Finally her path cleared and she was able to edge through a narrow corridor of tables ranged opposite the cashier and turn a corner into the main room. She stopped suddenly as a hasty glance snagged on a detail, the fabric of the edge of a sleeve. It was the tweed of Sam’s jacket, the jacket he always wore. Billy stood very still, looking at the sleeve. Seconds passed in ungraspable slowness while she waited to hear him speak her name. She must be mistaken, it couldn’t be Sam, she thought, and found the courage to look up. Sam and Henri were seated side by side, facing into the room. Daniel sat opposite them, with his back to her. Sam was leaning forward, frozen in the middle of a word. Billy took an eager step forward, her eyes locked into Sam’s gaze, her whole soul gathered into a mute question. He drew back and shook his head with absolute rejection, looking her full in the face without a flicker of expression. Billy knew at once that their connection had been broken forever. He looked at her as if she were a waxwork, not a living woman. Henri gaped. Unconsciously, Billy took one more step toward their table, but Sam warded her off with the steady, blank refusal of his eyes. Then he turned away deliberately and said something to Henri.
Billy turned and walked out of the restaurant with an imperative remainder of dignity that kept her from falling. On the street there was an empty taxi rank where two people waited in line. Her mind utterly emptied by the damage she had just sustained, she joined them automatically. Seconds later, Henri, who had run after her, tugged at her sleeve. Blankly, still clutching her severe composure, she turned to him.
“Honey, he believes it was only your friends who bought his work. Seven were sold by the time we closed … incredible! He thinks that you … paid for it, arranged it, faked it, he is convinced that he had no true success.”
“I didn’t do that.”
“Of course not, we know it, we tried to tell him, but he refused to believe us. Honey, I’m sorry. He’s a fool.”
“He read my letter?”
“Yes, as soon as he got it. And then the clients started to come …” Henri spread his hands apart in explanation.
“Go back, you’re shivering. Thank you for telling me, Henri.”
She must have known most of the day, Billy thought, from the time she found out that he had received the letter, for if she hadn’t known all day, if she hadn’t been preparing herself for this final failure, why was she feeling nothing now? Why was she sitting on the bed, still wearing her coat, numb within and without? She had no idea what to do next, no memory of how she had come from Lipp to her suite, she could imagine no future, remember no past, the present didn’t exist.
She heard a slight noise under her door and watched a letter emerge on the carpet. She looked at the letter for a half hour before she managed to make herself pick it up. She turned it over and over, a manila envelope from Josh Hillman. Finally, because she had nothing else in the world to do with herself except open this letter, she did so, finding that it contained a second letter, its envelope almost covered with foreign stamps, another communication from Spider Elliott. Automatically she opened it and automatically she read it through.
Dear Billy,
I still don’t know where you are or if you got the last letter I sent you, but I woke up this morning in the mood to write to someone, and it’s the first time I’ve felt this way since I left LA. If I write any of my six sisters, the others will all get jealous, so since you’re the only other woman in my life, you get this by default. (And don’t nag, I’ve sent my mother postcards from every port so she wouldn’t worry about me.)
I’ve made my way to the Aegean Sea and the Greek Islands, in island terms the equivalent of Broadway and 42nd St.—there are 2,000 of them. Someone from the Greek tourist board has spread the word that the islands have a total of 30,000 beaches. I wonder if they sent out some poor schmuck to count them? Sounds like a marketing gimmick to me … that would make 15 beaches to each island! But I’m willing to believe it—I think I’ve sailed past about 29,000 stretches of golden sand. How come it was such a big deal that Onassis had one private island out of 2,000? If he’d had his own baseball team I’d be impressed, but an island? Give me a break!
I’m anchored off Skala, the port of an island called Astipalaia in the Dodecanese chain of islands. Sound familiar? No, you don’t have to feel stupid, Billy, it’s practically unknown. However, it has all the advantages, a hill town with a windmill, a fishing village on a lagoon and a Venetian citadel. Did I mention the nudist beach? Seriously, there is one. With 2,000 islands to choose from, I figured that the one with a nudist beach had to have some free-spirited nightlife too, so that’s why I’m anchored here.
