by Rona Jaffe
“Perhaps you are having second thoughts, Mrs. Libra?” The doctor stood up and extended his hand firmly, as if to punish her. “You have made a decision. If you have second thoughts you can phone me. Good-bye.”
His hand was dry, reptilian. He should get out in the air more. They shook hands and Lizzie dawdled to the door because there was still five minutes left of her time and she resented having to pay for it if she didn’t use it. He was going to cheat her of her five minutes if it was the last thing he did. Those analysts learned the Power Play at analyst school, along with Punishment, Voyeurism, and Answer a Question with a Question. Why couldn’t he have learned to speak proper English without an accent? He’d been here for years. Maybe they learned the accent at analyst’s school too, so they would sound more authentic.
She went directly from Dr. Picker to the Oak Bar, where she had three martinis which she signed for and two more martinis which a tall, handsome young man bought for her. He said he was a model. She thought he looked a little too old and soft to be a model, almost flabby, but she phoned upstairs and found that Sam was at the gym and Gerry had gone home for the day. She looked at her watch, smiled at the young man, and took him upstairs with her.
They had a pleasant twenty minutes in the bedroom and then he said he had an appointment and she was glad to see him go because it had been foolhardy to bring him here when Sam could come home unexpectedly. She realized she had rather liked her romp with the young man, even though he was much too flabby through the middle to be a model (perhaps he was an out-of-work model?) and she realized that she was going to enjoy her sex life a great deal more now that she didn’t have to report every detail of it to Dr. Picker. She no longer had the creepy feeling that there were always three people in the bed. The young man said he would call her, and she thought maybe he would and maybe he wouldn’t, but it didn’t matter either way. She felt pleased with herself. He left, and she douched, saying good-bye to him with his babies, took a shower, washing him off with perfumed soap, put on her prettiest negligee and went into the living room where she mixed herself a fresh batch of martinis. Even if he had lied about his age (he had volunteered his age, so he must have been lying), he had wanted her—a woman old enough to be his mother! Well, ten years older than he was anyway. She wasn’t through yet!
When Sam came back from the gym, all clean and damp, Lizzie greeted him with pleasure. He was such a dear old friend, and she loved him more than any man on earth. She had remade her bed and she knew he would never find out because he never went near it anyway. She wondered how he could live without a sex life.
“I have to take Sylvia Polydor to dinner,” Sam told her. “She’s passing through on her way to Europe. I guess I’ll take her to Pavilion.”
“Can I come?”
“You know she hates other women. We’re just going to talk business. I’ll be home early. Did anybody call me?”
“I let the service get them,” Lizzie said.
“Why don’t you order something in the room—you look tired.”
You bet I’m tired, Lizzie thought. I have a right to be tired. “I guess I will,” she said.
He took his calls from the service and went into the bedroom to change his clothes. She heard the shower running, then she heard him making some calls. He had forgotten she existed.
When he had left she called Room Service and ordered a non-fattening dinner: broiled liver, plain spinach, melon, and tea. She weighed herself and was pleased to see that she sweated off a pound and a half with the male model, or perhaps it was just that liquor dehydrated you. She missed Elaine, who was in Reno getting laid by a millionaire rancher and putting in her residence time for her divorce. Elaine called her almost every night, drunk of course, but not incoherent. The millionaire rancher was a big drinker too, so they had a lot in common.
She didn’t feel like watching television this early, so she ate dinner in front of the windows that looked out over the city, and thought about things. She was a women who had everything: people probably envied her. She knew everybody, she had adventures, she had all the money anyone could want, she had a beautiful hotel apartment, a famous husband, a limousine with chauffeur at her disposal, the latest clothes, a masseuse, a standing appointment at one of the best beauty salons in town, unlimited charge accounts everywhere, good friends, a young face, a still trim (almost) body. Her husband trusted her. They never fought seriously about anything. He needed her. They were content. She began to cry.
Did Sylvia Polydor have everything too? Did people envy her? Was she going to Europe alone?
