Plotting by the Numbers : WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW? <i> By Benjamin Stein (St. Martin’s Press: $18.95; 298 pp.)</i>

When a writer, who is described in his publisher’s press release as “a trial lawyer and former speech writer for Presidents Ford and Nixon,” begins a novel with, “Nicole Miller pulled the bottom edges of her chinchilla coat over her knees. As she did, she brushed a tiny piece of paper off the hem of her red Chanel skirt,” I get nervous.

Unless the writer has also spent several years as a reporter for W or has had a previous life as a fashion maven, this is highly risky terrain for transplanted presidential speech writers.

We never find out what happens to the tiny piece of paper, which may well have been a lot more interesting than what happens to anyone else in Stein’s novel. The primary problem is that the author seems to be deciding as he goes along what kind of novel he is creating. From the Jackie/Judith beginning, the novel shifts (sometimes on the same page) from Glitz fiction, to Rags/Riches, to Wall Street Insider, to Serious Love Story, to Marital Distress, to The Other Woman, to Inspirational 12-Step Recovery, to Social Satire--without settling on a firm point of view.

We have the drum major from Tennessee (our Nicole), who in some oxymoronic miscalculation heads her perky little Subaru for Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune in advertising: “I want to read about myself in the Wall Street Journal. Be a star.”

Of course our heroine finds this harder than she had figured. Her situation is not made any easier by her creator who, after deciding to dump her there, admits (through the mouth of a minor character) that there are almost no viable agencies in Los Angeles, that the New York outlets are really just that.

Oh well, at least her devoted parents are behind her. When she calls for more money, her mother cheerfully sends still another thousand: “That’s what we’re here for, darling.” (Someone clone these parents immediately.) This is also confusing because we are later informed that her father has been laid off from his part-time teaching job.

Nicole, however, is miraculously saved by a Too-Good-to-Be-True Jewish Ad Mensch, who loves her work, gives her an office and an instant career, but who suffers a fatal coronary before Nicole makes it to the Wall Street Journal (or even Malibu). Nicole sinks into a bottle of California Chardonnay. (What Stein does not know about fashion trends he makes up for with his knowledge of designer drugs and white wines.)

Cut to Our Hero Barron Thomas, Vietnam vet, Yale Law grad, husband of the exquisite but pill-addicted lush, Saundra Logan Thomas, and self-made billionaire owner of his own airline. Loyal, long-suffering, hard-working Barron, who spends his days swimming with the sharks and his nights in a mansion in Bedford, N.Y., with an abusive, semi-comatose helpmate who is continuously reeking of some vile spirit or the other. (Usually it’s vodka. I thought vodka was non-reeking, but let’s not quibble.)

The Mrs. is to the rehab community what Magic Johnson is to the rim shot: She just bounces in and out. We are talking major disease here. Seizures, and vomit on the floors of fancy restaurants; passing out with a tray of “Courvoisier and fresh berries in her hands,” mid-dinner party; walking into plate-glass windows, which Barron in his long-sufferingness has reinforced so that she doesn’t hurt herself. (I see a codependency sequel here.)

So, Barron is set up by a California shyster representing an L.A. Fine Family and takes control of their real estate empire, only to discover that it includes an Indian reservation with a toxic dump site used knowingly by the Fine Family. (Did I include morality play as a theme?) Poor Indian kids are dying or being born with hideous diseases and handicaps. Blameless Barron now becomes the Man to Blame. Every newspaper in the world has his picture on the front page, except, it seems, the ones read in Los Angeles, where this scandal is unfolding.

Barron the Perfect starts popping his wife’s Zanax and whining to a Park Avenue analyst, whose main insight is that since he’s spending so much time in Los Angeles with the Indian massacre, why doesn’t he drop in at the Cedars-Sinai AA meeting? “It can’t hurt,” says the shrink. (How did Jung ever get along without this guy?)

Now we are at the Cedars-Sinai, always hip and trendy, AA meet. Our heroine is there (can you see where we’re heading?) Chardonnayless, jobless, far from the Smoky Mountains but brimming with serenity. In strolls Barron Thomas, which in terms of this story would be akin to Donald Trump stopping by mid-Taj Mahal and bankruptcy suits and Ivana/Marla scandal.

Not only is he unnoticed, and our Nicole has not a Culver City clue who he is, but he even stays after and helps her clean the coffee pots. We are expected to believe that a brilliant businessman, who has made his first uncalculated risk (and is being destroyed for it), and after 20 years of misery beside a hopeless drunk in all those reeking bedrooms, would, without a moment’s hesitation, lose his mind for a big-boobed blond at an AA meeting. Wouldn’t he be a little nervous that the future might hold more plate-glass windows and bathroom floors? Pa-leeze. The guy never pauses. His “Dream Girl” has appeared. Somehow the Indians disappear as well, and so it goes.

The most infuriating part of all this is that Stein is capable of far better. I have read his funny, sharply observant nonfiction diary about a summer in his L.A. life while trying to sell screenplays. In this new work there is a wonderful description of single men in Los Angeles, some interesting and original business observations, and a couple of poignant, spare passages about Nicole that let you know that somewhere inside this plot-by-the-numbers, soon to be a one-part miniseries effort, there is an intelligent, quirky writer trying to get out.

I hope Stein reclaims him and next time out (his 17th), he writes the book he can write.