Thy Neighbor's Wife (55 page)

The Los Angeles mansion, like the one in Chicago, would feature round-the-clock kitchen service, a Hefnerian lack of interest in whether it was day or night, and large parties hastily arranged by Hefner’s social secretaries whenever it suited his pleasure. Since most of the renowned movie moguls had in recent years become too old to host the gaudy, tinseled gatherings that had once been the hallmark of Hollywood, Hefner’s presence in Los Angeles was particularly welcomed, and as soon as his mansion was ready in 1971 for his first private party, the electrically operated iron gates at the bottom of the hill were opened to a procession of Rolls-Royces and Bentleys, Mercedes-Benzes, Jaguars and customized jeeps that transported up the winding ivy-walled road dozens of top producers and directors, film stars and models, all of whom were greeted in the marble hallway by a pipe-smoking silk-robed Hugh Hefner holding an open bottle of Pepsi, and by his ultra-bright princess in a high-collared low-cut blouse and tailored spangled blue denims.

As tokens of his affection, Hefner gave Barbi Benton a Maserati automobile, exquisite jewelry, beautiful clothes, and a red cotton-candy machine; and he commissioned a sculptor to do a bust of her that emphasized her sprightly sensuality and her firm pointed breasts. When Hefner was away from Los Angeles he telephoned her every day from his airplane, or from his limou
sine, or from his big Chicago bed, telling her that he loved her and missed her—which was true enough; but what he did not admit during their separations was that he was often sharing his Chicago bed with one of the new Bunnies or models who were residing temporarily at the mansion while training as waitresses at the Playboy Club or undergoing a series of test shots in the Playboy building’s photo studios.

Although Hefner was approaching forty-five, and had been involved with hundreds of photogenic women since starting his magazine, he enjoyed female companionship now more than ever; and perhaps more significant, considering all that Hefner had seen and done in recent years, was the fact that each occasion with a new woman was for him a novel experience: It was as if he was always watching for the first time a woman undress, rediscovering with delight the beauty of the female body, breathlessly expectant as panties were removed and smooth buttocks were exposed—and he never tired of the consummate act. He was a sex junkie with an insatiable habit.

He was also convinced that his hyperactive sex life was the regenerative source of his creative drive and business success, his confidence and uniqueness as a man; it was what separated him from the melancholy Fitzgeraldian characters that he otherwise identified with, those stylish romantics who feared growing older and who finally faded at forty into obscurity and despair. For the aging Hefner, the opposite had so far been true: He was happier in his forties than he had been in his thirties, and he had no doubt that in his fifties he would be even more fulfilled, that his many business enterprises would continue to thrive, and that he would possess in the center of his private paradise, as he did now, a young woman that he loved—while he simultaneously had access to skeins of migratory beauties that would bring variety and spice to his most personal moments.

During such moments in Chicago, hundreds of miles away from Barbi Benton, in the early summer of 1971, Hugh Hefner became particularly appreciative of a green-eyed zaftig blonde
from Texas named Karen Christy. Endowed with large, firm, magnificent breasts and curly platinum blond hair that flowed over her shoulders and halfway down her back, Karen Christy had been discovered in Dallas during a “Bunny hunt” conducted by one of Hefner’s associates, a Playboy Club executive named John Dante, who often traveled from city to city interviewing those women who, in reply to local newspaper ads, had expressed interest in working for one of the fifteen Playboy Clubs located around the nation. In Dallas, Karen and two hundred other applicants had assembled at the Statler-Hilton Hotel to pose in bikinis and meet with John Dante and other
Playboy
representatives. Notified weeks later that she was hired, she received an airplane ticket to Chicago and was invited to stay at the mansion while being trained to work at the Playboy Club in Miami.

