by Judith Gould
She raised her head with a jerk, her eyes widening. She did have that special someone of her own! Now, why hadn’t she thought of him before? And to think she’d been avoiding him! Why, he probably knew more about what sold in stores than she did. At least, given his vast retailing experience, he should.
Suddenly something came to life deep inside her mind.
Rack after rack of her clothes in one of the biggest department-store chains in the country. . . .
The image was so real she had to blink to remind herself where she was.
Even so, the small shelf-lined study seemed to expand into a vast glittering space. She could almost see the silvery steel escalators moving silently up and down, carrying shoppers laden down with bags . . . could practically feel the electrifying energy of acquisition, the sheer joy of shopping!
As though in a dream, she watched eager hands rippling through glorious garments—racks and racks of Technicolor coats and skirts and dresses . . . each one more outrageously beautiful than the last . . . each containing her own discreet label.
Whispery gooseflesh danced up and down her arms.
Hadn’t R.L. offered to back her?
Yes, but that had been some time ago.
But hadn’t he offered it more than once?
I can’t, she told herself. It’s a matter of pride. Of principle.
You can! You have to. All it takes is swallowing a little of that unaffordable pride of yours. Don’t you want to design? Don’t you believe enough in yourself? Well then, for God’s sake—take the plunge! Do it!
Taking a massive breath, she reached for the telephone with trembling fingers, picked up the receiver, and punched the eleven digits for R.L.’s office in Boston.
“Mr. Shacklebury’s office, good afternoon,” a clipped voice answered.
“Hello. Is this Sally?”
“Yes, ma’am,” R.L.’s secretary said.
“This is Edwina G. Robinson. Is he in?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Robinson. He’s out.”
Out? Edwina’s heart sank. “Oh,” she said. “I see. You wouldn’t happen to know whether or not he’s expected back today, would you?”
“Sorry, but he didn’t say.”
“Well, thanks anyway. I might try him at home.”
“Ms. Robinson, I wouldn’t do tha—”
But Edwina had already broken the connection, her pencil speed-punching the number of R.L.’s mansion on Beacon Hill.
“Please be there,” she prayed aloud, the prospect of talking to him and taking the career initiative of her life electrifying her every nerve. Just by calling him, she felt suddenly exhilarated, freed from all the emotional and professional baggage that had weighed her down. It was silly, of course, utter nonsense, but she actually felt—could it be?—yes, rejuvenated!
The sound of the first ring in her ear was like an added shot of exquisite adrenaline.
Chapter 32
With her head held high and a towering white towel with the blue monogram RLS wrapped around her head like a turban, Catherine Gage came out of the shower dripping water. Another monogrammed towel was tucked, Dorothy Lamour-style, around her like a sarong. She made a production of loosening it in front of R.L. and very slowly dabbing herself dry.
He watched her wordlessly. It seemed to take her forever to dry off and sort through her clothes, which he had collected from downstairs while she showered. Her every movement suggested she had all the time in the world.
First she sat down on the bed and, eyeing him from under lazy eyelids, lifted one shapely leg high and smoothed her hose with slow, deliberate movements up her left calf.
R.L.’s chest tightened with a band of angry tension as he watched her. Couldn’t she hurry up? Catherine didn’t belong in his life. She was a lethal species, a man-eater as hungry for sex as one of those grinning Pac Man heads happily gobbling up everything in its path. It was a mistake to have brought her here; a very bad mistake. Quite possibly, he considered, it might well be one of his worst mistakes— but certainly not as bad as having let Edwina break off their relationship fourteen years previously. That, he now knew, had been the single worst mistake of his life. He should have put up a fight; no way should he have let her slip through his fingers.
Hands in his trouser pockets, he paced the room impatiently, like a newly caged animal seeking escape.
“I do wish you’d stop that restless pacing, darling.” Catherine looped her brassiere straps over her shoulders. “Why don’t you sit down and keep still?”
He ignored her and she busied herself with her brassiere, reaching behind her back and fastening it before adjusting it up front.
