Lovers (14 page)

“Yeah, yeah,” she said drearily.

“On your feet, march!” he ordered, in a military bark.

“Okay.”

“Damn, I’d feel better if you’d only throw me a salute.”

“Okay.” She saluted limply and muttered “sir,” as an afterthought.

“You make me wish I hadn’t asked.”

“You kids have hit it!” Archie jumped to his feet in excitement the second that Gigi and David came to the end of a half-dozen Indigo Seas ideas, illustrated by the sketches David had comped up.

“If this stuff doesn’t get us the account, nothing will,” Byron agreed, thoroughly enthusiastic. “Congratulations!”

“I hate to rain on your little parade,” Victoria Frost said coldly, “but in your desire to con fat women into
thinking there’s something glamorous about obesity, you’ve managed to totally ignore the client’s chief selling points, the reasons why these women buy their suits: their famous power-net panels, their patented bra cut, their industrial-strength stretch fabrics, and their huge range of sizes—that’s what they’re selling at Indigo Seas, not a cheap imitation of Sophia Loren.”

What an overtouted, brassy showboat their little Miss Orsini had turned out to be, Victoria thought with sour, vindictive disdain. Archie and Byron had set their hearts on hiring someone who was totally unsuitable, as she’d known the minute she’d laid eyes on her. She had nothing against attractive female creatives, but there was something she instinctively sensed and detested in Gigi from the first, something aroused by her cocksure attitude, her lack of awe for Victoria’s power and position, her unearned self-confidence based on nothing but insolent youth—that whole and still-untarnished youth with its idiotic illusions that the whole world lay before her. She’d learn better, but meanwhile she had to be dealt with. It didn’t help that Gigi was clever enough to operate with the perfect awareness that all three of those fools, Byron, Archie, and David, were at least a little bit in love with her.

“We know all that, Victoria,” David said, interrupting the brief silence that had fallen after Victoria’s remarks. “But we’re looking to do something different here, to light a fire under women so they go into the stores with their minds
open and curious
, turned on enough by the ads to look out for the big Indigo Seas shoulder identification tag—the tag itself would contain all that technical information. We didn’t want to do text-heavy ads for a fashion product.”

“You’re mistaken, David,” Victoria said. “You were letting yourself be carried away by a chance to do pretty pictures, trying to sell the sizzle instead of the steak. Indigo Seas suits are hardly ‘fashion,’ they’re more like girdles to swim in. This work cannot be shown at the pitch meeting.
Indigo Seas is looking for a new marketing partner, not a Francis Ford Coppola.”

“Excuse me,” Gigi said, “but all the points you’ve mentioned are right there in the ads they’re currently running, Victoria. Why is Indigo Seas looking for another agency if they’re satisfied?”

“When you’ve been in the business as long as I have, Gigi, you learn never to ask a client
why
they’ve put an account up for review. It’s often a reason that has absolutely nothing to do with the current campaign, some sort of internal company matter, private politics. But you do
try
to use some basic common sense when you pitch. You don’t
deliberately fail
to mention their strong points.”

“Victoria,” Archie said, “this stuff of David and Gigi’s is so fresh and yummy, it’s so tasty you can bite into it, for Pete’s sake, why not give it a chance?”

“It’s different, Victoria, it’s newsy, it’ll grab attention, Indigo Sea’s been around for years, everybody’s sick of the power-net panels, those words alone are enough to turn you off,” Byron said indignantly. “This stuff is
juicy!”

“Swimwear for fat women
cannot
be ‘juicy,’ Byron,” Victoria informed him with a small, belittling twitch of her mouth. “Nor can fat women be ‘lush.’ ”

“Where is that written?” Gigi demanded, jumping up in a rage, a boiling, rattling, welcome rage that finally took her mind off her tattered soul and the fact that someone named Zach Nevsky existed. “Where the fuck is that written!”

“Really, Gigi,” Victoria chided her in icy scornfulness, “this is a presentation, not a streetcorner brawl.”

“Don’t ‘really, Gigi’ me! You keep on talking about ‘fat’ women when we use the word ‘abundant,’ you’re so damn condescending that I know that in your heart of hearts you don’t think they should be allowed to go swimming, and if that isn’t bad enough, you want to play it safe and give the client what you think it wants—if this is advertising, I’m in the wrong business!”

