Fashionably Late

by Olivia Goldsmith

  ‘Bashert,’ she replied. It was Yiddish for ‘fated,’ but she bet that Bill Wolper didn’t know that. She hadn’t even remembered that she knew the word, although Belle or Arnold must have used it from time to time. God, what was there in her that made her so contrary? She refused her Jewishness to Belle, who prized it, and then she threw it in the face of Bill Wolper, who must despise it. Karen heard Jeffrey sigh beside her. Well, he was probably beside himself, as well.

  Herb Becker began the meeting with an overview of NormCo and all its subsidiaries. Karen looked at the spidery org chart and sighed. She hadn’t seen anything as complicated since the printouts of her last ultrasound scan. She hoped that NormCo wasn’t as dysfunctional as her reproductive system. Out of nowhere, she thought of the mother and little girl she had seen in Macy’s – the delicious crease of the child’s elbow and the satin smoothness of her chipmunk cheek. What, she wondered, would it feel like to have a little girl like that? Remembering the child, she missed part of Herb’s boring explanation of NormCo’s retailing arm. She glanced over at Bill Wolper and realized that he had his eyes on her. Was he looking at her as if she were some toothy subsidiary to acquire, or was it more personal? She felt her color rise.

  ‘Karen, it’s time for your delivery,’ Jeffrey said. She stood up and walked to the screen that had been revealed when a wall smoothly disappeared into the floor. Everything here was smooth, except her. Karen took a steadying breath. ‘Look, here’s the thing: KInc isn’t like other companies. I know everybody must say that about their company, but in this case it’s true. In each of the last five years, we have had between two hundred and three hundred percent increases in our volume. Annually. And I don’t believe it’s just good luck. It’s not even good merchandising.’ She turned to Casey. ‘Not that we don’t have good merchandising,’ she nodded to him. ‘It’s because we know what women want and what women need. We understand today’s woman. Because we are her.’

  ‘Well, some of us are today’s woman,’ Jeffrey said with a smile.

  ‘And some of us just want to be,’ Casey murmured to Defina. Jeffrey gave him a look.

  Karen smiled at them all. ‘See, the thing is, it’s all based on design. And in fashion, we have the endless excitement of designing for the body; deciding what should be revealed and what should be masked. Some people believe that the heart of fashion is sex. That’s partly true. But I believe that women who follow fashion aren’t doing it to please men. They do it to please themselves. It’s one of the few means of self-expression left. It has also been said that clothes are a necessity, but fashion is a luxury. So, the women who buy our particular designs are buying them not only to express their personality. They also buy for the luxury of owning because owning this luxury also allows a woman to feel her place in society. People don’t buy our clothes because we advertise them well, or because we merchandise them well or because we get great publicity, although we do all of those things. They buy them because once they get into them, they can’t not buy them. We design them that well, and either you believe that and we make a deal because that’s what you believe in, or else we shouldn’t be talking. Because if you’re just looking for a name to buy, buy another name. We’re proud of our name, but we’re proud of it because it stands behind our designs.’ She looked directly at Bill. ‘Know what I mean?’ she asked.

  He looked straight at her and noddd, his face serious. The man hadn’t taken his eyes off her since she’d entered the room. Was he flirting, bullshitting her, or was he serious business? Did he understand?

  ‘Let me show you,’ she said, and nodded so that the first slide appeared.

  From then on it was easy. She showed them the line and explained the thought behind it. Then she sat down. Defina took over and covered the licensing operations, Casey went through their merchandising, and Jeffrey presented the numbers. That brought up a few tough questions from Herb and Basil about the phenomenal growth and the decreasing profitability, about servicing the debt the bridge-line borrowing had created, but Jeffrey took the rap on it and admitted the problems they had had with interest payments and cost control. ‘It was,’ he said smoothly, ‘one of the reasons we were so interested in NormCo.’ He went on to say that he felt the strength of NormCo’s buying power could help them reduce those costs.

