Inside, it was the usual circus, but at least the lights were on, so I had something to look at. All the big players were there in their customary spots, doing their customary things and in this instance I had a particularly good view of the French Vogue crew, who I found seriously fascinating. The editor-in-chief, Carine Roitfeld was the ultimate cool skinny French brunette, with legs as fine as crochet hooks and straight dark hair that fell right over her face, which was accessorized with the most astonishing pair of black eyebrows. They looked like Fuzzy Felt. She had an almost simian look to her – but, boy, was this one stylish monkey.
On this occasion she was wearing a killer black suit with a fiercely waisted jacket and a tight pencil skirt, which fitted her tiny body like a glove. Her heels were so dizzyingly high, even I would have been nervous to step out in them and, believe me, I did heels. It was no surprise she was Tom Ford’s muse.
The other amazing thing about the French Vogue-ies was that they all looked exactly the same. They were all super tall and skinny, with straight black layered rock ’n’ roll hair, and they only ever wore combinations of black and navy. Even the one guy who was part of the pack had the look. It was hilarious.
Another face I loved watching was Allure editor-in-chief Linda Wells, who was as restrained and icy as a Hitchcock blonde. She even dressed the part in perfectly fitting coats and high-heeled pumps. And she never wore stockings, which was another thing I liked about her.
Then there was British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman, who always looked refreshingly normal compared to her front-row companions, who were all so extreme in their style, they looked almost freakish. Ms Shulman looked like someone you might actually be able to have a decent chat with, but she worked a killer heel with the best of them.
As well as all the famous magazine babes, there was another whole front-row A-list of buyers, who were usually seated on the opposite side of the catwalk to the media. They were like a separate fashion tribe, with quite a few corporate suit-y men and women, mixed in with the more famous characters.
Of these my favourite was Joan Burstein – or Mrs B, as we all called her – from Browns in London. She was like the Duchess of Devonshire of fashion. Always immaculately elegant in tailored trousers, cashmere, pearls, kid gloves and a fur, a small crocodile bag in her hand – she had the manners to match her style too. If Mrs B hated a show, you could never have known it from her face, which she always kept in a perfect, politely interested semi-smile – in fact she did a much better job of not looking bored at tedious events than Her Maj the Queen. She was true fashion royalty.
Among the other buyers I always noticed was the exquisite Hong Kong Empress Joyce Ma, who wore the most amazing jewellery – she had pearl earrings the size of quail eggs. Then there was Kal Ruttenstein, from Bloomingdale’s, who suffered from very poor health, and had to be helped in and out of venues on his crutches, but always showed up just the same.
But the most intriguing was Lizard Man. No one seemed to know who he was – although I’d been told he had an upscale boutique in LA – but he must have been ‘someone’ because he always got great seats. What made him stand out was his unique look: he always wore bleached-out jeans and reptile skin – a hat, a jacket and elaborate cowboy boots. Different every day. He had a face as craggy as a komodo dragon, and bleached-out Shredded Wheat hair too. I was mad about him.
After a while, though, waiting for Dior to start, even this stellar people-watching got boring and I seriously missed having Nelly to talk to. If she’d been there we would have been eating sweets – cadged off Frannie – and roaring with laughter by now. I would have loved to have told her about Nivek, Cilla and Eeb. She would totally have got it. I worked out her backwards name on the show running order: Yllen Soilets. Soilets was a classic, but it didn’t seem so funny with no one to share it with.
The rest of my posse were all out of reach. Bee was front row, Alice just behind her – three rows in front of me, I always got crap seats in Paris – and Frannie was backstage doing a story on the make-up. I didn’t know the women on either side of me and I couldn’t be bothered to start a conversation with them. After a while I got so desperate I started playing noughts and crosses with myself. I had just won – and lost – for the third time, when my concentration was broken by a wave of laughter round the tent. I looked up to see Miles walking the length of the high catwalk with his metal camera case and tripod hoisted up on his shoulder.
