The Last Don - Mario Puzo [43]
“I have to go back to Vegas tomorrow,” Cross said. “I work in the Xanadu now.”
Ceil gave his hand a tug. “I hate Vegas,” she said. “I think it’s a disgusting city.”
“I think it’s great,” Cross said, smiling. “Why do you hate it if you’ve never been there?”
“Because people throw away hard-earned money,” Ceil said with youthful indignation. “Thank God my father doesn’t gamble. And all those sleazy showgirls.”
Cross laughed. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I just run the golf course. I’ve never seen the inside of the casino.”
She knew he was making fun of her, but she said, “If I invite you to visit me at college when I go away, will you come?”
“Sure,” Cross said. In this game he was far more experienced than she was. And he felt a tenderness about her innocence, her holding of his hands, her ignorance of her father and the Family’s true purpose. He understood that she was just staking out a tentative claim, the lovely weather, the explosion of celebration in her body of womanhood, and he was touched by the sweet, unsexy kisses.
“We better go back to the party,” he said, and they strolled hand in hand to the picnic area. Her father, Virginio, was the first to notice them and rubbed one finger against another and said, “Shame, shame,” gleefully. Then he embraced them both. It was a day Cross always remembered for its innocence, the young children chastely clad in white to announce the resurrection, and because he finally understood who his father was.
When Pippi and Cross went back to Vegas, things were different between them. Pippi obviously knew that the secret was out, and he paid Cross some attentions of extra affection. Cross was surprised that his feeling toward his father had not changed, that he still loved him. He could not imagine a life without his father, without the Clericuzio Family, without Gronevelt and the Xanadu Hotel. This was the life he had to lead, and he was not unhappy to lead it. But there began to build up in him an impatience. Another step had to be taken.
BOOK III
Claudia De Lena
Athena Aquitane
CHAPTER 4
CLAUDIA DE LENA drove from her apartment on the Pacific Palisades toward Athena’s Malibu house and pondered what she would say to persuade Athena to come back to work on Messalina.
It was as important to her as it was to the Studio. Messalina was her first truly original script; her other work had been adaptations of novels, rewrites or doctoring of other scripts, or collaborations.
Also, she was a coproducer of Messalina, which gave her a power she had never previously enjoyed. Plus an adjusted gross of the profits. She would see some really big money. And she could then take the next step, to producer-writer. She was perhaps the only person west of the Mississippi who did not want to direct; that required a cruelty in human relationships that she could not tolerate.
Claudia’s relationship with Athena was a true intimacy, not the professional friendship of fellow workers in the movie industry. Athena would know how much the picture meant to her career. Athena was intelligent. What really puzzled Clau-dia was Athena’s fear of Boz Skannet. Athena had never been afraid of anything or anyone.
Well, one thing she would accomplish. She would find out exactly why Athena was so fearful, and then she could help. And certainly, she had to save Athena from ruining her own career. After all, who knew more about the intricacies and traps of the movie business than she did?
Claudia De Lena dreamed of a life as a writer in New York. She was not discouraged when, at the age of twenty-one, her first novel was turned down by twenty publishers. Instead, she decided to move to Los Angeles and try her hand at movie scripts.
Because she was witty and vivacious and talented, she soon made many friends in Los Angeles. She enrolled in a movie-script