Amazingly enough, I have the awful suspicion that I’m all sailed out. One more flying fish, one more sunset, one more quaint harbor town, one more gorgeous day on the Aegean, or any other body of water—and I may throw up. Seriously. I didn’t know you could get too much sea and too many islands, but believe me, the mania has its limits.
I grew a long, scruffy sort of greenish beard out of sheer boredom and shaved it off for the same reason. I’ve read so much that I think I need glasses, but since I can still see the type if I hold the book at arm’s length, I’m not seriously worried. I’ve looked at so many stars that I’m ready for a job in a planetarium, but not willing. I can steer a boat in my sleep and I actually do it all the time without getting into trouble, because the ocean is really very big. That’s about the most profound truth I’ve discovered—the ocean is fucking big! I always heard it was in geography class, now I know it is. Major insight. I hope to hell you’re impressed, because it took me a lot of time to get this piece of information.
My crew and I are still getting along. I hired a couple of confirmed hermits and this is the best gig they’ve ever had, no people and damn little talking. At least they can cook. I realized too late that what I should have done was hire a couple of communicative Italians. By now I’d be fluent, the guy with the best tan on the Via Veneto.
I think it’s about time for me to get out of here and go home. I don’t have any particular plans, but I know that I’ve had it with this ship. Maybe I’ll go back to photography. Or maybe I’ll open an art gallery and encourage young painters, or maybe I’ll start a new business. Who knows? It’s a funny thing about being rich … it seemed like a huge amount of money when I turned it over to Josh so he could invest it for me, but now I’ve gotten accustomed to the idea of money quietly piling up, money that means I’ll never have to work again … and the idea of no work turns out to be the most horrible thought I’ve had in a long time! The question of what to do with myself and my future is beginning to loom large. I guess you’re one of the few people who can really appreciate what I mean … after all, you weren’t in it for the loot when you started Scruples, were you? In spite of all the fun—and trauma—the three of us had making Scruples work, I don’t see myself with a future in any other store … I’ll never find another partner like you—there couldn’t be anyone else as much fun to fight with—so what would be the point? Christ, what a frosty bitch you were when Valentine and I first got out to L.A., remember? But I saw that basic creampuff in you and it didn’t take me long to whip you into shape. I think I did a damn good job on you, if I say so myself.
Billy, old friend, I’m sending this off tomorrow with the wish that it’ll get to you in time to convey a big hug for a merry Christmas. I fully intend to have one, and I hope you’re planning a great holiday too. When I get back to L.A., I’ll be in touch with you as soon as Josh tells me where the hell you are. I’m thinking of flying back from Athens. Sailing back would take another year—no way! Joyeux Noël, my good woman.
Love and kisses—
Spider
Tears were running fast and hot over Billy’s face as she came to the end of the letter. Why on earth was she crying now, she wondered, why was she feeling something at last? Her tears were for Spider, she understood finally, tears of happiness for him. He sounded as if he had healed, as if he had returned to someone
very much like his old self.
She felt herself breaking out of the cave of ice in which she had been wandering, lost and uncaring. If Spider could survive, so could she, by Christ! The world wasn’t lost because one chicken-hearted man didn’t have enough confidence in himself to see who she really was, money and all. Fuck Sam’s artistic angst! Fuck Vito and Sam, those oh-so-vulnerable cowards who had the nerve to pride themselves on the accident of being born male, although they were crippled by their essential lack of belief in themselves and their quivering timidity about their real worth. Fuck ever again pretending to be what she couldn’t help being, fuck all men, contemptibly hiding behind the tissue paper-thin veneer of their overrated male hormones, who still didn’t have the balls to stand up to her! These men, who thought of women as the weaker sex, were terrified whenever a woman showed strength. What gutless wonders they were at heart!
Billy was galvanized into an emotion that felt like nothing else but a vast and abiding rage, an emotion strong enough to make her phone downstairs and make flight reservations to New York for the next day. She had all night to pack, she realized, as she rang for the maids and dried her tears, more than enough time, for she would not try to sleep again until she was on the plane, leaving Paris and everyone in it behind.
