Almost Perfect Page 12

  Stella is as deeply embarrassed as if Richard could have known what was in her mind.

  “Anybody home?”

  At that sound, that night, Stella rushes toward the door, guilt and gratitude combining to fuel her ardor.

  “Say, what’d I do?” he teases, familiarly.

  “Oh, you’re only talented and brilliant and sensitive and generous and extremely handsome,” Stella tells him, laughing.

  “Oh.”

  There are so many versions of Richard, and she lives with all those different men. It is no wonder, Stella sometimes thinks, that she is frequently confused. There is the near genius in visual matters, who could imagine such openness, such bare-boned elegance in her ratty, awkwardly divided, small-scale apartment—and the generous, sensitive person who put it all together, for her. (For the moment she ignores the slight presumption, maybe a little more than slight, of his never having asked or consulted with her about such a radical projected change.) And then there is the plain ordinary man who comes home for dinner at night, tired and hungry, with not a lot to say. And then the raging furious stranger who sometimes, terrifyingly, emerges—the horrible drunk.

  And: the most beautiful, fine-skinned, fair fresh flesh-smelling lover, whom she kisses, endlessly. (Does she kiss more than he does, more eagerly, fervently, strongly? Stella will not let this thought occur. Not yet.)

  But it is true that she lives with all those people. And that she is often confused.

  * * *

  What Stella and Richard will do, they decide, is invite everyone they know to their party. An open house for Stella’s new apartment. And the subtext, so to speak, is a celebration of Richard’s new job; of course Al Bolling will be among those invited.

  And Andrew Bacci and Margot and Justine and Collin Schmidt, and Tony Russo, Cats, and his Valerie. (“If they’re still together. I haven’t heard from him for a while,” Richard cautions. Stella refers to Valerie as Tits Galore, which Richard does not think is very funny.) Plus a number of friends from both their places of work, as well as from their former, other lives. Unstated is the fact that this is their first joint effort at party giving; some sort of statement about themselves as a couple is implicitly being made.

  But it begins fairly soon to seem, to Stella, more Richard’s party. They call his caterer (the same pretty girls who did the bubble party). His florist. Stella, left to herself, would have done it all more simply: buy lots of cheese and cold cuts in North Beach, and flowers from Bloomers.

  “Can’t I even pay for some of this?” she asks at some point.

  “Oh no. I’ll let you give a party later on, when I go broke. Right now I’m really okay that way.”

  Which in a way is all right with Stella; she is as broke as ever, maybe a little more so. She often buys a lot of fairly fancy food for their dinners, even though Richard shops too and almost always brings home wine and booze, not to mention all those flowers.

  Still, in another way this does not seem quite right; they should share the expense of this party. It’s her party too, is it not?

  The day before the party, a Friday, Stella stays at home to clean, and to think of and cope with last-minute details, like cocktail napkins, so far unmentioned, and Perrier, tomato juice, whatever, for the possible non-drinkers. Lemons and limes.

  In the midst of her coping with most of that (she is just back from the neighborhood supermarket), the phone rings, and Stella answers—to hear an unfamiliar, very enthusiastic woman’s voice.

  “Hi, Stell, how’s tricks? Listen, hons, I’ve got some almost unbelievable good news for you, kiddo. Oh, by the way, this is Gloria. Gloria Bergstein—I’m your agent, remember?” A harsh cigarette laugh, which Stella is to come to recognize as readily as the exuberant voice. “Well, The Gotham is just nuts about your squatter piece, those people around Civic Center, or whatever you people call it. They love it. They’re offering ten for first North American rights, and maybe I can get them up, or maybe do better somewhere else, but I have to tell you I’m tempted just to go with it. What do you think? It’s long, of course, but they like that. Spread over two issues, they think.”

  It is several minutes before Stella is able to understand that this flashy new New York magazine is buying her piece, a long rambling mess, as she thought of it, a mélange of interviews and opinions (mostly her own) about some people camped out at the UN Plaza and some other people, who insisted on feeding them. And that she is being paid ten thousand dollars.

