Chances

  “Oh, mah gawd!” she drawled in an exaggeratedly shocked voice. “Not nipples and pubic hair!”

  “Don’t joke about it.”

  She unhooked the top of her bikini and let it fall to the floor. “Sorry, honey, you’re right.” She turned to face him, moving provocatively so that her breasts swung in a tantalizingly sexy fashion.

  In spite of his anger he was hard immediately. She had that effect on him.

  Slowly she brought a finger to her lips and licked it, then she drew the finger down to one of her extended nipples and circled it slowly.

  He watched as the nipple grew even bigger, and he grew even harder. He had made love to her hundreds of times but the thrill, the expectation, was always as hot as the first time.

  How could he possibly stay mad at her? She might be a flirt, but when you got right down to it she was his—only his—and that’s what really mattered.

  Carrie had a full report on the wedding from Jerry Meyerson. He was a nice boy. She had liked him from the moment Steven had first brought him home, when they were both sixteen. Over the years she had watched him grow from a gawky teenager into a successful young lawyer. He called her Carrie, never failed to drop by at least once a week, and harbored a secret crush on her which they were both aware of but meticulously never mentioned.

  Carrie was flattered. She was fifty-three years old, and the admiration of a man young enough to be her son was always acceptable.

  Of course she did look marvelous. She was a face in New York society. Other women envied her. She was treated with respect, her opinions on everything from makeup to home decoration quoted constantly.

  Often she wondered what would happen if they all knew the truth about her. Would her opinions and ideas be courted then? Would charities beg her to be their patron? Clothes designers fight for her to wear their clothes?

  No way.

  How strange life was. Who would have thought she would ever have made it to where she was today? And Steven. How proud she was of him. He was a fine lawyer, even if he did insist on working as a public defender. He made a living, but it was nothing to the money he could be making if he would only go into private practice. She was prepared to finance him, but when she suggested this to him, he had turned her down flat. “I want to help people who really need my help, not some fat cat with dollar bills sticking out his ears. The people I help have to make do with what they can get. If they get me, and I can do something for them, it makes me feel good.”

  She didn’t argue. She knew that when he got older and wiser he would change his mind.

  Then Zizi had come into his life and ruined everything. From the moment Carrie first set eyes on her she had known she would.

  “It won’t last,” Jerry assured her. “They were even fighting after the wedding.”

  Carrie nodded. She knew it wouldn’t last. She just wondered how long it would take.

  She had not seen Steven since he had told her of his marriage plans. Much as it hurt her, she had frozen him out of her life in the hope that it might make him see sense. “Where have they gone?” she asked.

  “San Juan, where else would she drag him?” Jerry replied.

  She stood, indicating their meeting was over. “You will keep in touch, won’t you? I’m here if Steven needs me, but until he gets rid of that person I don’t think I want to see him. Perhaps it will help him to make a decision if I’m not around.”

  “You could be right.” He kissed her chastely on the cheek and wondered why his mother looked like an Elizabeth Arden face mask while Carrie resembled Lena Home.

  “I’ll see you in a week,” he said.

  “Thank you, Jerry.”

  Lucky and Gino

  1966

  “You have brought disgrace upon this entire establishment,” said the school principal with a censorious glare. “L’Evier has never known behavior like this before. Never!” She removed her pebble-like spectacles, and for one wild moment Lucky thought that the austere English woman was going to burst into tears. But she didn’t. She merely squinted, curled her thin lips disparagingly, and continued with her diatribe. “To bring boys into the school is bad enough. But to smuggle them into your room, and to be found… in bed with them—”

  Olympia stifled a giggle.

  The principal caught her eye and said ominously, “You may well laugh, young lady. I do hope that your laughter continues when your father arrives to remove you from this school that you have besmirched with your… disgusting behavior. You are both expelled. I have managed to contact your father too, Lucky. He will be here in the morning, and so will Mr. Stanislopoulos.” She replaced her spectacles firmly on her long thin nose. “In the meantime,” she continued, looking with distaste at the two girls, “you are to go to your room and stay in your room until you are fetched tomorrow. Is that quite clear?”