The bedside extension phone trilled softly.
R.L. automatically stopped pacing and glanced over at it, but he made no move to cross the room and answer it. Not with Catherine sitting right there beside it. Whoever was calling would just have to try again. As far as he was concerned, until he got Catherine out, the entire world could be put on hold.
Half-smiling, Catherine reached out with deliberate mocking grace, her dangling fingers poised above the vibrating receiver.
“Let it ring,” he said quietly.
Raising her eyebrows at him, she let her fingers drop and pick up the receiver. “Shacklebury residence,” she announced crisply. “Who is this?” She listened for a moment. “Who? Oh, I’m soooo sorry, darling, but he’s . . . well ...” She glanced across the room at R.L. and winked lewdly. “He’s terribly indisposed at the moment. Can’t it wait until I’m gone? I’m nearly dressed now. I’ll tell him you called. Edwina, did you say your name is?”
R.L. jerked as though he’d been scalded. “Give me that!” he thundered, and lunged across the room to grab the receiver out of her hand.
But Catherine ducked, evading his reach. “Got to go now, darling, the tiger’s reawakened!” she said quickly into the phone, and started to hang up.
R.L. managed to wrest the receiver out of her hand. “Eds!” he bellowed desperately into it. “Edssss!”
But it was like howling down an empty tunnel, and with a chill, he knew that irrevocable damage had been done. He could only hear a distant click, loud and final as a prison door slamming closed.
First came anger.
“Damn you, R. L. Shacklebury!” Edwina slammed the receiver down. “Damn you to eternal hell!”
The bastard! The two-timing, penis-led schmuck! Why couldn’t men think with their brains? Why were their brains always at the end of their dicks?
Then came hurt.
Deep inside her a sob formed, burst to the surface like a racing bubble, and erupted, loud and plaintive. Tears stung in her eyes, but she blinked them back valiantly. She wiped her sniffling nose with her wrist. For a long time she just stood there, shoulders bent and shuddering, breasts heaving convulsively. She felt so empty inside, so drained. So hollow and used and discarded.
“I wish you’d reconsider and spend the night.”
So he’d said that first night, after that awful dinner at the de Riscals’.
“Eds, baby. I love you. I need you ...”
So he’d whispered another time as he’d half-lifted her for a kiss and they’d clung to each other like magnets.
“You’re divorced, I’m divorced. We’re free, Eds! Even our kids get along. Why don’t we take the big plunge? God Almighty, if you only knew how I love you . . .”
His words reverberated and thundered and screeched discordantly.
LIAR!
The word exploded in her mind like a bomb.
Abruptly one arm shot out and blurred as she gave the nearest stack of magazines a savage shove. The Vogue stack teetered like a high-rise in an earthquake before slowly collapsing against the next stack, Harper’s Bazaar, which wobbled into the British Vogue right next to it.
Slowly, like lumbering dominoes, the Stonehenge of magazines collapsed in upon itself, a giant, gratifying pile of destruction.
Chapter 33
It had been an exha
usting day.
In the morning Duncan Cooper, M.D., had done a nose job and a face lift, and had followed up on three inpatients and two outpatients.
In the afternoon he’d done a malar implant, a tattoo removal, two dermabrasions, and a liposuction, between which he’d also had consultations with four prospective patients to discuss possible surgery.
The only breaks he’d taken were the hour he’d spent with Hallelujah at lunch and the twenty minutes he’d taken right before, rushing over to the fashion shoot at Central Park to see Billie Dawn.
Not surprisingly, Duncan was worn out—but not worn out enough to wheedle his way out of his date with Billie Dawn. No way would he do that. Hell, a man would have to be lobotomized and gay to stand her up.
