Princess Daisy (44 page)

“Nick,” Wingo said nastily, “we’ve obviously made a big mistake about the princess here … she just hasn’t got what it takes to go out on her own. Daisy, you won’t get a chance like this again.”

“Maybe next time somebody will ask me to rob a bank … who knows, I could get lucky. Now listen, you two masterminds, I haven’t had one bite yet of this lunch you invited me to and I’m not hungry anymore. I’m going back to the studio and work. As far as I’m concerned this perfectly splendid meeting never took place. You didn’t ask me about anything and I didn’t tell you how I felt Whatever you decide to do is up to you. I’ve forgotten the whole thing. Personally I hope we’ll be together for a long time. We’re not a bad team—
all
of us. Or, on the other hand, if you do leave, good luck! I predict many wonderful days for the two of you shooting the attack of the fifty-foot hemorrhoid. See you later.”

As Daisy left, Nick looked at Wingo. “I wish I could say she’s a bitch.”

Wingo’s face was that of a man who had just missed being run over by a bus. “You can’t and neither can I. I just wish I could say she was
wrong.
”

When Daisy got back to her apartment that night she found Kiki thumbing through an issue of the
SoHo Weekly News
. “Daisy, do you have a date tomorrow night?”

“You know I do—your cousin is coming to town to take me out for dinner.”

“Oh, right, I’d forgotten … so he hasn’t given up on you yet, huh?”

“Henry? I don’t think he understands English. I’ve said no so many times it’s boring, but, my God, he’s persistent. He’s so sweet I don’t want to hurt his feelings. I keep telling him he shouldn’t see me because it’s like cutting off a dog’s tail in little pieces—it would be kinder to whack it off with one quick stroke—sorry, Theseus darling—but he won’t pay any attention. Why’d you ask?”

“Oh, I just thought we might do something—there’s a
tap dance epic at the Performing Garage and a poetry reading at St. Mark’s Church and La Mama is doing Brecht for a change and there’s Microwave Music at Three Mercer—all kinds of things,” Kiki said glumly.

“Christ! What’s the matter? Have you taken your temperature? Where does it hurt?” Daisy said, looking at her friend with concern. Kiki was curled up on the couch in an old caftan, surrounded by scripts, letters and magazines.

“Don’t be an ass—there’s nothing wrong with me—I just thought we should seriously invest in a little cultural enrichment, that’s all. I have my theater, even if it is temporarily dark, but
you
, what do you do all day but think about things that are directed at making millions of women have anxiety attacks?” Kiki asked waspishly. “That, plus those Horse People will make you a cultural idiot if you’re not careful.”

“Let’s just stick to the facts,” Daisy said, ignoring her words. “You’ve never gone in for cultural enrichment since Santa Cruz misguidedly gave you a diploma. That means you don’t have a date for Friday night for the first time in something like eight years, and you’re in a panic. Now that’s absurd and you know it. There are a dozen guys you could call who’d jump …”

“I don’t want
them!
” Kiki said, sounding more confused than adamant.

“Who do you want?”

Kiki remained stubbornly mute.

“Shall we play guessing games? Who is it my Kiki wants? Who did she fill the fridge for last Saturday so that we had to eat pâté and cheese for breakfast all week long to get rid of it, who was unkind enough …”

“Oh, stop it, Daisy! You’re getting so rotten,” Kiki snarled.

“Luke still hasn’t called,” Daisy said flatly.

“No, he hasn’t. I’d like to kill him. How dare he do this to me? I simply don’t understand it! Nobody does this to me, nobody!” Kiki’s whole little body was huddled and shivering under the caftan as if she were preventing herself from springing forward and pounding her fists on the floor like a baby in a tantrum.

“Nobody but Luke Hammerstein.”

“That’s right, rub it in,” Kiki said bitterly.

“Kiki, come on, I’m sympathetic! But you have to face facts if you want to change them.”

“Oh, spare me—Miss Lonely Hearts rides again.”

“Do you know somebody else you can talk about it with?”

“Daisy Valensky, you have the makings of a first-class bitch somewhere inside that glorious exterior. You know I don’t,” Kiki said, seizing Theseus in a despairing embrace.

