An American Love Story

by Rona Jaffe

  “I used to live here,” Clay Bowen said. “In a bungalow. I still use this bar as my second office.” The maître d’ led them right to a small table in the front near the bar. The one time Bambi had come here with Simon they had been made to sit way in the back, even with a reservation and a tip. Cher had been in front, and a lot of other important people. Simon Sez, where Bambi had been the queen, had seemed a million miles away.

  “How about a glass of champagne?” Clay said.

  “That would be lovely.” Champagne, and a vintage car, and those stars all over his walls—it was like being in an old movie, it was so glamorous. She began to appreciate his being older; he seemed experienced, sophisticated.

  “You look very wistful,” he said.

  “Everybody always said I was so talented,” Bambi said. “I was the star of Simon Sez, every night; it was packed with people who came to hear me. But I still feel like a struggling artist.”

  “I was a struggling artist once,” he said.

  Bambi sat there rapt while he told her about his days as a very young agent putting together packages at AAI, his impudent talent, his rapid rise, and then his days at RBS, and the shows he had created, formed, or discovered; the actors who owed their careers to him; so many famous people he was friendly with. He had become a legend, and still was. She began to realize that those young writers she had been so impressed with in Simon Sez were really nothing. They had to try to sell their scripts to people like Clay Bowen. They were totally at his mercy. The air was very rare up here.

  She gazed at him with her large doe eyes, her longing to be a part of his world so clear on her face that only an unfeeling man could have sent her away with nothing. What had happened to her intention to be feisty?

  He looked at his watch again, and gestured for the check. “I have to get back to the office,” he said. “I’ll try to read your script and the other things in the next few days.” He signed the check and stood up, and Bambi almost sighed. “Come on, I’ll drive you back to your car.”

  He didn’t call for five days and Bambi began to panic. She had put her address and phone number on the top page of every single piece of material, he couldn’t have lost them. Maybe he was just busy. He was obviously far too important to put everything aside to read an unknown person’s script, even a friend of Sally Exon’s. But then, on the morning of the fifth day, just when Bambi was writing him a thank-you note, for lack of any other suitable way to get his attention, Clay Bowen called.

  “Can you have dinner with me?” he asked.

  “I’d love to.” Dinner, my God, dinner!

  “Seven-thirty at La Scala,” he said. “We’ll talk about your future.”

  La Scala was legendary, it was one of those expensive Italian places with red leather banquettes and a power front room for movie executives and TV stars. Clay Bowen was already sitting there, and he stood up to greet her when she was led to him. There was a bottle of Montrachet waiting in a cooler; it must have cost a fortune. He smiled at her. He liked my script, she thought, or he wouldn’t be doing this, and she smiled back. She had been expecting to be terrified, but he was so in control, so sure of his ordered world, that she felt almost normal. I want this, she prayed, please let me have all this.

  “Don’t bite your lip,” he said.

  “Oh, was I?”

  “Yes.” He tasted the wine. “Fine. Well, I read your script, and the stories. You have promise.”

  “Thank you,” she said, trying not to bite her lip.

  “Tell me a little bit about yourself. How long ago did your husband die?”

  “A year. He was in a car crash.”

  “Terrible thing. I hope he left you with enough money.”

  “Oh, yes. And then I sold Simon Sez. I couldn’t stand to be in that business. I’m really a creative person, not an administrator.”

  “Any children?”

  “No. Children were never an issue.”

  “You were smart,” he said. “Children are a financial drain forever.”

  “Not forever?” Bambi said.

  “They would be if they could.”

  “How many do you have?”

  “Just one. She’s working in New York, living with some jerk I can’t stand. My wife lives in New York part time, comes here part time.”

  He’s lonely, she thought. His wife must be away. The captain came over and they ordered; she ordered what he did since she was too excited about her career to care what she ate. “And what about you?” he asked, smiling. “Are you living with some jerk I won’t like?”

  “I’m not living with anybody,” Bambi said. “I don’t even go out.”

  “That’s very sad,” Clay Bowen said, but she could see he didn’t mean it.

  “Most of the men my age in this town are worthless,” Bambi said. “They think women are objects.”

  “I agree. Actually, most men of any age do.”

  “That’s why I want to devote my life to my work,” she said.

  He chuckled. “I can see we make a good pair.”

  “Would that were so.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I mean, I would be so helpful to you, and I could learn so much from you.… You said my script had promise. Does that mean you might actually think of producing it?”

  “Well, it’s not that ready,” he said. “But I could use an assistant. I would have you read material, write coverage, I’d show you how the business works. I wouldn’t pay much in the beginning; you’d be my apprentice.”

  “Oh, I’d work for nothing,” Bambi said.

  “I would never let you work for nothing. Why don’t I start you off free-lance, and we’ll see how it goes? Say, a month? And I’d want you to be thinking up ideas for projects, reading all the newspapers, finding things that are in the public domain.”

