Before Joy could curse or think of the dry-cleaning bill, or do anything other than just be astonished, Jack grabbed a bottle of club soda from the bar’s sideboard, poured the clear liquid on his napkin and began dabbing at the scarlet spot on her right breast.
He repeated the process until the stain was completely gone, his eyes focused only on what he was doing, oblivious to the calamity around him, his only agenda being to get the damn spot out….
And in that moment, for his simple act of chivalry, Joy fell in love with him.
“Is that better?” he asked.
His hand was poised at her breast, the damp napkin at the ready.
“I don’t remember telling you to stop,” she said.
He grinned, and she grabbed his other hand and pulled him of his stool and through the noisy crowd into the cool twilight, as other cars pulled up in front of the busy restaurant.
“Take me someplace quieter,” she said, relieved not to have to shout anymore.
“We can wait out here and not have to miss the food. They say it’s really something … you do like French food?”
“I don’t like French anything,” she said, then qualified her statement with. “Except clothes, and perfume … and kissing.”
He smiled sheepishly. “It was pretty bad in there, even for a Friday night. Where would you like to go?”
Joy thought for a second—and that was all it took. “Cantor’s,” she said.
Jack raised his eyebrows. “If it’s deli you want, Jerry’s is a nicer joint.”
“But not better food. And it’ll be more crowded.”
“Okay, you’re the boss. Cantor’s it is.”
The valet brought Jack’s car around, a late-model dark-green Lincoln.
A short time later, they easily found a parking space in the open lot next to Cantor’s. They got out and made their way along the beverage- and gum-stained sidewalk that paved an appropriate way to the venerable establishment.
Inside, assorted food smells delighted Joy’s senses as they passed by the long glass deli counter filled with breads, meats, salads, pastries and other delicacies, many of which a gentile girl like her didn’t recognize. An elderly gentleman in an inexpensive but dapper black suit perfect for a mortician led them to a cozy booth on the periphery of the large dining room.
The restaurant was bustling, but pleasantly so, the sounds of clattering dishes mixed with the murmur of other patrons— locals who refused to abandon the place for a more trendy spot; no movie stars here, at least not young ones—reminding Joy of the comforts of her favorite Chicago eateries, like Gino’s East, or the Berghoff, or even the late-lamented George Diamond’s.
She slid into the cracked and worn red-leather booth as Jack took his place across from her.
He looked around at decor that hadn’t changed in an eon, and said, “I think the last time I was here, they’d just remodeled—that must’ve been sometime in the Kennedy Administration.”
“Isn’t it just the best?” Joy asked, elated with her choice. “Talk about a sense of history … I’ll bet more power deals went down here than anywhere else in town.”
“Maybe. Remind me to take you to Musso and Frank’s sometime.”
A portly matron in a white cotton blouse and black skirt and with more miles on her than a ’57 Chevy rolled over to take their order. She had short, thinning hennaed hair, sketched-on eyebrows and clown-bright lipstick. Poised with pencil to order-pad, she wore the stern expression of a mother who might admonish a child for not eating his vegetable.
“What can I get you?” she asked, words clipped. They may well have been her millionth customers.
It would have taken a week to read the extensive menu, with all its orders, half-orders, and combination orders. Could they really have all that stuff back in one kitchen? But Joy already knew what she wanted.
“Matzo ball soup, please,” she told the waitress.
The woman grunted her approval, which—when Joy said nothing further—quickly turned to disapproval. “That’s all?” she asked Joy, frowning.
“Regular coffee with cream,” Joy said, then added to appease the woman, “and maybe some dessert later.”
The waitress shifted her stare to Jack.
“I’ll have the same,” he said, “but add half a Reuben on rye and potato salad.”
Mother smiled, pleased that her son was eating so well, then left to turn in their order.
Joy settled back in the comfy booth. “Where did you grow up?”
“Midwest.”
“Me, too! Where?”
“Omaha. How about you, Joy?”
“Chicago, mostly.” Thankfully the background story X-Gen had given her was consistent with her own past—made it easier to convincingly fake. On the other hand, she realized she was sitting across from somebody whose specialty was checking out people’s stories….
But Jack didn’t look like much of a threat right now, as he picked out a dill pickle from a selection in the little silver bowl on the table, and bit crunchingly into it. The dill looked so good and sounded so crisp … but Joy was saving what little room she had for the soup.
“You like it out here, in Phonywood?” Jack asked, chewing the dill.
“Very much. You suppose I fit in?”
“You don’t seem phony to me, Joy. And believe me, I can smell it. You do look like you belong—California girl if I ever saw one.”
“Maybe so, but sometimes I miss the cold and snow.”
He gestured with half a dill. “Hey, I’ve been in Chicago in the winter, and you’re crazy. The one thing I don’t miss about Omaha is the snow and the cold.”
“That’s two things.”
“Oh, so you’re gonna drive me nuts with details, huh?”
The waitress brought their food. The half-sandwich in front of Jack was no thicker than Stephen King’s The Stand (unabridged). Joy took a sip of the steaming aromatic soup, which was delicious.
“How did you come to be in your line of work?” Joy asked, dabbing her chin with her napkin.
