Dazzle - The Complete Unabridged Trilogy

by Judith Gould

  Tamara turned to the mirror one last time, attacking her cheeks with inspired pinches to bring out a healthy, rosy glow.

  'Stop that.' Inge gently slapped her hands away. 'You want red marks on your face? Enough is enough.'

  Tamara hurried lightly down the steep stairs, one hand on the banisters, the other dragging the crocheted stole behind her.

  Louis Ziolko was waiting just inside the front door, holding a match to a thick Belinda cigar. The match flared and his cheeks inflated and deflated like a bellows as he sucked on the flame. Hearing her footsteps, he glanced up through the blue cloud of smoke. God Almighty! The match slipped from his fingers. He could feel the muscles contracting painfully in his gut, as if he'd been punched. What was wrong with her? Didn't she know better than to leave herself wide open for sexual assault? Hadn't she given any thought to the way that horizontally gathered satin clung to her hips so ... so obscenely, that giant bow off to the side only inviting lecherous leers to follow the shapely perfection of her magnificent legs? Didn't she realize that the very act of totally concealing her bosom just begged one to rip it free? And those sedate pearls—a masterfully ladylike, demure touch if there ever was one, but one which played havoc with her ribald sensuousness.

  And clear out of the blue it hit him, as incisive a bolt of knowledge as if lightning had struck. At the coffee shop, and then again during the screen test, he had encountered a glorious girl, but this was no girl who was coming down those stairs now. Far from it. This was a woman, a sleek, poised, shapely siren, a natural star if ever there was one. What an entrance! 'Well, I'll be goddamned,' he muttered under his breath.

  Seeing him, Tamara slowed to a dignified walk the rest of the way down. She smiled. 'Am I late?' she asked in that throaty, haunting voice which caused cool ripples to course across his flesh.

  'N-no, you aren't late . . .'He took two steps toward her, seized her hand, raised it awkwardly to his lips. '. . . you're beautiful, princess.'

  She flushed with pleasure and he took the stole from her and draped it solicitously around her shoulders. He frowned inwardly. He had never felt like this before . . . why was he feeling this way now?

  The chauffeur snapped the rear door gently shut after Ziolko climbed in alongside her, and walked around to the front, to the separate driver's compartment. Then she heard the engine purr and the big car surged majestically forward, swinging out into the lane as if on a cloud. Beside her, Ziolko unfolded a leopard lap robe and spread it over her. 'Hmmm,' was all she said. She smiled at him gratefully and snuggled into the far corner, unaware that he was staring at her with the same kind of keen, mesmerized wonder with which she stared down at the rare fur. She stroked its sleek, spotted softness with her newly varnished, elongated fingers. How warm and potently satisifed she felt.

  Ah, to have such resources at her beck and call, she thought dreamily. This was the life. How invincibly superior and flush it made her feel! She sighed luxuriantly. How easily a girl could get used to this.

  Chapter 8

  The Duesenberg climbed up the curved, tree-lined roads into Beverly Hills. Through the rain-streaked windows Tamara caught occasional glimpses of lights glowing in the windows of the immense secluded mansions which had been built by the film-colony elite. This was her first time here, and she was thrilled to the bone. She had always wanted to see Beverly Hills for herself, but until now it had been part of that elusive, unattainable world she had only read about in the movie magazines. Even though she'd never seen it before, she knew all about Beverly Hills. Who didn't? For the most part, it was still a separate entity from Los Angeles, a sparsely settled wilderness where privacy could be treasured without being jealously guarded, and where an occasional deer or wolf could be glimpsed roaming about. She knew it was a community which, sadly but ironically, had been born of necessity with the influx of the ever-growing ranks of the motion-picture people. Movie stars and industry bigshots were frowned upon by the Los Angeles old guard, who viewed them as nouveau-riche upstarts and parvenus at best, and perverted hell-raisers at worst, so they had been driven up here, far from the fine old addresses and into the hills where no one in his right mind had wanted to live until now. These newcomers went about systematically creating an exclusive gilded ghetto all their own.

  'It must be beautiful up here during the day!' Tamara marvelled with suppressed excitement as acres of dark, untouched land slipped by in the empty tracts between the far-flung houses. 'It feels like we've left the city behind and gone to the country.'

