Scruples (60 page)

“Well—they say all the big trends start out on the Coast, but this time I think New York’s first and I’m numero uno in New York.”

“Stop being so mysterious,” she teased.

“Beautiful young married things.” Jimbo cocked his head at her in pride. “Almost newlyweds.”

“Jimbo—that
is
wicked,” Valentine said mockingly. “What do you do, lurk outside the church steps and lure them away?”

“Certainly not, Valentine, how gross of you. I wait till the first anniversary, my dear, it’s the least one can do, and then—well, all I can tell you is you’d be surprised at how easy it is.”

“Oh, no I wouldn’t. And what happens to the poor brides?”

“Oddly enough, they’re mostly so thrilled to be included in Prince’s parties that they couldn’t care less. Oh, they find ways to amuse themselves, I dare say. It’s great fun and you’re missing it all.”

“How does Prince feel about your branching out?”

“Heavens, sweetie, Prince and I are as good as married! You know that—he’s got me for life—the details don’t bother him. Prince doesn’t believe in a tight rein.”

“He certainly kept me on one,” Valentine said lightly but still resentfully.

“But darling Valentine, that was business! Listen, he’s somewhere around and he’ll be devastated if he doesn’t see you. I’m going to find him and tell him you’re here and we’ll track you down later.” He darted off with another kiss for Valentine and a wave at Josh.

“What was
that?”
Josh asked, nonplussed.

“Just an old buddy. Really a marvelous friend. You just have to get to know him, darling.”

“I hardly think that’s in the cards.”

“Now, don’t be stuffy, everyone can’t be a lawyer.” Valentine was flushed with the pleasure of seeing Jimbo again; she’d always enjoyed his banter and his seductive ways and his immediate championship of her in Prince’s circle. “Actually, Jimbo was a very brave soldier, tons of medals from Korea. And straight too, at the time, I mean. He tells the drollest story I’ve ever heard about how he was seduced on his hospital bed when he was in traction, absolutely helpless to defend himself, an orderly I believe it was, or maybe a doctor. That’s what started him on his merry way.”

“I’ll bet,” Josh said, trying to keep the grumpiness out of his voice.

Half an hour later, as they were waiting for the bartender to make their drinks at one of the pavilions scattered over the grounds of Lace’s estate, Josh stiffened in anticipation as an impressively handsome man caught sight of Valentine and obviously recognized her. He had half turned away, as if he wanted to avoid her, when she called out to him imperiously, “And how are you, Alan?” He turned back and advanced with a tentative smile. “Josh, this is Alan Wilton, who was my first employer on Seventh Avenue. Alan, Josh is a friend of mine from California.”

“Yes,” Wilton said nervously, “I’ve been reading all about you, Valentine. It’s the most marvelous success. I’m absolutely delighted for you and not a bit surprised. You were always going to be a great designer; it was just a matter of time.”

“Tell me, Alan,” Valentine purred, “how is your little friend, Sergio? Is he still with you, still doing just exactly what you want him to do, still taking orders—or is he still
giving
them, Alan? Didn’t you bring him tonight? No? Not invited? A shame, such a very beautiful, such a very alluring boy, Sergio—in fact, quite irresistible, don’t you think so, Alan?”

Josh watched, uncomprehendingly, as the stranger turned a dark red under his smooth olive skin. “Valentine—” Alan said pleadingly.

“Well, Alan, is Sergio still with you or not?” Josh had never heard such frozen wire in her voice.

“He still works for me, yes.”

“How wonderful a thing faithful service can be, can it not? And loyalty, and honesty—my, Alan, you are a lucky man. As a matter of fact, I already knew the answer to my question—I’ve seen your new line and Sergio is still using my old designs. Isn’t it time for a change, Alan, or has he become too—indispensable? Perhaps you find you can’t do without him, is that it? What a thin line separates the master from the servant—or should I say the slave? I’ve often reflected on that. Have you, Alan?” Valentine turned away from him, took Josh’s arm and walked away quickly, shaking with some emotion Josh couldn’t understand.

