Lace

by Shirley Conran

  Judy hoped that the magazine would give its readers the support that she had found in Kate, Maxine and Pagan. Together, the four of them had certainly brought out the best in each other. Without the other three where would they be? Kate was the only one who had real talent, but she was a quiet mouse who worried too much. Without Judy to push her, she’d probably be an unhappy divorcée, spending too much at Harrods. Without Kate, Pagan would still be a misfit brought up in a privileged world in which she never felt at home—a perplexed, hopeless drunkard. Maxine had gone a long way with her determination and hard work but she would never have been world-famous without Judy to show her to the world, and although Judy was a tough go-getter, she would never have started her own business if Maxine hadn’t pushed her into it. Alone, their frailties might have overwhelmed them. Together, they had strength and speed and style—which is what VERVE! was going to push as hard as it could.

  50

  DO YOU WANT to know what a woman finds attractive in a man?” Kate asked. “I just got the survey results.” She looked at the alert faces around her desk at the eleven o’clock Monday conference. It was thirteen weeks after the party at the Four Seasons, three weeks before the first issue was due to be published. “What women find attractive in a man and what men think women find attractive in a man turn out to be entirely different. Twenty-two percent of males admitted that what they thought appealed most to a woman was a large, tight-trousered bulge, but only three percent of the women thought so.”

  They all giggled. VERVE! had started with a shoestring full-time staff of fourteen plus freelancers and contributing editors. Most of the journalists were always working on at least three stories at once, in different stages of progress. The fashion editor was due to join them in two weeks—in her absence they were using high-powered fashion stylists at enormous expense.

  “The men didn’t think that slimness was important in a man, but most of the women thought it was vital,” Kate continued. “Only two percent of the men thought that the male buttocks were important, whereas this area easily was top attraction with women, at forty-two percent.”

  Kate had started that morning’s conference by giving a rundown of the schedule for the next issue: sixteen weeks in advance of publication, they discussed the rough shape of the magazine; copy deadline day was ten weeks later, and the following six weeks to publication was a fast-moving battle between the editors, the assistants, the art department and the printers.

  Life was fun, thought Kate after the conference, but it wasn’t the sort of fun that their readers imagined. It wasn’t a playgirl existence lived from champagne reception to dress show. VERVE! was absorbing work. That was the best possible fun. Sitting with six snarling telephones in front of her and a couple of people leaning against the wall just inside her door, Kate reflected that most of their readers would probably hate her job, but as far as she was concerned, she would gladly have paid to do it. Launching VERVE! was the most exciting thing she’d ever done and, however exhausted she was, she hated to stop in the evenings.

  There was only one fly in the ointment. Kate didn’t find Tom easy to work with. He had been brought up on the West Coast and before teaming up with Judy, he’d worked only in the motion picture industry, which inevitably coloured his attitude toward women. He couldn’t help categorizing women as mothers or hookers of one variety or another. Some of them were also properties, and these were liable to give trouble; you treated a property warily, as you would a baby cheetah. For Tom, Judy was a very valuable property. But Kate—well, she hadn’t proved her value yet. Tom intended to produce a magazine packaged a bit like the Virginia Slims ads . . . “You’ve come a long way, baby. . . .” But Kate didn’t fit the glossy, Virginia-Slims-Lib image any more than she did the heavy Ms. image. Tom couldn’t place her. Sure, she wrote that book, she was a minor celebrity, but that didn’t mean she was going to make money for him. So Tom and Kate kept clashing until Judy took it upon herself to soothe Kate down. “Look, Kate, all backers are difficult. One of the reasons that Tom keeps our backers happy is because he thinks the same way as they do. We’re taking a big, big gamble, which we certainly couldn’t do without Tom. His personal disadvantages are business advantages. He can deal with all that shit and leave us to get on with the work.” Judy took Kate by the shoulders. “Remember that your responsibility is to get the magazine out on his budget. It’s his responsibility to make a profit and he’s very, very good at that; but he might not be if he were the sort of liberated guy that you approve of.”

