Shades of Fortune

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  I will not say the word forgive. I am in no position to offer you such a flashy gift as forgiveness. Let she who is without sin cast the first stone, they say, and I am not without sin. I did it, too, to you, and what’s more I did it first. It was long ago, but that makes no difference because time does not create an alibi for disloyalty, for cheating. If I could sit here and look into my mirror and say I never cheated on our marriage, without lowering my eyes, remembering everything, that would be one thing, but I can’t. Even though you never knew about it, never suspected, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, because it happened. I knew what I was doing, as they say, and I did it. Only with one person, perhaps, but one was enough to draw the line between a woman who cheated and a woman who can say she never cheated. Or perhaps you did know, perhaps you did suspect. Is that it? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Tit for tat. Serves you right, old girl. Try a taste of your own medicine. See how you like it.

  That time there was passion—passionare, to suffer.

  And there’ve been other times I could have done it. Your law partner, Harry Walters—he wanted to. Your very own law partner, the man whom you play tennis with on Thursday nights, your dear friend, he asked me to. Are you getting it good enough from Brad in the sack? he asked me. I’ve seen him in the shower, and he looks kind of small in that department. I laughed in his face, and never told you. And there was the buyer at Bendel’s who suggested that he’d buy our products if I’d check into the St. Regis with him, and for two years no one could understand why Bendel’s wouldn’t buy us. I could go on. I could compile quite a little list of men who wanted to—even a woman who wanted to—but the list of people I’ve said no to doesn’t turn me into a woman who’s never cheated on her husband, does it? No way, old girl. No way, José.

  Dear Brad, she writes to him in her mind, dictating to herself the way she dictates those long and chatty office memos she likes to write. Dear Brad. Brad darling. Darling Brad, dearest one, dear heart, dearest husband, dear Brad. Has the trouble always been that you don’t really approve of the business I’m in, is that it? I mean, I know at the time you supported me when I wanted to do it, you were the only one who thought I had a chance, but perhaps, way back then, you had no idea that I would be so successful, that this little business of mine would become so big, that it would consume so much of my time and my life. Perhaps you thought it would be like the painter Ingres and his violin, a pastime, a hobby, an avocation, like our Saturday strolls around antique shops, looking for unusual plates. But now I’ve become a Cosmetics Queen—they call me that—and I’ve made all this money, richer, probably, than Grandpa ever was, and perhaps, years ago, you never really expected that. Do I earn more money than you? Yes, probably, but we’ve never discussed that, thank God; we’ve never had to, thank God.

  And then there are the kinds of people I have to deal with, the retailers and merchandise managers and buyers, the tough-talking Charlie Revson types, the spike-heeled fashion editors in their turbans, the New York types, the media salesmen and the ad agency reps; they’re really not your types, are they? They probably bore you, and you probably even find them a little vulgar. They don’t have names like Wickersham and Hollister and Cadwallader and Stettinius and Lord, the names you lunch with at the Downtown Club. They have names like Bernstein and Lifschitz and Goldbogen and Livingston that used to be Lowenstein and Robbins that used to be Rubin. I’m not saying you’re a snob, but these aren’t the people you’re used to, that you really feel comfortable with, at ease with. I picture you in your office sometimes, all tweedy carpet and chocolate-colored leather chairs, good cracked leather, old leather, lamps with parchment shades, and a view of Trinity Church and the Stock Exchange and Alexander Hamilton’s statue guarding the U.S. Treasury Building, Old New York, so different from mine. In Old New York, the lawyers come and go, talking of Paine vs. Bigelow. I know what your secret ambition is, or used to be. It was to be appointed a United States Supreme Court Justice. But has there ever been a United States Supreme Court Justice whose wife was a Cosmetics Queen? Will there ever be? Is that the trouble? Has my success collided with your ambition? I wanted you to be proud of me, I guess, but instead of pride I’ve brought you disappointment.

