Still, she felt a reticence about going out to lunch with Arlene. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the older woman. She did. And, in the right mood, Johanna found her company amusing. Arlene, ten years her senior, knew everything about everyone—Harry most definitely included. Her privileged information came by way of her marriage to Sam Baker and through the entertainment world connections she nurtured almost zealously. Bawdy, loquacious, she was born to gossip. Not to malign, but to share in whatever there was to share about other people’s lives.
And for what it was worth, she had, without warning, appointed herself Johanna’s guardian angel.
“You can’t stay locked up in that hotel room forever, sweetie.” For a moment, only for a moment, the woman’s voice softened. “I know how you must feel about the accident. “
“But—“
“No buts. At least,” Arlene laughed lustily, “none worth a second glance these days. Now, I’ll be by in half an hour. Sam’s busy with work Harry dumped on him today, so I’m totally fancy free and I intend to make you my fancy. Get dressed to the teeth, sweetie. I’m taking you out to lunch.”
She didn’t want to go, didn’t want to see anyone. “Arlene—“
“Fine, I take that as a yes. See you.” The line went dead.
Johanna hung up. A small smile curved her lips. Arlene was right, she had to get out, to do something, however meaningless, before she became dubbed the madwoman of the Hyatt Carlton Towers Hotel. Johanna glanced down at the plush carpet beneath her slippered feet. She had roamed her bedroom so much these last couple of days that she was surprised there weren’t worn paths in the rug.
With a sigh, half in resignation, half in anticipation, Johanna turned toward her closet.
True to her promise, Arlene was at her suite within half an hour. It never ceased to amaze Johanna that Arlene was always punctual. Women of her acquaintance were notorious about disregarding time. To be late was to be fashionable. Arlene was always afraid she’d miss something crucial if she wasn’t there on time.
Arlene breezed into the hotel suite, dressed in pearls, a fur stole haphazardly thrown about her shoulders and a designer dress at least one size too small for her ample frame. Arlene was always just about to go a diet. Tomorrow. Today there was always too much good food to be sampled.
The petite woman made Johanna turn around as she studied her critically.
“Well, you look none the worse for this beastly weather.” She stopped to consider her words. “’Beastly.’ My God, I’m beginning to talk like them. Any day now, I’ll be asking for tea instead of a coffee and tonic.” She leaned over and pressed her hand to Johanna’s arm, as if imparting an important confidence. “When that happens, I want your word that you’ll shoot me.”
Johanna couldn’t help smiling. “If it’ll make you happy.”
“What’ll make me happy,” Arlene answered, easily linking her arm with Johanna’s—it didn’t seem to trouble her that Johanna, slender, with a model’s bone structure, made her look like a comic foil—“is if that leading man they’ve picked for this little so-called ‘epic’ of Harry’s would give me a tumble and take me off for a weekend in the Cotwolds.”
“Where?”
“Ready?”
Without waiting for an answer, Arlene pressed Johanna’s purse into her hands. Johanna tucked it under her arm and nodded.
“The Cotwolds, sweetie. The country made by God when He was practicing for the rolling hills of Ireland.” She grinned wickedly, nudging Johanna out the door and to the elevator.
Johanna knew that the only time Arlene let her native chauvinism come to the fore was when she felt she was confronted with British snobbery. Arlene Baker had been born Annie Mahoney of some county in Ireland that Johanna never could remember. Her flaming red hair had been real once. Now it needed a helping hand from a well-known bottle of hair rinse. But nothing could dilute the fire in the woman’s eye or in her soul.
“You find Dale Kincaid attractive?” Johanna asked as they walked into the elevator. She thought that he was far too pretty to be labeled as masculine.
“Attractive?” Arlene rolled her eyes and heaved a big sigh, her hand to her ample bosom. “He makes me forget to breathe. Where are your eyes, girl?” She jabbed at the first floor button.
Johanna shrugged, her shoulders moving restlessly. “I guess I don’t notice things like that.”
