I stepped out of the elevator and walked right up to Mike. I vamped a wicked little rumba hip movement ever so slightly as I walked, a maneuvre no one but a brilliantly suspicious dance teacher could have noticed. He didn’t recognize me. “Ready to go?” I asked.
“Frankie?”
“Sorry it took so long. Gabrielle was on the phone and I had to lie a lot.”
“Frankie!”
I looked at him with a hint of lofty amusement, as if he were a younger brother. “Forget something?”
“Huh?” His expression was startled to the core.
Really, men are inarticulate, poor things.
“I asked if you’d forgotten anything,” I said patiently, pulling on my gloves and smoothing the fingers as meticulously as Marlene Dietrich ever had in any of her movies.
“No. I—never mind.” As we walked out of the hotel I had the strong impression that unless I was totally mistaken—and I’m not in the habit of making certain basic errors—I had rid myself of that chaperone tag for once and for all. Even if you give a dog a bad name, every dog has her day, and today was mine.
“Which way?” Mike asked, gesturing up and down the avenue.
“Let’s nip down the Rue Byard and go straight to the river,” I suggested. “It’s a good shortcut, I’m in a mood to walk by the Seine.”
“You seem to know Paris pretty well.”
“I used to come here a lot with my first husband,” I lied exquisitely, walking briskly, which is almost impossible when you’re hearing a waltz in your head. Ever see anybody march in three-quarter time? It can’t be done, but Paris brought out my inner waltz. Could it be a Zen thing?
“First husband?” he asked curiously. “Anybody I know?”
“Slim Kelly.”
“The sportswriter?” he asked, incredulous and impressed.
Now why is it that men react that way? Status by insemination? Do men have any idea how gross their thought processes are? I could have been married to Ted Koppel and they wouldn’t have as much respect as they did for that riffraff, that cur, Slim, a living legend, as he had rarely failed to remind me.
“Yep.”
“If Slim Kelly was your first husband, who was your second?”
“I haven’t met him yet. But I’ve only been divorced a little over a year, it stands to reason that there’ll be a second.”
“And a third?”
“Time will tell,” I flung over my shoulder as I zoomed up the Cours Albert Premier, headed for the Place de la Concorde.
“Jesus, Frankie, do you have to walk so fast?” Mike complained.
“You said you were suffocating in the hotel. I thought you needed a brisk head-clearing walk.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to run past the most exciting view in the world.”
“Whatever you say,” I slowed down. “You may be a little out of shape.”
He glared at me, or at least he started to glare at me, but the combination of my hair and my superior grin—did I forget to say that my teeth are as great for teeth as my feet are for feet?—stopped him in mid-glare.
“Don’t start with me,” was all he said. We continued to walk upriver, while on the other side of the stone quay the Seine, powerful and determined, made its way toward the channel. Across the river lay one of the great Parisian perspectives, punctuated by the Eiffel Tower. The parade of classic buildings, one more beautiful than the next, all of them low and many shades of ancient grey, was dominated as in no other city I’ve ever known, by a great, blowing freedom of sky. I had the same carefree feeling here as I had walking on the boardwalk in Coney Island, although here I traded the sweep of white sand and the ocean beyond for architecture. Fair enough, so long as I didn’t have to choose between them, I thought, as I hit my stride and walked on getting into a zone of pure pleasure.
“Aren’t you hungry yet?” Mike asked.
I stopped and looked around. On the other side of the street was the bird market, just ahead of us was the Ile de la Cité and the towers of Notre-Dame. That meant that somehow we’d managed to walk right past the Louvre, which is like overlooking the Pentagon.
“I could become hungry, now that you mention it. Funny, the last thing I think of in Paris is food.”
“So I’ve noticed. If you don’t watch out, you’ll get as skinny as the girls.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I’ll tell you, if you’ll just stop this marathon. There’s a place to eat across the street and that’s where we’re going.”
“Whatever you say … big … guy.”
“Watch it!”
“Touchy, aren’t you?”
