“How do I know? My only child happens to be a thirty-four-year-old woman I’d never seen in the flesh until yesterday.”
“Let’s forget the kid problem, then. Why worry about something that can’t happen unless we get married first?” she asked, with a glint of victory in her voice. How many more objections would he raise, she wondered, before he realized that love was too rare to turn his back on it?
“Jordan, you have a way of brushing aside reality that amazes me.”
“You mean because I haven’t brought up the racial problem?”
“What?”
“The racial problem,” she repeated, implacably.
“Jesus … your parents … as if I weren’t too old, I’m also the wrong race.”
“That’s the racial problem?”
“What else could it be?” he asked, puzzled.
“You can be as oblivious to reality as I can, when you want to be, Jacques. If you don’t even recognize it, then there isn’t any racial problem, as far as I’m concerned. My parents would come to appreciate you … eventually … so long as you didn’t try to call my father ‘Dad.’ I’m leaving now. Just promise me one thing, think about everything we’ve talked about. That’s all I ask. Think about it tonight. Sleep on it. And remember, you haven’t managed to say you’re not in love with me and that’s the only thing that matters.”
Jordan rose, in a liquid movement, and vanished rapidly from the Ritz Bar, taking all the magic in the room with her.
28
I found that I was slipping into my usual airborne reverie of where-and-whither almost as soon as we took off for New York in GN’s 727 private jet.
Could it really be only a little more than two weeks since we’d left New York for the Lombardi spring collection? I actually had to count from one date to another on my fingers, just to make sure, because that trip, so much of which had been interrupted by Maude Callender’s interrogation on the habits of models, seemed to have taken place an eon ago. In another world. On another level of existence.
Looked at from one point of view, the last two weeks had been like an extended, real-life episode of the “Love Boat.” I’ve watched a few cable reruns of that show, when I needed to choose between mindless entertainment or brooding myself to death. At the beginning of the hour a whole bunch of strangers meet, and by the end of the show, they’ve all paired off. I guess life no longer imitates art, but TV, except that our version hasn’t worked out as neatly as I remember it.
Did people on the “Love Boat” ever get off at a port and never get back on? That’s what’s happened to Tinker. She came to the hotel yesterday afternoon and informed Justine and me that she would be staying on in Paris. Maybe, just maybe, drug-induced freak-outs are good for some people, the way electroshock therapy has come back into use for clinical depression, but the experience with Goddess had left Tinker feeling, in her own words, “born yesterday.”
Looking happier and more relaxed than we’d ever seen her, Tinker told us that she wasn’t sure if she’d ever model again, but that if she did, it wouldn’t be in any continuation of her search for identity, but solely for the bucks.
“I’m over the proving-who-I-am-by-winning thing,” she said. “The beauty contests, the contest for my mother’s affection, the runway walk contest, the contest for Marco’s attention, the contest for the Lombardi contract and, God knows, any kind of dance contest. I know you two probably think I’m just saying that to put up a good front, because I didn’t win, but you’ve got to believe me, something snapped—not just my mind—last night, and I felt a load of gigantic pressure just blow away, pressure I hadn’t even realized I was under. Maybe falling on my face in public was exactly what it took.”
“Then what are you going to do with yourself?” Justine asked her.
“I’m going to stay here, get myself a studio apartment, or even live in some little hotel if I can’t find anything else. I’m in love with Tom but living with him … no, that’s over for now. I fell into it much too quickly because I needed him. I adore Tom but I’m not ready to get into a whole domestic thing, and now that the spring collection’s over, that’s what it would turn into. I didn’t come to Paris to play house and sit around watching him paint, and I don’t believe he’d really want me to … he’s into a different trip. Another thing, maybe you haven’t noticed, but he can be awfully possessive. Possibly that’s going to work out, possibly not, but right now I’m giving myself time to simply find out what I need, as opposed to what other people expect of me. Even Tom, or especially Tom.”
