The Rothman Scandal

by Stephen Birmingham

  A couple of years ago, Time magazine published a profile of Alexandra Rothman under the headline “Fashion’s High Priestess” in which the writer described her as an “icy-cool Olympian beauty.” Olympian. Control. The Ice Goddess. She had not particularly cared for that description of herself, though the article was accurate enough:

  Asked to describe her editorial philosophy, Style Arbiter Alex Rothman, 44, says, “I’m in show biz. I’m part of the entertainment industry. Fashion is entertainment. It’s supposed to give the audience a little lift. So is a fashion magazine. I like to think of my readers coming away from my pages whistling, feeling a little better about themselves. Editing a magazine is like tossing a party for good friends. I want my readers to come away from each issue thinking, ‘Wasn’t that fun? Didn’t we have a good time? Wasn’t So-and-so charming? Wasn’t So-and-so interesting?’ But of course, every hostess knows that no party is ever perfect. There are always little flaws that maybe only the hostess notices. Even the best cooks sometimes complain that they can never really taste their food. They have to rely on what their guests say about it. And so, with each issue, I try to throw a better and better party. To do this, you have to keep stretching, honing, fine-tuning, experimenting with all the ingredients of party-giving at your disposal. The impossible goal is to completely captivate every one of your guests, and make them want to come back to your house again and again for more of what you have to offer. To make them want to come back to your house more often than to anyone else’s. That’s why my favorite editorial phrases are ‘vivify’ and ‘fox it up.’”

  Fox it up?

  “It’s a somewhat indelicate expression from the western rodeo circuit,” says Rothman. “It means give it a little extra twist, a little more bounce, a little more spirit—the better to utterly captivate your audience, my dear” …

  Control. And the opposite of control was luck, and luck was love, and love was sacrifice.

  Mel had shown her what it was by hammering a nail into a white wall, and hanging a painting he didn’t really care for. And yet, she realized, she hadn’t heard from him all day. In a kind of panic, she thought: Will I lose him, too, the way I’ve lost all the others?

  In his office on the thirtieth floor, Herbert J. Rothman was talking on his speaker phone while a bootblack applied cordovan polish to the tips of his Lob shoes. Using the speaker phone left both of his hands free to attend to other matters which, at the moment, involved depositing various objects from the top of his desk—a sterling silver paperweight presented to him by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, a silver desk calendar, a silver ruler engraved H.J.R., a silver calculator, a silver water carafe, a Steuben candy jar, various family photographs in silver frames—into a series of packing boxes that lay about the floor. Miss Lincoln, his secretary, had supervised the major packing of his office earlier in the day, but had left the packing of the personal objects—such as the little black address book in the back of his lefthand drawer, which she wasn’t supposed to know about, but did—to him.

  “How is your headache tonight, my darling?” he asked the speaker phone.

  “No better, I’m afraid,” came back the English-accented woman’s voice from the little box. “It’s my nerves, I know. My nerves are bad, Herbert, really bad. It’s all this uncertainty and suspense. I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this, Herbert. I really don’t. Not knowing—”

  “Please be patient, my darling. Can I see you tonight?”

  “I can’t believe she’s not resigned! After that ad in this morning’s paper. But you say she’s not—”

  “Not yet. Not a word. So please be—”

  “I spoke with Mona Potter earlier today. She said that it seems absolutely incredible to her that she hasn’t resigned. She simply doesn’t understand it. She says the woman must have the hide of a rhinoceros. She says—”

  “Mona Potter is on our team,” he said.

  “Yes, but how much longer, Herbert? How much longer must I be kept dangling, while that bloody bitch—?”

  “It won’t be long, my darling. Can I see you tonight?” He lowered his face to the speaker phone. “My cock can’t wait to get in that hot little pussy of yours, darling. Is your hot little pussy panting?”

  She laughed. “Of course it is. But my nerves are totally shot. What if you were simply to give her the sack? You said you could do that, Herbert. Why not just sack her?”