  “Shit!” exclaimed Olympia, flopping down on her bed. “Daddy’s going to be really pissed off. He hates it when I’m thrown out, and he has to come and get me and make small talk and apologize for his naughty little girlikins. He made me swear I wouldn’t get myself thrown out of this one. Shit!”

  “My father won’t come,” Lucky said dourly. “He’ll send someone.”

  “Why won’t he come?” Olympia asked curiously.

  Lucky shrugged. “He’s a busy man.”

  “They’re all busy men.”

  “My old man’s busier than most.”

  “What does he do?”

  Lucky shrugged again, then said carefully, vaguely, “He has a million interests. Hotels…. factories…. publishing…. You name it, he has a piece of it.” She opened her closet and inspected her clothes.

  “Does he have a piece of Marabelle Blue?” Olympia asked casually.

  Lucky spun around and faced her friend. “How long have you known?” she snapped, two bright spots of red lighting up her cheeks.

  Olympia yawned and stretched. “A while. I was waiting for you to tell me. Jesus! I wish my father was a notorious criminal instead of a boring old millionaire.”

  “I’m not allowed to tell anyone.”

  Olympia snorted. “Since when did that stop you? Not allowed, indeed! Ha!”

  Lucky couldn’t help feeling relieved that at last someone knew who she was. She had always wanted to confide in Olympia, but Gino had forced her to make such a solemn promise….

  “I’d love to meet him. I’ve only just seen pictures of him in newspapers and things, but he looks marvelously rough and kind of sinister.”

  “Sinister?” Lucky laughed. What a strange description for the man she could remember hugging and holding, smelling and kissing. They might have drawn apart over the years, but she would hardly call her father sinister.

  “Tell me,” questioned Olympia excitedly, “has he really killed people?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Lucky shortly. “Everything that’s written about him is exaggerated. He told me that himself. I think he’s just got a reputation because of…” Her words trailed off. Because of what? How the hell would she know? Gino was her father. She loved him. Or hated hirñ;Depending. The man she read about: Gino the Ram Santangelo. Who was he? She certainly didn’t know. And she certainly didn’t want to find out.

  Or did she? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe one day. Only maybe….

  Getting engaged to Marabelle Blue had been an ace mistake on Gino’s part. The woman was a suicidal slut who craved constant attention. He couldn’t understand why he had done it. Had he been sorry for her or what? Six months of living together and he still couldn’t figure it out. All he knew was he wanted her to go. She talked marriage day and night, and it was getting difficult to stall.

  When he had removed Peter Richmond from her life, he had removed her security blanket. She needed a Peter Richmond around. She needed to know that she was beautiful and desirable, and that a man would allow his future to hang in balance while he fucked her. Gino wanted her. But Gino wasn’t risking anything by going with her. Peter Richmond’s s
udden defection was a blow indeed. Marabelle couldn’t handle it. The most desirable movie star in the world took to her bed and sobbed like a small punished child.

  Gino kept in touch, talking to her maid on the phone every day, hearing first that Miss Blue had a bad cold, then a headache, then a toothache.

  The studio was not amused. She was in the middle of shooting a movie, and her sudden sickness was costing them thousands of dollars a day. After four days they sent their lawyers and doctors to her house. The next morning she reported for work, pale and drawn. She had a fight with the director and walked off the set early in the afternoon. By six o’clock in the evening she had overdosed on a variety of pills and was rushed to the hospital, where her stomach was pumped out just in time.

  Gino was in Las Vegas when he heard. He flew back to Los Angeles immediately and went straight to the hospital.

  Marabelle was like a child lying in bed. She looked about twelve, with stringy yellow hair, pale blue eyes, and blotched skin.

  “What are you, some kind of a nut?” he asked affectionately.

  “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I always screw things up… always….”

