The Lonely Lady (29 page)

“How about a drink?” he asked. “We have everything.”

“A glass of white wine?”

“You got it.”

I took the glass from him and sat on the couch where he indicated. The men sat on chairs in a semicircle around me.

DaCosta translated for Paoluzzi. “Are you working right now?”

“No, but I’m considering a few things.”

Paoluzzi nodded as if he understood. “Do you prefer theater to films?” DaCosta asked, translating for Paoluzzi.

“I can’t tell,” I said. “I’ve never really had a film role that I felt was rewarding.”

Paoluzzi nodded, then spoke again. “The Maestro says that Hollywood has destroyed the American film industry with their emphasis on television. At one time they led the world but now the leadership has passed to Europe. They are the only ones to make films that have any artistic or real values.”

I sipped my wine and we sat in awkward silence for a moment until there was a knock at the door.

DaCosta jumped up and hurried out into the foyer. He returned with a tall red-headed woman wearing a beaded green evening dress and a long black mink stole. The men got to their feet and kissed her hand as they were introduced. Then DaCosta looked at me. “Marge Small, JeriLee Randall.”

There was an antagonistic look in the girl’s eyes. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I replied.

“You’re with the consigliere,” he said, pointing at Guercio.

She nodded casually. “Okay.”

The attorney smiled at her. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You got some champagne?”

He nodded and she followed him to the bar, where he filled two glasses, one for her and one for himself. They stayed there, talking in low tones. I wondered what they were saying.

DaCosta interrupted my thoughts. “The Maestro wants to know if you ever thought of working in Italy?”

“Nobody ever asked me,” I said.

“He says you would do very well there. You’re the type they’re looking for.”

“Tell him I’m available.”

Paoluzzi smiled, got to his feet, then vanished into the next room. DaCosta picked up the phone. “Front door,” he said. “Tell Mr. Paoluzzi’s chauffeur that we’ll be down in ten minutes.”

“How long have you been with Lou?” he asked as he hung up the phone.

“A week now.”

He nodded, smiling. “I don’t know how the little bastard does it. He always comes up with a winner.”

“I’m a little confused,” I said. “Mr. Bradley told me you were a producer.”

He laughed. “He never gets anything right. I’m a producer’s rep. Paoluzzi’s the producer.”

“I see,” I said, although I really didn’t. “What’s the picture about?”

“Damned if I know. Every meeting we go to he tells a different story. I’m willing to bet that none of them are what he’s going to make. He’s afraid that if he tells the real story someone’ll steal the idea. It doesn’t make my life any easier, I tell you.”

“Why?”

“I’m supposed to raise American financing for him and our money people don’t work that way. They want to know what they’re getting into.”

“You’re Italian?” I asked.

“American. My parents were Italian.”

“You come from New York?”

“Brooklyn. My father and brothers are in business out there.”

Suddenly I remembered why his name was familiar. The DaCosta family. They certainly were in business out there. They owned the waterfront. One of the five families that divided up New York. Now I understood what Bradley meant.

He smiled, as if he had read my mind. “I’m the black sheep of the family,” he said. “I didn’t want to go into the business. They all think I’m stupid for beating my brains out in show business.”

Suddenly I liked him. There was something disarmingly honest about him. “I don’t think you are,” I said.

The bedroom door opened and the Paoluzzis came out. I couldn’t help but stare at her. None of the pictures I had seen of her had done her justice. Without a doubt she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

I saw her swift appraising glance of Marge Small. In a moment she turned to me, and I knew the girl had been dismissed from her mind as if she never existed. “I’m sorry I took so long,” she said in a soft pleasantly accented voice.

“It’s all right,” I said.

DaCosta led the way to the car and opened the door. In the limousine he sat up front with the driver. The lawyer and Marge were on the jump seats and the Maestro sat between his wife and me. We went to Romeo Salta’s, a restaurant only two blocks from the hotel.

