Fashionably Late (57 page)

There, as neatly arrayed as in the very best boutique, was grouping after grouping of coordinates. There were two Adrienne Vittidini knits. Beside them hung three Joan Vass sweatersţone white, one red, and one blueţwith the knit skirts and leggings that matched. Lisa lifted her hand in wonder. There was a jacket that she herself had wantedţit was a Calvin Kleinţin a beautiful raw silk. Lisa reached up and took it out of the closet. It was a size two and it still had the price tag on it: nine hundred and sixty dollars. She hung it back on the rack, and continued with the inventory. There were three Ralph Lauren dresses, a couple of Anna Suis, a Jil Sanders jacket as well as a fabulous Armani blazer, three silk Armani shirts, a tie-dye suit by Dolce and Gabbana, and some lesser stuff. It was all size two.

Where had it all come from? Whose was it? And what was it all doing hanging there? Tiffcouldn’t get one of her legs into it. She certainly had never worn it, and she couldn’t have bought it. Even if she had spent all of her bat mitzvah money, she couldn’t have bought half of this. Anyway, Leonard had put all of that money in her college account.

Lisa took a step back, then grabbed the knobs of the bifold doors and pulled them firmly shut. She turned her back on the closet. Whatever Tiff had been doing, Lisa felt as if she really didn’t want to know about it. She had had quite enough of both of her daughters, today, thank you. She would go see Jeffrey. They wouldn’t talk about Leonard or about the girls or about Karen. Today they would only t”Lk about what they would do in the future when all the lovely money, the money that could finance a new life, came in.

Karen was flying to Hong Kong on one of the NormCo private jets. This time it wasn’t the 707. It was a 747. Only Bill Wolper and the President of the United States would use a plane this big. Bill had explained he preferred to use them for long hauls, since they had four engines instead of three. “More expensive to run, but worth it, wouldn’t you say? After all, you’re one of our most valuable assets.”

The plane seemed to climb into the sky like a rocket. Once they had reached cruising altitude, however, it leveled out and it was a lot more comfortable than any plane Karen had traveled in before.

There were two stewards, one male and one female, as well as a chef tucked away in the galley. All three of them there to serve her.

Karen sat up for a little while, reading over some of the hideously boring NormCo financials, and then decided to give up. Her ever-present schlep bag was filled with all kinds of stuff to readţback issues of Women’s Wear Daily, the coverage that the Paris show was getting in half a dozen fashion magazines, and a T. Berry Brazelton book for new parents. That and a name book were the two she really wanted to look at, but she certainly didn’t want to do it in front of these hovering stewards. So, even though it was only nine-thirty, she decided she would go to bed.

They were eager to help, but she found herself alone at last in a double bed that was perfectly turned down and fitted with real linen sheets. Of course they had the gray WW monogram.

She got into bed and wondered what it would be like to make love in a double bed thirty-five thousand feet over the continental United States.

Did Bill often seduce women in this bed? She was going to meet him in Bangkok. Somehow, she expected that he would make a move on her then.

Men, in her experience, almost needed to get that routine, knee-jerk seduction thing out of the way.

She shrugged the thought away and pulled out the Brazelton book. Back in New York, she hoped that Cyndi was being tucked in by Carl. Karen read a chapter on prenatal care, even though it wasn’t her job, and felt sleep begin to overwhelm her. She was tired, but as she tucked her face into the downfilled pillow she smiled, thinking of the baby that was waiting for her, albeit in utero, back in New York.

l Karen stepped into the white Mercedes that was parked at the curb at Bangkok’s International Airport. She had been met by a Thai representative of NorrnCo and a beautiful, tiny woman carrying a massive bouquet. Karen had been spared all of the baggage, immigration, and customs imbroglio. Apparently, as Bill Wolper’s guest, such indignities were considered beneath her. Instead she had been ushered into a pleasant room with purple silk on the walls where several government officials had done whatever needed to be done at a discreet teak desk while she sat on a gold silk divan. She still held the flowers, mostly white roses and purple orchids. There was a note affixed: “Welcome to Asia. I know you’re going to love it.” It was signed “Bill.” Karen wondered if it would be an insult if she left the flowers there in the car? They were enormous and difficult to carry, already wilting in the sun that shone down into the limo windows.

