by Judith Gould
“Fair enough,” Edwina nodded.
“. . . Subparagraph B,” Olympia went on, “gives Hal an out should she ever wish to quit or change agencies. As you can see, termination cannot be effected without written notice, and will not become official until a year from the date a certified letter to that effect is received. I take it you find that acceptable?”
“Sure!” Hallelujah piped up, her tawny eyes sparkling. “Just gimme a pen, will ya?” She held out a hand.
“Not so fast,” Edwina advised, pulling Hallelujah’s hand back. “Don’t be so anxious to rush into things that you might later regret.” Looking at Olympia long and hard, she shook her head. “No,” she said firmly, “I’m afraid I don’t find that acceptable at all.”
“Ma!” Hallelujah hissed out of the side of her mouth. “Like what are you tryin’ to do? Ruin everything for me?”
Edwina turned to her. “On the contrary,” she said, “I’m merely keeping your best interests at heart.” Leaning back in her chair, Edwina casually crossed one shapely leg over the other and looked across the desk at Olympia. “So far,” she told her, “I may be Hal’s sole client. But that,” she added shrewdly, “doesn’t mean she won’t be modeling for anyone else as time goes by, does it? Now, should that be the case, and should she decide she doesn’t like it here, I don’t want to see her locked into an entire year of representation. Right now, a year represents an entire thirteenth of Hal’s young life. No way am I going to let her get trapped like that.” She shook her head emphatically. “Sorry.”
Olympia reached for a celery stick and took a crisp bite. “It’s this agency’s standard procedure,” she pointed out.
“Perhaps. But we both know that contracts are made to be changed. That’s why we’re here going over it now.”
Olympia waited silently.
“Taking into consideration the fact that Hal’s a minor,” Edwina went on slowly, “I really don’t think changing the year to a three month period is asking for too much.”
Olympia sighed. “I really don’t like establishing precedents. They can be dangerous. If word leaks out”—she gave Edwina a knowing look—”half the girls under contract to me are liable to break their agreements.”
“Yes, but word doesn’t have to get out,” Edwina said resourcefully. “And besides, look at what you’re gaining—a model who’s already guaranteed a major client.” She paused. “Me.”
Olympia exchanged her celery stick for a cigarette and considered what Edwina had just said. “All right,” she sighed at long last, clicking her lighter and exhaling a plume of smoke. “Just this once I’ll make an exception.” She leaned forward, eyes narrowed, and used her cigarette as a pointer. “Just remember. Not a word about this to anyone.”
“Don’t worry,” Edwina said. “Mum’s the word.”
“Good. Now, is there anything else?”
“As a matter of fact,” Edwina said, “yes. I also want an addendum to the effect that Hal has the final say on all assignments she’s sent out to. And that includes any work she might do for Edwina G.”
Olympia squinted against the swirling cigarette smoke. “In other words, you want to give her full veto power. Is that it?”
Edwina nodded. “That’s it exactly.”
Olympia ground out her cigarette and sighed heavily. “There we go again.” She shook her head in exasperation. “Establishing another dangerous precedent.”
“Maybe. But due to Hal’s age, I don’t want to see her exploited. For instance, what if, God forbid, she models for someone else besides Edwina G., and some pervert should put the make on her? Or she feels totally uncomfortable someplace? Don’t forget, she’s still in her formative years. If she isn’t happy working, then I prefer she doesn’t work at all.”
“All right.” Olympia leaned back in her chair and steepled her fingers. “I don’t like it, but I can understand the reasoning behind it.”
Edwina smiled. “Then we’re all set. As soon as you make the changes, messenger the contracts with the addenda to my office. I’ll see to it that they’re signed and returned to you at once.”
Olympia smiled in return. Then she half-rose, reached across the desk, and shook Hallelujah’s hand enthusiastically. “Welcome aboard, young lady,” she said with mock gruffness. “You’re about to hit the big time.”
“D’ya really think so?” Hallelujah was all goggle-eyed.
“Do I think so? No, I don’t think so. I know so.” Olympia wagged a finger at her. “You mark my words. If I’m not mistaken, and I rarely am, you’ll do for today’s generation what Brooke Shields did for hers. You just wait and see.”
