Lovers (5 page)

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 and 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.

Gigi got up to go into the kitchen and make herself dinner, but stopped with the realization that not only was she not hungry, but she was too furious to be able to swallow. In her state of mind she was afraid to put anything into her mouth without someone around to apply the Heimlich maneuver. Wine was safe, it went down easily, and perhaps wine would soothe, she hoped, pouring another glass and returning to the view that normally made night music, but tonight looked as dull as Sally Lou found Scruples Two. But at least the lights below were shining
now
, unlike the stars and their unsettling intimations of the eons of time starlight traveled before it reached her eyes. What a bummer, knowing that you’re looking at the sparkle of a star long dead, Gigi mused, sipping slowly from her glass.

Resolutely, fortified by a touch of meditation on the unsatisfactory nature of the Milky Way and the evanescence of human existence, Gigi made an attempt to replace her anger with Zach with annoyance toward Sally Lou, but she found that all she felt for her former secretary was sympathy. Naturally that girl was bored. It was getting tedious enough for Gigi to do her own work, much less have to deal with it secondhand, as Sally Lou had. Was it only today that she’d realized it? Had she been so preoccupied with avoiding what felt more and more like a doomed and insoluble problem with Zach that she hadn’t been aware of a growing disenchantment with her job?

This
was
a night for nasty truths, Gigi thought, opening
the French doors and trying to escape from her perceptions as she went out onto the balcony. With luck she’d find a vicious Santa Ana wind or perhaps a werewolf’s full moon to explain her thoughts. She scanned the heavens and discovered an innocent crescent moon, clear skies, and a still night. She wished she smoked. She saw herself leaning on the balcony, as if it were the railing of a departing transatlantic liner, exhaling a stream of smoke with a worldly, brave, and resolute air as she turned her back on the past and sailed toward an exciting, daring, romantic future. In her high school days, when she and Mazie Goldsmith watched the classic films in Mazie’s father’s projection room, the stars in Hollywood acted with their cigarettes. Maybe that was what was wrong with movies now. No cigarettes, and particularly no expressive cigarette holders.

Suddenly shivering in the chill of the autumn air, Gigi had to go back inside, where she curled up on a couch and thought about lighting a fire and listening to some music. But not, for God’s sake, Nat King Cole, who would bring tears to her eyes. Or Patsy Cline, who would make her sob out loud. Or anyone else who sang songs of a faraway lover and understood how lonely and miserable she felt.

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, goodbye 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.

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 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 MacGraw 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. 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 almost 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. You have more than seven weeks before the next catalog will be due at the printers; that’s plenty of time to find and train another copywriter, but Archie needs to put together the Indigo Seas pitch as quickly as possible.”