  As they neared publication date, Tom’s growls could be heard around the office. “Do you realise what a bleed-off costs? . . . Does anyone in the art department realise that the little rule around the picture on page ninety-two added fourteen percent to the page cost? . . . Does anyone in the art department care?”

  Kate had always been terrified of violence—both physical and verbal. As a child she had never dared to show her own anger and always quailed before her father’s rage. As an adult, she still always caved in when voices were raised. But Kate didn’t forgive and she didn’t forget. She capitulated and remembered. Instead of discharging her anger in a blazing row, she stored up her resentment, which always built into a bigger and bigger head of steam until the day that Kate exploded.

  A messenger hurried down the office aisle. It was ten o’clock at night and the room was silent except for the occasional machine-gun burst of a typewriter. Only three people were still at their desks. Kate and the art editor were brooding over the page proofs as the messenger came up to them and handed over a big envelope.

  Inside, fresh from the printing press, was a rough-cut copy of their first issue. Blazing confidence, Lauren Hutton grinned up at them.

  Kate picked it up and ran to Judy’s office. “Look!” she yelled. “We ’re in business.”

  51

  ALL THE RIGHT people turned out for VERVE!’s launch party. There were plenty of celebrities, some agency heads and a lot of big advertisers—about five hundred people in all. The top columnists were there, the dailies had turned up and a couple of reporters from Time and Newsweek, as well as the trade press. There was no television coverage, but it was probably just as well—cables and lights would upset the party atmosphere, and anyway Kate and Pat had already appeared earlier on the breakfast shows.

  There was a murmur of voices, a clink of glasses, cigar smoke mingled with expensive perfume and the champagne flowed. Unexpectedly, however, the party to which Kate had looked forward to for months seemed to her a depressing anticlimax. She would have preferred to see this money spent on the magazine. She looked pinched and ill, so miserable and woebegone that Tom moved over to her.

  “Cheer up,” he said, “we’ve just had a successful launch and you’re having a normal, understandable reaction: you’re experiencing the depression that sets in with exhaustion after some mighty exertion that results in achievement. That’s how Shakespeare probably felt after he’d finished Hamlet.”

  Kate didn’t laugh. “I know it all feels stale to you,” Tom added. “You’ve been thinking about nothing else for the past three months. I know some of those guys out there looked bored, but when people are listening very carefully, their faces always look blank. It just means that they’re concentrating on what’s being said to them. Every single guest tonight was sounded out first, they’re all good potentials and a great many of them have already agreed to support us. You, Kate, are now part owner of a real, live magazine.”

  Kate’s eyes brimmed. “It’s just that I’m feeling exhausted and homesick and I suddenly felt so lonely. I’m missing Walton Street and London and Scotty most of all.”

  “Yes, well, it’s tough being a big girl. I’d better take you home.”

  They caught a cab back to Kate’s apartment where Tom said, “Going to help myself to a real drink, can’t stand that fizzy stuff. You get into bed and when you’re comfortable I’ll get some food sent in.”

  “I really couldn’t eat a thing, thank yo
u, Tom, but there’s some cold stuff in the fridge.”

  When she was wearily propped against the pillows, Tom appeared with a tray of coffee, some stale doughnuts, a stick of limp celery and a bowl of soup. “I promise I’ll do better next time,” he said, sipping whiskey from the depths of the blue cotton-covered armchair. He wondered how to cheer her up as Kate picked at her food.

  “Do you realise, Kate, that in the last three months we’ve spent more time together than the average married couple?” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and earnestly added, “Another thing you probably don’t realise is that you’ve made a lot of my old ideas look pretty stale. I’m not sure that this is the right time to say it, but I want to apologise. I underestimated you—your ideas, your originality and your experience. I thought you were just Judy’s British buddy and I didn’t see that we needed you. But now I’ve seen you in action and I am impressed. I’m sorry I’ve been so abrupt and offhand and, well, such a tough bastard.”

  “I like tough bastards. That’s one of my problems.”

  “Well, one of my problems is that I can’t get results without being a tough bastard. Now get some sleep and see you tomorrow.”

