“And I’m sure things must have been doubly difficult for you, what with nursing your poor ailing husband, then turning your home into a spa. But if movies really are your first love, then I say keep at it, dear. Things are bound to turn around eventually.”
Well, that pretty well tore it. Claire had crossed the line separating casual sniping from Extreme Provocation. It was one thing to imply Moira was a mercenary vixen. Moira saw no shame in this and could usually be seen toward the front of the parade on Mercenary Vixen Pride Day. It was another matter entirely to call attention to her thwarted ambitions, then compound the taunt with condescending sympathy. This Moira would not countenance. Glancing apprehensively toward her, I saw that her eyes were again fixed on Claire. Her smile had grown steelier and one could all but hear the low, metallic hum of silos opening.
“How kind of you, Claire,” she said, patting the condemned’s knee. “Yes, it was horribly difficult getting started. It’s so hard to find decent scripts — not just commercial fluff but the sort of things that really, you know, spoke to me.”
“What sort do you mean?” asked Gina.
“Call me Miss Retro,” she said with a girlish laugh, “but I just love a good old-fashioned romance. The sort they used to make years ago. Things like Casablanca. ” Her eyes swiveled back to Claire. “You know that one, dear? Casablanca? An old favorite of yours, I believe? I swear, I’d do anything—beg, borrow, or steal —to make a picture like that today. But there just aren’t scripts like that floating around anymore. Or maybe there are and people just don’t know about them yet. More champagne anyone?”
I have spoken before of the remarkable sangfroid Claire displays at moments that would make lesser women fall to their knees and ululate in despair. But not even Claire could entirely maintain her composure in the wake of so savage and unforeseen an ambush. Her face turned pale and her eyes took on that wide slightly glazed look one sees in the recently guillotined. I thanked God Moira had offered champagne, as the stars’ sudden focus on the waiter was all that kept them from noting Claire’s devastation.
“More champagne, Claire?” asked Moira.
“No thank you, dear,” said Claire, snapping out of it and plucking her head from the basket. “Goodness—I can’t think when I’ve seen a lovelier sunset.”
The Malenfants gazed out the window, allowing Claire to turn and face me and Gilbert. I braced myself for the eyebrow-singeing glare we had coming, but the look she gave us wasn’t angry. It was wounded and baffled and it pierced me more deeply than the blackest scowl could have.
It was hardly the first time that cowardice had led me to withhold some crucial bit of information from Claire only to have said info spring without warning from the shrubbery and seize her in its slavering jaws. But by failing to warn her about Moira I’d sunk to a whole new level of heinousness. Her stare reflected this. It was a look such as a lady gladiator might give her trusted comrade-in-arms upon discovering, in the heat of battle, that the new bronze shield he’d given her was in fact foil-wrapped milk chocolate.
“How lovely,” said Diana, admiring the sunset.
Claire rose and addressed me and Gilbert. “I’d love to see the grounds before it’s dark. Perhaps you boys will join me on a little tour?”
“Sorry! Can’t!” said Gilbert. “Massage,” he explained, then exited the bar, apparently via catapult.
“Philip?” said Claire.
My first impulse was to follow Gilbert’s lead by briskly dismounting the couch and diving through the Gilbert-shaped hole he’d left in the wall on departing. I knew though that the reckoning would have to come eventually and that forestalling it would only anger her further. I rose and, bravely forgoing the blindfold and cigarette, said that a tour sounded delightful. We bade farewell to our hosts and left via the terrace. We strolled for a bit in less than companionable silence, Claire gazing stonily ahead until we came to the little duck pond. Claire, with an assassin’s natural craving for privacy, scanned the area to make sure it was witness free. Then, satisfied that it was just us and the ducks, she pivoted sharply and slugged my shoulder with enough force to send me sprawling over a stone bench.
“How COULD you!” she roared. “How on earth could you do this to me?!”
“Ow!” I whined, rubbing my shoulder in a ludicrous attempt to prompt remorse. “That hurt!”