“Just hungry.”
We settled down in a glassed-in terrace of a tiny sidewalk restaurant called Le Bistroquet. I looked at the eloquent menu of hearty country fare.
“They don’t seem to have heard of sandwiches here,” I said.
“That was just a figure of speech.”
“Like ‘zaftig’?” I asked, studying the menu.
“I knew it! That’s why you’re so snippy, isn’t it? Come on, admit it, you’ve never forgiven me for calling you ‘zaftig.’ Frankie, that was a compliment!”
“Not where I come from, airball.”
“Zaftig—voluptuous, yummy, good in the hands, something to grab onto on a cold and stormy night, sexy, fuckable, for Christ’s sake. Fuckable!”
“Stop screaming.”
“Didn’t I just say you’d better not get too skinny?” He pounded on the table. “I meant it, damn it! I married a model once, nobody wore clothes better than she did, but Jesus, there was no comfort factor there, no room for cuddling, not with those elbows. Her hip bones were like swords, her pelvis could give you a serious bruise in a delicate place, and there was no joy at her bosom—it was before implants.”
“So why did you marry her?”
“Damned if I know. In bed she was like a praying mantis made out of iron, a very temporary turn-on. I was just a kid and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll bet anything your second wife was another skinny model. Photographers never learn.”
“I never married again.”
“Smart move.” Break my heart, he didn’t.
“So do you agree to forget about my calling you … zaftig?”
“You remind me of Slim Kelly. He used to call a pizza a ‘Guinea Pie’ and he insisted that I shouldn’t get upset because when he was a kid, Guinea Pie was shorthand for the best food in the world. He just wouldn’t understand that I objected to the expression on principle.”
“I promise never to say ‘zaftig’ again. If.”
“If?”
“You never say ‘airball’ again.”
“Oh, Mike, I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize that bothered you. It’s ancient history, after all. Dearie me, I didn’t mean to be tactless.”
“Look, Frankie,” he said, gritting his teeth, “there’s an airball in every shooter’s life. Bill Bradley says that the hardest thing he’s ever had to do in his life was to forget missing the last shot in the 1971 Eastern Conference finals because for the next twenty years cabdrivers reminded him of it. That’s United States Senator Bill Bradley!”
“Are you trying to tell me that nobody’s perfect?” I asked incredulously.
“You are an interesting bitch, aren’t you?”
“I was wondering if you’d ever notice. Schnoz and all.”
“Ah, shit!”
“I forgive you, I forgive you,” I said hastily, laughing helplessly at the expression on his face. My laugh told him how okay it was. “I can’t listen to another apology and another explanation of how aristocratic my nose is. For the record, I have always adored my nose and fully understood its natural distinction. Got that, Mike?”
“Sometimes I sound like a gold-plated asshole,” he muttered.
“Elegantly put. Shall we order?”
There’s a funny kind of moment that happens when two people who’
ve had a background of mutual put-downs decide to declare a truce. It’s an awkward and silent moment while both of them wonder what they’re going to talk about from now on, since they’ve abandoned the mutual hostility that fueled their relationship.
Mike and I buried ourselves in the menus, frowning dramatically, miming the difficulty of choosing among so many possibilities, pondering the potential of the Bistroquet’s kitchen as if we were two restaurant critics.
“Have you any ideas?” he asked finally.
“I thought, maybe, the stew?”
“Which stew?”
“That’s the problem, there seem to be three of them. Do you have a clue?” I asked.
“A steak and French fries, can’t go wrong.”
“Same for me, but no fries.”
“Just a steak on a plate?”
“With some … green beans?”
“You’ve got it.” He ordered in the kind of French we’d both learned at Lincoln.
“Wine?” he asked.
“Yes, please, a glass of red,” I answered. I never drink at lunch, but what the hell.
After the waiter filled our glasses, he held his up. “Here’s to playing hooky,” he said, gesturing out at the busy street just beyond the glass of the terrace. “If you’re going to do it, this is the place.”
