Billy had provided three boxes of new Keds in bright colors for the children to play with, knowing that any baby was more interested in the box than in anything it might contain. After they had munched wetly on the boxes and explored all their possibilities, there were the irresistibly chewy shoes and laces, objects that always kept her teething twins quietly busy for minutes at a time. When they tired of shoes, she had three pairs of unbreakable plastic sunglasses to give them, for her own sunglasses attracted them passionately, and, as a final treat, a bowl filled with ice in which three well-washed silver dollars were being kept cool for the ultimate in gnawing pleasure.
“They’re not playing with the boxes,” Sasha said, “they’re playing with Nellie, or hadn’t you noticed? They’re investigating her. Do they think she’s a toy? Some sort of doll?”
“They’ve never been this close to another baby before. Anyway, Nellie’s smart enough to take care of herself.”
“Of course she is,” Sasha said, “she was born smarter. It’s the nature of the beast.”
“She’s a girl,” Billy observed, without hurt feelings. “What do you expect?”
“Oh, Billy, girls may start out smart, but not all girls stay so damned smart!” Sasha said, and burst into violent tears.
“Good God, Sasha, you poor thing! What’s wrong, for God’s sake, what is it? Tell me what’s wrong,” Billy begged, holding her shoulders in a strong grip, but it was a long while before Sasha recovered enough to be able to utter a single word. Finally she wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and rallied enough to speak.
“We’re getting divorced.”
“Oh, Jesus. Oh, Sasha, I am so sorry.”
“But—you’re not surprised, are you?”
“Not … no, not entirely. I felt there was something … I didn’t know what, but I know both of you so well … I’d hoped …”
“I’ve hoped and hoped until I’ve gone almost mad from hoping. It’s really and truly hopeless. Billy, it’s been going on for months and it got steadily worse instead of better—I held out until I was sure, but I filed for divorce almost three months ago. Josh moved out then. Did Gigi tell you what was going on?”
“Not a word, not even a hint. But the last time Spider and I saw you and Josh, we both noticed that he wasn’t … oh, you put up a good show, but Josh didn’t, he looked so haunted, so … grim … and then you’ve always been busy when we called, and we wondered why.”
“He’s sick, Billy, poisonously sick with jealousy of men I slept with before I met him. And he has good reason.”
“How the hell can you say that?” Billy asked incredulously. “Is Josh out of his mind?”
“On that subject, yes.”
“What are you talking about? Sasha, you’ve got to explain!”
As rapidly as she could, but not sparing herself in any of the details, Sasha told Billy of Josh’s visit to New York and his discovery of her past. Her voice was matter-of-fact, but her eyes didn’t meet Billy’s, and she kept shaking her head slightly from side to side in self-disapproval, not realizing what she was doing.
Billy listened silently, Watching Sasha carefully. When she had finished, Billy grabbed her hands and squeezed them tightly.
“Now you listen to me, kid. Josh has done a lousy stinking number on you. He’s got you thinking that you’ve been one really bad girl. I hear all your well-reasoned justifications, but what I see is that somewhere along the line since this whole thing started, you’ve bought into his line of utter shit! Josh is a giant asshole, and if he were in this room I’d strangle him with my bare hands—in front of the kids if I had to—and no jury in the world would convict me!”
“Billy!”
“You should know what I was like before I met Vito. Josh would think it was a thousand times worse than anything you ever did. I picked out men—Ellis’s male nurses—and hired them with only one idea in mind, fucking them. I never wanted to get to know them well, it didn’t even matter if I liked them, as long as they attracted me physically. The point was the fucking. Pure fucking. You dated your lovers, you had relationships with them, dinner, dancing, jokes, romance—I wouldn’t have been caught dead in public with mine, and they weren’t lovers, we never talked, they were nothing but bodies with cocks attached. And that went on for years and years.”
“Billy!”
