“We had dinner one night, when you were in New York, right after I’d finished the introduction copy,” Gigi said rapidly, as she stood in front of Billy, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “Dinner to celebrate. Afterwards, we were talking and … then, Spider kissed me … for a few minutes, and then we stopped. That’s all that happened, a few kisses, but it dissolved some barrier between us—probably that of a giant generation gap—and we decided that we were going to be real friends from now on. Whatever you’ve noticed, simple friendship is what it boils down to.”
“Do you and Spider still have dinner together?” Billy asked, her face rigidly nonjudgmental. She was horrified as she heard how prying her words sounded, but Gigi answered easily.
“Sure, from time to time, when we work particularly late, usually with Tommy, but sometimes alone. He hasn’t tried to kiss me again and he never will.”
“How can you possibly sound so sure? Never is a big word. Never is a long time.”
“Because I told him it was completely wrong!”
“Well,” Billy said briskly, getting up from the table. “That’s that, then. Shall we take a stroll around the orchid house? My Jill St. Johns are just starting to bloom.”
“Billy, come back here and talk to me,” Gigi pleaded. “I want you to know why it was wrong.”
“It’s none of my business, Gigi, you don’t have to explain anything to me,” Billy said stiffly, with the nearest approach to coldness that Gigi had ever heard in her voice, but she turned toward Gigi and sank back into her chair. Gigi too sat down and took Billy’s hand, holding it tightly.
“Oh, Billy, I need someone to talk to so badly. I haven’t got a soul in the world anymore I can discuss things with but you, and I miss it! When I first came here, a little bedraggled mess, and you took me in and changed my life, there was nothing I couldn’t say to you, nothing I couldn’t bring to your doorstep, but after the fire at Scruples, when you went off to Europe—since then we just haven’t been together, just the two of us, in one place long enough to have any time alone. This is the first time in I don’t know how long—” Gigi bent her head to hide her emotion, the tears that were visibly rising in her eyes, and Billy found herself smoothing the bright strands of hair and making little comforting noises, as if Gigi were sixteen again, and wrapped in towels.
“You can talk to me about anything, darling, you know that,” Billy murmured. “I thought that Sasha had taken my place … it’s only normal, you’re the same generation.”
“No one could ever, ever take your place, Billy, don’t you understand that? And I couldn’t possibly tell Sasha about Spider. She’d think it was funny or she wouldn’t really hear me, she’s living in another dimension, Josh is the only thing that matters to her now.”
“I’m listening. You matter to me.”
“When Spider kissed me, after the first shock, because I didn’t know he was going to do it, he really took me by surprise, there was a moment when it seemed okay and then … Billy, the only way I can think of to describe it is that the room we were in was full of people. We weren’t alone. Spider wasn’t really all there, it wasn’t me he really wanted, I realized that almost immediately. I can’t guess what he was thinking, but I knew it was just a combination of circumstances that caused him to kiss me—a good dinner, wine, a fire, all the stuff that leads up to a kiss, but he hadn’t planned it. For example, if you’d been in L.A. instead of in New York, it would never have happened, it would have been the three of us having dinner … in fact, the first thing he thought of after I read him the copy was to call you so you could hear it, but it was too late in New York. I’m trying to say that there’s nothing inevitable between us, there never has been, and for me, kissing should be inevitable, not just because you’re at a certain place at a certain time and it seems like an amusing or interesting option.”
“How did you ever get so serious?” Billy said in wonder. “In this day and age, Gigi, a little kissing isn’t supposed to be something as momentous as ‘inevitable,’ for heaven’s sake.”
“A little kissing with Spider … it isn’t just like a little kissing,” Gigi muttered, “it’s like a lot of kissing.”
“I’ll bet it is,” Billy said dryly. “But you talked about a room full of people. I don’t understand that at all, unless you mean Valentine.”
