An Inconvenient Woman

by Dominick Dunne

  “I know,” said Flo. “Some people say she’s the only one who knew who killed Hector.”

  “I thought Hector committed suicide,” said Faye.

  “Two schools of thought on that,” said Flo.

  Faye looked at Flo. “Is your house on that side or this side?”

  “That side.”

  “Was that you who was screaming earlier?”

  “Yes, I screamed. My friend had a heart attack.”

  “What a terrible day you’ve had. I hope your friend will be all right.”

  “Thank you.”

  “There’s a call for you, Miss Converse,” said Glyceria.

  “Who is it?”

  “Mr. Cyril Rathbone.”

  “Oh, God. The son of a bitch is probably calling to tell me The Tower is on the All-Movie channel.”

  “He says it’s important.”

  “Would you excuse me?”

  “I better get back to my own house.”

  “No, no. Stay a minute. You’ve been so kind. Come in and have a drink.”

  “Oh, no, thanks. I don’t drink.”

  “Or some pizza. You must be exhausted. We have goat cheese pizza from Spago. Have you ever had pizza from Spago?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll stay?”

  “All right. May I use your ladies’ room?”

  “Yes, in there. I hope it doesn’t still stink. Pepper Belcanto threw up all over the walls this afternoon, and poor Glyceria had to clean it up.”

  The bathroom smelled of hyacinth air spray from Floris. Flo washed her face and combed her hair. She came out of the bathroom at the same time that Faye, aghast, hung up her telephone. Cyril Rathbone had just told her that Jules Mendelson had had a major heart attack in the house next door, which belonged to his mistress, whose name was Flo March, and that there had been a showdown between Flo March and Pauline Mendelson in the intensive care unit of Cedars-Sinai only a short time before. Faye did not tell Cyril that the very same Flo March had killed her dog, Astrid, and that she had just invited her to stay and share her goat cheese pizza from Spago.

  Jules remained in the intensive care unit for three nights and two days before he was moved to the finest room in the Mendelson Wing of the hospital. There were nurses around the clock. Dr. Rosewald had flown out from New York for conferences with Dr. Petrie. Dr. Jeretsky had come down from San Francisco. Dr. de Milhau had come in from Houston on the Mendelson plane. The prognosis was not promising. On several occasions Flo March, wearing a nurse’s uniform, had managed to get into the room and talk to the patient.

  The weather was vile. It rained all day long. Persistent downpours, sometimes torrential, were interspersed with thick mists that obliterated the city below. Pauline nodded yes when Dudley asked her if she would like a fire in the library. Even the pink and lavender roses she had cut in her garden and carefully arranged in the blue-and-white Chinese cachepots the day before could not dispel the gloom of the day. She played Mahler on the compact disc, the Ninth, her favorite, and tried to read the seventy pages of the Princess de Guermantes’s evening reception in Remembrance of Things Past, which was always her favorite passage, but she could not concentrate.

  Pauline moved over to her desk and picked up a piece of her blue notepaper. She wrote to her father. “Jules very unwell. Doctors mystified. He has suffered a serious heart attack. He’s brave but naturally extremely low. I’ll keep you informed. It was lovely seeing you, Poppy. Thank you for still being the best father in the whole world. Love, Pauline.”

  Dudley came into the room to tell her that Sims Lord had arrived at the house.

  “Oh, finally,” said Pauline. Seeing Sims Lord was the point of her day. “Show him in.”

  When Sims walked in, Pauline was struck, as she always was, by how handsome he was.

  “Hello, Pauline,” he said.

  “Are you soaked through?” she asked.

  “A bit wet, yes,” he said.

  “You are good to come all the way up here to the top of the mountain on such a terrible day. Come over here and sit by the fire. What will you have? Can Dudley make you a drink, or bring you a cup of coffee, or tea?”

  “No, thank you, Pauline. I was in Westwood at the Regency Club when you called, and I’ve just had lunch.”

