by Judith Gould
Attending two funerals in one day tends to make one all too aware of the fragility, preciousness, and shortness of life.
Throughout Anouk’s eulogies, Edwina kept looking at R.L. and holding his hand tightly.
Edwina G. Robinson Sbacklebury. Silently she tested the sound of it on her lips.
Much too big a mouthful, she decided.
Edwina G. Sbacklebury.
Hmmmm. Now, that did not sound all that bad. In fact, she rather liked it.
She leaned into R.L.’s ear. “I want to marry you,” she whispered while Dafydd Cumberland was recounting an anecdote about Anouk as only he could.
“What?” R.L.’s head swiveled around and his mouth dropped open. “Are you serious?”
Edwina nodded eagerly.
“What I just can’t understand,” he asked, “is why now? Why couldn’t you make up your goddamn mind a long time ago? You could have saved us both a lot of heartache.”
“Because,” Edwina said, “I hadn’t learned yet.”
“Learned what?”
“That life’s too short for us to waste another goddamn day, that’s what!”
The third funeral was in the afternoon and it was an East Village event. Needless to say, none of the mourners from Campbell’s journeyed downtown for this one—especially not Billie Dawn. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged her there.
It was the Satan’s Warriors’ big send-off for Snake. He was going with full biker’s honors to that great big Harley dealer in the sky.
Satan’s Warriors, three hundred strong, had ridden into New York from as far away as Jacksonville, Florida, to pay their last respects to a fallen “bro.”
There was the usual roughhousing. A few fights broke out. A little blood was spilled. There were two or three bad acid trips. Nothing out of the ordinary.
In the late afternoon, the block shook and rumbled as the hundreds of Harleys were fired up. Then, riding two abreast, the New York chapter of the Satan’s Warriors led the parade to the cemetery— following a police sedan that prudently cleared the streets. A modified Harley hog, converted into a three-wheeled trike, pulled Snake’s coffin. The various out-of-town chapters brought up the rear.
The roar of the bikes could be heard for over half a mile. It was a sight not often seen in Manhattan.
The funeral procession truly stopped traffic.
Of the three funerals held that day, Snake’s was by far the largest and most memorable.
Epilogue
Because of the necessary cleanup—and to a lesser degree out of respect for the dead—the black-tie gala for the Southampton Decorator Showcase Showhouse was postponed until the fourth of July. The doors were thrown open to the public on the following day.
By then there was no evidence of the slaughter that had taken place. Once again, every room was in a state of perfection. Luckily, the damage that had been wrought was covered by all the individual designers’ mandatory insurance policies.
Never had a showhouse generated such interest.
Thanks to the relentless newspaper and television coverage, the murder of Anouk de Riscal—New York’s undisputed social queen— and the famous Wall Street whiz who had terrorized the modeling world, that year’s Southampton Showhouse was the most successful in interior-design history.
Everyone was simply dying to see the crime scene of the year.
Hundreds of thousands of morbid curiosity seekers converged on Southampton and trooped through the showhouse, each paying ten dollars for the privilege.
The beautiful rooms went almost unnoticed. It was the crime scene that attracted and fascinated.
By the time the rooms were dismantled, an unprecedented two million dollars had been raised for Children with AIDS—1.6 million more than had originally been anticipated, proving that in a few rare instances, crime not only pays but also, in even rarer instances, pays for a good cause.
Billie Dawn and Duncan Cooper didn’t get married, but they lived happily ever after. They sparked a powerful kind of magic in each other that grew more and more potent as time went by. Everything they did seemed to turn to gold.
One day Billie mentioned in passing that studio lights left her skin rough and dry, while exposure to the elements during outdoor shoots left it chapped.
Without telling her, Duncan locked himself into the clinic’s lab and surprised her by coming up with a fabulous moisturizing lotion. Needless to say he’d developed it without testing it out on animals, but used the latest test-tube technology instead. Billie was delighted.