“Is it ever,” I agreed fervently.
“Did you ever actually play hooky?” he asked after we’d clinked our glasses.
“Once, but I told my mother in advance so she wouldn’t worry if the school called to find out what had happened to me.”
“You must have been one reckless, rebellious kid.”
“Yeah.” I giggled at the idea. “In my next life I’m coming back as Madonna. But in this one I was a pussy cat, a good little modern dancer pussy cat.”
“So what happened? How come you’re not still dancing?”
“In my third year at Juilliard I had a really bad fall and wrecked my knees beyond repair. You can dance with bleeding feet but not with bad knees.”
“Basketball either. When they go, it’s over.”
“Is that why you’re not a professional player?”
“God, that is so sweet!”
“No, I’m serious, I’m not trying to make a crack.”
“I know you’re not, that’s what’s sweet about it. Listen, Frankie, I hate to disillusion you, but I was a high school hero, that’s all. There are maybe a quarter of a million high school players as good as I was in the country at any given time. About fifty thousand of them go on to play college ball. Then, out of those fifty thousand, only fifty get into the NBA lottery each year. Fifty rookies, that’s all, get picked by any professional team out of a quarter of a million high school hot shots. And out of that fifty, you may find a couple of dozen guys who are never heard of again and a half dozen who become starters one day. That’s how hard it is.”
“It’s almost as bad as the odds of becoming a top model.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“Does that give you more respect for them?”
“I guess it should,” he said thoughtfully. “But great athletic skill still seems more … meaningful … than looking good in front of a camera.”
“Forget meaningful, think of the sheer determination required to get to the top.”
“I guess you’re right. It’s just that models never seem to be doing necessary work.”
“Mike, that’s not fair. Top models lead fiercely competitive professional lives for which, I admit, they’re overpraised, overindulged and overpaid. But, while that’s happening, they make an essential contribution to a huge industry and they turn it into one compelling, exciting show—like fireworks—for the world, and when it’s over for them, it’s over awfully fast and unless they’ve invested their money wisely, all they have are their scrapbooks. Like basketball players. Think of Claudia Schiffer as the female equivalent of Shaquille O’Neal.”
“Whew! I’m glad Bill Bradley made it in politics.”
“Me too.”
“Do you want cheese or dessert?”
“No thanks, I’d like to wander around a few more hours before the sun starts to set.”
And wander we did, along the river which, with its fourteen major bridges, will always be the most beautiful street of the two-thousand-year-old city. Whenever we were half-tempted to venture into one of the side streets the Seine lured us back, exercising that hypnotic fascination that is irresistible not only to tourists but to people who have lived in Paris all their lives.
We didn’t buy anything except a couple of cups of coffee, we didn’t go into a single historical building, we didn’t enter a gallery or browse in the open-air bookstalls or look at anything more significant than the window of a birdseed store, we talked a lot of nonsense and sometimes a little sense and at the end of the afternoon, when the sun set, I had the notion that we had become something close to friends.
“It’s getting cold,” Mike said. “Let’s get a cab and go back to the hotel for a drink. Maybe there’ll be a message for you there from the missing person bureau.”
“Hooky’s over,” I sighed. “But it’s been a wonderful day.”
“One of the very best,” he agreed. It seemed to me that he sighed too, but I could be wrong. Which would amaze me.
When we walked through the revolving door into the brightness of the Relais Plaza, filled with its usual elegant crowd, sitting at a table near the bar were Tinker, April, Jordan and Maude.
“Well, there you are!” April called accusingly.
“About time you showed up,” Maude frowned at Mike.
“And just where have you two been?” Jordan asked, indignantly.
Tinker had the native wit to squeal, “Frankie, fabulous hair!”
I looked at Mike and he looked at me.
“We went to the Louvre, of course,” he said.
“And I didn’t notice any of you there,” I added severely.
Yes, I think I could say that we had made friends.