“I daresay you are,” Victoria drawled. “Perhaps we
should go back and review the stuff Kerry and Joan did, as well as the work John and Lew produced. A lot of it wasn’t bad at all. We were too hasty to reject it, in my opinion. Or an FRB gang-bang may be in order, if Gigi and David can’t see their way clear to fixing their work.”

“Victoria!” Byron looked at her incredulously. “We hired Gigi for exactly the kind of work she and David have turned out here—what’s wrong with you?”

“Why don’t we have this little discussion in private, Byron? I think we can ask Gigi and David to excuse themselves.” Victoria remained calmly seated, fishing about in her purse, withdrawing her attention from Gigi and David.

“I’m not finished,” Gigi said, standing foursquare in her boots. “And I’m not a child you can excuse from the table.”

“Gigi—” Archie began.

“I’m not leaving, Archie. Davy and I will make the necessary changes to the Indigo Seas ads.”

“You will?” Archie asked, amazed at her quick surrender.

“No big deal,” Gigi responded, shrugging as she reined herself in. Some battles would keep, and whatever a gang-bang was at FRB, she didn’t like the sound of it. “There’s another thing before we’ve finished here. Two days ago I solicited new business from Ben Winthrop, the mall developer. I got him to promise me an eight-million-dollar account for an image-creating campaign for a chain of upmarket toy stores called The Enchanted Attic.”

“You solicited new business?”
Victoria asked, drawing an incredulous breath and turning white. “Just who gave you the authority to do that, may I ask?”

“I gave it to myself, Miss Vicky.”

David’s jaw dropped. Archie and Byron froze at Gigi’s impudent and aggressive tone.

“And, Miss Vicky, if that’s a problem for you,” Gigi continued, “I’ll take the eight-million-dollar Enchanted Attic account away with me in my little pocket and find an
agency that wants it and that appreciates my work. It’s my account, I developed it, and it goes where I go.”

“Oh, indeed. How enterprising of you. I wonder why I’ve never heard of this chain of stores,” Victoria asked the stunned atoms of air in the room. “Could it possibly be something you invented on the spur of the moment?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Gigi said, her hands on her hips.

Jesus, David wondered, how’d she turn from a chimney sweep into a pirate in a split second?

“You’ve never heard of it,” Gigi continued, “because it doesn’t exist except as a hundred and twenty-two bankrupt stores called Kids’ Paradise, most of them located in Ben Winthrop’s malls. He’s going to invest in their business, retain their locations, totally reposition their marketing, redecorate from top to bottom, and advertise them as the equivalent of Scruples crossed with Tiffany’s for Kids’ gifts—places to find the ultimate in toys and clothes for babies through pre-teens.”

“So there actually
is no
Enchanted Attic account, is there?” Victoria pounced. “Much less an eight-million-dollar account. It’s all on the if-come, isn’t it? Before they have any reason to advertise, they have to totally reorganize, rebuild, restock, invest a fortune, and you have no guarantee that it’ll be done, do you? Even if it does happen, it’s many months down the road, a year, maybe longer. That’s not what anyone with experience would announce as new business.”

“I have Ben Winthrop’s agreement.” Gigi sounded more sure of herself than ever.

“And just exactly what would that be worth? Can we take it to a bank?”

“If it isn’t solid enough for you, just say so,” Gigi flared. “I’m satisfied.”

“Ben Winthrop,” Victoria drawled. “He’s related to your stepmother, isn’t he? You have pure nepotism to thank for this opportunity, if that’s what it turns out to be, which I somehow doubt.”

“I’m sure you know infinitely more about nepotism than I do,” Gigi answered, “or at least that’s what Ben told me when he filled me in on your background, Ms. Frost.” Gigi felt as deeply refreshed as if she’d had an excellent night’s sleep.

“I hate to interrupt your heart-to-heart here, ladies, but don’t you think that you could wait for another time? Don’t we all have work to do?” Archie asked desperately.

“I’m finished for now,” Gigi said, impervious to the consternation in the room. “Come on, Davy, I’ll buy you lunch.”

“How long will we have?” Gigi asked David several days later, as they left his car with the valet parker at the Beverly Wilshire. Indigo Seas had taken two meeting rooms at the hotel for the occasion, one for the pitches themselves and one in which their executives could confer privately. The senior members of the pitch team, Victoria, Archie, and Byron, pulled in behind them.

“Indigo Seas said an hour and a half maximum. But we’re going right after lunch. That means they’ve heard two pitches this morning, eaten lunch, and haven’t had time to get tired yet: It’s ideal timing.”