“So will this!” she advised, smartly kicking my left shin.
“OW! Cut it out!”
“This is unforgivable! You SWINE! You treacherous BASTARD! You have wronged me before, Philip, but this is beyond the fucking pale! To let me just traipse in here without warning me that Moira knew about the Casablanca business —!”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t want to upset you! I didn’t know Moira was going to go rubbing it in your face. But then you started goading her and —”
“Do not attempt to blame ANY of this on me!” she roared in a voice so blistering that I cringed like a frequently whipped hunchback.
“How did this happen? Tell me, please, because I cannot begin to fathom your motives! Why you would tell anyone about that damn script, let alone Moira —”
“We didn’t tell her! She found out!”
“ How?! Nobody knew but us!”
I told her we’d run into Moira at a restaurant and that Gilbert, no less eager to flaunt our success than Claire herself had been, had asked her by for a drink. I outlined the night’s ruinous events, laying appropriate emphasis on Gilbert’s culpability.
“So you see, we had no choice but to deliver Stephen.”
“Then you’ve been here before?”
“Just once. And Stephen loved it! He’s practically a regular. So he’s happy, Moira’s happy. There’s nothing to be upset about!”
“Oh, no!” said Claire corrosively. “Everything’s dandy! We’ve won a high-profile job through plagiarism, but hey, that’s all right’cause no one knows about it except a satanic blackmailing bitch!”
“She’s already gotten what she wants!”
“And you think she’ll stop there? She’s MOIRA, you dolt! She’ll be beating us to death with this for the rest of our lives!”
“Calm down,” I whispered. “There are people on the terrace now.”
“God!” she moaned, plopping miserably onto the bench. “I can’t believe I’ve let this happen to me. Any of it!!”
“Shhh!” I said, for we were no longer alone. A masseur clad in a tight Les Étoiles T-shirt had emerged from a cottage some twenty yards away and was advancing toward us en route to the main house. He carried some used towels and a bottle of massage oil. As he drew closer I realized I knew him, though from where I couldn’t say. The man, blond and quite sexy in a boyish Abercrombie & Fitch sort of way, recognized me too and smiled in greeting.
“Hey! How you doing?”
“Great,” I said. “And you?”
“Same old, same old,” he said with a wink and proceeded on his way. As I watched his well-sculpted fanny retreat, it suddenly hit me. He was Buster. Monty’s hustler. And he was working at Les Étoiles, performing chores he characterized as the “same old, same old.”
“Who was that?” asked Claire.
A while back, you may recall, I spoke of how hard it is to maintain your equanimity while reeling inwardly from the discovery that the screenplay for which you’ve been taking bows is, in fact, Casablanca. That challenge, I now saw, was mere child’s play compared to the task of preserving a poker face while digesting the news that the luxury spa to which you’ve lured your dream man is, in fact, a discreet, high-end male brothel.
“Who was it?” she repeated, suspicious now.
“No one. Guy from the gym.”
“You seem upset.”
“Of course I’m upset! Moira’s got us by the short ones, you’re furious at me, I have a cold coming on —”
She seized my wrist and stared at me so intently her eyes seemed, like a lobster’s, to protrude on stalks.
“Is there anything
, Philip — anything — you’re not telling me about?”
“You’re hurting my arm!”
“Anything?”
“Look, I know you’re ticked off, and I don’t blame you, but the truth is—oh, damn!” I rejoiced, for sauntering toward us in her debut performance as a Welcome Sight was Gina. She waved cheerily and Claire, seething, waved back.
“Do you guys have a minute?” she asked. “I had this question about my character.”
“Actually,” I said, “I was just heading back to my room. Tummy trouble. I’m sure Claire can answer better than I could.”
