Judith Krantz (73 page)
Authors: Dazzle
“First tell me where you were all day,” Jazz demanded.
“Jesus! You’re such a pain in the neck that I forgot the most important thing! There’s only one way left to keep from selling the ranch, and that’s to buy out your sisters, remove the threat of the Hong Kong deal. I’ve been working on a plan all week. My father came out from New York, we’ve been in nonstop communication with our bankers here and back East, and it’s definitely feasible.”
“Buy out my sisters,” Jazz said blankly.
“Sure, and build the new town. Dad and I and one of our business partners would put up a third in cash, the banks are ready to lend us another third, and the last third is yours anyway—”
“But your father’s in the tugboat business,” Jazz said numbly, trying to deal with the astonishing development one step at a time.
“The tugboats are only a small part of what he does. He’s ready for a change. He likes the long-range potential out here, and anyway, he’s lonely in New York—he’s even thinking of moving to California.” Casey adjusted a large log so that the fire burned more brightly.
“But, Casey, what about you? You’ve always wanted to own a huge ranch,” Jazz said in confusion. “In serious ranching terms, this is just a small one.”
“I’ve always wanted to be in ranching, but now, after being Cow Boss, I’ve lived it thoroughly enough to see I’d never make a full-time rancher—I’m not happy without a fax on my saddle.” Casey turned around and grinned, satisfied with the jangled flames of his firemaking. “And there’s something else … something very important. I love this land, this particular piece of land. It’s all connected with how much I love you and how I feel about your father, how we
used to talk together about its history, and how you and I went off to try to rescue it together. I can’t imagine ever leaving it now for someplace else.”
“But, darling, Casey, I—”
“Jazz, remember that night when you were dreaming out loud about a new town, the night we found the Sentinel Rocks? That idea of yours came to life in my mind the way nothing else ever has! I’m invested in a dozen different big businesses, but this is the only one I’ve ever wanted to get involved in personally. Listen, Jazz, don’t think I could possibly do this to make you happy. No businessman would commit that kind of money—and that much of his own time—to a project unless he had great faith in its future.”
“And you and your father have that kind of money—to buy out a third?”
“With a little assistance from another guy who wants to get in on it … yeah.”
“I never knew … I mean, you never said …
that
rich?”
“Sort of—we’ve done pretty well.”
“What if you didn’t have to buy out anybody? What if you could just go ahead and build the new town without buying the land?”
“As an investment it would be the best of all possible worlds … the less you have to borrow … but why torture yourself with questions like that?”
“Well …” Jazz’s eyes brimmed over with fun. “Well …”
“ ‘Well’? I’ve never heard you say it in quite that tone … like a chicken the size of an elephant about to lay a diamond egg …”He scrutinized her ravishingly victorious face suspiciously.
“I had a nice little chat with Val and Fernie today. They’re not going to sell to anyone. They want to build the new town too.”
“Say that again!”
“You heard me the first time.”
“But how …
how on earth?”
“It’s complicated. I sort of explained it to them
better. It went something like, ‘Hey, kids, let’s put on a show.’ ”
“Witchcraft!”
“That’s as good a word as any,” Jazz said, delighted with herself.
“But what did you say when they asked about the financial partners in joint-venture agreements, about building a pipeline thirty-five miles from Yorba Linda for the water supply, about the ratio of office space to free-standing industrial buildings, about an internal transportation corridor …”
“Details,” Jazz said airily, waving them aside. “We discussed concepts, not details.”
“None of you three know fuck-all about building a town!”
“Of course not,” Jazz said majestically. “It may be my idea, more or less, but that doesn’t mean I ever had an intention of getting bogged down in the problem of cubic feet of sewer construction. Infrastructure—if that’s the right word—is what men are for. You’re so good at it. Not that women couldn’t be, if we chose to be, but some of us have more interesting things to do. In fact, I may even have given Val and Fernie the impression that you were going to be in charge of infrastructure.”
“Don’t you mean, ‘in fact,’ that’s exactly what you told them?”
“They were reassured to know that they’d be in your safe hands.”
“Wait a minute, Jazz. You told them that
before
I told you I didn’t intend to buy a big ranch.”