Arlene pressed her fingers to Johanna’s wrist. “There’s a pulse there, so you must be alive.”
“Am I?” Johanna couldn’t resist asking, a smile playing on her lips.
The doors yawned open, exposing the plush furnishings of the opulent lobby. Arlene, as always, led the way out. “Oh, now we come to the heart of it. Tell Aunt Arlene all about it, sweetie,” she coaxed.
“Just baiting you,” Johanna dismissed her momentary slip coolly.
Arlene was far from convinced, but she let the matter drop.
Until cocktails.
Seated at a prominent table in the Cafe Royal, breathing in the ambience where once Oscar Wilde had roamed freely, Arlene subtly urged a cocktail on Johanna. And then another. She had herself a well-earned reputation for being able to hold her liquor with the best of them, but Arlene knew that Johanna needed little more than white wine before her edge slipped away. She wanted the younger woman to relax. She looked far too tense for her own good, although considering what Johanna had to put up with, Arlene could hardly blame her for being tense.
“Now then,” Arlene began, leaning over the small, white linen-draped round table and covering Johanna’s small hand with her own, “spill it. What’s really been bothering you, Johanna?”
She knew without hearing the words, but felt that Johanna needed to verbalize the matter. Getting things off your chest always helped, Arlene thought.
Johanna played with the stem of her glass. The overhead light was caught in the fluted crystal, shattering into a rainbow of colors. There were no rainbows anymore, she thought sadly. Not for her.
“It’d take less time to tell you what wasn’t.”
“But that would be boring.”
Arlene smiled up at the young, slim-hipped waiter who came to serve them their main course of sinfully delicious French cuisine. Johanna thought the woman would devour the young man with her eyes.
“Another round, please,” Arlene gestured to the two glasses. She gazed after the waiter until he disappeared, then turned back to look at Johanna. “Do I embarrass you, Johanna?”
Johanna watched the amber liquid coat the sides of the glass as she moved it. “No.”
Arlene laughed. “You don’t lie well after one whisky sour.”
Johanna looked up at her and shrugged, grinning. “Sorry.”
“I like to look. They won’t let me touch.” Arlene sighed deeply. “Besides, I probably wouldn’t know what to do with it if they did.” She frowned down at her broiled halibut. “It’s been a long, long time since Sam found his way into my bed for anything more than a good night’s sleep.” The impish smile was gone and her blue eyes were serious as she regarded Johanna. “The same, I take it is true with you.”
The waiter appeared with their drinks and Johanna fell silent.
“Here.” Arlene pressed the new glass on her. “Take a good sip of this and then tell me.”
Johanna started to protest and realized that she really didn’t want to. Why not? Just this once, why not loosen up a little and admit what was wrong? She probably wouldn’t say anything that Arlene and the immediate world didn’t already know. She tossed back the drink and closed her eyes as she felt it slip, warm and comforting, to her belly.
She opened her eyes to see Arlene looking at her, waiting. “I think Harry’s made love to every woman in a ten mile radius in the last nine months but me.”
Poor kid. “By last tally, other than skipping me, you’re probably right.”
Even in her present semi-euphoric state, shame began to lick at her. “Does everyone know?”
Arlene shrugged as she drained the last of her glass and looked wistfully at it. “I don’t know. The prime minister might still be in the dark, but as for everyone else, they know.” She raised her eyes to Johanna’s, wondering how a louse like Harry had won a woman of breeding like her. “He thinks with his pants first.”
“When he bothers to think at all.” It surprised Johanna that she could sound so vehement about Harry’s faults in someone else’s presence. Usually, she played the loyal, forgiving wife, suffering in silence. Except to Paul, she had hardly ever voiced her unhappiness. It appeared now that she didn’t have to.
Johanna took another long swallow. The drink was strong and soothing. She felt warm and oddly happy. The details of the plush surroundings and lavishly painted ceilings were now lost on her. They all kind of blurred together. She knew the mild, contented feeling she was experiencing was temporary, but it was here now, and that was all that mattered.