“What was that all about, for God’s sake?”

“That lousy faggot!”

“I don’t get it—you love Jimbo, you hate that guy—it’s crazy.”

“Don’t ask me to explain, Josh, It’s too complicated.” Valentine took a deep breath and shook her tumble of paprika curls as if she were putting the whole incident behind her. “Come on, I see some people I want you to meet—there’s Prince and his gang—observe the Vivid People, darling; we don’t have anything quite like them out in Beverly Hills, some pallid imitations but nothing really close.” She drew radiance around her like a veil of light and advanced on a group of excruciatingly fashionable people, all of whom, Josh saw, as he hung back slightly, were greeting her with the kind of acclamation usually reserved for presidential candidates and Oscar winners. As Josh reluctantly approached, at Valentine’s urgent signal, he heard a man who looked signorial and tweedy, even in his dinner jacket, saying to her as he held both her hands in his, “—so you see, Valentine my dear, you owe it all to me—if I hadn’t fired you, like a blithering idiot, you’d still be working for me instead of being the biggest new star in fashion.”

“Oh, no Prince, don’t fool yourself,” Valentine told him with absolute sureness, “I would have found a way to get there, even without your lack of manners.” And she kissed him forgivingly.

Prince looked with interest at Josh when Valentine introduced them. “So this is your California beau, my pet?”

“Oh, Prince, you are too silly. Mr. Hillman is my lawyer. I brought him along for protection against all my old friends.”

“Hillman, of course—Josh Hillman. How foolish of me.” He turned to Josh with speculation alive in his eyes. “Your wife, Joanne, is one of my most adored customers—Joanne and I go way back, Mr. Hillman, as you would know if you remember paying my bills. A lovely, gracious lady. Please kiss her for me when you get back to Los Angeles.”

“I won’t forget, Mr. ah, Prince,” Josh said.

“Just Prince, Mr. Hillman, just Prince,” he said with a chuckle worthy of Henry VIII.

Smoothly, Valentine extricated them from Prince’s circle and turned a white, concerned face to Josh, her eyes filled with alarm.

“Good God, I never thought—and Prince will tell her every detail, you can count on that—I know him too well to think he’d pass up that opportunity. Maybe if I talk to him—”

“Absolutely not,” Josh answered. “It would only make everything obvious. He’s not sure of anything now, but if you talked to him, he’d know. After all, a lawyer can be seen in public with a client. Don’t give it another thought, darling, it’s not important.”

Shaking, she tugged his arm and led him into the cover of some trees. “Oh, Josh, it was a mistake for you to come. I’m terribly worried.”

“Don’t be, I promise you. You’re much too beautiful to worry. You’ll spoil the party—tonight you’re an Irish witch and you’re wasting that marvelous dress here in the shadows. Let’s dance. No? Well, if you won’t dance, we’ll just stay under the trees and neck.” He grabbed her and kissed her until he could feel her relaxing and beginning to respond in spite of the shock Prince had given her. “That’s better, my darling.
Now
, we’ll dance.” And Josh whirled her off onto the dance floor, crowded with beautiful women, not one of whom could outshine Valentine on this night of triumph.

Near dawn, when they returned at last to their hotel suite, Valentine fell asleep immediately. Josh Hillman sat by the window and watched the sun come up, something he hadn’t done since his law-school days after a night of study. He was thinking about the new Valentine who had been revealed to him that night, a Valentine who could be caustic, gracious, vicious, teasing, and loving, all in the passage of a half hour, a Valentine who could take care of herself in any encounter, who could match wits and spirit with kinds of people Josh had known existed but had never dealt with himself, a Valentine who was perfectly at home in the most smotheringly grand gathering he had ever seen in one place, a Valentine whom these same people treated as a heroine. He realized that of all the emotions he had felt last night, alarm and resentment had played a large part, as he saw Valentine slipping away from him into a world, a role, a position she had never prepared him for. It was like a magician’s trick and, proud as he was of her, he didn’t like it one bit.

