Thy Neighbor's Wife, page 49
At nineteen, however, she saw the Playboy ad in the local press; and later concluding that employment as a cotton-tailed waitress had to be more interesting and remunerative than working as a secretary in an office, she packed her suitcase in May 1971 and, landing at the Chicago airport, taxied to the ornate black wrought-iron front gate of Hefner’s limestone and brick domain on North State Parkway. After the security guards in the vestibule had verified her identity, Karen Christy was escorted by a butler through a marble hall up an oaken staircase to the fourth floor, where she was directed to a door leading into the Bunny dormitory.
Behind the door she heard the sound of showers and laughter, electric hair dryers and radio music; and as she walked through the hall she saw several nude young women rushing in and out of rooms, presumably getting ready to go to work at the Playboy Club. Amazed and mildly discomfited by their extreme informality, Karen became even more self-conscious when, on entering her assigned suite, she noticed standing in front of a mirror a nude brunet brushing her hair, and a short-haired blonde seated at the dresser polishing her fingernails. While both women were friendly as Karen introduced herself, and also patiently answered her many questions about the job she would begin on the following day, Karen sensed as they talked to her that they were critically appraising her, surveying the outline of her body under her clothing; and after she had removed her blouse but not her brassiere, one of the women lightly commented: “We don’t wear those around here.” Karen smiled but did not take off her brassiere as she continued to unpack; and it was not until after they had left for work, and the dormitory was quiet and empty, that she removed all of her clothes and entered the shower room.
Later, feeling refreshed and dressed in new clothes she had bought in Dallas, Karen ventured out of the dormitory and down the grand staircase, soon finding herself in a sixty-foot-long living room that had teakwood floors and a more than twenty-foot-high ceiling inlaid with flowered frescoes. At one end of the massive room was a carved marble fireplace large enough for her to stand in; at the other end, perched on pedestals, were silver polished medieval suits of armor; and in between was a mixture of antique and modern furniture, a concert piano and stereo console softly resounding with jazz. Around a coffee table, near the distant fireplace, sat a group of young women and older men who were engaged in conversation. Hefner was not among them, but Karen did recognize the man she had met in Dallas, John Dante; and when Dante saw her, he immediately got up and came forward to greet her. Dante was a ruggedly stylish man in his early forties with a small, neatly trimmed mustache and friendly ruddy face, and he wore an open silk shirt with a gold medallion around his neck and sharply creased tapered trousers. Although he was soft-spoken and unassuming, the butlers in the room, responsive to his status in the Hefner hierarchy, remained attentive as Dante shook hands with Karen; and when Dante asked her if she wanted something to eat or drink, two butlers were quickly at her side ready to fulfill her request.
She was introduced to the people around the coffee table, and sat among them for several moments in awkward silence as they chatted and relaxed in the surrounding splendor; then the group was joined by an attractive woman of about thirty with lean delicate features, large expressive eyes, and a manner that, while sophisticated, seemed warm and natural. Her name was Bobbie Arnstein, and, as Karen later learned, Miss Arnstein was Hefner’s social secretary and confidante; among other duties she helped to entertain Hefner’s house guests and visiting celebrities, scheduled the Playboy business meetings held in Hefner’s suite, and did most of Hefner’s personal shopping, including the Christmas and birthday gifts that he sent to his parents and children. Years ago, briefly and casually, Bobbie Arnstein had been romantically involved with Hugh Hefner; but since then their relationship had ripened into a deep and special friendship—and, like Hefner, she now preferred lovers who were years younger than herself. Bobbie Arnstein’s presence at the table, and her subtle way of including Karen Christy in the conversation without necessitating a response from the obviously shy Texas beauty, allowed Karen to feel more at ease among the many strangers. But Karen nonetheless welcomed the graceful exit that Dante provided when he offered to give her a tour of the mansion.