“I guess it must have been an attack of wishful thinking,” she said plaintively, but respectfully. Goodness, she thought, Casey had a scary way of keeping track of every last little word she said. She’d have to remember that.
“It was a con, an out-and-out con.”
“Not in retrospect,” Jazz cried indignantly.
“And then you would have talked me out of buying a ranch and persuaded me to stay here,” he said thoughtfully, ignoring her words.
“I would have tried—after all, my own work is basically here, not in Montana or Texas or wherever the big ranches are—but if you’d still had your heart set on buying a big ranch, of course I’d have gone along, kicking and screaming a little, but I’d
never
have let you go without me. I can work as a photographer whenever I want to, wherever I want to. That’s why they invented airplanes.”
“Hmmm.” Casey considered everything he knew of Jazz, that staunch, tricky, complex, determined, earthy, ariel, impetuous, bewilderingly self-confident and bewilderingly insecure creature he’d captured when he’d all but given up hope.
“Don’t you believe that I’d have gone anywhere with you?”
“As a matter of fact—I do.”
“Like Marlene Dietrich,” Jazz murmured dreamily, as she unfastened row upon row of tiny, hidden hooks that Casey’s fingers would be too large to handle.
“Dietrich?” he asked, watching her closely.
“In
Morocco
, when she leaves behind a dozen men who adore her in spite of her wicked, wicked ways, and falls in love with Gary Cooper. He marches away with the Foreign Legion, so she kicks off her high heels and follows him, barefoot across the hot sands … you know.”
“Every time I saw it, I used to get one tiny tear in my eye,” Casey said, “but don’t tell anybody.”
Jazz sighed with the felicity of boundless harmony. “It’s so wonderful—you’re as big a sap as I am,” she murmured.
Her eyelids were almost closed when she saw Casey abruptly leave the room without an explanation. Astonished, she waited, with her dress still clinging to her in a dozen tiny, cunning, hard-to-discover ways, until he came back, carrying a pile of blankets. He threw them on the floor in front of the fire.
“Now,” he ordered, “get undressed and be quick about it. When you’re stark naked, not one stitch on, I want you to wrap yourself in one of those blankets
and sit right here and wait patiently, no moving, no complaining, and absolutely
no
backtalk.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I just remembered that chili. I’m hungry, after all. I’m going into the kitchen to help myself to a heaping plateful, and I’m going to bring it right here and eat it, and if anything unforeseen happens, the only thing that will be ruined will be an old blanket. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir. Please sir, may I have some chili too?” Jazz asked pathetically. No, decidedly, she could never have married an unromantic man, she thought. She wondered if she should remind Casey to make sure the chili was still hot, but decided against it. He’d said no backtalk. And she had the strangest, most unexpectedly rewarding certainty that he meant exactly what he said.
For Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Byron Scott, A. C. Green, Michael Cooper, Mychal Thompson, Orlando Woolridge, Vlade Divac, Larry Drew, and the other members of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team of 1990. Together and individually, inspired by the intensity of their great coach, Pat Riley, and the leadership of the incomparable Magic Johnson, the ultimate basketball player of our era, the Lakers constantly enrich the lives of their fans as they demonstrate great-hearted courage, unselfish dedication and breathtaking talent.
For my husband, Steve. All writers agonize. But I’m lucky enough to have a husband who listens to my doubts, evaluates my solutions, puts matters into perspective and banishes the agony. When my day’s work has gone well, Steve is the only one with whom I can fully share the joy.
As I researched the background of
Dazzle
many generous people helped me by providing invaluable answers to my questions, others by giving me the chance to observe them at work. To all of them, I am wholeheartedly grateful.
Mrs. Alice O’Neill Avery
, a truly great lady of California, whose memories of days long gone were fascinating, moving and inspiring.
Mr. Anthony R. Moiso
, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Santa Margarita Company. Tony Moiso, Mrs. Avery’s son, a seventh-generation Californian and a leading force in Orange County, is doing much to preserve the quality of a way of life that is fast disappearing.
Dr. William P. Frank
, Associate Curator of Western Manuscripts at the Huntington Library, who helped me to solve pieces of the puzzle.
Dr. Judy Rosner
, Professor at the Graduate School of Management, University of California, Irvine, who is a wonderful friend and a knowledgeable guide into the mysteries of Orange County.
