Judith Krantz (74 page)

Yes, she knew she was right to leave, but there was still the matter of breaking the news to Billy and Spider and Sasha. They were like family members to her; she dreaded telling them.

Why had Josie said it was tough to fire people? It was so much worse to quit, Gigi thought as she hesitated outside of Spider’s office, remembering the night she’d written the introductory copy for Scruples Two. Until that point the only things she’d written had been cards to go with gifts from her own collection of antique lingerie, cards in which she could riff as much as she liked, take any liberty, please herself without worrying about the public. She’d been so nervous before she’d read that introduction to him that when he’d liked it—no, when he’d loved it—she’d been as proud as she’d ever been in her life. Nothing would ever make her forget the flying thrill of that moment. Taking a deep breath, she opened Spider’s office door and went in.

Spider was alone, studying a page of figures, his long, sinewy body contorted in various graceful ways, for no office chair had yet been invented that could accommodate him. As usual, he reminded Gigi of a great blond pagan who had been somehow transformed into a businessman without losing any of his free-spirited, laughing, essentially sensuous charm. She was delighted to find him alone. She couldn’t have talked to him in front of anyone else and she hadn’t wanted to make an appointment to see him alone, because that would have sounded unnecessarily ominous.

“Hi, got a minute, Spider?” Gigi asked, remembering vividly the day she’d first met him. She’d been sixteen, and she had arrived in California only the night before, seeking refuge with her father after the death of her mother. The very next afternoon she’d found herself transformed, dizzy and giddy with the excitement of Billy’s offered friendship compounded by her new haircut and new clothes, walking into an office at Scruples, where Spider and Valentine
were, to Billy’s shocked amazement, wrapped in each other’s arms. The first word Gigi had said to him was “Congratulations,” when he’d explained that he and Valentine had just been married, and the first thing he’d said to her was that she was more sophisticated than Billy. He’d been so protective, so interested in her right from the start, this Viking of a man who’d become her hero from the minute she laid dazzled eyes on him, this glorious guy to whom no woman, no matter how much she loved another man, could be indifferent.

“Ah, Spider Elliott, damn it, but I’m really going to miss you,” Gigi heard herself blurt out in a voice laced with regret.

“What’s the matter with you!” Spider jumped up from his desk in alarm. “Are you sick?”

“No, of course not.”

“You’re marrying Zach and leaving town?”

“That’s not in the cards.”

“Then why the fuck did you scare me like that? You sounded exactly like Ali McGraw in
Love Story.”

“Sorry … I … I’m … oh …” Gigi stopped, wordless. The only unspoken sentence that came to her mind was, “Spider, you’re not happy here.”

“Gigi,” Spider said gently, taking her cold hands, “you’re not making sense. Sit down right here and tell me all about it. Whatever it is, I’m sure I’ve heard more lurid tales.”

“I’m leaving Scruples Two for a job in an advertising agency.” Gigi said the words as quickly as possible.

“The hell you are!” Spider’s eyes searched hers and, as always, reached into and understood a woman’s mind as rapidly as those of any man alive. “You are. Yep, indeed you are, and there’s not a thing I can do about it. I’ve always thought you were cautious to a fault, Gigi. That’ll teach me to take a woman for granted. You’ve changed without giving me warning. Or else I’m losing my touch.”

“I didn’t know myself, Spider, until yesterday. I fired Sally Lou and then I fired myself …”

“Could you be more specific?” When Spider laughed at her that way, with his sunlit blue eyes almost closed and the deep lines suddenly intensified at their corners, Gigi always felt she heard a clap of giant hands. Relief warmed her as she told him everything that had gone through her mind the night before.

“And this agency, what’s-her-name Frost and the guys, you’re certain that they’re an outfit you can be happy with? After all, there are lots of other agencies in L.A.”

“Archie and Byron are a terrific team.
Smart
. I’ve seen their
work and I like them. Victoria and I won’t have any contact if I can help it. The way I figure, they can only prosper. They’re billing about thirty million a year after a mere six months in L.A., and with the entire economy going wild, advertising’s a good place to be. I had Prince’s ad manager check them out on Madison Avenue, and he gave Archie and Byron a rave. It makes sense for them to want me for a swimwear account, it plays to my strong point, and after that, well,” she said, suddenly feeling shy in her ambitions, “I believe maybe interesting things could happen.”