Another time, Billie mentioned that her skin felt flaccid in the morning.
Duncan came up with—what else?—an antiaging overnight cream that left her skin feeling brand new and tight.
Before long he had gone on to develop a whole line of skin-care products especially for her, and one day, when Billie noticed how extensive her range of personal skin-care aids had become, she mentioned to Duncan that he might consider marketing them.
He said he would, but only if she agreed to advertise them.
She said she would, and they went ahead with it.
The line proved so wildly successful that before long a Cooper Clinic Skin-Care Boutique occupied a prime sales spot on the first floor of every major department store in the country. Before long, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange—to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars.
Perhaps to make up for Billie Dawn’s years of suffering, fate smiled and smiled and kept on smiling.
Thanks to a new surgical procedure, the damage Billie’s reproductive organs had sustained during the Satan’s Warriors’ gang rape turned out to be reparable. In no time at all she became pregnant— and nine months later delivered strapping twin boys.
Billie knew where her priorities lay: motherhood came before career. She took a full year off from modeling, and then worked only whenever she truly felt like it.
Naturally, such is the nature of supply and demand that her reduced schedule only made her all the more sought-after—and expensive.
The money just kept rolling in.
Edwina G. Robinson was on top of the world.
The showhouse hadn’t been the only thing to benefit from the newspaper and television coverage of Leo’s killing spree and subsequent death. As the woman who’d pulled the trigger, thereby ridding the city of its most notorious psychopath—not to mention saving the life of her daughter and supermodel Billie Dawn in the process—she became an instant celebrity. Her picture appeared in every newspaper and magazine and on every television screen in the country. At first she fretted that all the publicity about her would hurt Edwina G. sales, since it was, in effect, negative publicity and she, after all, was an admitted killer.
But William Peters, her press agent, was in seventh heaven. He crowed that the kind of exposure she was getting couldn’t have been bought at any price. And of course he was right. She was invited to be a guest on Donahue and Oprah both, and she agreed to go on—but only if she could return two weeks later to present on-air Edwina G. fashion shows. The producers of both shows agreed with alacrity.
She also fretted about the future of Edwina G., since she had been partners with Leo Flood.
Once again, she needn’t have worried. The fallout was minimal and easily contained, since she hadn’t signed a contract with Leo personally, but with his company, Beck, Flood, and Kronin, Inc. Her contract with them was still valid, the corporation survived, and the new directors of the company, Saul Beck and David Kronin, made only one major change when they took over the leadership of the parent firm—they dropped the “Flood” in its name.
The Edwina G. “fast-fashion” boutiques were a runaway success, and her designs became the latest fad, putting Swatch and Reebok to shame. Within a year the company was doing three hundred million dollars in sales.
But before that happened, Edwina and R.L. officially tied the knot. It was a quiet wedding, with only a few close friends and Hal and Leslie in attendance. The bride wore Edwina G. and kep
t her maiden name.
With marriage came a change in their living arrangements. Edwina promptly put the San Remo co-op on the market, and R.L. sold his half-a-town house. Together they went house hunting—and since only the sky was the limit, they decided to have their cake and eat it too. They bought a double-width town house on the same block as the Cooper Clinic. It had a garage, an indoor lap pool, and a huge double-height ballroom.
Edwina put dibs on the ballroom and immediately transformed it into an at-home office.
Within a year she branched out and designed a complete menswear line. It sold like hotcakes. Next she took to designing bed sheets and an entire line of home furnishings as well.
Just like Ralph Lauren.
Hallelujah Cooper had no problems dealing with a famous mother, a famous father, and a famous common-law “stepmother” of sorts. Especially since, just as Olympia had predicted, she went on to become the newest sensation to hit the modeling scene since Brooke Shields. Despite her bizarre style, her young freshness appealed.
Before long, the disarming face with the punk hairdo appeared on all the major magazine covers on both sides of the Atlantic. Hallelujah was asking—and receiving—an annual six-figure income. And that was by working only part-time.
