Fashionably Late

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Why, she wondered, have I been blocked this way? She had to figure it out, because it was the reason that she was being punished now. Her life had completely fallen apart and she had to come to understand why she had been blinded to the betrayal at the center. She knew that if she couldn’t make sense out of this, she could never trust her own perceptions again.

  There was a tiny knock at the door. It was Janet, but this time she ignored Karen’s call to go away. She put her head into the office. Her face was white. ‘Karen, ya sistah is heah an’ ya gotta see huh.’

  ‘Forget about it,’ Karen said.

  ‘Karen, ya gotta or ya gotta make huh go. It’s makin’ us sick.’ Karen shuddered. What was making them sick? Why should Karen’s own grief affect Janet and the staff so deeply? They didn’t know. Or did they? Oh God, she hadn’t considered that. Karen’s face burned with humiliation. Still, Karen wouldn’t see Lisa. Not now; maybe not ever.

  But then the door swung open behind Janet. The secretary fell back, as if she had been struck, while Lisa strode past her. For a moment, Karen didn’t understand. Had Lisa actually hit the girl? But then she herself was hit by the odor.

  Odor would hardly be the word for it, though. It traveled across the room like a wall. It was a horrible smell, worse than a stink. It was a stench so bad that Karen was ready to gag if it didn’t go away. Was it Lisa who smelled like that? Karen moved to the window beside her and threw it open. There was no question of being polite. This was survival.

  ‘What the hell is it?’ Lisa asked. Her hair was wild, uncombed, and she was wearing a pair of Levi’s, red high heels, and an old shirt that looked as if it might be Leonard’s. Karen had never seen her sister look so awful, but the look was nothing compared to the smell.

  ‘What the hell is it?’ Lisa repeated. ‘How did you do this to me?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘What am I talking about? WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT? Like you can’t smell this. Like the whole city of New York can’t smell this! I know you and that black witch did this to me. She never liked me. Dr Schneider can’t figure it out. He actually gagged when I got into the stirrups. How did you do this?’

  ‘Lisa, I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Right. My vagina smells like I’ve got a dead wolverine in it, and nobody did anything. I know it’s Defina.’

  ‘Maybe you caught something from Jeffrey,’ Karen suggested. ‘Maybe it’s a yeast infection or something.’

  ‘A yeast infection!’ Lisa shrieked. ‘An ocean of Monostat wouldn’t do dick about this! If this is something Jeffrey’s got, his prick would’ve fallen off before now.’ Lisa began to sob, striding back and forth across the office. Karen kept the table between them and kept breathing through her mouth, staying close to the window. It was the most unbelievable stench.

  ‘I came in by train,’ Lisa said, sobbing, ‘I stepped into the car and before we got to Jamaica it had emptied out. I was alone in an entire Long Island Railroad car, and during rush hour! When I got into Penn Station, I walked by the line of winos, the ones who live in the underpass. You know how bad they smell. Well, they all turned and stared at me. My house stinks. All my clothes are ruined. You can’t go near my Mercedes without gagging. Jesus Christ, Karen, enough is enough! I never wanted Jeffrey. I just slept with him because I liked the attention. Because I wanted what you have. But you can have him. He’s just a no-talent brat. Just get rid of this stink.’

  Karen thought for a moment. Then she turned to the intercom and buzzed it. ‘Janet,’ she asked, ‘has Defina come in yet?’ It was only twenty to ten, and Defina was rarely in before ten-thirty. But before Janet buzzed back, Defina walked in to Karen’s office.

  ‘Hoo-eeuw! I smell a rat.’ Defina looked across the room at Lisa. ‘Is that you, girl?’

  Lisa wiped her eyes and glared at Defina. ‘It isn’t funny.’

  Defina looked over at Karen. ‘Boss, you should talk to your sister about her personal hygiene.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Lisa cried. ‘I know you did this. You and that voodoo. I already told Karen that I’ll do anything you want. Just make this smell stop.’

  Defina raised her eyebrows, tilted her head, and looked at Lisa. ‘You put dirt in your thang, don’t be surprised when it smells,’ Defina told her. ‘Don’t be blaming me.’