As he approached the end of the runway all the photographers whistled and cheered and he struck a supermodel pose, one hip out, hand behind his head. Quite a few flashes went off and the audience clapped, before he jumped down and disappeared into the photographers’ pit. It was very funny and very unusual, because like all the photographers he always got to the venues as early as possible to bag his position among the throng. So how come he was strolling in forty minutes after the invited time – just twenty minutes before the show would actually start?
They were a tight-knit pack of rogues, the shows photographers, and when they weren’t having fist fights with arrivistes who were blocking their sight-lines, or who had taken their particular spot – the territory was all minutely marked out – there was a kind of thieves’ honour between them. Even photographers who were fierce rivals would save positions for each other, if that was where they normally stood, but there was a limit to how long you could hold on to one square foot of standing space in conditions that would make laboratory rats freak out, even for your best mate.
But that wasn’t all that was weird about Miles’s runway strut. Apart from the spectacle of a grubby photographer acting up like Naomi Campbell, I was not prepared for the effect seeing him had on me. It was visceral.
He was wearing his same old jeans, his biker boots and his motocross jacket, he was unshaven, his thick hair was standing on end and he generally looked like he could do with a good wash. And I could have jumped up and shagged him right there on the Dior catwalk.
I really hadn’t expected to feel that way. In the few short days I’d had at home after Milan I’d honestly convinced myself I had worked Miles out of my system, as some kind of momentary insanity. Apart from the teeth-picking episode, I’d slipped straight back into my cool and comfy life with Ollie and, apart from the odd teeth-picking irritation, was perfectly happy there. Or, I thought I was.
We’d made love that night when we got home from E&O and I’d hardly thought of Miles at all during it. Just as it had always been, sex with Ollie was cosy, comforting and satisfying, like watching Casablanca on TV at home on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Sex with Miles had been like flying to Mars. They were two completely different activities and amazing though it had been with Miles, I didn’t think I really wanted to fly to another planet as a regular outing. It was too unsettling.
But watching him work that catwalk – just seeing his beautiful bum in those faded jeans and knowing the muscle that would have popped up on his right arm, when he put it behind his head like that – had me instantly convinced I wanted to take the next flight out, destination Outer Space. Not thinking with my conscious brain, but with something more primitive, probably located below the navel, I brought up his mobile number on my Palm Pilot wallet and sent him a text: ‘2nite?’
That was it. I had a reply very quickly: ‘hotel?’
I tapped back: ‘meurice’
And back came his reply. We had texts flying up and down that venue like invisible carrier pigeons.
‘room?’
‘319’
‘time?’
‘10’
‘11?’
‘ok’
‘v v ok’
It was that easy.
After the show I strolled along the sandy paths through the gardens wondering what to do with myself. Frannie was still inside with the Dior show make-up artist Pat McGrath, who she was going to be following all week for a big beauty story, and Bee and Alice had raced off to do an appointment before the next show, which I didn’t have an invit
ation for. Without Nelly to hang out with, I felt totally unanchored and, well, rather lonely. I thought about going to Angelina’s for a hot chocolate, as Nelly and I would have done, but I just didn’t feel like doing it on my own. I also felt extremely unsettled by what I had impetuously organized for my evening’s entertainment. I felt like I was possessed by someone else. A total slut.
I sat down on a bench to delete Miles’s texts from my phone and found I had another one – which suddenly made the night’s arrangements seem even more confusing. It was from Nelly: ‘We r here. Dinna 2nite? Nelly xxx’
I really didn’t know what to do. I had no plausible excuse for not seeing Nelly and Iggy. I couldn’t palm her off with some tale about a PR dinner because she knew the score – they didn’t really happen in the same way in Paris as they did in Milan; in fact we were usually left to our own devices there after the last show.
