The Slipper (37 page)

“Soon you'll get a play, too,” Nora told her. “It's inevitable.”

“And in the meantime, I'm working,” Julie said, lighting another cigarette. “We should be able to afford a new sofa next month.”

“God knows we need one. This place is a dump.”

“But it's ours,” Julie said.

“And it has character. I'd better go start my bath, love. I'd give anything if I didn't have this shitty party, but Ross insists we attend 'em all, add a little class. You and Jim have a good time. Save me some moo goo gai pan.”

At eight-fifteen Nora was stepping out of the elevator into the foyer of the spacious penthouse apartment of Jason Pollen's publisher. Soft music was tinkling. The caterers were setting up the tables. Smoked salmon. Caviar. Sliced beef and turkey. Wonderful hors d'oeuvres. A dazzling array of bottles crowded the surface of the white marble bar. No expense spared tonight, but then Hollywood people were coming, press, too. Kilgallen would probably appear, looking like a startled chipmunk in a tight satin sheath. Nora gave herself a quick examination in the mirror: pageboy long and sleek, face made up for party time, simple black brocade cocktail dress with spaghetti straps, black velvet waistband, narrow skirt. Chic. Sophisticated. The black high-heeled pumps were already killing her.

“Here you are,” Sage said. “Right on the dot. The onslaught's due to begin any minute now. Ross's in the kitchen pouring black coffee down Jason's throat. You look divine.”

“So do you.”

Sage was wearing a strapless leaf-brown linen sheath and a fake Aztec necklace of gold, green and blue, looking like something from
Vogue
.

“Why is it I always feel like a call girl at these shindigs?” Nora inquired.

“We serve the same function, only we don't put out.”

“Some of us don't,” Nora replied, glancing at another girl from the office neither of them liked.

“You mustn't be unkind, Nora. Celia's just a girl who knows how to get a head.”

“So they tell me.”

Shortly thereafter the guests began to arrive, and Nora and Sage went into their number. Their function was to greet the guests, smile, charm, empty the ashtrays, make pleasant chatter, keep things perking, see that everyone had plenty to eat, plenty to drink. Nora made like an airline stewardess and scintillated and the place was soon packed with authors, editors, boisterous Hollywood types with loud voices and smelly cigars. Kilgallen did appear sheathed in pink satin, and Jack Paar came, too, Jason being a frequent guest on his show. Ross darted about looking very nervous, his bald pate gleaming with perspiration, his maroon velvet dinner jacket extremely ill advised. He slapped backs and pumped hands and negotiated deals, filling the air with his own electricity. The guest of honor still hadn't made an appearance at nine-thirty, but no one seemed to notice. Everyone was too busy trying to make an impression on everyone else. Eyebrows were elevated when a beaming Truman Capote appeared at ten, looking like a wicked elf in black velvet suit and pink bow tie. Jason and Capote had recently blasted each other's prose in print, their “feud” avidly chronicled by the lightweight press.

“Christ!” Ross roared. “What the hell is
he
doing here?”

“Don't ask me,” Nora said, “
I
didn't invite him.”

“Jason is going to shit!”

“Where
is
Jason?”

“He's still in the kitchen. Dick's working him over with cold wet rags, feeding him more coffee.”

“With all that coffee, I doubt seriously he'll shit.”

“Lip! There's Bennett, he looks glum; Rand must be acting up. Go fetch him a drink, make a pun, cheer him up. If I get through this evening alive, it'll be a miracle.”

“If I get through this evening alive, I expect a hefty raise.”

“Go!” he thundered.

Nora smiled and chatted with Bennett Cerf and cheered him up and endured his atrocious puns and then she casually sauntered past the buffet table, spying two unopened tins of caviar on a box behind it. She had already spirited a bottle of Chivas Regal out onto the terrace, hiding it behind a potted rubber tree plant. She sauntered on, awaiting the right opportunity. The noise level was deafening. The air was dense with smoke. Capote was holding court in one corner. Kilgallen was taking notes. Sage was fending off the advances of a tipsy Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. The kitchen door banged open and there was a mighty roar and Jason Pollen finally made his appearance, charging upon the party like some crazed, wounded lion.