Behind the wall of glass, inside the air conditioning, Karen got her first look at Thailand. She was woozy from her sleep and the long trip, but she had to admit that if you were going to take a twenty-hour flight, this was the only way to travel. Would she always be treated this way once she was in the bosom of the NormCo family? Or was this just the honeymoon, to be followed by business as usual? Out the windows, Karen was disappointed to see that Bangkok looked much like any other city on the way in from the airport, although all of the Thai writing was very different than anything Karen had seen before. It was decorative, prettier even than Arabic. Somewhere Karen had read that the Thai alphabet had forty-four consonants and more than half as many vowels. Well, she didn’t plan to learn it any time soon. But it would make pretty patterns on fabric.

The Bangkok traffic was as desperate and mad as she had been told.

Darting among the hundreds of small cars and trucks were tiny tuk-tuks, the openair little canvas-topped taxis that buzzed around like swarms of colorfully striped insects. The noise, even through the cool glass of the Mercedes limo, was incredible.

The driver pointed out the grounds of the Royal Palace. They passed a series of canals, green and inviting, and then they were in the heart of the city, a hive of stores and crosswalks, signs and lights like any other capital. It wasn’t until she pulled into the circular driveway in front of the Oriental Hotel that she felt as if she might be in another part of the world.

She was greeted by six men in pristine white jackets and the traditional skirted pants of Thailand. Everybody smiled and bowed low, their hands raised and clasped together before their faces. “Sawadee kop,” they said, in greeting. She bowed back while her luggage was whisked out of sight. “Sawadee kop,” she said back to them, and they all giggled. Her driver smiled. “Only boy say kop,” he explained.

“Girl say kah.” ” Karen didn’t understand, but she bowed and smiled.

Then she was met by one of the managers and whisked past the registration desk and straight to the elevators. Checkin was apparently a formality she didn’t have to be troubled with, just like customs and immigration. This was what power bought. Karen was taken up to a suite in the old, central portion of the building. She walked in and it took her breath away.

The living room was tiled with white marble. It had huge windows from ceiling to floor. There was a carved teak divan upholstered in purple silkţapparently the Thai national colorţand a beautiful huge porcelain ginger jar beside it. There were several clusters of comfortable white cushioned chairs and a large bamboo plant growing in the corner near the staircase. The stairs brought her up to a bedroom loft that overlooked the living room and the enormous windows. Somehow, her bags had already arrived, and two valets in immaculate white jackets were almost finished unpacking her clothes. They bowed and murmured “Sawadee kop.” A tiny bouquet of purple flowers that Karen had never seen, beautiful little bell-shaped ones with flat round leaves, sat on the bedside table. There was a note beside the flowers addressed to her. She tore open the envelope. “Pleasant dreams,” it read. “I have a business dinner but I hope to see you for breakfast tomorrow.

Bill.”

The valets bowed out of the room, while the assistant manager showed her the enormous white marble bathroom, the smaller dressing room, and the little room downstairs off the living room that contained only a table, two chairs, and some kind of a blooming tree. Its utter simplicity and its utter luxury charmed Karen. If she could pick a single room to live in, it might be this one, with its floor-to-ceiling view.

It was already dark, but the room looked out on the gardens and the pool that edged the river, a twinkling green ribbon. There were dozens of graceful boats swooping over the surface. Across the river, Karen could see some kind of temple, its gold roof shining in the reflected lights of the water. Here, for the first time, everything looked otherworldly, oriental, delicate, mysterious, and beautiful. It was the Asia she had imagined in some fairy tale, not the terrible place Arnold had often described where virtual slave laborers worked for pennies an hour.

Karen sat and watched for a long time. She was tired, but she felt happy. Soon she would be rich, and soon she and Jeffrey would have their baby. She was looking forward to settling down to a better time then.

With both of these conflicts resolved, couldn’t they go on to have a marriage better than it had ever been? She got out her name book and began, once again, to search through it. But happy as she was, she was restless. The gardens below looked so inviting that she felt irresistibly drawn to them. After all, this was her first evening in Asia and she had barely let her feet touch the ground. She would leave this heaven on the tenth floor and have a drink in the garden beside the pool and the river.