Under Tinker’s bright glance there was a resonance that had a density rare in an eighteen-year-old. “I have that hundred thousand dollars, minus your commission, from doing the show—or rather from not doing it—and the way I plan to live, it should last a long time … years and years if I want it to. I’m going to read and go to galleries and walk all over Paris and maybe learn French … oh, there’s so much I don’t know! Damn-near everything. I can’t wait to find out who I am when my looks don’t matter to anyone, even to me.”
Justine and I exchanged glances, deciding in an instant, that it would be plain and simply wrong to tell Tinker about the enormous clamor there was for her back in New York.
“Remember, Tinker,” Justine contented herself with saying, “if you get restless or bored or need money, you can always pick up a phone and call me collect and I’ll get you a job right here. You don’t have to make any final decision about working for a long time. You’re still so young. Who knows, maybe you’ll want to go to college, you’ve got a million options.”
“That’s exactly why I’m going to do nothing,” Tinker said with the smile that had sent both of us reeling around the bend with excitement about her potential. At that moment it suddenly occurred to me that her face had lost its chameleon quality. It no longer was the perfect blank canvas, ready to be painted, with which she’d left New York.
Whoever Tinker Osborn was, she was definitely somebody with a mind of her own, a mind that would be interesting to watch as it developed.
So we’d lost Tinker, at least for now, but we’d kept April, I thought. She’d left New York an underappreciated Minnesota ice-princess and now she was returning in triumph, boasting the freshest, most original look in the world of modeling, a look that makes all the other blonds—even Elle and Claudia and Karen—who still cling to their long manes, look like dated versions of each other. Sure, men will always go for surrealistically big and prodigiously beautiful blonds, clonelike, glorious Amazons, with hair growing down to the crack of the ass, but April will intrigue and fascinate all the sexes with the element of wildness she’d tapped into.
I’m willing to bet that April has a lot more metamorphosing to do, that this is only the first new version of April Nyquist, that there’ll be change after change in the face and attitude and version of sexuality she’ll present to the world. Somehow she’ll escape the frozen fetishism of the camera yet, because of the relentless classicism of her features, there’s no way she can fuck up or be fucked up. How do I know? I don’t know—as some great mind once summed up Hollywood, “nobody knows anything”—but looking at her, I get a strong feeling about her future, and I’ve learned to trust my feelings more than my more logical thought processes. Remember when I thought that I couldn’t stand Mike?
I didn’t have to lean on my judgment when it came to April’s future with Maude. April was deeply engaged in a giggly, whispered exchange with a dark-haired French beauty, a startlingly sultry little piece named Kitten, whom April had managed to pick up somewhere, somehow, after the Lombardi show. She’d simply brought her along to hitch a ride to New York, where Kitten had an appointment to meet Katie Ford, and nobody’d asked any questions. Maude was sitting alone, as far away from them as possible, working steadily on her laptop. Personally I’d rather have flown commercial than punish myself that way. I felt truly sorry for her, but of course it was bound to happen. Still and all—so soon?
I looked
around the interior of the jet with unjaded wonder. I’d never imagined that somewhere there had to be someone who understood how to design aircraft seating. Our various lush swivel chairs were a combination of love seat and Barcalounger that gave comfort a new meaning. I was having such a delicious time with my thoughts that I had to fight to keep myself from drifting off, as Jordan had done, falling instantly asleep as the jet left the airport. I wasn’t surprised, not after last night.
Jordan had been quiet as we all packed after a final dinner at the Relais Plaza, where we’d amused ourselves by the sight of Peaches Wilcox, brilliant, beyond-bejeweled and looking as bloomingly rejuvenated as a vampire after a particularly tasty feast. Last night she’d reigned over three large tables of her guests, the cream of the small clan of American socialites who are rich enough to order from the couture. Marco, whose new affiliation had been fully explained to Justine by her father, glued himself to her side all through the meal, attentive, adoring, hanging on every word she said; the only thing missing were his leg irons and handcuffs, which, I assumed, had been left in her suite.