  Ziolko nodded. 'For now it's still like that, but just wait a few years. Every year more and more houses are going up. Soon, I'm afraid there won't be any privacy left. Land prices have gone through the roof. What used to be tracts of land are now little parcels being zoned smaller and smaller. Soon there'll be giant houses, swimming pools, and tennis courts on postage stamp lots. Mark my words.'

  'Do you live up here?' She turned to him curiously.

  He shook his head. 'Not yet.' He was watching her eyes carefully in the dim glow of the coach light. 'Why? You like it?'

  She nodded and breathed deeply. 'I smell eucalyptus.' She smiled at him.

  'Wait'll the flowers come out. Then it smells like a goddamn florist's. Flowers grow here like weeds. Well, here we are.'

  She sat up straighter and stared out her side window as the chauffeur steered the car into a narrow white gravel drive which crunched and popped beneath the pneumatic tyres. The drive was bordered on both sides by a wild, overgrown jungle of shrubbery. Occasionally a thorny branch would scratch against the polished sides of the car, causing Ziolko to grimace in anguish. Except for the pristine drive, it looked for all the world like a forest road leading nowhere. Then suddenly the shrubs cleared to reveal a massive floodlit mansion sprawling amidst a floodlit, formally landscaped garden. So this was where Oscar Skolnik lived, Tamara thought. She was impressed. Somehow the estate was exactly as she had imagined, and it certainly befitted a multimillionaire tycoon turned movie mogul.

  Slowly the car crept to a halt and the chauffeur got out, swiftly unfurled an umbrella, and held the rear door. The giant carved house door swung open and a black butler stood stiffly erect in the bright rectangle of light.

  'Good evening, Frederique,' Ziolko greeted. 'How you doing?'

  'Fine, thank you, sir. Miss.' The butler inclined his head a second time. 'Mr. Skolnik and the other guests are waiting in the sitting room,' Frederique murmured. 'If you will be so kind as to follow me, please.'

  Ziolko nodded and took Tamara by the elbow. She was grateful for his touch, for otherwise she would have stood there rooted to the spot, wide-eyed in wonder at the luxurious house.

  They followed Frederique through an atrium, past the slender, shallow green Alhambra fountains, whose splashing drowned out the persistent drumbeat of rain on the glass roof overhead. Looking up, she couldn't believe her eyes. An arched gallery completely encircled the atrium, and everywhere, pots of exotic hothouse orchids bloomed in riotous splendour. She drew in her breath and shook her head. Her eyes had already become so numbed by the grand displays of splendour that she felt as if she were drifting through a dream. This was more, far, far more than she had ever dared anticipate.

  Frederique led them under another set of arches and then swung open another heroically scaled carved door.

  Tamara was bedazzled. This was an enchanted world; these were the cultivated furnishings of a hedonistic sultan. A fire leapt and crackled in each of the large Adam fireplaces which faced one another across the expanse, scenting the air with eucalyptus and fruitwood while chasing away the damp chill. Despite the staggering thirty-six-foot-high ceiling and the room's auditorium scale, it nevertheless gave the impression of being a cosy, welcoming, and much-used and much-loved room.

  If a person's home was an indication of his personality, then Tamara was completely bemused by Oscar Skolnik. Everything pointed to his being a very complex and not easily understood man.

  She noticed him the
moment she entered the room. She had never seen him, but even from a distance of seventy feet it was impossible to overlook him. He was seated in a wing chair in the semicircular end of the room, apparently holding court. The other men present were all standing. A large painting on an easel was propped up to face him, and four men in evening attire stood to the left and right of his chair, their expressions dubious and thoughtful. Their attention was focused on a brittle praying mantis of a man with a lugubrious expression and a pointed Vandyke beard who stood beside the easel. Two women in pale floor-length sheaths sat off to the side, each holding a flute of champagne. It was an exceedingly elegant tableau, so perfectly composed and lighted that it seemed to have been contrived for effect.

  At first, no one took notice of the new arrivals, and Tamara was grateful. For a moment she hesitated and glanced pleadingly at Ziolko, but he smiled reassuringly, placed a hand in the small of her spine, and propelled her forward.

