I'll Take Manhattan (20 page)

All her strength had gone into opening the tomato juice and finding the Tabasco, for on Sunday she was alone. There were no maids, no secretaries, no cook in the huge house, all phones were quiet as the great ones of The Industry slept or thought vaguely about brunch as they watched people condemned to live in other places play football on television. Still, India reflected, if it weren’t Sunday she’d have to go to her regular workout with her
gym teacher, the arbiter of her life, Mike Abrums. If that man even suspected that she had a hangover, and God knows, you could keep nothing from him, he would make her very sorry indeed. He might even
take away her appointments
.

In spite of a well-founded rumor that he possessed—somewhere—a heart of gold, Mike Abrums ruled his pupils with the relentless discipline that he had perfected during his years in the Marines, teaching men how to kill other men with their bare hands. Now he maintained meticulously selected and worshipfully obedient Hollywood bodies in a state of perfection and had a waiting list of hundreds of supplicants. Mike had forbidden her to eat red meat, sugar, salt, fats and liquor, in any amount or form whatever. Last night, in an outburst of rebellion, India had copiously ingested every single item on his list of taboo foods.

“If I weren’t so beautiful I could eat a hamburger every day,” she said pathetically, addressing the ceiling. “If I weren’t a major star I wouldn’t have to be perfect. If I weren’t rich I couldn’t afford to go to that magnificent dictator six times a week, if I weren’t famous nobody would give a damn. I have a very bad case of the sort of problems that people always sneer at and say they would like to have, but just because everyone would like my problems doesn’t mean I have to like them. They are not a transferable asset. A banal thought, I admit, but in my condition I can’t rise above it.”

India’s voice, even though she was only speaking to the ceiling, was winelike, with its infinite shades and range, from darkly potent Burgundy to icy, brilliant champagne; from warm, mellow Bordeaux to the unearthly sweetness of Sauternes. After six years of Hollywood stardom, India no longer found it strange to be talking out loud to herself. One of the less recognized problems of being a star was that there were very few people in the world to whom she could speak frankly. The urge to bask in the glory of being her confidant was all but irresistible and if she confided in any but a trusted few she was likely to read about it in the columns the next day.

“If only my ceiling were more interesting,” she observed.
A hangover severely limited her options. She couldn’t stand the noise of music, she didn’t have the strength to focus on print, and worst of all there was nobody she wanted to talk to on the phone. At that thought she began to feel tears forming. She eased herself painfully out of bed, clasped a robe around her, and headed slowly for her pool. Anything was better than lying around feeling sorry for herself.

India threaded her way along the path of her back garden. It had been intended to look tropical and after spending two hundred thousand dollars, her landscape decorator had managed to achieve an unreal Rousseau-like landscape of monumentally exotic plants that seemed, in India’s present mood, to be menacing and grotesque. Uneasily she wondered about tigers, sleeping gypsies, and snakes. Suddenly the network of underground sprinklers everywhere sprang to life with an ominous series of thuds. They were only supposed to work during the night. As she stood there, buffeted by a dozen different nozzles, three enormous German shepherds, barking wildly, sprang out of the giant ferns, almost knocking her over.

“Down! Down, you revolting creeps!” she screamed, trying to sound authoritative. They slavered at her ambiguously.

“Bonnie-Lou! Sally-Ann! Debbie-Jane! Down, I say!” They were all males but it helped a little to pretend they were girls. The huge beasts terrified her but a consultation with the Beverly Hills Police had convinced her business manager and her agent that she had to have them. Apparently the fences and the electrically controlled gates and the television camera at the end of the driveway, plus all the complicated electric eyes and beams that were installed throughout the house, weren’t worth even one German shepherd, for real protection.

Muscles aquiver, India continued dripping her way toward the pool, hair drenched, robe soaking, slobbering wet dogs stepping on her feet and licking her hands in what she hoped was affection. Oh God. Had they been fed? She felt increasingly unsure of the future of this particular Sunday.