Peaches’ taste in men goes way beyond kinky, if you ask me, but if it makes Marco’s life a misery, why not? I haven’t forgotten what a malicious snake she was to me about Mike, but now that her venom will be channeled toward Marco, I can afford to feel mellow about it. There’s a couple I feel will be around for a bit, until Peaches tires of him. He’d better not lose any of that Renaissance hair, he’d better not get fat, he’d better not have an uncharming minute or an unsuccessful collection. Most of all, because of what I suspect about our Peaches, he’d better be ready to get it up—and keep it up—at a snap of her imperious, diamonded fingers. Alas, I’ve never heard of a man yet who could flex that particular muscle on command.
But back to Jordan. She failed to join in our conversation during dinner, she seemed to be sleepwalking and daydreaming simultaneously, polished by silence, and I had the feeling that she was immensely sad to be leaving Paris where her life had taken such a new direction. She and April would be back soon, of course, for the Lombardi ready-to-wear collection in March, but no show would ever equal the drama she’d just gone through.
Since Jordan was exactly Tinker’s height, and their measurements were the same, she’d had to show all of Tinker’s outfits as well as her own. I sensed such a deep weariness in her that I dropped in, uninvited, to help her pack since of all of us, she was the only one who’d bought so many antiques that she’d had to send a bellman to buy her an extra suitcase at the last minute.
“Promise me you’ll go to bed early,” I asked her. “You seem desperate for a decent night’s sleep. Your eyes look feverish to me.”
“Okay, Mom,” she agreed, “but I’m really not tired, my mind’s racing—I bet I’ll be up all night.” I made sure she was in her nightgown and ready for bed before I left her. I even tried to talk her into drinking a glass of warm milk, but Jordan balked at that, pushing me out of her room before I could tuck her into bed. Then Justine came back from dinner with her father and the two of us drifted off to our rooms and settled down for the night, worn out by too many decisions, too many emotions, too much excitement.
A few hours later, when I was deeply asleep, just at that moment when the mind and body are finally totally at rest, I was aroused by a combination of pounding on the door and ringing of the doorbell. I didn’t remember where I was for a disoriented minute and then my first thought was that the hotel must be on fire. I flew into my bathrobe, and opened the door the smallest possible crack, expecting to see the corridor filled with smoke. Instead, at eye level, I saw Jordan’s gorgeous bare legs kicking to get free, trapped by an arm covered in a man’s jacket.
“What the fuck!” I gasped, opening the door wide and gaping at Jacques Necker, holding Jordan struggling in his arms. “Let me go, you oaf!” she cried, hitting him with her fists. “Put me down!”
“I needed witnesses,” Necker said to me, carrying Jordan into the sitting room like a blond King Kong, sounding as if he were making a perfectly normal request. Justine staggered through the doorway.
“Papa? What are you doing here?” she asked groggily. Jordan fought harder and harder to get free of his unrelenting grasp, muttering curses.
“Two witnesses, excellent. That makes it official. Jordan and I are getting married.”
“Monsieur Necker,” I said soothingly, drawing on all my experience with dealing with wigged-out, complaining, fit-throwing, should-be-committed models, “that’s very interesting, very, very interesting news. It’s nice, really nice as it can be. But wouldn’t you be more comfortable if you sat down and told us about it slowly, very, very slowly, with all the details? Maybe you’d be even more comfortable if you put Jordan down, so I could give her a sweater, look, she’s freezing, she’s shaking, now you wouldn’t want her to catch cold, would you, Mr. Necker?”
“I’m laughing, you idiot,” Jordan managed to croak out, “not freezing.”
“You’re a big help,” I hissed at her. “It’s not funny.”
“I can’t believe it! How could this have happened, what’s been going on here, for heaven’s sake?” Justine looked intently back and forth from Necker to Jordan, weighing up what she saw in their faces. “It’s impossible! It’s crazy it’s … I don’t get it … but … whatever … hell, I don’t know, it just feels right!” Justine cried finally, flinging her arms around both of them, kissing them at random all over their faces like an overexcited dog. “Papa, you have incredible taste! Jordan, you’ll make him so happy. Damn, I wish I’d been here to watch this whole thing developing between you two.”
