An Inconvenient Woman

by Dominick Dunne

  Hortense Madden’s rage knew no bounds when Lucia Borsodi called her into her office to tell her that her story had been bumped—“Just temporarily, Hortense, calm down”—in favor of Cyril Rathbone’s story on the former coffee shop waitress, Flo March, who had become the mistress of one of America’s richest men, Jules Mendelson, and lived in splendor in Beverly Hills, where she was credited by the doctors with saving his life after he had a massive heart attack in her house.

  The picture on the cover of that week’s issue showed Flo March carrying a centerpiece of dying tulips to the Pierce Brothers Mortuary in Westwood. Inside was the long-forgotten photograph of Flo March escaping from the fire in the Meurice Hotel in Paris, carrying her jewel box, with Jules Mendelson in the background.

  On the Sunday that followed, Archbishop Cooning, whose mission was morality, preached from the pulpit of Saint Vibiana’s Cathedral on the disgrace of a man who used his vast wealth to corrupt the morals of a girl young enough to be his daughter.

  When Dudley removed the biodegradable plastic cover from the new issue of Mulholland, Pauline, watching, noticed that he reacted to the photograph of Flo March on the cover.

  “Did you ever know her, Dudley?” asked Pauline.

  “No, no, I didn’t,” said Dudley, but his face flushed with embarrassment at the same time. He turned away to attend to a chore; some petals from a flower arrangement sent by the White House—“Darling Pauline, Our love and thoughts are with you, George and Barbara,” the card read—had fallen onto a tabletop, and with one hand he swept the petals into the palm of his other hand, a task usually attended to by a maid.

  “Dudley,” said Pauline.

  “Yes, Mrs. Mendelson.” He was emptying the petals from his palm into a wastebasket.

  “Turn around.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Was that woman ever in this house?” There was a long silence. “Answer me truthfully, Dudley.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Mendelson.”

  If Pauline Mendelson were to live her life over again, she would not have made the decision she made that day, a decision that she knew at some deep level was a wrong decision even as she was making it. But her pride overtook her senses, and she made the decision that no amount of persuasion on the part of people who had her best interests at heart could dissuade her from making. She decided to cut off Flo March without a cent, even though she knew it had been Jules’s intention to provide handsomely for her.

  Her decision had nothing to do with money, for there was ample money. Only three days before, the day after Jules’s funeral, there had been a discreet inquiry from Titus Fairholm in Melbourne, Australia, who had always admired van Gogh’s White Roses, to see if the estate wished to sell it, at the proper time, for forty-five million dollars. Pauline knew it would probably fetch even more at auction at Boothby’s. Money did not figure in Pauline Mendelson’s decision.

  She could not bring herself to provide for a woman she regarded as little more than a whore, a whore who had destroyed the final years of what had appeared to be a perfect marriage.

  “That woman was here in my house,” said Pauline. “When I was in Northeast Harbor visiting my father, she came here into my home. What kind of a person would do a thing like that?”

  “Pauline, as your husband’s adviser, I must caution you against this. He made arrangements. She has papers. They are signed by Jules. And by me. And they are witnessed by Miss Maple and Olaf Pederson, who was the orderly with Jules.”

  “I know perfectly well who Olaf Pederson is. Olaf Pederson was in cahoots with Flo March. They were only after Jules’s money. I heard him talking on the telephone to her at almost the moment that Jules was dying. ‘She’s in there with him,’ he said. The ‘she’ he was talking about was me, Jules’s wife. I happen to know for a fact that she stole some yellow diamond earrings out of Jules’s pocket on the day of his heart attack. Friedrich Hesse-Darmstadt told me himself that he had spoken with Jules only a short time before the heart attack, and that the earrings were being sent back to him in London.”

  “I don’t know anything about yellow diamond earrings, Pauline, or about her and Olaf. What I do know is that the papers she has in her possession are legal. I can vouch for that,” said Sims. Sims Lord had had a career both enhanced and obscured by his proximity to the dominant presence of Jules Mendelson. Now, emerging from the shadows of that dominance, he sought to use patience in dealing with the widow.

  “Are these things written in the will?” asked Pauline.

  “They aren’t in the will, but the papers were already executed.”

  “When?”

  “Last week.”

  “Only last week? And when did Miss March receive those papers?”

  “On Friday.”

  “Friday? The very day Jules died, you mean? The day of the CAT scan, when Olaf, old loyal Olaf, dropped him off at her house on the way home from the hospital?”

  “Yes,” said Sims.

  “In anticipation of death then?”

  “It could be so construed, I suppose.”

  “I’ll take her to court. This constitutes undue influence on a sick man. Remember, there are witnesses who saw her sneak into his room in intensive care at Cedars-Sinai, dressed in a stolen nurse’s uniform, and passing herself off as his daughter. Remember all this, Sims.”

