Lovers

by Judith Krantz

  “You haven’t even given me a chance to tell you what’s happening in my job,” Gigi said, still holding the plates.

  “Okay, what?” He heaved a sigh of resignation.

  “Forget it. I don’t need you to listen at gunpoint.”

  “It’s not that I’m not interested,” Zach protested. “I’m sure that whatever you’re doing in—excuse the expression—advertising, you’re doing it brilliantly, but Gigi, darling Gigi, that can’t make the difference here, don’t you see? Oh, baby, it’s glaringly clear that you’ll be happier being with me, the way I’m happier with you,” he said in his most guileful and persuasive voice. “Look, sweetheart, wasn’t tonight just a bitch of an eye-opener? It could be like that all the time, you’d be able to watch me work, you could be on the set with me every day, every minute that you wanted to be, you could be in on every discussion, just like tonight, you could see how I get things done—”

  “Could I … sit at your feet?” Gigi’s voice was quiet, her question asked with a calmness that fell just short of being overstated.

  “Well … actually … you’d have be on the sidelines most of the time, there’s a sort of zone of concentration around the director and the actors, but I’ll try to give you as much total access—”

  “Sit down.”

  “I can’t, I’m too restless,” Zach protested, striding about like a warrior, a prince, a patron, a potentate, so vivid with his sense of his own potential that he didn’t notice the unusual colorlessness of her voice.

  Gigi opened her hands and let the stack of plates drop with a crash on the tiled floor. “Sit down!”

  “Jesus, what a mess! Here, let me help.”

  “Sit the fuck down, Zach Nevsky, leave the fucking pasta, leave the fucking sauce, leave the fucking plates!”

  “Gigi, poor baby, you’re overtired,” he said, as loftily amused as he was concerned. “Come on, sweetheart, I’m going to put you to bed where you belong.” He picked her up easily and carried her, screeching, into the bedroom, ignoring her kicking and elbowing as she struggled to make him release her, ferocious but ignored. He laid her on the bed, where, unwilling and determined, she thrashed about as hard as she could in his massive arms. He kissed her protesting mouth, not letting her lips form a single word, although she tried, frantically and ineffectually, to turn her head away from him. Totally outmatched as they fought, Gigi felt Zach quickly and adroitly ripping off her jeans and her panties as she kicked him in a rising arc of fury, her broken words still smothered by his kisses. One of Zach’s arms held her tightly down on the bed and with his other hand he covered one of her breasts, caressing it with a rhythmic squeeze, as if to quiet down an excited small animal, his breath coming faster as he felt the shape of her flesh under the thin T-shirt. Gigi struggled harder, frantically trying to twist her breast away, but Zach, in swiftly rising excitement, slipped his fingers under the fabric and captured her breast more tightly than before, his grasp becoming firmer and more purposeful as he found her silky nipple. He moaned, stabbed by desire, and lifted himself up so that he lay heavily over her bucking body. He ground his penis relentlessly into her thigh, and she felt the quick movement of his hand away from her nipple as he opened his zipper. She tried to scream as he entered her, but his tongue filled her mouth.

  Gigi bit Zach’s tongue as hard as she could.

  “Shit! That hurt!” he shouted in surprise and rage, rearing back, a bit of blood showing at the corner of his mouth, still holding her down on the bed.

  “Get off me!” Gigi screamed.

  “Why did you bite me?” he cried angrily.

  “Because you’re raping me, you lousy bastard!” She was panting with outrage.

  “Rape? Don’t kid yourself—you want it bad! You’re dying for it! You need another good fucking to get rid of the rotten mood you’re in! You just want my attention. Do you think I don’t know why you had a buzzard up your ass all night? I had to hold this meeting, but you begrudged me every single second of it.” He let her go and stood up, glaring at her.

  “My God, you really, truly don’t know me at all,” Gigi said violently as she saw the total of her long-deferred adding-up of unconscious computation, a total that included less surprise than grief and pain and a deep anger. “All you can see is yourself, as big as the sun and twice as bright. Everything is a function of Zach Nevsky, from what interests me to how I feel. All I can be, everything I am, is in the reflection of your glory.”

