by Di Morrissey
Gerry took a sip of his wine. ‘Where are you going, you mean. That’s the big question you have to answer. And was your life ever stable and predictable?’ He paused, thinking how she used to enjoy the upheaval of life on a top magazine. ‘You know, in light of your offer to go to Australia, I’ve been thinking about my life too. I’m about to turn forty. I hadn’t thought anything of it till a day or so ago when my mother rang and wondered when I was going to have a proper life. Marriage, kids, a job in the country where I could spend time on my art. The things I always talked to her about wanting.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I’m a big deal stockbroker, I make a lot of money, yet I suddenly feel life has passed me by.’ He finished the glass of wine. ‘She also wanted to know what we were doing to celebrate.’
Larissa had forgotten his birthday. At least it was two weeks away. ‘What would you like to do?’
‘Are you going to be here? Or in Australia? Bit hard to make plans.’
‘Gerry, I just don’t know. Ali is nagging now. Why don’t you toss in your job and come out to Australia? Take a year off.’
‘I can’t do that, Larissa. I’m responsible for a couple of very big clients. Look, we’ve been over this. Would twelve months apart be impossible? We could fly to see each other a couple of times in the year.’
‘Gerry, it’s not the same. Oh God, why is life so unfair!’
Gerry stood, took their glasses and went back into the kitchen to refill them. ‘After my mother’s phone call, I did think of another option.’
Larissa rubbed her eyes. They’d had this conversation several times since Nina had offered her the job as Ali’s deputy in Australia. She loved him, they’d been living together for seven years. He had a demanding job at the stock exchange, but he was able to unwind in the section of the apartment he had turned into a studio. Here he splashed paint on large canvases and occasionally exhibited and sold a few of them. She knew she was lucky to come home to a loving companion but, like tonight, he was often resentful of her dedication to her job.
Gerard sat on the arm of her chair, handing her the wineglass. ‘I did think I’d like to mark my fortieth in a special way. In fact I have given it a little thought.’ He gave a sheepish grin. ‘I was thinking we should go to Greece, hang out, drink ouzo, eat octopus or whatever. Make love in the afternoon, indulge myself into believing I’m still virile and sexy.’
‘You are.’
‘Yeah. How often do we make mad love in the day in funny positions, spread whipped cream and crushed strawberries on the belly and nether regions, eh?’
Larissa’s mouth twitched. She was always so tired these days, sleep had become an obsession. ‘It’s been a while, I guess.’
‘Yeah. Thanks to Blaze. So, let’s go to Greece. Make it a honeymoon, eh?’
‘Oh, Gerry, please. Let’s not go through this again.’ Larissa stood up. ‘Why am I the one who has to choose? Why don’t you toss in your job for a year? You say you hate it, that what you really want to do is paint. Well, prove it! Come out with me and paint for a year. See if you can make it.’
‘While you’re working till ten at night, totally wrapped up in the job. And I’m in a strange city. Sounds wonderful,’ he said bitterly.
‘Well, if I married you and stayed here, I’d end up being resentful, wondering if it was the right choice. It’s hard enough to be in a position choosing between staying here with you, or loping off to the other side of the world to be with Ali, of all people.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought it too hard a choice,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘You know what I mean. I’ve worked so hard to reach where I am. This would give me a big plus on the résumé and I’m one step away from an editorship. You think you’re feeling old. I’m feeling the heat on my heels from girls ten years my junior.’
Gerard snorted. ‘Hell’s bells, if you’re being stood over and feel like you’re being pushed aside at thirty-five, you’re in the wrong job, babe. COME TO GREECE!’ he shouted at her as Larissa headed for the bedroom – a suspended loft with huge windows that also overlooked the river.
‘YOU COME TO AUSTRALIA!’ she shouted back.
‘Go then. I can tell you’re going to hold it against me if you don’t. You’ll blame me for holding back your career. Anyway, it wouldn’t work.’
‘What wouldn’t?’
‘A holiday in Greece. We’d have a wonderful time and that would make it so much harder to say goodbye.’
Larissa peered over the balcony from the loft to see Gerard standing forlornly in the sitting room. ‘Goodbye? So I’m going, am I?’ she asked quietly.