Karen reacted to her acceptance with as much trepidation as joy, having never before been east of Texas and having spent most of her youth in the rural surroundings of Abilene, in a family that was unaccustomed to receiving good news. When Karen was three, her mother died from a complicated kidney disorder. Her father remarried, but this unhappy relationship ended in divorce when Karen was nine; and four years later, Karen’s father was fatally shot in a hunting accident. During those years Karen and a younger sister were alternately reared in the well-intending but barely solvent households of various aunts, uncles, or grandparents; and although Karen received federal aid as an orphan, and saved whatever money she could from her after-school jobs and her full-time secretarial position in a business office following her graduation from Cooper High in Abilene, insufficient funds forced her to drop out of North Texas State University after her freshman year.

At nineteen, however, she saw the
Playboy
ad in the local press; and later concluding that employment as a cotton-tailed waitress had to be more interesting and remunerative than working as a secretary in an office, she packed her suitcase in May 1971 and, landing at the Chicago airport, taxied to the ornate black wrought-iron front gate of Hefner’s limestone and brick do
main on North State Parkway. After the security guards in the vestibule had verified her identity, Karen Christy was escorted by a butler through a marble hall up an oaken staircase to the fourth floor, where she was directed to a door leading into the Bunny dormitory.

Behind the door she heard the sound of showers and laughter, electric hair dryers and radio music; and as she walked through the hall she saw several nude young women rushing in and out of rooms, presumably getting ready to go to work at the Playboy Club. Amazed and mildly discomfited by their extreme informality, Karen became even more self-conscious when, on entering her assigned suite, she noticed standing in front of a mirror a nude brunet brushing her hair, and a short-haired blonde seated at the dresser polishing her fingernails. While both women were friendly as Karen introduced herself, and also patiently answered her many questions about the job she would begin on the following day, Karen sensed as they talked to her that they were critically appraising her, surveying the outline of her body under her clothing; and after she had removed her blouse but not her brassiere, one of the women lightly commented: “We don’t wear those around here.” Karen smiled but did not take off her brassiere as she continued to unpack; and it was not until after they had left for work, and the dormitory was quiet and empty, that she removed all of her clothes and entered the shower room.

Later, feeling refreshed and dressed in new clothes she had bought in Dallas, Karen ventured out of the dormitory and down the grand staircase, soon finding herself in a sixty-foot-long living room that had teakwood floors and a more than twenty-foot-high ceiling inlaid with flowered frescoes. At one end of the massive room was a carved marble fireplace large enough for her to stand in; at the other end, perched on pedestals, were silver polished medieval suits of armor; and in between was a mixture of antique and modern furniture, a concert piano and stereo console softly resounding with jazz. Around a coffee table, near the distant fireplace, sat a group of young women and older men who were engaged in conversation. Hefner was not among them, but Karen
did recognize the man she had met in Dallas, John Dante; and when Dante saw her, he immediately got up and came forward to greet her. Dante was a ruggedly stylish man in his early forties with a small, neatly trimmed mustache and friendly ruddy face, and he wore an open silk shirt with a gold medallion around his neck and sharply creased tapered trousers. Although he was soft-spoken and unassuming, the butlers in the room, responsive to his status in the Hefner hierarchy, remained attentive as Dante shook hands with Karen; and when Dante asked her if she wanted something to eat or drink, two butlers were quickly at her side ready to fulfill her request.

She was introduced to the people around the coffee table, and sat among them for several moments in awkward silence as they chatted and relaxed in the surrounding splendor; then the group was joined by an attractive woman of about thirty with lean delicate features, large expressive eyes, and a manner that, while sophisticated, seemed warm and natural. Her name was Bobbie Arnstein, and, as Karen later learned, Miss Arnstein was Hefner’s social secretary and confidante; among other duties she helped to entertain Hefner’s house guests and visiting celebrities, scheduled the
Playboy
business meetings held in Hefner’s suite, and did most of Hefner’s personal shopping, including the Christmas and birthday gifts that he sent to his parents and children. Years ago, briefly and casually, Bobbie Arnstein had been romantically involved with Hugh Hefner; but since then their relationship had ripened into a deep and special friendship—and, like Hefner, she now preferred lovers who were years younger than herself. Bobbie Arnstein’s presence at the table, and her subtle way of including Karen Christy in the conversation without necessitating a response from the obviously shy Texas beauty, allowed Karen to feel more at ease among the many strangers. But Karen nonetheless welcomed the graceful exit that Dante provided when he offered to give her a tour of the mansion.