  “I can’t do that just now, darling,” he said. “She’s already spoken with her lawyers. They’ve brought up the matter of her contract. They’re asking questions about certain trust funds. I can’t afford another lawsuit at this point. I’ve told you about the IRS business, and our lawyers say that another lawsuit at this point in time would—”

  “Then what are you going to do, pray tell?”

  “I’m doing everything I can, within certain legal parameters that our lawyers have warned me about, to force her resignation.”

  “But it isn’t bloody working, is it?”

  “Darling, I am following the advice of legal counsel. They have recommended this psychological approach—the step-by-step withdrawal of her perquisites, for instance. I’ve already discontinued her limousine service. I’ve run the ad, exactly as you wrote it—”

  “But nothing’s bloody working! She hasn’t bloody budged!”

  A testy note was creeping into his voice. “Fiona, please don’t nag,” he said. “You’re not pretty when you nag. You’re not attractive when you nag. When you nag, you remind me of—”

  “Your wife? Is that what you’re trying to say? That I remind you of your wife? That wife you say you bloody hate?”

  “Now, darling, I didn’t say that,” he said in a more soothing tone. “I would never say that. I’m simply saying that, on the advice of legal counsel, in light of the IRS situation, we are trying to wear her down to the point where she will be forced, if she is going to retain any sense of pride at all, to submit her—”

  “Oh, fuck your bloody Inland Revenue, and fuck your lawyers, too,” she said.

  “It’s you I need to fuck,” he said. “Tonight?”

  “Please don’t make jokes. Just tell me what’s supposed to happen next.”

  “Well,” he said, looking around at the packing cartons that contained the contents of his office, “there are actually several further steps in our campaign to break this lady’s will. Tomorrow morning, for instance, I’m moving into my father’s old office. That should send a very strong signal to her that Ho Rothman’s regime is over, and that a new regime has been established in its place.”

  “And if that doesn’t work? And who’s to say it will?”

  “Next, I’m going to order painters into her office. The one they call her little jewel box, with all those magazine covers on the walls. I’m going to order all those covers stripped off, and the office repainted. By the way, is there any special color you’d like it repainted? Because that office will be yours one day soon, my darling.”

  “Chinese red,” she said. “And her apartment, too. Don’t forget you promised me I could have her apartment, too, and I’m getting bloody tired of living in a hotel.”

  “That will come next,” he said. “I will have her evicted from ten Gracie. All these things I can do without violating the terms of her contract, and without fear of her taking legal action. You see, our plan is to wear her down, wear her down, bit by bit, day by day, until her spirit breaks, or her nerves snap.”

  “And it sounds like it’s going to take bloody forever. I told you I wanted that terrace glassed in, didn’t I? I can’t stand a bloody open terrace.”

  “You shall have your glassed-in terrace, my darling,” he said. “That is a promise. Just be patient. These things take time. Believe me, I’m as eager to get rid of her as you are.”

  Her tone remained petulant. “Why do they need to take so much time? You know, you told me once, Herbert, that you had enough evidence about her to send her back to that little v
illage she came from in Ohio or wherever it is, with nothing. Evidence enough so she’d never be able to work in this business again. Evidence about that man she killed. Why not use that evidence? Now.”

  “Unfortunately, you misunderstood me, my darling. I didn’t say evidence. I said suspicions. Strong suspicions. But no real evidence. Or, let me say, half a piece of evidence, which is inconclusive. The other half is missing.”

  “Then find it,” she said.

  “Easier said than done, my love.”

  “Evidence can be bought.”

  “But where? From whom?”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “What about Lenny Liebling? They say he knows where all the bodies are buried. Try him. Lenny Liebling can be bought.”

  He whistled softly. “You know,” he said, “you may have something there. That happens to be a brilliant suggestion. That happens to be a suggestion bordering on genius, my darling. You’ve just given me another reason why I want you to be the next editor-in-chief of Mode, as well as the next Mrs. Herbert Rothman.”

  “Then get cracking on it,” she said.