  This is the happiest night of my life, she thought. “I won’t disappoint you,” she said eagerly. “I’m very imaginative.”

  “Good,” he said.

  If that portentous dinner was the happiest night, then the next month was the happiest month. Bambi was overflowing with ideas, and even though Clay, as she called him now, didn’t use any of them, he taught her more than she could have believed existed about the television business. When his wife was in New York—apparently she was an ex-dancer who was very active in charities—he met Bambi for dinner every night, at one or another small restaurant in Hollywood to “meet her halfway,” as he put it, so she wouldn’t have to drive so far to meet him in Beverly Hills. He was concerned about Simon’s fatal accident, concerned about her. He was very protective. She was still a little in awe of him, but not a bit afraid. If anything, she had a crush on him, and the magic life he held out to her with all his power. He was kind, generous, and attentive, but she couldn’t figure out how he felt about her. She knew he wasn’t very close with his wife.

  The only flaw in Bambi’s happiness was that she wanted an office of her own, in Clay’s offices. Free-lance, which had thrilled her so much a month ago, now was not enough. It was once again being on the outside looking in. She finally decided that instead of stewing about it she would tell him at dinner. He wouldn’t get angry, she knew that; he could just say not yet.

  “I’d be happy to use the smallest cubbyhole,” Bambi said. “But I feel so left out, so far away.”

  “But you’re never left out or far away,” Clay said gently. “I think about you all the time.”

  Bambi stared at him, and then, suddenly, she knew. She didn’t know how she could have been so clueless, except that being a sophisticated older man he had manners. He was in love with her.

  “I think about you, too,” she said.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes …”

  He took her ringless hand and ran his thumb over it. “You have restored my youth and dreams,” Clay said. “We’re going to do so many wonderful things together.”

  She shivered with joy. He had chosen her, she would have what she had dreamed of
all her life, this time she was sure of it.… He mistook her shiver for the trembling of love.

  “Show me where you live,” he said.

  He followed her up into the hills, up, up, past the bent and broken railings, past the place where she always averted her eyes because it was where Simon had died. But now the ghost of Simon had been laid to rest, and the headlights in her rearview mirror were her destiny. They parked in front of her house and she opened the door for Clay.

  In bed he came so fast she thought he couldn’t wait to get his hands on her. Or maybe he was nervous. She had only been to bed with men her own age, and she supposed a middle-aged man didn’t have the same kind of staying power. It would probably be better next time. But he was considerate and made up for it by doing other things.

  “I love you,” Clay said.

  “I love you too.”

  He smiled at her tenderly. “You have to love me,” he said. “It’s my rule.”

  He renovated a small room in his office that he had been using for storage and made an office for her. She went to work every morning like a real associate producer, and had business cards made. They continued to have dinner together whenever his wife was away, and now they could have lunch together too and she could go to meetings with him and meet people. He complained that she lived so far away, and shortly afterward, at the end of the summer, Clay brought some things to her house and began to spend the weekends there. He never did get better at fucking, but in the grand scheme of things it was really a small flaw.

  “I’m going to get a divorce,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to, we haven’t gotten along in years. Now I’m really going to do it.”

  “Good,” Bambi said. “I don’t like to see you unhappy.”

  “We’ll have to be very careful.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I understand.”

  “Not only because of the divorce,” Clay said. “I don’t want people to think I put you in my office because of our personal relationship.”

  “No,” Bambi agreed quickly. “That would be terrible. They wouldn’t respect me.”

  “I love you,” Clay said. “I want the two of us to live together. We can’t stay in my apartment for obvious reasons, so what if I stay here for a while?”

  “Will you empty the dishwasher?” She was the old Bambi again, lively and spunky the way she used to be, the way Sally Exon would have been, now that she was sure of Clay’s love and devotion.

  “No,” he said, “but I’ll take you out to dinner.”

  “I could live with that deal,” she said.

  Just before Christmas, Clay went on a business trip to Europe. He brought back a nice abstract painting for her; I love you hidden among the brushstrokes. She thought it was singularly appropriate. “Someday you and I will go to Europe together,” he promised.

  “I’d adore that,” Bambi said happily. “And I want to go with you to New York. I’ve never been to New York.”

  “That’s a little difficult,” Clay said. “My family is there. Someday we’ll go to London and Paris together, and to Cannes. We’ll go to the MIP, the big television convention. I’ll show you how I sell to Europe.”

  “I’d rather have that than a diamond bracelet,” Bambi said.

  “Good thing,” he said, laughing.

  At the end of February, Susan Josephs came into town and Clay took her to a party Bambi had wanted to go to. Bambi was a little annoyed, but he said he had to make nice with Susan because he was doing her book, and it was good for the two of them to be seen together.

  “I’d like to meet her,” Bambi said.

  “She’s very busy.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “I really don’t know her that well,” Clay said.

  “I guess you don’t think I’m important enough. You took her out twice and lately you’ve been going out with those businessmen from New York and wouldn’t take me either.”