“You know, Arlene,” Johanna confided, “the Amazons really had the right idea about men.”
“How’s that?”
“You fooled around with them, and then you killed them. No ties, no pain.”
Arlene nodded, the mound of fluffy red curls bouncing around her head like springs that had suddenly been compressed and then released.
“Truer words were never spoken. If I had left Sam on a high point instead of wallowing in this valley of neglect, I might be thirty pounds lighter.” She helped herself to a slice of French bread and buttered it generously as she continued to philosophize. “Food isn’t as good as sex, but at least it stays with you a while.” She patted her hip and laughed lustily. “A long while. C’mon, Johanna,” she lifted the younger woman’s chin with her finger tip, “no man is worth brooding over. With the lights out, they’re all the same.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Arlene drew her carefully penciled eyebrows together. “You mean you never—?”
Johanna shook her head. It wasn’t chic to admit it, but Johanna had never cared to be chic. “Never.”
Arlene stared at her as if she was trying to comprehend this information. Food and gossip were temporarily forgotten. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Oh my God, I could be dining with the last of a dying breed. You’re practically extinct, sweetie. A virgin wife.” She giggled, then saw that Johanna was hurt. Arlene hurried her next words. “That’s rather refreshing, actually, considering the jaded world we find ourselves living in.” She leaned closer, scrutinizing Johanna’s face. She knew of several men in their immediate sphere who would have wanted this woman in their beds, whatever the price. “Never even once?”
Johanna raised her head. “No.”
“My dear, how do you stand it?”
“I don’t need ‘it.’” She tried to curb her annoyance. She knew Arlene meant no harm. “I need Harry. I need the way he was. I want love, Arlene, not sex.”
“Well—“ Arlene drew out the word as she considered Johanna’s statement. “When you can’t get what you want, you take what you can.” She caught their waiter’s eye and lifted her empty glass aloft. The young man nodded and retreated.
Johanna suddenly felt sober as she shook her head. At least her mind was clear. The rest of her body wasn’t in focus yet. “Sorry, that would be selling out, settling for it. And I don’t do that kind of thing.”
“No, apparently not. A pity. When you want your sheets warmed, let me know. I know of at least three candidates who would offer you a good size chunk of the moon to be able to nibble on your, um, ear,” Arlene amended when she took stock of who she was talking to. “And other parts thereof,” she couldn’t resist adding.
Johanna had the last of her drink, then set the glass down. “You take them.”
“Oh, I would if I could, Johanna, I most certainly would if I could, but with me, they only want the ear, to talk, to complain and to get sympathy. I’d switch with you in a minute.”
She paused to consider her last statement. She thought of Harry in place of Sam. Sam might not be loving, but he wasn’t unkind. And there was something brutal about Harry. “Well, maybe not.”
Johanna laughed sadly as she played with her salad. “I didn’t think so.”
Chapter Nine
There had been a time when she looked forward to attending parties like this one, Johanna thought. Then it had been an experience akin to stepping into Wonderland. She had been fascinated by the glitter, the wealth, the power that churned within these gatherings of the finely dressed chosen few. The beautiful people. But she had found all too soon that they weren’t so beautiful after all, not beneath their carefully made-up faces and their expensive designer clothes. They were greedy, grasping and cruel. Not all of them, but enough.
Perhaps it was like this everywhere, although she couldn’t remember feeling this way in the little town where she had grown up. Perhaps, she mused, that was the problem. She had been too cocooned, too sheltered, too untrained to be able to handle the sort of life she was living now.
Maybe these types of goings-on did exist elsewhere, but they seemed more pronounced when they involved Hollywood persona because the people were all larger than life, or so their publicists would have wanted the rest of the world to believe.
Johanna glanced at her husband as they entered, together for once. She smiled but felt like a hypocrite. Everyone there, she felt, knew that their union was a sham.
