“What?”
“I was thinking about a conversation I had with business associates, about going into the diamond business. I want to come up with a new approach to this old business. Pennies of scent can sell for pennies or many dollars, depending on how it’s packaged and advertised, but the problem with diamonds is that they’re a commodity like pork bellies.”
Yvonne screeched. “Pork bellies?”
“Pork bellies are all the same.”
“Not to the pigs, they’re not.”
“To the bacon eater, they are. Anyway, the example I was giving about diamonds is that they’re not a fashion item, at least not at the wholesale level, because they’re all the same. But perfume and clothes are different. Fifty cents’ worth of scent can sell for—”
“Five hundred.”
“And a dollar’s worth of cotton can make a dress worth fifty dollars for a trip to the supermarket or five thousand for a trip to the Academy Awards.”
“I see what you’re saying. Diamonds are subject to the laws of supply and demand, fashion isn’t,” Yvonne said. “Fashion creates its own demand, but a diamond is a diamond is a diamond. Except of course when it’s a flaming ruby-red no one has ever seen before.
“You’re spoiled. With the Heart of the World, you got a taste of the sort of markup you find in the fashion world. The stone is worth a hundred times or a thousand times its ordinary carat value because it’s unique. But a diamond like that, one that grossly exceeds its carat value because it’s unique, comes around once in an eon. You’re trying to find a way to make other diamonds worth more than their book value and it’s not going to happen. People have been trying to do that for a long time.”
I nudged her with my elbow. “There’s an old expression about never saying never.”
“Well, Win, when you come up with a new way to market diamonds, let me know. I want to cash in, too.”
65
Rona was of indiscernible age and sexual preference, to my eye. Maybe if I saw her with her clothes off, I’d have a better idea of who and what she was. We went backstage and Yvonne introduced me.
“So you’re the man with the fire diamond who fights off thieves,” Rona said. “I saw it on television. You must bring it to my party after the show. You were foolish to fight with the thieves. Let them take it and collect the insurance. Bring it tonight and I will steal it from you.”
She spoke twice as fast as Yvonne and her French was only half as good. She was off and running without waiting for a reply. She was one part tornado, one part tyrant. She moved from model to model backstage at the fashion show, adjusting this and that, yelling commands, arguing with the girls, shouting at her assistants. She operated off of high-octane adrenaline, the kind that could fuel a Concorde.
Word spread that I was the man who owned a diamond mine and the most valuable diamond, and women who wouldn’t have given me a smile on the street eyed me like I was a movie director looking to cast a starring role—on the casting-room couch at that.
Yvonne thought it was funny. “We women are so attracted to a man’s wealth and power, that’s what’s sexy for us. At first it was the caveman who carried the biggest club, now it’s the man who has the biggest bank account. But at least there’s a practical reason behind the attraction. Men are much more basic and frivolous—give them tits and ass and they don’t care what’s in the bank or in the brains.”
Watching the fashion models in various states of chaotic undress reminded me of the times I went back to see Katarina when she was modeling. Modesty was not a part of the modeling gig. What was surprising about the profession is that many of the women looked better with their clothes on than off. Their tall, slender figures with modest bustlines suited designers presenting clothes, but were too skinny for my taste. Once in a while there was a Katarina who had a lush, full body that was perfect with or without clothes. The top model for the show, an Italian woman Katarina had worked with and said was temperamental, was living up to her reputation. Like Katarina, she wouldn’t wear just anything but had the right to refuse if she didn’t think the clothes complimented her.
“This is not the outfit I agreed to wear,” she told Rona. “You’ve made a change at the last minute.”
“You’ll wear it or you’ll never model again.”
That brought out an explosion of Italian, French, and English expletives. The women stood face-to-face, flushed and angry. It was the show’s grand finale. Rona tried to adjust the dress and the woman pushed her hands away.
“It makes me look like a cow! I won’t wear it!”
“You are a cow! You contracted for three runs. You wear the outfit or you can go down the runway naked and mooing!”
“Fine, good, fuck you, you bitch, I’m going naked.”
She began ripping off the clothes, taking everything off until she stood naked.
“There! I am ready to go onstage!”
Rona faced her, red in the face and her fists balled up.
I stepped in, pulling the pouch containing the fire diamond out of my pocket.
“I have the perfect complement to end your show with,” I told Rona. “She can wear this.”
I held up the diamond. I had placed it in a simple setting with a thin gold chain making it easier to handle—and harder to lose.
They both gawked at the gem.
“Oh my God,” the model said, “it’s the fire diamond.”
Rona shook her head. “It says nothing about my designs.”
“Yes, it does. It’s launching your new line of fashion diamonds.”
I put the diamond around the model’s neck.
“It’s the most valuable diamond in the world,” I said. “You’re wearing a hundred million dollars. If you run for the door, my guards will shoot you in the back.” I made up the price, but it was a nice rough figure.
“Oh my God.” She held up the diamond to look at it and then looked at me. “I love diamonds,” she purred.
Her vocabulary was limited, but her nipples stood at attention and saluted me. I got an instant hard-on. Like Yvonne said, it wasn’t what was between the ears that interested a man.