“I think you’re right,” Daisy said with a pleased smile. “This is my day for telling it like it is or some such slogan left over from—was it the fifties or the sixties?—never mind … but you’re not the first person who isn’t happy with me today. And guess what—I don’t give a shit.”

“Oh, be quiet and listen. That son-of-a-bitch has refused my advances, not once but
twice
. How can there be any
possible excuse
for that? Do you think he’s impotent? Do you think maybe he has an incurable form of some kind of V.D. and doesn’t want to tell me? Do you think … oh, God … do you think he’s in love with somebody? Oh, Jesus … I bet
that’s
what it is—that’s the only thing it could be!” Kiki’s hands flew up and covered her mouth as she contemplated this worst of all possibilities.

“If he were, I’d know it. He and North are tight—I’d have picked up something, somehow—that studio is like a commune, gossip like that would have zipped around by now. Kiki, it’s simple, and you brought it all on yourself.”

The phone rang and Daisy picked it up. “Hi. Oh, hi, Luke, it’s Daisy.” Kiki lunged for the phone but Daisy backed away holding it firmly on its long cord. “Nope, sorry, she’s not here. No idea … could be any one of a dozen places … I haven’t really seen her all week, to tell you the truth, except running in and running out … but I’ll take a message.” Kiki signaled frantically but Daisy made horrible grimaces and ferocious eyes at her while she shook her free hand menacingly back and forth. “All right—I’ll ask her to try to call you when she gets a chance. I’ll leave it on the top of her other messages … I’m beginning to feel like a switchboard. I don’t know why Kiki doesn’t get a service or something. No, that’s all right … I don’t really mind … at least you’re a client which is more than I can say for all of the others. Bye, Luke.”

“Daisy! How could you?” Kiki cried as soon as she’d hung up.

“
That’s
how you do it!”

“You’ve got to be joking. That’s the oldest game in the book. Nobody does that anymore.”

“
Everybody
does that who has the sense she’s born with. Too bad you didn’t know Anabel better.”

“But I’ve never played hard-to-get in my life,” Kiki sputtered, “and I’ve had more men than anyone I’ve ever known.”

“Men you were not really after. It’s easy to get a guy if you genuinely don’t want him. I’ve seen you in operation for years; everything made easy for the poor sucker, and he walks right into your big, beautiful spiderwebs, thinking how he’s made a conquest, and before he knows what’s happened, he’s a goner because right at the
heart
of your whole number is the fact that you simply couldn’t care less—you’re just doing it for kicks, a slap and a tickle, and he senses this, subconsciously anyway, and
that’s
what drives him crazy, not your availability but your essential
unavailability
. I defy you to name just one man you’ve had whom you didn’t give up if someone more attractive came along … I defy you to tell me the name of one guy who made you suffer … up till now.”

“Why should I let a man make me suffer? What’s so good about that?” sniffed Kiki rebelliously.

“Nothing. Suffering isn’t noble. But the fact that you have steadily refused to put yourself in a position where you might have had to suffer is what I’m talking about You’ve always gone in for basically unimportant relationships; good sex, lots of laughs, but not ‘meaningful,’ if you can overlook that cliché. Sorry,
sorry
, but it’s true and you know it, too. Now, along comes a man who could be important to you and you haven’t got any idea how to approach him. You’re putting on your old act with a new cast and it just isn’t working. So try a new script Luke is smarter than you are, hard as that may be for you to believe. He’s got you figured out, he can tell that you’re used to having your way with men, and he isn’t going to let that happen to him. What else is he doing but playing hard to get with you? He waited five days to call? Well, you’re not going to return his call for a week … maybe more. And when you do see him again, you’re going to be a whole new Kiki.”

“It’s too late, I’ve already blown it” Kiki said dismally. “I mean I really let him know I could be had … and all that food! I could cut my throat! And, Daisy, I do adore him so …”

“First impressions can be changed. You’re an actress, aren’t you? It’s simple—you threw yourself at him because you had nothing better to do
that
particular week.
But
, since then, things have changed. Don’t
ever
be specific about what has changed—he’ll imagine them.
Now
you’re not interested in getting involved. You’re cool, restrained and maddeningly off-hand. You can’t accept the first two times he asks you out but you leave the door open—you’re friendly—in fact, it’s as if the two first encounters had just never taken place. But don’t overdo it. Be yourself, but
don’t come on
. Let him try to figure that one out! I think they call it ‘bait and switch.’ ”

“I think they call it entrapment,” Kiki murmured, radiant with admiration. “Daisy—I can do it—I know I can. But what if it doesn’t work?”

