Delivering interoffice mail might have sounded like a dull job, but Miranda discovered that it didn’t have to be. She could read all the memos and learn what the buyers were buying and how much they were spending. She learned about the store’s markup policy, which was nothing if not whimsical; buyers marked up their merchandise to what they thought the traffic would bear. She also learned a lot about the politics of storekeeping: who was in favor and who was not, which departments were in trouble, and why, and what was going to be done about it. She learned that, though her father officially made all the decisions, it was really Tommy Bonham who ran the store.
Then, after her stint in the mail room, she had worked as a secretary for the sportswear buyer. Then she had been made an assistant buyer, which was just a fancier term for secretary. Then her father had given her the title of Director of Advertising.
It was a flashy title, but it didn’t mean a hell of a lot, and her father certainly knew that when he created the position for her six months ago. After all, the store’s advertising was so-called institutional advertising—just advertising the store’s presence, never any specific merchandise—and it was always the same, just a way of saying rather grandly to the public, “We’re here.” Mostly, her father had explained to her, her job would consist of ordering the ad space, making sure the store got the column inches it ordered, keeping the scrapbooks, and periodically being taken to lunch by space salesmen.
Still, right from the beginning, Miranda had tried to make the job into something more than that. She had designed a new, and snappier, company letterhead and bill head. “Our bills and letters look as though they were being sent out by a Wall Street law firm,” she said to her father, showing him her new designs.
“That’s what I like about them,” he said with a smile.
Next, she had suggested colorful bill stuffers. The store had just opened a tiny new gift boutique with one-of-a-kind treasures, bibelots, and boxes, including a pair of rare Romanov Easter eggs designed by the court jeweler, Peter Carl Fabergé. Miranda proposed announcing the new boutique with a bill stuffer showing a color photograph of the eggs.
“Bill stuffers are just that,” her father said. “Just stuff. They’re an annoyance. They go straight into the wastebasket, like the renewal slips that keep falling out of the pages of magazines. My kind of woman wouldn’t like them.”
Her next campaign had been to have Tarkington’s produce a catalogue.
“Catalogues are not our style,” her father said.
“Saks does lovely catalogues. So does Bloomingdale’s. So do—”
“My kind of woman would give a catalogue to her cook, who’d use it to wrap yesterday’s fish. A catalogue would cheapen us, Miranda.”
“But more and more people are shopping from catalogues. There was an article in yesterday’s Times—”
“And where is yesterday’s Times? Being used to wrap yesterday’s fish. There are too many catalogues coming in the mail nowadays. People just toss them out. People come from all over the world to experience our store. Our store provides the Tarkington’s experience. The Tarkington’s experience cannot be conveyed through a catalogue, Miranda.”
“Gucci has a catalogue, Tiffany has catalogues. So does Cartier. Of course ours would be the most beautif—”
“Does Harry Winston have a catalogue?” he asked her.
“No,” she admitted.
“You see? I am in the Harry Winston league.”
Try as she might, she had been unable to rock the boat or to change what had become “the Tarkington’s way of doing things.”
Under the mantle of Advertising came Publicity, but since the store eschewed most publicity and closely guarded the names of its celebrity clients, that side of her job hadn’t yet amounted to much either. Frustrated, Miranda had often thought that any lackey could do what she did. She didn’t even require a secretary. But she had decided to take her job seriously, nonetheless, to be patient and wait for the day when her father might take one of her ideas seriously and take her seriously—and pay her more than $30,000 a year.
“Retailing’s a man’s business,” her father often said to her. “Women just don’t take to it—except as buyers and salesgirls.”
Which was a damned lie, and she could have told him so, but she didn’t. What about Dorothy Shaver of Lord & Taylor, Geraldine Stutz of Bendel’s, and Jo Hughes of Bonwit’s and Bergdorf’s? Those were all legendary women—legends in their day—just as legendary as Silas Tarkington, for God’s sake! Those legendary women were all dead now, or retired, and so wasn’t the business ready for some new, young, talented female blood? But she had held her tongue.