Over the course of time since Valentine had returned from her first trip to England, Josh Hillman had occasionally, in his dispassionate legal way, considered that he had arrived at a perfect balance in his life. He had it all: the position of sage and brilliant man of law in his firm; a rock-solid place in the power structure of his community; a wife who ran half the charities in Los Angeles and managed to be a good mother and superb hostess; and to cap it all off, Valentine, who provided the romance he had never had before and who was so fiercely independent that she wanted nothing from him.

Now, looking out over the towers of New York, Josh Hillman cast a long view over his ideal life and asked himself a most uncharacteristic question: Why had he rocked the boat?

He had known, from the day Valentine told him that she was going to Lace’s party, that it was impossible for him to go without meeting at least one person he knew. At a certain level of achievement people tend to know each other anywhere in the world. He had set himself up to be discovered. Therefore, it followed that he had wanted to be discovered. Yet he was not a self-destructive man. On the contrary, he had led a constructive life for forty years, a life carefully, cautiously,
seriously
planned to get him all the goods and benefits a sensible man could possibly want for himself. He was the most sensible man he knew.

Wearily, Josh Hillman concluded that no man could live an entirely sensible life and have any self-respect left. He felt a lot of tumblers falling into place in his mind. Having arrived at some conclusion, whatever it meant, he felt an overwhelming need for sleep, a need not to carry his train of thought any further. It was quite enough novelty for one night for a man to see clearly that he is no longer the man he had always thought he was.

Again, Valentine and Josh had planned to take separate flights back to Los Angeles so as not to be caught arriving together. The morning after the party, Josh changed his ticket so that he would be on Valentine’s flight, explaining that no one was meeting him at the airport because he had just telephoned his family to warn them that he didn’t know when, precisely, he’d get back.

There is no other intimacy so heady as that special quality, that two people feel sitting together and drinking champagne in a first-class lounge thirty thousand feet above the ground. There is a particular quality about being literally out of touch with the earth and the people on it that creates a timelessness and a euphoria that adds an extra dimension even to the closeness of people who feel close under normal circumstances. Valentine was sitting next to the window, going over in her mind some of the more delectable moments of Lace’s party, when Josh broke into her reverie.

“Stop dreaming, darling, and listen to me.” Valentine turned to pay attention to him, but her mind was still on the party. “I have something to say to you,” Josh said, taking her hand in his. “I want us to be married.”

“Oh, no!” Valentine, no less than Josh, was stunned by the violence and immediacy of her response. Unexpected as his words had been, her answer had come instantaneously. “You can’t be serious; it’s
impossible!”

“It’s not at all impossible. I’ve been thinking about it for months; I just didn’t know I was. I only realized it last night.”

“No, Josh, no, it’s absolutely crazy. You’re just in a good mood because there aren’t any telephones in this plane. What a folly!”

“It has nothing to do with that, darling. I’m not the kind of man who goes in for follies, now am I?” She looked at him with anger now added to her earlier surprise.

“Even the most reasonable man has his insane moments,” she snapped. “Josh, you know it’s impossible. I don’t even want to discuss it. I’m perfectly content with the way things are. We have each other—why should you ruin your life, your wife’s life, your children’s lives?”

“Christ, you’re more conventional than I am. ‘Ruin my life’—do you think a divorce would ruin my life? It’s a common, everyday occurrence, happens to the best people. The only thing that would ruin my life would be to spend the rest of it without you.”

“How can you be so selfish? What about your wife? You’ve been married nineteen years! She loves you, she must!”

“I think that if she had to choose between me and the Music Center, oh, with maybe Cedars-Sinai thrown in, she’d take them and let me go. It’s been years since we’ve had a good life together, you know that. If I’d loved my wife, I could never have fallen in love with you the minute you walked into my office. I would just have thought, what a peppery, cute little thing you were and forgotten you.” Valentine was entirely unpersuaded.

“And your children?
Three
children. You can really think of—even consider—getting a divorce with three children?”