Piece of Work

by Laura Zigman

  All for a perfume that didn’t even smell good and wasn’t even selling!

  The cancellations were no surprise—especially to Jack, who had hoped this would happen the minute he hatched the plan in his mind months before. But there was a weird mix of satisfaction and annoyance in his voice.

  “You sound disappointed,” Julia said, relieved beyond belief to have two torturous cities cut off her tour of duty.

  “I am. I thought more stores would cancel by now. But so far, Boston and Orlando and the West Coast are still on.”

  “I’m sure if you work a little more of your evil magic, the rest of the tour will fall in like a house of cards.”

  “Lindsay Green came across extremely well on television,” he said. “Better than I’d expected, in fact. The perfect spokesperson. Articulate. Passionate. She even wore a bra, which is more than I can say for both times I met with her.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Didn’t you watch?”

  No, she hadn’t watched. Leo never let her watch anything she wanted to watch on television because he was under the strange impression that the television was all his.

  Jack was silent. She could tell he was trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong: He’d devised the perfect strategy to obfuscate a failing product launch and celebrity comeback; he’d leaked the appropriate information to the appropriate media pawns; he’d done an especially poor job of crisis management by making himself unavailable for comment all day Friday. Why wasn’t this whole farce over yet?

  “Even if the stores didn’t cancel, I was sure Mary would. I didn’t think she’d still go. I mean, who the hell would willingly walk into such an explosive situation?”

  Why, a desperate narcissistic has-been, that’s who!

  “Well, hopefully it won’t be that explosive since I worked out the agreement with PETA. Our quick response to their concerns about Heaven Scent’s animal-testing policies scored us some points—enough to at least buy us time to avoid any immediate protests and demonstrations.”

  She could swear she heard Jack scratching his chin. “Still, it’s not the most optimal circumstances to be trying to sell yourself to a public that’s all but forgotten you.” He paused. “But Mary has too much pride to let her daughter get the better of her. I didn’t figure that into the equation. Spite is a powerful motivator.”

  “She’s a tough old bird.”

  “One that I wouldn’t mind taking a shot at if I weren’t afraid of those fucking PETA people.”

  A brief fantasy clip of a bunch of angry protesters chasing after Jack with homemade signs and cans of red spray paint danced through her head, but when it was gone Julia found herself wondering how he had convinced Mary’s daughter to betray her in the first place.

  “I convinced her to work with me because I didn’t position her involvement as a betrayal. I positioned her involvement as a way to help her mother—as a way to help protect her mother from the shame of a very public failure. It’s not Mary’s fault that Heaven Scent couldn’t afford to produce a decent fragrance. And it’s not Mary’s fault that Heaven Scent performs irritability tests on the eyes of albino rabbits.”

  Julia laughed out loud. “So you’re telling me that Lindsay Green agreed to help you sabotage her mother’s comeback vehicle because she’s a nice person?”

  “No. I’m telling you that Lindsay Green agreed to do this because I knew that the only thing she wants more than attention from the media and from the public is attention from her mother. And I knew that this was the perfect way for her to get it.”

  She’d heard enough. “Go back to looking for celebrity underwear on eBay, Jack. I’ll call you from the road.”

  This time, when she packed for the trip, Julia knew the drill—she knew all about Mary’s luggage, Mary’s comfort, Mary’s meals; she knew about her schedules, her interviews, her hotel rooms, her Fresca, her breakfast menu orders, her Frick and Frack paranoia, her veal chops—so she didn’t even bother with her small suitcase on wheels and all the little Container Store containers and zippered pouches. It wasn’t worth it—using one arm to drag her own suitcase and the other arm to carry Mary Ford’s heavy Louis Vuitton makeup case while her briefcase and her laptop hung from her shoulder. She’d worn the same black suit all three days because she barely had a minute to pee and brush her teeth, let alone unzip her garment bag and change her clothes.

  Instead, she laid out a black suit that she would wear and not carry. Then she put two pairs of hose, two T-shirts, four pairs of underwear, and a small bag of toiletries into a black shoulder tote. She repacked her briefcase and made sure she had everything she needed—a wallet full of cash advanced by the company, her cell phone, her laptop, her files filled with airline tickets and paper schedules since she hadn’t figured out how to use Peter’s Palm Pilot, and all the other paperwork which was now essentially useless since so many of the arrangements had changed.

  The next morning, Mary settled into her seat next to Julia on the plane, strapped herself in, and passed the next fifty-eight minutes of the flight north to Boston expressing her concerns and demands—Was an airline security person going to meet their flight and take them via golf cart to baggage claim? Had Julia confirmed that the Chestnut Hill Bloomingdale’s had the proper equipment (a padded upholstered chair, a signing table draped with white linen and adorned with white flowers, an ample supply of Sharpie pens and, most importantly, cans of chilled Fresca and room-temperature Volvic water)? Were there any gossip or news items in the morning papers about her daughter’s appearances on the entertainment shows over the weekend and was there any word on impending protests and demonstrations by PETA activists in connection with Heaven Scent and Legend?—which Julia tried her best to answer and address. But the hardest question by far to field was why there had been a change in their hotel accommodations.