66
“Pork bellies?”
Rona’s face twisted in a sour expression.
We were alone in her Ile St.-Louis apartment overlooking the Seine and Rive Gauche. The Heart of the World had brought down the house at the fashion show. That and the fact that it was all the model wore. Rona took the stage right behind the model, and announced her new line of fashion diamonds. That’s all she said, which was smart, since we hadn’t figured out yet what exactly a line of “fashion diamonds” was.
“Pork bellies,” she repeated.
I laughed. I’d given her the “diamonds are a commodity” lecture I’d heard every time I mentioned starting a fashion line.
“But they don’t have to be pork bellies,” I said. “I realized that when I watched you take pieces of cloth and with a snip here and a tuck there, change the entire appearance of a dress.”
“We have unique cuts,” she said. “Every one different. Is that possible?”
“Within limits. Most diamonds are given fifty-eight facets, which is called a ‘brilliant’ cut. That number was chosen because it maximizes light that gives a diamond’s fiery glitter. But there are other cuts that can be used. The Tiffany Diamond has ninety facets. Bottom line, there are dozens of ways to cut a stone. The fifty-eight rule is used most often because it produces a good result. Sometimes the diamond itself determines how it should be cut.”
I could see her mind working away, she hadn’t interrupted me. I kept going.
“I don’t want to leave you with the impression that all diamonds of the same size and clarity sell for the same price after they’re cut and hit the retail market. A prestigious jewelry store will sell comparable merchandise at a higher price than a discount store. But at the wholesale level—between dealers—prices are pretty much standardized based upon size and quality. A stone with th
e same color and clarity and cut can sell for more than another one because it has more fire—it may be that the stone started out larger and the cutter whittled away more diamond to get a better result. It depends upon how much leeway there is for a cut and how much rough you want to cut away, thus reducing the carat size. Most people are more interested in the size of the finished product than the glitter because the brilliance is often too subtle for someone to notice unless they make a close examination.”
“But you can come up with a Rona cut, a unique cut that no one else uses?”
“Yes.”
“Then we need a unique cut,” she said. “That’s what fashion is all about. Women don’t buy my dresses at Bon Marche or Macy’s, they buy them in shops where only one-of-a-kind dresses are sold.”
“I’ll get the best cutter in the world and we’ll come up with a design that will be unique and meet a high standard of brilliance. It may be we’ll need to increase the number of facets substantially, over ninety perhaps, in order to get the right glitter. It’ll cost more and will only be practical on larger stones.”
She waved away the extra cost. “The cost of merchandise means nothing in fashion. You said people would pay more to buy the same diamond at a high-end store like Bvlgari’s and Tiffany’s than from a chain store.”
“That’s true, on the retail end people are willing to pay more for the privilege of shopping where snob appeal is part of the purchase. But the prices won’t be radically different for exactly the same stone with exactly the same brilliance. High-end stores sell better merchandise. Like I said, two stones with the same clarity and cut aren’t necessarily equal in brilliance.”
“Buyers are all fools when it comes to fashion,” Rona said. “Each woman thinks she’s buying one-of-a-kind when she buys my dresses. For my more expensive designs, I may only send one of each design to a shop, but there are thousands of shops from Paris to San Francisco to Tokyo. When an actress is seen wearing the dress in a national magazine or awards show, I load up the stores with that design. Women believe it’s okay to imitate a woman that is considered well dressed and sexy.”
“Maybe we’ll let the buyer chose the design,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“That would really make it exclusive.”
“How would you do that with diamonds?”
“People are used to walking into a store and choosing a diamond that’s already been cut and mounted. But what if we offered something really unique? Let them come into the store, choose a rough based on the size and clarity they can afford and then choose the shape and cut they want.”
“Can that be done?”
“With expensive stones it can. And using a computerized program to design the cut would not only impress people but show instant results. We’ll only deal in roughs of a certain shape and whose brilliance can be brought out with a limited number of different cuts. We can have computer models that show the end result of different cuts to the buyers. They can either choose a Rona cut, the standard fifty-eight brilliant, or a totally unique cut that is one-of-a-kind.”
“I’ll leave the cutting to you. We need to talk about three more important things. First, why should I get involved in this?”
“Exclusivity. People have had clothing and perfume named after them. No one has ever done diamonds. As the best advertising slogan in history says, diamonds are forever. They’re the hardest substance on earth, harder than steel. When your line of perfume has evaporated and the clothes you’ve designed are shreds, the diamonds bearing your name will live on. A thousand years from now a Rona diamond will sparkle as brilliantly as it did today.”
Her eyes lit up at the idea of name-recognition immortality. What I didn’t say was that I intended to get a lot more mileage out of her name in the long run than she ever imagined. Of course we’d have stores in New York, London, Paris, and Beverly Hills to cater to the rich. But someday I’d make even more money selling a Rona line to people who buy their engagement rings at the jewelry counter of places like Wal-Mart. Now wasn’t the time to bring up that idea. Rona had terrific snob appeal because she was the biggest snob in the world. Getting her to go for mass production would have to wait until she needed the money.
