“Prince, listen to me,” Billy commanded, getting up and perching on the edge of his desk, her slim, claret-red suit, with its matching crushed-velvet collar and cuffs, as perfect as only three fittings could make it. She wore a small, romantic hat of dark sable, almost the color of her eyes, tilted so far forward that it grazed her eyebrows, allowing her curls to spring freely away from her ears. She looked at the designer with a concentration he had never seen on her face before. “I don’t think you see the point of the capsule collections. We’re going to start with four of them, small but edited so well that there isn’t a single wasted or unnecessary idea. They’re directed toward young women who have, in Vogue’s immortal words, ‘more taste than money.’ One will take a woman through a week at her job, one will take her traveling, one will give her everything she needs for weekends—great-looking sportswear—and the fourth will be for after-hours—dates, restaurants, business dinners, all that. Everything in each individual collection has to work with just about anything in the other three collections. In other words, your easy office blazer is designed to be worn over your weekend pants and your restaurant shirt—clever, dressed-down designs that give a woman a hundred choices—letting her dress the way you dress, Prince.”
“Billy, stop selling me.”
“I’m just thinking out loud. You will admit that the women who don’t have the money to buy your ready-to-wear would love to be able to buy Scruples Two Prince exclusives?”
“The whole point, pet, is that they can’t. If they can’t afford Prince, well …” He threw up his hands. “I wish they could, but some things will always be out of reach except for the happy few.”
“You know, when I was buying tons of clothes, during my first marriage, I didn’t buy yours. I always admired them, but I thought I’d wait until I was over thirty to wear them. Has it occurred to you that women in their twenties, no matter how much money they have, aren’t your customers?”
“Until they grow up,” Prince observed from a lofty height, “they’re not ready for me. And I don’t lose anything, because how many young women can afford my clothes anyway?”
“There are lots of smashing rich young women who won’t even consider your things, Prince, because you’ve been designing for the same group of women ever since you started. They’re getting older and older, always photographed in Prince—your look is inextricably associated with them, the wealthy matron’s badge of office: the Prince ballgown, the important jewelry, the blond bouffant hairdo and the ten-thousand-dollar facelift. Where are your new customers going to come from? All those bright young designers, not just the Calvin Kleins and the Ralph Laurens, but others we haven’t heard from yet, will capture women who would otherwise graduate toward you, sweetie. On the other hand, if you designed for Scruples Two, you’d have to give yourself a good shaking-up and dusting-off, you’d have to challenge yourself to do something you’ve never yet proved you can do—versatile clothes at a humane price. Everyone would be talking about your new look, your new attitude. Why repeat yourself when you can renew yourself, Prince, you can feed your legend in a way nothing else ever will.”
“You’re shining me on.”
“I didn’t know you knew that expression, darling. Of course I am. There are other major designers who’d jump at this—they know it won’t affect their regular customers, they know that one thing has nothing to do with the other, but none of them has your particular talent. They make outfits.”
“So do I.”
“But you don’t wear outfits,” Billy said on a true, fresh note. “You wear separates, by choice. I’ve never once seen you in two pieces that matched unless it’s black tie, and even then you always add something different—a tweed waistcoat, plaid inside the cuffs and under the collar of your dinner jacket, a cotton batik cummerbund.”
“I’ll give you that,” he said, pleased in spite of himself. “I like to enjoy myself when I get dressed.”
“Oh, Prince! That’s it! That’s exactly it! Clothes that work like dogs but continue to give you a divine little high each time you put them on. Just tell me this, even if you won’t do it, is there anything you don’t like about my idea except the price?”
“I’m afraid you’re trying to reinvent the wheel, pet. Separates have always been with us. A woman can go to any department store and buy them, she doesn’t need me.”
“But it’s just not that easy! What if her job doesn’t leave her time to shop? What if she doesn’t have the ability to pull things together? What if she doesn’t live near a big store with a good selection of clothes? What if she doesn’t like the newest styles? What if she’s a busy young mother juggling baby, husband and career? Shopping’s a nightmare for most women!”