“Well, at least I’ve managed to make you smile. Or is that shock? In any case, it’s an improvement. You know something, Sasha, you were never a Great Slut, you were a Great Rake. Spider fucked just about every model in New York in his day, and his day lasted for a decade, until he met Valentine. He was a Great Rake, and so were you. I wasn’t a slut … I needed sex the way I needed water, and I found the only way to get it while Ellis was dying. And before I met Ellis, when I was living with Jessica in New York, I had my own Great Rake period, believe me. So let’s have no nonsense about jealousy being acceptable for whatever people did before they met each other. It’s unacceptable, and if Josh can’t get that, there’s nothing to do but get divorced, and the sooner the better. If you ask me, he’s just too old to change, too old and too bound up in a very strict background of traditional virtues.”
“It’s more than that, Billy, it’s even more than jealousy. He might have been able to cope with the jealousy one day, but it was the shame that finally made me make up my mind. Josh wouldn’t go anywhere with me because he was afraid of meeting someone who knew about my past. He felt shame that he was married to me.”
“Damn! If only you’d told him before you got married!”
“There would never have been a marriage.”
“That’s exactly what I mean. You could have been spared all this. Who needs his crap? Oh, Sasha, what can I do to help you?”
“Are you kidding? You’ve done it.” Sasha started laughing and crying at the same time until Billy found herself heartily joining in, deeply moved by Sasha’s plight. As they both recovered, they turned to their forgotten children, who had been quiet throughout their companionable fit of emotion.
“Do you see what I see?” Billy asked.
“How did they all manage to take their diapers off?”
“The twins untape themselves whenever they can … they hate diapers and they figured it out all by themselves, no matter how sticky the tapes are. Spider says they’re mechanically minded.”
“But Nellie doesn’t know how!”
“Either she’s just learned—or they took it off her. She’s much more interesting than the Keds. Either way, who cares? They’re too young to play doctor.”
“Is anyone ever that young?” Sasha asked suspiciously.
“Yes, Sasha, absolutely, positively guaranteed. I’ll show you the book where it says so.”
Gigi felt as if she’d been away for a period of time that had no relation to hours or days as they are counted in Southern California. She parked in her specially assigned space behind Frost/Rourke/Bernheim and tried to get back on course as she walked toward the agency entrance on the first Monday morning in May. She’d arrived home last night, not quite eight days after she’d left, with barely enough time for a few hour’s sleep.
She must be late, she realized, as she rapidly greeted Polly and received a complicitously meaningful look in exchange. Gigi felt dizzy with two sets of jet lag, a brain full of memories, and a heart spinning with unanswered questions, but she was certain that the word “Venice” wasn’t tattooed on her forehead. The only explanation for Polly’s I-know-what-you’ve-been-up- to look was that she was congenially suspicious. Gigi walked with purposeful rapidity past Bagel Central and headed directly to her office through the usual gossiping crowd, making a tightly polite greeting grimace that indicated that anyone who stopped her to say hello would regret it. She intended to get the Davy Melville business over with while she was still operating under a full head of steam.
The office was empty. Every sign that Davy had worked there had vanished, from the photo blow-ups on the walls to the espresso machine, from h
is drafting table to his bowl of organic fruit. Gigi stood in the middle of the room, relieved that Davy had had the sense to get a new partner before her return. Her desk intercom rang.
“Gigi? Archie. Could you come into my office for a moment?”
“I’ll be right there,” she said, and marched back down the length of the corridor. What’s with him, she wondered. No “Welcome back, Gigi,” no “Glad you’re home”?
“Great work, Gigi,” Archie said, looking up from his desk.
“Thank you.” How did he know already that she’d done great work, Gigi asked herself. There was an office grapevine like a python that grew fast enough to choke a grown man in five minutes, but it was only Monday morning and she hadn’t spoken to anyone yet.
“Yup. Terrific work. Davy was only Byron’s right arm and left nut, that’s all, until he met you. Now he’s performing the same functions for Jay Chiat, who will probably criticize and scare him into doing even better work than he was doing here.”
“Oh, shit, he quit.” Gigi flopped down into a chair, stunned.
“Yep, a week ago today. He came in here and told Byron and Victoria and me that your personal relationship had reached such a painful point that he couldn’t work with you, and he couldn’t stay in a place where he’d see you again every day. We gathered that you’d been … oh, let’s say … trifling with his affections.”