  Her first impulse, or one of the first, is to split the money, somehow, with all those people, the squatters and the feeders, all of whom she more or less got to know (several in both groups were Mexicans, with whom she found a special rapport). She dismisses this impulse, or almost dismisses it, as somewhat hysterical. But she will give them a big chunk of the money.

  Her second impulse is to call Richard—of course!

  “Baby, that’s great, that’s just really, really great. I always knew you had it in you, kid. This is super! Ten grand? Wow, you can start keeping me anytime. How much of that does your agent get? You don’t know? Well, honestly, Stell. Find out. Call her back and ask her. But, honey, I’m so pleased, I’m so proud of you. Now we have even more to celebrate at our party, don’t we. Stell, I love you.”

  He arrives home that night with a huge sheaf of flowers, beautiful, white stock (so sweet-smelling) and purple iris. This is for Stella, as well as for their party.

  * * *

  I have never been so happy in my life.

  That sentence dances through Stella’s mind on the night of their party, as she moves through the celebrating, admiring guests, in her new red silk dress in her beautiful new rooms. As she catches sight of Richard here and there, or as he joins her momentarily, now and then, for a small whispered joke, a quick kiss. She thinks, Never so happy. The room is full of flowers, of scents of roses and perfumes and sharp spicy foods, full of bright silk clothes, shining silver and glasses, pale yellow or deep red wines. She is so happy, Stella feels, that her chest might burst. It is one of those rare moments (she could hardly think of another one) when everywhere her mind alights seems propitious, and good.

  Even her work is going well. She has talked on the phone with her new editor at The Gotham and has felt extreme intelligence, along with enthusiasm.

  And she has wonderful friends.

  And a lovely love affair.

  Richard as a host is extremely energetic. He is everywhere at once, as a host is supposed to be. He neither drinks too much nor tells too many long jokes (Stella has observed him doing both those things too often at parties). But now he is too busy for drinking or for jokes; he talks quickly, vividly, to everyone there. He keeps glasses filled, he urges food.

  Al Bolling dislikes white wine, he has made that clear—and by implication, people who drink it. His drink is Scotch. “I assume you have some, old man?” Fortunately they do. A tall, somewhat paunchy man with thick dark hair, very pale skin, shadowed eyes, Bolling, for most of the party, seems to keep to himself, resisting efforts by both Richard and Stella to draw him in. “I’m not much of a mingler,” he at one point says to Richard. “Observation is more in my line.”

  “Well, observe away.” Blithe Richard.

  “I like your lady. I hope you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Not at all, I’m delighted to hear it, I like her too!” And Richard gives Bolling his warmest good-guy smile.

  * * *

  Margot has come to the party alone. She meant to come with Andrew, of course, but he is at home with a bad summer cold. Nothing more (Margot is sure), but having tested HIV positive (as he more or less knew he would), Andrew is sent into panic (not unreasonably) by any ailment. Margot has decided to pretend not to take him seriously, in terms of health, and to hide her own panic in sheer silliness. “You’re just afraid you don’t look cute with a cold,” she chided Andrew. “So Richard will love you less.”

  “Oh, Margot, come on.”

  Having watched R
ichard with this new man, this Al Bolling, Margot comes to several conclusions. One is that Richard is overdoing it; he must need Bolling badly for something or other, and his famous charm is not quite working. Bolling is not quite as charmed by Richard as Richard thinks he is. This connection will not end well for either of them, Margot feels.

  She also senses that Bolling has at least some incipient interest in her. Later, probably, he will ask her to go out to dinner; will she go? She is not at all sure that she will. He is attractive, but he looks very unhappy, and he looks like a drunk. Not her type at all. Not pretty. And she should go home early, to check on Andrew.

  Justine, who has also come alone, without Bunny, is likewise casing the party; and trying to define, for herself, the considerable unease into which this scene has propelled her. Perhaps, she tries to tell herself, she simply cannot get used to, cannot accept, such a smart surround for her insouciant old friend, her dear old Stella. But should she not be glad for such an improvement? The place used to look so shabby. Or is it the slightly manic glint in the eyes of both Stella and Richard, the faint edge of hysteria, of hyper, unreal joy, that she senses? She frowns to herself at the unpleasantly probing, analytic quality of her own mind—and then looks up to see before her an extremely attractive small dark man.

