Lovers (7 page)
Authors: Judith Krantz
“They’ve passed into history,” Billy laughed. “You heard it once, but from now on I’ll deny it,” she added with a renewal of her habitual energy. “I’ve been worried about you. Zach is away so much, and your job isn’t nearly enough for your scope, but you seemed so content to let things go on as they were … I didn’t want to stir things up in your little love nest. This is great news, just stupendous! What kind of agency? Is it that new place that was trying to recruit you before the babies were born? Frost something?”
“Right, same place. Archie Rourke, Byron Berenson Bernheim the Third, and Victoria Frost.”
“Oh yes, I remember, Millicent Caldwell’s daughter,” Billy said in the voice she used unconsciously when she spoke of those few women she considered her peers. “What’s the daughter like?”
“I haven’t met her yet. But the guys are wonderful.”
“Married?” Billy asked sharply.
“No they’re not. God, you’re conventional.”
“You will be too, when you’ve been married three times. Just watch out for them. No office romances.”
“But weren’t you Ellis’s secretary?”
“That was the exception.” Billy shrugged and blushed faintly. “I still don’t recommend it. Does Spider know?”
“Yes, I have his blessing. He understood perfectly, even why I have to leave so quickly.”
“But, darling, we can’t let you go without a going-away party. Josie can arrange it in an hour.”
Gigi growled and complained, but Billy, already at the phone, dialing Josie at the office, paid no attention. As she
heard the familiar sound of Billy issuing a long list of detailed instructions, Gigi realized that this was an opportunity to get away before she had to hear anything more about the powers of the fearful, mind-bending twins. She kissed the top of Billy’s head, waved, and disappeared down the corridor, closing the door behind her. As she walked toward the staircase she crossed the path of the admirable nanny, carrying a basket of newly washed baby clothes.
“Nanny Elizabeth, may I ask you something?” Gigi said, stopping her. “Is it my imagination, or is Mrs. Elliott overly … involved … in taking care of the boys?”
“My first-time mothers are always over or under, Gigi. I’ve never had an even-keeled one yet, not in twenty years,” the sturdy Midwestern woman said, smiling and unsurprised. “Now, Mrs. Elliott’s definitely way over—I think it was that book that did it—but there’s nothing to worry about, she’s as strong as a horse, and I give it another month or two to taper off to normal. When they’re under-involved, I do get concerned. It’s not that I mind the extra work, but the mothers themselves miss so much.”
“Do you believe that babies actually control adults with their eyes?”
“Well, of course, everybody knows that, Gigi. And if it weren’t with their eyes, it would be with something else, count on it, the little devils.”
After Gigi left, Billy noticed the box tied with blue satin ribbon. She opened it with immediate curiosity, realizing that Gigi had become too caught up in the discussion about the twins to give it to her. Under layers of tissue she found a peignoir made of gleaming satin in a particularly voluptuous shade of pink. It was elaborately decorated, with deep insets of Valencienne cream lace at the throat. Lace insets, four inches apart, ran vertically down the length of the garment all the way to the hem, where the lace foamed into a wide flounce that trailed on the floor.
On the arms of the peignoir, more lace fell from mid-arm to the wrist.
Entranced, Billy carried the peignoir into her bathroom and put it on in front of a full-length mirror, pulling it closely together so that her jeans and shirt were completely hidden. Another woman looked at her from her mirror, a woman with many a seductive secret, a woman she had forgotten she had ever been. She gazed at herself with astonishment and an immediate feeling that she was startled to identify as sexual arousal. Good grief, what was going on here, Billy asked herself, opening the card that Gigi had written to go with her gift.
