An Inconvenient Woman

by Dominick Dunne

  “Excuse me,” said Philip to Lonny when the waitress arrived with Lonny’s breakfast. “I’ll be right back.”

  “It’s over there, with the orange door, by the cash register,” said Lonny, pointing to the men’s room.

  Philip nodded and went to the men’s room. When he came out a minute later, he walked over to Jules Mendelson’s table.

  “Mr. Mendelson,” he said.

  Jules looked up from his paper but did not acknowledge Philip.

  “It’s Philip Quennell,” said Philip.

  “Yes,” he said, looking back at his paper in a dismissive manner. He had taken a dislike to Philip Quennell since the day the statue of the Degas ballerina had been knocked over and cracked, and he blamed Philip for the accident although it was his own anger that had caused it.

  As if reading his mind, Philip said, “I’m sorry about the accident with the Degas ballerina. I wrote Mrs. Mendelson a note of apology.”

  “She told me,” said Jules, not raising his eyes.

  “This is not the sort of place I would expect to be seeing you having breakfast,” said Philip.

  “I’m not having breakfast. I’m having a cup of coffee,” said Jules. “I come in here at this time to read my paper.” He tapped the newspaper on the table in a gesture meant to dissuade Philip from staying.

  “Quite a clientele this place gets,” said Philip. “See that guy over there, scarfing down the hotcakes? Jeans, T-shirt, windbreaker?”

  “What about him?”

  “Hustler. Porn star.”

  Jules nodded, indicated disinterest, and looked back at his paper. “I didn’t realize that was your inclination,” he said, chuckling.

  Philip smiled and started to move on. “You know what they say about him, don’t you?”

  “Of course I don’t know what they say about him. I never laid eyes on the man.”

  “They say he’s the guy who killed Hector Paradiso.”

  Jules smiled wearily. “Oh, that old chestnut. Hector Paradiso was a suicide, Mr. Quennell.”

  “No, he wasn’t, Mr. Mendelson.”

  “You have only to check the police report.”

  “Hector went to a bar called Miss Garbo’s after he left your party that night. It’s the kind of bar where rich johns make arrangements of a financial nature to meet young companions. There are several witnesses who will tell you that Hector left Miss Garbo’s in the company of that young companion. I’ve checked the police report. None of those facts are in it. Do you still want to tell me that Hector Paradiso went straight home from your party that night to shoot himself five times?”

  “Playing sleuth may be the most important thing that ever happened in your life, Quennell, but it’s a matter of absolutely no importance to me,” said Jules. He slowly turned the page he was reading and continued to read the story about the release from prison after five years of the Wall Street financier Elias Renthal.

  “This thing doesn’t have one goddamn thing to do with my life,” said Philip. “Why the hell should it matter to me whether or not they catch the killer? If I hadn’t been at your house that night and gone home with Camilla Ebury and been with her when you called to say that Hector was dead and then gone with her to Hector’s house to identify the body, I probably wouldn’t give it another thought, because it doesn’t involve me. What I’m interested in is why it is being covered up. Chances are it was what the supermarket tabloids refer to as a gay murder. He picked up a trick at Miss Garbo’s. He took home the trick. He got into a fight with the trick, probably over money—they say he was tight—and he got killed. Not a particularly uplifting scenario, but it is not a particularly original one either. There was that big decorator in New York it happened to last year. Bertie Lightfoot? Do you remember? I’m sure Pauline knew him. And in San Francisco. The gallery owner. What was his name? Ludovic Cato, wasn’t it? Same story. Stabbed to death by a mysterious stranger, all trussed up. But why the cover-up here in Los Angeles? Do you think the people in your privileged group really didn’t know Hector was gay? I don’t think so. Your kind of group might not have talked about it, but they knew it. Who are you all trying to protect? He had no family who might be embarrassed by such a revelation. Only a niece, with whom I am involved, and she would now like to have it solved.”

