Lovers (2 page)

If only she didn’t have a built-in need to disturb the status quo of her life, to upset the applecart, if only, Gigi jittered to herself, she’d been able to remain happily in the safe and wildly booming bosom of Scruples Two, the fashion catalog that she’d come to think of as the family business, she wouldn’t now be looking for a parking space in a state of gibbering fidgets, about to take her first steps in advertising.

Archie Rourke, copywriter, and Byron Berenson Bernheim III, art director, were two of the three partners in the
agency that had set up shop in Los Angeles six months ago, arriving fresh from New York. As Gigi pulled in gingerly next to a sleek Porsche, she reminded herself of the words that Archie had used while he was trying to persuade her to come to work for them.

“Advertising is the
major
art form of the second half of the twentieth century,” he’d said. “Three hundred years from now, when a museum curator is putting together a show to make our era live again, the material will be drawn primarily from television commercials and magazine ads.” She hadn’t made her decision based on the content of his words, but she’d noted the absolute sense of conviction with which he delivered them, as if the worlds of the theatrical arts, writing, music, and photography existed only to be incorporated in great advertising. They’d aroused Gigi’s sense of adventure and given birth to a curiosity that had eventually led to this paralyzing moment.

Gigi punched the car-alarm code absently and smoothed down her skirt with hands that trembled slightly. At least she was appropriately dressed. Each time she’d had lunch with Byron and Archie, they had worn the California version of East Coast high dignity, sporting Armani suits with fine, striped dress shirts and superior ties. Advertising, she understood, both from Archie’s words and the way he and Byron put themselves together in the heartland of casual, was a business that took itself seriously. Both of them looked as if they could be agents, and agents were the most rigidly well-tailored men in California.

Certainly Archie was as smooth-talking and persuasive as any agent she’d ever met, a man she could only describe to herself with an inward giggle as a handsome brute, as if his rakish, devil-may-care brooding looks, with the unbeatable combination of black-Irish curly hair and policeman-blue eyes had been assembled for viewing through the pages of a Regency romance.

Rusty-haired Byron was a contrast to Archie, a tall, elegant man with a mild and slightly awkward manner at the corners of which lurked an interesting edge of mockery.
His world, Gigi thought as she walked through rows of cars, seemed to be filled with private jokes, and his gray eyes often widened and flashed with humor as he sketched his striking graphic ideas on tablecloths. She was amused at the way the two men interacted. They’d been a team for so long that sometimes they sounded like two sides of the same fairly irresistible person.

What was bothering her as much as anything, Gigi realized as she threaded her way reluctantly across the parking lot toward Sunset Boulevard and the entrance of the building, was that damn magazine article she’d read last night. What evil hazard had thrust it in her path, that helpful article in that caring woman’s magazine, an article that told her everything she needed to know about the first day on a new job?

She hoped gloomily that she wasn’t going to be driven to volunteering for the company’s annual blood drive, one of the recommended ways in which to get to know your fellow workers. Perhaps she could get away with inconspicuously observing the local atmosphere before she made an active move in what the writer had called “workplace politics.” The article warned sternly against getting involved with the first friendly people you met, since they were bound to be the “office losers”; it instructed her to be upbeat without being overly bubbly, for bubbly would seem desperate; to smile in a way that indicated warmth but not unprofessional pushiness; to make a seating chart of her co-workers in order to memorize their names and to prove herself quietly over a period of months as she waited patiently, without a touch of fatal overeagerness, to make an impression in the company’s “collective corporate subconscious,” a concept that the writer of the article had assured her was rock-firm even if unacknowledged.

“I will be good,” Gigi murmured firmly in the immortal words of Queen Victoria when she discovered that she was about to succeed to the throne.

“Oy!” Gigi halted suddenly as she walked past a delivery truck. Goosy, twitching with nerves, overloaded with all
the information she’d absorbed, she suddenly needed to make a final inspection. She wore her one gray flannel suit, a recent gift from Prince, the great New York designer, cut with classic perfection. Its hemline, demure but not dowdy, bisected the middle of her knee; under the jacket she wore an immaculate white cotton blouse. She was five feet four inches tall but looked taller as she stood in perfectly plain black high-heeled pumps worn with opaque black panty hose. Her only jewelry was a pair of simple pearl earrings and the Cartier “Bathtub” watch with an alligator band that Billy had given her as a good-bye present at her going-away party when she left Scruples Two, a watch as expensive as it was discreet.