“Then you’ll just have to resign yourself. It’s better to know right away than to find out after you’ve turned yourself inside out for months over the guy. ‘Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.’ ”

“Betty Friedan?”

“Shakespeare—
As You Like It.
”

“Oh, what did
he
know. ‘Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?’ ”

“I knew you didn’t need cultural enrichment.”

“I put on
Twelfth Night
last year—don’t you remember—on skateboards?”

“Could anyone who had the good luck to be there forget that immortal evening? Listen, I can’t stand eating any more of last Saturday’s gourmet leftovers. Let’s go get a pizza as soon as I’ve cleaned up a bit. All right?”

“You’re on.” Kiki was already pacing the room like an oversized elf, holding herself tall, with an elusive, faintly amused, slightly preoccupied expression on her face and her body clearly expressing “touch-me-not.” Daisy flung her a fond look and left the living room quietly. When Kiki was getting into a character she liked to be alone. Daisy deliberately took her time washing her hands and suddenly she found herself plummeted from the peaks of the day into another of those strange pockets of sadness she had experienced only a week before, in Middleburg, at the Shorts. She’d been flying high all day today, telling Wingo and Nick-the-Greek what she thought of their sneaky plan and now straightening out Kiki.

But abruptly, face to face with herself, her life seemed,
in a frightening way, to be composed of a patchwork of odd bits and pieces which didn’t form anything as substantial as a quilt. Her work at the studio, difficult though it was, didn’t have the virtue of continuity; with every new commercial the achievements, the triumphant struggle of the week before were immediately replaced by today’s crisis. North’s lack of anger was not really a substitute for genuine appreciation, no matter what she’d told the others at lunch. She felt that she was forever playing catch-up on the job, always having to prove herself, over and over. As for her painting: her scramble after commissions was at the whim of capricious patrons who often treated her sketches and watercolors as just one step higher than a professional photographer’s studio portrait And her raggedy excuse for a love life was even more unfulfilling than she’d admitted to Kiki. The reason she could sound so wise on the matter of Kiki’s refusal to be vulnerable was because it was a trait she knew all too well, an element that was far more deeply established in her own sensibility than in Kiki’s prankster emotions. The idea of spending another evening fending off poor, dear, damp-minded Henry Kavanaugh was dreary. She should never have let him make love to her in the first place. She had never been in love—it was as simple and bare as that, and a constant source of uneasiness and depression, like a low-grade fever which would not go down. She thought of Kiki, practicing being hard-to-get in the other room—that was the one constant in her life, her friendship with that great, good loony. Nothing she could ever do for Kiki would pay her back for all the emotional support and unswerving affection she’d given Daisy in the years since her father had died.

Theseus padded into the bathroom and sensed her mood. He put his front paws on her shoulders, just as he used to do when she was little, and licked her nose. “You lovely lurcher, you,” Daisy told him and realized that she was crying. He was licking up her tears. Damn it, Daisy, she told herself, you go around as if you have the answers for the whole world, so just stop feeling sorry for yourself. Enough! You’re doing fine … just keep on truckin’.

17

H
ello, Ham?”

“Yup?”

“It’s Pat Shannon—how’s it
going?
”

“Couldn’t be better,” Ham Short grinned. The one who phones first in the mating dance of companies and corporations has put his cards on the table. And he liked a man who made his own phone calls. Nothing offended him as much as having another man’s secretary get him on the line and keep him waiting until she put him through to her boss. He invariably hung up on her, unless, of course, he wanted something.

“How about coming up to New York, whenever it’s convenient, and spending the day with me at Supracorp? I’d like you to know more about us.”

“How’s tomorrow?”

“Fine. We’ll send one of the company’s Gulfstreams for you.”

“The hell you will—I only fly in my own Aero-Commander … got it fixed up the way I like it”