  “That’s not true! We love each other, that’s what’s important!”

  “It was important,” Gigi said, almost to herself. There was a low thunder in her voice, and her lids were half closed over eyes that held a commotion of lightning. “I tried to make it the most important thing in my life, and I could for a while … and I did for a while … but that’s … not possible anymore. My life can’t be only about you, don’t you see? I will not let that happen to me. The longer we’re together, the worse it gets. I’ve finally understood how totally impossible we are together. What you just tried to do, what you said—no, Zach, you ruined it.”

  “You’re being melodramatic, for God’s sake, Gigi,” Zach said as a look of fear spread over his face. “You’re taking one little thing, one bad evening, and making it into a big deal. Look, what do you want me to do? Just tell me … I’ll stop asking you to quit your damn job … I’ll take it seriously, so help me God, even if it kills me … I’ll pay attention to your needs … I’ll be sensitive and caring and aware, all that shit, Gigi, I swear I will. I’ll change!”

  “I don’t believe you. I don’t trust you. Not even to be a liar or a hypocrite, which is all you’re offering.” Gigi got off the bed and went to the closet. “I want you out of here and I don’t want you to come back, not ever,” she said tightly, in a dead but resolute voice, as she threw him the sweater and heavy jacket he’d hung up earlier. “Don’t bother taking your keys, I’m going to change the locks.” She left the bedroom, crossed the living room, and stopped at the head of the stairs, waiting for him to leave.

  “Don’t be a total asshole Gigi, we haven’t finished talking,” Zach shouted at her.

  She turned and fixed him with a look so steady that it was like a metal bar between them. “You don’t live here anymore,” she said in a strong voice.

  “You stupid little idiot … how can you be so stupid …” he groaned out loud as he hesitated at the stairs. “Just because you had to cook one lousy little dinner …”

  “Get out. Get out before you make it worse.”

  “It can’t get worse,” he begged, letting her see his all-but-abject yearning.

  “Just go. Go!” Only after he left did the savage, rending tears come, but not once did she change the decision he’d forced her to make.

  Josh Hillman’s legal business took him to New York infrequently, so whenever he was in Manhattan he made it a point to lunch with other lawyers with whom he did long-distance business, at least one lunch to reinforce months of communication by phone and letter.

  Today, the day on which Gigi and David were presenting their Indigo Seas ideas to Archie, Byron, and Victoria, the day on which Zach Nevsky was trying to pry more money out of the reluctant studio heads, the day on which Sasha Hillman was going to a lingerie shower for the newly engaged daughter of one of his partners, Josh Hillman sat in the private dining room of the firm of Westcott, Rosenthal, Kelly and King. A few of the younger partners had been invited to lunch, men Josh had suggested to Bill Westcott that he should meet, since he might find himself dealing with them in the future.

  The conversation was deliberately low-key and relaxed, Josh drawing out the younger lawyers, not taking measure of their legal minds—for if their brains were not exceptional, these young men would never have found themselves in this grand, high, paneled room—but of their characters. In the years to come he would need a rough working knowledge of how decent a fellow each one was.

  The talk ranged from fly-fishing to tropical islands, from Ron
ald Reagan to the slow construction of Trump Tower, from the breeding of puppies to the raising of children, from the state of the stock market to the state of the younger men’s romantic lives. Josh took a lively part in the conversation without revealing anything more personal than his fondness for full-grown Skye terriers. He was here to cull, listen, absorb, and learn.

  Kent Rosenthal and Bill Westcott congratulated one of the younger men, Tom Unger, an evident favorite, on his recent engagement.

  “We were convinced that Tom would never marry,” Kent said to Josh.

  “I tried to introduce him to my wife’s niece, but he wasn’t interested, said his heart was broken,” Mike Kelly remarked ruefully. “Then he goes out and finds Helen.”

  “It was broken, seriously damaged anyway,” Tom Unger protested. “I didn’t see anyone for almost a year after Sasha disappeared.”

  “And that’s what you call constancy?” Kent Rosenthal asked.

  “It was the longest I’ve ever spent without a date since tenth grade.”