  Karen looked over at her friend. ‘Dee, did you do this?’

  Dee opened her eyes wide. ‘Girlfriend, I ain’t got the power. People ought to take responsibility for what they do. I didn’t do anything.’

  Lisa began to wail, and sank down onto the carpet, covering her face with her hands. ‘Help me!’ she cried. ‘It’s not fair. You have to help me.’

  Dee turned on her like a big cat protecting its cubs. ‘Fair?’ she asked. ‘I don’t think you have any right to talk about fair. You got a big sister who’s nice to you, a husband who takes care of you, and two healthy children. That’s a lot more than most women get. So, when you ignore your children, cheat on your husband, and do dirt to your sister, be sure that then you don’t talk about fair. Karen never done nothing but good by you. But her friendship wasn’t enough, her gifts weren’t enough, the money wasn’t enough. You still had to go on being jealous and resentful. That’s what you stink from.’

  ‘Don’t you dare judge me,’ Lisa snapped. ‘My sister likes you more than she likes me. Know how that makes me feel?’ Then Lisa turned to Karen. ‘And you don’t have to judge me either. You’ve always gotten what you needed in bed at home. You don’t know what it’s felt like for me.’

  Defina walked over to Lisa and took her arm. ‘Get up off that carpet or we’ll never get the smell out. I suggest you go home and make up a douche out of warm water, vinegar, and a few tears. Don’t forget the tears. Real important. I bet that will take care of the stink,’ she said.

  Lisa stood up, looked from one to the other with a wild expression, and then, without another word, dashed out of the office.

  Karen looked across her table at Dee. ‘What did you do?’ she asked.

  ‘I didn’t do anything. She’s the one who done something.’

  ‘Come on, Dee. Was that something you cooked up with Madame Renault?’

  Defina shrugged. ‘You yourself told me that mumbo-jumbo doesn’t work,’ Dee said. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Karen.’

  ‘Dee, I know you did something. I know you did it out of friendship, but I can take care of myself. I’m going to have to take care of myself.’

  Defina walked around the desk and put her arm around Karen. ‘You got a lot on your plate right now,’ Defina said. ‘Carl and I both thought you could use a helping hand.’ Then she put her innocent face on again. ‘But I didn’t do anything to Lisa.’

  ‘Yeah. Sure.’ Karen looked at her friend. ‘Will it go away now?’ she asked.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Defina told her. ‘As long as she remembers the tears.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Case Clothed

  Karen sat in one of the folding chairs in the showroom, waiting while the KInc staff assembled. The chairs were arranged in messy rows of ragged semicircles. Today’s pitch had no glossy portfolios, no colored slides. It was a very different presentation than the one she had made only a few weeks ago. She tried to keep calm, but she knew that announcing loss didn’t make you a popular kid. Was it ancient Greece where the tradition of killing the messenger had begun?

  Karen knew that it was going to be rough. Lots of these people didn’t have much between them and disaster and, since the last meeting, some of the more impractical ones may have already begun spending the NormCo money, money they now would never receive. Casey had told her that one of the workroom girls had started driving to the office in a new Cadillac, parking it out on the street, despite the insanity of the hand trucks and delivery vans, all just so the other women could see it. Karen’s announcement was going to be a blow, and she didn’t know how many members of the staff would stick with her.

  And why should they,
she asked herself. Hadn’t she, as their chief, as their mother, been negligent? She could see now that despite her promises to them, once NormCo came in, heads would have rolled. Jobs would have been lost so that some other slave girl in the Marianas – one who wasn’t dead yet – would be trapped in a filthy factory and in an even worse dormitory. She remembered again the poem that Arnold had on his office wall: I have shut my little sister in from life and light/(For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair). Had she shut these women in; too? For a sheath, for a scarf, for a blazer cut just right? For a moment she felt drowned in shame.