Jack put down his half-Reuben. “I spent a few years as a detective on the LAPD,” he told her. “Until my marriage went south.”
“Oh. I’m sorry….”
“Don’t be. It was an amicable split … casualty of my line of work.” He paused and added with a shrug, “How can you have a relationship with someone who’s never around, and on the rare occasions when he is, brings his work the hell home with him?”
Joy nodded. It was an old, old story—and it reminded her of her own sad sorry tale, and the relationships that had never fully blossomed, and why she’d never married.
“So I decided to take my expertise into the private sector, and found a good job with Mile High Investigations—I’m a partner, you know.”
Joy put down her spoon. “When I first started in advertising, I overheard two men in pinstriped suits discussing what they felt was important in life. One of them said, ‘First comes work, then comes love, then comes food.’ The other man agreed. I remember thinking that the order was skewed. But as time went on, I learned they were right.”
“Pretty girl like you? Never married?”
“No. I did have one serious relationship, with an older man … but he died a few years ago.”
“Sorry. That’s rough.”
“Yes.” She looked down at her bowl, swirling the half-eaten yellow liquid with her spoon, poking at the big doughy dumpling, then looked back at him, cocking her head to one side. “And since work comes first—and food’s been taken care of—what about the reason we got together tonight. The client list, remember?”
“Oh, I can’t work here.”
“No?”
Somewhere, as if one cue, a busboy dropped a load of dishes, clattering, shattering.
Jack shook his head. “Way too distracting.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have someplace quieter in mind.”
“Why, actually I do … my place.”
“You k
now, there are probably half a dozen frustrated screenwriters sitting in here, if you’d like to get some help putting a new spin on that old line.”
“Can’t you tell? I’m an oldies-but-goodies kind of guy. I was glad to hear you like older men….”
“You’re not that much older.”
“What are you, thirty, Joy?”
“Thirty-fve. What are you, Jack—forty?”
“Forty-five. My place … we don’t have to go far.”
“Just keep that in mind.”
His “place” turned out to be a beige Mediterranean-style home built high along the hill of winding Beverlycrest Drive. The house sat close to the narrow street, its front door just yards away, but protected by a beige wrought-iron fence.
Unlike her modest home, this near-mansion was worth millions.
Jack pulled his jade-green Lincoln sedan through an electronic gate and into a single-car garage, which was next to the house.
“Something you might be interested in,” Jack said, as they made their way to the front of the house, “being as you’re a student of history and all—Clark Gable and Carole Lombard lived here.”
“You’re kidding! Oh, I love them both…. Sucker for old movies…”
“Yeah, well, somebody famous has lived in every one of these houses. You know, I had a young actress up a few weeks ago … interviewing her for work …”
“I’m sure.”
“Anyway, I told her Clark Gable used to live here and she said, ‘Really! That’s so cool—I love Superman!’ ”
The sheer stupidity of that got Joy laughing, laughing hard, as he opened the heavy wooden door and a high-pitched beep sounded, signaling an alarm had been set. Joy quickly stepped inside so Jack could shut it off.
As he punched in a code at the keypad behind the front door, Joy looked around the small but elegant, round marble-floored entryway, where nude maiden statues stood guard on the periphery next to exotic plants elevated on Grecian columns.
An image of a shocked Jack coming in the front door of her painfully humble abode entered her mind, but she pushed the unpleasantness aside. Tonight was tonight, now was now, and tomorrow might never come….
The focal point of the entryway, though, was in its center: a large urn stuffed with canes.
“What’s this about?” she asked. “I didn’t notice you limping!”
“I once dated a woman who insisted on taking me to her aerobics class,” he explained. “Eileen Mumy taught it—she’s married to that guy who was in Lost in Space, the ‘danger danger’ kid? Anyway, I sprained my damn foot in the first ten minutes…. Eileen felt so bad she sent me a cane.” He pulled out a stick with a gold handle the shape of a duck’s head. “I used it instead of crutches. Then everybody and his brother started giving me canes. Friends. Clients.” Shaking his head, Jack put the cane back in the urn. “I guess you could say I’m set for my old age.”
Joy smirked. “Tell me about what happens when people find out you collect things. I ended up with a drawer full of troll dolls. Somebody gave me one as a joke, and I put it on my desk. Then somebody else thought it looked lonely. Before long there was a whole clan of those ugly little bastards.”
He laughed. “I promise I’ll never give you a single damn troll.”
“And I promise, even if you break both legs tonight, I won’t buy you another damn cane.”
“Deal.”
And they shook hands.
For a moment they stood in silence, smiling at each other, knowing something was happening, her eyes and his holding a separate conversation.
Finally Jack asked, “Can I show you around?”
“I’d love to see the rest of the house…. I assume this is just the guest house. Surely the main house must be more impressive.”
“Oh, yeah. This is strictly for the poor relations.”
He led her to the left, through an archway that opened into a formal dining room, with crystal chandelier, dark mahogany dining table, thick beige area rug, around whose edges were the names of movie stars (all old-timers), in gold Roman lettering.
The kitchen, through a swinging door, was modern and dazzlingly white; it had a breakfast area that looked out over Beverly Hills, the lights belonging to the stars below, putting those in the sky to shame.