She finally fought her way out of the rain forest and
stopped with a cry of disbelief and outrage. The water of the pool had turned overnight into a vile shade of murky green. Killer dogs, killer sprinklers and now killer algae. It was too much. She fled back to the house and pulled the bedcovers over her head, cursing the pool man who had skipped a visit. “Human beings were not meant to live in Beverly Hills,” India groaned into her now damp sheets. “The whole place is a desert, made to bloom only by water stolen from decent, hardworking farmers by the evil founding fathers of Los Angeles. An abomination in the eyes of the Lord. Repent ye sinners.”

She poked her head out of the covers and considered the possibility of another Bloody Mary. No. Absolutely not. One was clearly medicinal but two? She would count her blessings instead as her mother had taught her to. First, as ever, health. The only blessing that really mattered. Hangovers didn’t count as being sick since they were temporary. Second, her sheets, the smoothest possible pure cotton, from Pratasi, the borders embroidered with tiny scallops, at six hundred dollars the pair. She had a closet full of them, they were her pride and joy—could you be addicted to sheets? Still it was a harmless pleasure surely since you couldn’t eat or drink them. Or were the sheets a case of transference?

During the last year she had worked herself out of her transference to her shrink, Doctor Florence Florsheim, psychoanalyst to the stars, and now she seemed to have transferred her affections to her linen closet. Could this be called progress? She’d have to check it out with Doctor Florsheim but she doubted it. What were her next blessings? Beautiful, rich, famous and talented. Even John Simon agreed about her talent, an opinion she allowed to convince her whenever she began to feel self-doubt. But she’d covered all that already and found them less than comforting. Still that made six blessings. Lovers? She didn’t have one currently and the last one she’d had was, without the slightest qualification, an error in taste on a scale so great that she blushed at the memory. The
absence
of lovers was perhaps a blessing in disguise. Count it as half a blessing, making a total of six and a half, not too bad for someone with a life-threatening hangover. Youth? She was only just twenty-seven.
Yes, youth, if you didn’t remember that
thirty
was only three years away. Three years were ages and ages. More than a thousand days.
A thousand days were nothing
! She must not think about it. Christ, but it wasn’t easy to be the most beautiful movie actress in the world, it was stress on a major scale, even Doctor Florsheim had to admit that.

India thought of a remark made by Nijinsky when an admirer of the great dancer asked him if it wasn’t difficult to hang in the air as he literally seemed to do. He’d answered that it wasn’t difficult, “It’s just climbing up there and staying up for a little.” As good a description of a movie career as she’d heard, India reflected, and poor Nijinsky had died insane. Still, what else was she fit for? She’d wanted her career, worked hard for it, and now she just had to stay up there, defying gravity. Self-pity began to overwhelm India West once more. The phone rang just as she was about to get out of bed and comfort herself with pillowcases.

“Miss West. This is Jane Smith of ‘Sixty Minutes.’ We’ve decided to investigate the India West Syndrome and I’ll be out next week with a crew to follow you around for a month or so. My particular interest is in the problem of stardom, starting, of course, with the pimple on your ass …”

“MAXI! You angel, you blessing … how could you go away for so long … where are you calling from?… Are you really coming here? I’m all by myself and so very lonely.”

“No, I’m in New York and I’m not going anywhere, probably for the rest of my life. I have such a hangover that I don’t think I’ll live. I called you up to say goodbye forever.”

“You too? I’m curing mine with a Bloody Mary. Go make one—I’ll hold on.”

“What a sickening idea … I’d throw up.”

“Look, chemically tomato juice is half salt and half potassium. It replaces your electrolytes quicker than a transfusion and you can’t smell the vodka if you use enough Tabasco. The best internist in Beverly Hills told me to do it, honest.”

“All right … but don’t go away. I’ll hurry.”

As she waited by the phone India felt reborn. With
Maxi back on the same continent, even a sinister Beverly Hills Sunday seemed filled with promise. Maxi couldn’t enter a room without creating a fiesta.

Over the clinking of ice cubes Maxi returned to the phone. “I know why I got drunk but why did you?”

“It was the party last night. I went by myself and there wasn’t anybody there I wanted to talk to. Then a definitely fascinating guy walked in and I perked up until he got close enough so that I could read his T-shirt.”

“India, I’ve warned you never to read T-shirts. They’re pure aggression. What did it say?” Maxi asked, breathless with curiosity.

