Searching for Grace Kelly

by Michael Callahan

  “It’s Dixon. Laura Dixon.”

  “Very well, Laura Dixon,” he said. “Let’s try all of this again, okay? I am Benjamin Barnes, who is actually a hell of a lot nicer guy than the version you met Friday. And who would like to prove that to you. Say, Thursday night?”

  Aside from the busboys clearing dishes, they were now completely alone. The other girls must all be downstairs by now. Cat Eyes would be wondering where she was. “I really have to go. I’m sorry.”

  He walked out alongside her. “I’ll escort you out. This way you won’t be able to avoid my invitation.”

  She turned to look at him as they moved out onto the mezzanine. “Are you always this persistent?”

  “Only when I want something badly. And you owe me, you know.”

  “I owe you?”

  “You called me out for being named for a cardboard box.”

  Laura laughed, bemused while also quickly becoming unhinged. She looked over the railing and saw the Mademoiselle group below, gathering near the main exit. Cat Eyes was milling about. It looked like she was counting heads. Laura hustled toward the staircase, Box still beside her. She went down the first few steps and then turned back to him, started to say something.

  He cut her off. “Thursday,” he said. “Just say yes. One little word. Yes.”

  She let out a big exhale, smiled. “I can’t. I would love to, but I already have plans that I simply can’t break.”

  “Okay. Saturday, then.”

  Her mind was whirling. Was he just going to keep throwing out dates until she relented? “I don’t know . . .”

  “Of course you do. Saturday. Don’t worry. You’ve played hard to get enough. You’ve turned down the first offer. But you really must take the second. It would be uncivilized not to.”

  “I . . .” She shrugged. “Okay. Saturday.”

  “Perfect. Saturday was my first choice anyway. I’ll pick you up at nine.”

  “Nine? Where are we going at nine?” she said.

  “To dinner at El Morocco.”

  El Morocco. The most fashionable nightclub in Manhattan, tucked away on East Fifty-Fourth Street. “I don’t have anything to wear to the El Morocco,” she said feebly.

  “You’re in luck,” he said, backing away on the landing, his face exploding into a cocky grin. He spread his arms wide. “I know the guy who owns this place.”

  SEVEN

  Dolly nodded as Oscar the doorman opened the door to the Barbizon and wondered, as she did almost every time she saw him, how he kept cool wearing that ornate formal uniform in the middle of summer. She thought maybe that was part of the interview process: They forced you to put on this ridiculous outfit that made you look like you were a Napoleonic general, then asked you to stand in a ninety-five-degree room to see if you didn’t sweat. She loved Oscar—all the girls did—because he was always jovial and kind, because he knew the art of a well-placed compliment when you needed it most, and because he was almost leonine in his protection of the young women whose residence he stood sentry for. He was constantly being offered bribes—for introductions or to assist slipping some cad upstairs when the desk matrons were occupied. But he never relented. Girls besieged by overly amorous suitors knew they could count on Oscar’s protection.

  If only I were one of them.

  The late-day lobby was quiet, just a few girls taking refuge from the stuffy city streets. The lobby itself was a huge rectangle framed by a vast Oriental rug, on which was placed an imposing pocked leather couch and various tasteful upholstered side chairs, with a long mahogany coffee table in the middle. The lobby’s focal point was the curving staircase that led to the mezzanine, which for some reason always made Dolly think of the one that Clark Gable carried Vivien Leigh up in Gone with the Wind, though the Barbizon’s was neither as wide nor as grand. But Dolly often mused that perhaps that was what the Barbizon did best—provide a tableau where girls got to indulge their romantic fantasies, to play Scarlett O’Hara, looking down amused at all of the boys of the county who had come courting.

  She spied Laura, in a pale pink linen suit, sitting in the far side of the room, lazily flipping through a copy of Vogue. She’d taken off her fitted jacket and tossed it on the arm of the adjacent sofa, and her legs were crossed, as if she were waiting to be called into a doctor’s office.

  “Hey there,” Laura said as Dolly approached. “Out early today?”

  “Only a half-hour,” Dolly said, plopping down onto the sofa. “What are you doing? Shouldn’t you still be at Mademoiselle? Don’t tell me they’re tired of you after only three days.”