Instead, she had enrolled in some weekday evening classes in marketing and business at N.Y.U. It would be years before she got an M.B.A., but what the hell? She was learning something. And, because she knew what her father would think of this particular endeavor, she had held her tongue about that, too.
Now, after a little more than three years with the store, she is still patiently waiting for something to do where she will be asked to make a decision or at least to offer an opinion. After three years with the store, Thomas E. Bonham III is just another properly aloof executive, her father’s second in command, and his extraordinary good looks are just a familiar part of Tarkington’s general landscape, no more remarkable than the six Baccarat chandeliers that light the center aisle of the street floor. Who must she get to take her seriously now? she wonders. Tommy Bonham, of course.
As though he had been reading her thoughts, he says, “One thing I wanted to ask you. When do you think we should reopen the store? With all due respect to your dad, do you think just being closed today in his memory is enough?”
“Absolutely,” she says firmly. “I think we should open for business tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, business as usual. I think Daddy would have wanted that. And I certainly hope we’re not going to drape the windows with black bunting, or have the salespeople wear black arm bands, or anything. Daddy would have hated that.”
“I agree,” he says. “So we reopen tomorrow and act as though nothing has happened, even though something monumental has.”
“Yes,” she says, and realizes, with a start, that she has just been asked for her opinion.
“Of course,” he says, “I don’t really know who’s supposed to be running the store now that he’s gone. I don’t suppose there was anything said about that in his will.”
“No, but obviously you are. You were always the heir apparent, Tommy.”
“Well, I don’t know,” he says with a faint smile. “There’s a board of directors and shareholders to consider.”
“Well, you’ve obviously got my vote, Tomcat,” she says, and immediately wishes she hadn’t said that. Now that she finds herself a major shareholder, she mustn’t start acting as though she thinks she’s Tommy’s boss or something, though, in a sense, she is.
“What about your mother?”
“Mother’s never had that much interest in the store, as you know. But I’m sure she’d agree with me. You’re the obvious man to take over.”
“Well, suppose I serve as president pro tern,” he says, “until the shareholders decide what course they want to take. You know there’ve been several outside offers to buy the business. Some of the shareholders may decide they’d like to sell.”
“And let Tarkington’s become part of a chain? I don’t think any of us would like to see that happen.”
“I guess there was no mention of that in your dad’s will, either.”
She shakes her head.
“So if it’s okay with you I’ll call a little meeting, before we open the doors in the morning, and explain that I’m assuming the title of president pro tern. After all, somebody’s got to run the place.”
“Absolutely,” she says, thinking: If it’s okay with you!
“Actually, I’m a little surprised your father made a will,” he says. “With all due respect to your dad—he was my closest fr
iend, you know—men like him sometimes begin to think they’re immortal. They don’t make wills, because making a will reminds them that they’re not. Don’t misunderstand. I don’t mean to speak ill of your dad. I loved your dad.”
“I understand.”
“And if I do end up becoming the store’s new president, I want to give you a position of real responsibility, Mandy. Your talents are being completely wasted in that advertising job, as I guess you know.”
“Well, I think so,” she says.
“And—you know—I was thinking before you got here, Tarkington’s has always seemed like a kind of mom-and-pop operation, what with your mother and dad living in the apartment upstairs. A kind of cozy, family atmosphere. I think that’s always been a part of Tarkington’s special aura, its special charm.”
“Daddy used to say he liked his clients to feel as though they’d been invited into Buckingham Palace. Or were staying at the Paris Ritz.”
He laughs softly. “Well, you see? The Queen and Prince Philip live over the store, too. But I was thinking, what if you and I were to run the store as a partnership?”
“Partnership?”
“As co-presidents, perhaps.”
“Co-presidents?”