And apart from that, I desperately wanted to see Nelly. I wanted to hear all her news and I wanted to get to know Iggy better. Not just because he was the latest fashion superstar – although that was not without its appeal – but because he was my friend’s new man. It was my duty to check him out.
So I wanted to have dinner with Nelly – but I also wanted to rip the clothes off Miles and the two events were just not compatible. Or were they? I got my Palm Pilot out again and called his number.
‘G’day, Em,’ came a deep voice at the other end. It freaked me out. I had turned him into an abstract concept in my head and now it was all too real again.
‘Hi,’ I squeaked.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing you later,’ he said in that slow drawl.
‘Well, that’s why I’m calling…’ I said. ‘I’ve got a bit of a problem with it.’
‘That’s a bummer,’ said Miles. ‘But no worries, just let me know when you can do it. If you still want to.’
‘Well, what are you doing now?’ I said, boldness returning.
He laughed.
‘Funnily enough, I’m walking along the Rue de Rivoli in the direction of Angelina’s – where I was planning to have a hot chocolate – and I see I’m right outside the Meurice hotel.’
‘Go in,’ I said, my heart starting to pound. ‘Wait in the lobby. I’ll be there in a minute. Follow me up in the lift.’
I left the gardens at a run, cursing with frustration when I just missed the lights to cross the busy traffic on Rue de Rivoli. It felt like an eternity until they changed again and I raced over.
I stopped for a moment to compose myself before I entered the hotel and then as I came through the door, I could see Miles, out of the corner of my eye, sprawled on one of the brocade-covered chairs. In that fleeting glance I was pleased to notice he wasn’t encumbered by his photographic equipment. I went straight over to the reception desk to ask for a new key card because I’d accidentally left mine behind in my room and then headed for the lift.
I didn’t look over my shoulder as I waited for it to arrive, but as I stepped inside I felt Miles’s arms come round me from behind. I turned and lost myself in his kiss, with one eye open to hit ‘3’ on the control panel. Then I closed it again and we didn’t break off until the lift stopped. I led him down the corridor to my room and once we were inside we fell on each other, not even bothering to get fully undressed. I fear I made a lot of noise.
When we surfaced, I felt quite giddy. Miles sat up on the bed and shook his head.
‘Geeze,’ he said. ‘I think I’m seeing stars. What’s going on, Emily?’
I just shook my head.
‘Well, welcome to Paris, anyway,’ he said, tipping an imaginary hat at me. ‘Nice room,’ he said, looking round it. ‘Can I hit your mini bar?’
I just nodded. I still wasn’t capable of speech. Miles stood up and half hopped over to the cabinet, with his pants round his ankles.
‘Bloody boots,’ he said, grinning. He opened the fridge door and whistled between his teeth. ‘You magazine girls don’t exactly rough it, do you? Look at this, Veuve Clicquot. Tasty.’ He took out a bottle of Perrier. ‘Want anything?’ he said, waving it at me.
‘Is there any chocolate?’ I asked.
‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘You could do with a bit of fattening up.’
He came back to me with a bar of Toblerone and two Perrier waters with old-fashioned bottle tops, which he flipped off with his bare hands. They were huge, his hands.
Huge and brown, with beautifully shaped fingers. They looked like hands which could shoe a horse, or mend a Land Rover with a piece of string. Hands that could make a night shelter out of palm branches. Miles would be a good person to be lost in the desert with, I thought and I sighed suddenly, much louder than I realized I was going to.
‘That was a big sigh,’ he said. ‘You OK?’
And it seems I wasn’t, because the next thing I knew I was in floods of tears. I don’t know where it came from, but I was howling.
‘Hey, Em,’ said Miles and he put those strong arms around me, stroking me with those beautiful hands and kissing the top of my head. ‘It’s all right, babe,’ he said. ‘You have a good cry. You must need it.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ I said eventually, my voice quivering between sobs. ‘I don’t know what happened. I never cry. It just happened. God, how embarrassing.’