  “I had to return a bunch of dresses they used in a shoot all over town, and they told me I didn’t have to come back after I was done. So I had a little snack at Isle of Capri and then came home. But it’s too stuffy to sit in the room.” She closed the magazine. “I was going to treat myself to a milk shake in the coffee shop. Wanna come?”

  Dolly took in Laura’s figure, the way her bosom tapered to her narrow waist. She would love a milk shake. “No, I ate late.”

  “You seem distracted. What’s going on?”

  Plenty, Dolly wanted to say. This morning Bertrand Shaw had walked up to her desk as she was typing, perched himself on the edge, looked down at her, and said, “Well, I took your advice.”

  She’d almost lost her breath. “What . . . Really? How so?”

  “Well,” he said, smiling sheepishly, “let’s just say someone is going to be getting a very nice bouquet of white gardenias very soon.”

  Dolly had silently thanked God she was sitting. She might have fainted right there on the spot if she’d been caught in the hallway having this conversation. “Well, I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”

  “I’m hopeful,” he said, sliding off and heading to his office.

  Laura was looking at her expectantly, but Dolly couldn’t risk jinxing it. No, better to wait. “Nothing much,” she replied. “Any news from Box? Are you guys still going to El Morocco Saturday night?”

  It had been two days since the luncheon at Barnes & Foster, and Laura hadn’t heard a word. She’d succumbed to love-story hysteria and come back and told Dolly and Vivian everything that had happened the first day at Mademoiselle, breezing past the intimidating welcome from Cat Eyes before settling into a blow-by-blow recitation of the next chapter in the Box Barnes saga, right up to its cinematic staircase crescendo. Their disparate reactions had been predictable: Vivian warned her that he was a cad who would never follow through and who was probably at that very moment in bed with a Broadway dancer; Dolly already had Laura shopping for a trousseau at B. Altman. Laura hated being thrown off balance like this, of having her level of happiness so quickly altered by the affections of a man with whom she was barely acquainted and who she strongly suspected had the propensity to behave badly.

  “I don’t know,” she said with a heavy sigh. “I mean, he hasn’t officially canceled. But he hasn’t confirmed, either. And it doesn’t matter anyway. I still have nothing to wear.”

  A clipped British voice behind her interrupted. “I suspect, in fact, you do.”

  Vivian circled around and took a seat in the chair next to Laura’s, setting down a huge cardboard box onto the floor. A huge black B&F stared up at them in script, partially obscured by a wide green satin ribbon tied in a bow across the lid. “This was at the front desk. Special delivery,” Vivian said.

  Laura slid the card out from under the ribbon. FOR THE PRETTIEST GIRL AT THE BALL. I HAD TO GUESS THE SIZE, BUT THINK I GOT IT RIGHT. UNTIL SATURDAY—B.

  Dolly practically ripped the card from her hands. “I think it’s safe to say your date is still on.”

  A few of the other girls walking by had slowed down to glance over, and Laura suddenly felt self-conscious. “Let’s go upstairs. I feel like a mannequin in the Saks window.”

  “Oh, bosh,” Vivian interjected. “They’re all going to see you in it soon enough, Cinderella. Might as well whet the appetite.” She pointed to the box. “Let�
��s have at it, then.”

  Dolly nodded eagerly in agreement, frantically clapping her hands and barely suppressing a squeal. Laura quickly untied the ribbon, lifted the lid, and delicately peeled back the reams of scented mint tissue paper. “Oh my,” she whispered.

  The dress was not a dress, but rather a work of art. A strapless tulle gown in a deep shade of jeweled purple, with a subtly patterned bodice flecked with silver and trimmed with silk cabbage roses, leading down to a flaring ball skirt. Underneath was a filmy stole in a pale shade of lavender and a pair of gray opera gloves. Laura stood, pressing the gown to her body. Never in her life had she seen anything so breathtaking.

  Vivian checked out the label. “Philip Hulitar,” she mused. “Well, I’ve got to say, lout or no, he’s got excellent taste. Or a secretary with excellent taste.” She took an appraising step back. “My, my,” she said, “something tells me you’re going to be a popular lunch date at the office on Monday.”