When the telephone rang Lizzie wasn’t going to answer it, but then she thought it might be Sam wanting her to meet him somewhere for an after-dinner drink, so she blew her nose and picked up the receiver.
“Yes?”
“Is Mrs. Libra there?”
“This is she.”
“This is Jared.”
“Who?” Who the hell was that?
“Jared. From Las Vegas. The King Cactus Bar.”
She remembered. That bartender who looked like Paul Newman. “Oh my God,” Lizzie said.
“I don’t whether I should be flattered or hang up,” he said. He was making his voice even lower and sexier on purpose.
“Where are you?” she said.
“I’m in the lobby. Can I see you?”
“Are you crazy?” she said. “What if my husband was sitting here, you dunce?”
“Is he?”
“No.”
“Well then, can I come up?”
“I’ll meet you in the Oak Bar.” No, she thought, they’ll think I’m working split shifts. “No, make it Trader Vic’s.”
“I’ll be waiting,” he said. He hung up.
What a nerve! Lizzie thought. She washed her face and put on new make-up, white under the eyes to cover the circles, false eyelashes, because she’d cried them loose, and a young, pink lipstick—the hell with Franco and his vermilion skin remover. She wondered if the kid had come all the way to New York on his motorcycle.
She tried on three different dresses until she was satisfied. The Gilda Look was not her, but she couldn’t be unfashionable. No, it was not her at all. She finally settled for a last year’s Courreges—the kid probably wouldn’t know the difference. She brushed her hair out loose and pulled it back with a little Alice-in-Wonderland hair band. From far she looked nineteen. She took her sable coat, which had just come back from storage, and a key. She dropped everything on the floor then and ran into the bedroom to spray herself with perfume. She was just going to have a drink with the kid and that was all. But she might as well make a good impression on people who saw them together—people shouldn’t think he was out with his mother. She took the coat and the key and her purse and went downstairs.
Jared the ex-bartender was waiting at a table by the wall in Trader Vic’s. In the half-dark he looked so much like Paul Newman it was scary. The waiters kept looking at him as if they were not sure. When Lizzie entered the room they all looked at her, first with curiosity and then appreciatively when they saw her sit down at was-he-wasn’t-he Paul Newman’s table.
Jared smiled and took her hand. “I’m glad to see you.”
“So you came to New York.”
“I told you I would.”
“Did you ride your motorcycle here?”
“No, I sold it to buy the plane ticket.” He squeezed her hand. “What are you going to drink?”
“A Navy Grog.” Might as well get stoned.
He motioned to the waiter. “Two.”
“Well,” Lizzie said.
“Are you glad to see me?”
She smiled. “Why are you in New York?”
“To see you. To seek my fortune.”
“Oh?”
“I told you I was coming.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I hope you’re not in the middle of a romance,” Jared said.
“I have no romances. Only mistakes.”
“Don’t say
that.” He was squeezing her hand so hard he was hurting her, and Lizzie loosened his grip and took her hand away. The drinks came and he raised his glass in a toast, looking at her with those blue, blue eyes. She didn’t hate him as much as she wanted to. He hadn’t done anything really, just bang her, which was not exactly his unsolicited idea, and she was the one who had run out on him.
“Why did you run away?” he said.
“Me?”
“Yes. You. I waited for you.”
“I decided to go home.”
He looked down into his drink. “You thought I wasn’t good enough for you.”
“I never said that.”
“You don’t have to say it. You’re a sophisticated woman and I was just a bartender you picked up one day to play with and throw away.” He looked up and blasted her with those blue eyes. “Isn’t that so?”
“Why did you look me up, then?” Lizzie asked, her hands shaking.
“I’m a glutton for punishment.”
She laughed.
“I’m going to be somebody,” he said. “You wait and see. I’m going to make it here in New York. You’ll see. You’ll want me.”
“You don’t have to yell,” Lizzie said, although he was not yelling.
“I got in this afternoon, dumped my bags at a friend’s house, and came right over to find you,” he said. “I want you.”
“You can borrow me,” she said. “But you can’t have me.”
