Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [145]
This was our mission, made more difficult by the fact that the Mansfields, schooled in the Hollywood art of holding out until the very last moment, both as a matter of prestige and as a way of extorting every last concession and advantage they could, however minor, resisted every attempt on our part to pin them down on such matters as when, exactly, Jackie intended to finish the book, or whether she would even listen to our suggestions for revisions. All Irving Mansfield said, with the chuckle that was a trademark of his conversation, was that we shouldn’t worry, Jackie was a pro. In the meantime, would I remind Snyder that Jackie’s “publicity girl,” Abby Hirsch, flew first-class, the same as Jackie and Irving (she accompanied them everywhere, carrying Jackie’s wig box), that Jackie always got a stretch limo, not a sedan or normal-size limo, that the driver had to be dressed in a black suit, wearing a chauffeur’s cap, and that she expected the presidential suite in any hotel we sent her to. This was all minor crap, Mansfield said, hardly even worth mentioning, but I should understand that if Jackie thought we were going to nickel-and-dime her over chickenshit stuff like this, the way Bernie Geis had, she might conclude we didn’t really love and respect her, and her unhappiness would inevitably slow up her work on the book (“heh, heh”). I had to bear in mind that Jackie was a very sensitive human being.
I bore it in mind all the way through the lobby of the Mansfields’ building—in which there was a fountain with fresh gardenias floating in it, the first of its kind I had seen outside Beverly Hills—and up the elevator to their apartment, where Jackie herself opened the door. My first thought was that Truman Capote was onto something: She did look a bit like a truck driver in drag, or at least there was something very mannish about her appearance. She was tall, broad shouldered, large bosomed, with the deep, husky voice of a longshoreman, and she wore stage makeup that looked as if it had been put on with a trowel and then baked. Her face was an improbable dark tan, her lips a glossy bloodred, and her spiked eyelashes, striking on TV, were truly alarming close up. Her eyes were dark, bright, and very, very shrewd and tough. She offered her cheek, and I kissed it. “Irving’s out walking Josephine,” she said. She appraised me carefully. “Christ, I thought I was going to get a top editor,” she said. “You look just like a kid.”
“And you look just like a girl,” I said, stealing Milton Greene’s line to Marilyn Monroe.
It had worked for Milton on Marilyn, and it worked for me on Jackie. She gave a big grin and took us into the tiny kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Dom Perignon. I was interested to see that except for a can of dog food and an empty jar of cocktail capers, the refrigerator was bare. The Mansfields were not homebodies. She handed me the bottle and said, “Pop it, kid.”
I popped it—a European education pays dividends sooner or later—and the three of us sat down in the living room, where glasses were already waiting on the coffee table. I noticed that they were from the Beverly Hills Hotel, as were the cocktail napkins. The Mansfields, as I was to discover, expected to be comped everything. When they stayed in a hotel, they left with a supply of soap, toilet paper, and Kleenex.
I struggled to sit upright while I poured. Jackie’s upholstery—mostly some kind of shimmery gold fabric with a nubby weave—was protected by transparent