Lovers

by Judith Krantz

  Resolutely, fortified by a touch of meditation on the unsatisfactory nature of the Milky Way and the evanescence of human existence, Gigi made an attempt to replace her anger with Zach with annoyance toward Sally Lou, but she found that all she felt for her former secretary was sympathy. Naturally that girl was bored. It was getting tedious enough for Gigi to do her own work, much less have to deal with it secondhand, as Sally Lou had. Was it only today that she’d realized it? Had she been so preoccupied with avoiding what felt more and more like a doomed and insoluble problem with Zach that she hadn’t been aware of a growing disenchantment with her job?

  This was a night for nasty truths, Gigi thought, opening the French doors and trying to escape from her perceptions as she went out onto the balcony. With luck she’d find a vicious Santa Ana wind or perhaps a werewolf’s full moon to explain her thoughts. She scanned the heavens and discovered an innocent crescent moon, clear skies, and a still night. She wished she smoked. She saw herself leaning on the balcony, as if it were the railing of a departing transatlantic liner, exhaling a stream of smoke with a worldly, brave, and resolute air as she turned her back on the past and sailed toward an exciting, daring, romantic future. In her high school days, when she and Mazie Goldsmith watched the classic films in Mazie’s father’s projection room, the stars in Hollywood acted with their cigarettes. Maybe that was what was wrong with movies now. No cigarettes, and particularly no expressive cigarette holders.

  Suddenly shivering in the chill of the autumn air, Gigi had to go back inside, where she curled up on a couch and thought about lighting a fire and listening to some music. But not, for God’s sake, Nat King Cole, who would bring tears to her eyes. Or Patsy Cline, who would make her sob out loud. Or anyone else who sang songs of a faraway lover and understood how lonely and miserable she felt.

  Well, what about Scruples Two? Gigi pushed fruitless personal thoughts from her mind and concentrated on a problem she could do something about. Almost three years ago, when she had first come up with the idea of a catalog named after the world-famous Scruples, the boutique Billy had created, a catalog offering far less expensive clothes than Scruples; a catalog geared toward busy working women, wives and mothers, with neither time nor money to waste, she had asked Billy to let her call it Scruples Two. In all fairness, it had been Spider Elliott who’d finally convinced Billy to agree and to invest money and energy into the launch of the catalog, but Gigi had written the copy that explained the new concept and accompanied each photo. She considered herself as much responsible for its success as was Prince, the designer whose work Billy had commissioned, and as Spider, who’d also invested, and had designed the look of the catalog down to choosing the last model, the last piece of type.

  Prince’s work was ongoing, constantly presenting him with fresh problems as the catalog expanded and seasons changed. Spider now ran the entire company while Billy stayed home with their twin boys, and he faced new challenges on a daily basis. Aside from the marketing decisions he made with the Jones brothers, he was in charge of keeping the graphics of every issue of the catalog fresh and tempting, particularly since other companies were competing vigorously in the huge market Scruples Two had first defined. The catalog was a solid success, growing bigger by the month, thanks to expert management and brilliant execution. It was part of the American fashion establishment; even Vogue used and credited items from it, recognizing that many of their affluent readers also bought by mail order.

  Yes, everyone but she had fresh work on hand, Gigi realized clearly. Sasha, now Mrs. Josh Hillman, mother of little Nellie, was back too, after her maternity leave, busily chasing down new things to sell besides the core of Prince’s capsule collections, while Gigi was reduced to writing the obligatory copy she could do in her sleep. Now that she’d set the style, any good copywriter could be hired to continue it; they didn’t need her. No, damn it, Scruples Two had stopped being fun sometime in the past, and she hadn’t noticed until Sally Lou had brought it to her attention.

  “Gigi, I can see you’re not happy here.” She spoke the words out loud and knew they were true. True and final.