  “Hey, Quennell,” said Jules, looking up from his newspaper finally. His voice had turned harsh. He was not used to people who did not treat him with deference.

  “Yes?”

  “Read my lips, asshole. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “Ah, the great art collector and philanthropist has spoken,” said Philip.

  The two stared at each other, and Philip moved on.

  Sometimes, after they finished making love, Jules—still nude, still in bed—would pick up the telephone and call his office to check with Miss Maple for his messages. Twice he spoke to the President, in the White House, while lying in Flo’s bed, with the telephone sitting on his chest. Once Flo heard him say, “Best to Barbara,” in a matter-of-fact way, as if, as she told it later to Glyceria, it was no big deal. On this day he signaled Flo with a drinking gesture to bring him something cool to drink, without interrupting his train of thought. Flo was fascinated by the way Jules was able to conduct business involving great sums of money over the telephone. Sell this. Buy that. She felt important just hearing such large sums discussed over her telephone in her house. She grew to know that Sims Lord was Jules’s lawyer and closest associate, that Reza Bulbenkian was his contact in New York, and that Miss Maple, whom Jules sometimes called Syrup, was his secretary and had been his secretary for over twenty years. It was Miss Maple, whom Flo had never met, who paid all her bills and mailed her her allowance.

  Flo handed Jules a can of iced tea. “I hate canned iced tea,” said Jules. “In fact, I hate drinks out of cans, period.”

  “Oh.” Flo always felt hurt if Jules criticized the way she did things.

  “Look,” said Jules, taking her hand. “What’s the name of that decorator you’re using?”

  “Nellie Potts?” asked Flo.

  “Right, Nellie Potts. Tell her to call Steuben in New York. Tell her to order some decent glasses for you. Twelve of each. Water goblets, highball, old-fashioned, the red wine, the white wine, the champagne. Drinks taste better out of good glasses.”

  “Wow,” said Flo, impressed. “Should I get them monogrammed? You know, like FM? I read somewhere that Dom Belcanto has his glasses monogrammed.”

  “No, no, monograms are tacky,” said Jules. “And they take too long. Just order the glasses. Have them sent out by Federal Express. They’ll be here in a couple of days. And then you can serve me my drinks in some decent glasses.”

  “I’ll call Nellie later,” said Flo. She was delighted when she had projects to fill up her time.

  “Speaking of Nellie Potts,” said Jules, reaching out behind him in the bed and grabbing a handful of Flo’s new curtains. “Have you any idea how much these curtains cost?”

  “Yes, I do, Jules,” answered Flo.

  “That’s a great deal of money, Flo, for some curtains. Did you inquire first about the cost?”

  “Yes, I did, Jules.”

  “And you didn’t question such an exorbitant amount?” he asked.

  Flo raised her eyebrows. “You can afford it, Jules,” she said.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Then what is the point?”

  “This is a rented house. To spend forty thousand dollars for curtains in a rented house doesn’t make sense. You can’t take them with you when you leave, and that has-been TV star you rent this place from reaps the benefits.”

  “You don’t have to point out to me this is a rented house, Jules. And, by the way, the renovations of my closets are going to cost you that much again,” said Flo.

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “Aren’t I worth it, Jules? Any time you’re dissatisfied with my services, I shall be happy to make
other arrangements,” said Flo, grandly.

  “Now, let’s not get into that kind of conversation, Flo. I’m tired. I have a lot of important things on my mind.”

  Flo got up from the bed where she had been lying next to Jules. She picked up her terry cloth robe and put it on. “I want you to buy this house for me, Jules,” she said. “Trent Muldoon’s business manager said he’s ready to sell.”

  “This is not the time to be talking about buying houses,” he said. “I just told you I’m tired and that I have things on my mind.”

  “You keep putting it off, Jules. No time is ever the right time for you. I want something in my own name. I live in a rented house. I drive a leased car. What’s going to happen to me if something happens to you? I’ve gotten used to living like this.”