“You’re kiddin’!” Hallelujah’s mouth dropped open. She turned excitedly to her mother. “Ma! Like can’t you see me plastered like all over?” She sighed happily. “I could die!”
“Now that we’ve come to an agreement,” Olympia said, “I think it’s only fair to mention that Hal won’t come cheap.”
“I should hope not,” Edwina replied. “That’s why I brought her here. Like I said, I don’t want to see her exploited.”
“Oh, she won’t be,” Olympia assured her. “Not in any way, shape, or form. You have my word on that.”
“I’m delighted to hear it.”
“Then I suppose you’ll also be delighted to hear her going rate?”
“Which will be?”
“Oh, I was thinking of starting her off in the neighborhood of one thousand dollars.”
“Per day?”
“Per day!” Olympia snorted. “Per hour”
“What!” Edwina’s voice nearly failed her. “Tell me if I heard right. You did say a thousand dollars? Per . . . hour?”
“That’s right,” Olympia replied calmly, “I did. And that goes for anyone who wants to use her. You were right earlier, you know. My gut instinct tells me that everyone from Guess to Esprit will be fighting over using Hallelujah as a model. She’ll be a sensation.”
“You mean”—Edwina’s voice cracked—”I’ll have to dish out a thousand per hour too? For my . . . my own daughter’s services?”
Olympia nodded matter-of-factly. “That’s exactly what I mean. Remember,” Olympia reminded her, “you yourself said you didn’t want to see her exploited.”
“A thousand smackers an hour!” Edwina repeated weakly, shaking her head in disbelief. She turned to Hallelujah. “On the way home, I’d say the least you could do is to treat your poor fleeced mother to a drink. Or better yet, several anesthetizing rounds.”
“Ma! With what? My looks? I mean, I didn’t earn anything yet, y’know.”
Chapter 65
From Riva Price’s Gossip-at-Large: SOUTHAMPTON GEARS UP FOR THE SHOWHOUSE
Hot off the Manhattan-Southampton society burner: Yes, boys and girls, once again it’s Showcase Showhouse time out by the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea, where the old rich, the nouveau riche, and the wish-I-were rich swill their martinis. The house this year is that multizillion-dollar oceanfront mansion which goes on forever. You know the one.
When the 600—at least—terminally chic guests turn up at the showhouse Friday for the gala opening, their $500-a-head tickets will go a long way. Besides seeing the beautiful rooms with only 599 of their closest friends, they will also be treated to a fashion show, where Edwina G. Robinson, who never decorated a room, will unveil her very first collection of startlingly modern clothes. If you haven’t gotten your tickets already, forget the commute. They’ve long been sold out, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Oh, and just in case anyone gets eye-weary, there’ll also be a cocktail dance in a tent. And to satiate hungry appetites, Glorious Food will truck out such goodies as smoked-salmon flowers filled with truffles, lobster-and-artichoke salad, and pheasant stuffed with leeks and pecans. Renny of New York is going to do oodles of pink peonies, and the tables will be draped in pink moire, and the chairs will be slipcovered in the same. And thousands of tiny pink lights will twinkle, twinkle, twinkle! Can’t you jus
t see the Manhattan convoy already? Now you know why there’ll be a traffic jam.
And speaking of food: there’s much ado about the dessert. It’s a giant cake decorated to look like the house. My, my. What won’t they think of next?
Anouk de Riscal of the Antonio de Riscals is the general chairperson of the evening, which benefits Children with AIDS. The cochairs, who also did up two of the most beautiful rooms, are Boo Boo Lippincott, who will show up with her husband, Gideon, and Lydia Claussen Zehme, who won’t show up with hers. As she’s been telling anyone who listens, her divorce battle with Duke P. Zehme is getting so ugly she cries herself to sleep every night. All together now—boohoo!
