Authors: Dazzle
“Ready to go?” he asked.
“Let’s,” Jazz agreed hastily. If he walked into the apartment he’d see into her bedroom, beyond which lay her huge closet. She’d forgotten to close the closet door, and it looked as if a rummage sale had been going on in there.
Casey drove to Spago in the kind of silence frequently described as “companionable,” although silence like that made Jazz nervous. They weren’t old buddies, they weren’t intimate friends, they weren’t lovers. What was it with him and his comfortable silence? They were third cousins who had exchanged a few words and a few kisses, kissin’ cousins, about as tenuous a relationship as you could imagine, and it was clearly his duty to entertain her.
They left the car at the lot above Spago, with its many security guards, and started down the steep sidewalk to the entrance. At the top of the sidewalk, the usual crowd of paparazzi were waiting to shoot the stars.
“Hey, Jazz, where’s Sam?” one of them called.
“Is Sam coming in tonight?” another asked.
“Jazz, you two-timing Sam?” inquired a third.
“Ignore them,” Jazz instructed Casey. “They invent stuff like that to annoy me. Professional jealousy.”
Inside, the usual crowd waited at the bar. Bernard
spotted Jazz and came over immediately to give her a kiss on the cheek. “You look great, Jazz—set for Christmas already, huh?” he said. He turned to Casey and put a friendly arm around him.
“I have your table waiting, Casey,” Bernard assured him, and led them into the front room, turning to the left. At the end of the front room was the open kitchen. To the immediate right of the kitchen counter was the best table in the house, always reserved for parties of six or eight, and next to that was the second-best table, which could accommodate four or even five people. Tonight they had set a smaller table for two there, right in the curve of the window, turning it into the “lovers’ table” that always got more scrutiny than any other table in the house. Bernard led them directly there, and, as usual, everyone else in the place checked them out until they reached the table. At Spago it is never rude to stare, and table-hopping is a way of life.
“I gather you hang out here?” Jazz asked Casey, once they were seated.
“Whenever I get a chance to eat dinner in L.A. I wanted to invest with Wolf when he started this place, but he didn’t need my money. I have a piece of the new brewery, and he knows I want in on anything else he does. The man’s a genius.”
Well, that explained it, Jazz thought. Casey was an investor. Everybody knows that investors get good tables, that’s usually why they invest. Casey had bought in—not against the rules, but not a legit way to get a table position either, in her book.
René, the aproned, handsome waiter, appeared, carrying a platter. “Wolf saw you come in, Mr. Nelson, so he sent over your Jewish pizza. Oh, good evening, Miss Kilkullen, back so soon?”
Jazz nodded.
Casey’s
Jewish pizza? What about
her
Jewish pizza? She was the one who always ordered the pizza covered with the finest quality of smoked salmon spread over a thin layer of what cream cheese might taste like if it were elevated to something ten times better than cream cheese.
“Jazz, how about aquavit from the freezer with this?” Casey asked.
“Definitely.”
“Let’s not bother to look at the menu until we’ve finished the pizza, O.K.? Who knows what we’ll be in the mood for?”
“Who knows indeed? Dad said you’d tell me all about the latest guy who tried to buy the ranch.”
Jazz listened intently as Casey told her the story. “When the bastard finally took off,” Casey concluded, “Mike had a double shot of bourbon to get the taste of the Perrier out of his mouth and spent the afternoon in the Jeep, checking the fences to make sure that Rosemont hadn’t been tunneling under them, digging for oil.”
“That’s not so!”
“Honestly. He said Rosemont made him paranoid, something weird about his eyes, plus the way that helicopter kept flying back and forth over the land. He said that he knew exactly how Faust must have felt when he met the Devil, the only difference being that Mike didn’t want to sell.”
“It’s not easy to hang on to a way of life that’s over and gone everywhere except at our place and at Dick O’Neill’s,” Jazz said slowly. “But Dad will never change, and he’ll live to be a hundred, like his grandfather. I suppose to some people it could seem almost … well, almost selfish, one man living on land that thousands of people could live on, but Dad knows that once that ranch is gone, it’s gone for keeps, and there’ll be nothing left but some old photographs to show people how life used to be in California. He feels so fiercely that it’s up to him to preserve something of the past, he knows that he’s the last one who refuses to let it vanish, who’s holding back so-called ‘progress,’ and I understand him.”