  “You are going to be taken care of. Sims Lord will be making the arrangements,” said Jules.

  “You know, Jules, I sit here all day waiting for you to come over. I have no friends, except the maid next door who works for Faye Converse. I have no job. You’re afraid to be seen with me in public, so I almost never go out. I have thirty Chanel suits, and some forty-thousand-dollar curtains, and I’m about to have a couple of hundred Steuben glasses without a monogram on them, but it’s not really a fulfilling kind of life. So, I repeat, I want something in my own name.”

  “All right, all right, I’ll buy you the house,” he said.

  “Thank you, Jules, and I want the pink slip for the car too, in my own name.”

  “I better get dressed,” he said, getting out of bed and reaching around for his clothes.

  “Hey, Jules, you have to lose some of that lard around your middle,” said Flo. “Pauline’s taking you to too many banquets. When you bend over to tie your shoelaces, your face gets all red and you get short of breath.”

  Jules was both annoyed and touched. He did not like to be reminded of his girth. He had recently been infuriated by a magazine article that described him as a man of ample proportions. But it struck him how different his relationship with Flo was from his relationship with Pauline. With Pauline, he dressed and undressed in his dressing room, as she dressed and undressed in her dressing room, and they did not present themselves to each other until they were ready to face the world or ready to go to bed.

  Flo came over to him and put her arms around his neck. “Listen, it doesn’t bother me. The way I look at it, there’s more of you to love.”

  When Jules finished dressing, he walked into Flo’s living room. She was seated on her newly upholstered sofa, reading Cyril Rathbone’s gossip column in Mulholland. He was absurdly touched that she moved her lips when she read.

  “Oh, la,” said Flo, holding out her little finger in what she assumed to be a gesture of grandeur.

  “What?” asked Jules.

  “ ‘Pauline Mendelson is opening her orchid greenhouse for the Los Angeles Garden Club tour,’ ” she read. “ ‘Mrs. Mendelson, the elegant wife of Jules Mendelson, the zillionaire, has developed a rare yellow phalaenopsis orchid.’ Is that how you pronounce that?”

  Jules turned away. He could not deal with any overlapping of the segments of his life.

  “You know, Flo, you mustn’t move your lips when you read,” he said.

  “Did I do that?” she asked, slapping her hand over her mouth. “When I was in junior high at Blessed Sacrament, Sister Andretta, my home room teacher, used to say to me, ‘Fleurette, you’re moving your lips,’ and all the kids in the class would laugh. I thought I got over that.”

  “Tomorrow I’m going to bring you over some books I think you ought to read instead of all those gossip columns.”

  “Not long ones, for God’s sake. My lips will be exhausted.”

  Pauline Mendelson had not confronted Jules about the other woman’s scent on his fingers after she had kissed his hand and smelled it. Instead, she began to observe him more carefully. There were no telltale signs, nothing so obvious as lipstick traces on handkerchiefs or collars. For the first time since they moved into Clouds twenty-two years before, their habit of meeting in the sunset room each twilight for a glass of wine before they dressed for dinner had been disrupted when Pauline failed to appear for several days following her outburst. When they drove together to and from parties, she had a sense that his mind was elsewhere, although, once having arrived at the house where they were dining, they both automatically fell into their roles of devoted husband and wife, with never a hint, to even the closest observer, of a masquerade being performed. Several times Pauline awoke at night and saw Jules lying beside her in their bed staring up at the ceiling, but she did not speak. She knew the time was at hand to go to see her father in Maine, but she made no mention of her plans.

  She had grown used to her role as the wife of one of the country’s most eminent figures, and she was not unmindful that there was a dearth of replacements for a man of her husband’s importance, even for one of the marrying McAdoo sisters. Caution was the road she chose to follow. Jules, concerned, was aware from the attitude and the coolness of his wife that something was wrong. He even guessed that she may have heard of his involvement, although he had made every effort to keep the affair from being discussed. The very thought of dissolving such a marriage as he had with Pauline was unthinkable to Jules, even though he was in the grips of a grand passion with Flo March.

