Mario Puzo - Fools die

At ten thirty the phone rang. It was Janelle. “Oh, God!” she said. Her voice was as dramatic as if she had a fatal illness. “We’re not finished. We won’t be finished for another hour. Do you want to wait?”

I laughed. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll wait.”

“I’ll call you again,” Janelle said. “As soon as I know we’re through. Is that OK?”

“Sure,” I said.

I waited with Alice until twelve o’clock. She wanted to make me something to eat, but I wasn’t hungry. By this time I was enjoying myself. There is nothing so funny as to be made an utter fool of.

At midnight the phone rang again and I knew what she would say and she said it. They weren’t through yet. They didn’t know what time they would be through.

I was very cheerful with her. I knew that she would be tired. That I wouldn’t see her that night and I would call her the next day from home.

“Darling, you’re sweet, you’re so sweet. I’m really sorry,” Janelle said. “Call me tomorrow afternoon.”

I said good-night to Alice and she kissed me at the door and it was a sisterly kiss and she said, “You’re going to call Janelle tomorrow, aren’t you?”

I said, “Sure. I’ll call her from home.”

– -

The next morning I caught the early plane to New York, and at the terminal in Kennedy Airport I called Janelle. She was delighted to hear from me. “I was afraid you wouldn’t call.”

I said, “I promised I’d call.”

She said, “We worked until three this morning and the dress rehearsal isn’t until nine o’clock tonight. I could come over to the hotel for a couple of hours if you want to see me.”

I said, “Sure I want to see you. But I'm in New York. I told your I’d call you from home.”

There was a long pause on the other side of the phone.

“I see,” she said.

“OK”, I said. “I’ll call you when I’m coming to Los Angeles again. OK?”

There was another long pause on the phone and she said, “You’ve been incredibly good for me, but I can’t let you hurt me anymore.”

And then she hung up the phone.

But on my next trip to California we made up and started all over again. She wanted to be completely honest with me; there were to be no more misunderstandings. She swore she hadn’t been to bed with Evarts and the director. That she was always completely honest with me. That she would never lie to me again. And to prove it, she told me about Alice and her. It was an interesting story, but it didn’t prove anything, not to me any way. Still, it was nice to know the truth for sure.

Janelle lived with Alice De Santis for two months before she realized that Alice was in love with her. It took that long because during the day they both worked so hard, Janelle constantly hustling around to interviews arranged by her agent, Alice working long hours as costume designer on a big-budget film.

They had separate bedrooms. But late at night Alice came into Janelle’s room and sat on her bed to gossip. Alice would prepare something to eat and a hot chocolate drink to help them sleep. Usually they talked about their work. Janelle told stories about the subtle and not so subtle passes made at her through the day and they would both laugh. Alice never pointed out that Janelle encouraged these passes with her Southern belle charm.

Alice was a striking-looking, tall woman, very businesslike and hard to the outside world. But she was very soft and gentle with Janelle. She would give Janelle a sisterly kiss before they went to bed in their separate rooms. Janelle admired her for her intelligence, her competent efficiency in her field of costume design.

Alice finished work on her picture at the same time that Janelle’s son, Richard, came up to spend part of his summer vacation with Janelle. Usually, when her son came to visit, Janelle would devote all her time to taking him around Los Angeles, to shows, to a skating rink, to Disneyland. Sometimes she would rent a small apartment on the beach for a week. She always enjoyed her son’s visit and was always happy for the month he was with her. This one summer, as luck would have it, she got a small part in a TV series which would keep her busy most of the time but would also pay her living for a year. She started to write a long letter to her ex-husband to explain why Richard could not visit her this summer, and then she put her head down on the table and began to weep. It seemed to her as if now she were truly giving up her child.

It was Alice who saved her. She told Janelle to let Richard come. Alice would take him around. She would bring him to visit Janelle on the set to watch her work and whisk him away before he got on the director’s nerves. Alice would take care of him during the day. Then Janelle could be his buddy at night. Janelle felt enormously grateful to Alice.

And when Richard came for his month, they had a great time together. After work Janelle would come back to the apartment and Alice had Richard all scrubbed up for a night on the town. They would all three go to the movies and then have a late snack. It was so comfortable and easy. Janelle realized that she and her former husband had never had such a good time with Richard as she and Alice were having. It was almost a perfect marriage. Alice never quarreled or reproached her. Richard never got sulky or disobedient. He lived in what perhaps was a dream of children. A life with two adoring mothers and no father. He loved Alice because she spoiled him in some things and was strict with him only rarely. She took him for tennis lessons during the day and they played together. She taught him Scrabble and how to dance. Alice, in fact, was the perfect father. She was athletic and coordinated, yet with none of a father’s harshness, nothing of male domination. Richard responded extremely well to her. He helped Alice serve Janelle her dinner after work and then watched both women pretty themselves up to go out on the town with him. He loved dressing up too in white slacks and dark blue coat and white frilly shirt and no tie. He loved California.

When the day came for him to go home, Alice and Janelle both brought him to the midnight plane, and then, finally alone again, Janelle and Alice held hands, breathing the sigh of relief a married couple might breathe on the departure of a houseguest. Janelle felt so enormously touched that she gave Alice a tight hug and kiss. Alice turned her head to receive the kiss on her soft, delicately thin mouth. For the fraction of a second she held Janelle’s mouth on hers.

Back in the apartment they had their cocoa together as if nothing had happened. They went to their bedrooms. But Janelle was restless. She knocked on Alice’s bedroom door and went in. She was surprised to find Alice undressed in her lingerie. Though thin, Alice had a full bosom restrained by a very tight bra. They had, of course, seen each other in various stages of undress. But now Alice took off her bra to let her breasts free and then looked at Janelle with a slight smile.

At the sight of the nippled breasts Janelle felt a surge of sexual lust. She could feel herself blushing. It had not occurred to her that she could be attracted to another woman. Especially after Mrs. Wartberg. So when Alice slid under the covers, Janelle sat casually on the edge of her bed, and they talked about the good time they had had with Richard, just the three of them. Suddenly Alice burst into tears.

Janelle patted her dark hair and said, “ Alice, what is it?” in a very concerned voice. Yet at the moment both knew they were acting a play that would enable them to do what they both wanted to do.

Alice said, sobbing, “I don’t have anyone to love. I don’t have anyone to love me.”

There was just one moment when Janelle someplace in her mind kept an ironic distance. This was a scene she had played with male lovers. But her warm gratitude to Alice for the past month, the moment of lust that had been sparked by her heavy breasts were far more promising than the rewards of irony. And she too loved to play scenes. She pulled the covers down from Alice and touched her breasts and curiously watched the nipples rise. Then she bent her golden head and covered a nipple with her mouth. The effect on her was extraordinary.