An Inconvenient Woman

by Dominick Dunne

  Jules, embarrassed, muttered, “It’s mine.” He wanted to terminate the subject.

  “Sure, I’ll go for a ride with you,” she said, and then roared with laughter, blushing at the same time. “Hey, I’m only kidding. All my life I wanted to go for a ride in a Rolls-Royce.”

  “It’s not a Rolls,” said Jules.

  “What is it?”

  “A Bentley.”

  “A Bentley. What’s a Bentley? Never heard of a Bentley.” There was great disappointment in her voice.

  “Well, it’s like a Rolls, made by the same company,” said Jules, as if defending his car. He knew it was an absurd conversation, unworthy of him.

  “Like a cheaper model sort of thing?” Flo asked.

  “Yes, I suppose it is, but not by much,” he said. Looking at the next booth, he wondered if the people were listening, or if they knew who he was. He wanted to leave the orange Naugahyde booth where he was sitting. He visualized himself rising, leaving a large bill on the table to cover cost and tip, and walking out, but he did not. Instead, he pushed his coffee cup toward her to indicate that he wished another cup of coffee.

  Like a moth drawn to a flame, Jules began to visit the Viceroy Coffee Shop more frequently. Outside the window of the booth where he always sat could be seen a tall building. The golden letters on the side of the building proclaimed it as the Jules Mendelson Building, which was where his office was, although so far no one in the Viceroy had connected him with that name, or that building.

  One morning Flo kept him waiting while she joked with a young man at the counter, whom Jules recognized from previous visits. He saw that the young man was handsome, dressed in black jeans that were far too tight, and it surprised him how much anger and jealousy he felt. When, finally, Flo approached his table, he was cool and distant with her.

  “Cat got your tongue?” she asked. She frequently used expressions that he could not bear.

  “Who’s that guy you’re talking to at the counter?” he asked after she had brought him his coffee.

  “What guy?”

  “With the blond hair.”

  “Oh, him. That’s Lonny.” She made a thumbs-down gesture.

  “You looked quite friendly with him.”

  “Oh, please!”

  “What’s he always hanging around for?”

  “Drinking coffee, like you. Hey, you’re not jealous of Lonny, are you?”

  “Jealous. Of course not. Why should I be jealous? I just wanted to know who he is.”

  “Let me fill you in on Lonny. Lonny is not, repeat not, interested in pretty young girls, like me, believe me. Lonny is interested in rich old guys like you, who drive the kind of car you drive.”

  Jules reddened. He did not like to be described as an old guy. He was then fifty-three years old, and he did not think of himself as old. He had started to lose weight. He had started to eat only proper things—grilled sole and leaf spinach—and declined bread and dessert. Even Willi, his barber who shaved him every morning at five-thirty, had remarked only that morning that he was looking fit and years younger.

  Flo realized she had insulted him. “I didn’t mean old,” she said. “I meant older. Lonny was a friend of that famous writer who died. What was his name? I’m sure you’ve heard of him.” She tapped her finger on her upper lip as she tried to remember the name. “Basil Plant, I think it was. Anyway, Lonny’s supposed to have stolen the manuscript of his unfinished novel, or something like that. Somebody told me the story, but I hear so many stories here at the Viceroy that I can’t keep them all straight.”

  Jules shook his head. He was disinterested in the young man’s story.

  “Curly thinks you’ve got a crush on me,” said Flo, changing the subject.

  “Who’s Curly?”

  “The manager. Over there, talking to Lonny. He says you’ll only sit at my table when you come here and that you leave the biggest tips of anyone who comes into the place.”

  Jules did not answer. He lifted the London Financial Times higher, as if he had discovered something in the news that it was urgent for him to read, in order to hide the reddening of his face. The thing he most feared was to be talked about, although he was sure that Curly, or any of the people at the Viceroy, did not know he was Jules Mendelson. He wondered if he himself knew Jules Mendelson. The Jules Mendelson he knew would never be sitting each day for over an hour in an orange Naugahyde booth in a coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard in order to stare at a red-haired waitress called Flo March. That day he asked Flo March to go for a drive in his Bentley.