His workday finished, he spent a good three-quarters of an hour in the second-floor bathroom of his town house adjoining the clinic. He whistled while he showered. Clipped, filed, and buffed his already short nails. Shaved extra carefully for the second time that day. Slapped on expensive after-shave. Surprised himself by digging out all those boxes of toiletries—birthday and Christmas presents from former girlfriends—which he’d never used. Considered a new hairstyle. Constantly checked himself out in the full-length mirror from all angles, puffing out his chest, twisting his torso this way and that. He ruminated on taking the time to go back to the gym. Tried, unsuccessfully, to think of something besides his date.
It was impossible.
Billie Dawn. Hot damn. What was it about her that sent him floating on such an intoxicating cloud of euphoria? Was it her innocence—that unbelievable but refreshingly true fact that she didn’t know the extent of her own beauty? Or was it her inner radiance and that way she had of making a guy feel like he was the only man in the world?
He felt like kicking up his heels and dancing. Hell, he felt like he owned the world—look out, Donald Trump!
Duncan headed to his dressing room and spent another three-quarters of an hour getting dressed—something he normally took little interest in, something that usually took him less than five minutes. But he didn’t normally go out on dates with Billie Dawn. She deserved a sharp dresser. Come to think of it, she deserved more than that. Tom Cruise, maybe. Or Mel Gibson.
Scratch that. A Duncan Cooper would do nicely.
He tried on four different suits and six different shirts before finally settling on a blue-gray, double-breasted plaid wool jacket, gray gabardine trousers, a cashmere polo shirt in dark turquoise, and supple blue-gray loafers with paper-thin soles No tie tonight. He wanted to look casual. Laid-back.
An hour and a half of toiletry and dressing later, he headed down to get his car. There was a bounce in his step, a swagger to his move.
Since buying the town house on the other side of the clinic, he had enjoyed that rarest of New York rarities, an honest-to-goodness private garage, and he had celebrated by buying a brand-new arrest-me-red Ferrari. Now, climbing into it, he glanced at his watch. Bulgari—sporty stainless, not mid-life-crisis gold—showed him he had over half an hour before he was expected at Billie’s. Why not tool around the neighborhood in the meantime? Flex his automotive muscle?
Why not indeed?
He inhaled appreciatively. The Ferrari smelled of glove leather and high-octane gas—macho, macho. The low-slung seat gave him a headlight’s-eye view of the road.
Vrooommml One light tap on the gas pedal, and the tiger under the hood roared and the car leapt forward.
His response was practically orgasmic. All that growling horsepower was like a rush.
He turned right and headed over to Madison. He could feel the engine vibrating the sleek chassis, and grinned to himself. His usually soulfully gentle eyes glittered demonically. This was it. Encasement in a metal-and-glass shell like a knight of old inside armor. He slapped Janis Joplin into the cassette player.
At the red light at the corner of Seventy-second and Lex, a voluptuous brunette in the backseat of a cab eyed him covetously. He grinned up at her, winked, and the moment the light changed, was off like a rocket.
Jackie Stewart, eat your heart out!
He sang along with Joplin. He was king of the streets, lord of the asphalt jungle. Driving the Ferrari was, he considered, almost, though not quite, as good as sex.
He wondered happily: Am I regressing? Is this car a mid-life-crisis toy? A chrome penis?
Well, fuck it. He enjoyed the car, and whatever anyone else might think, he wasn’t about to let it bother him. Let the spoilsports pick him to pieces. He’d always been his own man, and he wasn’t about to change that now.
It had been an exhausting day.
In the morning Shirley Silverstein, a.k.a. Billie Dawn, had done an in-studio photo shoot for Maidenform bras.
In the afternoon she’d done the location shoot in Central Park for Vogue. Then Olympia had whisked her off to a meeting with the creative director of the Fink, Sands, and Sanders ad agency and Fritz Steinert, the vice-president of Mystique Cosmetics.
In between, she’d had to meet with the fashion editor of Vogue and the art director of a hair-conditioner manufacturer.
The only break she’d gotten was the few minutes during which Duncan Cooper had dropped by the park. Lunch had been a container of low-fat yogurt grabbed on the run.
