Once Is Not Enough (12 page)

It was later when they were lying together that she gave him the rules. “Dee must never know. If you want to go on seeing me,
no one
must know.” He agreed. He held her close and poured out devotion and promises. And he heard himself say, “Any way you want it, Karla. You see, I’m in love with you.”

Her sigh was tremulous. “I am fifty-two. Too old for love . . . and much too old for you.”

“I’m twenty-eight. That’s not exactly a boy.”

She laughed. “Twenty-eight, and so very handsome.” She
stroked his cheek. “A very young twenty-eight. But . . . perhaps we can be happy for a time. That is, if you behave.”

“How do you want me to behave?”

“I have told you. Also, you must promise never to try to reach me. I shall not give you my phone number and you must never come here unless I invite you.”

“Then how do I see you?”

“I will call you when I want you. And you must not speak of love. You must not imagine yourself in love with me or you will be very unhappy.”

He smiled. “I’m afraid that happened when I was fourteen . . .” He stopped. Goddammit, that was wrong, showing the disparity of their ages. But she had smiled.

“You love the Karla you saw in movies; you do not know the real Karla.”

He had held her close and knew a strange excitement as he felt her small flat breasts against his body. He liked breasts. But oddly enough it hadn’t bothered him that she had none. Her body was strong and firm. A dancer’s body. He had read stories about her early training in Poland for the ballet—how she had been forced to escape to London during the war and went directly into pictures as an actress. How she still worked out on the bar four hours a day. She had changed studios many times because of photographers who learned the address and waited to catch her. He had also heard that she had been a lesbian during her early days in Hollywood. All these thoughts came to him as he held her in his arms. But these stories were part of the legend . . . the woman of mystery . . . the woman photographers still chased everywhere. But at that moment she seemed to belong to him completely . . . her ardor and passion were young . . . she clung to him when they made love. Yet when it was over, a curtain came down, and Karla, the legend, returned.

That had been last spring. They had spent a fantastic month together. A month in which he wandered around feeling everything was unreal except his meetings with Karla. A month when he awoke each day not really believing this miracle was happening to him. But there was always the frustration of not being able to call, of having a sandwich sent in at lunch for
fear of missing her call, of walking through all work and conversation until the call finally came.

And then one day there was no call. He tried not to panic. Perhaps she didn’t feel well. Maybe she had the curse. Hell, did women of fifty-two still get the curse?

The following day there were the familiar pictures in the newspaper. Karla ducking photographers at Kennedy Airport. She was off to Europe, destination unknown. He had tried to check her plane reservations, but it was obvious she had used another name. One enterprising reporter claimed a ticket agent thought she was going to South America. But it was all just speculation. She was gone. That was all he knew.

He had tried to sound casual when he phoned Dee that night. He had talked about stocks, the weather, about her plans for Marbella . . . And when he finally managed to bring up Karla’s disappearance, Dee had laughed. “Oh, dear boy, she always does that. Karla refuses to have roots. That’s why her apartment is hardly furnished. If it were too comfortable, she might feel she actually lives there.”

“Has she always been like this?”

Dee sounded bored. “Always. I met Karla in California at the height of her fame. I was married to Emery then, and his book had just been bought by Karla’s studio. Naturally, Emery was frantic to meet her—most people still are—but you can imagine what it was like then. Well, Emery knew a director who knew Karla, and one great day—for Emery, that is—Karla actually appeared at a Sunday brunch. That was about 1954. Karla was at the peak of her fame and beauty. I must say she did generate a certain magnetism when she entered that room. She was painfully shy . . .” Dee laughed and he realized she was warming to the subject. “But she gravitated to me that day because she has an animal cunning and she knew I was the only one in that room that wasn’t impressed and it amused her. I was nice to her for Emery’s sake. And she actually invited us to her place for a drink the following week.” Dee sighed. “Talk about Falcon’s Lair. This was it. Not in the chic part of Beverly Hills, but way up in some godforsaken hills, surrounded by a twelve-foot stone wall she had had built. The house was barely furnished. It looked as if she had just moved
in. I swear there were still crates in the halls, and she had lived there five years. No one ever saw the rest of the house, but I understand that aside from the living room and bedroom, it was empty. She didn’t do Emery’s picture, and years later after I had divorced Emery and Karla had retired, we met and became friends. But one must take Karla as she is. The key to her personality is the three S’s. Secretive, stingy, and stupid! Once you realize that—you understand Karla.”