  “I told you,” he said, “they know my wife. You’ll meet other people with me.”

  Sometimes he could be annoying, and sometimes unpredictably confusing, but Bambi tried to understand. He thought he had a lot to lose, but the truth was she had more to lose than he did if it started to get around that Bambi Green had worked her way up by being Clay Bowen’s girlfriend. He was only protecting her.

  He had saved her from an unfeeling world, and was making her dreams come true. Now he had promised her that they would be partners, would work together in every way. He said his life was beginning again, but Bambi knew it was her life that was beginning—he already had what he wanted, and she wanted what he had. In a way, she loved him.

  She went back to Simon Sez one night, but only to brag about her exciting new job and to gloat. It was the day after Clay had put the announcement of her joining his company in the trades, and of course all the writers had seen it. Buck O’Neill was there, back from one of his comedy gigs in Dogpatch. He traveled all the time, but he had never really made it. She hadn’t seen him in ages. They reminisced for a while about the old days, when she and Simon had slept on his floor while they were trying to put together Simon Sez.

  “Those days seem so far away,” he said.

  “They are.”

  27

  1986—NEW YORK AND CALIFORNIA

  As spring went into summer Susan was confused and unhappy, trying to figure out what was wrong between her and Clay, thinking of things to reassure herself that nothing was. She reread his old cards. Was this one written only a year ago last Christmas? “Dearest Susan: I wish for you the happiest, happiest holiday—I love you more and more each year, and each Christmas. You make my life worth living. Without you there would be no holidays. All my love to you and my life, Clay.”

  It had come with another serious piece of jewelry. And along with it, a toy stuffed monkey, which she now slept with. “Dearest Susan, Monkey—This monkey is not as pretty as my ‘Super Monkey’ but it is dedicated to the monkey of my life … with all my love and two big tied-up prisoner Hunters … to torment. Love and Happy Holidays, Clay.”

  He came to see her as he had promised, but each time for a few days during the week, rushing back to California for the weekend, which he never used to do; claiming work. He came to New York only every other month. His separation from Laura was dragging on, and now he stayed at a hotel, although he spent his evenings in Susan’s apartment. She brought in gourmet food and tried to make their time together romantic, but it was not what she wanted it to be. The pale anxious look he had given her so many years ago when he was afraid she wouldn’t be there waiting for him was still on his face, but now he ran to the bedroom phone the moment he opened the door with his key, barely even saying hello, and called his office.

  “Anything I should know?” he would say on the phone.

  She would tiptoe to a place outside the door, hidden from him, and listen. She wondered if there was anything she should know.

  They did not make plans for their future—he was too distracted, it was too soon.

  He still phoned her every morning from L.A., affectionate but in a rush. If she called his apartment at night the service always answered, and he continued to say he had been at a dinner meeting and had come home too late to call and had turned off the phone. She finally gave up. When she called on weekends the service answered too, but at least Clay now called her back soon and said he had been asleep, or in the shower, or outside in the sun, or at the grocery. She said she wanted to come to visit him in Beverly Hills, but every time she did he said that was silly because he was coming to New York any minute. Next week, he would say. And then it would be the week after that, and the week after that; always putting her off.

  He spent most of his time with Anwar Akmal, his rich Arab backer, at his mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Often Clay called her on a Saturday morning and said he was off to Anwar’s for the weekend.

  “Look,” Susan said, “Anwar has a wife, why can’t I come too, and sit by the pool with her, and then when you and
Anwar finish work the four of us can have dinner together?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Clay said.

  “What wouldn’t I understand?”

  “Those Arabs have a very strong sense of morality about their family. I can’t bring my girlfriend home to his wife to stay over.”

  “Then I could come for the day.”

  “I don’t want to discuss it.”

  He had refused to give her Anwar’s unlisted number, but Susan wouldn’t have called anyway. She didn’t know what kind of person Clay was beginning to think she was.

  Clay came to see her for her birthday. She was forty-five. He went out on a mysterious errand and then came smiling into her apartment with a big box containing a CD player, and a plastic bag full of discs to play on it, attached the CD to her stereo system, and handed her a card: “Dear Susan: This little ‘present’ is to say I love you and you saved my life. Because you have. You don’t get older, you get better in every way. All my love, Clay.”

  She had saved his life. She had prevented him from suicide. That was the only thing that mattered, even though she had saved him to turn into this frantic workaholic fanatic.

  He was always tired these days, and made love to her only once on each visit. Susan felt it was a phase that would pass. He complained about his health and his anxiety attacks, and she urged him to go to a doctor, still worrying about him, frightened because he was in California all alone. And because she was alone, Susan tried to devote herself to her work, just as he did. She signed with a lecture bureau. The money was good. They wanted her to travel around the country talking about battered women; the subject that had become a sort of specialty for her ever since Like You, Like Me came out; and said they would find assignments for her soon.

  “We’re both the same,” Clay told her. “Our work is the only thing that really matters.”