This couple, who defended the fortress of their marriage with the rigorous loyalty of blood brothers, was spared the ambiguous changeable moods of lovers, escaped the predictable limits imposed by monogamy and enjoyed all of the privileges granted to matrimony.
Vanessa Valarian was a subtle and devoted practitioner of the art of doing favors. She had long nourished a private theory that a favor done for the right person at the right time, done without planned motive or direct expectation of reciprocity, would eventually prove to be a useful, even an essential piece of the superb mosaic of her life … caviar flung on the waters. The right time was, in her experience, when the person for whom she did the favor had no reason to expect anything of her, when the favor seemed to come straight from good-hearted open-handedness and appreciation of that person’s rare qualities. She almost never did favors for anyone who came to her for one; her favors had to appear as unhoped-for and unforgettable. The person for whom she did a favor needed no recommendation aside from Vanessa’s keen intuition that told her who was coming up and who was going down, who would make it, who had potential that hadn’t been detected, and who wasn’t worth bothering with. Like an expert surfer, she was able to detect the big waves before they gathered momentum, able to hop on board before the other women in her world had spotted the swelling and the power.
When Topsy Short had mentioned that Daisy Valensky was sketching Cindy as a sort of trial before Topsy made up her mind about commissioning an oil of all three girls on their ponies, Vanessa felt the tingle of opportunity. She had observed Daisy the evening before at dinner. She had known instantly, as no one else did, that the green Schiaparelli suit was almost forty years old and that the emeralds were false and that the girl was, in some way or another, vulnerable. How she could possibly be vulnerable in light of her title, her share of her father’s presumably fabulous fortune and her beauty was inexplicable, but Vanessa knew.
“Why don’t we look at her sketches before she goes back to New York,” she suggested.
“Oh, I don’t think she’d like it,” Topsy answered. “She told me when I asked her to come that they’d just be rough studies, like shorthand notes. She’ll send me the finished sketch in a few weeks.”
“What does it matter what she likes, young Topsy? Let’s have a peek—it might be amusing.”
Reluctantly Daisy allowed the two women to see her sketch pad. There were dozens of rapid, bold line drawings but none of them could convey to a nonprofessional what the finished sketch would be like.
Topsy was silent, her disappointment visible on her face, but Vanessa instantly grasped the extent of Daisy’s talent
“You’re good—but of course you know that,” she said to Daisy. “Topsy, you’d be making the mistake of the year if you don’t have Princess Daisy paint all three of your girls. In a few years you’ll have to pay twice the price for anything she does—if she even has the time for you.”
“Well … I’m just not sure—what if Ham doesn’t like it?” Topsy looked at Vanessa adoringly. How could she be interested in making decisions about paintings when, under her skirt, she could feel her naked thighs rubbing softly together, aching, trembling for the touch of Vanessa’s marvelous hands?
“I can’t imagine anything he’d like more, and if you don’t do it now—Topsy, pay attention!—you won’t have a record of the girls before they start to grow up—they’re just at that perfect age. If I were you I wouldn’t hesitate for a second. I’d have a really big oil, an heirloom … that is,” she said, looking at Daisy, “if you have time to take on such a job?”
“I could make time,” Daisy said, thinking that she’d paint all night for a month if necessary to get it done before the next bill came from England.
“Well, then, that’s settled. I’ve done you a great favor, Topsy, and I don’t want you to forget it. You’ll bless me someday.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Valarian,” Daisy said hastily.
Vanessa spied the hidden relief on Daisy’s face. So, she needed money after all. Curious.
“Thank me? Topsy’s the one who should thank me—she’s damn-lucky to get you,” Vanessa answered with the guileless, great, open smile that accompanied the execution of a promising favor that every instinct told her to grant. Daisy Valensky was now in her debt. “The next time we’re in England, I’m going to tell Ram just how talented I think you are. He’s a great friend of ours—we’re devoted to your brother.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Valarian,” Daisy said again, automatically. She felt a chill like a stain spreading over her heart.