Dee had gone off to Marbella and he had tried to put Karla out of his mind. He had gone back to the models he had been dating. He got involved with Kim Voren, a gorgeous Dutch model who adored him but told him he was an unsatisfactory, selfish lover. That had rattled him. He had always been a good lover. But with Karla on his mind . . . perhaps something was missing in his lovemaking. On top of this came the explosive news of Dee’s marriage, which threw the family into panic and jolted him back to reality. Dee was their security. Karla was gone, and he had to get back to the business of everyday living.

He gave his full attention to his work. He turned on the charm for Kim, and within a few days she exuberantly retracted her opinion of his lovemaking. And as he settled into his normal routine he almost appreciated the security of knowing what each day would bring. No wild highs . . . but also no agonizing lows. No sitting and waiting for the private phone in his office to ring.

And then, eight days ago, it rang again. Right in the middle of an active trading session. The low voice . . . the heavy accent. She was back! Ten minutes later he was ringing the bell of her apartment. When she greeted him he had not been able to conceal his amazement. It was as if she had stepped out of one of her old movies. She looked barely thirty. The magnificent face had no lines . . . the skin was taut across the cheekbones. She had laughed as she grasped his hands. “I am not going to tell you Karla had a long rest,” she said. “I will tell you the truth. I was so tired of my face not matching the firmness of my body. So I had something done. A wonderful man in Brazil. . . .”

She had not called Dee and she told him to keep her arrival
secret. “I am not up to Dee’s questions about my face. Or her gossip with her friends.”

And now it was as if she had never left. They saw each other every day. He would either go to her apartment at five, or they would meet and go to a ballet picture or a foreign movie. Then they would return to her apartment and make love. Afterward they would go to her kitchen and watch television as they ate the steaks they cooked together. Karla had no servants—she hated strangers to be around her. A maid came in every few days at nine, and left at noon.

She also adored television. She had a set in every room. She wasn’t interested in the news . . . she hated the war . . . pictures of it made her shudder. David realized she had lived through World War II in an occupied country. She refused to talk about it and he never pressed it. He was not eager to remind her that in 1939, when Poland was occupied, he had not even been born.

He finished dressing and looked at his watch. Six forty-five. He walked into the living room and mixed himself a short martini. In less than an hour he had to be at Dee’s to meet this stepdaughter she had inherited. Dee hadn’t sprung this dinner engagement on him until yesterday. And when he told Karla about it last night, she had smiled and said she understood. “Do not be upset. I shall invite an old friend over to eat your steak tomorrow.”

She hadn’t called today. Because she had no reason to call. She had told him to come by at the usual time tomorrow. If only he could call her now. This was the most frustrating part of their relationship. How could he play the man if he had to sit like a love-sick girl and wait for her to call the shots? He sat back and sipped his drink. He felt oddly unsettled. He wasn’t quite sure what bothered him the most—the idea that he wasn’t going to see her tonight, or the realization that she wasn’t in the least upset. And now he was racked with a frantic kind of desperation, a sensation he had never known until he met Karla. If only he could call her and tell her he missed her, that perhaps it would be an early evening and they could still be together. He swallowed his drink. It was an impossible
situation, not being able to call her; she had even taken the precaution of removing the number from the dial of her phones. It robbed the affair of some of its intimacy. What intimacy? He made love to her and she enjoyed it.
He
was the one who was emotionally involved. Actually she didn’t give a damn. But it didn’t matter. All he lived for was to be with her, and tonight
he
had been forced to break the date because of Dee. Dee didn’t know what it meant to feel like this. Goddammit but he hated Dee!

His mood was still heavy when he pressed the buzzer to Dee’s apartment. Mario, who doubled as chauffeur and butler when Dee was in New York, answered the door. Mike greeted him, and Mario set about to fix him a martini.