“ ‘Life Is Shit and Then You Die.’ ”

“You’ve got to get out of that place! When T-shirts start to drive you to drink …”

“And eat,” India said on a dire note. “Everything in sight.”

“Think of it this way,” Maxi advised. “One night’s eating isn’t going to show on your thighs and if you don’t get compulsive and
confess
to Mike Abrums, he can’t read your mind and you can reveal all the awful things you did when you see Doctor Florsheim because she never makes judgments.”

“Oh, Maxi, you’re right! When you’re not here there’s nobody to put me in perspective except myself and I’m not good at it yet.”

“It takes two for perspective.”

“Maybe
that
could be the title for my novel,” India said excitedly.

“Are you writing a novel?”

“I’m going to start as soon as I get the right title. I have a feeling that it’s what I should be doing. I’ve always wanted to write and half the people in town are being published—so why not me?”

“Instead of being the most beautiful movie star in the world?”

“Exactly. What do you think of
‘If Hell Is Other People, Then Heaven Is Smoked Fish’
?”

“
India
!” Maxi sputtered. “Not while I’m drinking.”

“Then you like it?”

“It’s divine, but a little too esoteric. Anything more mass market?”

“How about a science-fiction novel? I rather like
‘Chateau Margaux 2001.’ 
”

“No, India, no.”

“Well then,
‘Married Men Don’t Have Wet Dreams.’ 
”

“A hard case to prove.”

“How about
‘Hamlet Was An Only Child’
?”

“What does it mean?”

“I think it speaks for itself,” India said with dignity.

“Look, India, I’m worried about you—seriously. Going to parties alone, getting drunk, thinking up novel titles, next thing you know you’ll be counting your sheets again. And you know what that means. It’s not healthy for you to be alone in that monster house. What ever happened to that heavenly housekeeper who used to do tarot cards with you?”

“Doctor Florsheim told me I had to stop relying on friendships I paid for, so that means no live-in help.”

“Are you sure you’re neurotic enough to suffer such deprivation?” Maxi asked anxiously.

“If I wasn’t when I started, I am now.”

“I think you should tell Doctor Florsheim that you need sick leave and come visit me. I need you desperately.”

“I would in a second but I’m in the middle of a picture.”

“I was afraid of that,” Maxi said in tones of utter despair.

“Is it a man?”

“Ten times worse than the worst man I ever met, or even married. Worse than Laddie Kirkgordon.”

“Nothing could be that bad … you’re not sick, are you?” India asked.

“No, not unless you count stupidity as a terminal disease. And arrogance and misjudgment, lack of information, acting like an idiot and jumping off the deep end into an empty pool.”

“But that sounds exactly like you when you fall in love. I knew it was a man,” India insisted, her hangover cured by
the sound of Maxi’s voice, and the familiar delight of hearing about Maxi’s improbable problems.

“If you hold on while I make myself another Bloody Mary,” Maxi said in resignation, “I’ll tell you the whole hideous story.”

“Goody!” India cried and settled down for a lovely long listen.

Cutter Amberville’s return to San Francisco, after such a relatively short stay in New York, caused little surprise. His friends, all born-and-bred San Franciscans, felt gratified vindication of their own values. They had predicted, before he left, that nowhere in the East would he find the sweetness of life that they enjoyed, and his rejection of Manhattan proved how right they had been. Although some people persisted in calling San Francisco the Wall Street of the West, and others termed it the Paris of the United States, as far as they were concerned it was a city so unique that it need be compared to no other place on earth. Sheer civic pride alone would make San Francisco stand apart, for this quiet Spanish settlement had turned into an international boomtown when gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1848. From that time on successive waves of fortune had deposited millions, indeed billions, in the pockets of the lucky men who led the town, men whose freshly made money grew graciously mellow in less than a century.

None of Cutter’s friends—the Bohlings, the Chatfield-Taylors, the Thieriots, the de Guignés and the Blyths—ever knew that he had fled New York because of Lily. He was as welcome as a unicorn, that desirable legendary animal whose horn was reputed to possess magical properties—for was not an eligible yet unattached bachelor almost as rare as a unicorn?