“It was her birthday lunch,” Spider said proudly. “That’s my mom.”
“Oh … Spider,” Gigi sighed, and unexpected tears flooded her eyes. “You’re so lucky.”
Appalled, Spider leaned down and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. “Damn it, Gigi, I forgot about your mother. Hell, I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that. I just forgot entirely. I’m so sorry. Here’s a Kleenex,” he said contritely.
“It’s okay, Spider, honestly.” Gigi blew her nose and blotted her eyes, recovering herself. “I never do that—I don’t know what came over me. Your mother’s stunning, and of course those are your famous sisters—I was so busy getting a general impression of the picture that I completely missed the fact that I was looking at three sets of twins … their features were the last thing I was thinking about, and anyway they try to look individual.”
“Actually, that’s why I didn’t tell you who they were. If you’d known, you’d have been too busy trying to figure out which twin belonged with which, to have concentrated on the general look of them all together.”
“Did I get them right, as far as what I said?”
“On the nose. Of course, they’re not all that carefree, who is? But they’re a happy bunch of sweeties and busy full-time with many things besides their husbands and kids. I took that picture three years ago. I remembered it last night and dug it out to show everybody. You’re the first to see it—I thought that the look, not my sisters specifically, but the look they have, was right for Scruples Two.”
“You mean kind of easygoing sophisticated?”
“That absolutely, and more. I’ve been up to my elbows in every catalog ever published. There isn’t one of them that isn’t a disaster, an art director’s or fashion editor’s nightmare, graphically fifteen years behind the times. I’ve been analyzing every magazine on the newsstands, looking at the models, the locations and the layouts, and the one thing that I’ve decided is that we have to establish a single type of woman who embodies the Scruples Two look. Then we’ll choose our models from those who have our look naturally, loud and clear. Instead of hiring top models and dressing them in our clothes, we’ve got to find models who look the way our customers would and can look if they try. Not just in their wildest dreams, but in reality. We shouldn’t show them something they can afford to buy, being worn by someone they automatically dismiss as being too beautiful to relate to. You said you wished you knew my sisters.… I want our customers to wish they knew our models.”
“They’re awfully.…”
“Awfully what?”
“Well …” Gigi hesitated. She agreed with Spider in principle, but his sisters were so WASPy it hurt Italian-Irish teeth she hadn’t known she possessed.
“Very naturally … ah … blond and blue-eyed?” she ventured.
“Shit, yes. They’re ultra-WASPs, come by it naturally, my mother’s family was from Sweden and my father’s from England, that’s not what I mean.” Spider laughed at Gigi’s delicacy. His sisters would have been chosen as pin-up girls in the Third Reich, God forbid. “I’m just using them as an example of real women, not beauties. Well-educated but not society. Middle class but not noticeably lower or upper. Urbane but not necessarily urban. Outdoorsy when necessary, but never horsy. Clean-cut but not chiseled. Grown up. Relaxed but animated, with some character in their faces. Intelligence in their eyes—that’s essential. They could be black, white, Oriental or Hispanic, so long as they have the right look.”
“Where are we going to find these models?” Gigi sounded skeptical as she observed the visionary light fill Spider’s eyes.
“We’ll use unknowns, probably the gals who can’t make the grade at the model agencies because they’re not knockouts or because they’re not early-flowering, ten-foot-tall teenagers. Or maybe women who’ve never planned to model.”
“Spider, aren’t you looking for the deliberately average?” Gigi worried. “That doesn’t sound like a hell of a lot of fun.… looking at clothes on real, average women.”
“I’m looking for gals who are way above average, but not so you’d notice it before you notice the clothes. A fine distinction Gigi, but one that I have down cold. Once, way back in history, models used to be my avocation, my hobby, my reason for getting up in the morning and definitely for going to bed at night. Trust me on picking models, Gigi.”