Was anyone ever so absolutely right, Gigi wondered, could anyone make a better first impression? But being absolutely right went against her grain. Her own inclination was always toward the offbeat, the riotously unexpected, and although this leap into advertising demanded a new wardrobe, an old impulse had led her to pull her favorite hat down over her hair, streaked by her own hand in all the reddish-orangy-yellowy-golds of a cluster of variegated marigolds.

It was a deep-crowned late-Edwardian hat made from a beautifully faded floral linen. The hatband was a double width of heavy crimson taffeta, trimmed in front with two red cherries, a large red velvet rose, and several appliquéd green velvet leaves. The wide brim was pulled up at the front and anchored to the band by the rose.

This was a hat that a girl had worn when she’d seen her fiancé off to the Great War, Gigi thought, a brave, frivolous hat that had made her face bright. She knew that the fiancé had come back from the war, otherwise why had the hat’s owner kept it so carefully stuffed and wrapped with tissue, in the box bearing the name of a London milliner that Gigi had discovered as she searched for antique lingerie? Until today, Gigi had kept the hat on a stand as a decoration for her bedroom, but now it transformed the severity of her costume with an aura of missing charm. She
adjusted it carefully. The eighty-year-old hat felt as right as everything else she had on felt foreign and constricting.

Gigi pulled back her shoulders, tilted her chin, and marched out from the protection of the delivery truck, picking up speed and snap as she rounded the corner, entered the building, and, with a hint of her usual insubordinately dancing Jazz Baby walk, rapidly mounted the flight of steps that led to the offices of Frost/Rourke/Bernheim.

“Mr. Rourke said to tell you he felt terrible about it, but he and Mr. Bernheim have had to go over to a client’s for an emergency meeting,” the receptionist said as Gigi announced herself. “He just couldn’t be sure when they’d get back.”

“Oh.” Gigi looked at her blankly.

“I’m Polly. He left instructions to give you a temporary office while you waited.” The receptionist scrutinized her with wide eyes, looking as dubious as Gigi felt. Gigi had been asked to come in after the working day was under way, at ten-thirty, so that Archie or Byron would be able to take her around the office, introduce her around, and get her settled.

“Whatever you say,” Gigi responded, pulling her hat even more firmly down over her forehead so that it covered her bangs and pointed eyebrows, her curiosity high to see the offices in which Archie and Byron worked. She followed Polly into a maze of corridors with glimpses of large, high-ceilinged rooms in which a small number of people were hard at work, looking oddly scattered in their underfurnished quarters. The offices of Scruples Two were decidedly short on elbow room compared to FRB, Gigi observed. A few of the workers looked up incuriously as she passed and then turned back to their typewriters, word processors, or drawing boards, immediately identifying her pulled-together, elegant self as not germane to their tasks.

It was like being a visitor on a film set, Gigi thought as her eyes darted from left to right under the brim of her hat without catching a single interested glance. They recognized
her instantly as neither potential cast nor crew and, without prejudice, dismissed her as unworthy of interest. Advertising might well be the art form of the second half of the twentieth century, she observed, but those few of its practitioners she observed seemed to be passionately scruffy and as carelessly dressed as ballet dancers in their oldest, drabbest rehearsal clothes. One or two of them sported bright plumage in odd colors and unusual shapes. There was too much of a contrast in this for it not to mean something, she realized, but what?

“Here we are,” the receptionist said, gesturing as they finally entered a tiny room where fluorescent tubes hung down from a high ceiling and cast an uninviting light. “It’s too small for two people, so nobody ever uses it.”

“Doesn’t anybody have his own office?” Gigi asked.

“No way. They don’t like to be alone, it makes them nervous. Miss Frost is the only one with a private office. The creative teams are joined at the hip … you’ll see. Can I get you some coffee?”