  'What we have to do is acknowledge the symbolism,' the man with the Vandyke was saying with low-keyed but intense passion. 'In other words, we must scratch below the surface, dig deeply beyond the obvious representation, as it were, in order to find the Place of Truth—' He broke off suddenly when he realized no one was paying attention any longer: all eyes were on the newcomers.

  The silence grew prolonged. No one spoke. No one blinked. One of the women rose soundlessly as a ghost in order to have a better view of Tamara.

  One could have heard a pin drop on those priceless Bessarabian carpets.

  Tamara's initial rapturous delight at the house was immediately replaced by a severe attack of the jitters. Her entire body trembled as she moved forward, her earlier assurance deserting her as her sweeping gaze focused upon the unmoving figures bathed in soft lighting, a lamp catching the intensity of their stares and causing their eyes to glitter glassily; the lovely room which at first glance had dazzled now shifted slightly to take on a leering, intimidating quality, and the elegant tableau of men and women did a transmutation, taking on the severe, menacing presence of a panel of presiding judges. Tamara's impulse was to flee this minatory scene, these awe-inspiring surroundings. She was all too acutely conscious of the seven sets of hard, appraising eyes that were not so much looking at her as picking her over.

  A stab of resentment caused her cheeks to prickle and flash becomingly. She couldn't help but think that she was not a woman—not any more—but a slab of meat at the butcher's, waiting to be grabbed, poked, prodded, and sniffed at by finicky customers, as prone to rejection as acceptance. It was a humiliating, inhuman, and unjust position to be in.

  Yet somehow, despite it all, her heart pounding in her ears, she kept on moving with a queenly stride, her chin raised, her head held at a regal angle. All outward indications said she was the self-assured, quintessential beauty, a siren, a heartbreaker.

  Miraculously, she made it across the room without stumbling. As she approached Oscar Skolnik he noticeably sat up straighter, raising his crystal blue eyes to meet her gaze. In response, she readjusted her line of vision accordingly by raising her own gaze further, somehow managing, at the same time, to paint what she hoped was a coolly confident smile on her face. But the smile was not real. It was a false smile, as plastic as the shell of the radio in Inge's room.

  'Ah, just what we need!' Skolnik said when she halted beside the easel, facing her panel of judges from a distance of five feet. He sat back in a deceptively casual pose, crossing one leg over the other, but his sharp eyes never left her for an instant. 'What do you think of it?'

  His voice made her start, its sudden sonorous baritone breaking the acute silence as a gunshot might a hushed tomb's.

  'Wh-what?' Her vision lowered, meeting his eyes for the first time, and she stared at him blankly.

  'I asked what you thought of it.' His crystalline eyes bore into hers. 'Sometimes a fresh, impartial opinion sheds a good deal more light on such matters.'

  Opinion? She felt her heart stop for an agonizing moment. An opinion of what?

  She flitted a sideways glance at Louis Ziolko, but he was no help. He gave her a lopsided little grin. She turned her head and looked now directly into Skolnik's face.

  Everything about the man seemed bigger than life. He was too rugged to be called distinguished; he was a man thoroughly capable of the exploits that were part and parcel of his growing legend. Just as other men could instantly give off the impression of being oily or unctuous or fastidious, he exuded raw, potent, unadulterated power. He was clearly a man to be reckoned with. He smoked a pipe, drank champagne, and never gambled—other than on big business deals, which were gamble enough—and was a man who appeared, remarkably, to have only one vice, an exorbitantly expensive one: women, women, and more women. Rumour had it that he had bedded all the single women worth having in Hollywood, and had then gone on to raid Los Angeles' marital bedrooms, gossip Tamara wouldn't have doubted the truth of for an instant. There was a way he had of undressing a woman with his eyes, something of which she was uncomfortably aware at the moment. His eyes were the pale blue of arctic ice and conveyed the deceptive laziness of a riverboat gambler.

  He wore a paisley silk dressing gown with Turkish slippers, and was puffing on a clay pipe. His hair was prematurely grey. His voice was cultured, a melodious, rich baritone. He was saved from the fate of being merely handsome by the network of telltale facial scars, evidence of the dangers of aviation: he had crashed three times in prototype aircraft of his own design, and had lived to tell the tales. Yet for all the scars, possibly because of them, there was something brutally attractive about him, a blatant quality of bursting sexual vitality. Every crease and scar told of a man who had already crammed a lifetime of living into a few short years.