  Laura was elated. And frightened. And confused. She turned to Dolly, the dress still pressed against her bosom. “What do you think, Dolly?”

  Dolly was looking back toward the desk. “Agnes Ford,” she said.

  Laura and Vivian followed her gaze. “What?” Laura said. “Who’s Agnes Ford?”

  Across the lobby by the entrance, they could see a wispy young woman in a simple shift standing at the reception desk. Her hair was honey blond, her skin as white and flawless as fresh snow. She appeared to be fumbling with some sort of chunky charm bracelet, though it was hard to tell from this distance whether she was attempting to get it on or off.

  “That’s Agnes Ford,” Dolly said, in almost the identical conspiratorial whisper she’d announced the appearance of Box Barnes in the Barbizon coffee shop. “She’s a really famous model. The Ford agency stashes all of its top models here.”

  Vivian knitted her eyebrows. “She runs a modeling agency? She looks barely twenty.”

  “No, no, no,” Dolly said. “Her last name is Ford and the agency’s name is also Ford. It’s just a coincidence. But she’s really famous. And very dramatic. She had a pale blue Thunderbird delivered to the door here. Oscar signed for it.”

  “How do you know that?” Laura asked, still clutching the dress.

  Dolly sighed, exasperated. “How do I—Where do you two live, on some Indian reservation? It was all over the gossip columns! Sheesh!” She turned back to Laura. “She’s been on the cover of Mademoiselle.”

  Dolly was about to offer more color commentary—such as the fact that Agnes Ford had grown up in Nebraska, though there were those who thought that had simply been invented to create a rags-to-riches mystique—when a delivery man walked into the lobby and headed toward the front desk. Dolly gasped.

  A bouquet of white gardenias.

  They’d come. He’d sent them.

  Without a word she dashed over to the desk, sidling up next to Agnes Ford as Metzger absently signed for the flowers. “Well, a case of perfect timing,” Metzger said. “These are for you.”

  She slid the bouquet over to Agnes Ford.

  Agnes was still fumbling with her bracelet—definitely trying to get it off, Dolly could now see—and paid no attention to the bouquet. Her bouquet. Dolly knew she should walk away, back to Laura and Vivian. No one would be the wiser. But somehow she couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t stop herself from accepting the full, brutal force of the torture.

  “Your flowers, they’re . . . they’re beautiful,” she said cheerily. “Aren’t you going to open the card? See who they’re from?”

  Agnes Ford thrust out her arm. “Can you get this thing off?”

  Dolly hesitated, felt Metzger’s dead eyes flicker up from behind the desk, appraising. “Uh, sure,” Dolly said, taking hold of the bracelet on the girl’s left wrist. As she worked to unhook it—the clasp had gotten lodged in one of the bracelet’s loops—she inquired again about the flowers. Agnes Ford reached over and plucked out the card, deftly removing it from the tiny white envelope with one hand. She shook her head.

  “Wrong boyfriend?” Dolly asked, still fiddling with the bracelet. She’d figured out how to release the clasp but didn’t want Agnes Ford to see her eyes welling up.

  The model sighed deeply. “No such luck. Just some drip I talked to for, oh, I don’t know, two minutes one night at ‘21’ who now seems to think we’re the next Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Wilding.”

  Dolly continued to play with the clasp, her heart heaving. Her voice was barely a whisper. “So, not for you, is he?”

  “That’s an understatement. He works pushing papers at some publishing company. I’ve talked to more interesting statues.” She glanced over at the flowers. “Who sends gardenias?”

  Enough. “There you go,” Dolly said, sliding off the bracelet and handing it to her.

  For the first time, Agnes Ford smiled, the smile that had beckoned from the magazine rack, the smile that sold countless tubes of toothpaste and pillbox hats and silk stockings. “You’re an angel,” she said.

  She slid Bertrand Shaw’s white gardenias across the counter. “Here, take these. It’s the least I can do.”

  “Marciano is going to kill him.”