  Herb then made his pitch. He showed them the ideas for licensing that his group had prepared, along with mockups of the KInc moderate sportswear line, children’s clothes, home products, and leather goods. Most of the prototype stuff was ghastly, emblazoned all over with Karen’s initials. Hadn’t anyone told them that logos were over? Karen thought. Who had designed this stuff and how could she break their pencil so they could never draw again? Herb, unaware, smiled proudly. ‘We can roll you out in all these areas quickly and smoothly,’ he promised. It made Karen feel like a piece of dough. ‘Of course, these are only prototypes. But we can get you into mass market faster than anyone else could. And we see other ways we could help,’ Herb told them. ‘Our knowledge of offshore production might be useful. We have the contacts, worldwide.’

  Before Karen had a chance to talk about her feelings regarding the exploitation of Third World workers, Bill turned to her, touching her arm through the silk knit of her sleeve. She could feel his warmth. ‘But why are you interested in NormCo, Karen?’ he asked.

  There was a silence at the table. And the silence stretched on and on.

  ‘I want to do more,’ she said, at last. ‘I want to be able to get my ideas out to more women. In a way, it’s just ego – but not because I want to see my name in the paper or because I like picking up awards from the design groups. In a way it’s bigger ego than that. I believe my stuff is really good. And that, given the opportunity, more women – not just the rich ones – will recognize that it is. I want them to be comfortable and look good and feel better because of me.’ She paused. ‘It isn’t easy being a woman today. You work three shifts: you have a job, you’ve got a home and kids, and you have to maintain yourself and your appearance to keep looking attractive. If you let down at any of the shifts, you feel like a failure. I want to help make that third one easier. And I want to be recognized for doing it. It’s my contribution.’ She paused again. ‘Look, I know it’s not curing cancer, but it’s what I can do. We have always believed that we could make it in a really difficult business with two simple watchwords: “underpromise” and “overdeliver.” It’s the opposite of what most guys in the fashion industry do, but so far it’s worked for us.’

  It was almost one o’clock and Bill Wolper stood up. ‘This has been a very interesting few hours. I want to thank everybody for their contributions and insights.’ Basil, Herb, and the other staff members stood up. So did Jeffrey and the rest of the KInc staff. But Karen sat there for another moment. Was that it? Was that the only reward she got for spilling her guts? She felt flat, as if she’d let everyone down. Bill turned to her, leaned over, and took her hand. ‘I have an engagement for lunch, I’m afraid. But I hope you’ll let me take you out another time.’

  ‘She looked up at him. ‘We’d love to,’ Jeffrey said, and Karen rose.

  Somehow, they all got down the hall and out of the building without saying a word or breaking what Casey would call their ‘grown-up style.’ But once they got out of the building and onto Park Avenue, Jeffrey let out a war whoop. ‘Yes!’ he yelled. ‘Yes! We got ’em. I know we got ’em.’

  ‘Did we?’ Karen asked.

  ‘Absolutely. They’re salivating. Couldn’t you tell? We got ’em!’

  ‘But do we want ’em?’ Casey asked. ‘Jesus! That Basil and Herb Show was too much. Don’t they sound like some new salad dressing?’

  ‘Just doing their job,’ Jeffrey said. ‘We handled them.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t want them to be doing a job on me,’ Casey sniped. ‘But Karen, you were terrific. Some delivery.’

  Karen blinked at the word. What was this, a conspiracy to make her sad? She was selling her company, her baby, and
being reminded she’d never have a real one.

  ‘Yeah, baby, you were wonderful,’ Defina agreed.

  Well, anyway, she’d read the whole thing wrong. She’d done good.

  ‘You were great!’ Jeffrey told her.

  ‘So were you. All of you were,’ Karen managed.

  ‘We are going to get one helluva offer from these guys,’ Robert-the-lawyer predicted. ‘I’d say more than we expected.’ Karen could almost see him working out his percentage.

  ‘I say twenty. Twenty million dollars,’ Jeffrey predicted.

  ‘It doesn’t mean we’ll accept their offer,’ Karen said. She thought about Bill Wolper and was surprised all over again. She thought she was going to have to sell herself and instead she felt as if she’d been seduced. She turned to Defina. ‘What do you think, Dee?’

  ‘Honey, I don’t know about the money, but I saw way too many double K’s to be comfortable. Call me oversensitive, but if there was just one triple KI would have run screaming from the room.’