The highs and mighties who are expected to turn out en masse include such important types as Virginia Norton Rottenberg, Angie Gordon, Doris Bucklin, that ageless sex kitten Sonja Myrra, Dr. (Mr. Elena) Gregorietti and his lovely soprano wife, superphotog Alfredo Toscani, the ubiquitous Dafydd Cumberland, the handsome R. L. Shacklebury, Klas Claussen, and—oh, my goodness gracious—the check-bouncing Makoums. Don’t you hope they paid for their tickets with cash? I didn’t say that. Naaaah.
And before I forget, be on the lookout for dear Billie Dawn, the yummy supermodel—she’s the one staring out at you from this month’s cover of Harper’s Bazaar. Olympia Arpel of Olympia Models donated the services of all the models, including Billie, for the fashion part of the evening’s events. The beauties are already heading out to the Hamptons with Edwina because only practice makes perfect. I’ll let you know if Billie’s handsome beau, plastic surgeon Duncan Cooper, will be joining her. If he is, his presence is sure to cause quite a stir—can’t you just see all his lifted ex-patients trying to avoid him? Oh, my my my. Half the women in town are praying he won’t remember them. Do you suppose that’s why they call them stretched grins.
Ah, those Hamptons.
Tomorrow, read all about the behind-the-scenes battles that took place among the various decorators. And you thought walls couldn’t talk! Well, they can. Oh, hahahahhahahaha.
Chapter 66
The showcase house was finished. It had taken half a year of planning and months of labor, but inside and out, miracles had been wrought.
The mansion sparkled with new paint, and all around it, the sandy site among the dunes had been tamed by the landscape designer. A circular drive had been laid. Flagstone walks and exterior lights installed. A blanket of sod trucked in and fitted seamlessly. Full-grown shrubbery, trees, and flowers planted.
Everything looked as if it had been there forever.
Out back, three terraces overlooking the ocean were the product of three different decorators, each of whom treated the spaces as though they were rooms, thereby blurring the distinction between indoors and out.
One terrace had become a lush green solarium with a geometric marble floor, slatted white roof, statuary, and marble garden seats and tables.
The second had a boldly stenciled plank floor, a white canvas canopy that was whipped by the breeze, and dark Victorian wicker furniture brightened with flowered chintz.
The third was open to the sun, a riot of potted petunias, geraniums, and miniature roses. Turn-of-the-century wrought-iron tables and chairs, antique lace pillows and tablecloths, and paintings on easels created the ambience of an artist’s picnic—right down to the squeezed tubes of oil paint and color-smudged palette and brushes.
Down by the beach, a pitch-roofed yellow-and-white-striped tent had been done up to look like a maharaja’s exquisite changing room by the sea. Pennants waved from atop, and the inside was lined in sumptuous silks and spread with Persian rugs. It even had a rock-crystal chandelier, an antique stand-up steamer trunk opened to show exotic clothes on hangers, and, behind a carved screen, a metamorphic ivory-inlaid chair that turned into a traveling toilet.
That was the outside of the mansion.
Inside it, eye-popping elegance had been whipped up by the decorator-magicians.
The grand entrance foyer had a celestial theme. The swirling marquetry floor was inset with bronze medallions depicting the signs of the zodiac, and the center table held a bronze statue of Hercules with an astrolabe on his shoulders. The domed blue ceiling far above had gold-leaf stars connected by silver-leaf lines showing the heavens on a midsummer night’s eve. And the sweeping staircase, with its wrought-iron art-deco banister, was decorated with stylized flaming bronze suns and various configurations of the moon. Joyce Jillson would have felt right at home.
Room after room, hall after hall, landing after landing—the various decorators, for once unhampered by the wants and needs and restrictions of flesh-and-blood clients, had let their imaginations and budgets run wild.
There were two regal living rooms—one formal and one informal. Two dining rooms—again, one formal and one informal. A breakfast room. No fewer than three kitchens—the splendid main kitchen, complete with baronial fireplace, rush brooms, twig baskets, and subtle hand-painted bouquets on the cabinets, and two small but exquisite efficiency kitchens tucked in out-of-the-way places on two other floors. An English-country-house library. Lydia Claussen Zehme’s study. Boo Boo Lippincott’s Napoleonic ballroom, with Empire furniture upholstered in poisonous-green silk, spear-tipped curtain rods, and authentic crossed swords along the walls.