If Hallelujah had two complaints, they were that she had to schedule all her modeling assignments around her school hours and that Edwina insisted that the income she earned stay in her trust fund. “You might need it in the years to come, kiddo,” her mother kept warning her. “You never know . . .”
However, Hallelujah had absolutely no complaints about her mother’s marriage to R.L. or her father’s relationship with Billie Dawn. She loved both families equally, and shuttled, blissful with happiness, between them. She adored the Cooper twins and genuinely liked having Leslie Shacklebury as a brother.
She and Leslie got along famously.
Of course, it was only a matter of time before she had to do something about changing his nerdy look. After a while it just wasn’t all that fun or exotic anymore.
So Hallelujah took it upon herself to accompany Les on an East Village shopping spree, where she picked out everything for him. That done, she dragged him to her favorite punk haircutter down on Astor Place.
The change in Leslie was immediate and startling. Now he sported slick 1950’s greaser hair, cool aviator frames instead of his ponderous horn-rims, carefully torn and frayed Levi’s, and a scuffed motorcycle jacket of his own.
“You are like totally tubular!” Hallelujah exclaimed.
But best of all, Leslie commuted between the two households with the same comfort and ease as Hallelujah.
Needless to say, Ruby never changed. The only difference was that she now had two youngsters she could chew out about looking “like something the cat dragged in.”
Olympia Arpel retired from the hectic world of representing models. She sold her company to Eileen Ford, who inherited Billie Dawn and Hallelujah Cooper along with all the other models, and bought a condominium in Hawaii.
Since she had always been single and lived by herself, no one was more surprised than Olympia when she met and fell in love with her new next-door neighbor, Irving Ginsberg, another New York expatriate. He was a retired sixty-year-old widower who had, until recently, been the manufacturer of better dresses. The strange thing was, for two entire decades he and Olympia had lived within shouting distance of each other in Manhattan—and never met until both retired to Hawaii.
Irving Ginsberg proposed and Olympia accepted. Both promptly put their condominiums on the market and together bought a large oceanfront house with its own private beach and a picture-postcard view of Diamond Head.
Olympia loved having a man around and didn’t miss the New York rat race one bit. Paradise agreed with her.
But she never gave up chain-smoking.
Fred Koscina discovered that years of being overweight and eating high-cholesterol foods made for a deadly combination. While chasing a fleeing homicide suspect on foot, he suffered a massive coronary and spent twelve touch-and-go hours in the emergency room.
When he was finally released from the hospital, he bore a foot-and-a-half-long chest scar which testified to where his ribs had been cracked open for surgery.
Returning to active police duty, he discovered the department had transferred him to a low-pressure desk job. That, and his having to give up junk foods and start exercising, did it. He took early retirement, got his P.I. license, and opened a one-man detective agency.
He didn’t mind tailing errant husbands and cheating wives— anything was preferable to pushing paper or watching daytime soaps.
Still, he missed the job terribly. Once a cop, always a cop. It was in his blood.
Detective Carmen Toledo’s star rose rapidly in the ranks of the police department. Being both Puerto Rican and a woman gave her an edge; by continuing to promote her, the NYPD hit two minority birds with one stone, and she became their most highly visible token Hispanic.
Foolishly, for a while she actually entertained the belief that her swift promotions were the result of performing exceptional police work. When she found out differently, she got furious.
Nobody was going to play her for a fool—not even if it was to her advantage. For Carmen Toledo was possessed of an abundance of stubborn pride.
She quit the department, and her first order of business was to call up her old partner.
“Boss, you think you could use a lady private eye?” she asked Fred Koscina.
“Hell, yes,” he replied without a moment’s hesitation. “You wouldn’t believe how many divorce-happy schmucks with cheating spouses I got to turn down for lack of manpower.”
Within a year his agency’s business volume doubled, then quadrupled. He had to hire more detectives.