  “I thought we were staying at the Four Seasons.”

  “We are,” Julia said.

  “That’s not what the new schedule says. The new schedule says we’re staying at the Westin.”

  “The Westin?” Julia unfolded her copy of the revised schedule Jack had e-mailed her Sunday night at home and which she’d printed out but not yet looked closely at. “I don’t know anything about this.”

  Mary rolled her eyes. “Another Frick and Frack situation. One hand doesn’t know what the other one is doing.”

  Julia examined the accommodations page of the schedule for the first time and realized that Jack had downgraded their hotels from Ritz-Carltons and Four Seasons and other top hotels to Westins and Hyatts. He’d also switched their first-class flights to business class and coach. It was his way of trying to not only save some money but also give Mary further cause to become so incensed she’d play the star-treatment card and drop out of the tour.

  But Mary Ford wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I hear good things about the Westin chain. They have something called ‘the Heavenly Bed’ and ‘the Heavenly Shower,’ with down comforters and pillows and special toiletries,” she said, setting her jaw and fixing her hair. “I’ve seen their television ads. They’re trying to compete with the more expensive hotels for the business traveler’s business.” Mary leaned across the armrest and stuck her finger into Julia’s arm. “Don’t think I don’t know what that Jack Be Nimble is up to.”

  Poke.

  “He’s trying to smoke me out. But he’s going to have to do a lot better than taking away my fancy hotels and my first-class airline tickets to get me to walk away from this so he can cut his losses.”

  Poke.

  “My perfume might be tanking and my daughter might be trying to rain on my parade, but I’m washable. I didn’t last in Hollywood for as long as I did because I was a quitter.”

  Poke.

  She retracted her poking finger and sat back in her seat as the plane taxied down the runway and pushed its nose up into the air. “Now what idiot at the Boston Globe is coming to my Heavenly Hotel Room to interview me?”<
br />
  No idiot, it turned out, from the Boston Globe was coming to the hotel to interview her. That had been canceled, too, as Julia discovered upon check-in at the hotel, although for reasons having nothing to do with the PETA situation: George Clooney had been spotted in town, scouting locations for an upcoming film, and they’d put all their available entertainment reporters on that story. And so with only their five o’clock news segment to look forward to before their evening signing at the suburban Boston Bloomingdale’s, Julia suggested they have lunch somewhere on Newbury Street and rest up for the latter part of the day.

  After an uneventful meal at the recently updated Boston landmark the Locke-Ober Café, just across from the Boston Common (where Mary, who had been there years ago with “a gaggle of Kennedys,” pronounced her Lobster Thermidor “fabulous”), and after Mary had poked and prodded at her teeth and Julia had paid the check, Mary announced that she wanted to go shopping.

  “This is one of my favorite stores in the world,” Mary said, as she led the way into Louis, Boston’s equivalent of Barneys New York, which, like Barneys, had started out solely as a men’s store. Gliding across the threshold of the converted nineteenth-century stone mansion and heading toward the elevator, Mary pushed the button for the fourth floor, where the women’s department was.

  Julia followed Mary off the elevator and through the quiet skylit and nearly empty store, around the racks of tiny Prada and Gucci sweaters and skirts and T-shirts that looked like they were sized for five-year-old girls, and over to the far side of the floor, a large part of which was devoted to a single designer.

  “Jil Sander,” Mary Ford purred as she pawed through the jackets and pants and blouses on their heavy wood hangers. “My favorite non-American designer.” Julia watched as she pulled two suits—one black and one cream-colored—and two blouses off the rack and looked around for a salesperson. But before someone had the chance to spot her and lead her to a dressing room, Mary had taken off her blouse and had slipped one of the Jil Sander blouses on over her beige bra.

  “This is fabulous,” she said, buttoning the blouse and then reaching to slip on the black suit jacket. “No one knows fabric and fit like Jil. It’s that German precision. Not even Donna can cut a suit to fit like this.”

  Julia looked around to see if anyone was watching the spectacle Mary was creating—taking off the jacket and blouse she’d just tried on and readying yet another blouse and jacket to try on, while standing there yet again in her bra—terrified at the thought that at any second Mary might even drop her pants in order to try on the suit trousers. But before that happened a small young man in an exquisitely tailored dark pin-striped suit with a florid purple shirt collar and cuffs poking out of the jacket appeared, blushing and bowing.

  “Miss Ford,” he said breathlessly and completely unsurprised by Mary’s partial nudity. Has-beens must do this all the time, Julia realized—undressing in public as a way of getting noticed—she had just never been clothes shopping with a has-been before. “What an honor and a pleasure to serve you.”

  Instantly charmed, Mary turned toward him and gave him her classic grin, the one that had worked such magic that first day they met during the photo shoot.

  “And who might you be, Little Well-Dressed Man?”

  “Flint.”

  Mary raised an eyebrow. “Flint?”

  He nodded.

  “As in ‘Lint’ with an ‘F’ in front of it?”

  He nodded again.

  “What kind of a name is that?”