“I do too,” Casey said fervently.
“Oh, there’s Shirlee,” Jazz said, waving at her good friend, Henry Fonda’s beautiful young widow. She made a come-on-over gesture, and Shirlee left her companions to say hello.
“Jazz,” she said in her deliciously squeaky voice, that sounded as if she had a permanent case of low-level, sexy laryngitis. “At the lovers’ table two nights in a row? What goes on here? Does Sam know?”
“This is Casey Nelson, Shirlee. He’s my cousin.”
“Hello, cousin.” Shirlee’s eyes were full of mischief. “What degree of consanguinity are we talking about here?”
“Third cousin, Mrs. Fonda,” Casey said. “I don’t think that counts, do you?”
“Certainly not … only first cousins count. I’ve got to get back to my table. ’Bye, you two, don’t worry about incest.”
“I like her,” Casey laughed.
“Everybody does,” Jazz said, annoyed. Shirlee was usually supremely discreet, but Casey, too busy looking at Shirlee’s famous legs, hadn’t noticed her reference to Sam.
“Jazz, when are you coming back down for the weekend?”
“Probably next weekend, and of course for Christmas. I’m going to be very busy for the next few months … I probably won’t be able to come home as much as I’d like.”
“How so?”
“A new client, a major job. Diet Pepsi is going to go all out on a print campaign that’ll get the attention that Annie Leibovitz’s stuff gets for American Express, and they’ve hired me.”
“Naturally.”
“Naturally.” Jazz grinned. She and Annie had been pals, equals and rivals for so long that it felt like having a twin.
“What’s the thrust?” Casey asked.
“Simplicity itself. Double spread shots of celebrities with cans of Diet Pepsi.”
“That doesn’t sound new to me.”
“But it will be. There’s a twist. First of all, you’ll have to really search for the can. It’s going to be practically invisible, truly hard to find, like the piece of the
jigsaw puzzle that’s right under your eyes while you’re going crazy looking for it because you know it absolutely has to be there. There’s going to be no copy at all to explain the shot, just that pesky, damn near camouflaged can—maybe even only half of the can—that people will expect to find but can’t unless they honestly try—it’ll turn into a kind of game. That means that the shot will get an immense amount of time and attention … it’ll stop the reader cold. And I’m going to shoot all the celebrities in rumpled, mellow, sweaty, intimate action—Michael Jackson in a recording studio on the twenty-fifth take; Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith in bed, with a trickle of cola running down between her breasts into the nightgown, as if he’d just upset it; Madonna in her dressing room, half-in and half-out of her makeup and clothes, such as they are; Arsenio Hall wearing only a shirt, trying to make up his mind between a dozen new suits at his tailor’s—you get the idea.”
“How do you get people like that to pose in these situations when you’re not using their names?”
“Pepsi gives them $250,000 for their favorite charity.”
“I’d do it for less.”
“Yeah, it’s generous. But it’s the least part of the expense of the campaign.”
As Jazz spoke, she saw a tall, smiling redhead approaching behind Casey, putting her finger to her lips for silence as she looked at Jazz meaningfully. The woman looked familiar, but Jazz couldn’t immediately place her. The stranger put her hands over Casey’s eyes and said, in a voice that was obviously disguised, “Guess who?”
Casey sat still and then raised his hands to his eyes and carefully touched the hands that covered them, exploring the palms, the fingers, even the shape of the redhead’s wedding ring.
“Fauve Avigdor, what are you doing here?” Casey said, jumping up and folding her in his arms.
“How the hell did you know who it was?” the woman asked.
“Your hands,” Casey answered. “Only one pair in the world like them.”
Fauve Avigdor, Jazz thought—but she lives in Provence. And how could I have missed knowing who she was? I’m losing my grip.
“Fauve, this is
my
cousin, Jazz Kilkullen. Jazz, this is
your
cousin, Fauve Avigdor.”
“My
what?”
Jazz exclaimed. Fauve smiled without surprise.
“Where’s Eric?” Casey demanded.
“At the bar, waiting for our table.”
“René, please bring a chair for the lady,” Casey asked the waiter.
“Casey, have you taken leave of your senses?” Jazz insisted as Fauve sat down.