Nancy Dackstrand
, who knew so much about the search for Spanish land grants.
Gep Durenberger
, antiquarian extraordinary of San Juan Capistrano, who opened many doors of Orange County to me.
Joanne Jaffe
, Editor-in-Chief of
Angeles
magazine.
Tricia Burlingham
, photographer’s representative, a patient, enthusiastic source of information and explanation.
Rick Smolen
, editor, publisher and photographer, the guru and Godfather of all photojournalists.
Brian Leatart
, food photographer.
Robert L. Grigg
, car photographer.
Nancy Ellison
, painter, fashion and personality photographer.
Victoria Cameron Pearson
, fashion and personality photographer.
Susan Peters
, wise woman, photographer and editor.
Karen Silverstein
, photo editor at Condé Nast, L.A.
Karen Gillingham
of Food Pages, food stylist.
Edwina Lloyd
, my assistant and friend who reads all my pages first and never panics.
Medina Rosner
and
Harris Rosner
, who provide pleasure and inspiration.
DAZZLE
I’LL TAKE MANHATTAN
MISTRAL’S DAUGHTER
PRINCESS DAISY
SCRUPLES
SCRUPLES TWO
TILL WE MEET AGAIN
LOVERS
SPRING COLLECTION
THE JEWELS OF TESSA KENT
J
UDITH
K
RANTZ
began her career as a fashion editor and magazine article writer. Her first novel,
Scruples
, was an immediate top bestseller, as have been all her subsequent books—
Princess Daisy, Mistral’s Daughter, I’ll Take Manhattan, Till We Meet Again, Dazzle, Scruples Two, Lovers, Spring Collection
, and
The Jewels of Tessa Kent
She lives in Bel Air and Newport Beach, California, with her husband, movie and television producer Steve Krantz.
Here is a special preview ofLOVERS
by Judith Krantz
L
ess than a week before Gigi joined Frost/Rourke/Bernheim, on a Wednesday morning in November of 1983, she had arrived at Scruples Two determined to fire her secretary, Sally Lou Evans, who never finished the work Gigi asked her to do, yet had such a maddeningly unlimited and imaginative repertoire of excuses that she somehow managed to squeak by. Pretty Sally Lou was wildly popular with the other secretaries in the office, always ready to offer her homemade brownies, a tip on mending broken fingernails, or a flattering opinion on a new haircut. She was an attractive nuisance, an excuse for gathering and loitering, the office equivalent of a hometown soda fountain or the best truckers’ diner on a long highway. Gigi had never fired anyone in her life, but when the office manager, Josie Speilberg, to whom she’d brought her complaints, offered to do it for her, she’d decided that she should take on the task herself.
“Come on, Gigi, it’s tough to fire people. That’s what I’m here for,” Josie said in her self-appointed role as the most indispensable person in the entire company, relishing the prospect of a task that would be just one more item in her agenda as Vice-President in Charge of Sanity, the official title she had received as the price of turning down L. L. Bean when they’d tried to lure her away from Scruples Two.
“I hired her, I should fire her,” Gigi insisted, “it’s sort of a rite of passage.”
“I always fired people for Mrs. Ikehorn—I mean Mrs.
Elliott—,” Josie said, for she still wasn’t used to Billy’s new married name after many years of working for her as Ellis Ikehorn’s vastly rich widow. During Billy’s second marriage, to Gigi’s father, Vito Orsini, Josie had called her Mrs. O, which was as far as she was prepared to commit herself at the time. As it turned out, she’d been a visionary, for that marriage had lasted barely a year, leaving Gigi as Billy’s only meaningful and lasting legacy. Now Josie embraced the name of Mrs. Elliott, whenever she could remember it, for she took credit for being instrumental in promoting Billy’s blissful third marriage.
“Nope, thanks, Josie, but I’m going to be straight with Sally Lou. She’s just not getting the job done.”
“Can I give you a tip? There’s one perfect way to fire people that makes it easier all around. You start out by saying, sympathetically, ‘Sally Lou, I can see that you’re not happy here.’ Then, no matter what she says after that, you just keep repeating, ‘No, Sally Lou, I know you love the office, but trust me, you’re not happy here. I know you need the job, but you’re not happy here. You’d be happier somewhere else.’ ”
“Josie, she
loves
it here. She’s the office favorite, queen of the sorority. I’ll sound like a lunatic.”