Pollen was the darling of the literary establishment, deified by
The New York Review of Books
, given a cover by
Time
, hailed by most of the critics as Hemingway's successor and the Great Hope of American Literature. Nora found his prose turgid and self-indulgent, his macho posturing sophomoric, but with the exception of Capote and one or two others, hers was a voice in the wilderness. Bursting upon the scene with a gigantic novel about boxing, Pollen had captivated critics and public alike with his crude, bullish shenanigans, many marriages, drinking bouts and drunken brawls. A self-proclaimed genius, Pollen declared himself the best goddamned writer in this whole goddamned country and continued to churn out turgid epics that, because they were dense, because they were wordy and frequently incoherent, most felt must be brilliant. A former boxer himself, Pollen was a Man's Man with a vengeance, outdoing Hemingway himself in ostentatious virility.

Forty-six now, he was stockily built, not overly tall and running to fat, with a battered, jowly face, a broken nose, squinty black eyes and blond hair that roiled atop his head in short Harpo Marx curls. Roaring mightily, grabbing a drink, he wore soiled gray slacks, white shirt, a brown tie torn loose at the throat and a deplorably rumpled brown tweed jacket. He hailed guests with gusto, reeling dangerously and putting on a dandy act as the middle-aged enfant terrible of American letters. He bragged loudly about the brawl last night, laughed about his time in the slammer, grabbed another drink, kissed a startled young editor, stopped dead still when he spotted Truman Capote grinning at his performance.

A dead hush fell over the crowd. Pollen turned pale, and then he turned pink and began to stamp the floor with one foot, exactly like a bull. With a mighty yell he slammed his fist down onto a glass-topped coffee table, smashing it to smithereens. He took several deep breaths, snorting, getting ready to charge. Breaths were held. Sheridan looked as though he might faint.

“Oh, come
on
, Jason,” Capote chirped. “No one has to work
that
hard to prove he's got a pair of balls.”

Pollen reeled backward as though sustaining a blow and then he threw his head back and roared with laughter, reeling toward Capote and slinging an arm around his shoulders.

“I
like
this little bastard!” he yelled. “He may write affected, prissy stories, but he's got
guts
! Where's the bartender? I wanna buy my little buddy a drink!”

There was a round of applause and sighs of relief and the incident would undoubtedly be written up in a dozen columns, garnering tons of publicity for both of them. Seizing her opportunity, Nora deftly snatched the two tins of caviar and, unnoticed, carried them out to the terrace and placed them behind the rubber tree plant, to be retrieved later and carried home in the shoulder bag she always brought to these parties. It was pleasantly cool on the terrace. Nora rested her elbows on the smooth marble bannister and gazed at the misty black sky, starless, streaked with moonlight. Below, the city was shadowy black blocks spangled with light, and Nora remembered those corny scenes in countless B movies where hero or heroine stood on bridge or balcony gazing at the New York skyline and raised a fist and vowed, “New York, I'm gonna conquer you yet!” And, corny as it was, that's exactly how she felt, her heart filled with longing, with need, with determination.

Someone pinched her ass.

Nora whirled around. A short, rotund man with beaming moon-shaped face, horn-rimmed glasses and thinning brown hair grinned at her in the light streaming out through the French windows. In natty black suit and flashy blue silk tie, he reminded her of the Pillsbury Dough Boy, plump, amiable, full of mischief. Her ass still smarted. He had quite a pinch.

“How 'bout it, chick? Why don't we ditch this dump and have ourselves a
real
party at my suite at the Pierre.”

“Fuck off, creep.”

“Whatsa matter? My money not good enough for you?”

“How'd you like a knee in the groin?”

The plump little man looked puzzled, the huge brown eyes behind his horn-rims suddenly bewildered. “You mean you're not a bimbo?” he asked.

“I'm not a bimbo. I happen to be a literary agent.”

“A literary agent, hunh? Jesus, my mistake.” He looked properly apologetic, and then he grinned a wide grin. “You're still a knockout broad, best looker in the whole joint.”

“You need a new pair of glasses, Buster.”

His grin grew even wider. He exuded boyish amiability, and you couldn't help but like him, even if he was an ass-pincher. Nora sighed, pretending to be disgusted. The man took out an enormous brown cigar, unwrapped it and bit the end off, then lighted it with a solid gold lighter. Hollywood. Had to be. Nora squinted, examining his face more closely, and she remembered seeing his picture then and realized who he was. Terry Wood, born Irving Goldstein, former story editor at Twentieth Century Fox and, for the past decade, hotshot film producer, celebrated for his all-star epics based on best-selling novels, his brazen ripoffs of others' story ideas and his phenomenal exploits at the gambling tables. Because he could spell “cat” without a “k,” because he had been chummy with Fannie Hurst during the thirties, Hollywood considered him “literary.” Rumor had it that Schulberg had based his Sammy Glick on this same Terry Wood, né Goldstein.