  She forced herself to pull back from Skolnik's smouldering magnetism. He was certainly no man to treat casually; she had the distinct feeling that a woman could easily get hurt around him. But still, she couldn't help conjuring up an unbidden picture of him naked. It seemed to jump up before her eyes. A lion! That was what he was. A jungle creature. A hungry, predatory beast forever on the prowl.

  She realized with a sudden start that he had been studying her with the same frankness with which she was studying him, almost as if he had been able to seize on her inner life force and pull it out of her. Frightening.

  Then, with an easy grin that disarmed, that redeemed his improbably stony features and his deeply rooted lusts, he said, 'You must excuse me. Of course you can't know what we've been discussing.' He thumbed a gesture toward the canvas beside her. 'Well? What's your opinion? Should I buy it or not?'

  Tamara peered cautiously around the easel, then took two steps forward and turned her back on the group. She stared at the painting. It was a large rectangle, painted off-white. Off-centre near the top was a perfect black square, its angles lining up with the edges of the canvas. Another, smaller perfect red square under it was painted slightly on the diagonal. She furrowed her brow, trying to make sense of it. What could she say?

  'I really know nothing about art,' she said slowly, furrowing her brow. 'I do find it . . . interesting, though.'

  She could hear Skolnik chuckling.

  Bernard Katzenbach, the man with the Vandyke beard, was, above all, a salesman. He raised his beard-pointed chin defiantly. 'It is more than interesting,' he intoned indignantly, displaying glossy rabbitlike teeth. 'All art is interesting, of course,' he went on in sepulchral tones, 'since even the worst creative efforts have the redeeming quality of giving us a glimpse of the artist's soul. But this . . . this is an interesting, a heroic, a majestic vista of a tormented soul which has ultimately reduced life's myriad complexities to their simplest, most manageable and profound forms.'

  Two squares profound? Tamara couldn't believe her ears.

  'Tell me,' Skolnik interjected laconically with a lazy twirl of his index finger, 'is it worth two thousand dollars?'

  'Is it . . .' Katzenbach sputtered, 'is it worth . . . can a monetary price ever be pu
t on such genius? Why, it's a Malevich—'

  'I asked the lady,' Skolnik said easily.

  Oh-oh, Tamara thought, and said nothing.

  'Well, Miss Boralevi?' Skolnik prodded gently. 'Would you spend two thousand dollars on this painting?'

  She turned to face him and was silent for a moment. 'Two thousand dollars?' She managed to laugh lightly, 'I don't have two thousand dollars, never have had, so there is absolutely no way I can begin to imagine spending it. I'm afraid you've asked the wrong person.'

  Did she hear a palpable sigh of relief emanating from the stick figure that was the art dealer? Or was it her imagination?

  'Well-said,' Skolnik said approvingly. 'You must have been bred for sociability. An important asset in a star when it comes to dealing with the press and the public.'

  Did this mean she had passed his test, whatever it was? And he'd mentioned the word 'star'. Did this mean he really intended to make her one?

  'Louie,' Skolnik said without rising, 'I think you should introduce us to the beautiful lady.'

  Louis Ziolko nodded. 'As you all know, this is Tamara Boralevi, whose screen test you have all seen.' He turned to Tamara. 'Tamara, I'd like you to meet the powers that be at IA. To start with, seated in the chair, Oscar Skolnik, president of IA.'

  Tamara nodded. 'Mr. Skolnik.'

  'Standing directly to his left, Roger Callas, our general manager. Next to him is Bruce Slesin, vice-president, publicity. And on the right, the gentleman nearest O.T. is Milton Ivey, our general counsel.'

  'Gentlemen,' Tamara said.

  Except for Oscar Skolnik, who remained seated, each man stepped foward and shook her hand in turn, each of them murmuring that he was pleased to meet her.

  'And the gentleman on the right?' she asked.

  'Claude de Chantilly-Siciles,' Ziolko said, 'our art director. Claude gives our pictures their unique look.'