Gabrielle, yes, indeed
, that
Gabrielle, the divine one who invented
“Le Coucher de Gabrielle,”
always said that this peignoir was her lucky charm, for she wore it for her debut at the Folies-Bergere. Her debut took place on a night in the springtime, it took place, of course, in Paris, and it took place at a time when all women, no matter what their position in society, wore five layers of undergarments, fastened together by an infernal system of straps and hooks and buttons that had been invented so that it would take a very long time indeed for them to be removed. Women, especially our divine Gabrielle, did not wish to seem as if they could be easily conquered by any man. Every woman knew that men only wanted one thing of them, and this one thing they were determined not to surrender, for their Mamans had told them of the dangers of allowing men to have their way, and their Mamans were wise in the ways of the wicked world. Gabrielle, who lived on very few sous in a tiny attic with a view of the tops of the trees of the Parc Montsouris, was a dreamer by nature, and as she watched the buds on the trees swell in the purple twilight, she thought of all the unmarried men, all over Paris, who were, at this very minute, going home to their empty bachelor apartments. Oh, softhearted
Gabrielle! These men, dangerous and wicked though they were, she told herself, must be lonely in their empty rooms. She felt pity for them, a pity that grew deeper as a new moon rose and the evening star spoke to her. Wasn’t there anything that a charitable girl could do to make them happier, she wondered, without, of course, surrendering that precious thing that was of great price? Night by night Gabrielle meditated until she arrived at an idea that no one in the history of civilization—or at least in France, which is the same thing—had ever had before. What if a woman, a woman as demure and chaste and lovely as Gabrielle herself, were to permit these poor bachelors to watch her undress for bed? What if she were to arrive on the stage of a theater, well-covered, it went without saying, in her pink satin and cream lace peignoir, for which she had saved all her extra sous for three years? What if she were to allow her peignoir to slip to the ground, while a pianist played light classical music to which she would listen, unaware of the eyes upon her? What if slowly, very slowly, in time to the music, she were to remove, with delicate manipulation of all the fastenings and buttons, the first of the five layers of dainty undergarments that every woman wore? And another and another? And yet another? Of course, she would never remove the last layer, the chemise and the knickers, for that would not only encourage men to have indecent thoughts, but it would bring the
gendarmerie
to close the theater. There should be a screen on the stage, Gabrielle realized, so that when she took off that last layer and put on her nightdress, a high-necked white nightdress made of heavy starched linen that no woman need fear being seen in, she could do it behind the screen. And there should be a bed on the stage as well, a simple white bed into which she would slip, taking only two quick steps from the screen to the bed. Perhaps an audience
could be found for this decent representation of an event from everyday life, Gabrielle told herself as she made a rendezvous with the director of the Folies-Bergere
.
Ah, Gabrielle, the toast of Paris, Gabrielle who invented
le
strip-tease out of compassion for her fellow men, why did you never allow any of the men who wanted to marry you and share your little white bed to accompany you home? You could have married two kings, twenty-five noblemen, and two hundred stockbrokers, one more handsome than the other. Was it because each night, after you had given the performance of
Le Coucher de Gabrielle,
you changed into your dove-gray velvet coat and your hat with the gray ostrich feathers and told your coachman, who drove your four gray horses, to hurry to return to your big house that now looked out on the trees of the Parc Monceau? Was it because you were happily eager to go home without a king or even a stockbroker, and watch over the sleep of your little twin boys? Was it, oh, soft-hearted Gabrielle, because, you knew only too well what happened to women who listened to men, and surrendered that priceless possession they only possessed if no one else possessed it, for such is fate? To say nothing of biology?
With love from Gigi
.
Billy read the card and laughed and cried a little and resolved to wear the peignoir tonight, for she too had listened to a man, and she, like Gabrielle, had no regrets.
As soon as Gigi got back to Scruples Two, she made a lunch date with Sasha, who was free that very day. Sasha Nevsky was the last important person to whom she had to tell her news, except for Zach, who wouldn’t care where she worked as long as she was happy.
And her father, of course. Vito Orsini was in Europe
for the moment, but as soon as he came home she’d have dinner with him and discuss the whole thing. Their relationship had grown close and warm in the past years, and often, when Gigi was alone, Vito would take her out, always to a different restaurant, and insist that she order the most expensive things on the menu, and talk over all sorts of things, with an intimacy she didn’t believe would be possible for a daughter who’d grown up normally in her father’s house.
“You look awfully pleased with yourself—did someone just give you a lifetime supply of perfect panty hose?” Sasha asked her closest friend, with whom she’d shared apartments in New York and West Hollywood until, little over a year ago, she’d met Josh Hillman, Billy’s lawyer, and agreed to marry him on their first date.
