The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [105]
“But I do, I do,” I said fervently. “We are closer, I do understand you.”
“You’re sweet. I wish I had a little sister like you. Christ, how maudlin can you get!” He smiled bitterly. “Well, they’ve all gone, or have I already said that? The French, the English, the Americans, the Spaniards. Missy, Mac, Bax——”
Now was my chance. “I think we’re well rid of them,” I said, making my voice harsh. “Especially your friend Bax. You ought to know something, Larry: they all turned against you in the end. Especially your friend Bax.”
“Yeah? What’d he say?”
“He actually tried to make me believe you told him I’d sleep with him down here! He said that was why he rented the villa in the first place. He said that was how you talked him into coming down.” I snorted. “Of course I didn’t believe him. It was so obvious from the beginning that he was jealous. He knew I preferred you to him.”
Larry was too clever to deny it outright. He couldn’t be sure just how much Bax had told me. “Now wait a minute, wait a minute,” he said. “Let’s not condemn Bax altogether. He’s a nice kid. I like him. And maybe I did say a lot of things to him I oughtn’t to. Man to man I may have intimated that you weren’t exactly a prig. I mean I may have said I thought he had a chance or something like that. You know how guys go on. And he was good-looking and nuts about you.” He stopped for a moment. “The trouble is I can’t remember exactly what I did say: I forget. What’s the use of remembering anything? If it was unpleasant it was unpleasant and if it was pleasant it’s over.” He was sinking low again; I could hardly hear the last part. “But there’s one thing I want you to get clear, Gorce,” he said, suddenly leaning over me, and for a moment, I swear, sincere. “Whatever I may have said to Bax about you I knew this: you don’t have to sleep with anyone to get them to rent you a villa. You don’t have to do anything. You just have to be. I’ve been around and I know who does and who doesn’t. And Bax is no fool and he knew it as well as I do.”
It was the nicest thing that anyone had ever said to me, especially coming from someone who, as he said, ought to know. It was awful. Suddenly I wanted to drop the whole thing; but I knew, of course, that I couldn’t.
“Can you forgive me?” he asked.
“Of course I do,” I smiled at him. “I know you so much better than the others. You like being In Charge, that’s all; making things happen. Like Lila for instance. Teddy said the most awful things about you. Said you’d ruined her.…”
“Now that is nonsense,” he said vehemently. “That I do deny completely.…”
“But of course,” I said earnestly. “What Teddy didn’t realize was that: I’d actually overheard you and Lila last fall, when you were trying to make her pull herself together and start getting modeling jobs in Paris instead of coming down here—I mean if that’s trying to ruin her——”
He looked at me strangely. “Where’d you hear this?”
I made a vague gesture. “Montparnasse, Saint-Germain, somewhere. It was late. I was with a lot of people, I can’t remember.”
“Yeah,” he said wearily. “Yeah. I don’t know why I try to help her at all. I feel sorry for her, I guess, that’s it. But sometimes I’d like to kill her,” he exclaimed passionately. “I really would. Jesus, I can’t take this much longer—the drugging and drinking and all those stories she makes up about me——” Poor Larry, it was Art and Vice he was finding so hard to reconcile.
“Larry, darling,” I murmured lovingly, now that he was really nervy (I still held his hand). “Larry, you remember after Opening Night when we went off to my hotel? There’s something that’s been troubling me about that night ever since.…”
“Yeah?” Did he stiffen a little?
“Yes, it’s been