Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [83]
When I got there, everyone was partying as if there were no tomorrow. Still, the hosts had made an attempt to give a formal dinner, at which I was seated next to the wife of a big Florida developer. I glanced out onto the terrace, just in time to see the developer in the throes of a passionate kiss with another woman. I looked back at his wife’s face, saw her glassy eyes, and realized that she didn’t even register her husband’s infidelity. It was as if a veil had been ripped from in front of my eyes. The entire room was zonked out of their minds on coke.
At last I faced the facts. This place and these people were not for me. More to the point, neither was my husband or our marriage. And I couldn’t believe that it had taken me so long to see the light.
Fortunately, the party was in full swing, and the noise was so loud that no one noticed when I crept out of the room and upstairs to the guest bedroom, where I’d left my Louis Vuitton suitcases.
Exhausted by my dreadful night at Turnberry Isle, my revulsion at all the drug use and carousing going on, and Chuck’s indifference to me, I lay down on the bed. Before I knew it, I drifted off to sleep.
When I opened my eyes again, dawn was breaking. No one had come to find me, no one knew where I was, and no one cared, least of all my husband. I buzzed the doorman to come get my luggage.
Then the bedroom door opened, and there was Chuck, wasted from a night of drinking and drugs. He stood there staring at me intently, tall and handsome despite the ravages of alcohol and cocaine. He must have seen something flicker in my expression, because he walked over to the bed, almost like a sleepwalker, sat down, rested his head in his hands, and said, “I’m so sorry, Barbara Jean, I’m so sorry.”
I took one look at my husband, the man I had once thought I loved with all my heart, and simply walked out, my head held high, and didn’t look back.
Chuck merely watched as I left. He knew it was over between us and that any attempt to persuade me otherwise would be futile.
I took a cab to the airport and flew home to Los Angeles, alone. I felt sad that I no longer loved Chuck, and depressed that I was about to go through another divorce, but at least our split was my choice, and I was convinced that it was absolutely the right one.
FORTUNATELY, IMMEDIATELY AFTER my split from Chuck, I was able to drown any vestiges of melancholy in my new role as the madam in a touring company of the musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Moreover, my mother had moved down to LA from San Francisco and was now living with me, so I had her for company, which made life pleasanter and less lonely.
I loved the script, the songs, and everything else about The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, with just one exception: that four-letter word starting in f and ending in k, which the madam, my character in the show, uses frequently. My mother and I pored over the script together and spent hours trying to come up with alternative words to replace that dreaded one, but to no avail.
Finally the director laid down the law and in his Texas accent ruled, “Barbara Jean, just please say the word.”
And that, as they say, was that. So although I blushed a little on opening night, as the tour progressed I became more and more accustomed to using the f-word without blushing. And I have to confess that today you could say that I employ it frequently. However, when I do, I try to remember to make a mental apology to my mother, wherever she is. And I sincerely hope that she forgives me.
Soon after I was in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Michele Lee, of Knots Landing fame, who was married to the actor James Farentino, introduced me to Brentwood plastic surgeon Stanley Frileck, who was also director of the Michael Jackson Burn Center in Culver City.
Stanley was a kind and