“Very depressing indeed, dear.”
Billy laughed out loud. “You’re such a good-hearted guy, Prince, but I’d never know it to listen to you now.”
“Oh, just don’t play the ‘Where is your sense of social responsibility?’ card. I do my bit. Why do you want to be in trade, pet? I’ve never understood it. Why, you could be a duchess, even an English duchess,” he said reverently, unable to imagine a station in life that he would rather occupy or for which he was better suited.
“I’m basically a working girl, Prince, just like you’re a working man. And right now I’m anxious to get a jumpstart that will put my new project on the map quickly. You—or another top designer—are the key to a necessary edge. It’s not that I doubt the success of Scruples Two, I know I’m on the verge of something huge, but as usual, I’m impatient. If you’re going to offer the ultimate pleated skirt in the world, for example—at a price—you have to give it a special twist, a certain something that makes it stand out from every other skirt. If I knew what I wanted, believe me, I’d design it myself, but I haven’t a clue. Oh well, I should have known that you couldn’t be motivated. And it’s a shame, really. I’ve always felt I owed you something for taking Valentine away. She’d have worked for you forever if I hadn’t lured her out to Scruples.”
“Just how would letting you con me,” he chuckled, “repay me for taking Valentine away?”
“The money, darling. The loot,” Billy said as she got up to go. “But, as you said, you feel you have as much as you need. I guess you’re immune from the horrid little secret of the very, very rich. Well, good-bye, Prince, darling, I have to make another pitch at lunch.”
Prince got up to accompany her to the door. “What horrid little secret?” he asked lightly.
“Oh, you know—it’s a bit shame-making really, but most people never feel they have enough money, do they?… . And yet we all have so much more than we can ever spend. It must be something in human nature, this unending drive for more. I’ve been on that list of the ten richest women in America since Ellis died, yet now I’m determined to make Scruples Two a Fortune 500 Company. You own this big dress business, but you’re not on the list of the Forbes 400—you can’t build a private fortune in the hundreds of millions making expensive clothes, even with your licenses—I guess it’s a game, really, always wanting more when one has so much.…”
“Your guess is as good as mine …” He shrugged in irritation.
“Just look at me with a lovely house in Paris that I don’t even use but I love too much to sell. It’s too absurd, darling, when I could have a magnificent yacht and estates here and there, and spend my time having glorious fun, transporting my friends from one perfect vacation to another.” Billy paused and seemed to be considering her prospects with the attention of a woman in a brimming rose garden, pruning shears in hand, trying to choose the one perfect bud among a superfluity of marvelous blooms.
“But no,” she said finally, “here I am, darling, on good old Seventh Avenue, beavering away at this catalog because I’m so certain that the time is right for it and I’m going to prove it, Prince, come what may. Perhaps I’m a workaholic … but it’s so exciting that it can’t be bad for me. And the royalties on Scruples Two will be immense … I just felt
I’d rather you had them than somebody else.”
“Royalties?”
“Well, obviously whoever designs the capsule collections will get a royalty on every single piece sold. You understood that, of course … I did remember to say that, didn’t I? I suppose I could save the money and hire a crack design team, but I’d rather pay the royalties and have a giant name attached to the collections. There’ll be more in the end for everybody, including little me.”
“Billy?”
“Yes?”
“You are a totally evil little girl, you know that, don’t you?”
“Sweetheart, the worst!”
“Sit down. Let’s talk.”
“Oh, Prince!” Billy rushed into his arms. She hadn’t been sure she’d have to pay royalties, she’d hoped to get away with a huge design fee, but when it came down to the wire, if that was what it took, it was worth it. Some people really were only interested in money, and Prince, thank God, had always been one of them.