“Then I’ll borrow you.” He started feeling her knee under the table with his knee, and then he reached down and grabbed her knee with his hand. “Can I borrow you, Lizzie Libra?”
“I happen to be free for this entire evening,” she said.
He paid for the drinks and took her off to his friend’s apartment, a rather nice one-and-a-half with a big window and a double bed on the floor. Lizzie was so stoned at the idea that from nothing, absolutely nothing, she’d had two men in one day, and beauties at that, that she rather enjoyed it this time. He was nicer to her than he’d been in Vegas, more sentimental, and she thought the kid might actually have a crush on her. She watched him appreciatively as he walked around the room afterwards and she thought he would really be a catch if only he was somebody. Maybe he could act after all. But she wasn’t going to help him, no matter what he thought.
He gave her his phone number on a slip of paper. She folded it and slipped it into her wallet under the bills. “Let’s go out and have a drink,” he said. “I don’t want to drink my friend’s liquor.”
“Girl or boy?” Lizzie asked.
“What difference does it make if it’s just a friend?” he said.
Because it was just the right time to be seen she took him on a tour of a few of her favorite watering places. She nodded gaily at the people she knew and steered Jared quickly away without introducing him as if he really was Paul Newman and she wanted to protect him from the public. She was delighted to notice a few mouths drop open at the sight of them. Everyone just thought that she was with him for business, although they knew Paul Newman was not Sam Leo Libra’s client, but then when she and Jared began holding hands and whispering and looking very cuddly-cuddly in the corner they really stared. This wasn’t any potential client of Sam Leo Libra’s—this was a personal catch of his wife’s!
She felt euphoric. She let him jabber on about his ambitions now that he was in New York, and she tried to keep from smirking because it looked to everyone who was watching as if Paul Newman had found a woman to whom he could talk a blue streak. She saw one of the columnists looking at her and almost purred. Then just as the columnist started making his way toward them, she dragged Jared out of the bar on the pretext that it was one of her husband’s friends. She didn’t want to blow her act.
As they left she saw a couple she knew. She introduced Jared to them. “And you know Paul, of course …”
He stood there looking nonplussed, and before he could give it away Lizzie pushed him into a cab. The couple stood there on the sidewalk looking after them: the husband as if he’d never realized before that Lizzie Libra was a sexy woman, and the wife consumed with envy.
“What did you do that for?” Jared asked, angry.
“Oh, don’t be silly. I was just kidding.”
“I hate that,” he said. “I want to be me.”
“You are you, of course,” Lizzie purred, rubbing her face against his. She could see the driver looking at them through the rear-view mirror, and he seemed in shock.
The driver turned around. “Hey, ain’t you …?”
“No,” Jared said.
“Wow, I certainly thought you was him.”
“That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” Lizzie said brightly.
It was time for Sam to be long since home, so Lizzie told Jared to take her to the hotel. She knew everybody would be talking about her tomorrow and she felt warm and serene. Sam would hear about it right away, of course, but he knew too much about publicity to believe a word of it. He’d been making up lies for the columns for years. He would think it was a great laugh.
“When will I see you?” Jared asked.
“Tomorrow?”
“Right.”
“I’d better call you,” she said.
“Can you get me an appointment to meet your husband?”
“My husband?”
“I’ll need a personal manager.”
“I’ll be your personal manager,” Lizzie said firmly, and smiled at him.
“But I’ll need a publicist …”
“I’ll be your publicist.”
“Do you know how?” he asked dubiously.
“Do I know how? Just you wait and see.”
“Well, maybe I should meet your husband …”
“Is that why you wanted to see me?” She threw the knife in and waited for him to pull it out.
“No, no, of course not! You know that, Lizzie!” He was bleeding to death and she wanted to laugh.
“Well, then, everything’s going to be all right,” she said.
Their cab pulled up in front of the Plaza. He stepped out and helped her out. She gave him a nice little kiss so everyone could see. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.