  But, unlike the irresolvable fury with Zach, this was a dissatisfaction she could change, Gigi thought, getting up and pacing around the room. She’d never given Archie Rourke and Byron Bernheim the kind of no that meant absolutely positively not under any circumstances, goodbye and good luck, don’t call me and I won’t call you. She’d allowed them to keep trying to persuade her to join their agency, enjoying their blandishments and blarney without intending to take them up on their offer. In fact, she’d given them very little serious thought. Why, when she’d considered herself tucked so snugly into her familiar job, should she hanker to leap into a new field she’d never worked in before, something highly problematic, something so unpredictable and challenging?

  “Because I’m bored—fucking bored fucking bored!” Gigi announced to the quiet room as she went into the kitchen to find something really fattening to eat.

  The next morning Gigi woke after a few hours of broken sleep to find that her recognitions of the evening before had crystallized into an unmistakable determination to change jobs. In the course of one night, Scruples Two had become part of the past, as beloved as ever but clearly an area in which her work was finished. Frost/Rourke/Bernheim now announced itself to her as the alluring, unscripted future. There’d never be a better time than today to make the change and get it over with, she decided as she gulped her breakfast and hurried to dress. All her work on the newest edition of the catalog was completed and last week when she’d spoken to Archie Rourke he’d been as eager as ever to entice her into the advertising business.

  Yes, she knew she was right to leave, but there was still the matter of breaking the news to Billy and Spider and Sasha. They were family members to her; she dreaded telling them.

  Why had Josie said it was tough to fire people? It was so much worse to quit, Gigi thought as she hesitated outside of Spider’s office, remembering the night she’d written the introductory copy for Scruples Two. Until that point the only things she’d written had been cards to go with gifts from her own collection of antique lingerie, cards in which she could riff as much as she liked, take any liberty, please herself without worrying about the public. She’d been so nervous before she’d read that introduction to him that when he’d liked it—no, when he’d loved it—she’d been as proud as she’d ever been in her life. Nothing would ever make her forget the flying thrill of that moment. Taking a deep breath, she opened Spider’s office door and went in.

  Spider was alone, studying a page of figures, his long, sinewy body contorted in various graceful ways, for no office chair had yet been invented that could accommodate him. As usual, he reminded Gigi of a great blond pagan who had been somehow transformed into a businessman without losing any of his free-spirited, laughing, essentially sensuous charm. She was delighted to find him alone. She couldn’t have talked to him in front of anyone else and she hadn’t wanted to make an appointment to see him alone, because that would have sounded unnecessarily ominous.

  “Hi, got a minute, Spider?” Gigi asked, remembering vividly the day she’d first met him. She’d been sixteen, and she had arrived in California only the night before, seeking refuge with her father after the death of her mother. The very next afternoon she’d found herself transformed, dizzy and giddy with the excitement of Billy’s offered friendship compounded by her new haircut and new clothes, walking into an office at Scruples, where Spider and Valentine were, to Billy’s shocked amazement, wrapped in each other’s arms. The first word Gigi had said to him was “Congratulations,” when he’d explained that he and Valentine had just been married, and the first thing he’d said to her was that she was more sophisticated than Billy. He’d been so protective, so interested in her right from the start, this Viking of a man who’d become her hero from the minute, she laid dazzled eyes on him, this glorious guy to whom no woman, no matter how much she loved another man, could be ind
ifferent.

  “Ah, Spider Elliott, damn it, but I’m really going to miss you,” Gigi heard herself blurt out in a voice laced with regret.

  “What’s the matter with you!” Spider jumped up from his desk in alarm. “Are you sick?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “You’re marrying Zach and leaving town?”

  “That’s not in the cards.”

  “Then why the fuck did you scare me like that? You sounded exactly like Ali MacGraw in Love Story.”

  “Sorry … I … I’m … oh …” Gigi stopped, wordless. The only unspoken sentence that came to her mind was, “Spider, you’re not happy here.”

  “Gigi,” Spider said gently, taking her cold hands, “you’re not making sense. Sit down right here and tell me all about it. Whatever it is, I’m sure I’ve heard more lurid tales.”

  “I’m leaving Scruples Two for a job in an advertising agency.” Gigi said the words as quickly as possible.

