I recognized her now. I’d seen her in small parts in different movies and she’d always been good. She gave her part second effort. You always liked her on screen, but you never thought of her as great. I could see she admired Clara Ford and had hoped the critic would say something to her. She hadn’t, so now Janelle was being funny malicious. In another woman it would have been a catty remark about Ford, but with her it was OK.
She knew who I was and said the usual things about the book that people say. And I put on my usual absentminded act as if I had barely heard the compliment. I liked the way she dressed, modest, yet stylish as hell without being high fashion.
“Let’s go over,” she said. I thought she wanted to meet Kellino, but when we got there, I saw her trying to get Clara Ford into a conversation. She said intelligent things, but you could see Ford putting the ice on because she was so beautiful, or so I thought then.
Suddenly Janelle turned and walked away from the group. I followed her. She had her back to me, but when I caught her at the door, I found that she was crying.
Her eyes were magnificent with tears in them. They were golden brown flecked with black dots that were maybe just darker brown (later I found out they were contact lenses), and the tears made the eyes bigger, with more gold. They also betrayed the fact that she’d given the eyes a little help with makeup that was now running.
“You’re beautiful when you cry,” I said. I was imitating Kellino in one of his charming roles.
“Oh, fuck you, Kellino,” she said.
I hate women using words like “fuck” and “cunt” and “mother-fucker.” But she was the only woman I ever heard who made the word “fuck” sound humorous and friendly. The f and the k were Southern slurry soft.
Maybe it was obvious that she had never said the word until lately. Maybe it was because she grinned at me to let me know she knew I was imitating Kellino. She had a great grin, not a charming smile.
“I don’t know why I’m so silly,” she said. “But I never go to parties. I just came because I knew she’d be here. I admire her so much.”
“She’s a good critic,” I said.
“Oh, she’s so smart,” Janelle said. “She once wrote something nice about me. And you know, I thought she’d like me. Then she put me down. For no reason.”
“She had plenty of reason,” I said. “You’re beautiful and she’s not. And she’s got plans for Kellino tonight, and she was not going to have him distracted by you.”
“That’s silly,” she said. “I don’t like actors.”
“But you’re beautiful,” I said. “Also, you were talking intelligently. She has to hate you.”
For the first time she looked at me with something like real interest. I was way ahead of her. I liked her because she was beautiful. I liked her because she never went to parties. I liked her because she didn’t go for actors like Kellino, who were so goddamn handsome and charming and dressed so beautifully in exquisitely tailored suits, with haircut by a scissor Rosin. And because she was intelligent. Also, she could cry over a critic putting her down at a party. If she was that tenderhearted, maybe she wouldn’t kill me. It was the vulnerability finally that made me ask her to have dinner and a movie. I didn’t know what Osano could have told me. A vulnerable woman will kill you all the time.
The funny thing is, I didn’t see her sexually. I just liked her a hell of a lot. Because despite the fact that she was beautiful and had that wonderfully happy grin even with tears, she was not really a sexy woman at first glance. Or I was too inexperienced to notice. Because later, when Osano met her, he said he felt the sexuality in her like an exposed electric wire. When I told Janelle about Osano, she said that must have happened to her after I met her. Because before she met me, she had been off sex. When I kidded her about that and didn’t believe her, she gave me that happy grin and asked if I had ever heard about vibrators.
It’s funny that a grown woman telling you that she masturbated with a vibrator can turn you on to her. But it’s easy to figure out. The implication is that she is not promiscuous, though she is beautiful and lives in a milieu where men are after women as quickly as a cat after a mouse and mostly for the same reason.
– -
We went out with each other for two weeks, about five times, before we finally got to bed. And maybe we had a better time before we slept together than we did afterward.
I would go to work at the studio during the day and work on the script and have some drinks with Malomar and then go back to the suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel and read. Sometimes I’d go to a movie. On the nights I’d have a date with Janelle she’d meet me at the suite, and then she would drive me around to the movies and a restaurant and then back to the suite. We’d have a few drinks and talk, and she’d go home about one in the morning. We were buddies, not lovers.
She told me why she divorced her husband. When she was pregnant, she’d been horny as hell, but he didn’t care for her pregnant Then when the baby came, she’d loved nursing it. She was delighted by the milk flowing from her breast and the baby enjoying it. She wanted her husband to taste the milk, to suck her breast and feel the flow. She thought it would be so great. Her husband turned away in disgust. And that finished him for her.
“I’ve never told anybody that before,” she said.
“Jesus,” I said. “He was crazy.”-
Late one night in the suite she sat beside me on the sofa. We necked like kids and I got her panties down around her legs and then she balked and stood up. By this time I had my pants down in anticipation, and she was laughing and half crying, and she said, “I’m sorry. I’m an intelligent woman. But I just can’t.” We looked at each other and we both started laughing. We just looked too funny, both of us, with our bare legs and crotches and her white panties over her bare feet. Me with my pants and shorts snagging my ankles.
By that time I liked her too much to get mad. And oddly enough I didn’t feel rejected. “It’s OK,” I said. I pulled up my trousers. She pulled up her panties and we hugged each other on the sofa again. When she left, I asked her if she would come around the next night. When she said she would, I knew she would go to bed with me.
The next night she came into the suite and kissed me. Then she said, with a shy smile, “Shit, guess what happened.”
I knew enough, innocent as I was, that when a prospective bed mate says something like that, you’re out in the cold. But I wasn’t worried.
“My period started,” she said.
“That doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you,” I said. I took her by the hand and led her to the bedroom. In two seconds we were naked in bed except for her panties and I could feel the pad underneath. “Take all that stuff off,” I said. She did. We kissed and just held each other.
We weren’t in love that first night. We just liked each other a hell of a lot. We made love like kids. Just kissing and fucking straight. And holding each other and talking and feeling comfortable and warm. She had satiny skin and a lovely soft ass that wasn’t mushy. Her small breasts had a really great feel to them and big red nipples. We made love twice in the space of an hour, and it had been a long time since I had done that. Finally we got thirsty, and I went into the other room to open a bottle of champagne I had waiting. When I got back into the bedroom, she had her panties back on. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed with a wet towel in her hand, and she was scrubbing out the dark bloodstains on the white sheets. I stood watching her, naked, champagne glasses in my hand, and it was then I first got that overwhelming feeling of tenderness that is the signal of doom. She looked up and smiled at me, her blond hair tousled, her huge brown eyes myopically serious.