  The bootblack took a final swipe with his polishing cloth across the tops of Herbert Rothman’s shoes, and then tapped the tips of his toes with his fingertip to indicate that he was finished. Herb Rothman slid a five-dollar bill across the top of the desk in the bootblack’s direction.

  “Can I see you tonight, my darling?”

  She seemed to hesitate. Then she said, “No. My nerves are just too shot tonight. Tomorrow night, perhaps. Ring me up and we’ll see.”

  “Oh, my love … my love …”

  “Ta.”

  The bootblack packed his tools inside his combination footrest–squat-box.

  At that same moment, Alex Rothman stepped across a crack in the sidewalk with grass growing in it, looked up, and realized that she was lost. She was in a neighborhood she had never been in before. It was shabby and rundown. Overflowing cans of garbage lined the sidewalks. On the stoops of tenements, young men in sleeveless T-shirts sat drinking beer, and from a fire escape above, using an uncased pillow as an armrest, an enormously fat woman was having an unintelligible, but very loud, conversation with a friend in the apartment below. Out in the street, two unleashed dogs or no recognizable breed chased each other in endless circles. Where am I? she asked herself in terror. Am I losing control of myself? She had no idea where she was, and hurried toward the corner of the block, where surely there would be a street sign to help her get her bearings. “Hey, where’s the party, sweetheart?” one of the undershirted men called to her from a stoop at the sight of this strange, fashionably dressed woman at dusk in his neighborhood. “Yeah,” called another, lifting his beer can. “Wanna party here? Hey, sweetheart, what’s your hurry? I got a party here, sweetheart,” he said, patting his groin, and there followed a number of catcalls and wolf whistles at the woman who had dressed on Gracie Square that morning for Arnold Scaasi’s winter resort collection at the St. Regis Roof, and was now walking through a slum.

  “Aw, she’s old enough to be your mother, Rico,” she heard another voice say.

  When she reached the corner, she saw that somehow, out of control, she had walked eleven blocks in the opposite direction from the Lombardy. She stepped into the street, her arm raised, praying for a taxi.

  And for an awful moment—at least until she saw the reassuring yellow roof light of an approaching cab—she was back in the schoolyard in Paradise, with Dale Smith and the other eighth-graders about to hog-pile her.

  “Ah, good evening, Wally!” Lenny said cheerfully as the black man entered his office and set down his box and began removing his tools and polishes. Lenny extended his left foot onto the footrest. “Now these are crocodile, Wally,” he said. “So pay special attention to any dust that collects in the little ridges of the leather.”

  Wally wielded his brush. “Heard an inneresting conversation up on thirty, Mr. Liebling,” Wally said.

  “Ah,” Lenny beamed. “Tell Uncle Lenny all. And don’t forget that I’m remembering you handsomely in my will.”

  28

  “Forty-six separate coats of lacquer,” Rodney McCulloch was saying almost defiantly. “Forty-six separate coats. That’s what it took to get this effect. It looks like black mirror, doesn’t it?”

  “Extraordinary,” Alex said. “Who did you say your decorator was?”

  “Billy Yardley of Ottawa,” he said. “Ours was the last job he did before he died of the AIDS. Faggot, of course. They all are.”

  This lugubrious piece of information added a sudden mortuary note to the McCullochs’ living room, which, in Alex’s opinion, needed no help in that direction.

  “He also did Margaret Trudeau’s new house,” he added. “I guess that’s a pretty good endorsement, ha-ha-ha.”

