Always and Forever (36 page)

“I’ll meet you for dinner at Trader Vic’s at 6:30,” he whispered to Sascha. “Be there.”

He left Julius Kohn Furs, San Francisco, and took a taxi to the 4-S Shop, near Union Square. She couldn’t afford to be on the Square, he thought with characteristic arrogance. And what a stupid name for a women’s store!

If it wasn’t for the old man, he wouldn’t be in such a rush to track down Kathy. He was in no hurry for a divorce. Of course, he missed the kid, he told himself with a temporary surge of guilt. And until he cleared up this mess with Kathy he wasn’t going to see that stock in his name.

The taxi driver pulled up at the curb before Marge’s shop. Not bad-looking, he conceded, but shops like this were a dime a dozen. She’d be lucky to stay alive with all the competition that was coming along these days.

He opened the door and walked inside, his eyes automatically checking the staff. Marge—talking with a customer—and another woman who was setting up a table display of sweaters. The woman came toward him with a smile.

“I’m an old friend of Marge’s from New York,” he explained. “I’ll just hang around until she’s free.”

“Phil!” All at once Marge spied him. “Be with you in a few moments.” She was winding up a sale.

“Hey, the shop looks great!” he said when she came over to greet him. They contrived a light embrace. “How’re things going?”

“Good,” she told him with a breezy smile. “Is Kathy in town with you?”

“No.” All at once he was irritated. Marge must know they were separated. “I thought you might know where she was.”

Now Marge’s smile faded. Her eyes seemed anxious.
Was she putting on an act?

“It’s been an awful long time since we’ve exchanged letters. You know how it is when you’re so far apart.” She paused, as though mentally debating. “I gathered you two had separated, but I figured it was just some spat and you’d made up by now. Some character came around here—I guess it was sometime last month—and he was asking questions about Kathy.”

“She walked out with Jesse. We’ve been frantic to find them. She didn’t even leave a note. I don’t know what triggered her running off like that,” he lied. He often asked himself if Kathy had talked with Rhoda about what happened. Wouldn’t Rhoda have written Marge? The three women were thick as thieves. “It’s as though Kathy and Jesse had just disappeared from the face of the earth,” he said with an air of bewilderment.

“That’s not like Kathy.” Marge appeared upset. “And it amazes me that she didn’t get in touch with me. We’ve always been so close.”

“If you hear from her, will you phone me? Call collect,” he said, turning on the slightly jaded Phil Kohn charm. She didn’t know anything about Kathy—she was pissed that Kathy hadn’t been in touch. “I’ll be at the Palace Hotel here in town until Friday morning. After that, you can reach me in New York.”

“I’m sorry, Phil. I can’t imagine Kathy going off like that.” She hesitated. Her face troubled. “You’re sure she and Jesse went off on their own volition? They—they couldn’t have been kidnapped?”

“Kathy didn’t leave a note, as I told you,” he said tersely. That cinched it. She didn’t know anything. He was wasting good time here. “Just a scribbled memo that the Caddy was at the White Plains station.”

“It’s weird.” Marge shook her head in disbelief. “If
you
hear anything, will you please let me know?”

“Sure thing,” he promised. Now let him get the hell out of here. He had a heavy date for tonight.

The midday sunshine had given way to a dreary drizzle. Kathy and Jesse returned from sightseeing to settle themselves in their motel room. Kathy with a magazine to read and Jesse with a new puzzle to put together. Even while she read, Kathy half-listened for the sound of the phone.

The jarring ring—when it came—sounded overly loud in the silence of their room. She picked up the phone on the first ring.

“Hello—”

“Everything went fine, Kathy,” Marge reported, her voice jubilant. “He came here. We talked. He’s convinced I don’t know where you are. I suspect he believed I’m annoyed that you weren’t in touch with me. You know, our being best friends for so long. You would have been proud of me. Like I promised, an Academy Award performance. And he’s leaving on Friday morning.”

“I’ll drive home early Saturday morning,” Kathy said after a moment. “Just to make sure he’s gone.” It was absurd the way her heart was pounding, just because she knew Phil was here in San Francisco. “Let’s hope we’ve put this scene to rest.”

