“Such as?” prodded Ruth.
“Well, such as this.” Betsy got to her feet, breathed heavily, and then spoke in what she hoped were seductive tones. “ ‘Elvira entered Bullocks. Once inside, her chest was out of control. It took on a life all its own. He was there. The clerk at the ribbon counter. He didn’t belong there. Elvira could see him galloping across the desert, his steed snorting and puffing, ahead of him the oasis where Fatima awaited him. Instead he was measuring yards of ribbon for a middle-aged matron who was oblivious to his magnificent looks. Why was he a clerk at Bullocks?’ ” Betsy stood against a wall; her chest rising and falling like an ocean tide running amok. “ ‘Was he a spy? Had he been placed there by Macy’s?’ ” She burst into laughter. “It’s no use. I sit at that damned processor trying to write this stuff, but I can’t do it.”
Said Ruth, “My husband read those things. He doted on them.”
“Millions read them,” said Maxwell. “And like you, Betsy, I wish I could write them. I’m having enough trouble with my leper. The network warned me against anything falling off, you know, like his nose or his index fingers. Soap audiences don’t go for that sort of thing. They don’t mind suicides, car crashes, or latent homosexuals... but they draw the line at sophisticated physical disability.”
Soon the three were heavy into a discussion of mediocre writing. This led to another round of drinks and then the decision to dine together, and within a few weeks, Ruth, Betsy, and Maxwell were phoning each other daily, sometimes twice and three times. They learned that Betsy had come to Los Angeles from Toronto three years earlier following her divorce from a lawyer who not only came from wealth, but amassed a fortune of his own from representing a number of well-heeled shady characters, including a number of Caribbean dictators and South American drug dealers.
The three became inseparable, and soon, when Betsy realized Ruth and Maxwell were strapped for money, she insisted on helping. Ruth accepted Betsy’s contributions with alacrity, saying to Maxwell in private, “Well after all, Maxwell, Albert Schweitzer accepted donations.”
Betsy seemed to enjoy showering them with largess, though this largess never came in big sums. It was a tenner here, a twenty-dollar bill there, and once she let Ruth try on her tiara, a gift, she claimed, from a prime minister of Canada.
One afternoon, when Maxwell was busy at a television studio pitching an idea to a twenty-four-year-old production genius who ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches washed down with spring water, Betsy and Ruth were in Ruth’s apartment and the talk got around to the men in their lives.
Ruth asked, “The prime minister. Was it Massey? Were you very much in love with him?”
“Who? Massey?” Betsy seemed to be caught unawares. “Oh. Him. No. I promised him never to talk about him.” She sounded so reverential, Ruth wondered if she meant hymn. “The great love of my life is dead. And there will never be anyone to replace him. Never.”
Ruth cleared her throat. “I’ve never known a great love.”
“Armand wasn’t the great love of your life?”
“He was a fine person. He was fun at first. But I like to think there’s someone out there looking for someone like me.”
Betsy was fingering the strand of pearls around her neck. “You were married to him for twenty years and he was never ever your great love? Not even a great lover?”
“I have no way of making a comparison. He was the only man in my life. Like I told you, I was young, naive, and a slow starter. After the first three years of our marriage, it was Armand who accelerated, and I found myself marooned in a perpetual cloud of dust left by my accelerated husband.”
“How you must have hated him.”
“Oh no!” Ruth was quick to defend herself. “I never hated him. I don’t think I could have gone on living with him if I hated him. There were people in the past whom I grew to hate, but I dropped them. I don’t tolerate hatred, not in myself, not in anyone else.”
“Do you suppose you might grow to hate me?”
“Oh Betsy, what an awful thing to ask!”
One night at dinner at Betsy’s the hostess said to her two guests, “I have something to tell you.” She poured brandies and led them to the sofa and easy chairs. Comfortably seated, Betsy said, “You’re my two best friends. In fact, next to my lawyer, Bartlett Campbell, you’re the only people I trust. I have come to love you both. So I want you to know that I have made a new will, and you, my dear friends, are my sole beneficiaries.”
Maxwell heard Ruth gasp as he felt the blood rush to his cheeks. My God, he was thinking, how can you tell a poverty-stricken writer, one who deserves to be declared a disaster area, that he’s now the heir to a share of a great fortune. Ruth was struck dumb. The insurance money was long gone, and she was too shy and embarrassed to ask Betsy to increase her generosity.
“Oh, my poor darlings, this is such a shock. I didn’t mean it to be. I wanted to make you happy!” She lowered her voice. “I have no relatives; you see. I’m alone in the world. And, well...” she arose dramatically and positioned herself against double doors that led to a balcony that afforded a magnificent view of the San Diego freeway. “I didn’t want you to know. But now you must. I’m very ill. I’ve been ill for years. The real reason I came to L.A. was for medical treatment only available here.” Ruth and Maxwell found their voices and were remonstrating. “Please, please don’t, please. Let’s enjoy ourselves. Let’s have our luncheons and dinners and go to the theater and see terrible plays about ugly people in the barrios, and revivals of George Bernard Shaw with an all black cast. Come on now, let’s have more brandy and swap terrible jokes!”
Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and bills began piling up. “It’s awful,” Ruth said to Maxwell one Saturday evening when they dined alone, Betsy having arranged dinner with her lawyer, “knowing we’re to inherit all that money and today we can’t pay our bills. I have to admit it, Maxwell, I have to admit it,” the texture of her voice darkened, “I’m thinking a very terrible thought.”
“Me too.” He was barely audible. “Umm, er... Betsy’s been losing weight. The circles under her eyes are turning into crevasses.”
“And she’s barely eating. You know, I’m going to ask her if I can give her some vitamin shots. I wonder if her doctors give her any. She won’t tell me who they are. Has she told you?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I feel she’s gone a little quiet of late. Like, well, like she might wish it was all over with.”
“I wonder. Do you think she does?”
Betsy brightened at the suggestion of vitamin shots. “Not that I think they’ll really help.” She and Ruth were speaking on the phone. “Do you want to come over now?” Betsy asked Ruth.
“There’s no time like the present, if you’ll forgive a cliché!”
Betsy replied solemnly, “I do forgive a cliché.”
Several days later, the obituary in the Los Angeles Times read:
BERING, BETSY: Age 39, suddenly of a heart attack. There are no immediate survivors. Her friends Ruth and Maxwell are grief-stricken. Services will be private.
Betsy’s lawyer, Bartlett Campbell, invited Ruth and Maxwell to his office. Before going, they spoke on the phone, very excited at the prospect of hearing the terms of Betsy’s will, which, they presumed, was why they were asked to Campbell’s office. He was a handsome man in his sixties and introduced them to an associate, Walter Trance, who grunted his hellos and sat next to Campbell.