  “Hey, you wanna get engaged, kid?” It was out before he knew it. Then it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Gino Santangelo. Marabelle Blue. Every guy in America would eat his fucking heart out!

  Marabelle liked the idea a lot. There was only one small problem. She already had a husband, the veteran stuntman she had married in her early Hollywood days.

  “We can fix you a quickie Tijuana divorce, no big deal,” Gino had said. “In the meantime you can move in.”

  A few weeks after she took up residence in the Bel Air house, he realized he had made a big mistake. Her movie had finished shooting, and she had a long break before the next one. She spent the time lying in bed, watching television, devouring movie magazines, and eating. Marabelle Blue—fantasy sex symbol—couldn’t even be bothered to comb her hair.

  Gino could not believe what was happening. “You going to get up today?” he would ask.

  She would smile contentedly. “Maybe.” But more often than not she wouldn’t. She would lie in bed like a sloth, and by the evening the room would smell of oranges, pickled onions, and Marabelle herself—she never bathed.

  Gino was soon disgusted. But how to get rid of her? She wasn’t just an ordinary woman, she was a movie star with accountants and agents and managers and producers and directors and hangers-on and fans.

  There were times when she was forced to get up, apply a two hour makeup, mask her platinum-blond hair with a scarf because the black roots were an inch long, and bathe, because how could she go to costume fittings stinking like a pig?

  What the fuck had he got himself into? He sent for Costa. “Get her out of my house,” he told him tersely. “I don’t care what it costs. I’m going to New York, and I want you to tell her it’s over.”

  He knew he should tell her himself, but Christ! It was like dealing with a retarded child. He had tried to have a conversation with her a few nights before. Her lower lip had trembled, her eyes brimmed with tears. “Aren’t you happy, baby? Don’t I make you happy?” And before he could stop her she had slid out of bed, thrown off her nightgown, held open her arms and said in her best little Marabelle Blue voice, “Come on and fuck me, baby, that’ll make you happy.”

  He would sooner have thrown a fuck into a rancid cat. Fuck her? Wasn’t smelling her enough?

  Costa went to the house while Gino was away and told her that she must go. She took the news calmly enough, her eyes hardly leaving the flickering television set.

  That very same evening she slit her wrists with a razor and barely made it through the night. The maid discovered her naked and bleeding on the bathroom floor and immediately contacted Costa, who was able to arrange a cover-up that prevented it hitting the papers.

  Gino flew back to Los Angeles, furious and trapped.

  Marabelle was childlike and contrite. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’ll try harder, really I will. When we’re married it’ll all be great.”

  “I must be gettin’ old to have even thought about marryin’ her,” Gino confided to Costa.

  “You? Old? Never, my friend.”

  “I’m nearly sixty,” he said ruefully. “That ain’t springtime.”

  Costa slapped him on the shoulder. “We’re both getting on. The difference is I’m younger than you and yet I look years older!”

  “You lead a clean life, that’s what does it. I bet you’ve never even looked at another woman. You and Jen are still a couple of kids together.” His eyes hooded over, and Costa knew, without his saying anything, that he was thinking of Maria and how things could have been.

  “How’s Lucky?” he asked quickly. “Does she write often?”

  “Nope. She’s a funny kid. Didn’t even stay over Christmas. Came home for two days, then was off to visit that friend of hers again.”

  “I guess with Marabelle in the house—”

  “Christ! When I get rid of her I’m really gonna spend some time with the kids—get to know ’em. They come back from school with their loud music and funny clothes and honest to God, Costa, I feel I’ve got a couple of strangers in the house. I’ve been so busy anyway…. Next summer I’ll take ’em away somewhere.”

  A week later he struck on the ideal way to get rid of Marabelle. “Call up the schmuck she’s married to,” he instructed Costa. “Let’s see how much it’ll cost.”

  Dario Santangelo was five feet eleven inches tall. Straight, slim, and clear-skinned. With his white-blond hair, fine features, light suntan, and natural clothes sense, he looked older than his years. Most boys in his grade at school were short, pimply monsters, always fighting, jerking off, discussing girls or cars or the most effective ways of farting in class.