Phil walked into Trader Vic’s with an air of satisfaction that he was now on a first-name basis with the front-line staff. Every time he was in town he made a point of having dinner here at least once. It was becoming a kind of club for celebrities.

He’d made a very early reservation, not only because he was impatient for what he liked to call his “special dessert,” but with an eye to avoiding anyone who might know him. Any friends, acquaintances, or business associates wouldn’t arrive until 8
P.M.
By then he and Sascha would be cavorting in the style he liked best in his suite at the Palace.

Walking into the nautical “Bali Hai” atmosphere of Trader Vic’s, he thrust from his mind the gnawing reminder that his father was going to be furious that he had no lead on Kathy’s whereabouts. Worry about that later, he thought in soaring high spirits. Tonight was for relaxing.

Sascha was waiting at the table for him. She was one of the few models he knew who could appear voluptuous with small tits and an almost flat rump, he thought. It was the way she moved.

“Hi.” Her amazingly blue eyes were provocative against a perennial golden tan. She wore a flattering black sheath with the shorter skirt Dior had decreed last year and that women had rushed to adopt.

“Hi.” He slid into his chair and a knee reached under the table to find hers. “You look good enough to eat.”

“Later we play.” She laughed in that throaty way that set his teeth on edge.

For a few minutes they concentrated on what to order. Both focusing on the Polynesian specialties. He could be happy with his life as it was, he told himself, with a wife conveniently off in the wild blue yonder. He could play with impunity. Why did the old man insist on getting back at Kathy before he turned over that stock?

Phil pretended to need swift service, and their waiter served them with commendable speed. Sascha scolded him when he rejected dessert as a time-waster. Still, he suspected, she was pleased that he was so hot to trot.

“We’ll order dessert sent up to the suite,” he promised. “If you still want it later.” His eyes full of promise.

Once in Phil’s suite they embarked on a passionate path to the bedroom. This was a chick who knew how to please a man, he thought in triumph while they dallied at the entrance to the bedroom. No doubts tonight that he’d be able to perform like an eighteen-year-old.

Sascha always wore sexy black lace underthings, he remembered while he helped her out of her bra. His hands fondling the tiny, huge-nippled breasts for a moment before reaching to release the hooks of her garter belt—all that she wore beneath her dress.

Her long slender fingers played with his hair—still movie-star lush except for the one thinning spot of which he was desperately conscious—while he dropped to his knees to guide her nylons down slender thighs and legs, his mouth nuzzling at her pelvis.

“Phil, let’s go to the bed,” she whispered. “Sweetie, I can’t wait!”

“Okay, okay.”

They were caught up in a crescendo of passion, moving to their ultimate destination with a matching frenzy when the phone rang.

“Damn it!” Phil grunted, freezing for a moment.

“Do you have to answer?” Sascha asked, her crimson nails digging into his shoulders, her body refusing to abandon its race.

“No,” he said thickly. “Let him call back later.” Knowing it was his father. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

K
ATHY AND MARGE WERE
in a festive mood when they headed together for the New Year’s Eve party Noel was giving in his late mother’s Washington Street mansion: Christmas business had been gratifying. Back from a month in the south of France, Fred and Cleo were impressed with the sales figures.

Kathy and Marge were hoping they were sufficiently impressed to put up funds for an advertising campaign. They plotted to discuss this with Fred and Cleo at Noel’s party. It was Noel who cannily suggested he invite them.
“My parties are a real mix of people. They’ll have fun. Sometimes that’s the best time to get across a business message.
”

In the few weeks since they had met at that sidewalk cafe in Little Italy, Kathy and Marge had become fast friends with Noel. He was bright, warm, intelligent. He was unhappy about the split with his sister Wilma, but he had no intention of giving her half-interest in the house, as she demanded.
“She’d have it on the auction block in a week.”

They knew that Noel had never held a full-time job in his life. He’d played at being an actor, a writer, an artist. Most of the time he had been his mother’s traveling companion on frequent jaunts to exotic places.

Noel had become their escort at the occasional diversions they allowed themselves. He treated them to a night at the San Francisco Symphony. Now it was a Friday night routine for Noel and Marge to come to Kathy’s apartment for dinner, a festive occasion that Jesse enjoyed. Noel was so gentle and tender with Jesse, Kathy thought. The way David had been.