  “Tom is our official hopeless romantic,” Bill Westcott added with a grin. “Every law firm needs one. But only one.”

  “Sasha who?” Josh asked. His heart, with a quickened throb of alertness, pounded heavily.

  “Sasha Nevsky.” Unger shook his head sadly. “Helen, my fiancée, is a fantastic girl and she’ll be a wonderful wife, but I’ll be the first to admit she’s no Sasha. Sasha was unique.”

  “How so?” Josh queried casually.

  “Well … it’s not important, it’s ancient history. Really.”

  “Come on, Tom, we’ve all heard about the unique Sasha, girl in a million. You can tell Josh,” Mike Kelly said, laughing at Tom’s reluctance. “He lives in Hollywood, he’s unshockable.”

  “Oh, okay, it seems impossible now that I’ve met Helen, but this gorgeous creature, Sasha, had me completely under her spell,” Tom said. “The problem was that there were always two other guys in her life at the same time, right along with me, and she never hid it. Never even tried to. She called herself the Great Slut—she came right out with it, proudly too, I’m not kidding, she just laughed at your expression and dared you to object. There was almost something … pure … about it—that honesty.”

  “And you didn’t object?” Josh asked, his expression curious.

  “Sure I did, I hated it, but I went along. The others did too. Sasha had a way of making men forget about their territorial rights. And the way she claimed that kind of liberty—the same as a man would—made you unable to argue that she shouldn’t have it. God knows, I tried without success. I guess I could plead temporary insanity. On the other hand, I still wonder if maybe she was right, maybe an unattached woman should have total freedom. The guys here are all too chauvinistic to give me an argument.”

  “Tom’s our point man on civil liberties,” Mike Kelly said, laughing heartily.

  “You didn’t want to marry her?” Josh probed.

  “She wasn’t interested in marriage … which, as it turns out, was for the best, now that I have Helen.”

  “So what happened to her?”

  “That’s the strangest thing. One day she disappeared and that’s the last I ever heard of her. No letter, no goodbye. I hope she’s happy, wherever she is. She was … utterly remarkable.”

  “Told you he was a hopeless romantic,” Bill Westcott said. “Want a brandy, Josh?”

  “No thanks. In fact, gentlemen, I’d better be getting back uptown, pleasant as this has been.”

  “Gigi, you look like you pulled three all-nighters in a row. Are you sure you’re okay for the presentation?” David Melville worried as he looked at her, dressed in a black turtleneck sweater tucked any old way into a pair of black corduroy pants, both of them obviously as old as her battered black leather boots. She looked like some sort of eighteenth-century orphan who’d been apprenticed to a chimney sweep, he thought, except for her contemporary pair of enormous sunglasses. Her face was pale, she’d made no effort with her hair, which floated around her weary features as if she hadn’t bothered to brush it this morning, and she wasn’t even carrying her usual bagel from Bagel Central, the help-yourself food counter in the central corridor where the agency employees congregated at all times of the day, often picking up some of their best ideas as they stood around chatting and gossiping over sticky buns or fresh fruit.

  “I had a bad bad night, must have been something I ate. I’m tired is all.”

  “It’s nerves, you just won’t admit it. We’ve had too much time to anticipate and worry. If only we’d been able to make our presentation yesterday, when it was hot off the drawing board, but no, they were all too busy working with other creatives. Damn!”

  “I’m not worried,” Gigi said drearily. “I couldn’t care less, if they like it, fine, if they don’t, fine too. Life goes on.”

  “Oh, wonderful! So you’re the kind who takes refuge in ‘I couldn’t care less’ when you’re nervous as hell.” His voice was gently accusatory. “So much for Miss True Grit of 1983.”

  “Have it your own way.”

  “Would a Valium help?”

  “What would it do for me?”

  “Take the edge off your anxiety, for crying out loud!” he said, running his fingers through his already rumpled dark hair until it stood on end.

  “You take it, Davy. You need it.” She smoothed his hair idly.

  “I’ve had one already. Come on, Gigi, they should be in the conference room in a minute—you’re not going to keep those sunglasses on for the presentation, are you?”

  “I have some sort of weird eye infection. I look awful.”