  Perhaps if we’d had another child. But then …

  Your goal was prestige. Mine is … perfume.

  I can’t sit here all night thinking thoughts like these. We have an advertising meeting in the morning. He’ll come home, eventually. At least he always has before.

  In her bedroom, Mimi’s maid has turned down the covers, drawn the curtains closed, and placed a small plate of fruit on her bedside table: an apple, a banana, and a plum, red, white, and blue. With the fruit knife, she slices a wedge from the apple and places it in her mouth. Then she slides between the sheets and arranges many small lace-edged Porthault pillows around her head and neck and shoulders. Then she turns off the bedside lamp. Close your eyes and think happy thoughts, her mother used to say, and you’ll be sure to have a good night’s sleep.

  But, instead of happy thoughts, omens and portents swirl around her in the darkness. Tonight was supposed to have been the special family preview of her new Mireille fragrance, and that little preview did not go well. Does that bode ill for the future of the fragrance? Mimi tries to remind herself that she does not believe in omens and portents. Hers is a business, after all, that is based on superstitions, hunches, guesswork, instinct, gut reactions. Elizabeth Arden would not make a business decision without first consulting her horoscope. Charlie Revson consulted regularly with a palmist and would not do business with a man whose license plate had the number thirteen in it. Even Mimi’s building believes in witchcraft. There is no thirteenth floor. If you go looking for evil omens, you can find them everywhere. From beneath a pillow, Mimi reaches for her sleep mask. The sleep mask has the effect of pressing her wakeful eyelids closed.

  Much later, she has the dream. It is a dream she has had before, though not lately, and it is a dream that, even as she dreams it, she knows is only a dream, and she knows that she will awaken from it, and always at the same point. In it, she is a little girl again, and in a car somewhere, and suddenly there is a terrible screeching of brakes, and a loud crash, and a large dark object flying up across the sky, and people screaming everywhere, and then there are only her mother’s screams and sobs. This is where she invariably awakens, with her mother’s screams, never finding out what the screams mean, or what has happened.

  Awake, she realizes that the sound that awoke her was the sound of her husband’s bedroom door closing across the hall. From the digital clock at her bedside, she sees that it is ten minutes of three, and she realizes that he has not come into her room to kiss her good night, the way he usually does.

  On the beach at St.-Jean-de-Luz, you covered my feet with sand, and then my legs, and then my belly, and then my arms, and then my breasts, until I was covered with sand all the way up to my neck, and all that was sticking out of me was the head. And you said that now I had a figure just like Mae West’s, and then you kissed me on the lips and said that even if I got to be as old and fat and bloated-looking as Mae West, you’d still love me.

  Mimi told me all of this, much later.

  4

  It is now ten o’clock the following morning, and Mimi and her advertising director, Mark Segal, sit in the small conference room of the Miray offices at 666 Fifth Avenue. Mimi is perched on one end of the conference table, and Mark sits at the other, and between them, spread out across the table, are the pasteups for the print advertising and the storyboards for the television commercials for the new Mireille campaign. Seated a short distance away from them, trying to be unobtrusive, is Jim Greenway, whom Mimi has invited to follow her about during a somewhat atypical business day. It is atypical because it is not every day that the final details are worked out for a fifty-million-dollar campaign that will spell either success or failure for a brand-new range of products in a notoriously fickle marketplace.
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  There is tension in the air as Segal, an athletic-looking young redhead with a fiery beard, in jeans and shirtsleeves, holds up one after another of the ads and storyboards for Mimi’s inspection. At first, no one speaks. All the ads, which feature the Mireille Couple in various romantic locales and situations, are signed with the line, which is Mark Segal’s, “Mireille … at last the miracle fragrance.” The television commercials, which are designed to expand on the situations depicted in the print ads, also close with this signature line. Watching Mimi’s reactions closely, Segal nervously flexes the biceps of his right arm.

  Finally, he says, “Something’s bothering you—I can tell. What is it?”