  The entire room—two stories high—was done in black and gold. The shimmering black walls, under their “forty-six separate coats” of lacquer, rose to the distant ceiling covered with more black lacquer, from the center of which descended a huge golden chandelier, necklaced with crystal prisms. Flanking the central fireplace, in which an artificial fire flickered behind a glass screen, were two sofas, each easily eighteen feet long, with ormolu gilt frames and covered in black toy plush. Along the buttoned backs of these pieces were arrayed a display of plush toss pillows, alternately black and gold. Between the sofas had been placed an equally long, low coffee table, with a gilded metal frame and a black onyx top. Throughout the room were scattered many—far too many—other pieces of furniture: tables, vitrines, prie-dieux, stiff little Régence chairs, cabinets, bombés, and chests, all of black and gold. On every flat surface in the room were arranged objects—clocks, boxes, pyramids, candlesticks, snuffboxes, inkwells, decorative vases, and statuettes of dancing nymphs and lyre-playing fauns—all of black onyx and vermeil. Four tall east-facing windows were draped with gold cut-velvet hangings tied back with wrist-thick black velvet ropes. The thick sculptured carpet was of a floral pattern of black and gold and, in the center of the long coffee table, was an enormous arrangement of black and gold silk flowers—roses, lupines, gladioli, tulips, hydrangeas, and hollyhocks.

  “He’s certainly been consistent with his color scheme, hasn’t he?” Alex murmured.

  “Sit down,” Rodney McCulloch said, and she settled herself in one of the long black plush sofas, accepting the glass of wine he handed her, and he seated himself opposite her, briefly disappearing behind the bouquet of silk flowers. “Get these damn flowers out of the way,” he said, pushing aside the vase and coming into view again. “Now, you know me. I don’t like to beat around the bush. I like to get right down to brass tacks, and not waste time with any bullshit. We’re doing this for Maudie, right? And we’re going to do it right—right? No shortcuts. Now Maudie’s a good-looking broad—hell, you’ll see that when you meet her—but the thing is, she doesn’t have a hell of a lot of class. I think that’s why these fancy New York broads have been high-hatting her, giving her the snoot. Hell, I’ve seen the way some of ’em look at her. They look at her like they’re looking at a plate of spoiled fish.” He twisted his face into an exaggerated expression of disgust. “But, hell, why should she have any class? She grew up on a beet farm on the plains of Manitoba, where the nearest thing to a big town, Winnipeg, was six hundred miles away. Maudie’s people were poor, dirt poor. Uneducated. Maudie never went past high school, not like you—”

  “I’m a country girl myself, darlin’,” Alex said. “And I never went beyond high school, either. Your wife and I should have a lot in common.”

  His eyes widened. “No kidding? I figured you for one of those finishing-school types. Well, I guess that just proves that what I want done for Maudie can be done, which gets back to Maudie’s problem—no class. Hell, I know she’s got no class, and I’ve told her she’s got no class, and she knows she’s got no class. But what the hell to do about it? That’s what has us stumped. It’s not that I don’t let her spend money. Hell,
Maudie spends a damn fortune on clothes, and I let her, but she still doesn’t look quite right, and that’s where you come in. When I bring Maudie down here, I want you to look her up and down and tell us just exactly what’s wrong with her. Start at the top, with her hairdo. Then go to her jewelry”—he pronounced it joolery—“and then the dress she’s wearing, the stockings, the shoes, the whole thing, top to bottom.”

  “Now wait a minute, Rodney,” she said easily, taking a sip of wine. “Surely you don’t expect me to let your nice wife walk in here and immediately begin telling her what’s wrong with her—a woman I’ve just met.”

  He looked surprised. “Why not? That’s what I’ve told her you’re going to do. That’s what she expects. Your candy opinion. Wasn’t that part of our deal? You get my money to start a new magazine. I get you to class-up Maudie.”

  “To begin with, darlin’, we don’t have a deal. Not yet, anyway. For another thing, your wife is a human being, not a dressmaker’s dummy. If I’m going to help her in any way, I’ll need to get to know her. I’ll need to get my eye in. That’s an expression we use in the fashion business—‘getting your eye in.’ It means getting the feel of the person, her personality, her—”

  “I told you the problem. She has no class. She has no personality.”

  “Come, come, Rodney. Everyone has a personality.”

  “Not her! I ought to know, I’m married to the broad. That’s why we both want you to come right out and tell her, flat out, what’s wrong with her. No bullshitting around the bush.”

  “And if Maudie doesn’t like what I tell her?”