  ‘They’re saving the KKK line for the south,’ Casey cracked. ‘There’s a guaranteed brand recognition factor there.’

  ‘KInc. Where race is always an issue, gender is interchangeable, and reality is an option,’ Jeffrey snapped, then shook his head. ‘You know what we’re called in the industry? “KInc-y.” I swear to God, if NormCo gets just one tiny whiff of that, you can forget this deal or any other.’

  ‘You mean I have to give up my satin pumps?’ Casey asked.

  Defina raised her eyebrows, ‘I think they like us because we’re a little left of center. Come on, this is the fashion business.’

  Karen tried to intervene. ‘Oh, come on, Jeffrey! You think Bill Wolper hasn’t heard rumors that Halston was a little light in his loafers? Or that he thinks Willie Smith’s early demise was from a heart attack? Jeffrey, we are not Midwest Corporate America. We’re not even Wall Street. We’re the garmentos – the crazy gays and ethnics that dress America. Surely even the great, white Bill Wolper has a clue.’

  Jeffrey turned to face her, his expression almost savage. He’d gone livid – his face was almost the gray of his hair. ‘Goddamnit!’ he cried. ‘Goddamnit!’ And Karen was shocked to see tears – real tears – on his long, dark lashes. ‘You’re the ones without a clue. Robert and I have spent months setting this up and making this happen. Do you know how we’ve been sweating out the debt load we’re carrying? This deal would put all of us – all of us – into the Bentley Turbo R Category. And instead of thanking me, you’re sniping at the opportunity of a lifetime as if they’re lying dozens deep on the ground. Do you know that right now if our creditors insisted on immediate payment, we’d be forced into bankruptcy? And if Munchin or Genesco or any of the manufacturers decide not to ship our product until their invoices are paid we won’t have any receivables next season? There won’t be a next season. I’m doing a high-wire act here and I don’t have a net. Jesus! You’re all a bunch of imbeciles! No! Worse than imbeciles. Children. You’re a fucking bunch of children.’ He turned his back and strode along down Fiftieth Street toward Lexington Avenue. The group stood there in silence for a moment. Then, predictably, Robert ran after Jeffrey.

  ‘Jeffrey, wait!’ he yelled.

  The rest of them just stood there at the corner, paralyzed. At last, Casey broke the silence. ‘What the fuck is a Bentley Turbo R?’ he asked. No one answered.

  At last Defina spoke. ‘I never knew Jeffrey thought children were even worse than imbeciles,’ she said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Out of the Closet

  Karen felt as if she’d never been so tired. But she’d promised Carl she’d come, and she’d hardly seen him except at the Oakley show, which wasn’t the same as spending time alone together. She was always so busy. She dozed in the limo to Brooklyn and now awoke as it stopped in front of Carl’s Curl Up and Dye on Montague Street. The salon was on the ground floor of a brownstone that Carl owned and lived in. It was the trendiest place for haircuts in Brooklyn Heights, but in the fashion scheme of things that was only about half a step higher than being the coolest person in Piscataway, New Jersey. The driver held the limo door open for Karen as she stepped onto the cracked sidewalk of the quaint street. Brooklyn Heights reminded her of Georgetown, which reminded her of … well, of all those trendy-but-still-just-so-slightly-suburban locales.

  ‘I’ll be a couple of hours. Maybe you’ll want to have dinner next door,’ she told the driver. ‘My treat.’ Capulet’s on Montague was a sort of yuppie fern bar restaurant. She’d had drinks with Carl in there many times, but the food was mediocre at best. Anyway, the driver shook his head.

  ‘I’ll be fine, Mrs Kahn,’ he told her, so she turned and walked toward the lighted window of Curl Up and Dye. What would it be like, she wondered, if your job were to sit in the deepening twilight and wait. She knew she wouldn’t be able to do it. But maybe it’s very restful, she told herself. Why are you always assuming that other people’s lives are unsatisfactory and other people’s style or job or deportment or accent needs to be improved? Why? Because I’m crazy, she answered herself, and she rattled the locked door of the salon.