  To Sims Lord, the elegant and refined Pauline Mendelson had become a different woman since Jules’s death, maddened by hatred of Flo March, but he was struck by her power. “Pauline, next to you, I was probably the person closest to Jules. This was what he wanted,” said Sims patiently.

  Pauline’s voice rose. She had become quick to anger of late. “Whose side are you on, Sims?” she asked. “We’d better get that straightened out right here and now.”

  “Of course, I am on your side, Pauline,” said Sims, in a placating tone. “That is a thing you never have to question. But there could be consequences, very unpleasant consequences, to what you are suggesting.”

  “How much does it come to, what she wants?” asked Pauline.

  “Over a million. Under two, I suppose. I suggest you pay her, and be done with it,” said Sims.

  “Pay her over a million dollars! Are you mad?”

  “That’s what that ring cost that’s on your finger. It’s a sixth of what that Sisley picture costs behind your head,” said Sims, holding out his hands in exasperation to indicate the absurdity of her concern for a million dollars. “What the hell difference does it make? Pay her.”

  “Never!” Pauline spat out the word. “If she is so broke, tell her to sell the yellow diamond earrings she stole out of my husband’s suit pocket on the day he had his heart attack in her house.”

  Sims shook his head. “I’m terribly afraid you’re going to be sorry, Pauline.”

  Pauline wondered, looking out her library windows at the lawn and sculpture garden, and beyond at the pool and pavilion, if she and Jules had ever been happy, or if Clouds was no more than a magnificent set for the performance of a marriage.

  Flo’s Tape #22

  “I ordered my new sofas, and I picked out the gray satin fabric for ninety-five bucks a yard. Jules used to say it was an outrageous amount to spend, but I didn’t care. He had the money. If Pauline had said she spent ninety-five bucks a yard, or even a hundred and ninety-five bucks a yard, he wouldn’t have thought anything of it.

  “Let me tell you about these sofas, because they’re important to the story, especially since Kippie Petworth dripped blood all over one of them. Nellie Potts, my high-class decorator, said they were copied from a design of Coco Chanel from her apartment in the Ritz Hotel in Paris. I liked the sound of that. I waited and waited for them, in anticipation. They took forever to make. And then finally they came. And I arranged them where they should be, and there was great excitement, and for a few days I could think of nothing else but my new gray satin sofas, and I’d sit on different places on the sofas, until I found just the right place for me to use as
my regular place to sit down. And then I got used to them. And it was back to plain life again, waiting for Jules to come at a quarter to four each afternoon. Or playing with Astrid. Or drinking ice tea with Glyceria, the maid from next door. The sofas, they were nice, but they weren’t it. Do you know what I mean? IT. They weren’t it. They were just sofas. And I was just a mistress again.”

  23

  Flo March. Flo March. Flo March. Since her picture appeared on the cover of Mulholland, Flo March had become notorious. People discussed her everywhere. The discredited mistress of a disgraced billionaire, the magazine called her. “Have you heard? She crashed Jules’s funeral, and there was such a scene you wouldn’t believe it, darling, between Pauline and this ghastly woman.” Her name became as well known at fashionable dinner parties as it was at the Viceroy Coffee Shop, where she used to work, and where all the customers wanted to hear about her. Curly and Belle, who defended her, became important for having known her. At the bar at Miss Garbo’s, Manning Einsdorf and Joel Zircon had stories to tell about her. Women who had sat next to her under the hairdryer at Pooky’s Salon and not noticed her, or not spoken to her, now claimed to have been acquainted with her. Even those closest to Pauline Mendelson could not resist, among themselves, supplying each other with every bit of information about the woman in whose house Jules Mendelson had suffered the heart attack that eventually killed him. “She went to communion at Hector Paradiso’s funeral. Pushed her way right past the casket.” Or, “Of course you’ve seen her. She has her hair done at Pooky’s. Very pretty, in a cheap sort of way, all tarted up in Chanel.” Or, “Madge White actually met her, at a steak house in the Valley, having dinner with Jules,” Or, “She ran over Faye Converse’s dog. Killed it. That sweet little Astrid, that used to belong to Hector.”

  During the two-week period that her picture was on the cover of Mulholland magazine, Flo March, shamed by the controversy she was causing, shrank from contact with everyone she had ever known. She stopped answering her telephone and did not check her message machine. Friends came to her house and rang her bell, but she did not answer her door. Pooky left message after message on her machine that he would be happy to come to her house before he opened his shop in the morning to take care of her hair, but she did not reply to his messages. Even Glyceria, Faye Converse’s maid, was not able to get into the house on Azelia Way, although she came by each day and brought things to eat, which she left by the sliding door that opened onto the swimming pool. On some days Flo never rose from her bed. She had started to drink wine all day long and take Valium.

  It became Sims Lord’s duty to inform Flo that the financial arrangements made in her favor by Jules on the day of his death were going to be contested by the estate. He came to her house to tell her personally, at the behest of Pauline Mendelson, after she did not return several of his telephone calls.

  “What exactly does that mean?” asked Flo, stunned by his announcement.