At dinner there was no mistaking who the star was. We had the best table and Carla Maria the best seat. She got the same kind of treatment at El Morocco, where we went after dinner. Mysteriously, photographers appeared everywhere we went, and in a curious way it felt good even if it wasn’t for me. It had been a long time since I had been around this kind of show business excitement.

“Dance?” DaCosta asked.

We went out onto the small crowded dance floor. The music was sedate. It was not until after one o’clock that they went into any rock. He held me closely as we moved slowly to the Sinatra record on the stereo system.

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked.

I nodded. “It’s fun.”

“Do you really have some jobs on the fire?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You wouldn’t be with Luigi if you did. He’s generally a desperation area.” His eyes were serious as he looked down at me. “You have talent, real talent. What went wrong?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know. Everything. It’s like—one day it was all there and, the next day—nothing.”

“It’s the breaks,” he said. “It happens like that sometimes.”

I didn’t answer.

“Carla Maria likes you,” he said.

I was pleased. “I like her too. She’s really a fantastic lady. You can tell her I said so.”

“The Maestro also likes you.”

“Good. He must be a great talent.”

He found an opening and steered me to a corner of the dance floor near the wall. “He was wondering if you would be interested in doing a scene with Carla Maria.”

“I would,” I said quickly. Then I looked at his face and knew we weren’t talking about the same thing. I felt myself turning red. I didn’t know what to say.

“It’s okay,” he said finally. “You don’t have to.”

“I’m surprised,” I said. “I just didn’t expect this.”

“They have their own ideas of fun,” he said. “I’m just delivering the message.”

“Is that part of your job too?”

“That and a lot of other things.”

When we got back to the table Guercio and the other woman had gone. I caught the signal that passed between Paoluzzi and DaCosta, then the producer got to his feet and said something in Italian.

DaCosta looked at me. “The Maestro apologizes but it’s time to leave. He has appointments early in the morning.”

We all rose and almost caused a collision between captains and waiters rushing to move the table out of the way. Carla Maria and her husband led the way out of the club, DaCosta and I brought up the rear.

The limousine rolled up as we came out the door. “The Maestro wants to know if we can drop you off on the way back to the hotel?” Da Costa said.

“No, thanks. I live over on the West Side. Tell him I’ll grab a cab. And thank him for a lovely evening.”

DaCosta repeated it in Italian. Paoluzzi smiled, bowed and kissed my hand again. Then he looked into my eyes and said something.

DaCosta translated words. “He says that he hopes he has the good fortune to work with you someday.”

“I do too,” I said.

I held out my hand to Carla Maria. She smiled. “That is not the way we say good night in Italy.” She leaned forward, pressing her cheek against both of mine and making kissing sounds. “Ciao,” she said.

“Ciao.”

They got into the limousine. DaCosta escorted me to my taxi and pressed a bill into my hand. “Cab fare,” he said.

“No,” I said, trying to push it away.

“Take it. It’s on the expense account.” He closed the door of the cab before I could protest again. “Good night.”

“Good night,” I said as the taxi moved away from the curb.

“Where to, lady?” the driver asked.

I gave him the address.

“Was that Carla Maria Perino getting into that limo?” the cab driver asked.

“Yes.”

“Gee.” His voice was filled with a whispering wonder. “She’s really something else, ain’t she, lady?”

“She really is,” I said, and I meant it. Then I remembered the bill I had in my hand. For a moment as I looked down at it I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I had never seen a real five-hundred-dollar bill before.

Chapter 19

I called him on the house phone at nine o’clock the next morning. He sounded sleepy.

“JeriLee Randall,” I said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay,” he said.

“I just want you to know that I left the money you gave me in an envelope at the desk in your name,” I said. “Thank you anyway.”

“Wait a minute!” He sounded wide awake now. “Where are you calling from?”

“The lobby.”

“Don’t go away. I’ll be down in a minute. We can have a cup of coffee or some breakfast.”

“I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“I want to see you.”