“You’re the expert,” Gigi conceded. “I’m more into excess, as in ‘Why can’t we use the most beautiful girls in the world to make our clothes look good?’ ”
“Because it’s a big turnoff. I don’t know if women even realize it, but after they’ve seen too many beautiful girls in magazines they get to feeling a nasty little low-level depression, a fretfulness, a dissatisfaction, that they don’t understand is directly connected to the models. They keep right on reading magazines, sure, because they’re curious about fashion and beauty, but a steady diet of top models makes any woman feel subliminally unattractive in comparison. Women who feel unattractive aren’t going to be in the mood to call up and order clothes over the phone at midnight. I want our customers feeling euphoric!”
“Midnight?”
“Well, sure. We have to have round-the-clock phone ordering … get them when they’re in the mood. What if a woman wakes up at three A.M. with an anxiety attack? Could there be a better way to cure it than to catalog shop? She doesn’t even have to get out of bed, only reach for her phone and her catalog. She can chat with her Scruples Two phone pal, order a little something, and go back to sleep feeling a whole lot better.” Spider inspected Gigi’s desk, piled high with discarded sheets of typing paper. “Working on something?”
“Just fiddling,” Gigi said. “Trying to set the tone, work out a sort of introduction to the catalog in general terms, so people will know what we’re about.”
“Read it to me?”
“It’s still awfully rough, but … oh, all right,” Gigi said, squirming with the fearful, hesitant timidity of authorship. She had to get some feedback or burst, and Spider was the only person left in the office.
I know some secrets you hide in your closet that you won’t tell your best friend about … well, maybe you would, if she’d sympathize, instead of giving you that wise-ass, smarter-than-thou look, but how can you count on it? As for telling your sister, you know better! For example there’s that beautiful, ruffled, real lace blouse you bought because you were feeling so romantic that you couldn’t resist it, and when you got it home and tried it with all your skirts, it made you look weirdly like your mother. But it’s too good to give away and too small to give her. And then there’s that good wool suit, too expensive even when you bought it on sale, but it was exactly what your boss would approve of and you knew you could wear it forever. Except that you found out that it’s too hot and too uncomfortable to wear all day long in the office and too conservative to wear at night, and the jacket just looks wrong with a pair of pants and a T-shirt.
I understand about that low-cut sweater you bought because you thought it would look marvelous with simple pants for one of those invitations to a don’t-bother-to-get-dressed-up party. (Don’t you hate it when the hostess says that? Why give a party unless people can dress?) Of course it makes you look as if you had a severely split personality. I have three of them and I haven’t got it right yet.
I know about those elephant-retreating-into-the-jungle pants that you bought without checking in a three-way mirror and I know about that practical, sensible coat you wore for two years, hating every minute of it, because you’re practical and sensible only to a point—and it went too far!
But enough of these tales of closet woe. Why torture yourself about that bright red, sparkly cocktail dress you bought for Christmas parties and regretted even before you had it shortened—and that was three years ago!
My point is that we all make mistakes. Everyone. People who boast that they never make the same mistake twice make new ones all the time. The best-dressed man I know once told me that two out of
three things he bought were mistakes and he only wore the one that wasn’t. I don’t know anyone who can afford to make mistakes like that. But you can afford to take all the things in your closet that make you feel a nasty little “yucch” in your heart, and give them away to the Salvation Army, because, face it, you’re never going to wear them again anyway.
And then, as a reward for cleaning house, you can take a look at the clothes in this catalog and think about owning some of them. Just call us and we’ll get them in the mail to you right away and we pay the shipping. They’re not too expensive, they’re beautifully made, they work, together and separately, and best of all, if you don’t absolutely love them when you try them on, just send them right back to us without excuses and we guarantee your money back. No strings. I want you to enjoy opening your closet door. Clothes should make you feel happy, never, ever guilty.
“Don’t stop reading,” Spider said.
“That’s it … I was just looking for places to cut.”
“Cut one word, change one single word, and you’ll have to answer to me,” Spider said threateningly.
“You … like it?”