  “Thank you, Dudley,” said Pauline.

  Pauline sat on a corner of the sofa opposite the chair on which Sims was seated.

  “The fire feels so good,” said Sims. “Look how your ring picks up the flames.”

  Pauline looked down at her engagement ring. “This ring and you came into my life the same week,” she said. “Do you remember?”

  Sims laughed. He had been retained as Jules’s lawyer after Marcus Stromm had been fired, the same week that Jules gave Pauline the historic de Lamballe diamond, and the same week that he had married her in Paris, with Sims as their best man. In the years since, his successful career had been both enhanced and obscured by his proximity to the dominant presence of Jules Mendelson. “I certainly do.”

  “I’ve grown to hate this ring,” she said.

  “Hate it?”

  “For years I’ve enjoyed watching people react to it. It is quite blinding. Now it seems fake to me. Like my marriage.”

  “Oh, Pauline,” said Sims.

  “It’s true. Don’t pretend it’s not, Sims. I understand your loyalty to Jules, but I know you must be aware of all that has been going on with Miss Flo March, as she seems to be called.”

  Pauline stood up. She took the ring off her finger. “I don’t intend to wear this anymore,” she said. For an instant Sims thought she was going to throw it into the fire, but she placed it in a silver box beneath the painting of van Gogh’s White Roses.

  “Someone could pick that up there,” said Sims.

  “I’ll put it in the safe later,” she said, dismissing it. “But, of course, I didn’t ask you to come up here on this hurricanelike day to talk about the de Lamballe diamond, Sims. I know all about the affair. I have met this woman.”

  “You have?”

  “She was in his room in intensive care when I arrived. She had passed herself off as his daughter. She was whispering in his ear when I walked into the room. That woman is interested in one thing and one thing only, and that is Jules’s money. Imagine, with a man as ill as Jules is, possibly dying, that she should be in there grubbing for money. It’s disgusting, but not surprising. I understand that she has been there on two occasions since I asked her to leave. I understand she dressed herself as a nurse and was able to get herself into his room.”

  Sims did not tell Pauline that Jules had told him that he must see that Flo March was taken care of, that the house on Azelia Way must be bought and put in her name, with no further haggling about price, and that a trust should be set up for her that need not be in the will, so as not to embarrass Pauline.

  Pauline continued. “There is something that I want you to handle for me, Sims. I want to bring Jules home from the hospital, and I want you to tough it out with the doctors to agree. They never will with me. We all know how tough you can be. Jules always said about you that he was glad you were on his side.”

  “Do you think that’s wise, Pauline? Jules is a very sick man. He is not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot,” said Sims.

  “I’ll have round-the-clock nurses, male nurses, who can lift him and get him to the bathroom and wash him, and I’ll have the doctors call here twice a day. I want him home.”

  “This will all be very expensive,” said Sims.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Sims. This picture alone,” she said, pointing to the White Roses, “is worth forty million dollars, at least. Let’s not waste any time on what something is going to cost.”

  “When do you want to do this?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  Lucia Borsodi, the editor of Mulholland, never removed her harlequin-shaped dark glasses, even in darkness. She was credited by everyone in the magazine business for saving,
“absolutely saving,” the floundering magazine and turning it into the enormous success that it had become. “She not only has an extraordinary story sense,” a cover piece in the arts-and-leisure section of the Sunday Tribunal said about her, “but she has an uncanny sense of timing as well.” It was Lucia, as his editor, who told Cyril Rathbone, to his consternation, that he must hold back on his story about Jules Mendelson.

  “It’s too early, Cyril. Don’t jump the gun,” said Lucia.

  “But, Lucia,” exclaimed Cyril, almost in tears.

  “No, no, Cyril, trust me. It’s the gossip columnist in you that is rushing this story, but it’s a much bigger story than that, as you yourself have pointed out. You simply want revenge on Pauline Mendelson because she has always snubbed you.”