  For one moment Kate had thought he was going to make a pass at her. Her love life had been nonexistent in the past few months, and it hadn’t been so great before that; she ’d almost given up hoping that one day she’d meet a man with whom she would climax effortlessly, with love and truth and abandon.

  But none of them did.

  The following day she woke feeling much better and was just getting out of bed when the intercom rang.

  “There’s a guy down here with some flowers.”

  “Send him up,” Kate said, expecting a delivery boy. To her surprise, Tom appeared behind a foaming armful of yellow mimosa and a paper sack containing fresh coffee, bagels, lox and cream cheese.

  “Hi. Breakfast. Back to bed,” he said, and handed her the morning papers. All the dailies had covered their launch, including a frontpage splash in WWD. Kate immediately felt better.

  “I feel ashamed about last night. I tend to cry when I’m tired.”

  “Forget it,” said Tom. “That’s what intrigues me—you’re such an odd combination of strength and vulnerability. You’re tough without being masculine, you work as hard as Judy, and that’s saying a lot, but you’re very fragile in some areas. Although you won’t admit it, you need looking after.”

  “I’m being looked after,” said Kate, grinning at him. “Lucky it’s Saturday.”

  “I’ll have to go into the office pretty soon.”

  “Me too.”

  She looked pale but pleased with herself as she lay back against pink pillows in a white lace negligée. Tom, watching her against the pillows, suddenly realised that he was going to make love to her. The tray crashed to the floor and bagels flew across the room.

  After one moment of astonishment, Kate was conscious of his hands on her skin, his hard mouth on hers, the smell of newly laundered cotton and a man’s warm body. She didn’t even have time to be self-conscious as she felt his hands exploring her body, sliding over the lace. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” she gasped.

  “I think it’s an excellent idea,” Tom murmured into her hair.

  “I thought you were against fornication among the staff. . . .”

  “Yes, this is madness,” Tom cheerfully agreed, as he felt for her breasts. “Now are you going to undo this or do I have to tear it off you?”

  With one wriggle Kate was out of it, and then he was stroking her body with possessive tenderness. His mouth never left hers as he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled off his tie, and then she felt his hard chest against her soft breast and smelled the erotic, fresh-straw-smelling sweat of his armpits. She bent her head and nuzzled there, inhaling the soft down in the pit of his arm, the only soft hair on his body. They were both naked and lying together, each wondering at the warmth of the other’s body, each touching and feeling, slowly exploring each bend of arm and leg.

  Very slowly, Tom slid on top of her and she felt him warm inside her. He moved softly, then with more strength, his hard legs against her soft thighs, his mouth crushing hers, his broad hands cradling her breasts, feeling her small, beige nipples harden beneath his touch.

  Kate felt excited and yet strangely peaceful. Of course her body had been made for Tom, this tender, tough man, her love. Her love?

  Alarm bells rang. She gasped and suddenly stopped moving. “What’s up?” murmured Tom.

  “Well, I don’t want to get involved.”

  “Of course not,” he murmured and softly stroked her breasts, as she quivered under him. Slowly she let him draw her down again into the soft, warm, erotic depths. As their passion mounted, she felt Tom’s warm breath in her ear, his hard, pulsing body on top of hers, then she was up on the ceiling, oddly dispassionate, looking down at herself and Tom in bed below, and for Kate the moment was lost as Tom climaxed with an animal growl.

  They lay clinging to each other. A faint almond whiff of semen rose from the rumpled sheets.

  “Mmmmmmmm, mmmmmm . . .” he murmured, hugging her, “but I wish you had come.”

  “I did.”

  “No you didn’t, darling. I don’t mind if you don’t have an orgasm, but I do mind if you fake. Where does it get you? What’s the point?”

  Gently he kissed her and stroked her shoulders. She felt his hands slowly slide over her body until, softly, he started to stroke the small, dark forest, started to feel her with a soft, steady touch, his hands moving lightly and with sensitive patience until Kate relaxed then suddenly arched toward him in ecstasy and fell back, melting into his muscular arms.