“No … no,” Gigi said, considering deeply. “I didn’t think he could possibly get me mixed up with Valentine. I was so lonely that night, I was feeling so bummed out, I just needed some human contact, I guess. But in that roomful of people, Valentine wasn’t there at all. I think Spider’s mourned her, and he’ll always adore her memory, but he’s in another part of his life now. I guess what I meant was that.… the other people were mostly all the dozens of girls, the models he’d just been telling me about, the gorgeous girls he used to have flings with, before Valentine, and then, mainly … the most important thing for me was someone else … someone I met in New York. It didn’t work out, to put it mildly, but I can’t get over it. I know I have to, I tell myself it’s just a question of time, but while Spider was kissing me I couldn’t stop thinking of … this other person. That’s why I knew it was wrong.”
“Zach Nevsky,” Billy said with gentle authority.
Gigi gaped and turned red. “Sasha told you! Well, she doesn’t know fuck-all about it! Nobody does!”
“Sasha only told me that she was mystified by your relationship with Zach. Remember, Gigi, when we were looking at her catalogs before Christmas? That’s the only time she mentioned him, because she thought it was very strange that he hadn’t called all week to find out about your leg.”
“Then where’d you get that crazy idea?” Gigi demanded violently.
“Zach told me.”
“What!” Gigi was stricken with utter confusion. “Why are you smiling like that!” she cried accusingly at Billy. “There’s nothing to smile about. Zach talked to you? I don’t believe this! But whatever he told you, it’s a lie!”
“Oh, Gigi, you and Zach are so pathetically screwed up. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing,” Billy gasped, biting her lips.
“Billy, if you don’t stop turning this into a joke, I’ll … I’ll …”
“Now just shut up and listen to me. Zach came to see me a few days after the ski accident. He decided I was the closest thing you had to a mother, and he wanted to clear things up—”
“Oh, sure, make excuses,” Gigi shouted. “How dare that vile, promiscuous, sickeningly hypocritical sex fiend, that tin-pot dictator who doesn’t give a shit about anything but himself, have the nerve to try to lie to you!”
“Because he loves you. He loves you. Gigi! Don’t go off like a rocket again, Zach does love you, I’m convinced of it, and I know exactly what happened when you found him with that blonde. Will you shut up and listen to the whole story and just not interrupt until I’ve finished?”
“A pack of lies! Zach can talk anybody into anything, but I can’t believe you didn’t see through him!” Gigi was sputtering in her fury.
“Are you going to listen, or aren’t you?” There was something in the combination of Billy’s inescapably dancing eyes and obdurate, uncompromising attitude that made Gigi finally subside into grudging, unwilling silence.
“Okay,” she said unbendingly, and listen she did, as Billy told her everything that had been said from the moment Zach had introduced himself to her in the hotel lobby.
“Gigi, don’t you see that it wasn’t Zach’s fault?” Billy pleaded as she finished the story.
“I don’t know that it happened exactly like that … but, yes, I suppose it’s not impossible … I guess,” Gigi responded, as if she were talking to herself, thinking intently. “The one thing I’m sure of is that Pandora is quite capable of anything. That girl … I hate the idea, but I suppose that if he woke up … with her like that … he probably couldn’t have stopped. And up on the mountain—Zach did say he loved me and I believed him …” Gigi spoke reluctantly, but her fa
ce was opening like a flower in the sun after a shower of rain. “Why didn’t he tell me himself?”
“Would you have listened to him then?”
“I wouldn’t have let him in the door.”
“There hasn’t been a single opportunity to tell you sooner, or I’d have grabbed it,” Billy said. “It isn’t the kind of ‘oh, by the way’ sort of thing you drop into a conversation, and anyway I thought you’d forgotten him, consoled yourself with Spider.”
“I’ve never stopped brooding about Zach, that poor dumb idiot.” Gigi stopped for a fit of the giggles. “ ‘Intromission’? He actually said he was in a ‘posture in which intromission had already occurred’? Do you suppose he made up that word?”
“I checked the dictionary,” Billy said, “it’s in there all right, it means penetration.”
“I’d never have believed he knew such a.… dainty way to describe it.” Gigi doubled over in an unstoppable outburst of mirth. “Anyway,” she said when she’d recovered, mopping at her face with her napkin, “Spider’s too old for me, for heaven’s sake, he’s as old as …” she stopped in confusion.