Her return, or rather her retreat, to her native land seemed to suit Billy Ikehorn, Cora de Lioncourt decided, as she and Billy had tea together at Billy’s apartment. The semi-rural ease, the downright unapologetic sloppiness—or was it slovenliness?—that she understood was a permissible way of life in California, obviously agreed with Billy in a way that the electric elegance of Paris had not. Of course, making the grade in Los Angeles would take no effort for her at all. It must be such a relief for her to give up on New York and Paris and slink back home. It was the only explanation she could think of that would account for Billy’s air of excited happiness on a dreary day in a dreary month on which the only appointment she had mentioned having was one with John Prince to look at his new spring collection.
Cora observed Billy closely, noticing that not only had she lost the weight she’d gained in Paris, and had her hair cut short again, but that her personal style, her carelessly brilliant chic mixed with sensuality, was once more intact. Today, in addition, Billy seemed to be suppressing some secret triumph, Cora realized with irritation, as she nibbled at a tea sandwich. Other people’s secrets were impermissible.
“You’re looking extraordinarily well, Billy,” she said, her enticing voice honeyed and faintly reproachful, as if looking too well were something that had to be explained.
“Thank you, Cora. It’s your city that does it. I love a good stiff jolt of New York every now and then. It’s a tonic to my system.”
“But you still don’t plan to buy a place here?”
“Why bother? An apartment hotel’s so convenient.”
“Will you be moving into your house in Paris in the spring?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” Billy said with an impenetrable smile.
“But what do you do with yourself in Los Angeles? You made such a speech at the Ritz about women who don’t do anything but shop and go to parties, and now you’re living in a place where there’s far less going on than there is here or in Paris.”
“Oh, I keep busy with this and that, Cora, it’s amazing how the days fly by,” Billy said evasively. She had no intention of telling Cora about Scruples Two. Winning Prince over had been a necessary struggle, but there was no reason to expose her fledgling project to a woman of such overly refined standards that she would dump cold water on the mere idea of a fashion catalog.
More secrets, Cora thought. Billy Ikehorn and her secrets truly infuriated her. Billy had an unsubdued independence that made Cora want to see her shatter into pieces, like a shop window hit by a well-thrown rock. Billy had refused to be guided by any one of Cora’s recommendations except in the matter of her Parisian real-estate agent. Her own percentage of that deal had been a meager, unacceptable return for her trouble. She had groomed Billy Ikehorn to be the catch of her lifetime of manipulation. By all rights Billy should have become a cash cow, yet she continued to elude Cora, as un-bovine as an eel in mud. Her buoyant high spirits were no more than deliberate provocation.
Oh, Billy knew exactly how enviable she was, Cora thought, consumed by bitterness, as she watched her sitting there in that brilliantly chosen sable hat, her large sable muff held in her lap, as carelessly luxurious as a latter-day Anna Karenina before she came to grief. This woman to whom riches came without effort, this woman who had been born to beauty, this woman who could, by lifting a finger, instantly acquire better objects than those Cora had worked a lifetime for, drove her mad with envy. Just by existing, Billy made her feel shabby, as if the careful, clever cultivation and accumulation of her own life were a small and unremarkable achievement.
She gave up on Billy Ikehorn, there was no reason to dance around her any longer, no reason to continue to protect their relationship in hope of future gain.
“I had the oddest experience in Paris, after I saw you last at the Opéra,” Cora remarked.
“Did you?”
“Remember that man who came over to our table and made that awful scene, that tall, angry, redheaded man who asked you who the hell you were?”
“That? Of course, how could I forget? An old beau with a grievance, nothing more.”
“But you see, that’s exactly what’s so odd. A few days later, I saw him again. I was doing the new exhibitions, and there he was, in the Templon gallery with some very interesting work, if you happen to like modern sculpture.” She observed Billy with the watchful quietude of a panther.
“He would be there,” Billy said calmly. “That’s where he showed his work.”