For the next half hour, Karen followed Dante through corridors and secret passageways, past antique furnishings and pinball machines, and down a curved staircase into the underwater bar that could also be reached by sliding down a brass fireman’s pole from the floor above. Dante, who had moved into the mansion at Hefner’s suggestion years ago and knew something of its history, told Karen that it had first been erected before the turn of the century by a Chicago industrialist who later entertained in the house such guests as Theodore Roosevelt and Admiral Peary. Until Hefner had purchased it, for less than a half-million dollars in 1960, it had been empty and gathering dust for years; and since acquiring it Hefner had spent at least a half million on modernization and such features as the bowling alley, the swimming pool, and his private apartment that was replete with electronic gadgetry and custom-made furniture of his own design. When Karen asked if she could see Hefner’s quarters, Dante at first hesitated, explaining that Hefner had arrived in Chicago earlier in the day from Los Angeles and might be sleeping; but a few minutes later, after Dante had gone off by himself to check, he returned to say that Hefner was awake and would be glad to meet her.
With Dante at her side, Karen walked across the oak-paneled living room in which they had been sitting earlier, climbed two steps, and passed through a door that led into a room that was abundantly appointed with electronic equipment, including eight separate television monitors, one for each channel in Chicago, thus permitting Hefner to have a variety of programs taped simultaneously and replayed at his convenience. Opening a second door, Dante guided Karen onto the thick white carpeting of a paneled room that was dominated by the round bed in the center of which, eating a hamburger and sipping a Pepsi, while reading page proofs, sat Hugh Hefner.
With raised eyebrows and an exaggerated smile, Hefner bounced out of bed to welcome her; and for the next ten minutes, in addition to bantering with Dante for Karen’s amusement, he conversed with her in a serious but convivial manner, asked her questions about her background and her future aspirations, and took her through the apartment, showing her his luxuriously furnished library with walls lined with books, his bathing area with a Roman tub large enough for a dozen people, and the many buttons and knobs that activated his rotating bed, which was eight and a half feet in diameter and had been built at a cost of $15,000. Near the bed, and pointed toward it, was an Ampex television camera that was designed to produce both instantaneous and delayed transmissions, on the wall screen above, of Hefner’s amorous activities, which he found endlessly stimulating; but in his guided tour with Karen Christy he tactfully avoided any mention of this apparatus.
Before Karen had left, Hefner explained that he would be playing pool later in the evening with the actor Hugh O’Brian and a few other house guests, and he added that he would be very pleased if Karen would join them. She replied that she would. Later, relaxing alone in her room, she was surprised at how comfortable she had felt in Hefner’s presence, and how convincingly contented he had seemed within himself. Having watched him one night a year ago on the Johnny Carson television show in her college dormitory, she had sensed him to be somewhat artificial and forced in his manner; but in person he was more free-spirited, unassuming, and physically more attractive. She also found endearing the signs of adolescent sloppiness she had observed in his private quarters—the floors littered with scraps of paper and old magazines, bits of clothing carelessly tossed across chairs, the suitcase from his California trip opened but not yet unpacked. Despite the valets and many housekeepers dedicated to maintaining order and tidiness around the clock, Hugh Hefner conveyed the impression of having to be looked after more carefully, catered to more personally.
In the pool room hours later with Hefner’s guests, and still later standing around the pinball machines that Hefner skillfully nudged and patted with the palms of his hands, Karen Christy was constantly aware of Hefner’s attention. He smiled at her as he chalked his cue tip, winked following each good shot, and, after delivering a joke or witty comment to the crowd, he would invariably look in her direction to study her reaction. While his lack of subtlety might have cost him points with a more worldly woman, Karen was flattered by it, preferring by far his open approach to the indirect tactics of a less forthright man. He seemed to be acknowledging not only to her but to the room at large—and particularly to the other attractive women gathered there—that he was overwhelmingly drawn to her; and while she chose not to dwell on where this all might lead, she was for the moment enjoying it immensely.