  “A nighttime name.”

  She rolled her eyes at Julia. I told you the gays love me.

  “Flint,” Mary repeated dubiously.

  He blushed again and curtseyed. “It’s a stage name.”

  Mary rolled her eyes dramatically toward Julia. “An actor.”

  He smiled naughtily. “A performer.”

  As he led her away behind a wall into a dressing room with an armful of clothes for her to try on in private, Julia couldn’t help being impressed by and a little jealous of how masterfully he was handling Mary. While she was momentarily distracted, Julia called the office.

  Jack’s phone went directly to voicemail, but Jonathan picked up their line on the second ring. The minute she heard his voice, she knew something was wrong.

  “Lindsay Green’s PETA news made the morning papers and columns,” he said nervously, like a monkey that had been spanked and traumatized. Which she knew he must have been, having been left all alone with Jack during this crisis. “The New York Post, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, Variety.”He paused to catch his breath and she did the same. She’d only known about the Post and USA Today that she’d grabbed before getting on the shuttle.

  “And it made all the morning shows.”

  “Fuck.”

  “There are two protests planned that we know about,” he went on. “One in front of the Heaven Scent building on Fifth Avenue and the other at Bloomingdale’s on Lexington.”

  “When?”

  “Today. Late afternoon, around rush hour. They’re going to start at Heaven Scent, then march crosstown to Bloomingdale’s to maximize disruption. Jack thinks both are going to get wide coverage, both national and local, and that the story will move from entertainment to news.”

  “Fuck.”

  Julia glanced over at the dressing room. She could still hear Mary crowing about the fabulousness of whatever it was she was now trying on, so she turned back to the phone.

  “What about the Bloomingdale’s here in Boston?”

  “So far it’s quiet. No word of activists planning on showing up, no cancellation by the store.”

  Julia shook her head, completely flummoxed. “I don’t understand. This is exactly what my conversation and agreement with PETA on Friday was intended to prevent.”

  “I think Jack overrode that agreement.”

  “What do you mean he overrode it?”

  Jonathan paused and she could tell he was going into her office and closing the door for privacy. “I found a letter at the fax machine that he sent to PETA Friday night after you left.” She could hear him shuffling some papers until he found what he was looking for—the letter itself, which, he confessed, he’d made a copy of and stowed in her office. “It said that ‘despite the terms discussed with my associate regarding Mary Ford’s participation in the making of a public service announcement denouncing cosmetics testing on animals, Miss Ford has declined to participate in your very worthy cause. While she loves animals and of course finds the cruel treatment and exploitation of them deplorable, she is otherwise currently committed to the promotion and marketing of her new fragrance, Legend.’”

  “But that’s a lie. Mary would have told me if Jack had called her. And she never would have gone back on her word. Especially on this. Even though she hates people, she loves animals.” Before she could further deconstruct the counterintuitive negative-publicity-generating strategy and guerrilla tactics Jack was using to squash Legend, Mary emerged flushed from the dressing room, suits and blouses and Flint in tow.

  Julia folded up her phone and slid it back into her jacket pocket. “Any luck?” she said with as much false cheer as she could muster.

  Mary winked at Flint, who, on cue, gathered the clothes she was apparently planning to buy in his arms like little children. Then she winked at Julia.

  “I think Jack DeMarco owes me a suit.”

  Julia stared at Mary, then at Flint, then at the suit’s price tag, which she found tucked up inside the left jacket sleeve.

  $3700.

  “Excuse me?” Julia said.

  “Combat pay. If not for his incompetence—and yours—I wouldn’t be in this mess. For one thing, my perfume would smell good, and for another, I wouldn’t be about to face the front lines of a rabid political movement.”

  Julia looked over at Flint but he shrugged helplessly. Not that she was surprised, since he obviously worked on commission and wasn’t about to risk losing a sale
like this.

  “My little friend here told me about what’s going on in New York today. And apparently he’s heard through the grapevine that there’s a very good chance we’re going to run into some trouble at Bloomingdale’s tonight. Which is why I can’t afford to look anything less than my absolute best.”

  She poked Julia and nudged her over toward the register.

  “Take out your credit card, Einstein, and pony up. It’s showtime.”

  If Julia thought she was prepared for what they would face that evening at Bloomingdale’s, she realized, when their black sedan passed the store, because the throng of sign-carrying protesters was clogging both the front and rear entrances of the store, that she wasn’t. She knew, from the quick research she’d done the previous Friday at the office, that PETA had a remarkable ability to organize protests all around the country on very short notice due to its e-mail network of eager and agile community activists, waiting by their computers for the call to arms, but she hadn’t expected the crowd she saw gathered that night. With their signs and banners and their synchronized chants of “Heaven Scent is a lie! Bunnies shouldn’t have to die!” Julia realized for the first time what they were up against: people who were going to look great on the eleven o’clock news.

  Julia pressed her nose up to the glass of the passenger window and slid to the edge of her seat.

  “Pull forward and behind that restaurant,” she said, tapping the driver on the arm as she held on to the back of his headrest. When he put the car into park, Mary poked Julia.