  Her dress had been cheap and a bit showy. Jules felt that it did not suit her. He thought that the skirt was too short, even though she had beautiful legs. He was used to seeing her in her pink waitress uniform, which had a simple style to it, and he was at first disappointed in her appearance away from her job.

  “You know what I like about you, Jules?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “You were awkward and clumsy about asking me out, like you weren’t used to picking up girls like me. I was touched by that.”

  “I thought it was the car that got to you.”

  “That too,” she said, and they both laughed. He noticed that she seemed to enjoy her own humor. If she said something funny, she laughed heartily along with her listener at her sometimes boisterous stories.

  “You don’t laugh enough, Jules. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

  “I guess that’s so.”

  “You want to know what else I like about you?”

  “Sure.”

  “You didn’t come on to me the minute we were alone in your car.”

  “That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to.”

  “I understand that, but still, you didn’t come on. You acted like a gentleman, which is something I’m not used to with the kind of guys who ask me out.

  “I don’t even know your last name,” Flo said to him, getting out of the Bentley in the parking lot behind the Viceroy, where her car was parked.

  “What difference does it make?”

  “No, c’mon, tell me.”

  “Mendelson,” he said quietly.

  She looked at him. Her mouth fell open. “Like in the Jules Mendelson Family Patient Wing at Cedars-Sinai Hospital?”

  Jules nodded.

  “That’s you?”

  Jules nodded.

  “That’s where my mother died. In the burn unit. She was burned in a hotel fire.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her high spirits had vanished. She had become quiet.

  “G’night,” she said. She stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind her. She started walking toward her own car and then turned back to look at him. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, looking out at her. She opened the door of his car again and put her head inside.

  “Does that mean you’re married to Pauline Mendelson?” she asked.

  He nodded his head in an almost imperceptible manner. He had heard that florists and hairdressers and people in shops called his wife by her first name, but it was the first time he had ever heard it himself.

  “No wonder you didn’t want anyone to know your name,” said Flo. “You better get home. Your wife’s probably having a party and is wondering where you are.” She slammed the door again and got into her own car.

  The next day Flo had been distant. After Jules was seated in his regular booth, she asked Belle to take her tables—her station, she called it—saying she was going to take her break early. Then she sat at the counter and joked with Joel Zircon, the Hollywood agent, and Manning Einsdorf, who owned Miss Garbo’s, in a boisterous manner. Jules, furious, read his Wall Street Journal.

  Out the window behind him, Flo noticed for the first time the gold lettering on the tall building that read THE JULES MENDELSON BUILDING. He stayed for only two cups of coffee, rose, and left Belle the same ten-dollar tip that he always left Flo. She did not get up from the counter when he left.

  The next day he brought a gift wit
h him, a small blue box from Tiffany tied with a white ribbon.

  “For you,” he said, sliding it toward her on the Formica table.

  “Really?” There was a childlike look of joy on her face.

  “Open it.”

  “Now?”

  “Sure.”

  She untied the white ribbon carefully, as if she were going to save it. She smiled at him. Then she slowly opened the small blue box. Inside was tissue paper, which she tore aside. Beneath was a layer of white cotton. Under the cotton was Jules’s gift. She picked it up. Disappointment registered on her face.

  “Do me a favor, will ya, Mr. Big Bucks? Take your little silver trinket from the economy counter at Tiffany’s, and shove it. My ex-boyfriend, Mikey, from the Mobil gas station over there, would have given me something better than a silver key chain with a heart charm hanging off it. What was it, a leftover from your office Christmas gifts? Save it for your receptionist’s birthday. Hey, Belle, will you take my station? I’m gonna take my break.”

  Jules sat there, grim-faced. It was a cheap gift for the intention he had for it, and she had called him on it. She had also called it right; it had been a leftover from the office Christmas gifts, an accompaniment to the bonus that each of the girls on his staff received.