‘I know you are, even if you haven’t realised it yet.’ He turned to the kitchen. ‘Have a shower. Dinner’s almost ready.’
Larissa let the hot spikes of water stab into her skin. She was tired and confused. She felt an irrational annoyance at Gerry. She wanted him to make the decision. Marriage just seemed a way of tying her down. Only those in the magazine business really understood the pressures, the competitiveness, the drive to be innovative, the juggling of personalities and egos, the circulation and advertising figures that ruled their existence, the constant threats of budget restraints or financial crises. With several magazines and two newspapers in the Triton American stable, one of them was always haemorrhaging cash. Nina was brilliant at running the ship, protective of her staff and the whole ethos of Blaze and what it represented, yet she could be firm and initiate effective cost-cutting when necessary. The employees, unless they were not performing, were the last to be slashed.
With Ali at the helm of Blaze Australia . . . could she work with her? There was something about Ali that Larissa could never trust, and if she was honest, couldn’t like. Was it the competitive threat? While Larissa accepted it was every woman for herself striving for the top positions, was it jealousy that Ali may succeed where Larissa may not? Ali was superficially pleasant and efficient, and occasionally very clever, but it was her ruthless streak and frightening ambition that disturbed Larissa. And what about Gerard? Would he still be waiting for her, could their relationship survive such distance?
Larissa turned off the shower knowing the real question was how much did she value Gerard? It rattled Larissa when she realised she was leaving Gerard – even temporarily – to throw her lot in with Ali. No matter how reassuring Nina had been, Ali holding power over her gave Larissa the jitters.
They got through dinner sharing stories of the day, and no more mention was made of Larissa taking up the job in Sydney. But later, wrapped in Gerard’s arms, with his familiar smell of aftershave and linseed oil where he’d run his paint-streaked hands through his hair, she wondered how could she be apart from him.
At breakfast, Gerard was affectionate and attentive. The memory of their lovemaking glowed in his smile. They sat across from each other at the small table. Gerard had his tie around his neck, his blue shirt unbuttoned as he spread jelly on his croissant. As he lifted it to his mouth, a speck of jelly dropped onto his shirt.
Larissa leaned over and dabbed at it with her napkin.
‘How are you going to look after yourself while I’m gone?’ she said softly.
Pain clouded his eyes for a moment, then a resigned expression settled on his face.
‘I’ll manage,’ he whispered.
TAKE FIVE . . .
Larissa and Gerard skirted around any confrontation. Oblique references or awkward silences became the pattern as Larissa sorted and packed, cancelled regular hair, manicure and gym appointments. Gerard left the room when she talked to friends on the phone about her new assignment. At one point, Larissa wished he’d just blow up and yell at her not to go. The less they said about the forthcoming separation the more strained the silences became and the more Gerard retreated into his own world. He spent hours at his easel, late into the night, slipping into bed in the dark so as to not wake Larissa.
But Larissa was aware of him settling on the far side of the bed. It had always been her habit t
o reach out and curl herself around him – now she hugged her side of the bed, each aching to reach across the chasm between them.
Slowly her anxiety turned to guilt and then to resentment.
Gerard was experiencing the same feelings, yet neither showed these to the other. Instead a false brightness, a cheerful industriousness covered the hollow words, the pang in their hearts that neither knew how to overcome. Even Gerard’s birthday, a formal cocktail party Larissa had organised at Alain Ducasse on Central Park South, with old college friends Gerard had not seen for years, had done little to relax them. The impasse, forced by their imminent separation, and each one’s defiant refusal to give in to the other, was relieved only after Gerard had pecked Larissa formally on the cheek and waved her through the gate at JFK.
Nina had agreed that after six months Larissa could review her situation. This irritated Ali, and she’d pointed out the inconvenience of making her deputy established and known, a task made harder because she hadn’t worked in Australia before. Nina had appealed to Ali to be understanding, explaining the sensitivities involved in Larissa’s long-term relationship, reminding her an editor had to be aware of the senior staff’s personal lives as well as their professional capabilities. Neither raised the subject, but the spectre of Lorraine hovered in their minds.
