” he heard her explain.

  Nicholas knew he was about to be taken up to bed, but was still startled when the butler bent over him, wiggled his head under Nicholas’s arm, grabbed onto his wrist, and hoisted him out of the chair. Nicholas didn’t want to be manhandled. He fought for his wrist and tried to swing around his other arm so he could punch the butler in the gut. But the butler made a soothing English humming sound—not so different from a nanny’s—and Nicholas allowed himself to be walked and dragged from the dining room, hauled up the stairs of the London townhouse, and put in a narrow tester bed in a small back bedroom that smelled of camphor.

  He liked the butler. The man took off not only his shoes but his socks and covered him with a light quilt. Nicholas fell right into a deep sleep. He needed it. It had been a rough day. It had been a rough month. At the last moment, the studio fired his relatively unknown co-star and hired another actress to play William the Conqueror’s wife, Matilda. The actress they hired was Laurel Blake. His lawyers agreed Nicholas’s contract allowed him to approve his co-star and he could challenge the casting of Laurel Blake, but they suggested the litigation would take longer than the filming and, while not quite so costly, it would be, as they put it, “complex.”

  Pamela came to the studio every day, and Laurel had her lover—whom she called her manager—with her, a man in his mid-twenties who had appeared in several pornographic films; still, their presence only mildly discouraged Laurel. She sent Nicholas unsealed notes, using the script girl as a messenger. They began with a relatively innocuous Remember Yugoslavia? Remember Paris? but when he did not respond she wrote, Remember the good times? Want some more? and finally, Remember how you loved my finger up your ass?

  He took her aside after a script conference. “I want those notes to stop,” he said.

  Laurel smiled. “You know how to stop them.”

  Late one afternoon, when they were resting a few minutes after nearly twenty takes on a scene between them, Pamela came over to him and put a cool, wet cloth on the back of his neck. Laurel had stared, taking in Pamela’s diminutiveness, her jeans, sneakered feet, and T-shirt. Then, in a voice so loud the entire crew heard, Laurel said, “I see you have what you’ve always wanted, Nick. A boy.”

  Everyone had felt sorry for Pamela that day and went out of their way to be kind, but most of the time they avoided her. Nicholas realized she did not fit in. As much as she knew about film, she knew nothing about film people. She was shy, and when she finally found the courage to speak, she’d try to discuss craft. “Are you familiar with Gianni Di Venanzo’s work?” she’d ask the cinematographer. She’d meant it as a social gambit; he’d taken it as a criticism of his technique. “Who do you consider your major influences?” she’d asked the director. “My mum and my dad,” he answered. “No, really, Arthur,” she’d persisted. “My brother George.”

  They avoided her, and because she was nearly always pressed against him, they avoided Nicholas. In the kindest way. As star, anything he demanded he got. As he walked through the studio, smiles wreathed faces, hands waved, cheery hellos bellowed forth. But although his hab
it was to keep pretty much to himself, he found himself with too much time on his hands. He and Pamela stayed alone in his suite of rooms in the studio. He made love to her more often than he would have liked. He called his brokers and lawyers more often than necessary. He was the star, the reason why William the Conqueror was being made, but he was not part of the company. He missed the camaraderie. Pamela’s shyness was so intense it drew him into its shadow.

  The formal dinners, routine entertainment for visiting celebrities, were painful for her. No one, she told him, wanted to talk seriously: not novelists, not statesmen, not university professors. She’d gone over to one of the world’s most gifted playwrights just to tell him how much she’d admired his work, and he’d spent an hour talking about his shoemaker. An hour on different lasts, grades of leather, and who the shoemaker’s most renowned customers were; he’d mentioned the Prince of Wales and Nicholas Cobleigh. They all wanted to gossip, she told Nicholas. She tried to have intelligent conversations and no one was interested. When they tried to pry information from her about him, or gossiped about people she’d never met, she just clammed up. She couldn’t help it. She was not cut out for cocktail parties, for superficial chatter or hypocritical intimacy.

  He watched the men seated beside her attempt light conversation. Her responses were either painfully terse or agonizingly long-winded. He watched the Englishmen; their eyes, rarely the mirrors of their souls, almost danced with relief as they turned to the women on their other side. The women seated next to him darted fast glances at her and back to him, hardly disguising their wonder at Pamela. Their silent inquiry—what does she have?—was so obvious it might have been shouted.

  It wasn’t that he was embarrassed to be linked with her. It was just that he wished she could enjoy herself.

  At one party, the men rose after the second course and changed dinner partners. A man, Lord Something-or-other, was seated beside Pamela. To Nicholas, down the table, the man didn’t look very aristocratic in his badly tailored shiny blue suit. Still, he was a lord. Someone, as Jane would say, to write Rhodes about. Pamela did not say a word. She sat rigid, spooning up tiny dots of summer pudding and cream. She answered his questions with staccato responses, which Nicholas—far down the table—heard as peeps. Peep. Like a tiny bird.