Fashionably Late (11 page)

Or she’d go to her own closet. Not to see what she had, but to see what she lacked.

It was difficult, of course, to fill in the negative space. To imagine what she needed rather than what she had. She’d found that was the key to an important piece of clothing: The long jean skirt that she had created five years ago came from her staring into the closet and it had become a classic. So had the tent dress with the matching tenpocket vest. And all her signature stuff in sweatshirt material. If all else failed, sometimes she’d go on shopping jaunts with Defina. They’d do a lot of looking, a lot of talking to sales clerks, and a lot of watching the other shoppers.

Maybe that’s what she could use today to get a kick start on her creativity. She hadn’t slept for hours after the argument with Jeffrey, and she already felt tired, as if the day was almost over.

She couldn’t just drag herself through it, either. She had the meeting with NormCo to prepare for, and the ever-present pressure of the new collection and the Paris show. Plus a trunk show coming up in Chicago and dinner this week with a reporter from Women’s Wear. Worst of all was the major interview on the television show. That Elle Halle thing.

Karen had already sweated out a segment on a Barbara Walter’s special, but this was an hour-long show! It was Mercedes’s idea of following up on the Oakley Award. Oy ley!

Janet, who was young and still in awe of Karen, was bustling around outside her door. Now the girl knocked and stuck her head in.

“I just wanted to remind you that Mrs. Paradise and Elise Elliot are coming in again today.”

Shit! Elise Elliot, a great star during the Audrey Hepburn era, had made a huge comeback in the critically acclaimed work of director Larry Cochran. Now they were to be married. That he was almost thirty years younger than the bride caused a great deal of talk both in Hollywood and in New York, towns that had seen everything. Now, after years of living and working together, Larry had joshed that he was going to make an honest woman out of Elise. Sheţa newsmaker for two generationsţknew the event would be a circus for every photographer and cameraman that could crawl out of the woodwork.

She had come to Karen for help and it wasn’t easy to give. Elise Elliot knew all there was to know about clothes and was used to getting her way. Though wealthy, she still watched every penny. And she, as all great beauties, mourned the fading of her looks, the softening of her face, and was attempting perfection one last time. She’d been driving Karen crazy with the fittings.

“Oh, Jesus!” Every time Karen used any expletive, Janetţa nice Catholic girl from the Bronxţcringed. But the other inheritance from Janet’s parochial school upbringing was that she was the only kid under thirty who could spellţthe nuns were good for teaching something other than guilt. They had also instilled in Janet the ability to cope with Karen’s ever-changing schedule. Yes, the sisters at Our Lady of the Bleeding Ulcers had prepared Janet well. They’d prepared Janet to take aggravation.

“Do you want me to reschedule?” Janet asked. “I told them it was tentative. They said they were flexible.”

That was a lie. Elise Elliot was as flexible as a cement block. A sophisticated, charming, slim, and beautiful cement block, but a cement block all the same. “No,” Karen told Janet. After all, you couldn’t reschedule a legend. Elise Elliot had been a movie star for close to thirty years. Karen’s designs would get great coverage, guaranteed to make “Star Tracks” in People magazine, but the whole thing had become a pain in Karen’s ass, and if Annie Paradise, the writer, hadn’t asked, Karen would never have done it. But Annie had recommended Ernest to her, and Karen was so grateful, she’d do almost anything to oblige.

“You know that the camera crew is coming in this afternoon.”

It was too much! Jesus, when did it start to get easy? “No. I didn’t know that. I thought they finished up everything but my interview with Elle Halle. I thought yesterday’s taping of Jeffrey was the end of that.”

“They say they just want some background. You know, the showroom and the workroom. Maybe one more fitting.”

“Goddamnit!” Karen couldn’t tell them no, either. Why was it that the bigger she got the less control she seemed to have? “Tell Mercedes to handle them. They always create chaos. Tell them I am not available.”

“Okay. Okay.” Janet backed away.

She had to get out of the office, Karen decided. She would clear her desk, then hope that Defina got into a better mood, and the two of them could schlep around to Saks or maybe they’d call a car and go all the way to Paramus. Karen preferred to shop the suburban malls than the less reality-based New York stores. She got more ideas there, somehow.