Ali surprised Nina by changing her mind and agreeing to Larissa’s review of her position after six months. It occurred to Ali that by then she would want a deputy who answered to her and not to Nina. A deputy who would do her bidding and add to her power base. For Ali had no doubts about assuming as much power as she could while being editor of Blaze Australia. It wasn’t just for the power, the money or the position. In Ali’s view, Australia owed her. And she intended to take as much as she could.
*
Gerard wasn’t happy about Larissa’s move, but he knew better than to try to stop her. They had agreed at the start of their partnership and living together that their careers had equal merit. When one was under particular pressure, the other tried to be the supportive one on the domestic and emotional front. The arrangement had worked fairly well because Gerry held his peace. He never passed on his mother’s barbed questions about when they were going to settle down and marry, have children and Larissa give up work? It occasionally irked him that he was the one to hold his tongue, but he had come to realise how much Blaze meant to Larissa. His job was a means of making money. His painting was his passion. It seemed to him that for Larissa the daily machinations at Blaze consumed her energy, her interest and her devotion. Maybe this time apart, while she was in Australia, would put their relationship in its true perspective.
He never spoke these thoughts, but a question about what books and CDs she planned to take with her brought anguished cries from Larissa.
‘I’m not moving there, Gerry. I can live without those trappings for a while. They’ll make me homesick. I can’t play our favourite music when I’m on the other side of the world from you. I’ll cry. I’m going to live a minimalist lifestyle. Besides, I can buy new albums there. I like quite a few of those Aussie music groups.’
Ali had planned her foray into the Australian media scene carefully. She stayed at the hotel for the first few weeks while she looked for an apartment, settling on ‘The Toaster’, the building that had caused so much controversy a few years earlier for being a blot on Benne-long Point, the most sacred site of Sydney Harbour, next door to the famed Opera House. She’d hired an interior designer who chose a stark black and white theme with futuristic metallic furniture and fittings. Wide windows without drapes had transitional glass to dim subtly or clear with a faint tint, according to the strength of the sunshine so the main room was always bathed in a fluid, balanced light. Abstract paintings and a large sandblasted sculpture were by avant-garde Australian artists. Several dramatic dracaena trees fanned spiky fronds towards the vaulted ceiling. The effect was contemporary and stylised, if sterile. Ali had no personal photographs, favourite pictures, knick-knacks or anything that gave a clue to the person who inhabited this space.
She combed the city and its eastern suburbs’ neighbours of Double Bay, Woollahra and Paddington, all the while looking at shops and fashions. She watched the men and women in the streets and restaurants, trying to grab a handle on the style of her Australian contemporaries. On weekends, she felt they revealed their true taste – casual, sporty, yet a more healthy and softer style than New Yorkers. Maybe the climate was more like California, but here there was a far more natural look. The girls didn’t have a weekly manicure and pedicure, they did their own hair and appeared to relish individuality. Fashion must-have fads were identifiable in certain looks or accessories, but Ali came to the conclusion these women were not slaves to fashion labels. And from what she’d read of the salary scales here, few could afford to wear expensive brands.
However, she soon discovered the ‘ladies who lunch’ groups. Successful career women or wives with rich husbands held court at their favourite restaurants in outfits Ali could put a name and a price tag to with ease. While fashion was only a portion of Blaze’s content, Ali had been schooled by Nina who’d said readers – men as well as women – were always interested in fabulous-looking fashion with a story, not just way-out photos of clothes no one you knew would wear.
The first issue of Blaze Australia had been put to bed under tight wraps so that no clue to its cover or contents would leak. It would hit the streets in two weeks with the media launch a few days before.
Nina hadn’t moved anything personal into her new Australian office other than her favourite Aboriginal painting she’d brought from New York, her cedar chair and several framed photographs of Clara’s millinery creations as seen in Vogue in the late fifties and early sixties. She’d wait till she was back in harness, after her trip to Europe, to settle into her new office. That was the plan. Nina was unsure about her true future. She’d wait and see what happened. For the first time in her life, she had no definite goal – just an unsettled feeling she couldn’t pin down.