“No, thanks,” Gigi answered. “I’ll be fine here, Polly.” She gave the retreating receptionist a close-mouthed smile that she hoped was warm yet not desperate, neither overeager nor unprofessional. The little room contained nothing more than a nondescript desk covered with towering piles of hundreds of magazines:
Vogues
and
Bazaars
from all countries, years of back copies of
Elle, Town and Country
, and some ultra-high-fashion magazines from France and Italy that she barely recognized. She prowled around the desk, closed the door to the office firmly, and sank into a surprisingly comfortable, battered old armchair that she found hidden behind the desk.

Well, she knew Polly and she knew where Polly sat. That was a beginning. She could, of course, start leafing through the magazines she assumed had been dumped there for her inspiration, but the idea wasn’t remotely tempting, following on the heels of the shock of this non-welcome. There was a phone on the desk, but the only number that came to mind was 911.

Somehow, Gigi told herself, as she took deep breaths to conquer her hyperventilating, she’d made a grave mistake about the corporate subconscious. There was no chance she would let herself be introduced to those people out there in her overdressed state. Why hadn’t Archie or Byron warned her? Why had they entrapped her by their own attire? At least when she’d started high school she’d known exactly what all the other kids would be wearing, and that knowledge had enabled her to get through the first awful day before she made human contact. Of course, if she were truly, deeply self-confident, it wouldn’t matter—she’d have the basic inner assurance to meet anyone dressed in anything, assaulting the corporate norm without a second thought. She’d be Anna Magnani, she’d be Lauren Hutton, she’d be Martha Graham. No, Bella Abzug. Better yet, Barbara Jordan. How could her hands and feet be icy while sweat was forming on her forehead? How could she, Graziella Giovanna Orsini, be reduced to acting like such a wimp just because she hadn’t known the dress code? On the other hand, even Ralph Waldo Emerson had admitted to submitting with admiration to a lady who had told him that the sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity that religion is powerless to bestow.

As she arrived at this reflection, the door opened without a knock, and someone stuck a head into the room.

“Where are you?” an unknown man’s voice asked.

“I’m working,” Gigi muttered, hunching farther down until only the top of her hat could be seen as she buried her face behind a magazine. Emerson’s presence had vanished.

“Jeez. Already? I thought we could destroy a few bagels and trade life stories,” he said, stepping into the room.

“Maybe later,” Gigi said testily, not raising her eyes, “much later. I’m getting into this.”

“I’m David,” he said. She had the impression of someone trying to peer down at her from a great height.

“Gigi,” she admitted, shifting her chair closer to the
highest pile of magazines and pressing herself into the lee of the desk, the shield of the magazine almost touching her nose.

“Polly told me you were here. Sure you don’t want a bagel? I just got ’em fresh. Or there’s some terrific Chinese stuff from yesterday. We pulled an all-nighter and there’s lots left. I could stick it in the microwave. I’ve got a box of Fig Newtons in my office, and an espresso machine. Come on, I’ll make you a cappuccino.” His voice was eager and full of curiosity as he advanced, about to edge around the desk, obviously trying to get a look at her.

“No! Absolutely not! Nothing!” Gigi turned herself into the smallest possible surface, bringing her knees up to her chin and planting her shoes on the seat of the chair. Only shoes, hat, hands, legs, and the smallest slivers of gray flannel on either side of her hips and shoulders were visible as she menaced him with her voice.

“Nothing?” he repeated incredulously.

“Food is the last thing on my mind,” Gigi said as coldly and dismissively as possible, cowering in her chair. “I told you I was busy. Close the door when you leave.”

“Sure,” he said in disappointment. “I’ll catch you later. Maybe we can lunch?
Great
hat.”

In less than a minute he had rematerialized as a large hand holding an apple. “Got it! You’re into organic food. This is Mrs. Gooch’s guaranteed best. Now, what’s your sign? I’m a Leo. I’m not convinced about astrology, but you can’t rule it out. Tell me about the first time you went to bed with a guy. How much of a disappointment was it? Did you cheat a lot in school? How much credit card debt do you feel comfortable with? Are you married, single, divorced, or—”