The lobby, which she hadn’t had time to notice when she was whisked through on her way in, was now the meeting place for people dressed in evening clothes. Karen saw two beautiful Thai women, all in silks, one turquoise and one violet and both sparkling with diamonds. They were drinking with an Asian and two American men. They were breathtakingly beautiful. Karen walked passed them, feeling even larger and more clunky than usual, but once she exited through the glass doors and into the soft caress of the garden’s air and darkness, she felt not just comfortable but transported. The air seemed to be exactly body temperature, as if the boundaries between where she began and where she ended became blurred. She walked along the immaculate bricked paths, palm trees and tropical vines swaying overhead, fern and orchids at her feet. A parrot shrieked from a hidden nest, and Karen, startled, laughed. She walked to the balustrade along the river, which in the gathering darkness had turned into a black satin mystery. Lights twinkled all along it and the chatter of a dozen languages from people sitting sedately at the tables overlooking the pool merged into a lulling sound, as comforting as the slap of the river water against the pilings below her feet.

Karen felt as if she had never known such peace. She had worked hard.

Nothing had been easy. She existed in a man’s world, a tough world of business controlled by people who didn’t want to give her a share. She had struggled and she had managed, against great odds, to make a life for herself and to shape it into what she wanted. Soon all the struggle would be made worthwhile. Staring into the Bangkok darkness Karen felt the deep pleasure of success.

Breakfast with Bill beside the pool was charming. A Thai breakfast, at least at the gorgeous Oriental, consisted of the thinnest of omelets, rolled like a crepe over chopped vegetables and sided not with home fries, like in her local Greek joint back in New York, but with the most delicious rice. The idea of rice in the morning had no appealţuntil she took her first bite. Mercedes, with her no-starch diet, would have been scandalized, but Karen smiled.

“Good, isn’t it?” Bill asked.

“Beats hell out of eggs over easy and a side of pig,” Karen agreed.

She couldn’t remember when she had felt so pampered, so surrounded by luxury. She couldn’t tell if it was the pleasant cocoon of the Oriental, of Bill’s money and power, or the deference and attention of Bill himself. She wished they could spend the day staring at the river traffic, drinking and eating on the sunny veranda. It might be good to be rich.

As if he sensed her mood, he leaned across the sun-splashed table and smiled at her. “So, are we going to sleep together?” he asked pleasantly.

Karen couldn’t say she was completely surprised by the question, but she was surprised by Bill’s asking it aloud. And she didn’t know how to answer him. Like a kid, she laughed. “I’m married,” she reminded him.

“I already knew that,” Bill said easily and picked up his glass of mango juice. It was one of the most exquisite colors that Karen had ever seen.

“I don’t do that sort of thing,” Karen said.

“But you have thought about it?” Bill asked. “You even thought about it for this trip, as a possibility today.”

“I did not,” Karen told him. She was confused. She had thought about Bill back when they first lunched, but that was when things weren’t going well with Jeffrey, before there was the prospect of the baby.

Anyway, even then it had only been a fantasy. Admitting it might make it happen, and she was fairly sure she did not want it to happen.

“I don’t believe you,” Bill said.

Karen laughed. “I can prove it,” she told him. “Any woman who was considering an affair would have shaved her legs.” She uncrossed hers and held one out, discreetly, for him to see. Her ankle just brushed his. He reached down and circled the ankle with his hand. It made her blush, but she covered her confusion with another laugh. “See?” she said. “Five o’clock shadow. I rest my case.”

Bill let both the subject and her ankle drop. Smoothly, he began to talk about their schedule. Was he angry? She couldn’t tell. They finished breakfast and met the entourage that was waiting.

They had a long day ahead of them. Bill was going to show her several of the factories that NormCo used, as well as two locations where they might become the major buyer of production time. Karen felt guilty, because a part of her wanted to spend the day lounging on a chaise beside the beautiful pool, but she was Arnold’s daughter and she wouldn’t duck out on her responsibilities. So she was whisked into another white Mercedes and they spent the morning and afternoon at the five different places. Wherever they went, Bill was referred to and treated with more than respect. It wasn’t just the bowing or the deference due to a boss. It seemed to Karen that there was a natural submissiveness, an almost religious pleasure, in the rituals of respect.