Ali would take over a large area where a partition had been ripped out to make an editor’s suite, which included her private rooms, then another area with a custom-made round table where the staff could attend editorial meetings in comfort. The office belonging to former editor Dorothy Power had been refurbished for Larissa.
Nina dropped an arm lightly across the newly arrived deputy editor’s shoulders. ‘Welcome, and how do you find Australia so far?’
Larissa laughed, glancing at her watch. ‘I’ve heard that’s the classic question. Judging from the past few hours – not bad.’
‘Seriously, Larissa . . . I do hope you enjoy it here. I know you’ll give creative leadership to the staff. You understand how Ali can be . . . well, prickly. Clever, but she doesn’t have your people skills.’ Nina glanced at her, trying to read behind Larissa’s cheerful smile. ‘How did your nice guy take this, er, break?’
‘It wasn’t easy. Why is it when anything positive comes along it’s the female who has to make the hard choice?’ Larissa looked out the window at the harbour and said softly, ‘At least he was happy with his fortieth birthday celebrations. Thank you so much, Nina, for understanding how important it was for me to organise that evening for him, even though it meant me not being here to help with the first edition of Blaze.’
Nina squeezed Larissa’s hand. ‘As important as Blaze is to me, your happiness, and therefore Gerard’s, is important to me too.’
Larissa sighed. ‘He’d love this. It would be such an inspiration. All his life he’s wanted to paint. Here he’d have the chance to prove it to himself. Maybe he didn’t have the guts. All that male ego about being a house husband, me supporting him, not knowing anyone . . . it was too hard. He let me go.’
‘Could he have stopped you?’ asked Nina quietly. And when Larissa didn’t answer, she continued, ‘It’s always the women who take matters into their hands. But, Larissa, I promise this will be rewarding for you. The launch of a new magazine �
�� one that is successful – will jump you up the ladder very quickly. This is an enormous responsibility and the fact I will be away for a couple of months means I can relax knowing you’re here.’ Nina gave her a pointed look and, without saying any more, both women understood the subliminal message – keep an eye on Ali. Nina squeezed Larissa’s shoulders then broke away. ‘You have a lot of ability, and different skills from Ali’s, which is why I wanted you both with me to set Blaze on the right road. You have the talent to go where you want, it’s up to you to make your own choices in life. And whatever you choose, I’ll support you and wish you well.’
Larissa turned her back on the magnificent Darling Harbour view and opened her arms to embrace the office space. ‘I’ve made my choice. I’m here, aren’t I? Where do I start?’
Nina gave a c’est la vie shrug and became businesslike. ‘I decided to sit in for you for the first issue as Ali’s deputy and I’ve been very impressed with her ideas and her achievements, as I knew I would be. I felt it best that I let her be on the front foot, seen to be making the decisions. I stepped in once or twice, quietly and privately, but she is certainly a quick learner. Now it’s up to you to work with Ali. I’m leaving in two days. I know I’m handing you a double-edged sword. Guard my dreams and keep your cutlass sheathed.’ Nina gave a slight humorous bow. ‘Larissa, I charge you with protecting my creation, keeping an eye on Blaze, on Miche when she arrives and, most of all . . . love what you’re doing.’
Larissa returned Nina’s embrace. ‘Nina, it’s not going to be easy without you here, but I want you to enjoy this break. Don’t worry, I’ll be your backstop.’
Ali had quickly unearthed the hottest new hair and beauty salon in Sydney – the Yellow Brick Road. It still had the industrial high-tech trimmings, but the decor was technicolour Wizard of Oz – flamingo pink, tangerine and lime. It was run by Brian Standish from Revesby, except that he now called himself Dane. Sometimes he was known to fling on a large black satin cape studded with stars, ‘for wizardly inspiration’. Dane ruled his salon with imperial autocracy. He was over six feet, with a shaved shining head and a wispy four-inch goatee on the tip of his chin. His two stylists were also bald, though Miles sported a scalp tattoo while Rex wore earrings. Dane was the cutter, Miles the colour expert, Rex did make-up and manicures. Dane required them to work their lean muscular bodies at the gym with him before dawn and by 7 a.m. the coffee was brewing and they opened the doors to their elite clientele – businessmen and women like Ali.