“What you need, Luke Hammerstein,” Kiki announced sweetly, “is someone to wreak havoc with your life.”
“That last exhibition just about did it for me,” Luke answered as they found a table in The Ballroom.
“I thought you’d like it—how many people have ever seen Quebec manhole-cover rubbings?”
“It was a definite first. I’ve been curious about them as far back as grade school. And I like the fact that the group who did them is making rubbings from the manhole covers in SoHo to show in Quebec. It’s that kind of cultural exchange that may do something to help the uncertain relationship we’ve always had with Canada.”
“Yeah—I worry about Canada a lot.”
“Do you?”
“Naturally. There’s a tunnel in the heart of downtown Detroit which takes you right into Canada. When my brothers and I were kids we used to pester our father to take us. It sounded so romantic.”
“Was it?”
“Of course not—that just proves that you know nothing about Detroit … or Canada.”
“We can’t all get lucky.”
“You’re making fun of me again,” said Kiki, her eyebrows, with their jubilant angles, rising toward her ruffle of hair which was temporarily its natural brown.
“I’m sorry but I can’t help it. You’re like Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing—remember, she was ‘born in a merry hour’?”
“Well, did she get the guy in the end?”
“You never stop, do you?” Luke Hammerstein had been pursued by females since he was twelve, but never had he met one as frank about her intentions as Kiki Kavanaugh. Was she a compendium of every craft and guile known to women, or was she what she presented herself to be, an innocent sensualist out to have a thoroughly good time—with him as a partner? Luke was used to the new breed of women, but Kiki was a Green Beret in the battle of the sexes. It put him off balance, he admitted to himself. He was actually playing hard to get, like a woman was supposed to do—this role-reversal stuff was kind of fun.
“Get me a drink, for God’s sake—I’m beat,” he said. They were both carrying baskets loaded with the afternoon’s purchases.
“Have you ever had hard cider?” Kiki asked. It was her favorite next to the iced Irish Coffee.
“Not yet, but why don’t you order it since you’re obviously going to anyway.”
He looked in mild exasperation at the baskets they’d deposited on the white tiled floor. Kiki had bought, if he remembered correctly, an appliqued apricot satin cover for a hot-water bottle at a store called Harriet Love, a sculpture of a green frog, done entirely in neon tubing at a gallery called Let There Be Neon, two black satin garments, ambiguously called “guest kimonos,” two bottles of Soave Bolla and one of Wild Turkey bourbon at a liquor store which had, in its window, a sign announcing WE DO NOT HAVE PINT BOTTLES OF WINE, and a piece of jewelry which made him nervous, an ivory heart with a red stone hanging from it like a drop of blood. Even the jewelry in SoHo had names, he thought—this one was called “They’ve Been Kicking My Heart Around.” And that wasn’t counting what she’d bought at Dean and Deluca, the great gourmet grocery store, where overflowing baskets of garlic buds, apples, lemons, black radishes, walnuts and plummy dried yuccas stood decoratively in the doorway and expensive pots and pans hung from the skylight two stories above. There she’d gone wild. Slabs of pâté en croute and duck gallantine, both at over twelve dollars a pound,
from a counter on which two dozen different pâtés were displayed; a jar of heather honey from Holland; whipped cream cheese and a Petit St. Marcellin, the small cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves; three different kinds of salami, one from Spain, one from Italy and one from France; a pound of smoked Scotch salmon; a jar of hot okra pickles; a pound of Black Forest Ham; a dozen freshly baked croissants; half of a perfect brie; and, from the baskets of bread which hung all over the store, she’d picked one twisted challah, four bagels and one loaf of dark pumpernickel. Then she’d added a box of Dovedale Butter-Shortbread from an English company which had been established in 1707, and several bars of bittersweet chocolate from the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company in San Leandro, California. There was something about the combination of foods she’d bought which struck him as highly suggestive.