“Of course I didn’t try to talk to him, but after he left the gallery with the dealer, I fell into conversation with an assistant, Henri somebody, a great admirer of your sculptor … Sam Jamison?… . yes, that was his name, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And Henri, rather a charming fellow who grabs any chance to speak English, told me that he’d been with your old beau, as you call him, at the Opéra that night. He even remembered seeing me at your table. He said that the sculptor.… Sam.… had disappeared after he saw you … missed the second act entirely.”
“We all saw him rush away.” Billy shrugged, sweating under her blouse.
“And we all saw you rush after him,” Cora said, her most brilliant smile flickering on her lips, baring her perfect teeth.
Billy confronted Cora directly, impatiently letting her muff drop to the floor, folding her arms, her smoky eyes defiant. “Cora, what are you driving at? What business is it of yours? Am I not permitted a private life?”
“Now, Billy, of course you are. Don’t be silly. It’s merely that Henri what’s-his-name thought you were somebody else entirely, somebody named Honey Winthrop. I didn’t know you still used your maiden name.”
Billy continued to fix Cora with a dangerous gaze. “I think that there are things friends shouldn’t ask each other about, don’t you?”
“You’re right, of course,” Cora agreed, lightly. “Yes, another sandwich, please, they’re so good I can’t resist. Tell me, did you order a lot from Prince?”
“Much too much,” Billy said. “The new collection was particularly good.”
As Cora bit into her tiny watercress sandwich, she thought of the deeply interesting lunch to which she had invited charming young Henri Legrand. He had been just as curious about Billy as she was about Sam Jamison, and between the two of them they had pieced together the whole incredibly juicy story. Billy had her secrets, true, but not as many as she believed, and the most intriguing of them now belonged to Cora de Lioncourt.
“Gigi, look at this photo,” Spider asked, as he walked into her office with the sleeves of his blue denim work shirt rolled up, “and tell me what you think about it.” He passed her an enlargement of a color photograph of a group of women, all but one of whom seemed to be in their late twenties or early thirties. They were standing in a garden in a laughing group around an older woman, seated on a garden seat, whom they were toasting with flutes of champagne.
“Who are they?” Gigi asked curiously, sitting behind her desk.
“I
’ll tell you, but that’s not important, just give me your off-the-cuff reaction.”
Gigi studied the photo closely before she answered. “They’re happy,” she said, “genuinely happy, that’s the first thing I notice, and they’re really glad to be together. They’re relaxed, carefree—oh!—they have a strong family resemblance, they’ve all got to be related one way or another. Come on, Spider, who are they?” Gigi looked up at him through her bangs in her most singularly coaxing way, both frank and slightly comical, as unable to keep a restless, native flirtatiousness out of her eyes as she was to change the way her ears were so delicately pointed.
“Keep talking,” he said. “So far I haven’t heard anything profound from the person who’s announced that she thinks she can write all the copy for Scruples Two.”
Gigi bent her bright, silky head attentively over the photograph. “They’re not New Yorkers, but they’re not country girls either, they’re too sophisticated for that. I don’t know how I know, but I’m sure of it, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, L.A.? They’re sophisticated in a casual sort of way, as if they don’t have to work at it … it comes naturally to them. They all know how to dress but they’re not copycats. Two of them—these two in jeans,” she said, pointing, “are definitely underdressed compared to the others, but they look just fine anyway. They’re all nice-looking women, a couple of them are very nice looking, but not one is what I’d call a real beauty. If I had to guess—do I have to guess, Spider?—okay, okay, I’d say that they’re probably married and have kids … but,” Gigi paused and pondered before she continued, “most likely they aren’t full-time housewives. Maybe one or two are, but I think most of them work, or teach, or do heavy-duty volunteer work … what I mean is that they look as if they’re busy with a lot of interesting things and they’re having such a good time! I wish I knew them. Actually the best looking of them is the older woman—why are they all toasting her?”
Scruples Two Page 49