“You Californians don’t know your own family history. If you were my father’s daughter, you’d be aware that sixty years ago one of his great-grandfather’s sons, Perry Kilkullen, had an illegitimate daughter, and that baby was Fauve’s mother. Poor Perry died before he could marry Fauve’s grandmother, Maggie Lunel. So we’re all definitely cousins, in a vague sort of way, but brave, brawny, lusty Kilkullen blood runs in all our veins.”
“In Casey’s anyway,” Fauve said to Jazz, laughing. “We must meet again and discuss him behind his back, in brawny, lusty detail. Now I have to go back and find Eric.”
“What brings you both here?” Casey asked.
“Eric’s designing a new housing complex in San Diego. Casey, where can I reach you?”
Casey scribbled a number on a piece of paper and handed it to Fauve, who made her way composedly back to the bar.
“My God, Mistral’s daughter is a cousin of mine, and I didn’t even know it,” Jazz marveled. “I should have recognized her, but she looks older than I remember. Of course, there haven’t been any photos of her in magazines for years—since Mistral died. That must have been about fifteen years ago … I was only in high school.”
“Just about. I’m one of the collectors of Fauve’s paintings. Someday I’d like to show them to you—they’re remarkable.”
“You collect paintings, you invest in restaurants, you have a fax in your bedroom at the ranch so that you can communicate with your broker in New York before dawn, you have the good kind of Vuitton luggage—just what kind of Cow Boss are you, Casey Nelson?”
“A damn good one, according to your father.”
“How can it be more than just another game to you, Casey? Ranching isn’t an easy life, and you’ve obviously got more money than you need.”
“Should I let money stop me from doing what I want to do?”
“That’s no answer.”
“Jazz, I’m a cattleman. I’ve been one for years. What do I have to do to prove it to you? Can’t you just believe I have the same reasons to love it that your father has?”
“No, because he was born on the land, our family land, and that makes an immense difference,” Jazz persisted.
“I fell in love with ranching when I was a kid destined to run a tugboat fleet. What if Mike had been born on the ranch, hated it, and run away to sea? Would that invalidate his life’s work?”
“Why don’t I trust you when you sound as if you’re making sense?”
“Why don’t you trust me at all?” Casey sounded unexpectedly somber.
“Where did you get that idea?”
“It just came to me. You don’t really trust men in general, do you?”
“No. No, I don’t,” Jazz said slowly.
“Gabe. He’s the reason.”
“Casey,
do not start.”
“Sorry. Forget I said anything. Let’s order.”
They plunged into an inspection of their menus. After they’d ordered, Barbara Lazaroff, who was Wolfgang Puck’s wife and a professional restaurant
designer and architect, came over to greet them. As always, she was an exotic work of art, her brilliant eyes and long black hair set off by fantastic antique jewels. She dressed in a collage, a pastiche of elaborately decorated pieces of clothing like none other in the world, combinations that could only exist in Barbara’s lively fantasy.
“Jazz,” Barbara asked, “that jacket? Is it a political statement? All that green … the environment? Anyway, it’s really great on you. That reminds me—we have to start baking our Christmas cakes or they won’t be ready in time. Oh listen, yesterday when you promised to get Sam’s autograph for that waitress, I hope it wasn’t an imposition. She knows she isn’t ever supposed to ask for autographs in here, no matter what the provocation, but she just couldn’t restrain herself. I almost asked for one myself, but I decided Wolf wouldn’t approve.”
“Right, Barbara.”
“Since you’re coming in with Sam tomorrow, there’s plenty of time. I promise not to let that waitress near this table again. She might have an attack, jump the guy.”
“Right, Barbara.”
“Thanks, kid. ‘Bye, Casey, see you next week. Same time, same place. Remember, you get a Christmas cake too.”
“Sam?” Casey asked. “It seems to me that I keep hearing that name tonight. Who is he?”
“An actor. Sam Butler.”
“Sam Butler,
an
actor? Or Sam Butler,
the
actor?”
“The,” Jazz replied.
“You had dinner at this table with him last night. You’re having dinner with him at this table tomorrow?”
“So it would seem.”
“I wish I hadn’t asked. Actually, I had decided not to, but it kept coming up so often that I figured no one could be as stupid as I was trying to be.”
“He’s just a friend,” Jazz said hastily.
“Oh, I know that. A girl who doesn’t trust men in general certainly isn’t going to trust—of all the kinds of guys in the world—an
actor.”
“God, you’re a shit.” Jazz was obscurely pleased at his words.