by Judith Gould
“Could this have something to do with it?” Liz unfolded that morning’s Women’s Wear Daily and handed it to Edwina. “You know how Liza hates anyone else but Chic! magazine to get a scoop.”
Knitting her brows, Edwina stared at the WWD headline:
THE NEWGIRL LOOK—fevered, kooky, bright, stylish, snazzy, funny, modern, snappy, girlish, devil-may-care, and young young young.
And under that, a second bank of headlines read:
UPSTART FIRM TO TACKLE UNDER-THIRTY MARKET
Quickly Edwina skimmed the two-column story. Basically, it covered the press releases William Peters Associates, her press agency, had sent out, and touched upon the established mass-market manufacturers Edwina G. was preparing to battle for a share of the lucrative sportswear market—namely the Gap, Esprit, Liz Claiborne, and others like them. But what William Peters Associates certainly hadn’t sent out, and what accompanied the article, were two sketches—her own sketches of two of her designs—sketches that were supposed to be in-house trade secrets!
“Dammit!” She scowled at Liz. “How the hell did they get hold of these?” She shook the paper angrily.
“You know better than to look at me. Obviously, someone here must have smuggled them out.”
“That’s all we need—our designs circulating and being copied before our clothes even get to the manufacturers! We’ll lose our shirts for sure. And our pants and underwear,” she added gloomily.
“WWD,” Liz said reasonably, “has spies everywhere.”
“That I know,” Edwina said testily, and heaved a sigh. “All right, tell you what. Spread the word among the staff that spies won’t last long at Edwina G. Also spread the word that Edwina G. herself will not hesitate to take legal action against the culprit.”
“Will do. But that still doesn’t take care of Liza Shawcross.”
Edwina pursed her lips and tapped them with an index finger. “Oh, yes, it does. Whether by hook or by crook, WWD has gotten their scoop. Call Liza’s secretary and tell her . . . tell her Ms. Robinson would be absolutely delighted to meet Ms. Shawcross for lunch. Since WWD got their paws on my sketches, it’s only fair to give Chic! some scoop or other in order to balance the scales. Yes. Arrange for the car to pick me up at twenty to one. And since you offered, call Marsha Robbins, beg her forgiveness for having screwed up my schedule royally. Tell her I threatened to fire you, if you must. Also, call around to some of the security firms. In the future, we can’t have our designs walking out like those two did. Oh, and check with Leo Flood’s attorneys to see whether or not it’s legal for a security guard to search employees’ belongings when they leave the premises.”
“Anything else?”
“Just get started.”
As Liz left her office, Edwina kicked off her shoes and sank down in her swivel chair. Picking up the phone, she punched out the number for Diamondstein Garment Manufacturing on Thirty-seventh Street. As soon as she got Bernie Diamondstein on the line, her voice turned hard and accusing. “Bernie? Eds here. Listen, what kind of shit are you trying to pull? Those quotes for the prototypes of those ten outfits? They’re way outta line, buddy. . . . When d’you think I was born? Yesterday? . . . What do you mean, as God is your judge, you’re losing money? You’ll lose money all right if Taiwan or Hong Kong gets the business. . . . Damn right I’m serious. Dig out your calculator and go over those figures again. . . . Sure we’ll have lunch one of these days. After you quote me some realistic prices, you thieving gonif. . . . That’s right, you have a good one too.”
Liza Shawcross, the fashion editor of Chic! magazine, had an overabundance of everything—right down to her English rose complexion, top international connections, and an enviable education at one of Switzerland’s finest finishing schools.
She was beautiful, well-groomed, fashionable, and eminently proper-looking—for those who didn’t know better, the perfect role model for twenty million career-hungry women. But what Liza Shawcross was definitely not was a lady. Her heart was tungsten steel, her blood equal quantities of high-octane ambition and superhuman energy, and her mind was a machine with but three distinct motivations— the glorification of herself, the substantial increase in circulation of whatever magazine she worked for (at the moment Chic!, the world’s number-two fashion magazine), and a hunger to wrest the position of editor-in-chief of American Vogue from Anna Wintour, who recently had wrested it from Grace Mirabella, who, in turn, way back when, had wrested it from the late Diana Vreeland.