  Cyril blushed. If there was any doubt about his motive, the reddening of his face belied it.

  “Don’t you understand,” Lucia said gently to the man she had just embarrassed. She understood writers and knew how to handle them. “What you have here is a story unfolding. This is not a complete story yet. You have the inside track. You were there. You saw the heart attack. You saw the girl breathing life into her lover’s mouth. You have the photographs taken at the hospital. You interviewed the policeman who gave Flo March the ticket. You saw Pauline Mendelson arrive. You heard from the admitting nurse that the two ladies had hot words over Jules Mendelson’s dying body.”

  “All that,” said Cyril, like a miser gloating over his gold. “It will be the story of my career.”

  “But you have nothing from any of the principals. You must interview Flo March. If you get an interview with Flo March, I will give you the cover,” said Lucia.

  “The cover,” gasped Cyril. It was beyond his wildest dreams.

  “In the meantime, start planting things in your column, little hints. That will build up your audience for the story when we’re ready to go with it.”

  SQUIB from Cyril Rathbone’s column in Mulholland:

  The cafés are buzzing.… Who was the gorgeous redhead who rode in the ambulance with billionaire Jules Mendelson after he suffered his massive heart attack at a secluded house off Coldwater Canyon last Friday?

  Madge White, who was loyalty itself when it came to her friends, did tell Rose Cliveden, in strictest confidence, that she had actually met the girl—“so common, you wouldn’t believe it”—at a steak house on Ventura Boulevard.

  “No!” gasped Rose. Although Pauline Mendelson was Rose Cliveden’s very best friend in all the world, as Rose frequently told anyone who would listen, Rose was not averse to hearing just the slightest little bit of gossip that just might put a chink in the armor of Pauline’s perfection.

  “Jules pretended he couldn’t remember her name, and he told me the most awful lie about Sims Lord being in the men’s room, and that the girl was actually with Sims, but, you see, my Ralph really was in the men’s room and he would have known whether Sims Lord was in the men’s room or not, and he wasn’t.”

  Rose didn’t want to hear about Ralph White in the men’s room of a steak house in the Valley. “It’s too sad,” said Rose. “Poor Pauline. Do you think I should say something to her?”

  “Heavens no, Rose. You mustn’t.”

  “But she’s my very best friend in all the world,” said Rose.

  “She’d die. She’d simply die, if you brought it up,” said Madge.

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Rose.

  “We must keep this to ourselves, Rose. Not a word to anyone.”

  “Oh, darling, my lips are sealed.”

  When Rose hung up on Madge, she called Camilla Ebury and told her, in the strictest confidence—“No one knows but us, darling, so not a word to anyone”—that Jules had his heart attack at the home of a common prostitute. “And guess what?”

  “What?”

  “Madge actually saw her.”

  That night Camilla Ebury dined with Philip Quennell at Morton’s Restaurant. Because of Camilla’s great friendship with the Mendelsons, Philip had not told her that Jules Mendelson had been instrumental in having him fired off his documentary film. Camilla seemed unusually quiet throughout the meal, as if her mind was on something else.

  “Is anything the matter?” asked Philip.

  “No.” She looked around her at the restaurant. “I never know who any of these celebrities are they make such a fuss over. Do you know any of them?”

  “That’s Barbra Streisand you’re staring at. You certainly have to know her,” said Philip. It always annoyed him that the social Angelenos he met through Camilla took such pride in distancing themselves from the film people.

  “Why do you suppose she does her hair in that awful frizzy way? It’s so unbecoming,” said Camilla. “She should go to Pooky.”

  “You’re changing the subject. I asked you if anything was the matter. And there is. I can tell. When you’re silent like this, there is always something troubling you.”

  “Rose told me something today that is so upsetting I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I promised I wouldn’t tell.”

  “All right.”

  “But I want to tell.”

  “Then tell.”

  “It’s about Jules and Pauline.”

  Philip looked at her. “What about them?”