It was a low maneuver but one that would not, I reasoned, make Claire any madder at me since this was, at present, impossible. I hastened toward the terrace, determined to find Moira and demand to know what Buster was doing on her payroll and how many of his ilk could be counted among the spa’s amenities. I proceeded to the lobby, where the desk clerk (Harlot? Dominatrix?) told me that Moira was in the lounge. I found her sitting at the end of the bar, inspecting page proofs for an elegant new brochure. The Malenfants had left but there were ten or so patrons scattered about, including Sir Hugo Bunting, the much-lauded English actor whose fondness for Shakespeare was subsidized by hammy stints as villains in big effects-laden comic-book movies. His presence at Les Étoiles did little to contradict my theory.
Moira smirked at me as I took the stool next to hers.
“Someone looks cranky. Claire haul you out to the woodshed?”
“What the hell kind of place are you running here?” I hissed.
“What are you talking about?” Her tone was bland but she’d lowered her voice.
“I’m talking about Buster.”
“Who’s Buster?” she asked. Her bewilderment seemed genuine, though, being Moira, this did not mean that it was.
“He works for you. The blond with the muscles.”
Her eyes darted to the barkeep, who was serving a newcomer two stools away. Her expression remained cordial even as she angrily muttered, “There’s no one working here named Buster.”
“Call him what you want but I’ve met him and I know he’s a god-damn hustler. Ow!” I added, as she’d just grabbed my hand and dug her nails into my palm so deeply that I could now add stigmata to my woes.
“Keep your voice down. You want the bartender to hear?”
“He doesn’t know?”
She shook her head, then snatched her cigarettes from the bar and lit one.
“Does Stephen know?”
She made no answer nor did she need to, her eyebrows conveying more eloquently than words how amusingly obtuse she found the question. A sudden burst of laughter turned our attention to the bar’s entrance, where a high-spirited trio of gentlemen, fresh, no doubt, from their happy-hour blow jobs, was ambling in.
“I am not having this conversation here,” said Moira, rising and leading me out to the bar terrace. We had it to ourselves, the post-sundown chill having driven her guests indoors. Moira’s manner was cooler still as she seated herself at a table and took an exasperated drag off her cigarette.
“Gawd, what is wrong with you! Asking about these things right in the middle of my damn bar! You haven’t told Claire, have you?”
“God, no!”
“Well, see you don’t. That self-righteous cow’s just the one who’d blow the whistle on me.”
“So you admit it then? That this whole place is nothing but a posh boy brothel?”
“Les Étoiles,” she said icily, “is not a brothel.”
Her eyes darted inside, where the threesome had seated themselves at a window table a few feet away from us. Moira, leery, I supposed, of lip-readers, rose and led me around the side of the building past the dining room to the larger south terrace. This was deserted and the salon overlooking it more comfortably distant. We took a table on the outer edge by the stone balustrade.
“Les Étoiles,” she resumed petulantly, “is not a brothel. It is a full-service luxury spa. Certain of my clients demand fuller service than others and we’re happy to provide it. Top quality, total discretion. Ninety percent of my guests have no idea what the other ten percent are getting and that’s just the way my Diamond Plan clients want it. They come here because they feel safe, and they adore me because I’m the first hotelier they’ve ever met who understands what they really want. Sir Hugo called this place paradise on earth, which I found very touching.”
“Have you lost your fucking mind?! What happens to you, not to mention them, when this all gets out? And you know it will! You can’t keep a thing like this under wraps forever!”
“So far, so good,” she said blithely. “My boys will never squeal. They’re making more money than they ever dreamed of. Besides, they’re scared.”
“Scared?”
“I told them all my backers are the Russian Mafia and if anyone kills the golden goose I can’t be responsible for what happens to him. A complete lie but it keeps them quiet. As for the clients, my God, who are they going to tell? I choose them very carefully and they’re all very big names. So even when they see some other bigwig they suspect might also be here for the deluxe package—and who might have a good hunch why they’re here—well, they just smile because they know the other guy’s not going to blab any more than they are. These men didn’t get where they are by not knowing how to keep a secret. It’s very Skull and Bones.”
“So to speak.”
I did not share her confidence that all squealing would be confined to the massage rooms and I said as much. She replied that it was my timidity that had held me back in life and that I should take a page from Gilbert, who, though indisputably the product of a butterfingered wet nurse, at least had a certain audacity.