  “Hi,” he says. “I’m Tony Russo. Richard calls me Cats. Are you a friend of his too?”

  Oblivious to almost everything but her own great pleasure in this occasion (she is also getting a little drunk, as Richard now is), Stella still thinks in stray moments of The Gotham, her article being there. Her money. Can she do it again? she wonders. She believes that she can. Her head is so full of ideas, of plans; she is dizzy with her own words. She will write more and more and be more and more successful, Stella believes on this night of the party.

  She can almost believe that she deserves a man as radiant as Richard is. Looking across the room to where he stands, she feels her heart contract at the very sight of him—as, sensing her glance, he looks up at her and smiles, dazzlingly.

  16

  Successful Stella

  About three weeks after the celebration party, Gloria Bergstein calls early one morning to say that The Gotham has taken another piece of Stella’s, one that she has worked on off and on for a couple of years, about volunteer workers in local hospices, burnout, all that; it is somewhat grim, and the paper turned it down, finally, on the grounds that no one would want to read it. It is fairly short, and this time The Gotham is offering $7,500. “The best I could do, babycakes,” rasps Gloria, inhaling an early cigarette; it is 9:00 a.m. in New York, 6:00 in California. “But I’ll get them back up to ten next time, or else spit in their eyes.”

  “God, Gloria, that’s okay, seventy-five hundred is terrific, I can’t believe it. That’s marvelous!”

  “Just keep working, kiddo. We’ll be in touch.”

  Stella hangs up the phone and turns to Richard, lying beside her in bed. Now wide-awake and propped up to listen. Stella asks him, “Did you hear that—can you believe it?” She is almost in tears.

  “Why didn’t you hold out for ten? why are you so grateful?” But he is smiling and happy and warm, kissing and embracing her, telling her then, “You’re so lovely, I’m so happy you’re happy.”

  “Where shall we go for dinner?” asks Stella. “Let me take you. Somewhere great.”

  They settle on the Nob Hill, the grandest restaurant they know; they agree to meet there at seven.

  All that day long Stella is smiling. This is what happiness is, she thinks. To have love in your life, and especially love in the beautiful form of Richard. And some success in your work, people saying that what you do is really okay, is in fact quite good. And lots of money. Oh, those three things are really enough to make her (or anyone!) entirely happy. How lucky she is! Even if The Gotham never takes another piece by her, she will still be very happy, Stella thinks, and for the moment she believes that this is true.

  At work everyone congratulates her. “The Gotham, wow!” “That’s really the best in the business right now. As good as The New Yorker used to be.” “That’s super! How lucky those old fools upstairs turned it down.” “That’s great!”

  Stella is struck by the real warmth in all those reactions; today she feels that everyone genuinely wishes her well, that everyone is pleased for her.

  “It’s partly because they know you’ve paid your dues,” says Justine, over a quick but celebratory lunchtime salad. “They all know you’ve been working very hard and you’ve been as underpaid as they are.”

  “And I’m not twenty-one. Not some bumptious suddenly successful kid,” says Stella, very seriously.

  “No. It’s lucky you’re so old. Otherwise everyone would be very mean and envious.”

  They laugh, and then Justine asks, very lightly, “Richard’s pleased?”

  “Of course. Really pleased. But why? You’d think he wouldn’t be?”

  “Well, it’s supposed to be very hard on men. The success of women.”

  “I know, but Richard isn’t like that. Not a dumb macho bone in his body. He’s very ‘in touch with his femaleness,’ you know? And with mine. I think.” But this exchange is making her just slightly anxious, Stella notes; she feels a small, painful thrust of worry, a tiny shadow cast on her sunny day. Which almost instantly passes.

  “The fact that Richard is so intensely creative too, and successful at it, that must make a big difference. If he were just some ordinary advertising jerk …,” says Justine.