  “The hell you are!” Spider’s eyes searched hers and, as always, reached into and understood a woman’s mind as rapidly as those of any man alive. “You are. Yep, indeed you are, and there’s not a thing I can do about it. I’ve always thought you were cautious to a fault, Gigi. That’ll teach me to take a woman for granted. You’ve changed without giving me warning. Or else I’m losing my touch.”

  “I didn’t know myself, Spider, until yesterday. I fired Sally Lou and then I fired myself …”

  “Could you be more specific?” When Spider laughed at her that way, with his sunlit blue eyes almost closed and the deep lines suddenly intensified at their corners, Gigi always felt she heard a clap of giant hands. Relief warmed her as she told him everything that had gone through her mind the night before.

  “And this agency, what’s-her-name Frost and the guys, you’re certain that they’re an outfit you can be happy with? After all, there are lots of other agencies in L.A.”

  “Archie and Byron are a terrific team. Smart. I’ve seen their work and I like them. The way I figure, they can only prosper. They’re billing about thirty million a year after a mere six months in L.A., and with the entire economy going wild, advertising’s a good place to be. I had Prince’s ad manager check them out on Madison Avenue, and he gave Archie and Byron a rave. It makes sense for them to want me for a swimwear account, it plays to my strong point, and after that, well,” she said, suddenly feeling shy in her ambitions, “I believe maybe interesting things could happen.”

  Spider got up and started prowling around his office, looking at Gigi as he walked back and forth, remembering that tremulous, oddball, mysterious little figure who had abruptly popped into their lives, an unknown daughter out of Vito’s past, a whim of Billy’s turning her into a legal ward and an unofficial stepdaughter. Gigi, without whom none of them would be together today; Gigi, whose talent they had come to count on; Gigi, who had outgrown them. Damn it to hell, he thought, he was the one who was going to do the major part of the missing, more than it would be fair to tell her, more than she knew or should know. She had to be free to make whatever she could of herself. There was no telling how far she could go, this woman who had never realized, on that single night when she’d stopped him from trying to make love to her, that it was almost the only time he’d been rejected in a lifetime of conquest.

  “When do you want to leave?” he finally asked reluctantly.

  “I think I should … leave right away,” Gigi answered firmly, “without two weeks’ notice. You have more than seven weeks before the next catalog will be due at the printers; that’s plenty of time to find and train another copywriter, but Archie needs to put together the Indigo Seas pitch as quickly as possible.”

  Her voice wasn’t apologetic and her words were irrefutable, Spider rioted ruefully. Already someone else’s needs were coming first with her. Archie! Archie indeed! What kind of name was that? Did he have a butler named Jeeves?

  “I thought about it all during breakfast,” Gigi continued rapidly, “and since I’m leaving, I should let them know today, leave here … tomorrow … so I can be there by next Monday.”

  “Jesus, you’re a heartless bitch. What about the big going-away party, the gold watch for two and a half years of faithful service, or would you rather have a silver tea service?”

  “I was hoping to avoid exactly that. Please, Spider, no fuss. Josie will slime me with a guilt trip that’ll break my heart.”

  “I could too, if I wanted to. A guilt trip you’d never recover from.”

  “But I knew you wouldn’t. That’s why I told you first of anybody. Do I have your blessing?” Gigi’s impudent mouth, with its upper lip that curved naturally in a hint of a smile, was frankly laughing at him now, and so were her large, beautifully shaped green eyes that reminded him so much of Valentine’s.

  “You have my blessing, my wholehearted blessing, combined with my wholehearted wish that you’d stay. But you’re not wrong to want to try something else, you’ve picked your time wisely, and although you can never really be replaced, we’ll just have to be good soldiers and carry on without you—I know there’s no real room for major career growth in a catalog, Gigi, but an advertising agency’s something else.”

  “Oh, Spider, thank you!”

  “Do you want me to tell Billy for you?”

  “No, I’ll go and see her now, at the house. I’m afraid she won’t be as open-minded as you are, but I wouldn’t feel right about not telling her in person.”

  “Brave little Gigi. Still, you never know. Billy took a few risks in her day too, she’s grabbed her life in both hands and changed it more than once. Maybe she’ll understand, in spite of the fact that she counts on you.”