  “Do you know where he had the heart attack?” asked Camilla.

  “No,” replied Philip, although he was pretty sure he did know.

  “At the home of a prostitute.”

  Philip, understanding, nodded slowly. “She’s not a prostitute,” he said. “She’s a mistress. It’s a very different thing.”

  “Jules has a mistress?” asked Camilla.

  “Yes. For quite a few years.”

  Camilla stared at Philip in disbelief. “How could you possibly know such a thing?”

  “Because I know her.”

  “You constantly amaze me, Philip.”

  “You know her too.”

  “I do?”

  “You met her. Flo March.”

  “You mean that pretty red-haired girl wearing an evening Chanel suit in the morning, who was sitting in your room at the Chateau Marmont?”

  “Yes.”

  “She said she bet you looked cute in Jockey shorts.”

  Philip smiled.

  “At least she didn’t mention your tattoo, down there.”

  Philip laughed.

  “Do you know something, Philip?”

  “What?”

  “I kind of liked her.”

  SQUIB from Cyril Rathbone’s column in Mulholland:

  The cafés are buzzing.… Who was the gorgeous redhead comforting billionaire Jules Mendelson in the intensive care unit when his wife, the elegant best-dressed Pauline, walked in?

  “Hello?”

  “Miss March?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Cyril Rathbone.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “I hope I haven’t caught you in the middle of a suicide attempt.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Cyril chuckled. “Just a little joke, Miss March.”

  “You’ve got some sense of humor, Mr. Rathbone.”

  “Well, you sounded so, what shall I say, so desperate. Is that the right word? Desperate?”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to see you, Miss March.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “I would like to do an interview with you.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Why?”

  “No.”

  “You are being credited with saving his life, Miss March.”

  “I am?”

  “The mouth-to-mouth resuscitation you did on Mr. Mendelson that you learned when you were a waitress at the Viceroy Coffee Shop.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I was in your house.”

  “You were? When?”

  “I was the one who called the a
mbulance for you.”

  “That was you? The guy in my house was Cyril Rathbone, the columnist? That was you?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Listen, Mr. Rathbone.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I always thought I’d die happy if I could be written up in your column, just once even, but now I don’t want to be written up in it anymore, even though you don’t use my name.”

  “I think we should meet.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m afraid I have to hang up now, Mr. Rathbone.”

  SQUIB from Cyril Rathbone’s column:

  The cafés are buzzing.… Is the reason billionaire Jules Mendelson is being secretly moved from the VIP section of the Jules Mendelson Wing at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to his hilltop estate, Clouds, on Friday afternoon that a certain gorgeous redhead has managed to get into his room by disguising herself as a nurse?

  Outside the hospital and then again outside the gates of Clouds, Pauline stayed by Jules’s side the whole time, holding his arm and maintaining a pleasant countenance as the photographers took their picture what seemed like a hundred times, or two hundred times, strobe flash after strobe flash.

  Inside the gates, the Bentley, moving slowly, appeared at the turn in the drive and then came forward into the courtyard. The chauffeur, Jim, jumped from the car and opened the rear door. First Pauline got out. Then Jim reached in and pulled Jules out of the car. Dudley, the butler, ran forward from the house pushing an empty wheelchair. For a moment Jules stood leaning on a cane, until the wheelchair reached him. The staff who watched him out of the various windows of the house were not prepared for the drastic change in his appearance. He looked shrunken. He had become an old man, although he was not yet sixty.

  Inside the house, finally, with the door closed behind them, Pauline maintained the same composure in front of Dudley. “I would like some tea, Dudley,” she said, anxious to be rid of him before he said anything sympathetic, which she felt he was going to do. “And a drink. I’m sure Mr. Mendelson would like a drink, wouldn’t you, Jules?”

  “Yes, yes, fine, a scotch, Dudley, and a little Pellegrino water,” said Jules. His complexion was pale, and he had lost a great deal of weight. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.