Harry still cut a resplendent figure in his tuxedo. Ten pounds lighter than his sparse frame should actually be carrying and with a haunted look to his eyes, he was still a very good-looking man. And charm, when he wanted it, could ooze through his very fingertips. There was a magnetism in his eyes, when they weren’t glazed over, she thought cynically, that held his audience, male or female, right where he wanted them.
She supposed it was the memory of that, and nights of tenderness and pleasure, that kept her where she was, hoping, praying. Johanna alternated between despair and optimism when she thought of the future. Mostly, she thought, despair.
Johanna saw people staring at them as they entered the vast hotel ballroom. Harry knew how to make an entrance, she thought, even when he walked silently into a room. Heads would turn, conversations would pause. Once that had been because he was the bright young director, the lightning-witted genius who could make a turnip cry or laugh at will, let alone a performer. Everyone wanted him to direct their picture, everyone wanted to be seen with him.
Now, Johanna knew, the conversations stopped because fresh speculation would begin. Was he straight tonight? Would he make a fool of himself? How long before he’d fall on his face, or find a woman to seduce? And how long would it be before he destroyed himself completely? She had no doubts that bets were made as to the length of time it would take.
Part of her heart ached for Harry, her Harry, the old Harry. And part of her felt that he was getting no less than he deserved. She prayed that perhaps the scorn of his peers and sub-peers, as he had begun to call them, would finally shake him up like nothing else could.
Alicia Martin, her hair done up in a winged hairdo that seemed to wantonly defy gravity, her bosom nearly exposed in its entirety in a sapphire blue gown that bore a designer’s name and price, glided toward them like a shark cutting through the water to get to its prey. In her cool, regal manner she simultaneously nodded at Johanna and dismissed her. Her attention, for whatever reason, was entirely on Harry. She offered him both cheeks to be kissed.
As he kissed her, she took hold of both of his hands in hers. “Harold, darling, we were beginning to think that perhaps you weren’t going to come.”
His gaze lingered over her exposed breasts, then he cast a belittling glance at Johanna.
Johanna wondered if he had managed to do a line or two of powder before they came, even though he had promised her, contemptuously enough, that he wouldn’t.
“Johanna,” Harry informed Alicia, “was having second thoughts about coming tonight.”
“Seco
nd thoughts?” The scarlet nails fanned out along the tanned expanse of breast.
Harry was talking about her and staring at Alicia. Johanna felt her temper rising.
“Second thoughts?” Alicia repeated, pouting prettily. “Should I be offended?”
Johanna knew Alicia didn’t give a damn what she thought about the woman or her party. She wasn’t in the business of caring what wives thought. Only studio hierarchy mattered and it seemed that Alicia hadn’t decided whether or not Harry was down for the count.
She’d be damned if she’d stand there like a mute. “It’s just that Paul—“ Johanna began.
“Yes, yes, terrible tragedy, wasn’t it?” The dead did not matter. They didn’t make policy or money. Alicia linked her arm through Harry’s and was already leading him away. “But life is for the living, isn’t it?” she laughed wickedly into Harry’s face as she slowly rubbed her bosom against his arm.
“—has only been dead a couple of days and I thought it wasn’t appropriate to attend a party just yet,” Johanna finished, determined to get the words out. For whatever good it did, she thought ruefully. She hated Alicia Martin, hated this party and hated herself for not saying no to Harry. He certainly wouldn’t have missed her if she hadn’t attended.
Maybe that was why she had decided to come after all.
“Talking to yourself, sweetie?” Arlene came up behind her. She was dressed in a black sequined floor length gown that made her bear a striking resemblance to a sparkling Franklin stove.
Johanna sighed as she turned toward her friend. “I wasn’t when I started out. But it seems no one wants to listen.”
She cast a damning look in Alicia’s direction. The woman was still clinging to Harry and laughing up into his face as if he was saying something very witty. Johanna had no doubts that Harry probably thought it was.
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