  “Maybe,” Gigi said doubtfully. Billy, even with the softening influence of marriage to Spider, was still the most demanding woman she’d ever had anything to do with, and Billy had many perfectly valid reasons to feel that she’d singlehandedly invented Gigi. Abandoning Scruples Two would be much less of a trauma if it didn’t mean letting Billy down as well.

  Spider leaned down, grasping her shoulders, and shook her hard and briskly for a minute, like a friendly lion expressing a number of unutterable and complicated thoughts to a pussycat. Then he took her face tenderly in both of his hands. “Remember what you said when you first met me, way back when?”

  “Of course. ‘Congratulations.’ ”

  “Congratulations to you,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “And good luck, Gigi darling.”

  “Mrs. Elliott’s in her sitting room, she said to go right up,” Burgo O’Sullivan said to Gigi. “Hey, kiddo, you’ve got that look on your face that you had when I told you a girl couldn’t get into my poker game.”

  “Yeah, well, I was sixteen then, and starting high school, so naturally even your penny-ante weekly game sounded like a better idea than meeting new kids.”

  “Fresh, still as fresh as ever. So did you wreck the car? Seduce another chef right under my nose, the way you did that poor English fellow?”

  “Burgo, when will you start treating me like a adult?” Gigi gave an unconvincing smile to wise Burgo, who filled a multitude of undefined but indispensable jobs at the great house in Holmby Hills.

  “I’ll give it some thought,” he answered, “and let you know. How about a cup of tea? It might steady your shaky nerves. You look the way you used to when I first tried to teach you to make a left in heavy traffic.”

  “Burgo, you’re imagining things. I’ve got to go talk to Billy.”

  “It’s an emergency, then. You never refuse a chance to visit the kitchen.”

  “Sort of. I’ll come by afterwards and tell you all about it.”

  “Is that a present for me?” Burgo asked, looking with interest at the white box with a blue satin ribbon on it that Gigi carried.

  “No, it’s for Billy, for having the babies. It’s not fair that people send things to newborn children who don’t know the difference, and not to the mother, who did all the work.”

  “
I see, a bribe.”

  “Burgo, you have an innately suspicious mind, you should be ashamed of yourself. See you later.” Why did he always see right through her, Gigi wondered as she left him. The present she had brought, from her precious collection of antique lingerie, might, just possibly, soften Billy’s reaction. But a bribe? Never! … Or … maybe?

  In spite of the need to hurry that she had impressed on Burgo, Gigi found herself dragging her steps as she walked through the spacious rooms, which fairly vibrated with color and freshness, and in which every corner offered intriguing places to stop and linger and inspect the fascinating multitude of objects and antiques and flowers that seemed to have been placed there by a happy chance, instead of by Billy’s constant rearrangement of her treasures.

  Upstairs, at the end of a long corridor, the door to Billy’s sitting room was open.

  “I’m in here,” Billy’s voice called faintly. Gigi found her flopped heavily on a couch in an attitude of complete exhaustion, her crop of short, heavy, dark curls drooping messily around her face, the lids falling wearily over her smoky eyes, her skin pale and bare of makeup. She wore one of Spider’s old shirts over a pair of baggy jeans, and it was impossible to believe, at the moment, that this wiped-out scrap was the magnificent Billy Ikehorn, the embodiment of the groomed-to-perfection, the exquisitely dressed, the splendidly bejeweled kind of woman of whom the world possesses perhaps several hundred, with only two or three as internationally famous as she.

  “Spider didn’t say you weren’t feeling well,” Gigi said in concern. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known I was going to disturb you.”

  “Whatever are you talking about? I’m perfectly fine,” Billy said, too weakly to sound indignant. “I’ve just finished putting the boys down for their nap, that’s all. This is the best possible time to see me. Come sit down here next to the couch.”

  “Did Nanny Elizabeth leave?” Gigi asked in concern, putting the box down on a table. She hadn’t seen Billy at home more than four or five times since the twins, Max and Hal, were born, and then only on the weekends, when they were showing off the babies, with Spider expertly performing fatherly chores, as well as the experienced nanny hovering in the background.