  The subject was boxing, specifically the upcoming fight in September between Rocky Marciano and Archie Moore, and Nicola Accardi was telling anyone—in this case, two similarly swarthy men and their dates sitting at a corner table at Antolotti’s on East Forty-Ninth—that Marciano wouldn’t let the bout go more than three rounds. A detailed analysis of the respective fighters’ hooks and jabs and crosses had been going on for a good fifteen minutes; Vivian had tuned out somewhere around the three-minute mark. She had never understood the fascination two men pummeling one another to a pulp had held for her father and uncles back in Surrey.

  Of course, there’s so much I’ve never understood about Dad, she thought. Or he, me, for that matter. Which explains how I ended up in New York in the first place.

  Why couldn’t she have been more like Mary and Emma? It certainly would have made life easier. Yes, her life would have turned out predictable and boring, but there was comfort in such things, she’d come to realize. But her sisters’ lives were an argument she could never talk herself into making: the sacrifices too big, the payoffs too small. Security was for the timid and the weak.

  She took another drag on her cigarette, looked around the room. There was the occasional couple engaged, laughing, clinking wineglasses over dinner, but for the most part the restaurant seemed stuffed with men like Nicky and his cohorts. What the hell am I doing here? she asked herself, not for the first time tonight. But then she glanced at Nicky’s profile, his strong jawline and languid eyes and thick mane of silken black hair.

  Carnality was a dangerous pastime. Not for some faux morality reason, the scorn of the sentries who ran the Barbizon or the Women, who looked at girls such as she as wanton harlots. But because in the end, indulging in it was invariably empty and fleeting. Wasn’t what she was doing simply the sensual version of what the girls back at the hotel, watching telly while eating ice cream and trying to guess some contestant’s hobby on I’ve Got a Secret, were doing? Passing time, trying to stay entertained, forgetting the drudgery of everyday life. She longed to be a singer but instead spent her nights passing out cigarettes. Laura wanted to be a writer but instead spent her days taping boxes of shoes. Dolly wanted—oh, who knew what Dolly wanted? A husband, that was for certain. Vivian flashed back to the episode in the lobby yesterday. How very odd. Dolly had rushed over to see the model and then after several minutes had walked out of the hotel, head down and clutching a single gardenia.

  Vivian would never understand women.

  She lifted her champagne coupe, silently toasting herself. Tuning in once again, she found the topic had now switched to the Brooklyn Dodgers and their odds of winning their first World Series. Boxing, baseball. What was it with American men and their sports? Not that the Brits were much better, she supposed: Dad was absolutely mad for go
lf, a sport so dull she couldn’t fathom watching a single hole, never mind eighteen.

  He had been so angry at her coming to America. Then again, he’d left her little choice.

  Of course, he’d been so angry at so much of what she’d done growing up. She hadn’t been like Mary and Emma, the good girls who’d stayed on the straight road, dressed modestly, and waited for their husbands to show up. Vivian had found trouble early and often, and discovered that instead of it scaring her, it only made her feel more alive. She had no acuity for cooking, baking, or cleaning and had no intention of acquiring it, either. What she did have, from the time she was a seven-year-old girl standing in a pew in St. Mary’s in Fetcham, was the ability to sing.

  God held no fascination for her; the Bible was a book of fairy tales that might as well have been written by the Brothers Grimm. But the music of the church, that was something else. There was something aching in the dour verses, accompanied by organ and harp and violin, a sad beauty that touched her in a way little else ever had. Music was transcendent. She loved the way she sounded when she sang. And that when other people heard her sing, they saw not the redhead with the dangerous curves, but something far more real. Something pure.

  Nicky’s elbow nudged her back into the conversation. “Tell ’em, Ruby,” he was saying, “am I right, or what?”

  “Ruby” had become his selected nickname for her, though in more intimate moments he had the good sense to swap in “Honey” or “My lovely,” which, it pained her to admit, she rather liked. He had tried “Red” at first, but she had protested, pushing back that it made her sound like a saloon owner. At least Ruby had some style, something Bogart might call Bacall.

  “I’m afraid I’m a bit out of my depth,” she said, sipping again.

  “I’m telling these mooks that Johnny Podres is going to mow down that Yankees lineup.”

  “Dodgers ain’t gonna make the Series, so that’s gonna be kinda tough there, Nick,” one of the mooks retorted. His date opened her compact, pursing her very red lips, coated in lipstick so thick it looked like cake frosting.