Lizzie Libra sailed into the hotel like a super-star. Everyone bowed and scraped as she passed. When she got upstairs Sam was in his bed asleep. He had taken a couple of sleeping pills. Lizzie helped herself to two of them, removed her make-up while they were working, and crawled into her own bed. She was so glad she’d given Dr. Picker the bar rag. She hadn’t been this happy since the old days.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As the jolly yuletide season approached, Bonnie Parker and a queen named Garbo were wandering down Third Avenue doing some Christmas shopping when they were approached by a cute boy. He said hello, so they said hello. The cute boy then pulled out a badge identifying him as a plainclothes policeman and arrested them on the charge of impersonating women. Luckily, Bonnie was wearing Mad Daddy’s raincoat, which he had lent to Gerry one night when it stormed and which Bonnie had mopped from the apartment, and it had a label in it from a men’s store. She was also wearing boy’s jeans. Therefore it was decided at the station house (where they were unceremoniously hauled, as Vincent/Bonnie later gleefully told Gerry, “along with all these rapists, muggers, Negroes, and other criminal types!”) that Vincent Abruzzi was not impersonating a woman after all, and just happened to have an unfortunate feminine appearance. As for his make-up, make-up was not illegal. He was let go, but poor Garbo had to raise bail. Neither Vincent nor Gerry told Mr. Libra, of course.
Gerry Thompson decided after some deliberation that she would not go home for Christmas, so she did her shopping early and mailed all the Christmas packages home by December fifteenth. She was busy planning her wedding to Mad Daddy. They decided it would be small and intimate, in a judge’s chambers, to be followed by a wild party at P. J. Clarke’s, which they would take over completely for the occasion. They thought a Third Avenue bar was just the right combinat
ion of informality and sophistication, although Mad Daddy rather leaned toward the zoo. (Gerry vetoed the zoo—Valentine’s Day would be too cold, and besides, who could get a permit?)
Sam Leo Libra was too fastidious to let anyone but himself do his Christmas shopping. He bought a white fox jacket with shoulder pads for Lizzie, because that was what she wanted, silver money clips with his own initials for each of the clients—except Sylvia Polydor, who got a silver goblet with his initials on it, to add to her collection—and a Gucci bag and wallet for Gerry. He had Gerry send out his usual five hundred Christmas cards, this year bearing a message of peace.
Although Bonnie Parker had not yet taken her screen test, Libra was negotiating for Dick Devere to direct her first film in a package deal, whatever it turned out to be. Libra was surprised and rather baffled when Dick flatly refused to direct Bonnie in any film, but after the success on Broadway of Mavis!, Dick could write his own ticket and there was nothing Libra could do. Dick Devere accepted a sophisticated tragi-comedy, and planned to leave for the Coast directly after the first of the year. He was going to spend Christmas in the Bahamas, where he had rented a bungalow on a deserted patch of beach.
The King James Version appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, doing two numbers from their hit album of the Songs of Solomon, and received 2451 letters of praise, 1552 letters of condemnation, and a fifty-dollar check for “their church” from a confused viewer.
Shadrach Bascombe started costume fittings for his first film, in which he played a former boxer who was now a spy, and Libra engaged a ghost writer to pen Bascombe’s memoirs, highly expurgated.
Lizzie Libra’s analyst, Dr. Picker, left for two weeks in Acapulco, where the in-analysts were going this year, and included Lizzie in his Christmas-card list so she would remember to come back.
Lizzie was seriously considering returning to her doctor because of the unfortunate turn of events with Jared–Paul Newman. The joke had been a great success and had made all the columns, but Jared, for some crazy reason, had been very annoyed. He had decided that being passed off as Paul Newman was going to be the death of his embryonic career as an actor, and he had walked out of Lizzie’s life forever with some very harsh words. Lizzie telephoned him repeatedly, but he refused to have anything more to do with her. She was not upset, only confused. She felt lonely after he was gone, and thought it would be nice to have someone to talk to, so she phoned Dr. Picker’s office, found he was away for the Christmas holidays, and made an appointment for the first week in January.