  Dario was immediately regarded as somebody different, an outsider. He didn’t fit in. He was clever. The teachers liked him. The boys hated him.

  His dreams of having a wonderful time at school were soon shattered. To gain favor he confessed his real identity. He was Dario Santangelo. His father was the infamous Gino. The result of his confession was that the boys hated him even more and went out of their way to make his life as miserable as possible.

  He stopped trying to be liked and retreated into a shell where their sarcastic barbs and insults could not penetrate. Regularly he wrote to his sister, telling her how great school was, how terrific the other boys were. Lucky never replied. It was as though she had forgotten all about him. For so many years it had been just the two of them—and then she had gone away to that school in Switzerland, met some stupid girl with a dumb name, and withdrawn from his life. Just like that. At Christmas she had hardly spoken to him at all.

  He decided to stop writing to her. Pay her back. He would ignore her.

  Lucky couldn’t sleep. It was nightmare time. Flashes. A blue swimming pool. A sunny day. A raft in the pink water….

  She sat up in bed sweating. She wished she was Olympia with a real mother and father. What difference if they were divorced? At least they were both around.

  She kicked the covers off the bed and wondered who Gino would send to bring her back. She hoped it would be Marco. She wanted him to hear all about her escapade. Let him hear the gory details of her and the boy she had smuggled into the school. Let him hear about the two of them naked under the sheets, and Olympia, across the room, naked with her boyfriend for the night. Ha! He wouldn’t think she was such a kid then. She was fifteen. Old enough. Experienced. Very.

  Many’s the night she had escaped from the confines of L’Evier and practiced the fine arts of Almost. Even naked, in bed with a boy, you could get away with Almost.

  With Marco she would like to go All The Way. Yes. Olympia said she would only consider going All The Way with Marlon Brando. Lucky decided to settle for Marco.

  Gino boarded a plane in New York, sat back, and lit up a fine Monte Cristo. At first he had considered sending someone to fetch Lucky
home: Marco, Red, or even Costa. But Jennifer had convinced him he should go himself. “It’s your duty as a father, Gino,” she explained. “It shows that you are genuinely concerned.”

  “I am genuinely concerned, for crissake. When I get hold of her I’ll beat the livin’ shit outa her.”

  “No,” Jennifer said softly, “you’ll do no such thing. You’ll talk to her and find out why.”

  “She’s fifteen, Jen,” he exploded. “What’s a kid of fifteen doin’ fuckin’ around?”

  “What were you doing at fifteen?” Jennifer inquired quietly.

  Gino frowned. Poor old Jen was getting past it. Only a fool would make a remark like that. He was a man. At fifteen he could do what the hell he liked. It was different for girls.

  Now he was on a plane and he still wasn’t sure why. Whatever had to be said could be said anywhere. New York. Los Angeles. Vegas. Anywhere.

  So why was he going? Just because Jen said he should?

  “Can I get you anything, sir?” inquired a stewardess.

  He ordered a double scotch and sat back and thought about Marabelle. At last she was gone. What a brilliant stroke, coming up with her husband. Who better to take her off his hands?

  The old stuntman had come to see him. A weather-beaten face clad in cowboy clothes that had seen better days. “How’s Mary?” he asked anxiously.

  “Mary?”

  “Marabelle,” Costa interjected quickly.

  “Oh, yeh.” Gino shook his head sadly. “She’s one sick kid—her own worst enemy.”

  The old man nodded. “Mary has… problems.”

  “Problems. Shit! More than problems.”

  “Are you going to marry her?”

  “Tell you what. I’m gonna give her back to you with a nice little present. I got you both a house on the top of Mulholland Drive. It’s yours—just get her out of my life by six o’clock this evening.”

  It was done. Bye-bye, Marabelle Blue. And good riddance. It cost a hundred thousand, but it was worth every cent.