15
This whole mad weekend trip was typical of Zach Nevsky, Nick De Salvo thought in admiration. Just yesterday, on Friday morning, Zach’s entire company of actors had been stuck up to their eyeballs in a thick miasma of dullness, a vast, glue-like bog that was rising fast over their heads. Every last one of the performers, even he, the star, was numb with a supreme lack of interest in the playwright’s vision. That word, vision, made him queasy behind his eyes. Vision, ech!
Was vision-sickness some sort of violently contagious virus that only attacked actors who had been struggling in a rehearsal hall for weeks on end? Maybe it was unshakable, unacknowledged insecurity that made them all secretly wonder why the hell they were involved in this silly business of worrying about the vision of some writer, instead of working at a normal job as their parents had suggested, demanded, implored that they do for as long as they all could remember?
He’d been sitting there, word-perfect as always, but mentally flat on his ass with his sudden lack of curiosity about the subtext of the play. Did he give a flying fuck if Hamlet and his mom had a yen to dance the dirty turkey? Did he care if his uncle had done the nasty on his daddy? Did he give a shit if he’d hurt the feelings of that weird nymph, Ophelia, or if she’d always been around the bend? Talk about a whiner! And what sensible guy could worry that if he died, he might—perchance, as the fellow said, perchance, no less—dream? Weren’t bad dreams just about the least of Hamlet’s worries, perchance?
Why had he, Nick De Salvo, a dues-paying, seriously major, hot young star, an outstanding member of Young Hollywood, turned down a giant-budget buddy flick at Universal to come back to New York and play Hamlet Off Broadway? So what if all the greatest actors in history had felt they had to have a whack at the greatest play in history? Why hadn’t he left it alone, he didn’t need to prove to himself that he was as good as Olivier, he knew he wasn’t, not yet. Give him time. The guys at Universal weren’t exactly hustling him to play Shakespeare, and his agent had all but popped a hernia at the news.
Yeah, yesterday there wasn’t an actor in the room who hadn’t reminded him of a gloomy, resentful schoolkid kept in unfairly during recess. And then Zach had walked in and strolled around the table without a word, looking at their glum faces in paternal amusement, given each of them a jelly doughnut out of a paper bag, unleashed that big, unguarded laugh of his and told them all to take seventy-two. Not five, not ten, not even the afternoon off, but just to get the hell out of the rehearsal hall and not dare to come back until Tuesday, when they would have had a three-day weekend to recover from too much great language.
“You’re all too good to be bad,” he’d told them, “you’ve all got what it takes or I wouldn’t let you in the door, but you’re forcing it. You can fake an orgasm—yeah, even you guys—but you can’t force Shakespeare, so out! Have some laughs before I lay eyes on you again, or I won’t let you come play tragedy with me!”
The room had cleared in ten seconds and he had decided to go skiing with Zach. Nothing New York had to offer could be more fun, Nick reflected as he drove along a highway that had been recently cleared of snow after an early, pre-Christmas blizzard. Zach and he had been best friends since grammar school, even though he sometimes got fed up with the guy when he was nudging, kvetching, manipulating, shaking, moving and harping on that vision thing. “I’m not a sieve, Nick,” Zach would say, “I’m there to serve the playwright and I can’t do it unless I connect to the vision personally. Directing is about allowing creative people to discover the stuff they’ve got through me.”
Well, Zach was right, as usual. The only time he had been spectacularly wrong was back in seventh grade when he’d tried to be an actor himself. Probably because Zach was the tallest guy in the class, he’d been given a part in the spring play. A real lox, act he could not, no way, but he’d memorized everyone’s lines by the first rehearsal and started prompting them when they forgot, and then making suggestions and finally shaping the play to his thirteen-year-old vision, leaving poor Miss Levy, their homeroom teacher and official director of the play, wondering what had hit her.