For the next half hour, Karen followed Dante through corridors and secret passageways, past antique furnishings and pinball machines, and down a curved staircase into the underwater bar
that could also be reached by sliding down a brass fireman’s pole from the floor above. Dante, who had moved into the mansion at Hefner’s suggestion years ago and knew something of its history, told Karen that it had first been erected before the turn of the century by a Chicago industrialist who later entertained in the house such guests as Theodore Roosevelt and Admiral Peary. Until Hefner had purchased it, for less than a half-million dollars in 1960, it had been empty and gathering dust for years; and since acquiring it Hefner had spent at least a half million on modernization and such features as the bowling alley, the swimming pool, and his private apartment that was replete with electronic gadgetry and custom-made furniture of his own design. When Karen asked if she could see Hefner’s quarters, Dante at first hesitated, explaining that Hefner had arrived in Chicago earlier in the day from Los Angeles and might be sleeping; but a few minutes later, after Dante had gone off by himself to check, he returned to say that Hefner was awake and would be glad to meet her.

With Dante at her side, Karen walked across the oak-paneled living room in which they had been sitting earlier, climbed two steps, and passed through a door that led into a room that was abundantly appointed with electronic equipment, including eight separate television monitors, one for each channel in Chicago, thus permitting Hefner to have a variety of programs taped simultaneously and replayed at his convenience. Opening a second door, Dante guided Karen onto the thick white carpeting of a paneled room that was dominated by the round bed in the center of which, eating a hamburger and sipping a Pepsi, while reading page proofs, sat Hugh Hefner.

With raised eyebrows and an exaggerated smile, Hefner bounced out of bed to welcome her; and for the next ten minutes, in addition to bantering with Dante for Karen’s amusement, he conversed with her in a serious but convivial manner, asked her questions about her background and her future aspirations, and took her through the apartment, showing her his luxuriously furnished library with walls lined with books, his bathing area
with a Roman tub large enough for a dozen people, and the many buttons and knobs that activated his rotating bed, which was eight and a half feet in diameter and had been built at a cost of $15,000. Near the bed, and pointed toward it, was an Ampex television camera that was designed to produce both instantaneous and delayed transmissions, on the wall screen above, of Hefner’s amorous activities, which he found endlessly stimulating; but in his guided tour with Karen Christy he tactfully avoided any mention of this apparatus.

Before Karen had left, Hefner explained that he would be playing pool later in the evening with the actor Hugh O’Brian and a few other house guests, and he added that he would be very pleased if Karen would join them. She replied that she would. Later, relaxing alone in her room, she was surprised at how comfortable she had felt in Hefner’s presence, and how convincingly contented he had seemed within himself. Having watched him one night a year ago on the Johnny Carson television show in her college dormitory, she had sensed him to be somewhat artificial and forced in his manner; but in person he was more free-spirited, unassuming, and physically more attractive. She also found endearing the signs of adolescent sloppiness she had observed in his private quarters—the floors littered with scraps of paper and old magazines, bits of clothing carelessly tossed across chairs, the suitcase from his California trip opened but not yet unpacked. Despite the valets and many housekeepers dedicated to maintaining order and tidiness around the clock, Hugh Hefner conveyed the impression of having to be looked after more carefully, catered to more personally.

In the pool room hours later with Hefner’s guests, and still later standing around the pinball machines that Hefner skillfully nudged and patted with the palms of his hands, Karen Christy was constantly aware of Hefner’s attention. He smiled at her as he chalked his cue tip, winked following each good shot, and, after delivering a joke or witty comment to the crowd, he would
invariably look in her direction to study her reaction. While his lack of subtlety might have cost him points with a more worldly woman, Karen was flattered by it, preferring by far his open approach to the indirect tactics of a less forthright man. He seemed to be acknowledging not only to her but to the room at large—and particularly to the other attractive women gathered there—that he was overwhelmingly drawn to her; and while she chose not to dwell on where this all might lead, she was for the moment enjoying it immensely.