  Mimi continues to study the photographs of the two models. Then she says, “She’s lovely, there’s no doubt about it. Lovely. She’s got just the look I want. Of course, you’d hope that with looks like that would go just a little glimmer of intelligence, but in her case there just isn’t any. It doesn’t seem fair, does it—that a girl who can sparkle like that in front of a camera should be such a dim bulb in real life? But it doesn’t matter. She looks … simply wonderful. I wouldn’t change a thing about her.”

  “Fortunately, only Sherrill’s friends will get to see her in real life,” Mark says.

  “If we decide to use her live in any in-store promotions, just make sure she’s not allowed to open her mouth. They were both at my house for dinner last night, and you should have seen her trying to figure out which fork to use. It’s sad, isn’t it? You’d want a girl like that to have everything, wouldn’t you? But all she is is a gorgeous face.”

  “That’s about all you can say about most of these girls,” he says.

  “Well, maybe the exposure we’ll give her will help her wise up—go to charm school, or something. But it’s not her I’m worried about, Mark. It’s him. Why does he seem too …”

  “Pretty?”

  “Yes. That’s it, exactly. Here’s the case of a boy who, when you see him in the flesh, looks nice and wholesome—rugged, outdoorsy, like he belongs on a ski slope, or on top of a diving board, or sculling with the Yale crew. But in front of a camera, he seems to go all … soft, somehow.”

  “Effeminate, you mean?”

  “Not effeminate, exactly. Just … soft. Do you see what I mean, Mark?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid I do.”

  “Can we screen the first commercial again, Mark?”

  “Sure,” he says. He dims the lights, the screen descends from its recess in the conference room ceiling, and the video projector begins to roll.

  The scene is the dock in front of the Seawanhaka Yacht Club in Oyster Bay, a balmy summer afternoon; sunlight on the blue water of Long Island Sound refracts the camera’s eye with diamond flashes. Through these flashes, we see a snappy yawl-rigged sailboat move into view, the Mireille Man at the tiller, in dark blue jeans, bare to the waist. There is a bright sting of music. The camera then moves to pick up:

  The Girl, standing on the dock, waving to him, all in white, her skirts blowing in the breeze.

  THE GIRL: You’re late!

  THE BOY: Tricky winds!

  We see the boy maneuver the sailboat expertly to the dock and throw a line, which she catches and lashes around an upright pier. Then we watch as he holds up both arms, as she steps into them, and as he lifts her lightly down to the deck. He nuzzles her shoulder. Then, in close-up:

  THE BOY: Hey! What’s that you’re wearing? You smell brand-new!

  THE GIRL: It is brand-new! It’s Mireille—by Miray!

  We watch him as, nostrils flared, he nuzzles her some more, drinking in her scent with obvious pleasure and excitement; nuzzles her shoulder, her cheekbones, her ear lobe, and finally brushes her lips with his. There is another musical sting, a clear, high, bright electronic chord.

  THE BOY: You smell … miraculous!

  Once more the screen fills up with diamondlike flashes of sunlight refracted on water as, simultaneously, the legend travels across the screen: Mireille … at last the miracle fragrance.

  The screen goes blank, and the lights come up again.

  “Do you see what I mean?” Mimi says after a moment. “A soft look. What can we do, Mark, to make him have a harder edge?”

  He says nothing.

  “His face has no corners to it. Do you agree?”

  He nods, frowning, looking unhappy, and flexes his biceps several more times.

  Suddenly Mimi picks up a grease pencil from the table, and, pulling out the storyboard for the commercial they have just screened, she makes a mark across the face of Dirk Gordon. “I think I have it,” she says.

  “What is it?”

  “What if we gave him a scar, Mark?”

  “A scar?”

  “Yes—like a dueling scar. Across one cheek. It would break up that dumb symmetry. And it would give him a history, like—”

  “Like the Hathaway man with the eyepatch?”