Spider got up and started prowling around his office, looking at Gigi as he walked back and forth, remembering that tremulous, oddball, mysterious little figure who had abruptly popped into their lives, an unknown daughter out of Vito’s past, a whim of Billy’s turning her into a legal ward and an unofficial stepdaughter. Gigi, without whom none of them would be together today; Gigi, whose talent they had come to count on; Gigi, who had outgrown them. Damn it to hell, he thought, he was the one who was going to do the major part of the missing, more than it would be fair to tell her, more than she knew or should know. She had to be free to make whatever she could of herself. There was no telling how far she could go, this woman who had never realized, on that single night when she’d stopped him from trying to make love to her, that it was the only time he’d been rejected in a lifetime of conquest.

“When do you want to leave?” he finally asked reluctantly.

“I think I should … leave right away,” Gigi answered firmly, “without two weeks’ notice. There’s more than seven weeks before the next catalog will be due at the printers; that’s plenty of time to find and train another copy-writer, but Archie needs to put together the Indigo Seas pitch as quickly as possible.”

Her voice wasn’t apologetic and her words were irrefutable, Spider noted ruefully. Already someone else’s needs were coming first with her. Archie! Archie indeed! What kind of name was that? Did he have a butler named Jeeves?

“I thought about it all during breakfast,” Gigi continued rapidly, “and since I’m leaving, I should let them know today, leave here … tomorrow … so I can be there by next Monday.”

“Jesus, you’re a heartless bitch. What about the big going-away party, the gold watch for two and a half years of faithful service, or would you rather have a silver tea service?”

“I was hoping to avoid exactly that. Please, Spider, no fuss. Josie will slime me with a guilt trip that’ll break my heart.”

“I could too, if I wanted to. A guilt trip you’d never recover from.”

“But I knew you wouldn’t. That’s why I told you first of anybody. Do I have your blessing?” Gigi’s impudent mouth, with its upper lip that curved naturally in a hint of a smile, was frankly laughing at him now, and so were her large, beautifully shaped green eyes that reminded him so much of Valentine’s.

“You have my blessing, my wholehearted blessing, combined with my wholehearted wish that you’d stay. But you’re not wrong to want to try something else, you’ve picked your time wisely, and although you can never really be replaced, we’ll just have to be good soldiers and carry on without you—I know there’s no real room for major career growth in a catalog. Gigi, but an advertising agency’s something else.”

“Oh, Spider, thank you!”

“Do you want me to tell Billy for you?”

“No, I’ll go and see her now, at the house. I’m afraid she won’t be as open-minded as you are, but I wouldn’t feel right about not telling her in person.”

“Brave little Gigi. Still, you never know. Billy took a few risks in her day too, she’s grabbed her life in both hands and changed it more than once. Maybe she’ll understand, in spite of the fact that she counts on you.”

“Maybe,” Gigi said doubtfully. Billy, even with the softening influence of marriage to Spider, was still the most demanding woman she’d ever had anything to do with, and Billy had many perfectly valid reasons to feel that she’d singlehandedly invented Gigi. Abandoning Scruples Two would be much less of a trauma if it didn’t mean letting Billy down as well.

Spider leaned down, grasping her shoulders, and shook her hard and briskly for a minute, like a friendly lion expressing a number of unutterable and complicated thoughts to a pussycat. Then he took her face tenderly in both of his hands. “Remember what you said when you first met me, way back when?”

“Of course. ‘Congratulations.’ ”

“Congratulations to you,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “And good luck, Gigi darling.”

“Mrs. Elliott’s in her sitting room, she said to go right up,” Burgo O’Sullivan said to Gigi. “Hey, kiddo, you’ve got that look on your face that you had when I told you a girl couldn’t get into my poker game.”

“Yeah, well, I was sixteen then, and starting high school, so naturally even your penny-ante weekly game sounded like a better idea than meeting new kids.”

“Fresh, still as fresh as ever. So did you wreck the car? Seduce
another chef right under my nose, the way you did that poor English fellow!”