  “Ah, you poor kid, tension goes to your eyes, huh? I get hives—listen, even if they don’t like our Indigo Seas stuff, which is impossible, they’ll be jumping up and down about The Enchanted Attic.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said drearily.

  “On your feet, march!” he ordered, in a military bark.

  “Okay.”

  “Damn, I’d feel better if you’d only throw me a salute.”

  “Okay.” She saluted limply and muttered “sir,” as an afterthought.

  “You make me wish I hadn’t asked.”

  “You kids have hit it!” Archie jumped to his feet in excitement the second that Gigi and David came to the end of a half-dozen Indigo Seas ideas, illustrated by the sketches David had comped up.

  “If this stuff doesn’t get us the account, nothing will,” Byron agreed, thoroughly enthusiastic. “Congratulations!”

  “I hate to rain on your little parade,” Victoria Frost said coldly, “but in your desire to con fat women into thinking there’s something glamorous about obesity, you’ve managed to totally ignore the client’s chief selling points, the reasons why these women buy their suits: their famous power-net panels, their patented bra cut, their industrial-strength stretch fabrics, and their huge range of sizes—that’s what they’re selling at Indigo Seas, not a cheap imitation of Sophia Loren.”

  What an overtouted, brassy showboat their little Miss Orsini had turned out to be, Victoria thought with sour, vindictive disdain. Archie and Byron had set their hearts on hiring someone who was totally unsuitable, as she’d known the minute she’d laid eyes on her. She had nothing against attractive female creatives, but there was something she instinctively sensed and detested in Gigi from the first, something aroused by her cocksure attitude, her lack of awe for Victoria’s power and position, her unearned self-confidence based on nothing but insolent youth—that whole and still-untarnished youth with its idiotic illusions that the whole world lay before her. She’d learn better, but meanwhile she had to be dealt with. It didn’t help that Gigi was clever enough to operate with the perfect awareness that all three of those fools, Byron, Archie, and David, were at least a little bit in love with her.

  “We know all that, Victoria,” David said, interrupting the brief silence that had fallen after Victoria’s remarks. “But we’re looking to do something different here, to light a
fire under women so they go into the stores with their minds open and curious, turned on enough by the ads to look out for the big Indigo Seas shoulder identification tag—the tag itself would contain all that technical information. We didn’t want to do text-heavy ads for a fashion product.”

  “You’re mistaken, David,” Victoria said. “You were letting yourself be carried away by a chance to do pretty pictures, trying to sell the sizzle instead of the steak. Indigo Seas suits are hardly ‘fashion,’ they’re more like girdles to swim in. This work cannot be shown at the pitch meeting. Indigo Seas is looking for a new marketing partner, not a Francis Ford Coppola.”

  “Excuse me,” Gigi said, “but all the points you’ve mentioned are right there in the ads they’re currently running, Victoria. Why is Indigo Seas looking for another agency if they’re satisfied?”

  “When you’ve been in the business as long as I have, Gigi, you learn never to ask a client why they’ve put an account up for review. It’s often a reason that has absolutely nothing to do with the current campaign, some sort of internal company matter, private politics. But you do try to use some basic common sense when you pitch. You don’t deliberately fail to mention their strong points.”

  “Victoria,” Archie said, “this stuff of David and Gigi’s is so fresh and yummy, it’s so tasty you can bite into it, for Pete’s sake, why not give it a chance?”

  “It’s different, Victoria, it’s newsy, it’ll grab attention, Indigo Sea’s been around for years, everybody’s sick of the power-net panels, those words alone are enough to turn you off,” Byron said indignantly. “This stuff is juicy!”

  “Swimwear for fat women cannot be ‘juicy,’ Byron,” Victoria informed him with a small, belittling twitch of her mouth. “Nor can fat women be ‘lush.’ ”

  “Where is that written?” Gigi demanded, jumping up in a rage, a boiling, rattling, welcome rage that finally took her mind off her tattered soul and the fact that someone named Zach Nevsky existed. “Where the fuck is that written!”

  “Really, Gigi,” Victoria chided her in icy scornfulness, “this is a presentation, not a streetcorner brawl.”