“Gigi, it’s fucking perfect! Damn! I wish Billy were here to read it. She’s gonna be so thrilled. Let’s call her in New York and you read it to her over the phone … no, it’s after seven here, after ten in New York, she won’t be in. Oh, baby, you are one talented copywriter! We have to celebrate. I know, I’m taking you right out to a wonderful dinner. You deserve the best, in fact even I deserve a treat for finally figuring out the model problem.”
Gigi lay back in her desk chair, her arms and legs flopping loosely, looking up at him wide-eyed with a flood of relief. She’d been so worried about the tone of the introduction to the catalog that she’d made six false starts in the last few days, and what she’d just read Spider had been written in desperation in the last two hours.
“Oh, I don’t want to go to a restaurant,” she said. “Not now. I’m too wound up to sit still … let me cook, I haven’t had anyone to cook for since Sasha deserted me for Josh, and my idea of a celebration is eating my own food, but not eating it alone.”
“It’s too much work for you,” he protested halfheartedly.
“I have to calm down from my literary crisis, and cooking’s the best way.”
“Okay, but you’ve got to let me help.”
“Done, you can open the wine.”
“That was the best pasta primavera, the best veal with wild mushrooms, the best spinach salad, the best … what was the dessert?”
“We haven’t reached it yet,” Gigi said. “We’ve had seconds on everything, finished a bottle of wine—”
“Whatever dessert is, it’s gonna go to waste, I want to eat more but I can’t. Did you and Sasha eat like this all the time?”
“Even better,” Gigi said, “when we didn’t have dates. That wasn’t often, or we’d have been twice our size.”
“And she left you for a man? No gratitude, that girl, none.”
“But an excellent, indisputable sense of timing.”
“She’s got that,” Spider said, stretching luxuriously and sipping from the glass of brandy Gigi had poured for him. “I’ll grant her that. Talk about striking while the iron is hot.”
“She said it was beshert, that’s Yiddish for fated, destined, written in the stars.”
“I’m inclined to agree with her. Josh is another person, transformed, transfixed, transfigured, transported, all the ‘trans’ words. I never knew a man could be so happy, and even his kids approve of her. Are they going to get married here or back East?”
“They’re not sure yet. The great white wedding of the year will require transportation of one family or another from one coast to another, and there seem to be more Hillmans than Orloff-Nevskys, which I wouldn’t have believed possible. Sasha’s clan are professional nomads, they can be packed and ready to jump on a plane in five minutes. The Hillmans are stick-in-the-muds … so probably here.”
“And of course you’re going to be the maid of honor?”
“You bet your ass. Maid of honor and private-eye catering consultant so they get the best of everything and don’t get persuaded to have anything they don’t want.”
“Don’t you ever relax?” Spider asked curiously, as he observed Gigi. He felt languid, lazy and utterly pleased with life, after making himself comfortable on the inviting, slightly rump-sprung, faded flowered couch that had come with the furnished apartment, but Gigi was still clearing the table, a job she had insisted on doing herself. She moved economically, with the same effortless, quick precision with which she’d prepared their meal. At least Gigi had been persuaded to let him tend the fire as well as open the wine, jobs she’d conceded were men’s work.
How long ago had she been Billy’s newly hatched chick, he wondered dreamily. Five years, six years, more? And now Gigi was more adult, in some ways, than Billy herself, just as capable of the bravura gesture as Billy, if you took into account the differences in their ages and means, just as hardworking when possessed by an idea or a goal, yet somehow Billy had an impulsive quality that Gigi didn’t seem to possess. Billy rushed into things recklessly and sometimes unwisely. Gigi, he’d bet, would proceed with all due dispatch and a lot fewer emotional bruises.
“The last time I relaxed I broke my leg,” Gigi said ruefully, as she came and sat down next to him.
“I’ll take you skiing some day,” Spider offered. “You can’t let one bad experience cheat you out of the greatest sport in the world.”
“I don’t think so,” Gigi said seriously. “That’s one invitation I can be counted on to refuse.”
“Did it hurt that much?”