“That’s not important. Just get the firing over with in a friendly way. You’re concerned for her, that’s the message.”
“I’m on my way,” Gigi said firmly. “Thanks, Josie. But how will I ever be able to believe anything you tell me again, now that I know how your mind operates?”
“Well, what happened?” Josie asked Gigi when she spotted her in the company cafeteria at lunchtime.
“Sit down and I’ll tell you,” Gigi invited, looking dazed.
“Hard time, huh? It can be rough, but it’ll never be as hard again,” Josie sympathized. “It’s a trial by fire. Firing must be a gender thing. Men don’t have the same problems with it.”
“Sally Lou thanked me.”
“Say, you must have been good,” Josie marveled.
“She thanked me for
noticing
that she wasn’t happy. She said she liked me too much to say anything, but she’s been miserable working at Scruples Two. She’s been trying to make the best of it.”
“Why, the little ingrate! What a nerve, after all you’ve put up with.”
“Josie, she was just being honest. She was relieved that she didn’t have to quit … she has a phobia about quitting.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Sally Lou said, and I quote, sparing you her Bette-Davis-in-a-snit tone of voice, ‘This is a boring office. Boring, boring, boring. There isn’t a single available man around to flirt with, nobody but a lot of women, nice women, but women.’ What’s more, she’d expected something glamorous when she came here, because of the reputation of Scruples, the store, but the catalog business is repetitive. She thinks my writing is very nice but after all it’s not gripping, like ‘Dear Abby’ and there’s an opening for a secretary at Creative Artists. Apparently the place is full of men, and who knows what it could lead to? She says her ‘people skills’ haven’t been utilized here. So she kissed me a tearful, grateful good-bye, collected her pay, and left. Now I have to get a new secretary.”
“Why didn’t you make her stay till you’d found a replacement?” Josie demanded.
“I didn’t have the heart to incarcerate her any longer. She wanted to zip right on over to CAA.”
“I knew you should have let me do it,” Josie said in righteous tones.
“Could you find me a new secretary, Josie, preferably a guy? Maybe he’d find a satisfactory social life here.”
That evening, after work, Gigi lingered over a solitary, pre-dinner glass of wine. She’d been living alone for over three weeks while Zach Nevsky was away on location, in preproduction for a film in Montana, and he wasn’t due back for another three weeks. A year ago they had rented an old house in the Hollywood Hills, on Laurel Lane, one of the many mysterious, little-known twisting streets that rise high behind the Chateau Marmont, an utterly charming semi-ruin of a more or less Spanish-Italian-French Provencal house that had been built in 1927, with three stories that climbed the steep hill, and a view of Los Angeles from every southwest-facing widow.
She felt bleakly gloomy, Gigi realized. Heavy-hearted. In fact, utterly depressed. Zach’s absence was getting to her, and it was worse every day. The last time he’d returned from a distant location shoot—and that hadn’t been so long ago—he’d promised her to try to accept only those jobs that would keep him in L.A., for he was in such demand as a director that he could decide among a multitude of offers. But he had quickly become so deeply fascinated by an offer to direct a movie based on a Pulitzer prize-winning novel about life a hundred years ago in Kalispell, Montana, that she hadn’t had the heart to ask him to turn it down. How could
she refuse to marry Zach and yet expect him to reject projects that fulfilled his ambition and vision? If she were ready to leave her job, become a wife, and follow him from one shoot to another, they could be together full-time, Gigi reminded herself, but exactly what kind of a life would that be, besides peripatetic?
She already knew the answer, she admitted. Even when both of them were home, they were rarely alone together. “Full-time” togetherness didn’t exist for more than an hour or two. Not for Zach Nevsky, unless he was asleep.