I put down the phone. In less than three minutes he came out of the elevator. He hadn’t been asleep as I had thought. He was already shaved and dressed. He didn’t speak until after we had gone into the restaurant and the waiter had brought us some coffee.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said.

“Neither did you.”

“You don’t understand. It’s all part of the business.”

“But it’s not my business,” I said.

“You really are an old-fashioned girl, aren’t you?”

“No. New-fashioned. I don’t believe in taking money I haven’t earned.”

“What are you going to do for a job?” he asked.

“Keep on looking,” I said.

“I’ll talk to Luigi about you. I’ll make sure he doesn’t hustle you.”

“I’m not going back to him.” I hesitated. “Is Paoluzzi really going to do a picture in which he needs an American actress?”

“Paoluzzi is only interested in doing pictures with his wife,” he said.

“Then there wasn’t really a job?”

“No.”

“That’s what I finally figured out. I guess I’m really stupid.”

“It’s a stupid business. There are millions of girls and very few jobs. Even those with talent rarely make it.”

“I’ll make it,” I said. “I did it once.”

“Weren’t you married to Walter Thornton?” he asked.

I knew what he was getting at. “They gave me the Tony for acting, not because my husband wrote the play.”

“But everybody needs a friend,” he said. “At least that gets you past the secretaries.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Paoluzzi kept me up half the night talking about you. He says you can get more work than you can handle in Italy—with the right kind of a sponsor.”

“Meaning himself?” I asked.

He nodded.

“No, thanks,” I said. I started to get up.

He put a hand on my arm to stop me. “Don’t be a fool. I could name a half dozen stars who made it that way including Carla Maria. And she was only seventeen when he found her in Naples a dozen years ago.”

“It’s not my style. I came close to it once and it left me feeling like half a human being.”

“Independence isn’t what it’s cracked up to be,” he said. “Most independent people I know are broke.”

“What about you? I notice you didn’t go into the family business.”

He reddened slightly. “That’s different.”

“Why is it different?”

“Because I’m a man and you’re a girl. I can take care of myself better than you can.”

“Maybe you can right now, but I’ll learn. And when I do, there’ll be no difference.”

“The world won’t change. If you’re smart you’ll find some nice guy, get married and have a couple of kids.”

“Is that the only answer you have for me?”

“That. Or the other. And you already said you’re not interested in the other.”

“You mean either I become a wife or a whore. There’s no other way for me to make it?”

“Outside chance,” he said. “One in a million.”

“My kind of odds,” I said. “Thank you for the coffee.”

He took my hand. “I like you. I’d like to see you again sometime.”

“I’d like to see you too. But on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“No business. No bullshit.”

He grinned. “You’re on. How do I get in touch with you?”

I gave him my number and we walked out to the lobby. “I’ll give you a call next week when I get these people out of town.”

“Okay,” I said. We shook hands and I went out into the street. The sun was shining, the day was warm. I didn’t know why, but suddenly I was feeling up.

I didn’t see him again for three months. And by then things were very different for both of us. My father died that summer and for the first time in my life I found out what it really meant to be alone.

There had been no work that summer, not even in summer stock. I made the rounds every day, read
Casting News
and answered every call. But without an agent I wasn’t getting anywhere. Even for television commercials you needed an agent to get you inside the doors of the advertising agencies.

Every night I would return to my small apartment exhausted, but after only a few hours’ sleep I would wake up and be unable to go back to sleep. I worked on my new play but it wasn’t coming together. Everything I wrote seemed forced and artificial. Then, after a while, I didn’t write at all. I would sit by my typewriter staring out the window at the night-darkened street, not even thinking.

Somehow my father sensed what was happening. And one day, without a word, I received a check for one hundred dollars. And from then on, the check came regularly every Monday. Without it I couldn’t have managed.

I tried to talk to him about it one day. But he would say nothing except that it was something both he and Mother wanted to do because they loved me and had faith in me. When I went to thank Mother, she looked at me coolly. “It’s your father’s idea,” she said. “I think you should come back home and live with us. I don’t hold with a young girl living alone in the city the way you do.”