“It still hurts,” she murmured, so softly that he barely caught the words.
“I’m sorry, Gigi, I’d never let you get hurt.”
“Oh, you’d say that, of course, but you can’t guarantee it, can you?” Gigi shook her head in wise negation.
“I guess not,” he admitted. “Mountains … they’re perilous by nature. You can break a leg standing on the lift line if some dumb snow bunny skis into you.”
“You’ve just convinced me never to go skiing again … not that I needed another lesson.” There was something in Gigi’s voice that made Spider look at her closely. More had been broken than her leg, he realized, more than he’d ever been allowed to know. Gigi, for all her droll, spicy, heartbreaker’s charm, for all the almost arrogant impudence of her merrily shaped mouth, was a private person, a deeply private person he didn’t really understand at all. And he didn’t like that, not one bit, he couldn’t accept it, it went against all of his nature to allow a girl he’d known for years to have a mysterious life he knew nothing about. Suddenly he found that he wanted her desperately.
“Gigi,” Spider said, and held her by her shoulders, “darling Gigi … if you don’t want me to kiss you, I don’t know how I’ll stand it.”
Gigi stared at him. He wasn’t pulling her forward, just touching her lightly with his big, firm hands, leaving the decision up to her. As if she could resist one kiss, just one kiss, from a man who’d been her hero from the day she’d met him, as if she weren’t yearning for the comfort of his arms after all her profoundly wounded disillusionment, after feeling totally bereft and loveless for months. Gigi swayed forward, only two inches, but he needed no other signal to pull her tightly against him and seek her lips.
At the first touch of his mouth, Gigi was stunned by the depth of her need. Spider kissed her over and over, tentatively at first, and then, as she responded, more and more passionately, until she felt herself reeling with delight. She lay in his arms as he bent over her, his mouth the center of her world, his searching, seeking, impetuous mouth, his sighs of pleasure, his eagerness, his arms trembling as he clasped them so tightly around her that she felt he would never let her go. To kiss, to kiss like this forever, he tasted so good, he smelled so good, she wanted nothing more from life, Gigi told herself with half of her mind, as s
he was tossed in a sea of soul-restoring kisses, her arms wrapped as tightly around Spider’s neck as if he were rescuing her from a shipwreck. I’m being swept away, she assured herself, swept away … and she attempted to abandon herself to him, in spite of a dim swarm of disturbing thoughts that refused to be chased out of her mind.
Suddenly, Gigi felt the touch of Spider’s hand at her breast. She held her breath, shocked out of her trance. She moved for the first time since he’d begun to kiss her, trying to sit up.
“No, no, baby, don’t be frightened,” Spider said softly, “don’t be frightened. I said I’d never hurt you.”
“Spider—let me go!”
“But … but.… Gigi, darling, why?”
“It’s wrong …”
Gigi’s inflection was so urgent that he moved reluctantly away from her, until they were both sitting almost upright side by side on the couch, his arms keeping her turned toward him.
“Gigi, how could it be wrong? Don’t you want me?”
“Of course I do … who wouldn’t?” she asked simply. “But it is wrong, don’t ask me how I know, don’t ask me to make sense, don’t ask me for a single good reason, just believe me.”
“Wow,” Spider said shakily, “you want a lot.”
“I know.”
“I don’t have a choice, do I?” His voice was rueful.
“Thank you, Spider.”
“Oh boy.… ‘thank you, Spider’ … you’d better promise me that we’ll always stay very good friends, darling, after I let you get away so easily.” He couldn’t help but smile at her anxious, imploring, half-guilty, but totally defiant expression.
“It wasn’t all that easy for me.”
“Now it’s my turn to say ‘I know.’ I guess that’s some satisfaction. Better than nothing, right? Good night, my baby. Don’t forget to punch the time clock when you get to the office in the morning. And thank you for dinner. An exceptional dinner. Dinner with Gigi—as lovely—and as perilous—as any damn Alp I’ve ever skied in my life.”
Scruples Two Page 50