Being in that play with Zach was the reason he was a successful actor now, Nick realized. Even way back then, Zach had encouraged him, even deep into the first year of puberty the guy had time to have vision and to articulate it. What the fuck, admit it, he’d missed hearing people carry on about the vision thing out on the Coast. Like all the rest of Young Hollywood he’d wake up every morning and wonder if his success was due to dumb luck and timing plus the face he couldn’t be proud of because he’d been given it, not worked for it, or whether he could maybe, possibly, really act. Actors lived with fear. The whole town ran on fear. Somehow Zach took the fear away and replaced it with courage. A stint with Zach forced him to dig down the way the camera never did, made him touch the core of the talent he had, allowed him to use it to its fullest. His commodity. The ability to act was his commodity, the only one he had to offer besides his face, and every once in a while he needed to work with a director who deeply valued that commodity, who recognized it and didn’t inhibit his individual creative impulses. Yeah, he had to admit it, he had the vision thing too. Once you’d been exposed to Zach, you couldn’t ignore it. He hadn’t been back East for a year—he was overdue for a dose of Zach. Invigoration, thy name is Nevsky. When had the guy learned to ski?
What about the girls? How had Pandora Harper, who was playing Ophelia, and who was hopelessly and, as far as he could see, unsuccessfully, drooling for Zach, managed to horn in on this ski trip? He didn’t remember inviting her, but she seemed to be with him, sort of. She wasn’t his type, he didn’t lust to melt her glacial, well-bred blond beauty, although Pandora, to be fair, could act up a storm or Zach wouldn’t have cast her. She’d come from an impeccable background, been Deb of the Year or something equally improbable, yet she had a frightening ambition to succeed as an actress and a lot of the equipment. But, good actress or not, he sure as hell wasn’t interested in a girl who was manifestly salivating over Zach in a subtle way only another man could see.
What he didn’t get was Gigi Orsini. Was she Zach’s date or wasn’t she? It hadn’t been made plain. Zach’s sister’s roommate? What kind of relationship was that? It didn’t explain how come she made the fourth member of their little winter sports group, especially since she’d never been skiing before. He had to get to the bottom of this because if Gigi was not Zach’s date, he personally would be deeply interested in teaching her how to, most efficiently and quickly, take off her ski boots, her ski pants, and her ski underwear, all of which she’d told him she’d borrowed for the weekend. She had zing, tang, zest, zip, all that scrumptious springtime stuff. Nothing dumbly traditional there. G
igi’d be all pinky-pointy and spirited, not well-bred and boring. Yes, indeed. Yum!
What she’d like to know, Pandora Harper thought, was how this Gigi somebody, who couldn’t even ski, had attached herself to Nick De Salvo, just about the most happening young leading man in Hollywood. Had Zach, in his divinely dictatorial way, simply dragged her along as a blind date for Nick? Improbable as it sounded, in this day and age, people still got fixed up, as they quaintly put it, and there was every chance that his sister had nagged him to do something about her roommate. Tacky.
Gigi-whoever was a perky little thing, you had to admit, if you liked perky, and she very much did not. You couldn’t trust the perky ones, they were sneaky and fast, disappearing behind almost any closed door or into any dark closet to rip off a quickie and no one the wiser. They had a kind of animal cunning, or, as Hamlet said, “methinks it is like a weasel.”
Darling, gorgeous Zach, hard as it was to credit, was old-fashioned enough to care deeply for his sister. He was sentimental in a world in which men hadn’t been sentimental for a hundred years. And an idealist in a world that glorified everything but ideals. If he weren’t the most unassailably sexy man she’d ever laid eyes on, she’d steer very clear of him. Useless idealism and outdated sentimentality weren’t her thing, any more than perky. Nobody got famous on them. Or rich, for that matter.
Not that money mattered to her, she had more money than anyone would ever need in a dozen lifetimes, thanks to Great-Grammy’s trust, and a good thing too, when you considered that another actress would have to be willing to go hungry working Off Broadway. No, money didn’t matter. Fame, oh yes, fame, nothing less—that was what she was after, and that was what she intended to have. On her way to fame, how divine to find Zach Nevsky, bull-necked, rugged, boiling with energy, and by reputation possessed of the most reliable hard-on in the entire theatrical world of Greater Manhattan. Every fine young actress must screw her quota of directors, and a few extra if possible. Tradition demanded it, and she’d been brought up to obey tradition, particularly when it agreed with her inclinations.
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