by Mario Puzo
Artie shrugged. “I think she likes it. You know I’m used to you, but you are a tough guy on the nerves.”
Again I was a little stunned, but I could never get mad at my brother.
“That’s good,” I said. “I’m leaving for California tomorrow to work on the movie again.”
Artie smiled. He understood what I was feeling. “As long as you keep coming back,” he said. “We can’t live without you.” He never said anything so sentimental, but he’d caught on that my feelings were hurt. He still babied me.
“Fuck you,” I said but I was happy again.
It seems incredible that only twenty-four hours later I was three thousand miles away, alone with Janelle, in bed, and listening to her life story.
One of the first things she told me was that she and Doran Rudd were old friends, had grown up in the same Southern town of Johnson City, Tennessee, together. And that finally they had become lovers and moved to California, where she became an actress and Doran Rudd an agent.
Chapter 30
When Janelle went to California with Doran Rudd, she had one problem. Her son. Only three years old and too young to cart around. She left him with her ex-husband. In California she lived with Doran. He promised her a start in movies and did get her a few small parts or thought he did. Actually he made the contacts, and Janelle’s charm and wit did the rest. During that time she remained faithful to him, but he obviously cheated with anyone in sight. Indeed, once he tried to talk her into going to bed with another man and him at the same time. She was repelled by the idea. Not because of any morality but because it was bad enough to feel used by one man as a sexual object and the thought of two men feasting off her body was repugnant to her. At that time, she said, she was too unsophisticated to realize that she would get a chance to watch the two men making love together. If she had, she might have considered it-just to see Doran get it up the ass, as he richly deserved.
She always believed the California climate was more responsible for what happened to her life than anything else. People there were weird, she said to Merlyn often, when telling him stories. And you could see she loved their being weird no matter how much damage they had done to her.
Doran was trying to get his foot in the door as a producer, trying to put a package together. He had bought a terrible script from an unknown writer, whose only virtue was that he agreed to take a net percentage instead of cash upfront. Doran persuaded a former big-time director to direct it and a washed-up male star to play the lead.
Of course, no studio would touch the project. It was one of those packages that sounded good to innocents. Doran was a terrific salesman and hunted outside money. One day he brought home a good prospect, a tall, shy, handsome man of about thirty-five. Very soft-spoken. No bullshitter. But he was an executive in a solid financial institution that dealt with investments. His name was Theodore Lieverman, and he fell in love with Janelle over the dinner table.
They dined in Chasen’s. Doran picked up the check and then left early for an appointment with his writer and director. They were working on the script, Doran said, frowning with concentration. Doran had given Janelle her instructions.
“This guy can get us a million dollars for the movie. Be nice to him. Remember you play the second female lead.”
That was Doran’s technique. He promised the second female lead so he could have some bargaining power. If Janelle became difficult, he would up the ante to the first female lead. Not that that meant anything. He would, if necessary, renege on both promises.
Janelle had no intention of being nice in Doran’s sense. But she was surprised to find that Theodore Lieverman was a very sweet guy. He didn’t make leering jokes about starlets. He didn’t come on to her. He was genuinely shy. And he was overcome by her beauty and her intelligence, which gave her a heady feeling of power. When he took her home to Doran’s and her apartment after dinner, she invited him in for a drink. Again he was the perfect gentleman. So Janelle liked him. She was always interested in people, found everybody fascinating. And she knew from Doran that Ted Lieverman would inherit twenty million dollars someday. What Doran had not told her was that he was married and had two children. Lieverman told her. Quite diffidently he said, “We’re separated. Our divorce is being held up because her lawyers are asking too much money.”
Janelle grinned, her infectious grin which always disarmed most men except Doran. “What’s too much money?”
Theodore Lieverman said, grimacing, “A million dollars. That’s OK. But she wants it in cash, and my lawyers feel this is the wrong time to liquidate.”
Janelle said laughingly, “Hell, you have twenty million. What’s the difference?”
For the first time Lieverman became really animated. “You don’t understand. Most people don’t. It’s true I’m worth about sixteen, maybe eighteen million, but my cash flow isn’t too good. You see, I own real estate and stocks and corporations, but you have to keep the money reinvesting. So I really have very little liquid capital. I wish I could spend money like Doran. And you know, Los Angeles is a terribly expensive place to live.”
Janelle realized she had met that familiar type in literature, the stingy millionaire. And since he was not witty, not charming, not sexually magnetic, since, in short, he had no bait except his sweetness and his money, which he made clear he didn’t part with easily, she got rid of him after the next drink. When Doran came home that night, he was angry.
“Goddamn, that could have been our meal ticket,” Doran told her. It was then she decided to leave him.
The next day she found a small apartment in Hollywood near the Paramount lot and on her own got a bit part in a movie. After her few days’ work was done, homesick for her child and Tennessee, she went back for a visit of two weeks. And that was all she could stand of Johnson City.
She debated bringing her son back with her, but that would be impossible, so she left him with her ex-husband again. She felt miserable leaving him, but she was determined to make some money and some sort of career before setting up a household.