  Karen had always prided herself on the fact that, even if she wasn’t saving the world, even if she was only indulging herself and her clientele, she had at least made jobs for several hundred people; that she helped them to pay their rent and buy their babies shoes. This was the first time she was ever going to take something she had promised away from them. But maybe she had taken something from them long ago. Something more important even than this money. Take, for example, Mrs Cruz, who had given years to the little stitches that made up all those hundreds of dozens, thousands of dozens, of outfits that had gone into Karen’s line. I have shut my little sister in from life and light/(For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair). Just now, Karen couldn’t see the point of it. Not at all.

  People were talking quietly amongst themselves. Karen sat at the front and felt separated, as lonely as she ever had in her life. Jeffrey showed the good grace of not attending. Staff must have noticed but no one had said anything to her. Who, now, was she connected to in a way more visceral than habit or duty or tradition? Certainly, she wasn’t connected now to Jeffrey. And her sister! Well, that was over. Her mother was useless to her, and Arnold, though a kind man, had always been distant. Now he was sick. Who was there that she was a part of, or that was a part of her? Tears of self-pity rose like a tide, but Karen bent her head for a moment and blinked them away. There was no time to feel sorry for herself. Right now she had to feel sorry for the people she was about to drop her little bomb on.

  She looked to the back of the room. Defina stood, leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest. Their eyes locked and Defina nodded her head. It was time to start.

  ‘You all know that I have an announcement to make,’ Karen began. She was surprised to hear that her voice wavered. She cleared her throat. ‘When we met and went over the NormCo deal,’ she said, ‘I had every intention of moving ahead with it.’ There was a murmur, but she continued. ‘I would like to be able to say that we are going to move ahead. But we’re not.’ The murmur grew to a buzz and Karen didn’t push against it. She gave them a moment and then, raising her voice, she continued. ‘Quite a lot of things have been brought to my attention that make it impossible to accept the NormCo offer. This was a decision I had to make for all of us. But I felt that I did not have a choice. In the final analysis, the deal that NormCo offered me was one that I think would hurt us all in the long run. It seems clear to me now, despite their promises, that it would have meant moving jobs out of here and eventually shutting down a large portion of this operation.’ The murmur started up again, but Karen continued. ‘Of course, this means that the money that we had all expected won’t be forthcoming and that, I know, is a disappointment to everyone.’ She bit her lip and paused, scanning her audience. Mercedes Bernard stood up abruptly, and though she was as controlled as ever, Karen could see that she was furious. Mercedes turned and walked out of the room. Many eyes followed her.

  Karen looked through the audience. Only Casey was smiling. Well, he’d always felt threatened by the deal. The rest of the staff looked either angry, stunned, or confused. Karen caught the eye of Mrs Cruz. Her brown, wide, wrinkled face showed no expression, but she nodded to Karen. It was a gesture of such generosity that Karen almost lost it, and then felt such a swell of gratitude that she could hardly stand.

  ‘That’s not all the bad news,’ she said. ‘We are also going to have to undergo a serious reorganization. We have to find a way to finance and service the debt we incurred when we started up the bridge line. Now that you’re stockholders you should understand that. I can’t tell you what the reorganization is going to entail, because I honestly don’t know. But I promise you that as soon as we figure out how we are going to proceed, I’ll share the plan with you.’ There was no point in telling them that without Jeffrey they had no fiscal management and that she herself didn’t have a clue as to how they were going to finance themselves or anything else. She would just have to do the best she could. So would they.

  ‘If any of you feel that you no longer want to be associated with the firm, I will understand, although I will be extremely disappointed. I don’t think I have any more to tell you or any answers to your questions right now. But I will arrange for a time to meet separately with anyone who wants to. In the meantime, Defina Pompey is available to answer questions.’ Yeah, like people weren’t afraid to talk to her! Karen took a death breath. ‘Thank you for coming, and just let me say one more time how sorry I am if I have disappointed you.’ Then she couldn’t help it. Her eyes filmed over with tears and she had to walk as quickly as she could out of the room, down the hall, and into her office.

  Karen had barely had time to mop her eyes before the door was thrown open by Mercedes. Karen spun around from the window. Mercedes, always pale and neat, was absolutely livid. Her black hair stood out around her head as if she had either run her hands through it like a mad woman or it had been electrified. For a moment Karen had time to think that the usually stylish Mercedes looked like a cross between Morticia Addams and the Bride of Frankenstein. They were appropriate analogies, because Mercedes quickly started a horror show.