  She woke to feel his lips on her small secret slit, his tongue gently caressing the pale pink seed pearl, his face against the delicate folds that surrounded it. Pink upon pink, soft, sucking flesh; swirling, exquisite oblivion, falling into a caressing sea.

  “What a wonderful way to wake up,” murmured Kate, going to sleep again.

  Afterward they took the phone off the hook, had a shower together, started to make love under it and decided that it wasn’t really all that comfortable in the slippery tub with the water raining down. They slid back into the crumpled bed. Like a bird’s-eye view of the Alps, thought Kate for one moment, before all thought was wiped from her mind and sensation alone flooded her body.

  Later, still naked, they pulled the bed straight, but as soon as they’d smoothed the antique patchwork spread Tom gently pushed her back on it and again reached for her breasts. Kate pulled him down, dodged his hands and instead slid down between his thighs; lying curled between his legs she stroked him, feather-soft, cupped him in her hands. He felt her warmth, the soft stroking touch of her hand on his cock, then her lips were sucking, soft as a sea anemone, then more insistently. He felt her tongue searching, reaching, sliding, slipping, sucking until Tom could think of nothing except the scratching fingernails on his inner thighs, that sure insistent mouth, the mounting, quickening pressure of her lips upon him until, with a groan, he climaxed.

  Kate, who never knew whether to swallow, spit or dribble, tasted the oddly pungent, acrid almond odour. “What do men like?” she timidly asked Tom later.

  Silence, then he said, “Naturally, I can’t speak for the rest of my sex, but when borne on summits of delights such as I have just experienced, I neither know nor care.”

  It was six o’clock in the pearly grayness of Monday morning. “You’re quite something,” Tom said. “I don’t want anyone or anything else. But let’s keep this from the office, huh?”

  Naturally, that was impossible. Monday, Kate was a different, sparkling creature, thought Judy, from wan, little Friday Kate. Tom hadn’t been in all weekend and she’d left plenty of messages, getting crosser and crosser with his answering service. Both of them had been unavailable. Unavailable together all weekend, concluded Judy.

  Before Monday was over, Kate had casually asked Judy what Tom’s wife was like. “
She’s just a simple all-American girl,” Judy said. “Aged twenty-three, golden hair and a handspan waist, radiant as the dawn, that sort of thing. . . . No, I’m joking, she’s really ninety-five and the poor woman’s only got one eye, no teeth and these thirteen lovely children, all very hungry. . . .” She relented. “In fact, they split up before Tom and I joined forces. His ex is all right, there’s nothing wrong with her; she’s just a spoiled Jewish princess who never stops yacking—heavily into macrobiotic nutrition and meaningful encounter groups. But the two boys are really neat. Tom doesn’t talk about them, but he sees them as much as he can.”

  When they were together, Kate felt an irresistible and seemingly irreversible love for Tom. This wasn’t like her girlish wish to be married to Robert. This wasn’t like the awed infatuation she’d felt for Toby, her ex-husband. This was a growing, tender lovingness. She didn’t feel hemmed-in, she didn’t feel humble or in any way subservient, she didn’t want to get on her knees and worship and she didn’t feel that she was putting on an act or altering herself to please him. Not once did she feel the urge to scribble Kate Schwartz, Mrs. Tom Schwartz or even Kate Ryan-Schwartz. She simply wanted to be with Tom, whenever she could, and to hell with the future. Suddenly Kate’s neat navy suits were seen no more; instead she appeared in an amethyst linen suit from Yves Saint Laurent that she wore with no blouse underneath. This went down so well that she went back and bought another version in shocking pink. Shortly afterward she turned up at the office wearing a Spanish orange jersey jumpsuit. Nobody in the office needed to be told that Kate was in love.

  Tom also had suddenly changed. He became more affable and mellow, he was seen to smile during office hours and his sharp sarcasm softened. To Kate, he was surprisingly loving, gentle and generous. Aware of his office reputation as a tightwad, he consciously tried to overcorrect, and Kate loved him for it.

  But she didn’t want diamonds, she didn’t need emeralds—all she wanted was Tom.