“As I am,” Billy calmly completed the phrase.
“I don’t mean you’re old, you know that, but you’re almost exactly the same age as Spider, you’re the same age my mother was, even if you look twenty-seven, a too-thin, nervous twenty-seven, and Spider could have been my father, give or take a few months, if he’d started early … it’s not the same as Sasha and Josh at all. Josh could be her father theoretically, but she couldn’t possibly be his daughter, if you see what I mean.”
“You make your point perfectly.”
“Oh!” Gigi said. “Fathers. I almost forgot. I had dinner with mine the other night, and he asked me to ask you to put in a good word with Susan Arvey about Fair Play. He wanted you to tell her it was a movie that should be made, use your influence with her.”
“I simply do not believe the sheer callousness of that man,” Billy said flatly.
“I thought it was odd, his asking you for a favor, you’d be the last person—but apparently the Arveys really have him over a barrel. He’s never admitted that anything was going badly before, he even told me that they were only four million dollars apart on the deal, but it might as well be forty. That’s the first time he’s ever mentioned money to me, he likes to act as if it’s raining down from heaven. I’ve never seen him so deeply worried. I told him I’d pass on the request, but I couldn’t say that I thought you’d do it. Under the circumstances.”
“I’ll think about it,” Billy said briefly. “Now what are you going to do about Zach? Will you write or phone?”
“Oh no,” Gigi protested, shocked. “Not out of the blue. He’s coming out for the wedding next month. When I see him, I’ll know. What if he’s found somebody else?”
“Want to bet on it?” Billy offered. “I’ll give you interesting odds, if he’s found somebody else, you get a million. Cool cash. If he hasn’t, you owe me one dollar. You’ll never get a better bet than that.”
“It would be a nice consolation prize … but I only bet on cards, dice and horses. Men are too tricky.” Gigi looked at her watch. “My God, Billy, this has been the longest lunch in history. I promised Sasha she could bring her cat to spend a few days at my place. He’s developed a nervous condition, he’s losing his hair from severe jealousy of Josh—she wants me to see if I can live with Marcel. I don’t think it’s going to work, but I’ve got to get home because she’ll be coming by with him any minute. You don’t happen to want a cat, do you?”
“If I did, it wouldn’t be Marcel. Give me a kiss, you darling,” Billy said tenderly. “We must never, ever lose each other again, Gigi, not for a minute.”
After Gigi left, Billy went restlessly up to her room. It was rather late in the afternoon, but there was a sky punctuated by small, puffy pink clouds that reflected the setting sun. She couldn’t possibly stay indoors with so much on her mind, she realized, and she quickly made her way back outside, heading for her walled garden.
She strolled around it, searching for a dead leaf to pick off a geranium, or a drooping rose that needed to be pruned, finding nothing in all the swaying sheaves of bloom that needed any attention. “Too many gardeners,” she murmured to herself, taking a single fully open white rose and studying it absently as she thought over her complicated conversation with Gigi. The usual clarification of her thoughts that she hoped would come to her in the secret garden didn’t take place. She couldn’t see far enough in front of her, Billy decided, to know which way she was headed, but there was one definite thing she could do, only one, and she decided to get it over with immediately. With a look of resolution she made her way back to the house, a huntress pursuing her prey through the forest, repeating to herself that there was no time like the present, never any time quite like it. On the terrace she picked up a phone.