“Why not? Another mom-and-pop operation.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’m quite ready for that,” she says. “I don’t know as much about the business as I need to know. I’ve never even been out into the market, for instance. I’d need—”
“I’d teach you everything you need to know,” he says.
“But I don’t have your experience, your—”
“You could be in charge of what I call the creative end of the operation. I could be in charge of the financial end. That’s the way your father and I more or less divided things up for the past half dozen years or so.”
“But as co-president?”
“Fifty-fifty partners. A team. Most of our clients are women, after all. I think they’d like the idea of knowing there was a woman at the top. And I know how much you love the store.”
“That’s true, but—”
“You see, I’ve always thought you had great retailing talent, Miranda. You’ve got the innate feel for it, the nose for it. Retailing’s in your blood, and why shouldn’t it be? You’re your father’s daughter.”
She sips her wine thoughtfully. She would like to say, But in the two years I’ve been with the store, you hardly seemed to notice me. It was never more than a nod or a smile or a wave of your hand in my direction when we encountered each other in the hall. Months would go by, and you never seemed to know I was there. When did you notice this great retailing talent of mine—which, in fact, I do possess? But instead she says, “This is a big responsibility you’re suggesting for me, Tommy.”
“I know you’re up to it. I know you’d do a superb job. You and me, in tandem, at the top.”
“I’m certainly flattered, Tommy, but—why didn’t you ever mention this to me before? That you thought I had some talent.”
“I couldn’t. Your father had some pretty old-fashioned ideas about women in top spots in retailing. And after all, your father was my boss. I’m just telling you now what I’ve always thought, what I’ve noticed about you all along. I’d just like to see you become the great retailing genius that your father was.” He fixes his deep-blue eyes on her intensely. “I’m quite serious, Miranda,” he says.
“Well, let me think about it,” she says. “After all, all I’m doing at the moment is buying the same ad space, for the same ads, in the same publications, week after week.”
“Pretty boring, isn’t it?”
“True enough.”
“And this idea of mine excites you, doesn’t it? I can tell it does.”
She nods and takes another sip of wine. “You’re right, it does,” she says. She stares deeply into her wineglass. Co-president!
“Then do we have a deal?”
But at that moment, the maitre d’ approaches them with a white cellular phone in his hand. “Telephone for you, Mr. Bonham,” he says.
Tommy holds up his left hand. “No calls, Jean,” he says.
“It’s a Mr. Minskoff calling, sir. He says it’s urgent.”
“Tell him I’m not here. Tell him I just left. Tell him anything you want. I’m taking no calls.”
And now Mona Potter, in her red Ungaro suit, is also approaching their table. “When’s Tarkington’s going to open up again?” she demands in her loud voice. “I need to know for my column. And Miranda, sweetie, from you I need to know how it feels to’ve inherited a bundle of your old man’s money.”
4
As Connie Tarkington and Jake Kohlberg wait for the light to cross Forty-second Street, they hear a woman waiting next to them say to a friend, “Look, isn’t that Consuelo Tarkington? It is! Jeez, I wish I had her money!” Jake responds by looking down at his feet, and Connie by removing an oversize pair of sunglasses from her purse and putting them on. The light changes, Jake takes her arm, and they cross the street together, heading north.
Jake chuckles. “Those shades aren’t going to help you one damn bit,” he says. “You’re still one of the ten best-dressed women in the world. You’re still a celebrity.”
She sighs and says nothing, the heels of her Chanel pumps clicking on the sidewalk. Then she says, “Where are you taking me?”
“To the Yale Club, where we can have a quiet talk. Yale men are trained not to make noisy comments about their beautiful women guests.” Ahead of them, the blue-and-white flag flutters in the breeze from its mast. They mount the short flight of steps to the club, and the uniformed guard at the reception desk says, “Good afternoon, Mr. Kohlberg,” and nods politely to Connie.