“Give me a break, Arch, Davy was into emotional receivership. What am I supposed to do, marry someone I’m not in love with so you don’t lose a key creative?”
“I expect loyalty from you, Gigi, but not to that degree. What I would suggest is that as a member of a creative team you refrain from engaging in physical contact beyond what would be considered appropriate to office behavior.”
“Gee, Arch, did you ever think of becoming a copywriter? The U.S. Marines’ training manuals, for instance, could use you. You have such a thoroughly light way with words. I was wrong, okay, I should never have let things go so far with Davy, I know that very well. Much too well. I’m sorry as hell that he felt he had to quit, and I’d like to request a female teammate in the future so that I don’t get carried away by my uncontrollable lusts, my unleashed emotions, and my ferocious sexual demands, which, obviously, Davy was absolutely powerless to resist, hard as he tried to.”
“But he said—”
“He never knew the real truth, poor boy. Davy was my sex slave, Arch. I forced him to fall in love with me by bewitching him with a combination of magic spells and potions known as the Orsini Curse. It started way back in Florence, Italy, and Savonarola was its first victim. Does that cover this unfortunate episode? Or would you like to put me in the stocks next to Bagel Central, where everybody can see that I’m punished for my sins, not that they don’t know all about them already, with elaborations too horrible to contemplate. I’ll never live it down. Now I understand why Polly gave me that very odd look.”
“There has been a fair amount of talk,” Archie admitted, breaking out his gorgeous flimflam-artist grin, delighted that he didn’t have to scold Gigi anymore. He and Byron had flipped a coin to decide who would get the task neither of them wanted, although it obviously had to be done.
“Why can nothing go on in this office,” Gigi asked querulously, “without everyone instantaneously getting a cockeyed version of it?”
“It’s one of life’s little mysteries. I think it’s something in the bagels. How’d it go in New York?”
“We’re all set. The first twenty-five Enchanted Attics will open within two months, seventy to eighty more over the summer, the last ones in the fall. Ben’s people will discuss the new set of media buys with Victoria. Oh, and by the way, I don’t know how big it’s going to be, but I seem to have developed another new account for us.”
“What? Gigi, that’s fantastic!”
“I do hope it will help make up for the loss of Davy,” Gigi said demurely.
“What’s the account?” Archie asked eagerly.
“The Winthrop Cruise Line.”
“What’s that?”
“At the moment, it’s three empty ships sitting in drydock outside of Venice, and three engines sitting in Trieste.”
“Oh,” Archie said, deflation clear in his voice. “When you said the Winthrop Cruise Line, I was expecting something big and exciting. I thought maybe Ben had taken over a bunch of huge ships.”
“In a year, Archie, my friend, a jewellike new ship will be sailing the seas, soon to be followed by two more, ships that will set the standard for glamour, luxury, spaciousness, and expensiveness, each catering to no more than a couple of hundred rich people who could afford to spend lots of money on second homes but don’t want the bother or responsibility. Is that exciting enough for you?”
“Hey, listen to this!” Archie said, busy scribbling. ‘When your second home is the seven seas’—how about that for the copy line?”
“I liked it when I wrote it down on the plane yesterday. Here’s a list of twelve copy ideas, it’s at the top.”
“Gigi—”
“Yes, Archie?”
“I have a problem. I don’t know whether to beg you on bended knee not to be such a cocky smartass, adorable as you are, or … whether to ask you to have dinner tonight, now that you’re no longer, so to speak, involved.”
“I vote for dinner, Archie, since, after our discussion, I realize that you couldn’t remotely intend to pursue or initiate any colleague-to-colleague contact, either emotional or physical, that might be misinterpreted by either party engaged in said contact.”
“On second thought … why don’t we make it a big lunch, to celebrate the new account? I’ll call Byron and find out if he’s free to come with us,” Archie said, laughing helplessly. “I’m not sure I trust myself to live up to your moral standards. Oh, and when Byron asks you out, as I happen to know the bastard is planning to, can I count on you to tell him the same thing?”