14
Justine took a deep, listening breath as she paused in the hall corridor in front of the closed door that led to Loring Model Management. Inside she heard the unmistakable sound of a large group of models, a high-pitched babble, punctuated by outbursts of semi-scandalized shrieks and thoroughly wicked laughter. They couldn’t be allowed to see her like this, she realized in a sudden panic, and dug in the pocket of her coat for her old knit cap. Although it was warmish in the hall she tugged the cap down as far as it would go and still give her a minimum of visibility. She pulled her hair around her cheeks, raised the collar of her white coat and wound a white muffler around her face so that only the tip of her nose was visible. Thus disguised, almost indistinguishable against the white walls of the agency, she slipped into the reception room and skirted the furniture until, unnoticed by anyone, she slid quickly into the refuge of her own office. She breathed a sigh of relief as she reached safety and locked the door behind her.
She knew what she looked like. Lips puffed and swollen, cheeks and chin covered with whisker burn, eyes languid and almost unfocused, with circles under them from lack of sleep, tangled hair that had only been towel dried, since Aiden didn’t have a blow-dryer. She looked utterly fucked-out, completely, thoroughly fucked, up, down and sideways. It felt one hell of a lot better than it looked. They’d never tried to make the Knicks game, they’d never changed the sheets, much less made the bed, they’d barely stopped to eat and she’d resented the showers they eventually staggered into together because soap dissipated the way Aiden smelled.
Stop it this minute, Justine told herself firmly, as she tried to make repairs with the cosmetics in her desk drawer. Nothing worked. She took one of the iced bottles of champagne from the bar, where it was always kept ready for celebrations, and rolled it around on her flaming cheeks, knowing that only a good night’s sleep alone in her own bed would begin to help. And she didn’t want to sleep alone in her bed. Stop it! Justine buzzed her
secretary.
“Phyllis, good morning.”
“Oh! I didn’t see you, Justine. I’ll be right in.”
“No, stay out there and hold the fort. Just slide the faxes from Frankie under the door.”
“There aren’t any, Justine. I just checked the machine.”
“But that’s impossible!”
“I couldn’t understand it either. They’ve been gone four days. I called the phone company to see if there was anything wrong on the lines from Paris to here, but everything’s normal. Do you want me to phone her at the hotel?”
“No, not yet. I’ll tell you when. Anything else I should know about?”
“Another call from Dart Benedict wanting to make a lunch date.”
“Ignore him. Listen, Phyllis, unless it’s an emergency, just take messages for me. I have a lot of stuff to catch up on in here, and since nobody’s up to speed yet, this gives me some necessary time.” Even without the evidence of her face, Justine thought, she’d never be able to explain her outfit to Phyllis. Pink tights and a Giants sweater weren’t her normal agency-head garb. She’d have to rush home at lunchtime and change.
“Will do, Justine.”
The city was slowly digging itself out of the blizzard but most of the side streets were still impassable. However, the noisy chatter outside her door was loud enough to indicate that every model who hadn’t been paid last Friday had managed to show up for her check, mobbing the bookkeepers’ office, clutching the book of vouchers that would indicate exactly how long she had worked, for whom and at what rate. This weekly rite was usually spread over a period of hours late on Friday, but last week most of the girls had gone directly home to escape the storm and today was a holiday for them since the photographers’ studios were only now beginning to attempt to function.
Damn! It was, as Frankie would put it, a snatch convention out there. One of the chief Catch-22’s of the agency business was that the more successful she was—the more bookings her girls had, and the higher their rates—the more she stretched her already frighteningly large line of credit. She could never, never, never relax about her credit, Justine brooded. She tended it as carefully as a prematurely born baby who was the only heir to a throne; kept it constantly warm, free from the slightest contagion and religiously fed on time. Loring Model Management, like all other agencies, paid their girls weekly, but collected far more slowly from their clients. However, every ninety days there was that huge note due to be paid, and recently everyone’s clients had been holding on to their money longer than they ever had since she’d started in the business. It was something to be concerned about. But not until tomorrow.
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