Luke had been to SoHo a number of times before, since no advertising man he knew would miss the opportunity to see the big new works that were displayed in the galleries; but mainly he’d stuck to quick visits to 420 Broadway, where the major uptown dealers had their downtown branches: Leo Castelli, Sonnabend and André Emmerich.
Today he’d seen a SoHo he’d overlooked, the SoHo of people who actually lived here, a SoHo in which the Porcelli Brothers displayed fresh honeycomb tripe in the window of their butcher shop; in which a little kid walking a bike had stopped Kiki at a corner and asked, “Miss, could you cross me, please?”; in which a sign proclaiming PERSIAN CAT FOUND was displayed in the window of the M and D Grocery, a shabby, old-fashioned store which nevertheless had a freezer full of expensive Häagen-Dazs ice cream and shelves on which salted nuts shared the space with religious pictures and ten kinds of yogurt; a SoHo where, in the Mandala Workshop, you could buy a symbol representing the Jungian effort to reunify the self, made of hand crochet and stained glass. This SoHo was one of exotic contrasts. J. Volpe, General Machinist, was next door to a gallery which offered prints of “erotic food”; stores selling plumbing supplies and the A and P Cordage Co. existed cheek to jowl with the Jack Gallery with its Erté and Jean Cocteau watercolors.
Kiki looked at Luke shrewdly. He was in SoHo shock … she knew the signs. She had planned to have dinner at The Ballroom but the enormous mural on the wall opposite their table would only intensify his discomfort, showing as it did, in vivid photo-realist fashion, nineteen of SoHo’s most famous artists and citizens, including Larry Rivers and Robert Indiana.
“I know what you need,” she told Luke.
“Now what?”
“Chinese food.’ ”
“By God, you’re right! It’s the only thing I could eat. How did you know?”
“You’re Jewish—it’s simple—when Jews go into culture shock the only thing that brings them back is deli or Chinese. We gentiles feel better right away if we just sit around and watch white bread burning.”
“Don’t you mean toasting?” he asked limply.
“No, burning, like a Yule log. Come on, we’ll go to the Oh-Ho-So. It’s right across the street.”
Since no one had yet taken their order they unceremoniously picked up their baskets, left The Ballroom, crossed the street and staggered into the bar at the Chinese restaurant: a most welcoming bar crowded with worn, green velvet loveseats and chairs of carved wood, no two alike, all pulled up around tables which were made from a clutter of Victorian leftovers and, when the Victoriana failed, battered sewing-machine tables.
In the light of the jukebox, Kiki’s umber eyes were shot with sparks of opals, yellow diamonds and glee.
“The gentleman will have a double Wild Turkey on the rocks,” she told the waiter, “and I’ll have some hard cider. Now let’s talk about the other night. Why didn’t you want to make love? Were you really too tired?” she asked Luke, with her bawdiest smile.
“Shit—just when you start to coddle me, like a real woman, you turn all aggressive. Wait till after the egg roll, won’t you?”
“All I meant was I wasn’t too tired—and I’d had to handle Theseus all day. So how come? Are you shy … do you wait till the third date—have you religious scruples?”
“After the egg roll,” he reminded her mildly. He had the equilibrium of strength. Luke was fully aware of his forces, so he didn’t mind revealing his weaknesses. He’d never met the woman who was a match for him—it was his secret pride. Three older sisters had taught him more about women than he needed to know, he had once liked to say, although he was aware that those had become fighting words in recent years. He saw Kiki sizing him up with the skill of a Monte Carlo, croupier, no, make that a pit boss in Vegas. He smiled at her faintly, tauntingly.
“You know what you remind me of?” she said heatedly. “Those crypto-Greek heads in the Met from five hundred B.C.—they all have the same smug, superior, secretive smile—not even the decency to pretend to be honest—total conceit that has lasted for three thousand years.”
“After the egg roll.”
“All right—but then—watch out!”
“Do you always warn your intended victims?”
“I try to be fair. Men are, in many ways, more fragile than women.”