Her ex-husband was still obviously smitten by her charm. Her looks were better, more sophisticated. She turned him on deliberately and then brushed him off when he tried to get her to bed. He left in an ugly mood. She was contemptuous of him. She had truly loved him, and he had betrayed her with another woman when she was pregnant. He had refused the milk from her breast that she had wanted him to share with the baby.
“Wait a minute,” Merlyn said. “Give me that again.”
“What?” Janelle said. She grinned. Merlyn waited.
“Oh, I had great tits when I had the baby. And I was fascinated by the milk. I wanted him to taste it. I told you about it once.”
When she filed for divorce, she refused to accept alimony out of sheer contempt.
When she got back to her apartment in Hollywood, she found two messages on her phone service. One from Doran and the other from Theodore Lieverman
She called Doran first and got him in. He was surprised that she had gone back to Johnson City but didn’t ask a single question about their mutual friends. He was too intent, as usual, on what was important to him.
“Listen,” he said. “That Ted Lieverman is really gone on you. I’m not kidding. He’s madly in love, not just after your ass. If you play your cards right, you can marry twenty million dollars. He’s been trying to get in touch with you and I gave him your number. Call him back. You can be a queen.”
“He’s married,” Janelle said.
“The divorce comes through next month,” Doran said. “I checked him out. Re’s a very straight square guy. He gets one taste of you in bed and you got him and his millions forever.” All this was off the top of his head. Janelle was just one of his cards.
“You’re disgusting,” Janelle said.
Doran was at his most charming. “Ah, honey, come on. Sure we split. Still, you are the best piece of ass I ever had in my life. Better than all those Hollywood broads. I miss you. Believe me,
I understand why you split. But that doesn’t mean we can’t stay friends. I’m trying to help, you have to grow up. Give this guy a chance, that’s all I ask.”
“OK, I’ll call him,” Janelle said.
She had never been concerned about money in the sense that she wanted to be rich. But now she thought about what money could do. She could bring her son to live with her and have servants to take care of him when she was working. She could study with the best teachers of drama. Gradually she had come to love acting. She knew finally that it was what she wanted to do with her life.
The love for acting was something she had not even told Doran, but he sensed it. She had taken countless plays and books on drama and film from the library and read them all. She enrolled in a little theater workshop whose director gave himself such airs of importance that she was amused, yet charmed. When he told her she was one of the best natural talents he had ever seen, she almost fell in love with him and quite naturally went to bed with him.
Charmless, stingy, rich, Theodore Lieverman held a golden key to so many doors that she called him. And arranged to meet him that night for dinner.
Janelle found Lieverman sweet, quiet and shy; she took the initiative. Finally she got him to talk about himself. Little things came out He had had twin sisters, a few years younger than he, who had both died in a plane crash. He had had a nervous breakdown from that tragedy. Now his wife wanted a divorce, a million dollars in cash and part of his holdings. Gradually he bared an emotionally deprived life- an economically rich boyhood which had left him weak and vulnerable. The only thing he was good at was making money. Re had a scheme to finance Doran’s movie that was foolproof. But the time had to be ripe, the investors played like fish. He, Lieverman, would throw in the pump-priming cash, the development money.
They went out nearly every night for two or three weeks, and he was always so nice and shy that Janelle finally became impatient. After all, he sent her flowers after each date. Re bought her a pin from Tiffany’s, a lighter from Gucci’s and an antique gold ring from Roberto’s. And he was madly in love with her. She tried to get him into bed and was astonished when he proved reluctant. She could only show her willingness, and then finally he asked her to go to New York and Puerto Rico with him. He had to go on a business trip for his firm. She understood that for some reason he could not make love to her, initially, in Los Angeles. Probably because of guilt feelings. Some men were like that. They could only be unfaithful when they were a thousand miles from their wives. The first time anyway. She found this amusing and interesting.
They stopped in New York, and he brought her to his business meetings. She saw him negotiating for the movie rights for a new novel coming out and a script written by a famous writer. He was shrewd, very low-key, and she saw here was his strength. But that first night they finally got to bed together in their suite at the Plaza and she learned one of the truths about Theodore Lieverman.
He was almost totally impotent. She was angry at first, feeling the lack in herself. She did everything she could and finally she made him get there. The next night was a little better. In Puerto Rico he was a little better still. But he was easily the most incompetent and boring lover she had ever had. She was glad to get back to Los Angeles. When he dropped her off at her apartment, he asked her to marry him. She said she’d think it over.
She had no intention of marrying him until Doran gave her a tongue-lashing. “Think it over? Think it over? Use your head,” he said. “The guy is crazy about you. You marry him. So you stick with him for a year. You come out with at least a million and he’ll still be in love with you. You’ll call your own shots. Your career has a hundred times better chance of going. Besides, through him, you’ll meet other rich guys. Guys that you’ll like better and maybe love. You can change your whole life, lust be bored for a year, hell, that’s not suffering. I wouldn’t ask you to suffer.”