After a midnight supper, which had been carried on silver trays by butlers into the game room—and had been served on the glass tops of the pinball machines that Hefner and some of his guests continued to play while eating—the group drifted down to the underwater bar for drinks, swimming, and conversation. Hefner stayed close to Karen; and gradually the other people, sensing that he wanted privacy, left the two of them alone. It had been after one o’clock when they arrived, and three hours later they were still there, sitting together and talking softly at a small table under the hazy blue-green light glowing through the pool. He seemed avidly interested in learning more about her past, her schooling, her friends, how she had endured the hardships and the many deaths in her family. Although his questions were endless, he did not appear to be merely probing in the professional manner of a magazine editor—he seemed sincerely interested in knowing her intimately, eager to hear from her what nobody had ever taken the time to hear, and he listened for long periods without interrupting, allowing her to develop her thoughts in an unhurried way. She also listened while he discussed his own past, his disappointing marriage, his hopes for his children, and his current love affair in Los Angeles with Barbi Benton. Karen was especially appreciative of his candor regarding Barbi, a subject that a less honest man might have conveniently ignored on a first evening with someone new. As it happened, Karen was well aware of Barbi Benton, having seen her with Hefner on the Johnny Carson show, where their eventual marriage was mentioned as a possibility, although Karen remembered doubting at the time that Hefner would ever destroy his renowned bachelorhood for Barbi Benton or anyone else. And now, a year later, with Hefner in person, seeing how he enjoyed his life in his mansion filled with toys, Karen was even more convinced that he was a poor candidate for marriage—which was not meant as a criticism on her part; on the contrary, she relished the idea of being close to a rich and busy older man who had somehow retained a youthful vigor for fun and frolic. And as the hours passed in the underwater atmosphere of this timeless place, Karen was aware only of her pleasure and comfort in his company; and when he suggested that they return to his apartment to watch a movie, she stood and took his hand. Later, when he asked her to spend the night with him, she accepted without hesitation.
The marvelous mood of their first evening extended through the following day and into the next night; and much to Karen’s delight and surprise, they remained compatible lovers and congenial companions throughout the entire week—interrupted only by his business meetings and her hours of training at the Playboy Club. But before she had been fitted for her Bunny uniform, Hefner asked if she would mind quitting her job so they would have more time together at night; he assured her she would not have to worry about the loss of salary, suggesting she could earn much more as a magazine model adorning the pages of Playboy. When she agreed to pose, Hefner instructed his photo editor to arrange for her test shots; and after days of shooting, Karen Christy became the Playboy centerfold for the December issue of 1971, for which she received $5,000.
Her sudden emergence as Hefner’s lover in Chicago caused some astonishment and envy among the Bunnies in the dormitory; but as they realized that Hefner was serious about her, they resigned themselves to her privileged presence, and in time they came to like her. Though she now had access to a limousine and had charge accounts at his expense in Chicago stores, she remained essentially the same country girl she had been on the day of her arrival from Texas. She often walked around the mansion in bare feet, shorts, and a T-shirt. If influenced at all by her new surroundings, it was only evident in her abandonment of her brassiere, and in her developing skill at the games that Hefner and his close friends spent so much time playing—backgammon, Monopoly, and the pinball machines. She spent her days as she had done since her girlhood, watching soap operas on television, including “Another World,” her favorite show, which she had begun watching at fourteen while living on her grandmother’s farm; and if occasionally she missed it due to spending the afternoon in bed with Hefner, she knew that she could see it later at her convenience because the house engineer had been instructed by Hefner to tape its every installment.
When Hefner left for Los Angeles, as he did every other week, Karen expressed no resentment about his continuing interest in Barbi Benton; although as the months passed, and as Karen was becoming more emotionally involved with Hefner, she felt an increased loneliness and she privately wondered what, if anything, Barbi knew about her. But the telephone calls she received each day from Hefner when he was in California, and the gifts he gave her, reassured her. During their first month together, he had given her a diamond watch inscribed “with love”; and his Christmas gift to her in 1971 was a full-length white mink coat. In March 1972, on her twenty-first birthday, he gave her a five-karat diamond cocktail ring from Tiffany’s. He also gave her an emerald ring, a silver fox jacket, a Matisse painting, a Persian cat, a beautiful metallic reproduction of the Playboy cover on which she was featured; and for her Christmas gift in 1972, she received a white Mark IV Lincoln.