Altogether, six bedrooms had been decorated, each in a completely different style and with beds that ran the gamut: metal campaign beds, cocooning four-posters hung with hundreds of yards of fine fabrics, even twin pint-size bassinets with puffy layers of voile beside two English nursing chairs.
Nothing had been overlooked. Not the pots and pans in the kitchens, the lavish fresh-flower arrangements in all the rooms, the fluffy towels in the baths, nor the silver bowl of pistachios on an end table in one of the living rooms. A few scattered nut shells even gave the illusion that someone actually lived there.
One could have moved in A.M. and entertained P.M. It was that complete. All was elegant. All was perfect.
Not even Joyce Jillson could have predicted that this dream house would turn into such a house of horrors.
Chapter 67
Twenty-two hours before the grand opening, the sky was black and star-speckled, and the temperature had plunged. The partial moon illuminated high, fleeting clouds, and a low misty fog hovered just above the ocean, wafting along in mysterious tendrils and current-led swirls. The incoming breakers surged to the shore in phosphorescent ranks, and spray exploded upon the slanting beach.
In the Decorator Showhouse, amber lights glowed in all the windows, giving the illusion that the turreted mansion was a brightly lit ocean liner washed up upon the dunes.
Edwina came back into the ballroom, hand in the small of her aching spine. She was bleary, and every bone in her body demanded rest. Even comfortably dressed in her electric-green one-piece Danskin and Capezios, it was all she could do to limp around. She felt as if she had been on her feet for days—which she had.
Everything ached.
“Are they gone?” Hallelujah asked. She and Billie Dawn were sitting on the edge of the naked plywood runway that bisected the length of the ballroom. Tomorrow it would be draped with felt. Tomorrow.
Right now, tomorrow seemed far away. And then again, dreadfully near.
“Yes,” Edwina replied, flopping wearily down between the two of them. She crossed one leg over the other and massaged a tingling foot with both hands. “Lucky girls, those models,” she said wistfully. “What I wouldn’t give to have gone with them. And I always thought models had it so tough!”
Hallelujah eyed her mother sympathetically. “Ma,” she said softly, “I’m really sorry. Okay? I didn’t realize runway modeling took so much practice. I know I’m holding you up. If you want, I can drop out.”
“Absolutely not.” Edwina smiled at her. “We’ve already come this far, so we’re going to go on with it. A Cooper and a Robinson never quit, remember that. I suppose I’m doing penance for something I must have done, though what it is, I really don’t
know. God really must work in mysterious ways.”
“It shouldn’t take us more than another two hours to work the kinks out,” Billie Dawn said gently. “Hal’s a quick study.”
“Two hours . . . two hours,” Edwina sighed. She lay back on the plywood and stretched painfully. “What’s two more hours, heaven help me? A lifetime, my darlings. A lifetime.”
“I know, Ma! Why don’t you go upstairs and spread out in one of the bedrooms? Yeah! Then, when we’re done, we’ll come and get you.”
Edwina seriously considered it for a moment and then shook her head. “No, no, I can’t do that. Anouk’s roaming around somewhere to make sure we don’t mess anything up. She’s responsible for us, and if I spread out on one of those heavenly made-up beds she’s liable to lynch me. No, your ma’s place is down here with you. The rest of the house is absolutely off-limits.”
Hallelujah dangled her legs from the runway. “Yeah,” she said morosely, “I suppose you’re right.”
“It’s awfully quiet in here, isn’t it?” Edwina was staring up at the cove ceiling of the room, viewing the six giant crystal chandeliers from directly below. Shivering suddenly, she sat up and rubbed her upper arms briskly. “I hate big old empty houses,” she said, as if to herself. “Especially at night. They give me the willies.”
“We are in a brand-new house, Ma. Remember?”
“Maybe, suggums. But it feels old and creaky to your poor overworked ma. And no matter what they’ve done to gussy it up, it still looks like a haunted house, at least from the outside. Doesn’t it? Thank God there’s not a full moon. I don’t think I could bear being alone in here if there were.”
“Yeah, but you’re not alone. There’s the three of us, right? An’ there’s Anouk. That makes four of us.”