Luke sighed, looking, giving Kiki the feeling that he was like nothing so much as a whole pile of presents that she was itching to unwrap.
“Okay, we’ll talk about other people. Tell me about your mother,” Kiki suggested.
“My mother is an arch-conservative. She never redecorates. We still have art deco.”
“My mother redecorates every year. We’re just getting art deco.”
“My mother warned me that if I ever marry a beautiful gentile girl, one day she’ll turn out to be just another old shiksa—shiksa is the only Yiddish word she knows.”
“My mother believes that the way to break in a sable coat is to wear it to a Japanese restaurant the first day it comes from the furrier. She orders sukiyaki cooked at the table, and sits in the coat during the whole meal. It takes about a week to air it out, but after that the coat knows that she’s the boss. Also I think she’s an anti-Semite.”
“My mother is such an anti-Semite that when her club started letting in Russian Jews, instead of only German Jews, she left it.”
“My mother’s worse than that. She took a course in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in case my father ever got a heart attack and then, when she was in a bank, a man had a heart attack right in front of her and she didn’t try to save him because he was so repulsive looking she was afraid of catching whatever he might have had … and he died right there in front of her.”
“Jesus! Did she really?” Luke said, fascinated. Kiki was winning the mother-game.
“No, but it did happen to her real-estate lady,” Kiki admitted.
“My mother doesn’t have real-estate ladies,” Luke said with a cool smile.
“Don’t you ever move? You have to have a real-estate lady to buy a house.”
“My mother doesn’t believe in moving—it’s nouveau. She just has …”
“The apartment on Park Avenue and the house in … Pound Ridge … and the place in Westhampton—no, East Hampton—right?”
“Almost—how’d you get so close?”
“It figured. I think we have the same mother only they don’t know it.”
“Do you realize,” Luke said moodily, “that five times more people buy pet food than buy baby food? Isn’t that horrifying?”
“No, dummy. It’s because babies grow up and start to eat like people but pets eat pet food all of their lives.”
“You’re not entirely stupid,” Luke said, reluctantly. Most people reacted to the pet-food statistics with dependable indignation.
“Do you want to hold hands?” Kiki asked hopefully.
“Not during lobster Cantonese!” he said scandalized.
“You lack passion,” Kiki warned, looking yearningly at his mouth—there was something about a man’s mouth, presented between a mustache and a beard, which made it so much more edible looking than if it just sat there on his face surrounded by skin.
&
nbsp; “You’re just saying that to make me prove to you that I’m not boring. It won’t work.” Luke applied himself to his lobster with calm relish. Kiki looked at him in dismay. This wasn’t going right at all. Most men, in her large experience, had no defenses against a well-mounted, absolutely shameless attack. Bewildered, confused, flattered, they fell for it, and once they’d fallen for the idea they were only a step away from falling for her. Luke made her uneasy … she had the feeling that somewhere she’d gotten her act wrong, but she’d started out with him as she had with dozens of others and now the pattern had been set Maybe he was just hungry. Maybe he had just been tired. With Daisy away for the weekend, and the provisions she bought for breakfast and lunch tomorrow, she still had lots of time to work on this unexpectedly stubborn customer. She really had to have him.
“Could you please bring us some hot tea,” she asked a passing waiter, “and some optimistic fortune cookies?”
The Friday following her weekend in Middlebury, Daisy found the studio unexpectedly peaceful. North had gone off for a week’s vacation, the first in over a year, so there was no production meeting scheduled until the middle of the next week. There were myriad details for her to check in the office, but she was pleased when Nick-the-Greek and Wingo Sparks invited her to have lunch with them. Normally she ate lunch at her desk, with a sandwich in one hand and the phone in another.
Once the waiter had brought them their food, Nick said casually, “So how’s the job going, kid? You holding up all right? I mean, we all know it isn’t easy working for North. Sometimes I get the idea that he doesn’t realize what you’re worth.”
Princess Daisy Page 33