  “But in that case we wouldn’t be together at all,” Stella points out, laughing, her happiness restored.

  Dinner at the Nob Hill is a great success. Two happy and successful people. Eating and drinking much too much good food and wine. And going home, amazingly, to love. To amazing love.

  “You’re really hot at The Gotham,” Gloria Bergstein has told Stella. “And they’ve got money to burn. Send them anything. Your high school essay contest entry, maybe.”

  “I don’t really have a thing right now, but I’ll think.”

  What Stella does have is an entirely private project, undertaken more or less as therapy after Prentice died when she was trying so hard to shake off all the anger and hurt around his death. At that time she began a sort of reminiscence of some good times with Prentice, in his parents’ house in New Hampshire: the wonderful library there of Victorian children’s books (including Sara Crewe); the attic full of toys. And the lake, the beaches and rocks, and canoes, and picnics. The grandparents getting drunk and singing hymns. Prentice cooking steaks like a regular father. Prentice kind and affectionate with her.

  She has written all that, but it makes her shy to think of sending it to The Gotham.

  She could show it to Justine, she thinks, and ask her opinion, but Stella decides instead (she is not sure just why) to show the piece to Richard. To ask him what he thinks.

  “You read it to me,” he tells her. “You know how I hate to read. I’m the illiterate lover.”

  And so, after dinner, she does read the whole fairly long piece to Richard, who listens with great intentness, smiling, with a small laugh here and there. And then, “Well,” he tells her. “That’s really super. I think it’s the best thing you’ve done; I know they’ll take it.” Rather hesitantly he adds, “But wouldn’t it maybe be a little better if you started with the picnic?—I don’t know—and then the books and the dolls?”

  “That sounds right—in fact I know you’re right. Richard, you are a genius!”

  “All the girls tell me that.”

  But he is very pleased, she can tell. And actually his was a brilliant suggestion; the piece now has a dramatic structure, a form that it lacked before. “You’re absolutely brilliant,” Stella tells him, when she has printed out her piece and sent it off to Gloria.

  “A whole new career for me.” Richard laughs. “Illiterate boy finds work as literary critic.”

  The Gotham buys the piece. This time for twelve thousand.

&nbs
p; With Richard, Stella admits only to the wildest happiness, and she credits him with the success of this latest piece. “It was all in the way you shifted things around. Honestly, that made all the difference.”

  “Stell, come on! But where shall we go to celebrate?”

  To Simon Daniels, who calls, as he sometimes does, to give a sort of progress report on the Prentice Blake project, Stella admits a somewhat less positive reaction. “It scares me,” she says to Simon. “I know it’s silly, but it does. I don’t do well with success.”

  “That’s not so silly,” Simon tells her. “It is scary. The slightest success. Especially in this crazy country we live in, where every day we see how dangerous it is. Success or failure, I think. I do wonder if that’s true anywhere else, or as true. I would rather guess not, but it would be interesting to know, don’t you think?”

  “Extremely,” Stella tells him—though she is actually thinking less about success in England or France or China than about her own trepidations. But Simon’s question has been interesting, and she forces herself to carry on with it. “You’d think we’d know,” she says to Simon. “Or at least that someone would.”

  “Actually I have a pal in London I can ask about how things are there, success-wise. He’s really on the fringe himself, so he’d be the first to know.”

  Stella then asks how the Prentice book is going, and Simon tells her, “Hard work. Everyone contradicts everyone else. It’s honestly hard to believe they’re all talking about the same guy.”

  “Well, he was pretty complicated,” Stella tries to reassure him.

  “But his politics! Really schizo.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve begun to think he could have been CIA.”

  “Oh Lord!”

  “Justine, what on earth, what’ve you done to your hair?”

  “Calm down, Stella. It’s just a rinse. It’ll go away.” But Justine frowns a little, and very slightly blushes, as she explains, “Don’t you ever think a person could get tired of plain old gray-blond hair?”

  Stella laughs. “Oh sure, but I loved it, Justine. Your gray is really beautiful.” And then, her voice darkening with suspicion, “Did you do this for Collin? I mean, did he—”