“So they’ll hear four pitches in all, one after us?”

“Don’t know. They might have asked four more agencies to pitch tomorrow. Or yesterday. Or they might have scheduled three for this afternoon … they never say.”

“Is this like being rushed for a fraternity?” Gigi was fastening on the details of this new experience, unlike any other she’d ever had, in an effort to quiet her stage fright.

“Do I look like someone who’d try to join a fraternity?”

“No. Do I look like someone who’d get into a sorority?” Gigi had adopted an outfit that she hoped would convey creative punch with a proper awareness of the client’s importance—indeed, the importance of the entire swimwear industry. She’d put together some of Prince’s pieces from various Scruples Two catalogs, a slender green
wool skirt that flared out at the hem, a finely striped green and white blouse with poet’s sleeves, silver buttons, and a collar that hinted at the Tyrol, worn with a small red velvet vest hanging casually unbuttoned over her antique chunky silver Santa Fe belt. At the last minute, that morning, she’d added a pair of dashing red lizard cowboy boots that made her look taller.

“You look like something out of
The Sound of Music
crossed with
Shane.”

“My God, I never thought of that,” Gigi said, horrified.

“No, no, that’s good. Great! Everybody loved
The Sound of Music
. It’s infinitely reassuring. A subliminal coup. Even Victoria didn’t say anything against it when you wore it for the rehearsal. Do you think my one and only suit’s okay?”

“You look like Gregory Peck in
Roman Holiday
. You’re absolutely beautiful.”

“So are you, Gigi, darling, beautiful.” Good God, David thought, he’d even go to a pitch every day in the week if it gave him a legitimate opportunity to tell her she was beautiful and call her “darling” without making her diabolic pointed eyebrows jump with surprise.

“When will they let us know?” Gigi demanded for the tenth time that week.

“That’s another thing we can’t project, Gigi darling,” he responded as he had ten times before, knowing that she was too distracted to notice the second endearment. “They’ll let it be known who gets the account in their own good time. Today, tomorrow, or two weeks from now. Whoever gets it, the news will travel with the speed of light.”

“There’s something profoundly sinister about all this,” she said.

“Nobody pitches a seven-million-dollar account without suffering, that’s the price of getting into the game. It’s sadistic, but I bet every industry has these little cruel rituals.”

“Not at Scruples Two.”

“But that was family.”

“Do you think we should pray?”

“I’m a Congregationalist, we don’t pray for business success. Or at least I don’t think we do.”

“What’s a Congregationalist?”

“A mild, liberal sort of universal Protestant, we love everybody, Gigi, especially you,” David said fervently.

“Does this elevator not run or what?” Gigi asked impatiently as Archie, Byron, and Victoria joined them in the lobby, Archie and Byron natty in full-throttle Armani, Victoria more chastely businesslike than ever in a perfectly plain navy suit that could have been cut by Balenciaga with his own hands if he hadn’t elected, at his peak, to stop making clothes because the few women he deemed worthy of his talents no longer existed.

The pitch team, not bothering to pretend to make conversation, found the third-floor meeting room in which they were to set up. Victoria was greeted at the door by a dignified middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Jane Fairbrother, executive secretary to the president of Indigo Seas, George Collins.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” Jane Fairbrother said with a pleasant and utterly impersonal smile. “The bosses are running a little late. Can I get you coffee or tea? No? There are pitchers of water at your table, let me know if you run out.”

Gigi surveyed the room. At one end was a group of chairs for the audience, at the other end a simple table with five chairs behind it and an easel at each side.

“Just sip the water,” Archie hissed in her ear. “It doesn’t help cotton-mouth, no matter how much you drink, and you don’t want to have to pee in the middle of this.”

Victoria sat down in the center chair, flanked by Archie and Byron, while Gigi and David, carrying the large leather portfolios filled with their carefully arranged mock-up ads, sat at each end.

After a short wait, a group of people entered from the connecting room. Victoria rose to make the introductions.

First came the three Collins brothers, who owned Indigo Seas: Henry, John, and George, who was the senior brother and clearly the most important of the three. Then came the marketing director and his male assistant and the advertising director with his male assistant. As the three brothers took their seats in the second row, three soberly dressed, dumpy older women sat down in the last row. They must be the brothers’ secretaries, for each of them held a Steno pad and a pencil. Victoria nodded graciously at them, but obviously she had never met them before, and no Collins brother introduced them to the FRB team.