“Tell me! What do you think got us into this mess? God,” I said, my mind reeling, “how do you even rope them in? Goddamn movie stars! Do you just say, ‘Have a nice massage, and, oh, if you like dick, ask for Buster’?”
Moira conceded that this had been the trickiest part of the enterprise and one she’d pondered at length while honing her business plan.
Her first task, she said, had been to hire a crackerjack staff of real massage therapists, for most of her guests would expect nothing less (nor, indeed, more). Then, after extensive research and interviews, she’d recruited a small but skilled stable of red-hot hunkadoodles who were, she boasted, the cream of LA’s beeper-boy set. She promised them she’d more than double their incomes while providing a glamorous working environment plus benefits. She then provided them expert training in various massage techniques so that they’d blend in with the other staff and pass when necessary for the real thing.
“You’re right, though—the tricky part was the first approach. It couldn’t seem forward or tacky or we’d just scare people off. But we worked out a pretty good system.”
Whenever a suspected candidate for Deluxe Treatment was reeled in, he’d be assigned an appropriately pec-tacular full-service masseur. The Adonis, clad in a spandex T and linen drawstring pants, would pop a Viagra beforehand so that by midmassage the client would find looming mere inches from his face what the client, if a studio prexy, might call a “major tentpole event.” One of three scenarios would then play out. The client, embarrassed or timid, would ignore it, in which case the masseur would do the same. The client would complain and the masseur would apologize abjectly for his unbidden arousal, then offer to have someone else finish the massage. Or, as happened most often, the client would say, “My, my — whatcha got there?” and voilà, another satisfied customer.
The initial tryst would be followed by a private consultation with Moira. She’d tell the client that she’d heard his massage had grown somewhat exuberant. The extra attention, she’d assure the blushing patron, was on the house, but if he was interested, similar forms of “Stress-Reduction Massage” were discreetly available to those members of the Les Étoiles family who desired them. Such members, she’d assure him, represented a mere fraction of her clientele, most of whom were unaware that suc
h services were on offer to a pampered few. Her regular masseurs and all nonessential staff were equally oblivious to these favors, the fees for which were tallied quarterly and discreetly billed as “membership dues.” Often the clients, mostly closeted and/or married, would ask either shrewdly or snippily how Moira had surmised they’d rise to the bait in the first place. Her reply never varied.
“At Les Étoiles we pride ourselves on anticipating our patrons’ needs.”
“So there you are,” she concluded proudly. “Not bad for a little girl from the Upper West Side.”
“Oh, yes,” I sneered. “From small-time scam artist to Hollywood whoremonger. It’s a fucking Hallmark Hall of Fame movie!”
“Prude,” she said flatly, then her face suddenly lit up in a welcoming smile. She waved to a newcomer in the salon and held up a finger to promise prompt attention.
“I have to go. Dame Judi’s here.” She started off toward the salon but after she’d gone a few steps turned back and said, “Not a word about this to anyone, you hear? Anyone. Don’t forget, dear—you’re working for me now.”
She left and a familiar voice behind me chirped, “Are you really? ”
I prayed this was merely a stress-induced auditory hallucination, but when I turned, there, dapper as ever in a blazer and maroon silk ascot, stood Monty Malenfant.
“Glen, you scamp! You’re just full of surprises!”
Fifteen
MONTY!” I CRIED, CLUTCHING THE BALUSTRADE, the shock having gelatinized my knees. “Has anyone ever told you you’re adorable when startled?”
“What are you doing here!”
“Surely I needn’t tell you that,” he said with a saucy wink. “I’d heard the most intriguing things about the place from sweet little Buster—who goes, can you believe it, by ‘Adrian’ here!—and simply had to try it. Makes a nice change, I must say, from ordering in. Rex, you’ll be thrilled to know, is here as well. It’s his birthday so I thought I’d treat him to a boy who wouldn’t rob him and then beat him up as those in his price range are regrettably wont to do.”