Such is the National Geographic fate of legendary editors-in-chief: the young fish eats the old fish, which in turn is eaten by an even younger fish, which . . . which, Liza had long ago decided, was not a positive way of thinking about the future.
She sat broodingly at her ragged-edged, speckled granite slab of a desk, her stony eyes glaring at the cover of the Women’s Wear Daily in front of her. Despite the fact that WWD was a daily trade newspaper and Chic! a glossy monthly with a circulation of three million and as many as five hundred pages per issue, over two-thirds of which were some of the most expensive advertising pages sold on earth, Liza Shawcross still couldn’t help feeling a pang of professional envy. After all, designs of any yet-to-be-produced garments were as jealously guarded as the gold at Fort Knox, and WWD, by having gotten hold of Edwina’s, had come up with a scoop. The fact that a fashion magazine, unlike a daily trade paper, is produced many months ahead of time and usually can’t use a scoop if it falls right into its lap, didn’t lessen her pique. She should at least have seen these sketches first!
The very idea that someone else had gotten the jump on her rankled, humbled, and smarted.
Worse, this time she had no one to blame but herself.
I’ve been asleep on the job, she thought. I haven’t been paying attention.
For when Edwina G.’s press release had landed on her desk, she had summarily discounted it as just another run-of-the-mill company starting out—ultimately doomed to fail. And when, a month earlier, Edwina G. Robinson had finally gotten through to her and proposed a lunch date, she, Liza Shawcross, had purposely made it for many weeks in the future, an action designed for a threefold impact: to show muscle, to humiliate, and to seek the requisite obeisance.
But now . . .
Now . . .
Faced with the two fashion sketches in WWD, Liza Shawcross realized she had made one of her exceedingly rare mistakes. True, Edwina G.’s designs were trendy. But they were so originally trendy, and had such a vital visionary impact—such pizzazz—that she immediately knew she had to remedy her mistake at once.
So she had instructed her secretary to call Edwina’s secretary at once and change the lunch date to today. And Edwina, obviously no fool, had wisely accepted.
That done, Liza summoned her immediate staff to her office. She got to her feet, took her characteristic wide-legged stance, and faced them squarely, hands resting on her narrow hips. “I want to know everything there is to know about Edwina G. Robinson,” she told them in no uncertain terms, “as well as the new company she founded, which is called Edwina G. You have until eleven-thirty to dig up what you can. Report back to me then. Now, get cracking.”
Thus dismissed, the staff rushed out to consult microfilmed back issues of the trade papers, make telephone calls, contact their vast networks of spies, and call in favors.
At eleven-thirty on the dot, Liza’s minions marched back into her office to report their findings. Then, after dismissing them without so much as a word of thanks, Liza sat back, lit a skinny black cigarette, and puffed it thoughtfully as she reviewed the information her staff had collected.
Edwina G. Robinson had been a trunk-show drummer for Antonio de Riscal.
Which means she’s got experience and contacts, Liza thought.
Edwina had actually quit her plum job at de Riscal—and in a tiff, it was rumored.
Which shows she’s got nerve. Or courage. Or stupidity. Or all of the above.
She had also raided the top marketing and d
esign talent from first-rate firms in order to create a first-rate staff.
Which shows street smarts, loyalty from former associates, and no small plans for the future.
And Edwina was seriously negotiating with Bloomingdale’s, Marshall Field, and a host of other stores nationwide for major-visibility in-store Edwina G. boutiques.
Which, for a new company, not only shows chutzpah, but proves beyond a doubt that Edwina G. Robinson knows her market. Obviously she has no inclination to sell ten or twenty high-priced items— she wants to sell hundreds of thousands of low-ticket items, and is too smart to gamble on a chic SoHo boutique or fight an uphill and most likely losing battle for the wealthy, devoted clientele of the likes of Geoffrey Beene and Antonio de Riscal.
But the single most important, and unexpected, piece of information was that Edwina was being backed by Leo Flood—the wunderkind of Wall Street—the man with the invaluable knack for backing nothing but winners.
Now, that is more than just interesting, Liza thought, swiveling her chair back and forth. It’s practically proof positive that Edwina G. might be around for a long, long time—and offer some serious competition to Liz Claiborne and Esprit.