“Mr. Orsini, please,” she said to the operator at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
“Hello, Vito, it’s Billy,” she said rapidly. “Fine, thank you. Look, Gigi asked me to call Susan Arvey. I’m sorry, but I’d rather not. I can’t stand that woman, never could. There’s something about her that gives me the creeps. I don’t trust her. I know.… I know I used to see a lot of her, that doesn’t mean I liked her, and frankly I don’t think she ever liked me. She just liked knowing me, being my hostess, I can tell the difference. What’s the situation on the film? Come on, Vito, don’t waffle, just give me the bottom line, the whole story, as nasty as it comes. Never mind why I want to know, if you don’t want to talk about it I’ll hang up now. Right. Right … I see. How much is the grand total? Eleven? Is that final, or is that a budget you can live with? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. A definite twelve? You’re sure it won’t be thirteen? All right, I’ll finance the picture … yes, of course I mean the whole thing, you don’t think I want to be in business with Curt Arvey, do you? I’ll call Josh tomorrow and you can go see him in the afternoon, get a deal memo, so you can go ahead with preproduction. He’ll work out all the gruesome details, my profit percentage and all that, just don’t put my name on it. Oh, Vito, for Christ’s sake, don’t thank me, I’m not doing this for you. Of course I liked the book, that doesn’t have anything to do with it either. Why? Because I’ve always dreamed of being in show business, isn’t that enough for you? What? You ‘insist’ on knowing? I don’t fucking believe you! All right, I’m grateful to you. You don’t merit my gratitude, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. You have the great, good, totally undeserved luck to have Gigi for a daughter. No, I’m not doing it because she asked me, don’t you think I saw through that ploy? I know you, Vito, remember? I know exactly how your mind works. It’s because Gigi is, because I’ve had her in my life, because I’ll always have her, because I love her … and if you hadn’t been her father, she wouldn’t be here. Just accept it. No, you don’t owe me anything … you still don’t get it, do you, Vito? I owe you. Oh, Vito, just one thing, there’s a terrific New York theater director named Zach Nevsky—oh, you know about him already? I want him to direct the picture. Get him out here as soon as possible. Tomorrow if you can. Yes, Vito, that’s all the interference I’m planning on. But it’s a condition. A definite condition. I don’t care if he’s never used a camera before—get a smart cinematographer—you’ll be planning the shots yourself anyway. No, Vito, he’s not ‘uncredentialed’—he knows me. Fine, I’m glad we can agree. Good-bye, Vito, just don’t call to let me know how things are going.”
21
A fashion show?” Billy asked coldly, repeating Spider’s words. She hadn’t seen him since her lunch with Gigi until this minute, when he burst into her office filled with his new idea. “I’ve never even considered that.”
“I hadn’t either, it came to me in the middle of the night,” Spider explained. “I’d been dreaming about the catalog, and when I woke up the whole thing was as clear as if it had already happened: we’d show only Prince’s clothes for the four capsule collections, each collection s
hown complete in itself, and then all the separate pieces reassembled and put back together in the endless different ways you’ve been working on, to demonstrate how versatile they are. We’d need at least eighteen runway models working at top speed, maybe more, considering Gigi’s accessory ideas.”
“It’s not impossible, every last one of the samples is finally here, but who would we be putting on the show for?”
“That’s the point,” Spider said, his enthusiasm flaring sharply. He’d slouched on the corner of Billy’s desk, lanky and graceful, but now he leaned forward eagerly. “The cream of the fashion press, the top editors of the big papers’ style sections, the wire service ladies, the fashion editors of every magazine women read, and TV of course, the fashion editors of the national daytime morning shows, the afternoon talk shows, and the people who book segments on the big local morning shows in the top markets—there are literally hundreds of people important enough to invite.”
“Invite?” Billy said, sounding almost quenched by the magnitude of his plans. “Invite where?”
“I thought we’d have a junket, a whole weekend, so we can fly them all here to Beverly Hills, plan some special events, and then show the Scruples Two Prince collections on Saturday night at a gala party, maybe on a studio soundstage—we’d get professional party planners to work that part out—but do you like the idea?”
“Give me a split second to think about it,” Billy said, leaning her elbows on her desk and supporting her head on her fingertips. It was well past seven o’clock on the Monday evening following her lunch with Gigi, and she’d been working without a break all day, munching a sandwich as she supervised the unpacking of the precious, finished “counter samples” that had arrived by courier after one of Prince’s chief assistants had spent months making sure that each sample was reproduced exactly to Prince’s specifications and to the quality of his original sample.
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