“Burgo, when will you start treating me like a adult?” Gigi gave an unconvincing smile to wise Burgo, who filled a multitude of undefined but indispensable jobs at the great house in Holmby Hills.

“I’ll give it some thought,” he answered, “and let you know. How about a cup of tea? It might steady your shaky nerves. You look the way you used to when I first tried to teach you to make a left in heavy traffic.”

“Burgo, you’re imagining things. I’ve got to go talk to Billy.”

“It’s an emergency, then. You never refuse a chance to visit the kitchen.”

“Sort of I’ll come by afterwards and tell you all about it.”

“Is that a present for me?” Burgo asked, looking with interest at the white box with a blue satin ribbon on it that Gigi carried.

“No, it’s for Billy, for having the babies. It’s not fair that people send things to newborn children who don’t know the difference, and not to the mother, who did all the work.”

“I see, a bribe.”

“Burgo, you have an innately suspicious mind, you should be ashamed of yourself. See you later.” Why did he always see right through her, Gigi wondered as she left him. The present she had brought, from her precious collection of antique lingerie, might, just possibly, soften Billy’s reaction. But a bribe? Never! … or … maybe?

In spite of the need to hurry that she had impressed on Burgo, Gigi found herself dragging her steps as she walked through the spacious rooms, which fairly vibrated with color and freshness, and in which every corner offered intriguing places to stop and linger and inspect the fascinating multitude of objects and antiques and flowers that seemed to have been placed there by a happy chance, instead of by Billy’s constant rearrangement of her treasures.

Upstairs, at the end of a long corridor, the door to Billy’s sitting room was open.

“I’m in here,” Billy’s voice called faintly. Gigi found her flopped heavily on a couch in an attitude of complete exhaustion, her crop of short, heavy, dark curls drooping messily around her face, the lids falling wearily over her smoky eyes, her skin pale and bare of makeup. She wore one of Spider’s old shirts over a pair of baggy jeans, and it was impossible to believe, at the moment, that this wiped-out scrap was the magnificent Billy Ikehorn, the embodiment of the groomed-to-perfection, the exquisitely
dressed, the splendidly bejeweled kind of woman of whom the world possesses perhaps several hundred, with only two or three as internationally famous as she.

“Spider didn’t say you weren’t feeling well,” Gigi said in concern. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known I was going to disturb you.”

“Whatever are you talking about? I’m perfectly fine,” Billy said, too weakly to sound indignant. “I’ve just finished putting the boys down for their nap, that’s all. This is the best possible time to see me. Come sit down here next to the couch.”

“Did Nanny Elizabeth leave?” Gigi asked in concern, putting the box down on a table. She hadn’t seen Billy at home more than four or five times since the twins, Max and Hal, were born, and then only on the weekends, when they were showing off the babies, with Spider expertly performing fatherly chores, as well as the experienced nanny hovering in the background.

“Of course not, she’s around here somewhere, probably doing their laundry.”

“I don’t get it. I thought that with a great full-time, live-in nanny you wouldn’t have to do all the scut work, and just look at you … Why don’t you get another nanny if she can’t handle it?”

“She can, Gigi, she can. Nanny Elizabeth’s the best in the West, and I’m afraid I may be driving her crazy because I won’t let her do everything. But if I don’t feed the boys, and burp them and change them and put them down and get them up, they’ll end up thinking she’s their mother, not me. This is the most important time of their lives, crucial time, Gigi, and if I miss it I can never get it back. Did you know that if people grew at the same rate as babies do in their first year, we’d all be about a hundred and eighty feet tall? So you see …” Billy’s voice trailed off at the thought of the immensity and importance of her task.

“But, Billy, twins … Aren’t you
supposed
to have help with twins?”

“In theory, of course, but the people who decided that never stopped to think that one twin could end up not getting as much maternal attention as the other. I can’t risk that. They’re four months old, a very impressionable age.”

“Personally,” Gigi said, prudently suppressing a smile, “I don’t remember anything about being four months old.”

“You think you don’t, but everything that happened made a difference.
Everything
, believe me.”

“No doubt, but it’s too late now. Listen, Billy, there’s something I want to tell you …”

“I’m leaving Scruples Two to work in an advertising agency, writing copy. Tomorrow’s my last day.”