The cigarette had burned down to the filter. Feeling it scorch her fingers, Liza reflexively dropped the butt into the ashtray and sucked on her index finger. She barely felt the burn, and her smooth oval face had undergone a metamorphosis from thoughtful to serene. Edwina G. Robinson, it seemed, had everything it took to make a go of it in this cutthroat business. Talent, contacts, vision, a single-minded purpose—and one hell of a heavy-duty backer.
Liza Shawcross decided she would be very nice to Edwina G. Robinson.
Chapter 48
“Darlings!” trilled Anouk de Riscal, the chairperson for the Decorator Showcase Showhouse. “This is it! Get those all-important first impressions!”
Anouk was turned out like a diva on Capri. All in white silk: pleated pants, blouse, jacket, turban. But she wore very black 1950’s-style sunglasses with upswept frames, the black earpieces hugging the outside of the turban instead of tucked inside over her ears. The effect was stylishly bizarre. Very high camp. Very Anouk.
In the rear-facing jumpseats of Anouk’s midnight-blue Rolls-Royce Phantom V, Lydia Claussen Zehme, Klas Claussen’s sister, and her decorator partner, Boo Boo Lippincott, both ducked down to catch their first glimpses of the challenge awaiting them.
Boo Boo and Lydia were dressed in their working uniforms, Boo Boo in a red cashmere wool suit, white silk blouse, and Hermès scarf, Lydia in a double-breasted black wool jacket, cream-and-black-striped skirt, and gold Bulgari necklace.
One look out the window, and Boo Boo went pale beneath her makeup.
Lydia let out a howl of anguish.
For what awaited them here at Southampton’s most prestigious address, Meadow Lane, where some of the world’s most opulent mansions shared some of the finest unspoiled sand dunes and private ocean beaches in the world—was not at all what they had expected.
What both decorating partners had expected was one of those giant shingled mansions straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald—the kind completely surrounded by a deep pillared porch and consisting of two or three rambling stories containing forty-odd rooms—one of those dreamy oceanfront “cottages” erected by free-spending millionaires in the Jazz Age.
But this.
Well, this house was big and rambling.
This house was not, however, by any stretch of a farfetched imagination even remotely reminiscent of the golden age of F. Scott Fitzgerald, rumrunners, and flappers.
Lydia turned slowly to Anouk. “Darling,” she begged fervently, “say it isn’t so! Not this, the site of the old duPont estate!”
Boo Boo, who summered in Connecticut and hadn’t been to Southampton for two summer seasons, lowered her window with the press of a button, all the better to gape, perplexed and in stunned disbelief, at the monstrosity rising so ... so enormously out of the dunes. “If . . . if this is the old duPont estate, then . . . then where’s that marvelous old Georgian house I remember?”
“Gone, darling,” said Anouk. “Gone, like so many of the good things in life.”
“But . . . but this!” Lydia sputtered. “Anouk! Why didn’t you warn us?”
“This” was a grotesque monstrosity, a forty-thousand-square-foot Beverly Hills-style castle somehow lost in the Southampton dunes— with ugly, ugly witch’s-hat turrets and angled towers and steep dark mansard roofs. It didn’t seem to rise out of the ground so much as lurk there, casting ominous shadows.
And it was big, because for the nouveau riche, bigger wasn’t vulgar, bigger was better.
“It looks,” said Boo Boo darkly as the long Rolls crunched slowly over the sandy drifts that obscured the gravel drive, “as though all that’s missing is a carousel and a slide.”
“Don’t look so peeved, darling! Think of the challenge! How many other showhouses have you done that were still in a raw, unfinished state, so to speak?”
“Unfinished?” Lydia asked, alarmed. “How unfinished?”
“Yes. How raw exactly?” Boo Boo piped up.
“Oh, do stop going on and on, darlings!” Anouk said.
A moat, Lydia thought, feeling such mangling, lancinating pain and disgust shooting through her guts that she didn’t think she would be able to get out of the car. That’s what it’s missing. A moat. And a dungeon too. Most definitely a dungeon. Or was there one, and had Anouk conveniently forgotten to mention that too? “It wouldn’t happen to have,” she said, scowling up at the eyesore, “a dungeon? Would it?”