For now, she’d give up on ideas. Karen gathered the pads together and was just dumping them into the wide, flat drawer where she stored them when Jeffrey walked into the room. “Hi, honey,” he greeted her cheerfully.

Karen blinked in surprise. Men killed her. They really did. Didn’t he have a clue? She was still upset by their talk last night. Hurt and disappointed. And she was angry about this withholding tax business.

She’d told him not to do that again. Jeffrey had pushed her to expand the company, but he’d assured her they’d have enough backing to do it.

This was one more thing to make her crazy, but if she got into it now they’d have another fight and she hadn’t gotten over last night yet.

How come he was acting as if nothing had happened? Didn’t he understand what last night had meant to her? Didn’t it hurt him too?

Or was he just being brazen and trying to “tough it out”? Sometimes, when Jeffrey knew he was in the doghouse, he did use that tactic. It always left her feeling confused and vulnerable. Should she act as if nothing had happened? Should she pitch a fit? Or should she be cold and risk being accused of being overly sensitive or bitchy? Not knowing what to do, Karen figured she’d go for the tax stuff. It was easier than the baby stuff.

“Jeffrey, what about withholding? Are we in trouble again?”

Jeffrey blinked. It was the only sign he ever gave of being surprised.

“No, we’re not in trouble.”

“Has it been paid?”

“Not yet.”

“W y not? Isn’t it due?”

“Karen, why don’t you let me run the business? You knew that if we tried to do the bridge line that we wouldn’t be able to repay our loans unless we managed to get through a couple of good seasons. Well, we’ve got the orders, but we don’t have the cash flow, and the factors are giving me a little trouble. I’m just trying to finance the piece goods you’re buying like a mad woman and pay the manufacturers enough to keep them shipping. We knew the loan was going to go up before it came down, but we didn’t know it was going to go up this much, or that our receivables would get paid on a ninetyday cycle. So if I have to borrow from Peter to pay Paul, it’s only temporary. We have to keep the factors happy and confident. The IRS is never happy, so what’s the difference?”

“The difference is, that’s not our money. The staff already earned it.

You said you wouldn’t do this again.”

“Well, I am. Don’t look at me like I’m a criminal, I’m doing it for you. Look on it as a temporary loan from your beloved staff, negotiated by your beloved husband.” He kissed her on the cheek. “I’d like to start to go over the numbers with you before the NormCo presentation,” Jeffrey said pleasantly. “Then you’ll understand this better. We could go over it this weekend, but you’re doing that stupid brunch.” Karen had invited both his family and her own out to their house in Westport. She had to do it: she hadn’t invited them to the Oakley Awards and hadn’t had any of them over in months. With her niece’s bat mitzvah coming up, she felt obligated to do some family thing before that extravaganza. Jeffrey looked down at his sheaf of papers. “I know you don’t enjoy going over these numbers.”

Now she’d never get to work, Karen thought with a pang. “That’s okay,” she said.

“This afternoon looks good for me,” he said. “It’s important that you understand all the figures, just in case you’re asked. It would hurt our credibility if you wound up looking like window dressing.” The man was incredible. Business as usual. Last night had never happened, or meant nothing.

“Jeffrey, I’m not an idiot and I’m not window dressing,” she snapped.

He waved his hand. “Oh, you know what I mean. I don’t want them to think that you don’t have a clue about the business end and are just some flighty designer.”

She looked at him steadily. “Why should they think that?” she asked.

“Is that what you think?”

“Of course not. I know it.”

She didn’t like his joke. “I’ve got work to do,” she said coldly and buzzed for Janet. “Send Defina in,” she told Janet. “I’m ready for her.”

Jeffrey knew he’d been dismissed and he didn’t like it. “Just be ready for me at noon,” Jeffrey told her. “We have a lot to go through.” He turned and tried to slam the door, but wisely, years before, Karen had put an air compressor on the hinge. No one was going to slam the door on her, in her office, she figured. She could just see Jeffrey stalking past Defina in the hallway. He ignored her.

“Spread the joy,” Defina cried out to him as she hustled into Karen’s office. “Glad I’m not married, when I take a look at you two this morning,” she said cheerfully. “What’s coming down?”

“Men. You can’t live with em … “

“And you can’t live with em,” Defina finished for her. “So, what’s next?”

“When the going gets tough … ” Karen began.