“All right, the second question is, how much will I receive for the use of my name?”
I grinned. “I thought you’d want to let us use your name for the sake of art, sort of a gift to the world.” I put up my hands to stop a flow of profanity. “Just kidding, but this is a win–win scenario for you. You’re basically licensing your name and leaving all the work to me. We’ll take a look at other licensing agreements and come up with terms that will be more than fair.”
“The agreement won’t be just for money, but my name is my stock-in-trade. I will insist upon controlling how my name is used—and that it is not abused or involved in anything that will tarnish it.”
“That’s fair. What’s the third thing?”
“Let me see that red diamond.”
We had been sitting at a safe distance from each other, but now she moved closer, sitting almost on top of me.
“It’s back in the vault—”
“It’s in your pocket. You are too much in love with it to let it out of your sight.”
Smart lady. I handed her the Heart of the World.
She rotated the diamond in her hand, picking up the light.
“Incredible. It really looks like a fire is glowing in it.”
She put her hand on my lap. She squeezed my penis with one hand and the diamond with the other.
“We’ll seal the deal with a fuck,” she said. “Mars is in Capricorn, Mercury is in ascension. I’m heterosexual and horny this time of month.”
PART 8
HOLLYWOOD
67
House of Liberté, Beverly Hills, 1998
I stood on the corner of Rodeo and Little Santa Monica and looked down Rodeo in the direction of Wilshire. It was a singularly unimpressive street. One- and two-story buildings, for the most part. It had none of the powerful facade and elegance of the upper-end shopping districts of New York, London, and Paris. But there was more snob appeal in a few hundred yards of Rodeo than on the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, with maybe some of London and Paris thrown in.
That was because snob appeal was easier to obtain on the West Coast than anywhere else. The only thing that counted out West was money. And it didn’t have to be “old money.” Leaving out the carpetbaggers who brought their money with them, there was no “old money” in California, at least not the way they counted “old” in Europe. California’s version of old money came from mining, oil, and real estate, none of which were ancient history. New money came from entertainment, the defense industry, and Silicon Valley, and engendered real contempt from the European and eastern seaboard old money because the person who possessed it actually worked for it.
The snob appeal of Rodeo Drive was even more focused in terms of its basis—it was almost exclusively centered around “the industry.” The fifteen or sixteen million people in the Los Angles basin worked in many different industries, but universally, when “the industry” was mentioned, it meant the entertainment industry. A guy with ten thousand shoe stores spread across America could move here and buy a twenty-million-dollar house in Beverly Hills, but in terms of snob appeal, he ranked far behind the actress who appeared periodically on a cable TV show and lived in a West Hollywood walk-up.
Not that the shoe guy’s twenty-million-dollar mansion was that impressive either, especially if you drove by and saw it going up piece by piece. You can bet about 95 percent of the cost went into purchase of the lot alone. The remaining 5 percent was used to raise a plywood mansion. That’s what all these big Beverly Hills houses were, good old pine framing with plywood walls. On top of the plywood went a facade that hid the house’s cheap construction.
You could get away with that kind of cheap construction in the warm, dry Southern California climate. On top of that, anything
grew here, because the climate’s basically warm desert turned into an oasis by stealing water from communities hundreds of miles in every direction. I watched the landscaping go up one day on a new Beverly Hills plywood mansion. After the house was done and the concrete driveway was dry, trucks loaded with trees, bushes, and flowers pulled up. Full-grown trees and bushes went into the ground, blooming flowers were planted, and grass rolled out. Literally in hours, bare dirt around the house was turned into a small rain forest. I especially like watching the grass being rolled out. It reminded me of the old movie Dick and Jane from the 1970s starring Jane Fonda and George Siegal. Siegal, who played Dick, was an aerospace executive who got laid off about the time he and Jane bought an expensive new house. As their financial woes rose, they didn’t just lose their expensive furniture and cars, but the landscaper came back and repossessed their plants and rolled-up lawn.
Yeah, the town was phony, tacky, plastic, a cheap imitation of quality, a place with a Styrofoam soul.
And I couldn’t wait to jump into the middle of it.
I don’t know what it was about L.A. that attracted me. It wasn’t even a real town with a main street—mostly it was just one giant strip mall. If you had to choose a main street, I guess it would be Wilshire Boulevard which ran twenty miles and went through three different towns.
But I had the same emotional response to the industry that everyone else had. I came here to mingle with the stars, maybe even make love to one or two—hopefully not an action hero pumped up with steroids.
It was amazing how well I fit the L.A. mode. I ran my diamond business like a movie studio when it came to promotion—no one pulled more stunts or got more free publicity. What it had taken the old names in the diamond industry over a hundred years to build up in terms of name recognition, I had done in the five years since I left Angola. Now I was doing the same play as I walked down to meet my staff on Rodeo Drive where House of Liberté was getting its finishing touches. Yeah, I kept the accent over the “e.” It had snob appeal. Isn’t that what diamonds were all about?
Heat of Passion Page 31