It was like Doran to think that he was being very clever. That he was really opening Janelle’s eyes to the verities of life every woman knows or is taught from her cradle. But Doran recognized that Janelle really hated to do anything like that not because it was immoral but because she could not betray another human being in such a fashion. So cold-bloodedly. And also because she had such a zest for life that she couldn’t bear being bored for a year. But as Doran quickly pointed out, the chances were good that she would be bored that year even without Theodore to bring her down. And also she would really make poor Theodore happy for that year.
“You know, Janelle,” Doran said, “having you around on your worst day is better than having most people around on their best day.” It was one of the very few things he had said since his twelfth birthday that was sincere. Though self-serving.
But it was Theodore acting with uncommon aggressiveness who tipped the balance. He bought a beautiful two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar house in Beverly Hills, with swimming pool, tennis court, two servants. He knew Janelle loved to play tennis, she had learned to play in California, had had a brief affair as a matter of course with her tennis teacher, a slim, beautiful blond young man who had to her astonishment billed her for his teaching. Later other women told her about California men. How they would have drinks in a bar, let you pay for your own drinks and then ask you to go to their apartments for the night. They wouldn’t even spring for the cab fare home. She enjoyed the tennis pro in bed and on the tennis court, and he had improved her performance in both areas. Eventually she tired of him because he dressed better than she did. Also, he batted right and left and he vamped her male as well as her female friends, which even Janelle, open-minded as she was, felt was stretching it.
She had never played tennis with Lieverman. He had casually mentioned once that he had beaten Arthur Ashe in high school, so she assumed he was out of her class and like most good tennis players would rather not play with hackers. But when he persuaded her to move into the new house, they gave an elaborate tennis party.
She loved the house. It was a luxurious Beverly Hills mansion with guest rooms, a den, a cabana for the pool, an outdoor heated whirlpool. She and Theodore went over plans to decorate and put in some special wood paneling. They went shopping together. But now in bed he was a complete bust, and Janelle didn’t even try him anymore. He promised her that when his divorce came through next month and they married, he would be OK. Janelle devoutly hoped so because feeling guilty, she had decided the least she could do, since she was going to marry him for his money, was to be a faithful wife. But going without sex was getting on her nerves. It was on the day of the tennis party that she knew it was all down the drain. She had felt there was something fishy about the whole deal. But Theodore Lieverman inspired so much confidence in her, her friends and even the cynical Doran that she thought it was her guilty conscience looking for a way out.
On the day of the tennis party, Theodore finally got on the court. He played well enough, but he was a hacker. There was no way he could beat Arthur Ashe even in his bassinet. Janelle was astonished. The one thing she was sure of was that her lover was not a liar. And she was no innocent. She had always assumed lovers were liars. But Theodore never bullshitted, never bragged, never mentioned his money or his high standing in investment circles. He never really talked to other people except Janelle. His low key approach was extremely rare in California, so much so that Janelle had been surprised that he had lived his whole life in that state. But seeing him on the tennis court, she knew he had lied in one respect. And lied well. A casual deprecatory remark that he had never repeated, never lingered on. She had never doubted him. As she had never doubted anything he said really. There was no question that he loved her. He had shown that in every way, which of course didn’t mean too much when he couldn’t get it up.
That night after the tennis party was over he told her that she should get her little boy from Tennessee and move him to the house. If it had not been for his lie about beating Arthur Ashe, she would have agreed. It was well she did not. The next day when Theodore was at w
ork she received a visitor.
The visitor was Mrs. Theodore Lieverman, the heretofore invisible wife. She was a pretty little thing, but frightened and obviously impressed by Janelle’s beauty, as if she couldn’t believe her husband had come up with such a winner. As soon as she announced who she was, Janelle felt an overwhelming relief and greeted Mrs. Lieverman so warmly the woman was further confused.
But Mrs. Lieverman surprised Janelle too. She wasn’t angry. The first thing she said was startling. “My husband is nervous, very sensitive,” she said. “Please don’t tell him I came to see you.”
“Of course,” Janelle said. Her spirits were soaring. She was elated. The wife would demand her husband and she would get him back so fast her head would swim.
Mrs. Lieverman said cautiously, “I don’t know how Ted is getting all this money. He makes a good salary. But he hasn’t any savings.”
Janelle laughed. She already knew the answer. But she asked anyway. “What about the twenty million dollars?”
“Oh, God. Oh, God,” Mrs. Lieverman said. She put her head down in her hands and started to weep.
“And he never beat Arthur Ashe in tennis in high school,” Janelle said reassuringly.
“Oh, God, God,” Mrs. Lieverman wailed.
“And you’re not getting divorced next month,” Janelle said.
Mrs. Lieverman just whimpered.
Janelle went to the bar and mixed two stiff scotches. She made the other woman drink through the sniffles.
“How did you find out?” Janelle asked.
Mrs. Lieverman opened her purse as if looking for a handkerchief for her sniffles. Instead, she brought out a sheaf of letters and handed them to Janelle. They were bills. Janelle looked at them thoughtfully. And she got the whole picture. He had written a twenty-flve thousand dollar check as down payment on the beautiful house. With it was a letter requesting that he be allowed to move in until the final closing. The check had bounced. The builder was now threatening to put him in jail. The checks for hired help had bounced. The caterer’s check for the tennis party had bounced,