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"I like skunks," Nicholson admits. He is referring to women who are alluring but unreachable—"ball busters," as his character in Carnal Knowledge called them. Although Nicholson disclaims specific identification with the hung-up hero of that film, an occasional recreation of his and Warren Beatty's is riding around town, skunk spotting on the street. "I know some of my friends think I'm self-destructive or masochistic," he says. "I know damn well what lies in store, but I choose to go after it anyway. I'm courageous." Says Brother-in-Law Shorty: "I think Jack hates women."
There are at least two women, however, whom Nicholson counts among his closest friends, and who come as near to having his number as anyone can. One is the reclusive Carol Eastman, who witnessed a Nicholson temper outburst vented against a snooty waitress in a restaurant. "You say one word," Nicholson warned the waitress, "and I'll kick in your pastry cart." Eastman remembered the scene and adapted it years later in her Five Easy Pieces screenplay, in which Nicholson throws a famous fit over an order of wheat toast.
The other woman is Helena Kallianiotes, who played a schizy hitchhiker in Five Easy Pieces. She was making a living as a belly dancer and recovering from two bad marriages when Nicholson took her home with him one night, said, "Pick yourself a bedroom," and welcomed her simply as a friend. Now she lives next door, and has run Jack's household through the romances with Mimi, Michelle and Anjelica. "Jack once said to me, 'Helena, look, I have very aristocratic feet.' So I say of him he has the feet of an aristocrat and the body of a peasant. He has traveled with kings and knaves, and sees no difference between them."
With Anjelica, who is serene and apparently not a skunk, Nicholson seems content. Their life, however, is hardly quiet. There are three phone lines in the house, and they are usually ringing. If Nicholson is not around to take the call, he is firm about returning each one personally. The front door is left open, and friends wander in. Nicholson will often come back from work with a few pals in tow, a group that might include Mike Nichols (whom Nicholson calls "Big Nick"), Candice Bergen ("Bug"), Art Garfunkel ("Art the Garf) or Warren Beatty ("Master B"). The house itself is raffish and eclectic, featuring a collection of pig effigies: stuffed toy pigs, carved wooden pigs, a pig matchholder and a needle point showing two pigs coupling. "When pigs became the symbol of evil," Nicholson explains, "I adopted them."
In Nicholson's upstairs office are stacked airmail editions of his favorite paper, the international Herald Tribune —he plans to read every issue this year in a single sitting someday. Sundays are the province of his daughter Jennifer, 10, who visits, although her father says that he is "very tentative about infringing on Jenny's life. I want to be invited to enter her world, to be admitted gracefully."