  “There won’t be anything for you, Flo. Other than what Jules had already given you.”

  “But why?” asked Flo.

  “The estate feels that undue pressure was placed on Jules at a time when he was too ill to realize what he was signing,” replied Sims.

  “Pressure by whom?” asked Flo.

  Sims did not answer.

  “By me? Is that what you mean?” asked Flo again.

  “I am merely the messenger here, Flo,” said Sims.

  “No, Sims. You are not the messenger at all. You are a participant in this matter. Your name is on those documents as a witness.”

  “I am acting for the estate, of which I am an executor,” he said.

  “The estate is who exactly, Sims? Pauline? Is it Pauline who feels that undue pressure was placed on Jules? You know that’s not true, don’t you?”

  Flo was sitting on her gray satin sofa. A feeling of panic overtook her. She rose from her seat so that it would not be apparent to him that her hands were shaking. She walked by him on her way to the bar, where she reached up for a glass and then poured herself some white wine from an open bottle she removed from the refrigerator. He liked the way she was dressed, in pants and a sweater. He liked the whiff of Fracas perfume that preceded and trailed her. He liked the way her beautiful red hair was tied back in a ribbon. He liked that she was wearing no makeup. He realized that he was very attracted to her.

  As she passed Sims on her way back to the sofa, he took hold of her arm and stopped her. “You didn’t offer me a glass of wine,” he said, smiling at her. She understood his smile. She had seen that same smile on the faces of older men who desired her since she was fifteen years old. She pointed to the bar with her head and with her thumb at the same time. “Help yourself,” she said.

  He pulled her to him and began to kiss her. She stood there as he kissed her, but did not respond. He began to breathe heavily and pushed himself against her. She pulled back from his embrace.

  “No, Sims. That’s not what I’m all about,” she said, waving her hand in front of her.

  He continued to hold her. “Listen to me, Flo. I could take care of you. You could stay on in this house. I’d set you up.”

  She pulled away from him. “You’ve come here to tell me I’m being deprived of my rightful inheritance, and you want to knock off a quick piece of ass at the same time? Is that it?” she asked. “How did I make the mistake in my mind that you were supposed to have class?”

  “Come on, Flo. You’ve really got me going. Feel how hard I am,” said Sims. He took the glass of wine out of her hand and placed her hand on his fly.

  “I’m pretty sure that your great friend Jules didn’t lead you to believe that I’m that easy, Sims,” she said, shaking her head.

  Sims had unzipped his fly. He reached in and pulled out his penis and held it out to her, as if the sight of it, erect and strong, would send her into fits of passion and lust.

  Her glance, filled with contempt, ignored his offering. “Do I really look that cheap, Sims, that you think it’s all right to just pull out your dick in front of me? I don’t think you’d do that with Pauline, up there in the library at Clouds. Put it away. Or jerk it off. White pubic hair never turned me on.”

  She sat down on the sofa and picked up a magazine, which she leafed through, while Sims Lord, red with rage, reinserted his diminished penis into his trousers and zipped himself up. Arranged, he moved toward the front door, thin-lipped now and distant. He opened her door and left without a farewell.

  One day Philip Quennell came to her house and rang and rang her bell, but she did not answer. He could see that her car was in the garage and knew that she was inside. As he was about to leave, he tried the door and, to his surprise, found that it was open. He walked in.

  “Flo?” he called, when he was in the hall.

  Although it was bright daylight outside, the curtains were drawn, and the living room was in near darkness. When his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that Flo was sitting in the corner of one of the large sofas. In front of her on the glass coffee table were a bottle of white wine and a water goblet from her set of Steuben glasses.

  “Not safe to leave your door open these days,” said Philip, taking in the scene. “There’s all kinds of nuts out there.”

  “What difference does it make?” asked Flo, looking up at him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m on what’s known in the program as a little slip,” she replied.

  Philip picked up the bottle.

  “Frightfully good, you know, from the Bresciani auction,” she said, in an exact imitation of Jules Mendelson’s voice.

  “This is not going to help,” said Philip.

  Flo shrugged. “He hated my cheap wine that I used to buy at Hughes Market, so he sent over a few cases of his best for when he came to call. He hated my cheap glasses too, so he had me order a dozen of every conceivable size glass from Steuben in New York. He also hated my cheap sheets, so he ordered sets and sets from Porthault when he was in P
aris. The only thing he liked cheap was me.”

  “You’re not cheap, Flo,” said Philip.

  “Thanks, Phil Q. That’s sweet of you to say, but you don’t know some of the things I did with him.”

  “I don’t want to know either.”

  “You’re sounding priggish, Phil Q.”

  Philip took the bottle of wine into the lavatory off the living room and poured the remains of the bottle down the toilet.

  “You sound like an elephant pissing,” she called out to him.

  Philip laughed. He returned to the living room and put the empty bottle in the wastebasket.

  Flo watched him. “Lots more where that comes from,” she said.