With the money she was earning from her modeling and public appearances for Playboy, she bought for his Monopoly board such specially designed items as hand-carved hotels shaped like the Playboy Plaza Hotel in Miami, and tiny individual statues of the six people who were most often seen seated around the board; in addition to Hefner, whose two-and-a-half-inch-high sculptured likeness wore a colorful bathrobe and smoked a pipe, the other figurines represented Karen, Bobbie Arnstein, and John Dante, and two old Hefner friends and habitués of the mansion, Gene Siskel, the Chicago Tribune movie critic, and Shel Silverstein, the cartoonist and children’s writer. She also commissioned a Chicago artist to do a three-dimensional portrait of Hugh Hefner, a large oil painting that showed him seated in a chair wearing a silk robe and smoking a pipe, while above his head was a cloud of white smoke in which was a small nude picture of Karen Christy. When she presented him with the gift, she amused him by pointing out that the section showing her was detachable, and that whenever he became tired of looking at it he could easily replace it with an inset of someone else.
But throughout 1972 into 1973, during their every-other-week reunions in Chicago, Hugh Hefner tired of neither her picture nor her presence, and he also began asking her to join him on airplane trips. He took her to Orlando, Florida, to see Disney World; to a resort hotel in the Caribbean, where he was being honored at a convention of magazine distributors; and to New York City, where there was a backgammon tournament. While in New York, after Karen had expressed a wish to do some shopping, Hefner reached into his pocket and handed her his wallet, then left to attend a meeting. In the wallet was $3,000. But as Karen wandered through stores along Fifth Avenue, she found herself checking the prices and resisting the impulse to buy; as outlandishly generous as Hefner was capable of being, Karen also knew that he was quietly conscious of how money was spent—and, not wanting to take advantage of him, nor to waste money herself on things she did not really need, she later returned the wallet with only $200 missing.
Karen Christy’s sensitivity to certain conflicts in Hefner’s nature, to his varying moods and unexpressed wishes, contributed greatly to the harmony of their relationship. One day when they were playing Monopoly in the Chicago mansion, a butler announced that Hefner’s plane was ready to leave for Los Angeles; and Karen, though barefoot, quickly followed him out the door and accompanied him in the limousine to the airport. As Hefner boarded the plane with his business associates and friends, one of them playfully suggested that Karen come along for the ride—which, with Hefner’s sudden approval, she did. During the flight west, she and the others resumed their game of Monopoly and enjoyed a festive lunch, while the pilots, following Hefner’s instructions, radioed ahead for a separate limousine that would take Karen to a Beverly Hills shoe store, and then back to the Los Angeles airport, where an airline ticket would be waiting for her return trip to Chicago.
After this flight, Karen sometimes traveled from Chicago on commercial planes to join Hefner at the Los Angeles airport, and then fly back with him on the Playboy jet so that they could gain extra hours of pleasure together. Time—not money—was of primary importance to Hefner if love and pleasure were involved. He had often said following his fortieth birthday—when his personal fortune exceeded $100 million dollars—that money was no longer a factor in his life, but time was; and that he would spare no expense in gaining time to fulfill his romantic desires. Once, when Karen was visiting her relatives in Texas, Hefner dispatched a Lear jet at the cost of more than $10,000 to pick her up in Dallas and bring her to the Los Angeles airport so that she could be with him on the Playboy DC-g jet headed back to Chicago.
On another occasion, when he returned to Chicago without her, he was surprised to see that the trees outside the Chicago mansion were festooned with yellow ribbons, a decoration inspired by a song currently popular around the nation—“’Tie a Yellow Ribbon”—a recording of which Karen had bought for him weeks before; the song described a returning lover for whom the sign of continued affection was a yellow ribbon tied to an oak tree, and Hefner had immediately responded to the song, and asked that it be played repeatedly on the mansion’s big stereo. But since the song was on a 45 rpm recording that was not made for continuous play, Hefner asked one of the butlers to stand next to the stereo and, as soon as the record was finished, lift the needle and put it back to the beginning. The butler spent an entire evening replaying the song.