  “Exactly,” Mimi says. “Only this would be more exciting than an eyepatch. How did that good-looking man get that ugly scar? the viewer will wonder. In some barroom brawl? Defending some maiden’s honor? In some nasty accident? Or on the lacrosse field in some really rugged play? Smashed in the face by a hockey puck? See what I mean?”

  Mark Segal scratches his red beard thoughtfully. “I see what you mean, but—”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know how little Dirkie-boy will feel about us turning him into Scarface,” he says.

  “Well,” she says with a little laugh, “we do have him under contract, don’t we? It’s really up to us how we decide to make him look, Mark.”

  “That’s true, but—”

  “Again, but what?”

  “You’re talking about reshooting the entire campaign, Mimi.”

  “Look,” she says, “maybe for the print ads we can airbrush in the scar. If that doesn’t work—”

  “Then what?”

  “Then, I guess we reshoot. It’s not the first time we’ve had to do that.”

  “You’re also talking about reshooting three thirty-second television commercials. You can’t airbrush TV film. Do you know how much that’s going to cost?”

  “Of course I do. But Mark, I honestly think that the scar could make all the difference—between an excellent campaign and one that’s spectacular. I think we’ve got to try it, Mark, don’t you?”

  He is scowling now. “Well …”

  “Really, Mark. Because this is the most important product launch we’ve ever done.”

  “The most important ever? How come?”

  “It just is. All at once it is—for reasons I can’t go into right now. Just take my word for it. This campaign can’t just be successful. It’s got to be sensationally successful.”

  He shrugs. “If you say so,” he says.

  “Let’s try it with the airbrush first. Give the head shots of Dirk to the art department, and have them experiment with scars. Have them try different kinds of scars. Tell them I want some real tough-looking scars. Once we see the airbrushing, then we’ll decide—”

  The door to the conference room opens, and it is Mimi’s secretary, Mrs. Hanna. “Mr. Michael Horowitz, Miss Myerson,” she says. “Returning your call.”

  “Oh, yes,” Mimi says, hopping off the edge of the table. “I want to talk to him.” To Segal, she says, “We’ll decide when we see what the art department comes up with,” and blows him a kiss.

  Segal, still scowling, begins gathering up the layouts and pasteups and storyboards from the conference table. Before immediately following Mimi back to her office, Jim Greenway steps over to him and says, “What do you think of this scar idea, anyway?”

  At first, Mark Segal merely grunts. Then he mutters, “Brilliant. As usual. Fucking brilliant. Simply fucking brilliant, is all I can say.”

  It all began, needless to say, with one of her famous “Mimi Memos” more than two years ago, in the spring of 1985.

  MIRAY CORPORATION

  Interoff
ice Memorandum

  TO: All employees

  FROM: MM

  (Over the years, her employees have learned that whenever they see that double M on an interoffice memo, something important is on the boss’s mind. But that the subject of this memo should have now gained the importance that it has, they could not have guessed.)

  SUBJECT: Perfume

  The perfumer’s art is at least 10,000 years old, and the earliest perfumes were in the form of incense. Indeed, the word derives from the Latin per and fumus, literally “through smoke.”

  Ancient man, believing that the greatest offering to his gods could only be one of his most precious possessions, offered in sacrifice a domestic beast—or another human. The earliest perfumes were resinous gums such as frankincense, myrrh, cassia, and spikenard, which were sprinkled on an animal (or human) corpse before it was burned, in order to mask the stench of burning flesh. In the Bible, Noah, having survived the Flood, offered burnt animal sacrifices in gratitude, and “the Lord smelled the sweet odor”—of incense. Gradually, the burning of these resins alone replaced the sacrifices, and the burning of incense survives today in the ritual of the Catholic Church.

  The logical next step was for men and women to anoint their bodies with these fragrant resins, and by 3000 B.C. the Sumerians in Mesopotamia and the Egyptians in the Nile Valley were literally bathing themselves in oils and alcohols of jasmine, iris, hyacinth, and honeysuckle.