“Gee, I hope I’ll remember,” Gigi said earnestly. “But if there’s a full moon—well, all bets are off. That Orsini Curse I told you about? You see, Archie,” Gigi said, scurrying to the door of his office, “it’s stronger than any individual, and,” she added, as she escaped into the corridor, “the women in my family are helpless victims of their own fatal power. It could happen to Byron—it could even happen to you, sweetheart.”
Victoria Frost stared at the pile of issues of Adweek, Advertising Age, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal that lay on her desk. Each of them carried a story on the projected Winthrop Cruise Line that Ben Winthrop had announced at a press conference. Although none of them credited Gigi with the idea for inspiring the type of cruise ship he described, all of them, in the part of the story that concerned the award of the account to Frost/Rourke/Bernheim, mentioned Gigi as a “rainmaker” and included a few paragraphs on The Enchanted Attic, Indigo Seas, and the small but promising Beverly Hills Beauty Bar cosmetic accounts, a recent line Gigi and David had pitched and won, as well as the designer perfume account on which Gigi and David had been the creative team.
Until today, she had been considered the rainmaker for FRB, Victoria thought, but from now on she’d be forced to share that position with Gigi in the minds of the advertising community. The Winthrop Line account was budgeted at fifteen million dollars; the first all-copy “teaser” ads would start to run as soon as possible on the premium-priced back covers or the inside front covers of every top prestige magazine in the United States and Europe. Ben Winthrop had told the press that he aimed to make the Winthrop Line, beginning with the Winthrop Emerald, into the equivalent of a string of five-star international resorts.
The agency had added over thirty-three million dollars to its billings since Gigi had arrived on the scene, Victoria estimated. Archie and Byron hadn’t waited the customary year to review Gigi’s salary, but had put their heads together and decided to give her an immediate bonus and triple her compensation. When they’d told Victoria what they thought FRB should do for Gigi, she had
accepted it; the money Gigi earned wasn’t a battle she could win. They couldn’t afford to lose Gigi, but all the rationality in the world couldn’t change a bitterness that her discipline in hiding her emotions had barely enabled her to mask.
The luck of that creature! The Enchanted Attic and Winthrop Line accounts were the result of Ben Winthrop’s raging hard-on for her, did anyone doubt that? The smaller Indigo Seas, perfume, and Beauty Bar accounts showed only that people would always fall for flash and trash; Gigi’s big accounts had come from her willingness to play the sex game, and that could turn against her as quickly as it had turned toward her. The chit was out of the office playing at spending Ben Winthrop’s money far more often than she was in the office doing the job she’d been hired for, Victoria reflected savagely. Winthrop had given her the opportunity to excuse her absences on the grounds that he needed her to make a host of decisions, when it was obvious that what he really wanted was to have her easily available even when he wasn’t working in Los Angeles. Victoria’s animosity toward Gigi had grown with each of Gigi’s triumphs, but she made herself treat the girl with an even correctness, a seamless lack of overt hostility.
Victoria had slowly come to understand that Angus Caldwell was the problem that drove her almost unbearably wild with impatience, not Gigi, who had used her twat so cunningly to conjure millions out of Ben Winthrop.
It was almost a year and a half since Angus had persuaded her to move to California, and he was still hesitating, still finding a multitude of reasons why it wasn’t the right time to make the definitive break with New York. Yet, whenever they were together, no matter how brief it was, he made her realize that every other man she had anything to do with was third-rate, good only for minimal physical release.
Sometimes, Victoria brooded, she’d caught herself wishing Angus would die. She had loved him so utterly for so long, and with such absolute singlemindedness, that she knew that nothing less than death could force her to give him up. If he were dead she could probably go on with her life, such as it was, but while he was alive, and married to her mother, she would never know a moment’s happiness. If Angus were dead, her love would never die, but it would become peaceful and painless, a source of timeless tenderness and memories, instead of a daily dagger-wound of jealousy and need and hunger. Perhaps, in time, she would find a place in which to feel gentle.
Lovers Page 30