She remembered the days when she and her best friend, Sasha Nevsky, had shared an apartment while they worked in New York. It was then that she’d met Sasha’s Off-Broadway director brother and actually been enough of a hero-worshiping patsy to be charmed by the way his life had the shape and sound of an ongoing party. Zach had hundreds of friends in the theater, and sooner or later they all seemed to drop by his place, uninvited, coming almost every night to take a warming, revivifying bask in the glow of his conviction of the importance of actors in the world. They flocked to heal their insecurities by listening to his great, unguarded, confident laugh, to give themselves courage in their professional struggle by sheer contact with him in all his rough power, his longshoreman’s height with width, which belied the cleverness, intelligence, and generosity with which he wrestled to the ground the problems they brought him.
Zach was a bloody theatrical institution. Gigi told herself in a gust of sudden rage. A fucking institution, a giant sauna who should be transformed into a large building made of concrete, not flesh and blood. Then all the needy people who demanded a share of him could walk in and shelter themselves in his walls, and she would be spared the illusion that he could be loved like an ordinary man. A girl who was so pig-stupid that she’d fallen in love with The Institution that Walked Like a Man had only herself to blame.
Well, what
about
Scruples Two? Gigi pushed fruitless personal thoughts from her mind and concentrated on a problem she could do something about. Almost three years ago, when she had first come up with the idea of a catalog named after the world-famous Scruples, the boutique Billy had created, a catalog offering far less expensive clothes than Scruples; a catalog geared toward busy working women, wives and mothers, with neither time nor money to waste, she had asked Billy to let her call it Scruples Two. In all fairness, it had been Spider Elliott who’d finally convinced Billy to agree and to invest money and energy into the launch of the catalog, but Gigi had written the copy that explained the new concept and accompanied each photo. She considered herself as much
responsible for its success as was Prince, the designer whose work Billy had commissioned, and as Spider, who’d also invested, and had designed the look of the catalog down to choosing the last model, the last piece of type.
Prince’s work was ongoing, constantly presenting him with fresh problems as the catalog expanded and seasons changed. Spider now ran the entire company while Billy stayed home with their twin boys, and he faced new challenges on a daily basis. Aside from the marketing decisions he made with the Jones brothers, he was in charge of keeping the graphics of every issue of the catalog fresh and tempting, particularly since other companies were competing vigorously in the huge market Scruples Two had first defined. The catalog was a solid success, growing bigger by the month, thanks to expert management and brilliant execution. It was part of the American fashion establishment; even
Vogue
used and credited items from it, recognizing that many of their affluent readers also bought by mail order.
Yes, everyone but she had fresh work on hand, Gigi realized clearly. Sasha, now Mrs. Josh Hillman, mother of little Nellie, was back too, after her maternity leave, busily chasing down new things to sell besides the core of Prince’s capsule collections, while Gigi was reduced to writing the obligatory copy she could do in her sleep. Now that she’d set the style, any good copywriter could be hired to continue it; they didn’t need her. No, damn it, Scruples Two had stopped being fun sometime in the past, and she hadn’t noticed until Sally Lou had brought it to her attention.
“Gigi, I can see you’re not happy here.”
She spoke the words out loud and knew they were true. True and final.
But, unlike the irresolvable fury with Zach, this was a dissatisfaction she could change, Gigi thought, getting up and pacing around the room. She’d never given Archie Rourke and Byron Bernheim the kind of
no
that meant absolutely positively not under any circumstances, good-bye and good luck, don’t call me and I won’t call you. She’d allowed them to keep trying to persuade her to join their agency, enjoying their blandishments and blarney without intending to take them up on their offer. In fact, she’d given them very little serious thought. Why, when she’d considered herself tucked so snugly into her familiar job, should she hanker to leap into a new field she’d never worked in before, something highly problematic, something so unpredictable and challenging?
“Because I’m bored—fucking bored fucking
bored!”
Gigi announced to the quiet room as she went into the kitchen to find something really fattening to eat.
* * *
The next morning Gigi woke after a few hours of broken sleep to find that her recognitions of the evening before had crystallized into an unmistakable determination to change jobs. In the course of one night, Scruples Two had become part of the past, as beloved as ever but clearly an area in which her work was finished. Frost/Rourke/Bernheim now announced itself to her as the alluring, unscripted future. There’d never be a better time than today to make the change and get it over with, she decided as she gulped her breakfast and hurried to dress. All her work on the newest edition of the catalog was completed and last week when she’d spoken to Archie Rourke he’d been as eager as ever to entice her into the advertising business.