‘Now don’t go all English on me, Emily,’ said Miles. ‘You obviously needed a cry, so let it out. It’s not anything to do with me, is it?’
I shook my head.
‘I don’t know what it’s to do with.’
‘Well,’ said Miles, handing me a large piece of chocolate. ‘Eat that. Give you strength.’
We sat chewing for a moment and then he spoke again.
‘You know, what happened between us back there, Emily. It’s not an everyday event, you know. It’s unsettling.’
I looked up at him, blinking my eyes which were stinging a bit. He picked up his T-shirt and wiped my cheeks with it.
‘You can blow your nose on it, if you like,’ he said, smiling his cheeky smile. ‘I often do.’
I shook my head, but he had me smiling again.
‘So it’s not always like that for you?’ I said quietly. Although I hadn’t thought about it consciously, I think I had somehow assumed that Miles was such a great lover that all his sexual encounters went off the Richter scale.
He laughed heartily.
‘Are you kidding?’ he said. ‘It’s a long time since Mount Vesuvius last erupted, you know. No, it is not always like that for me. In fact, it’s never been like that for me. Here, have some more chocolate.’
That gave me something to chew on.
After that we just lay there in each other’s arms for a while. We didn’t make love again. We didn’t need to. I didn’t know about him, but I didn’t want to do anything else, except to lie there breathing next to him. I loved his male smell. It was all very well having a lungful of Acqua di Parma whenever I went near Ollie, but there was something deeply appealing about Miles’s unadorned masculinity.
He was the first to speak.
‘I hate to break this moment,’ he said, almost whispering. ‘But are you doing Comme?’
And suddenly we were both roaring with laughter. I laughed until my stomach muscles hurt. The very idea of a fashion show just seemed so hilariously ridiculous in that primal situation we were in – man, woman, bed – it was the funniest thing I had ever heard. Eventually I recovered enough to speak. Now he was using his T-shirt to wipe tears from his own eyes – tears of laughter.
‘Well, actually, I’m not,’ I said. ‘They never give me an invitation. Not important enough. How about you? But it must be too late now anyway, you’d be even later for that than you were for Dior, I think, Mr Supermodel.’
He chuckled.
‘Did you see me then?’ he said, putting his arm behind his head and pouting, as he had on the catwalk. I’d been right, the muscle on his biceps did spring out. At that moment I could have taken a bite out of it.
; ‘Of course I saw you,’ I said. ‘Two thousand people saw you.’
‘Good,’ he said, grinning again. ‘I wanted you to see me. That’s why I did it.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I mean, I was late anyway, I’d had a big argie bargie with my email and I was running really late. Seamus was saving my spot and I knew I was cutting it fine, but I didn’t really need to walk along the runway, did I?’
‘Well, that did cross my mind.’
‘So I did it for a laugh, to cheer the boys up and to remind you I was in town – and gorgeous. Guess it worked, eh?’
I just shook my head at him.
‘You’re shameless,’ I said.
‘What’s to be shamed about? I’m a lusty man, you’re a beautiful woman. I’d be a sad arse if I didn’t try.’
There was a natural pause. I could tell we were both thinking the same thing.
‘So how was it with your old man, when you got home?’ he said, sounding a bit apprehensive. ‘Did you feel bad?’
‘For a minute. Then I forgot about you,’ I said, poking him in the ribs.
‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Good job I reminded you then. Anyway, like I said before Emily, there is no pressure from my end – as it were.’ He laughed. ‘But really, you know I’m here, you know I’m willing. It’s up to you.’
There was another pause and then he spoke again.
‘Are you doing Costume National?’
We laughed again.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And Rochas. Lucky that Costume National’s just across the road from here. What time is it now? Just before six? Perfect. We’ll make it with plenty of time.’
‘I’m not doing it,’ he said. ‘I’ve still got to sort out my stupid email and Seamus has taken all my equipment back to the hotel – I dumped it all on him when you rang…’
Handbags and Gladrags Page 13