Her feet ached from being on them all day; her neck was tender from hours spent craning it; her lips ached from alternately smiling brilliantly and pouting seductively.
Not surprisingly, Billie Dawn was worn out—but not too worn out to wheedle her way out of her date with Duncan Cooper. Nothing short of being at point zero of a nuclear blast could have made her break it. Appealing looks, a great personality, those soulful liquid eyes, and that head of cute, unmanageable yellow-gray curls—he was everything a girl could want, wrapped up in one perfect package. If he wasn’t one in a million, she didn’t know who was. Besides, last winter, when she had been Humpty-Dumpty, he had put her back together again.
Her workday finished, she hurried home to her high-rise sublet on East Sixtieth Street.
The phone rang as she was letting herself in. She let it ring; she wasn’t expecting any calls, and besides, the answering machine was on. Whoever was calling would have to leave a message. She had better things to do with her time right now—like getting ready for her date with Duncan Cooper.
She sailed into the bathroom and lavished special care on herself. She was buzzing pleasantly. Sang while she douched. Hummed while she blow-dried and combed her waist-length hair. Whistled while she filed, buffed, and relacquered her long, already perfect nails. Concentrated quietly while she shaved her slim smooth legs for good measure.
Her grooming completed, she dabbed chill fingers of perfume behind her ears and into the cleft of her smallish breasts. Studied her nude self in the mirror. Fretted, as usual, over her lack of cleavage. Considered wearing her hair in a different style. Ruminated over applying more makeup than usual, and then decided against it. Tried, above all, to think of anything but her date.
Which was like winning the Lotto jackpot and not giving it a second thought.
Her eyes were glowing. She sighed with breathless expectation.
Duncan Cooper, M.D.—wow. What was it about him that electrified her every nerve ending and sent tingling shivers dancing up and down her spine? Was it his uncomplicated ease—that natural way he had of dealing with everything around him—or was it his natural warmth and that sincere way he had of looking at her and making her feel like she was the only woman on earth? Whatever it was, it made her feel like extending her arms and dancing around and around. Heck, if she got any happier, they’d have to cast her in a Disney movie!
Billie Dawn repaired to her bedroom and felt her joy vanish the moment she slid aside the doors of her closet. A mountain of clothes—clean and pressed, clean and unpressed, mostly dirty— tumbled out, threatening to bury her. With a cry of dismay she jumped back to avoid the avalanche of fabric. And then just stood there and stared. Nothing, nothing more than a row
of wire hangers, alarmingly empty wire hangers, hung on the clothes bar! Could that be? She slapped her forehead. Damn! She’d been so busy lately that she’d forgotten to lug her clothes to the cleaner’s. She had been intending to for weeks now, but something had always come up.
Now she could just see herself in some horribly expensive restaurant, all rumpled, while flickering candlelight picked up every wrinkle and stain. Duncan would think her a pig—and who could blame him?
Stifling a cry, she fell to her knees and frantically attacked the clothes. Somewhere in that jumble there had to be something she could wear—didn’t there? But dresses, skirts, pants, blouses—the longer she pawed through them, the more panicky and bewildered she became.
Finally she bit her lip savagely and sat back on her heels. What could she wear? The few clean clothes she managed to sort out were all what she called “in-and-out clothes”—sensible, no-iron outfits she wore on modeling assignments that she could get on and off in a flash. They were hardly the romantic sort of thing one wore on an important date. Nothing she owned seemed appropriate—or did the least to inspire her. Despite her now-astronomical salary, she had yet to spend money on any really good clothes. And why should she? Up until now, she had hardly gone anywhere. Oh, the movies, the odd ballgame, maybe a casual neighborhood restaurant. . . but that was it. Period. Besides, after spending all day putting on and taking off some of the world’s most beautiful clothes, who wanted to come home and have to do the same? Home was for rolling up one’s sleeves and pant legs and relaxing. In fact, now that she thought about it, she’d gotten to the point where every time she changed clothes, she felt like she should be getting paid for it.