They doubled back to the entryway through a den decorated in tan Berber carpet, walls lined with leather-bound books and expensive Asian and African knickknacks, a modern mahogany desk, Jack’s familiar leather attaché tossed casually on it. The desk faced a series of windows, some of them open, providing a delightful breeze, along with another glittering, breathtaking Hollywood view.
A sharp feeling of envy shot through Joy like a sudden chest pain. Sitting at that desk, with that view, she could come up with a million brilliant ad campaigns, compared to where she worked at home now, at a scarred-up little desk, looking out on a tiny, parched lawn.
Money might not buy happiness, but it sure could buy creativity, or at least an environment in which creativity could flourish, and that was more important.
Then down a spiraling staircase they descended, to a lower level (there were three others, she discovered), past the master bedroom (very masculine, with a zebra bedspread) and two other bedrooms that looked unused. A floor below the bedrooms sprawled a workout room with all kinds of equipment, a whirlpool and sauna, looking out on a small outdoor pool built on a cement platform. The final floor was for the live-in help, Jack said, which at the moment was empty.
“Do you use the workout room much?” Joy asked, as they began their ascent back up, admiring his tight buns.
Jack, leading the way, said with a wry laugh, “Very little. I get all my exercise climbing these goddamn stairs.”
“I guess if you build on a hill, you can only go down.”
“The more modern houses have elevators.”
“I’d rather have this one,” she commented; they were standing in the foyer once again. “I’d much rather have Gable and Lombard than an elevator. This place has so much character and history. You can just feel it.”
He was staring with open affection. “Funny, coming from somebody your age.”
She shrugged. “Guess I’m a sucker for somebody else’s era. I mean, I grew up in the ’70s—how bleak is that? You got The Honeymooners—I got The Brady Bunch!”
Yes, those classes at Simmons did pay off at the darnedest times….
Jack gestured to the right of the entryway, to the only place they hadn’t been yet, the living room, which seemed small by Hollywood standards, but had a high vaulted ceiling, and was richly decorated with white leather furniture, a leopard-print rug and an extensive collection of African artwork. Pottery, paintings, masks, sculptures had taken up residence in every nook and cranny.
She stood in front of a white marble fireplace staring at two huge elephant tusks that stood guard on either side.
“I bagged those on my last safari,” Jack’s voice came from behind her.
She turned and gave him a wide-eyed look.
“Just kidding. I couldn’t kill a rabbit.” He stood at a liquor cart, removing a silver wine stopper from a bottle.
Joy was relieved; overtly macho men put her off. They were always compensating for something—buying and shooting guns because nature hadn’t given them much of a gun to shoot.
“You can almost see Gable and Lombard,” he was saying, handing her a glass of wine, “can’t you? On the sofa, sipping wine—well, him straight whiskey, her wine.” He tapped his glass with hers. “To Clark and Carole?”
“To Clark and Carole,” she repeated, wondering if the two icons would have stayed together if Lombard hadn’t died in that plane crash.
Seated on the leather couch, which was white as a marshmallow and damn near as soft, they talked in hushed voices about movies and music and books, finding out they had similar tastes, despite the ten-year difference in their ages (of course, he didn’t know she was the one ten years older). A deco clock on the mantel r
ead nearly midnight, when Joy remembered something.
“Hey!” she said, turning her face toward his. “I thought you were going to help me with that list. It’s getting late, you know!”
“You’re right,” Jack said, feigning surprise. “It is late … too late to do any constructive work, anyway.” His face came closer to hers. “Tell you what, I’m busy this weekend, but I will call you Monday afternoon. We can do it then.”
“Over dinner, I suppose?”
“I work best on a full stomach.” He put his fingers under her chin and lifted her face to his. “You know, Joy, if you want something done right, you can’t rush it.”
Was he talking about the list of names, or their relationship?
He kissed her hard, his lips unyielding; she submitted completely, though unable to match his intensity. Then he drew away, and before she could reciprocate with a kiss of her own, he gently pulled her to him, putting one hand in her hair, laying her head on his chest.
“Let’s not rush it, sweetheart,” he whispered.
Later, after Jack had driven her back to her car in the parking garage at work, and while she was making the fifteen-minute commute home across winding Laurel Canyon, she could still feel his warm, provocative kiss on her lips.
She wasn’t offended, or even puzzled, as to why Jack hadn’t tried to sleep with her. In fact, she was touched by the courtliness of a man who could call her “sweetheart” with neither embarrassment nor irony. She sensed, as he must have, that this relationship was special, more than a one-night stand, and neither wanted to compromise it by being in too much of a hurry.
Joy felt a youthful glow that, for a change, did not come from the clear capsules in the silver-capped plastic bottle.
10
“Doctor My Eyes”
(Jackson Browne, #8 Billboard, 1972)
A week slogged by and the only contacts she had with Jack Powers were business-related, quick, friendly phone calls adding names to their list of prospective spokespersons, with follow-ups telling her his background checks were coming along fine. By Friday she was thinking she had somehow blown it, when Jack called her just after lunch and asked her out again.
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