she was working. She could study with the best teachers of drama. Gradually she had come to love acting. She knew finally that it was what she wanted to do with her life.
The love for acting was something she had not even told Doran, but he sensed it. She had taken countless plays and books on drama and film from the library and read them all. She enrolled in a little theater workshop whose director gave himself such airs of importance that she was amused, yet charmed. When he told her she was one of the best natural talents he had ever seen, she almost fell in love with him and quite naturally went to bed with him.
Charmless, stingy, rich, Theodore Lieverman held a golden key to so many doors that she called him. And arranged to meet him that night for dinner.
Janelle found Lieverman sweet, quiet and shy; she took the initiative. Finally she got him to talk about himself. Little things came out He had had twin sisters, a few years younger than he, who had both died in a plane crash. He had had a nervous breakdown from that tragedy. Now his wife wanted a divorce, a million dollars in cash and part of his holdings. Gradually he bared an emotionally deprived life- an economically rich boyhood which had left him weak and vulnerable. The only thing he was good at was making money. Re had a scheme to finance Doran’s movie that was foolproof. But the time had to be ripe, the investors played like fish. He, Lieverman, would throw in the pump-priming cash, the development money.
They went out nearly every night for two or three weeks, and he was always so nice and shy that Janelle finally became impatient. After all, he sent her flowers after each date. Re bought her a pin from Tiffany’s, a lighter from Gucci’s and an antique gold ring from Roberto’s. And he was madly in love with her. She tried to get him into bed and was astonished when he proved reluctant. She could only show her willingness, and then finally he asked her to go to New York and Puerto Rico with him. He had to go on a business trip for his firm. She understood that for some reason he could not make love to her, initially, in Los Angeles. Probably because of guilt feelings. Some men were like that. They could only be unfaithful when they were a thousand miles from their wives. The first time anyway. She found this amusing and interesting.
They stopped in New York, and he brought her to his business meetings. She saw him negotiating for the movie rights for a new novel coming out and a script written by a famous writer. He was shrewd, very low-key, and she saw here was his strength. But that first night they finally got to bed together in their suite at the Plaza and she learned one of the truths about Theodore Lieverman.
He was almost totally impotent. She was angry at first, feeling the lack in herself. She did everything she could and finally she made him get there. The next night was a little better. In Puerto Rico he was a little better still. But he was easily the most incompetent and boring lover she had ever had. She was glad to get back to Los Angeles. When he dropped her off at her apartment, he asked her to marry him. She said she’d think it over.
She had no intention of marrying him until Doran gave her a tongue-lashing. “Think it over? Think it over? Use your head,” he said. “The guy is crazy about you. You marry him. So you stick with him for a year. You come out with at least a million and he’ll still be in love with you. You’ll call your own shots. Your career has a hundred times better chance of going. Besides, through him, you’ll meet other rich guys. Guys that you’ll like better and maybe love. You can change your whole life, lust be bored for a year, hell, that’s not suffering. I wouldn’t ask you to suffer.”
It was like Doran to think that he was being very clever. That he was really opening Janelle’s eyes to the verities of life every woman knows or is taught from her cradle. But Doran recognized that Janelle really hated to do anything like that not because it was immoral but because she could not betray another human being in such a fashion. So cold-bloodedly. And also because she had such a zest for life that she couldn’t bear being bored for a year. But as Doran quickly pointed out, the chances were good that she would be bored that year even without Theodore to bring her down. And also she would really make poor Theodore happy for that year.
“You know, Janelle,” Doran said, “having you around on your worst day is better than having most people around on their best day.” It was one of the very few things he had said since his twelfth birthday that was sincere. Though self-serving.
But it was Theodore acting with uncommon aggressiveness who tipped the balance. He bought a beautiful two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar house in Beverly Hills, with swimming pool, tennis court, two servants. He knew Janelle loved to play tennis, she had learned to play in California, had had a brief affair as a matter of course with her tennis teacher, a slim, beautiful blond young man who had to her astonishment billed her for his teaching. Later other women told her about California men. How they would have drinks in a bar, let you pay for your own drinks and then ask you to go to their apartments for the night. They wouldn’t even spring for the cab fare home. She enjoyed the tennis pro in bed and on the tennis court, and he had improved her performance in both areas. Eventually she tired of him because he dressed better than she did. Also, he batted right and left and he vamped her male as well as her female friends, which even Janelle, open-minded as she was, felt was stretching it.
She had never played tennis with Lieverman. He had casually mentioned once that he had beaten Arthur Ashe in high school, so she assumed he was out of her class and like most good tennis players would rather not play with hackers. But when he persuaded her to move into the new house, they gave an elaborate tennis party.
She loved the house. It was a luxurious Beverly Hills mansion with guest rooms, a den, a cabana for the pool, an outdoor heated whirlpool. She and Theodore went over plans to decorate and put in some special wood paneling. They went shopping together. But now in bed he was a complete bust, and Janelle didn’t even try him anymore. He promised her that when his divorce came through next month and they married, he would be OK. Janelle devoutly hoped so because feeling guilty, she had decided the least she could do, since she was going to marry him for his money, was to be a faithful wife. But going without sex was getting on her nerves. It was on the day of the tennis party that she knew it was all down the drain. She had felt there was something fishy about the whole deal. But Theodore Lieverman inspired so much confidence in her, her friends and even the cynical Doran that she thought it was her guilty conscience looking for a way out.
On the day of the tennis party, Theodore finally got on the court. He played well enough, but he was a hacker. There was no way he could beat Arthur Ashe even in his bassinet. Janelle was astonished. The one thing she was sure of was that her lover was not a liar. And she was no innocent. She had always assumed lovers were liars. But Theodore never bullshitted, never bragged, never mentioned his money or his high standing in investment circles. He never really talked to other people except Janelle. His low key approach was extremely rare in California, so much so that Janelle had been surprised that he had lived his whole life in that state. But seeing him on the tennis court, she knew he had lied in one respect. And lied well. A casual deprecatory remark that he had never repeated, never lingered on. She had never doubted him. As she had never doubted anything he said really. There was no question that he loved her. He had shown that in every way, which of course didn’t mean too much when he couldn’t get it up.
That night after the tennis party was over he told her that she should get her little boy from Tennessee and move him to the house. If it had not been for his lie about beating Arthur Ashe, she would have agreed. It was well she did not. The next day when Theodore was at work she received a visitor.
The visitor was Mrs. Theodore Lieverman, the heretofore invisible wife. She was a pretty little thing, but frightened and obviously impressed by Janelle’s beauty, as if she couldn’t believe her husband had come up with such a winner. As soon as she announced who she was, Janelle felt an overwhelming relief and greeted Mrs. Lieverman so warmly the woman was further confused.
But Mrs. Lieverman surprised Janelle too. She wasn’t angry. The first thing she said was startling. “My husband is nervous, very sensitive,” she said. “Please don’t tell him I came to see you.”
“Of course,” Janelle said. Her spirits were soaring. She was elated. The wife would demand her husband and she would get him back so fast her head would swim.
Mrs. Lieverman said cautiously, “I don’t know how Ted is getting all this money. He makes a good salary. But he hasn’t any savings.”
Janelle laughed. She already knew the answer. But she asked anyway. “What about the twenty million dollars?”
“Oh, God. Oh, God,” Mrs. Lieverman said. She put her head down in her hands and started to weep.
“And he never beat Arthur Ashe in tennis in high school,” Janelle said reassuringly.
“Oh, God, God,” Mrs. Lieverman wailed.
“And you’re not getting divorced next month,” Janelle said.
Mrs. Lieverman just whimpered.