“The tough go shopping!” Defina exclaimed, finishing Karen’s sentence again. Defina grinned and waited while Karen grabbed her purse and put on her lipstick.

“One thing I know,” Karen said. “I’m not going to be back here to see him at noon.” At Janet’s desk, Karen paused for a moment. “Cancel the models, see if you can move Miss Elliot’s fitting to tomorrow, and tell my husband he can forget about the NormCo presentation rehearsal. I’m out of the box until three.” She walked down the hall with long strides, Defina at her side.

“Girlfriend,” Defina said approvingly, “you are every husband’s nightmare: a wife with her own Gold Card.”

At the elevator, the new receptionist called out to her. “It’s your sister,” she said. “Will you take the call?”

Oh shit! Karen realized that she still hadn’t called Lisa. One more thing she had to do. “Tell her I’ll call her from the car phone,” Karen barked, and she and Defina stepped into the steel box of the elevator.

Lisa closed the front door and breathed a sigh of relief. The abortion of the morning was, at last, over. It hadn’t been worse than usualţit was just that the usual was bad enough. She had managed to ignore the absolutely indecent shortness of Stephanie’s skirt and the positively gross broadness of Tiffany’s ass while stopping the two of them from squabbling any worse than they absolutely had to in front of their father. She had managed to get Leonard out the door and even weedled a couple hundred bucks out of him by telling him she was having the Mercedes lubed. Fuck the Mercedes, she would spend the money on her own maintenance. Not that two hundred bucks would do much, but she was always short of cash and at least now she could carry something in her pocketbook.

Lisa turned and walked down the hallway of their four-bedroom colonial-style house, pausing at the door of the breakfast room. She surveyed the remains of the meal. Stephanie, as usual, had eaten nothing, while Tiff, also as usual, had cleaned not only her own plate but her sister’s and her father’s. Lisa had seen her do it in the reflection of the glass-paned doors. She hadn’t said anything. She couldn’t take another traumatic scene. She shook her head. The kid was already a size fourteen and she wasn’t even thirteen years old.

She would look like shit at the bat mitzvah.

Lisa winced, imagining the satisfaction the bitches at the Inwood Jewish Center would have over that. And there was no way Lisa could control it or do anything about it. Both she and Leonard would be humiliated, but she knew from experience that diets and trying to force or reward Tiff were useless. They had already sent her to weight-loss camp two years in a row now and Tiff had managed to gain weight at both of them. Had she gnawed tree bark, and was tree bark fattening? Lisa still didn’t know how her daughter had done it. Neither did the last camp director, who had “suggested” to Lisa that she should try counseling for Tiff and not return her to camp this year.

Lisa turned away from the table. Camille, her housekeeper, would be in at nine and she could clean up the mess. The sight of the congealed egg yolks drying on the plates made Lisa feel sick and out of control.

Well, so what? So she couldn’t control her preteen daughter. So sue me, she thought. But Lisa could control how she looked and she knew that she was going to look better than anyone else at the bat mitzvah.

It would be an opportunity to shine. One of the problems in her life, she admitted to herself, was that while she had wonderful clothes, she didn’t have enough fabulous places to wear them. The affair would be an occasion where she could really show herself at her best.

Today she had to find shoes. While she had promised herself that her last pair of Walter Steigers would be her absolute final shoe purchase, she had been lucky enough to find a Donna Karan pants suit on sale at NeimanMarcus when she’d shopped there with Belle. It was fifty percent off, God’s way of saying she was meant to have it. It was a fabulous color for herţa sort of soft wine shade in a heavy silk broadcloth.

With her dark hair and the gold buttons of the suit as contrast, the color gave her a fabulous glow, and Lisa already had the exact shade of lipstick to wear with it. The only problem was the shoes.

She did already have a maroon pair of suede Manolo Blahniks, but the heels were a little too high for a pant suitţshe hated that tarty spike-heelswith-slacks lookţand, anyway, the maroon didn’t have the soft mauviness that the Donna Karan suit had. It would be a push to wear them together and Lisa despised that kind of dressing. The “well-it-almost-goes-so-what-thehell-look,” she called it. It would be better to wear black shoes than the maroon ones. But Lisa had tried the suit on with the three different pair of black shoes she hadţa snake skin, a silk faille, and a patent leather pairţand none of them really worked. So today Lisa planned to find the right pair of shoes.