  Carl heard her, stopped sweeping, and came to the door. He was wearing black jeans, black Doc Marten’s, and a white and black T-shirt that said, ‘I CROSS-DRESS MY KEN DOLL.’,’ There you are,’ he sang out. ‘Hey, you look a lot like the Oakley Lifetime Achievement Award winner.’

  ‘What a coincidence,’ she managed to smile.

  He put the broom aside, with a shake of his big head. ‘Life,’ he said. ‘One night I’m in the ballroom of the Waldorf and the next I’m sweeping up a stranger’s hair off the linoleum. Cinderella in reverse.’ He sighed. ‘If you want anything done right, you have to do it yourself.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ she agreed.

  Carl looked at her in the harsh light of the overhead fluorescents. ‘Talk about Curl Up and Dye,’ he said. ‘You look like what the pussy dragged in.’

  ‘Well, at least I’ve come to the right place.’

  ‘Not for pussy, honey,’ he smirked, flipped off the light, tapped in his code on the burglar alarm, and put his arm around her. ‘We’re outta here, Mary,’ he said. He reached down and picked up a flashlight. He flipped it on but nothing happened. He sighed deeply. ‘A flashlight is something I carry dead batteries in,’ he said. ‘Well, at least it’s heavy. There was a homeless guy crouched on my upstairs landing yesterday. Scared the shit out of me. He was harmless, but you never know.’ He hefted the flashlight and took her through the side door and into the little hallway that led upstairs. He groaned as he began pulling his overweight body up each step. ‘Ooh, Mary! My dogs are barking. This is an overrated job for an overweight guy over forty. It sure takes it outta you.’

  They came to the landing and he pulled out a key to get them inside his apartment. Like any time she was stressed out, Karen was starving. She was grateful to smell something already cooking. In the bay window a small round table and two comfortable chairs were set, the candles already lit.

  Carl’s apartment was an almost perfect approximation of a tatty English country house, from the faded cabbage rose chintz slipcovers to the sisal that covered the floors. Old landscapes and botanical prints and heavily varnished dog paintings hung on the walls while the Empire striped wallpaper had faded around them. Everything had a used but homey patina. In the twenty-eight years she had known him, Carl never bought anything new. It wasn’t out of cheapness: it was his form of creativity. He was always finding a vase that could be rewired into a lamp, which then required a lampshade, that then had to be lined with a particular pink silk, not to mention being fringed with the fringe that came off a bedspread he had bought secondhand in some nameless thrift shop. He had created a fussy, charming little nest and he had shared it with Thomas, until Thomas died two years ago. Now, looking around, Karen noticed for the first time that somehow the place seemed faded in a tired, not-so-charming way. ‘Sit, sit,’ Carl told her and, with r
elief, she sank into one of the armchairs pulled up to the table. There was a tree-level view of Montague Street, the streetlights just turned on, shedding pools of yellow light in the deepening twilight.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ he asked. ‘Win any other lifetime awards this week?’

  ‘No. I just had to do the Elle Halle interview and meet Bill Wolper.’

  ‘Well, ex-cuuuuse me. Did you have dinner with the Queen as well?’

  ‘No. I’m doing that tonight.’

  ‘Oooh, Mary. She’s so nasty! Some day I’m going to regret sitting next to you in Home Ec class.’ Carl was the only boy in Rockville Center High who refused to take shop.

  ‘We met in Drama Club,’ Karen corrected. She herself had never taken Home Ec. This was a fight they’d been having for almost two decades.

  ‘Wasn’t Rockville Center High’s Drama Club a kind of head-start program for homos?’ Carl asked.

  ‘If it was, what was I doing there?’ Karen asked.

  ‘Oh, you know my theory: you’re a gay man trapped in a woman’s body. That’s why you’re such a great designer.’

  Despite their joking, Carl heard the deadness in her tone of voice. He looked at her more closely. ‘So, how bad is it?’ he wanted to know. That was the nice thing about Carl: he always knew her temperature. It was so relaxing, not having to explain or pretend.

  ‘Not so great. There’s a cash flow problem, and maybe an offer to buy us out, and Jeffrey’s all bent out of shape and my mother is crazy. And I’m so tired. I feel like everything’s going too fast and going wrong, even when it’s going right. What would you call that?’