“Dee’s having her hair combed,” Mike said. “One of those guys with the tight pants comes up every night.” Then the door opened and Dee swept into the room. She put her cheek to Mike, who dutifully kissed it, floated over to David and told him how perfectly marvelous he was looking, and he in turn kissed her cheek and told her how marvelous she looked. Then he sat on the edge of the couch; made the proper small talk with Mike and wondered where in hell the daughter was.

He had almost finished his martini when she came into the room. He heard himself accepting the introduction, asking the stock questions—How was her trip? Did she feel the jet lag everyone talked about? But he knew he was staring like an idiot. Holy God! She was a real knockout!

He heard himself promising to take her to Le Club, to Maxwell’s Plum, Daly’s Dandelion—to all the places she hadn’t seen. Good God, he was saying he’d get tickets for
Hair
. He lit a cigarette and wondered how he would ever manage to extricate himself from all these offers he had suddenly made. He had been talking from nerves. Well, he was plenty unnerved. He hadn’t expected anything like this. He sat back and tried to think rationally. Okay, January was an exceptionally beautiful young girl. But she wasn’t Karla. Yet one day Karla would pick up and leave again. He must realize that. Karla was just something insane and wonderful that was happening in his life.

Suddenly he realized he was just staring. He had to say something.

“Do you play backgammon?” he asked.

“No, but I’d like to learn,” January said.

“Fine. I’d be delighted to teach you.” He finished his drink. (Oh, great! Now he was going to teach her backgammon!) He’d better shut up and go easy on the martinis. He decided to keep it impersonal and began talking about the backgammon tournaments in Vegas, London, and Los Angeles. Dee was their family champ. She always did well. He heard himself explaining how the tournaments went, about the betting . . . Suddenly he stopped. He had a feeling that she really didn’t give a damn about backgammon and was just listening to please him. This couldn’t be happening! He was Karla’s lover. And this young girl was throwing him off base. It was her incredible cool. That easy half smile that was making him run off at the mouth like an idiot.

The doorbell rang and Mario admitted two couples who had arrived together. David found himself accepting another martini. He knew he shouldn’t, but the girl had a disconcerting effect on him. He watched the easy nonchalance with which she accepted the introductions. And always that quick smile . . .

He also noticed that her constant focal point was her father. Her eyes followed him wherever he moved, and occasionally they would exchange a wink as if they shared some private joke.

Dee’s guests were paying January extravagant compliments. She accepted them quietly, but he could tell she wasn’t impressed. Then it hit him that maybe she wasn’t overly impressed with him either. This was a new experience. Like when the Dutch girl told him he wasn’t great in bed. Was he allowing Karla to swallow him alive? Drain him of all of his personality? For the rest of the evening he made a concerted effort to put Karla out of his mind and concentrated on January. Yet as the evening progressed, he had the uneasy feeling that he wasn’t reaching her in any way.

Actually he was having an extremely disconcerting effect on her. After Dee’s “selling job” she had been prepared to dislike him on sight. Instead she found this marvelous-looking
young man who didn’t seem at all taken with himself. He was very tall. Ordinarily she didn’t like blond men, but David’s hair was dark brown and sun-streaked. He was tanned and his eyes were brown.

She liked him. She really did. And that half smile that bothered him had been the nearest thing to a mask that she could manage. The muscles of her face actually ached, trying to hold that smile as she watched Mike in the role of “Dee’s husband.” Because from the attitude of everyone—Dee’s friends, even the waiters and maitre d’ at the restaurant—she was still Deirdre Milford Granger . . . and Mike was just her newest husband.

They had gone to dinner at Raffles, a discotheque restaurant next door to the Pierre. Dee directed the seating arrangements at the large round table. Mike was wedged in between two women: a Rosa Contalba, a middle-aged Spanish lady whose escort was a young Yugoslavian artist she was sponsoring, the other woman was plain and a bit on the large side. Her diamonds were also large. And her husband was enormous. He sat to the left of January and felt it was his duty to make small talk. He went into an endless story about their ranch in Montana. At first she tried to appear interested but soon realized that an “Oh, really!” or “That’s very interesting!” was all he seemed to need. There was cross-talk back and forth—summer vacations and winter plans. Rosa was going on a photographic safari to Africa. The stout woman was too tired after the season in East Hampton to even
think
of the winter yet. And everyone asked Dee when she was opening the Winter Palace in Palm Beach.