  ‘What the fuck have you done?’ she asked, her voice almost as deep as Linda Blair’s dubbed one in The Exorcist.

  ‘I did what I had to do, Mercedes.’

  ‘You did what you had to do? Well, I did what I had to do and in the last eighteen months I made you. I’ve gotten you over a dozen magazine covers this year alone. There was that five-pager in Vanity Fair. There was the personal profile in Mirabella. Not to mention all the coverage of the line. I booked you with some new angle on every goddamned TV show that mattered. I got Paris to happen. I made you a commodity. I cashed in every chip. And now you are telling me that I can’t cash out?’

  ‘Mercedes, there were no guarantees.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be some kind of comfort? I am fifty-eight years old. Do you know how long it took me to work my way up from the back rows to a front seat at the shows? Thirty years! I covered the industry, I knew everyone, and I sold you the benefit of that. Now what? I’m not the kind of woman who can live comfortably on a Social Security check and a partial pension from the magazines. They never paid shit! I made you, Karen, and you owe me.’

  Despite her exhaustion, despite her sadness, Karen felt herself getting angry. Why was it that everybody thought her success was due to them? Jeffrey had made her, Liz Ruben had made her, Bill Wolper would make her (in both senses of the word), and now it was Mercedes. Karen took a deep breath, ready to say she didn’t know what, when Casey stepped into the room.

  ‘Fuck you, Mercedes,’ he said. ‘What the fuck do you know? You had the easy job. You got Karen coverage just at the time when everyone was panting for it. I’ve been here from the beginning, when she and I had to push a cart in the snow over to Bloomingdale’s to show them the first line. We showed it in the freight elevator and we sold the whole thing to Marvin Traub. So fuck you. Karen would have got where she is with help from any flack. Don’t overdramatize.’

  Mercedes narrowed her elegant, long eyes. ‘Who asked you, you little faggot?’

  ‘I think that will be about enough, Mercedes. Unless you want to call me a nigger bitch before you get your skinny ass out of here,’ Defina said, joining the group and closing the door on Janet and the cluster of secretaries who stood, gaping, outside.

  Mercedes looked over at Karen. S
he took a deep breath as if she were ready to try again. ‘You know that what I say is true …’ she began.

  But Karen was sick of it. She’d had enough. ‘Mercedes, it’s time to go. Casey, would you help Mercedes pack up her desk?’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Casey smiled. He escorted her out.

  Karen, shaken, looked over at Defina. ‘She looked at me as if she wanted me to die,’ Karen said. ‘God, what an experience.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Defina nodded. ‘Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.’

  Karen had worked so hard for so long, but she wasn’t sure what she had worked for. Certainly not for this. The darkness outside seemed ominous, threatening. She felt that there, on the ninth floor, she was floating in space, connected to no one. If she wasn’t connected anymore to Jeffrey, she was truly alone.

  Karen had spent all the afternoon and evening in Jeffrey’s office, going over the financials with Casey and Lenny. It had been exhausting, depressing, and confusing. Had she been guilty of too much dependency on Jeffrey? Had she made that typical woman’s mistake of letting her husband do the ‘man’s work’? But in the world of fashion there were very few businesses that didn’t operate the way the two of them had. Yves Saint Laurent had Pierre Bergé; Valentino had Giancarlo Giammetti (and those two couplings had been marriages); Calvin Klein had Barry Schwartz; Christian Lacroix had Bernard Arnault. Even that master of merchandising, Ralph Lauren, had Peter Strom. And all of these guys were men, operating in a tough man’s world. Despite that, if the designers hadn’t had the help, the support, and dedication of their brilliant partner businessmen, they would have closed their doors after a season or two. The rag trade demanded too much from a designer; there wasn’t time to both create and manage a business. Surely she had been no worse than other overworked creators. But now, figuring out where KInc stood and coming up with a solution that Jeffrey had not been able to find, was an incredible extra burden, and one she was afraid she couldn’t carry.