And Fred Koscina, P.I., became the Koscina-Toledo Investigative Agency, Inc., which did have a certain ring to it.
For Carmen and Fred both, it was almost like old times.
Almost.
Antonio de Riscal continued to rule the top of the high-fashion roost—and he wanted to stay there. He truly missed Anouk, but that didn’t mean he had to mourn her forever. Although his sexual peccadilloes were for the most part overlooked, he knew that to really ensure his position he couldn’t remain a widower. Even the ionosphere of society had its share of homophobics; more important, there was the rest of the country to consider. In order to keep generating publicity—the kind of publicity he wanted— he knew that he needed another decorative woman to complete his sleek image.
A wife. He needed another wife to be his beard for the entire nation; another Anouk, who would put up with him and not be sexually demanding.
Antonio had known Marissa Carlisle for years. She was thirty-five, widowed, worth half a billion dollars, and a killer beauty. She was also virtually anorexic, deadly funny, delightfully evil—and a discreet lesbian. Just like Anouk.
And, like Anouk, she and Dafydd Cumberland fast became bitches-in-arms.
One year to the day after Anouk’s murder, Antonio and Marissa announced their wedding. The ceremony, of course, was just the type of fairy-tale event that publicists love. The bride wore—what else?—a ravishing de Riscal wedding dress embroidered with seed pearls and topped off with a lace-and-pearl veil and a thirty-foot train.
If any woman had the kind of balls Anouk had possessed, it was Marissa de Riscal, and if Antonio was fire, she was gasoline. Together they ruled the pinnacle of Manhattan society, and stayed there, uncrowned emperor and empress of the greatest city in the world.
It was just like old times.
Naturally, it was the de Riscals who gave the parties of the year and made hitherto unfashionable things fashionable—proving that Marissa, like Anouk before her, was the hostess with the mostest.
And the first big party they gave was in Edwina’s honor—to celebrate Edwina G.’s runaway success. It was held at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and consisted of cocktails, a formal sit-down dinner, and
a fairy-tale ball.
All of society turned out for it, a number of them surprised and others simply curious that it should honor a fellow designer—especially an ex-employee.
But Marissa, ever manipulative—an Anouk to the core—possessed the kind of social brilliance only a true bitch—like Anouk—could have appreciated.
“Darling, isn’t it lovely, the success Edwina is enjoying?” Marissa kept telling everybody, showing how wonderfully kind and forgiving Antonio could be.
And it was during that fairy-tale ball that, looking around, Marissa de Riscal became aware of just how scarecrow-thin most of the women were, how unhealthily bony, all sharp jutting angles and slanting hollows. And there was Billie Dawn, pregnant once again and positively radiant as she danced the night away with Duncan Cooper. How good she looked!
Hmmmmm. Marissa de Riscal considered. Just a wee bit of flesh, a tiny bit more, can be quite, quite nice . . . and so different and healthy-looking. But not too much. Just a tad. Perhaps she would try to gain four or five pounds and be a little bit different . . . perhaps even start a new rage.
Because, she thought, comparing Billie Dawn to the dancing skeletons all around, you really could be too thin. But, she thought smugly, her arms happily wrapped around Antonio, you could never, never be too rich.
# # #
JUDITH GOULD is the author of 18 sensational novels, the most recent being GREEK WINDS OF FURY. SINS, her first novel, was the basis of the famed CBS television series starring Joan Collins and shown during "Sweeps Week," upon which TV advertisement rates for networks depend. In 1993, Ms. Gould was the recipient of Romantic Times Magazine's REVIEWERS CHOICE AWARD for "Best Contemporary Novel" for FOREVER. Her novels have been translated into 24 languages. After living in Manhattan for over 25 years, Ms. Gould currently makes her home in the historic Hudson River Valley, and is at work on a new novel. She can be reached at www.judithgould.com, and her backlist is being mounted in e-book format.