The Bartlett mansion was elegant without being intimidating. Kathy and Marge, along with Jesse, had been there for Thanksgiving dinner—prepared and served by Noel’s staff of two.
“The terms of the will keep Curt and Greta on the job until they decide to retire. They’re both in their middle seventies, but they love this house. They’ll be here till they drop.”

Kathy and Marge arrived early. Despite their wealth and world-traveler status, Fred and Cleo were shy at being among strangers. And both women knew that holidays were trying periods for Noel. Despite his often irreverent remarks about her, he deeply missed his mother. He’d always made a point of spending holidays with her during the long years of her widowhood.

“You both look marvelous!” He greeted them with exuberant embraces and led them into what his mother liked to call the grand salon—a huge carpeted room with a grand piano at one side and a parade of six crystal chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling. The room had been cleared of its usual 18th-century furniture to allow for a change in decor. A pianist was playing a Cole Porter tune.

“Curt and Greta are setting up the most gorgeous buffet,” Noel told them. “And Curt will do bar duty until midnight. After that we’re on our own.” Already Curt was behind the improvised bar.

“Noel, you’ve made it look like a Paris sidewalk café,” Kathy said admiringly, viewing the line-up of small tables along one wall, temporarily adorned with prints by famous French artists. Colorful tablecloths were spread on the tables, each table with a silver vase holding a single red rose. “You have a talent for these things.”

“That’s the story of my life,” he nipped. “A collection of tiny talents. None of them big enough to be developed. That’s one of the reasons I love you two. You’re both talented, and you’re working at it.”

The first of the sixteen guests Noel had invited began to arrive. Sixteen, he’d pointed out earlier, because he loathed the habit of pairing off dinner partners “like Noah’s Ark.” Fred and Cleo were the last to arrive. Hurrying to welcome them—they’d met Noel at the shop so he wasn’t a complete stranger—Kathy saw their wary glances about the room.

Noel’s guests were an eclectic group. Kathy saw that Fred and Cleo would not be comfortable with Chris Logan, the talented young homosexual artist who followed Noel about with adoring eyes, nor with the Amazonian lesbian writer who was celebrating the sale of her first novel ten days ago. Noel had instructed Greta to lay four settings at each table except for one with five. That was deliberate, to allow Marge and her to sit alone with Fred and Cleo.

While gypsy-garbed fiddlers strolled among the guests, Greta began to bring huge platters of food to the buffet at one side of the room. When she signaled Noel that everything was in place, he clapped his hands together for attention.

“Chow time,” he announced effervescently. “Let’s greet 1954 with satiated tummies!”

It was incredible, Kathy thought with gentle amusement, that Fred and Cleo could be so traveled, so accustomed to money, and yet remain so unsophisticated. But they were enjoying themselves, she decided, while Cleo talked about the bargains she’d found in Italy on their last visit. To so many women, European cities were mainly a shopping mecca. Sightseeing took second place.

She would have enjoyed the party immensely, Kathy told herself, if she and Marge were not so determined to persuade Fred to put up money for promoting the shop before he and Cleo took off again, this time for Palm Beach. For a moment she felt a touch of alarm. Probably Bella and “the girls” would be in Palm Beach, also.

But even if they should meet in that society whirl, Fred and Cleo knew her as Kathy Altman. Nor was it likely, she decided realistically, that talk about Phil’s wife would enter their conversations. She must learn that she lived in an entirely new world now. Kathy Kohn was dead. Long live Kathy Altman.

“Marge tells us you came up with the title for the shop,” Fred punctured her introspection.

“Not just the title,” Marge said. “The whole concept of the shop. And it’s working well. With some major promotion the idea could really develop big.”

“We offer what appeals to the average young woman, and today they spend a lot of money on these items,” Kathy added with studied casualness. Her eyes warned Marge against a hard-sell.

“You’re sharp, Kathy,” Fred approved. “I could see that right off.”

“And I’d like to see us push more of Marge’s own designs,” Kathy pursued. “It’s not as easy to manufacture on a small scale out here the way it is in New York, but we can do it.”

“Kathy has an eye for what’s commercial,” Marge said. “I design and test it out on her. What she doesn’t like, I change. I may complain and grunt a lot, but I know she’s always right.”