“Not yet.”
“You’ll feel better when you’ve had something to eat.”
“Have you shown this stuff to Ed Victor yet?” she asked.
I had, of course, but her sudden change of tone made me wary. “Don’t you want me to?” I vacillated.
“Let me think about it.”
“What is there to think about, Ava? We’re on the same side, aren’t we? You must tell me if there is anything you’re not happy with.”
“No, it’s fine.” She sounded hesitant.
“But something’s worrying you, I can tell,” I said. If there was a problem it was better to get it out in the open and deal with it now.
“I’m not sure about some of the things we say about Mick and Howard, honey,” she said slowly. “You’ve used an awful lot of personal stuff.”
“Such as?”
“Like saying Mick and I continued to sleep together after our divorce.”
“Well, you did, didn’t you? That’s what you said.”
“I know. I just don’t know if we should spell it out so plainly.”
“Why not?” I said.
She changed the subject and her diffident manner gave way to something much harder. “The stuff about Howard, did I say that? I don’t remember saying all that.”
“You did, Ava. Maybe not word for word—I’ve used material from earlier notes but it’s essentially what you said. I’ve kept the same feeling, the same line. That Howard taught you lovemaking didn’t have to be rushed, how he talked to you like a horse whisperer,” I said, grateful that I had discreetly omitted her remark that Mickey always woke up with an erection, and Howard never did. But I still had no idea of what the problem was, or its scale.
“The thing is, it could open up a can of worms,” she said.
“I don’t see how.”
“I was also sleeping with Howard after I split with Mick.”
“You mean you were sleeping with Mickey and Howard at the same time?”
“You don’t have to be coy, honey,” she said, and laughed. “I slept with them on and off for a while. Well, pretty much right up until I met Artie. It was only for sex. But we’re not going to say that either, honey.”
“Did Mickey and Howard know they were sharing you?” There was no point to the question except prurient curiosity, and I knew it was a mistake the moment I asked it.
“Jesus Christ, Peter!” she said angrily. “Does it matter?”
“I suppose not,” I said sheepishly. “Anyway, we don’t say that you were sleeping with both of them after your divorce from Mickey? We don’t spell it out, do we?”
“And we’re not going to,” she said flatly.
“Then I don’t see how it can open a can of worms. No one is going to know unless you tell them,” I said.
“People have dirty minds, honey. Some smart-ass reporter is sure to put two and two together,” she said. “It’ll make me sound like a fucking puta.” Puta was her favorite word for a slut. She despised putas.
“People aren’t going to think that at all,” I said.
“Bull-shit. You know exactly that’s what they’re going to think.” I heard her take a deep breath. “Where we talk about what Mick and Howard were like in the feathers. Do we have to go into that?”
“You’re complimentary about both of them,” I said.
There was a silence on the line and I knew she was reading the copy again.
I had been scrupulous about quoting her exactly and her squeamishness surprised me. She had been inordinately discreet, even generous to both men. After quite a long silence, she said: “Yeah, I guess that’s okay. I haven’t said anything shitty about them, have I?”
“You’ve been sweet to them.”
“But I thought it was just between us—not between you, me, and every Tom, Dick, and Harry who is going to buy the book.”
“You want a bestseller, don’t you?” I said.
“Telling how Howard measured up to Mick in bed—do we really have to use all that stuff, honey?”
“We don’t have to but it’s what you said, Ava,” I reminded her again. “It sounds fine to me. Do you want me to lose it? We can do that but it would be a pity.”
“I thought all that stuff was between us, honey,” she repeated, avoiding my question.
“All what stuff? We’re talking about maybe a dozen lines, probably less. Anyway, you knew the meter was running,” I said. I hoped she remembered it was her phrase.
“I don’t want a kiss-and-tell book,” she said stubbornly. “I thought we agreed on that.”
“But we want an honest book. This is honest. Emotionally it’s honest to the bone. Only you could say these things the way you say them. Readers will love that.”
“Fuck the readers.”
I decided not to argue with her any further. “Fine, if that’s what you want,” I said. “Fuck the readers.”
“You think?” she said, and laughed again.
“I told you what I think, Ava.”
“I know.”
I could hear the caution in her voice and tried again. “I truly don’t see what the problem is, Ava. It’s an exaggeration to say that you compare Mick and Howard as lovers. We are talking about no more than a few lines in the whole book. I don’t think that makes it a kiss-and-tell book.”
I heard her turn the pages of the chapters I’d sent her. “Am I right?” I said.
“It’s ten lines,” she conceded after a while.
“That’s nothing. It’s an aside,” I said. “Blink and you’ll miss it.”
“You don’t think it puts me in a bad light?”
“Why should it? It’s honest. Women will certainly understand the truth of it.”
“You don’t think it makes me sound like a goddamn tramp?” she persisted.
“Ava, you are talking about something that happened more than forty years ago—you were just a kid, a baby! Your words, not mine. Moral attitudes have changed. There’s been a whole sexual revolution since then. The whole world has turned.”
“Tell me about it,” she said bleakly.
I felt her resistance weakening. “Sexual mores have changed. Nobody is going to be hurt by it. Mickey isn’t going to complain, is he?” I said. It was hard to believe that this apparently uninhibited woman whose sexual appetite at the height of her fame had been legendary, who had unashamedly taken matadors, big-game hunters, passing hunks, and leading men to her bed, whose romantic life had mirrored that of her most famous screen character—the lovely and amoral Lady Brett Ashley in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises—was now fretting about minor indiscretions half a century before.
She said, exasperated, “Who the fuck knows what Mickey will say? He’s got religion now.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“He’s got religion coming out of his fucking ears.”
“I still think he’s going to be flattered that you continued to want him physically even after you were divorced. No man’s going to complain about that, especially forty years on.”
“It makes me sound like a goddamn tramp,” she said again, truculence in her voice. “It makes me sound as if I was there just for Mick to get his ashes hauled.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, although it made me laugh.
“I don’t want to have to watch every fucking word I say to you, Pete,” she said.
“You don’t,” I said. It was too early in the morning to get into an argument about what was on and off the record. As far as I was concerned everything she said was grist for the mill, although I knew that when push came to shove we’d always do it her way.
I said, “Look, let’s not get hung up on words. When we get to the end, we’ll go back and look again at anything you’re still not sure about. We’ll rework anything you’re not comfortable with.”