“Who knows?” Anouk trilled laughter. “It seems to have everything else!”
“How many rooms can it have, I wonder,” Lydia thought aloud in horrified awe.
“Enough so that, for once, there needn’t be a lottery, or a drawing of straws, or a waiting list for designers to showcase their talents,” Boo Boo replied tartly. “There’ll be a room for every decorator on the east coast, from the looks of it.”
“Well, at least this explains one thing,” Lydia said morosely to Anouk. “Now I know why you were so cagey when I asked you which particular house the charity committee board had chosen.” She turned to Boo Boo. “Oh, Boo Boo, Boo Boo!” she wailed. “We’ve been had! We’ve been suckered into taking charge of the ugliest house east of Beverly Hills, without even realizing it!”
“And all along we thought it was a plum to be in charge of the showcase showhouse!” Boo Boo grumbled in turn. “We’ve been duped!”
“Duped?” echoed Anouk, pushing her sunglasses up above her forehead. “I might have . . . ah . . . neglected to mention which house on Meadow Lane it was, but . . . ‘duped’? Really, darlings! Isn’t that word a bit . . . hyperbolic?”
“You committed a sin of omission, and if that’s not duping us, I don’t know what is,” Lydia snapped. “All you said was that it was a house on Meadow Lane which was up for sale!”
“And it is up for sale,” Anouk purred sweetly.
“It’s been for sale ever since the township’s been trying to have it torn down,” Lydia retorted.
She and Boo Boo stared out at the offending mansion.
“Oh, Lydia!” Boo Boo moaned.
“Oh, Boo Boo!” Lydia moaned back.
“We can’t!”
“It’s beneath us!”
Anouk raised an elegant eyebrow. “Come, come, darlings. Just thing of it as . . . as a challenge.”
“I prefer not to think of it at all,” sniffed Boo Boo.
“Then do think of the good cause you’ll be doing this for.”
“We’re trying, believe me. Otherwise, you’d be seeing a cloud of dust where we’re sitting right now.”
Anouk wasn’t deterred. “Lydia. Boo Boo. You two know, as well as I, that not only will the showcase showhouse raise tens of thousands of dollars for a very worthwhile charity, but it will also give a lot of new and little-known decorators that all-important first chance at ex
posure—not to mention all the established ones who’ll be lining up to showcase their talents.”
“Lining up?” asked Lydia acerbically. “Or chasing us with broomsticks?”
“You have the most extraordinary sense of humor, Lydia.” Anouk looked at her severely. “Just remember, darlings, it’s all for a very good cause. Think of all those poor innocent little babes born with AIDS. You know that’s what this project’s raising money for.”
“She’s trying to make us feel guilty,” Lydia sighed.
“She thinks plucking at our heartstrings will work,” Boo Boo agreed.
“And she’s succeeding,” Lydia sighed. “Dammit!”
“Now, enough wasteful procrastinating! Off you two go!” Anouk made elegant shooing motions with her hands. “Go . . . go explore!”
“Come on, Boo Boo,” Lydia sighed. “We might as well get it over with. Let’s start the . . . ahem . . . grand tour.” Snatching her sketchpad and a set of blueprints off the seat, she glared at Anouk one last time and then ducked out of the Rolls. She turned and stood there a moment, head tilted back, eyeing the house with hopeless trepidation. Had she not known better, she would have sworn that it was watching her from behind all those blank, forebodingly dark windows.
“You don’t suppose something with fangs is waiting to attack us in there!” fretted Boo Boo with a shudder as she joined her.
Lydia looked at her. “Vampires, if I remember correctly, sleep in their crypts during daylight hours. Since it’s a bright, sunny morning, we’re safe,” she said with false cheer. “From vampires, at least,” she added ominously.
“Maybe,” Boo Boo agreed with a sideways glance. “But we’ll stay out of the cellars, agreed? I am not going to set foot anywhere below ground inside that monstrosity, Lydia. You know how I loathe anything with more than four legs—and a lot of four-legged things as well.”
“You forgot these,” Anouk called out the open back door of the Rolls.
Lydia turned back to the car and leaned down into it, looking at the keys dangling from Anouk’s hand.