  Under suspicion, facing the loss of a marriage he treasured, he still continued his afternoon visits to Azelia Way, as his ardor for Flo did not diminish for a second. His erotic longings intensified each day; he could not wait for the sight of her alert breasts and ample bush, which were more beautiful to him than her beautiful face. “Be nude,” he would say to her on the car telephone so that not a moment of their time together would be wasted. He wanted more and more of her, and she always obliged. “Don’t use those scents and unguents down there,” he said one afternoon. “Your natural smells drive me mad.” He begged her to talk dirty to him during their lovemaking, and she obliged. “Lower,” he whispered in her ear once. She understood he did not mean the position of her hands on his testicles, but that he wanted her language to be even baser, and again she obliged. Afterward he said to her, “Where in the hell did you learn how to talk like that?”

  She lay back in bed smoking a cigarette, looking up into space, and answered in a surprisingly harsh tone. “Don’t go moral on me once you’ve come, Jules. It’s what you begged for.”

  He looked at her. He knew she was right. The next day he brought her a jewel, a sapphire ring surrounded by diamonds. She was ecstatic. “Like Princess Di’s,” she said. “Only bigger. I used to think if I ever had a ring, a really good ring, I would love a sapphire. Did I ever tell you that, Jules? I didn’t, did I? How did you know?”

  “It’s the color of your eyes,” said Jules.

  She was touched. “You are surprising, Jules. Sometimes you’re so gruff and unsentimental. I didn’t think you ever noticed the color of anything about me, other than my pubic hair.”

  Jules roared with laughter. He knew she was inferior to him, both in position and intellect, but he loved her. He loved her madly.

  “I love you, Jules,” she said simply.

  “Really?” he asked.

  She thought of what she had just said. She perhaps venerated him more than she loved him, but certainly love was present. “Really,” she replied.

  When he left that day, she walked him to his car. “I’m mad about this ring, Jules. I won’t ever take it off. But you won’t forget about the house, will you? I want to own this house.”

  A few days later the two women in Jules Mendelson’s life met by accident in the parking lot of Pooky’s salon. Pauline Mendelson rarely went to Pooky’s to have her hair done. She was one of a few very special clients for whom Pooky happily adjusted his busy schedule, going up to Clouds to do her hair in her elaborately outfitted dressing room. But on the day before Casper Stieglitz’s party, which Pauline never wanted to attend, Pooky was not able to accommodate her in their usu
al manner on such short notice, and she drove into Beverly Hills to have her hair done at his salon. As she was parking in the lot behind the shop, a red convertible Mercedes backed into the front of her car. It was Flo March, leaving the shop after her appointment.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Flo, hopping out of her car and running over to Pauline’s. “That was my fault. But I’m insured. Don’t worry. And it’s not bad. Just a dent.”

  Looking in the window, she realized the person whose car she had hit was Pauline Mendelson. “Oh, my God, Mrs. Mendelson,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. I hardly felt it,” said Pauline. She got out of her car and went around to look at the dent. “Don’t worry about it. It was an accident.” The girl looked familiar to Pauline. “Do we know each other? Have we ever met?” she asked.

  “No, no, we haven’t,” said Flo. She had become shy and spoke very quickly. “I just know who you are. I recognized you from seeing your picture in the papers and magazines all the time. You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Mendelson.” She felt only fascination for the wife of her lover.

  Pauline smiled. “I love your suit,” she said.

  “Oh, my gosh, coming from you,” said Flo, thrilled with the compliment.

  Then, looking at the Chanel suit, Pauline remembered. “I know where I saw you. At Hector Paradiso’s funeral. Weren’t you a friend of Hector’s?”

  Flo began to get nervous. “Yes, I knew Hector. I have to run. Thank you for being so nice, Mrs. Mendelson.”