  That night, as he was dressing for dinner, he telephoned her at her apartment to apologize. It was the first time he had ever called her, as well as the first time he had ever called another woman from his house. Her line was busy. He showered and then telephoned her again, and her line was still busy. He put his studs and cuff links in his dinner shirt and dialed again, but her line was still busy. He tied his black tie. The line was still busy. He put on his black patent leather shoes. Still busy. He put on his dinner jacket. Busy.

  “Jules,” called Pauline. “We’re going to be late.”

  “Coming,” he called back. One last time, he thought. He dialed again. Her telephone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Your line was busy,” he said. There was a tone of annoyance in his voice.

  “Yes, it was,” she said coolly.

  “Who were you talking to?” He knew it was the wrong question to ask, even as he was asking it.

  “None of your fucking business.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You’re speaking to me in an annoyed voice, as if I have no right to talk on the telephone.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll tell you what. Call the telephone company tomorrow and have another line put in. I’ll take care of it.”

  “You’re some big gift giver, Bucks,” she said.

  There was a knock on the door of his dressing room, and then the door opened and Pauline walked in. “Jules! Please! We’re going to be late! It’s a surprise party for Madge, and Rose will be livid if we spoil it.”

  “I’ll be right there, Pauline. I’m just finishing this call with Sims.”

  “My God, is that Pauline?” asked Flo, enchanted. “I can’t believe it. Pauline Mendelson. ‘Jules! Please! We’re going to be late! It’s a surprise party for Madge, and Rose will be livid if we spoil it.’ ” Flo spoke in an exact imitation of Pauline’s upper-class voice.

  “Jesus,” said Jules, panicked. For him, familial domesticity of the highest order, such as he shared with Pauline, and love of the most sexual nature, such as he yearned for but had not yet shared with Flo March, were not incompatible, but it was unthinkable for him that the two could ever intermingle. “Look, I have to go.”

  “Bye,” she said. Her indifference exasperated him.

  “You still mad?” asked Jules.

  “No.”

  “Who were you talking to before?” he asked.

  “One of my lovers from Watts,” she said, and hung up.

  The next day Jules contacted a furrier in the San Fernando Valley that was not likely to be frequented by any of the people Pauline knew. He sent Flo a silver fox coat.

  “Now we’re talking,” said Flo, after she tore open the box and pulled it out.

  Even women who were jealous of Pauline Mendelson, for the silver platter that her life had been handed to her on, had to concede that she would be marvelous as the wife of the head of the American delegation in Brussels during the year of the statehood of Europe. Although Jules had not as yet been confirmed, the President had assured him that his confirmation was a foregone conclusion and preparations could be made. First the possibility of that high office, which Jules craved, and then the certainty of it, kept things on keel for him during the private torment of his obsession with Flo March.

  On her twice-a-year trips to Paris to buy her clothes, Pauline had made several side excursions to Brussels and had secured for them a large house set in a verdant park on the Avenue Prince d’Orange, where it was expected she would entertain magnificently during the year of their stay. Mr. Jensen, the French decorator, had flown over from Paris with Pauline, and they had chosen the colors in which the rooms would be redone and had decided in what locations the paintings she intended to bring from Clouds, like van Gogh’s White Roses and the six Monets and the Degas and the Bonnard of Misia Sert, would be placed. Pauline, who was meticulous in all things, had over the years perfected her Foxcroft schoolgirl French so expertly that even her French friends, who were numerous, praised her on the faultlessness of her tenses and the elegance of her pronunciation. Jules, on the other hand, had no aptitude for languages other than his own. He spoke the kind of French that the French smile at, but no one ever smiled at Jules Mendelson in a condescending way, for he was too awesome in manner, posture, and wealth.