“A literary agent, hunh?” he said, puffing on the cigar. “So what da ya handle?”

“Shit.”

“What kinda shit?”

“Sweet nurse romances. Hard-boiled detective tales. Lesbian novels.”

“Afraid there's not much demand for any of them in my line of work. I'm Terry Wood, maybe you've heard-a me. I make movies.”

“I've heard of you,” she said dryly.

“Yeah? What'd ya hear?”

“I heard you were an unprincipled rogue, a charlatan, a thief, a plagiarist and the most brilliant producer in Hollywood.”

“The last part's true,” he admitted candidly. “Ever see any of my movies?”

“Several of them. They're sleek, glossy, grabby, terrific entertainment. You know what the public wants.”

“And I deliver every time. You're a gutsy little broad, aren't ya? Not a bit intimidated by me. I like that. Most people tremble in their boots because I'm so powerful and important. Gets kinda tiresome. Actually, I'm very lovable.”

“And your wife doesn't understand you,” she said.

“The last one understood me well enough, took me for a couple of million, a house on Rexford Drive, a chalet in Gstaad and a fortune in diamond baubles. She also took my chef, damn the bitch, good chefs are hard to come by.”

“You producing Jason's latest epic?”

“Naw, I just flew in with the guys, hoping to find me another hot property. I'm lookin' for another blockbuster, something along the lines of
Peyton Place
and
The Best of Everything
, something with a lotta attractive young people and a whole lotta humpin'.”

Nora looked at his amiable, moon-shaped face and took a deep breath, mind racing a mile a minute. Why the hell not? What did she have to lose? Couldn't hurt anything. Although she didn't drink that much, she longed for a slug of whiskey to give herself courage. She took another deep breath, then plunged right in.

“I just happen to know about a book you might be interested in. It's not finished yet, won't be ready to show for at least a couple of months, but it's a doozy, has everything.”

Terry Wood took another puff of his cigar. The butt glowed bright orange in the semidarkness. The noise of the party roared behind the French doors, a frenzied, muted background. Nora's throat felt tight. Her heart was beating much too rapidly. The producer was suddenly all business, his eyes shrewd behind the thick horn-rims, all amiability gone. Poppin' Fresh had been transformed into a shark. No one survived on top in Hollywood for over twenty-five years without being a tough son of a bitch, and Nora suspected Wood was one of the toughest.

“So what's it called? What's it about?”

“It—it's called
The Slipper
,” Nora said nervously, improvising. “It's about—about these three young girls who meet in college, all of 'em dreaming of fame and glory. One of them, Anne, she wants to be a—uh—a dress designer and she's wonderfully talented, always making gorgeous sketches of clothes, but she-she's very shy and timid and she's only eighteen and she's married to a cold, handsome son of a bitch and working as a waitress in a greasy spoon to put him through med school. He meets a rich debutante who can do more for him and divorces Anne and leaves her penniless and pregnant.”

“So?”

“So she comes to New York with her friend—uh—her friend Susan, determined to make it as a designer. Susan is a beauty, cool and lovely, she looks like Grace Kelly, and
she
dreams of becoming a top fashion model. All the men are after her, but she—uh—Susan's in love with a man old enough to be her father. He's spoiled her for all the gorgeous young studs who flock around in droves. Unfortunately, he's very married, and his wife refuses to give him a divorce. All the fame and riches she acquires as a model can't compensate for her broken heart.”

“And the third girl?”

“Her name's Billie. She's bright and cute and cocky, and she's very insecure. Billie desperately wants to be popular in college but boys don't like girls who're smarter than they are, so she's a wallflower, all alone on Saturday night. Billie wants to be a journalist, works on the college paper, hopes to get a job with
The New York Times
, and she's good, damned good, but lonely. She decides to do something about it, goes out with a jock who needs help with his term paper in English and puts out for him. She starts going out with his buddies on the track team and soon becomes the town pump, the most popular kid on campus with the horny set.”