“If you’d been here,” Jordan said, suddenly serious, “it would never have happened, not in a million years. Thank you for not coming sooner, Justine.”
Were all three of them insane? Necker loosened his hold on Jordan so he could include Justine in his hug. I stood, looking at the happy group, trying to make sense out of this loony scene. Necker and Jordan? For real? He glanced at me, and read my mind.
“Jordan incapacitated me for any normal life, Frankie,” he explained with a great big, astonishingly sweet smile. Well! How about that? First time he’d called me anything but Miss Severino. First time he’d really smiled at me. Someone had loosened this guy up, and it wasn’t Justine.
“Incapacitated”—there is more than one way to declare your love, I guess, and looking at the illumination that was Jordan, I realized that my ability to empathize hadn’t been working with her. She hadn’t been desperately tired, she’d been desperately and unhappily in love. And I hadn’t seen it coming, not for a minute, even though all last week I’d watched them set off on those cultural excursions of theirs. Had they been to the Louvre too? Maybe, but something tells me it wasn’t the same Louvre Mike and I had frequented every afternoon. Necker was too proper and so, in her own grown-up, sophisticated way, was Jordan.
So there’s your “Love Boat” complement; Jacques, as he now insists I call him, and Jordan, holding his hand in her sleep; Maude lovelorn and loveless; April and Kitten and whoever takes Kitten’s place, and so on and so forth, I’ll bet, for years into the future; Tinker, who jumped ship; and Justine and Aiden, the contractor, who still remains to be inspected but can’t possibly be half as … well, let’s agree on it, no way can he be anything like half as divine as Mike, who’s up in the cockpit showing the pilot how to fly the plane.
The only person Jacques asked to come along with us to the airport was Gabrielle d’Angelle. He told her about his forthcoming marriage; news that you would have thought should have provoked some reaction bigger than her startled congratulations. While he gave her a list of things to supervise for him during his trip to New York, Gabrielle seemed to be working out the answer to some kind of vexing long-standing question. Yet when Jacques, almost casually, told her that he was promoting her to executive vice-president of La Groupe Necker, she broke down, literally bursting into tears of joy, and didn’t stop for ten minutes. She pulled a rea
l weeper. I believe Gabrielle must be the most dedicated, least romantic career woman I’ve ever met in all my years of working with women. You can’t generalize, not even about the French, can you?
Of all of these recent romances, please notice, I’m the only one who’s engaged to her long-lost true love—no quickie romance for me—and, as it happens, the only one with an engagement ring.
While he was running around yesterday, taking more pictures of the girls, Mike found time to nip into Van Cleef and buy me a ring that’s embarrassingly big, if you’re the kind of person who’s easily embarrassed by mere material possessions and I find, to my surprise, that I’m not. I guess that must have something to do with learning to wear Donna Karan.
Justine wants to give our wedding reception at her house and I want to have it at Big Ed, because she’ll have enough to do getting married herself, to say nothing of whatever sort of ceremony Jordan and Jacques are planning after he meets her parents. Gracious! If it weren’t for weddings, what would happen to the American economy?
The event I’m looking forward to almost more than getting married is the tenth reunion of my class at Abraham Lincoln High School this spring. Two weeks ago I’d been planning on skipping it. Almost every one of my nine hundred or so classmates could be counted on to drag a spouse or partner of some persuasion to this particular reunion, and I didn’t know anyone I cared to bring.
But when I show up with Mike Aaron—the legendary star who’s never been forgotten—and they find out that I’m Mrs. Mike Aaron—Caramba!
Okay, call me a show-off, call me ostentatious, call me pretentious, but how can I resist a chance to prove to all those fellow students who teased me about being too skinny to look good in a leotard and tights, that even a kid with a big nose, who wore her hair screwed up in a bun, whose finest feature was her big feet—that even Frankie Severino could grow up to accept, with grace and dignity and passion, the heart and hand of the once and forever prince of Brooklyn?
Spring Collection Page 40