  When Pauline had gone to China with her sister and brother-in-law, Louise and Lawford Ordano from Philadelphia, Jules took Flo to Paris, where he had business. They sat in different sections of the Concorde and never once spoke during the flight, because Jules knew several people on board. In Paris they stayed at different hotels. The Mendelsons always stayed at the Ritz on the Place Vendôme, and that is where Jules stayed. Flo stayed nearby at the Meurice. Jules lived in fear that one of Pauline’s friends would see him with the young and beautiful redhead.

  In the limousine leaving the Charles DeGaulle Airport for the city, Flo stared out the window of the car, overwhelmed to be in Paris. “Is that the Eiffel Tower?” she asked.

  “No, that’s the airport tower,” Jules replied.

  “Oh. It looks like the Eiffel Tower,” she said.

  “No, it doesn’t,” replied Jules. “It looks like the airport tower.”

  “To me, it does,” insisted Flo.

  He gave her a credit card to shop with and told her to go to any of the couturiers, except the one that Pauline went to, but he would not accompany her to the fashion showings, and she had no idea what clothes to order. A sympathetic vendeuse, sensing her confusion, advised her to try Chanel. “You can’t go wrong at Chanel,” she said. On the first day she went to Chanel, Flo ordered four outfits. On the second day, she ordered six more. When a fitter asked her questions about length and color, she turned to the vendeuse and said, “Just do whatever you think is right. I’m putting myself in your hands.”

  In two days she had spent nearly fifty thousand dollars. An accountant, who did not recognize her face or name, noticed the amount of her order and telephoned to check out her credit. He was told that there was a sufficient amount to cover whatever Miss March charged. He was told she had unlimited credit.

  Each night they dined at her suite in the Meurice. It was there that Jules finally made love to Flo for the first time. He discovered that his sexual appetite was limitless. His requests for specific acts were not plebeian, and Flo denied him nothing. In the beautiful young woman who was once named Fleurette Houlihan, Jules Mendelson had found his perfect sexual partner.

  If she was unhappy with the limited scope of her Parisian adventure, she did not let on. At that time in her life, just to have been in Paris at all was enough, even hidden from view. For her to be able to say, “When I was in Paris,” when she was in conversation wit
h her friends from the Viceroy Coffee Shop, or her hairdresser, Pooky, or even a stranger, thrilled her. Only the four-alarm fire that turned out to be no more than a burning mattress in the next suite brought the trip to a halt before its natural expiration.

  For all his passion for Flo, Jules never once entertained the idea of a divorce from Pauline. Each was necessary to him, and it did not occur to him that he could not have both. He shut Flo out of every part of his life except his sex life and allowed her to have no life of her own that did not revolve around him. For this he paid her a great deal of money. If in the totally improbable event that the two women in Jules’s life had ever met and compared notes, each would have found that the other woman had that part of Jules that she most wanted. The beautiful and elegant Pauline would have liked a more romantic relationship with her husband, instead of being kept on a pedestal by him, and the sexy and erotic Flo would have liked to receive guests and sit at the head of dinner tables full of famous and rich people.

  Jules woke at three in the morning and could not go to sleep again. Pictures and thoughts of Flo March filled his mind. He yearned to be with her. He ached with desire for her. Turning, tossing, wanting to cry out her name, he pulled the bedclothes over him in such an abrupt fashion that he pulled them off Pauline, lying next to him.

  “Jules, for heaven’s sake, what is the matter with you?” asked Pauline, awakened now, and cold. She pulled the covers back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. There was such a forlorn tone in his voice that it was impossible for Pauline to feel annoyance with him for ruining her sleep.

  “Jules, is there something you want to discuss? Is it the conference? Has something gone wrong?”

  “No, no. I’m sorry, Pauline. Go back to sleep. I’m all right. It’s just—”

  “Just what?”

  “Nothing, really. Nothing.” He began to snore lightly to show that he had fallen asleep again, which he had not. He had not meant to fall in love with Flo March. He had meant only to set her up and visit her when he felt like it, to give her gifts, to have her at his beck and call. It had never occurred to him that he might want to change his whole life and make her the dominant figure in it.