They find a quiet corner of the east sitting room and settle themselves in a pair of large easy chairs. Connie crosses her legs and lets the heel of one blue pump dangle from the tip of her toe.
A waiter approaches them. “Tea, Mrs. Tarkington?” he asks.
“Yes, please. Lemon, no sugar.”
“I’ll have a brandy,” Jake Kohlberg says. “Courvoisier.”
“Well,” she says after the waiter has departed, “maybe it will be nice not having to worry about being on the Best-Dressed List. Not having to worry about being a walking advertisement for Tarkington’s.”
“You’ve always been the best. The best there ever was.”
Her lips part slightly to expose perfectly white and even teeth. “As Blazer said—like one of the mannequins in his Fifth Avenue windows.”
“Ah, you’ve been more than that, Connie. Much more than that.” To change the subject slightly, he chuckles softly again. “So many funny stories about Si,” he says. “Is it true he once went up to the apartment and took some dresses out of your closet when he couldn’t find anything in the store that a customer wanted?”
“Oh, that sort of thing happened all the time,” she says. “I was always going into my closet to get out a particular dress, only to find that he’d taken it out and sold it to one of his ladies. I’d find other things in my closet, too. And in other places.”
“Hmm? What sort of things?”
“Oh, like a pair of panties between the sheets when my maid went to turn down the bed. Or a box of tampons on the closet floor.”
“Now, Connie, don’t brood about those things.”
“I’m not brooding, Jake. You asked me what sort of things I found, and I told you. There were other things. Worse things.”
His brandy arrives, and her tea, and the waiter pours it for her.
“Let’s talk business for a minute,” she says when they are alone again. “Am I really going to be rich?”
“Oh, I think you’re going to be very comfortably off,” he says. “The houses, the other properties, the shares in the store—”
“How many shares will I own?”
“Well, Si owned about thirty percent of the shares outstanding. That, divided by two, would give you and Miranda each about a fifteen-percent
additional position in the company.”
“Plus the shares he gave us both from time to time—Christmases, birthdays, that sort of thing. But that wouldn’t give us a majority position, would it?”
“Probably not. You’d each own roughly twenty percent.”
“How much would these shares be worth, do you suppose?”
“That’s hard to say until we’ve had a chance to examine the books. Inventory. Accounts receivable. That sort of thing.”
“Of course.”
“And I should warn you, Connie, that Moses Minskoff—whose name you mentioned this afternoon—has already resurfaced. He claims to be in possession of some IOU’s of Si’s, some promissory notes, representing loans he made to Si over the years. Of course until I’ve had a chance to examine these documents I’ve no way of knowing whether they’d stand up in a court of law. But I thought I should warn you that this Minskoff character has already started making sword-rattling noises.”
She shivers. “How did Si ever get mixed up with a man like Moe Minskoff?”
He sighs. “Well, there were times in your husband’s business when he needed ready cash, and needed it in a hurry. Minskoff was there to provide it.”
She taps her lacquered fingertips on the tabletop. “He used my husband, and the store, to launder his filthy money—which came from God knows what crooked source!”
“Well,” he says with a small smile, “when a man needs ready cash and someone else is on hand to supply it, he doesn’t always question the source of the cash too closely.”
“I suppose not. But still—Moe Minskoff. Of all the people in the world—”
“That’s why I want to handle the Minskoff situation very carefully, Connie. I don’t want anything about this to get into the press. I don’t want anything to come out that would damage the store’s reputation. Meanwhile, I think a more important question is, who’s going to run the store now that Si is gone?”
“Well, I can’t run it, and couldn’t even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Miranda’s always said she’d like to run the store some day, but she hasn’t had any real experience. Retailing is a—a jungle. Si often said so. And Miranda knows nothing about that jungle. Of course, that’s Si’s fault, too, in a way. He never wanted her to get any real retailing experience. He never even wanted her to work for the store.”
Carriage Trade Page 6