“I’m so excited and relieved I don’t know what to do,” Gigi admitted gaily. “I was dreading telling Spider and Billy that I’m leaving, but they both think it’s a great idea.”
“Leaving? Leaving Los Angeles?” Sasha looked bewildered.
“Of course not, leaving Scruples Two.”
“What?” Sasha shouted. “You’re doing
what?”
“Stop making that awful noise, for heaven’s sake, it’s not going to bother you. I’ve got that job at the ad agency I told you about, isn’t that terrific?”
“It’s the worst news I’ve ever heard! How can you do this to me, Gigi? Oh God, I don’t—I
won’t
—believe it, you’re just springing this on me, as if it doesn’t matter? What ever happened to you to make you so cruel?”
Two large tears plopped out of Sasha’s eyes and dribbled down her cheeks, merely enhancing her Edwardian beauty, that classic Gibson Girl profile, that lavish luster of black hair and black eyes and white skin that, in combination with her marvelous body and irresistible walk, had made her the best lingerie model on Seventh Avenue before she joined Gigi in Scruples Two.
Gigi looked at her in astonishment. Sasha, the famously hard-hearted tormentor of the male sex; Sasha, who had
brought Josh Hillman, the most eligible single man in Beverly Hills, to his knees in one evening; Sasha, the sweepingly tall, the domineering, the possessor of all the answers—weeping? She’d never seen a tear form in those eyes before.
“But, Sasha,” Gigi protested, watching more huge tears appear, “it shouldn’t make any difference to you. It won’t change anything between us, you’re always out of the office with your assistants, why in God’s name are you crying? Stop it, or at least get out a Kleenex, this is getting embarrassing … people are looking at you.”
“Let them look,” Sasha gulped as a narrow ribbon of tears dripped off her chin and hit the tablecloth. “I’m not ashamed of honest emotion.”
“If you’d just explain … What emotion, exactly? It can’t be that you’re going to miss me at Scruples Two, because we hardly catch sight of each other at work anymore, it can’t be envy of my new job, because you have a fantastic job of your own … What’s this all about?” Gigi demanded sternly, handing Sasha a napkin. She hadn’t gone through a morning of confronting Spider and Billy to let Sasha, of all people, make her feel like a betrayer.
“It … it just won’t
be
Scruples Two anymore if you go,” Sasha finally said, getting her voice under control, although the tears continued to come.
“Be reasonable! It’s a huge business and getting bigger every day. I’m not irreplaceable.”
“Sure, someone can copy your writing style, but you and me, oh, Gigi, we
were
Scruples Two before there really was one … it was just the two of us, me and my ratty old collection of Christmas catalogs and you and your idea of how to make a better one … If you leave, the spirit, the essence goes out of the whole thing.”
“Sasha,” Gigi said gently, “that spirit was gone ages ago, as soon as Scruples Two became a definitive success and the marketing guys came in and started to make the big-money decisions. You’re remembering the start-up time, when Spider and Billy and the two of us were all
creating something together and taking a gamble that we were right. It’s like people in the third year of a Broadway success wishing they were back rehearsing before the first-night curtain went up.”
“Oh, Gigi, we had so much fun!”
Sasha spoke in a voice of loss and sadness that Gigi thought was strangely unjustified, considering that her friend now had what any woman would consider a perfect life: a husband she adored, a heavenly baby girl, a job she did brilliantly, and all the money anyone could want.
“But aren’t we still having fun?” Gigi asked, deeply puzzled.
“No!
We’re grown up now
. Grownups don’t ever have fun the way we used to, and if you don’t know it now, Gigi, you will, just you wait.” Sasha seemed full of a strange, inappropriate grief.
“Good Lord, you’re twenty-six, you’re married and a mother, if you weren’t at least a little bit grown-up now you’d be in trouble,” Gigi said, trying to ignore her friend’s unaccountable misery and bring matters back onto a plane of reality.
“Do you think I don’t know all that?” Sasha flashed.
“Well then?” Gigi challenged.
“Oh, it’s all right for you,” Sasha said. “You’re playing house with my loopy genius of a brother—you can flit around and try this and sample that—you’re nothing close to a grownup yet and you don’t have to live up to … to … live up to
things.”