Satin Dreams (24 page)

She leaned over the railing, untypically loud and accusing. “Your own model,” she yelled, saving the best for last, “collapsed and fainted dead away on European television. In the arms of your backer, for God’s sake!”
 

“It wasn’t live, it was on videotape.” Jack signed the last bunch of purchase orders in the lower hallway while Peter Frank held the clipboard. “So, we bought it off Deutschevideo.” He shrugged his big shoulders under a Cardin black wool coat trimmed in caracul. “The boo-boo won’t air.”
 

“Five-thousand dollars?
Five thou
, for a thirty-minute kraut videotape, on top of all the money we’re pouring into the sewers of Paris?” She leaned perilously over the marble railing. Few people had ever seen the vice president and CEO of Jackson Storm, Inc., so riled. “Jack, mark my words, you’re facing the end of the world, we all are—when you get back from your holiday!”
 

But the front door slammed, cutting her off.
 

Peter Frank looked up the Maison Louvel stairwell, aware that Mindy’s fierce speech had been broadcast throughout the building.
 

“We’re in better shape than that, Mindy,” he said, though he wasn’t feeling all that confident himself. “No end of the world before the next fiscal quarter, okay? But you’re right,” he conceded, “we’re all strung out.” He managed a grin. “Get some rest over Christmas, okay?”
 

Mindy Ferragamo squared her thin shoulders under her black business suit, belligerently. “Christ, Peter, what do you know about anything? He can’t find Marianna and the girls.” She drew back, her face in shadows. “Jack’s wife walked out on him.”
 

“Jesus,” Peter said, shocked. “The poor bastard.”
 

He continued to stand in the lower hall with the forgotten clipboard purchase orders in his hand, long after Mindy Ferragamo had left the upper-floor railing.
 

Christmas Eve morning, Jackson Storm left for New York on the Concorde, planning to spend the holidays in Tahoe. Or maybe St. Croix. No one was really sure. His calls would be taken at Jackson Storm headquarters in New York.
 

Mindy Ferragamo departed Charles de Gaulle airport for Kansas City to spend Christmas with her parents. Peter Frank headed for Boston. Princess Jacqueline Medivani was somewhere in Paris with her father Prince Alessio, and her married sister Princess Catherine. Princess Jackie had left an enormous bottle, beautifully gift-wrapped, of Joy perfume for Alix on the table in the atelier. The
Fortune
magazine writer Christopher Forbes had flown to London for a temporary assignment.
 

On the Christmas Eve half-day at the Maison Louvel, Gilles Vasse came to work, doggedly hoping to finish off a few of the many costumes that had to be done for the opera ball. In his watchman’s cubbyhole off the lobby, Abdul was surprised to see Gilles come up the stairs from the street. But he quickly marked him “in” on his security list.
 

Nannette and Sylvie were at work, although they planned to leave half an hour early for the annual seamstresses’ guild party sponsored by St. Laurent. Alix, who had avoided most holiday celebrations since she’d been in Paris, had come into help Nannette and Sylvie.
 

All of Paris, it seemed, was partying. Snow was still on the ground, the air was crisp but not freezing, and traffic was heavy. The sound of it in the nearby rue Cambon was like distant thunder. Bells from the many ancient churches on the right bank of the Seine pealed all morning and would continue ringing until Christmas Day.
 

The burly little French
poste
, when he came to deliver the mail, was unsteady on his feet with all the toasts he’d drunk to the holiday season. Even Karim had gone to an all-day bash at his technical college.
 

“
Eh bien
,” Nannette said as Alix helped her carry the last pile of boxes up to the storeroom. “It is good to have the place quiet for a while. Are you all right? You are well, not feeling poorly as you did at the party?” Her keen eyes took in Alix thoroughly. “You do not want to overdo.”
 

Alix had the grace to blush.
Nannette thinks I’m pregnant
, she realized, feeling humiliated. Everyone, apparently, thought she was going to bed with Nicholas Palliades on a regular basis.
 

“I’ve been working too hard,” she explained, aware of the other woman’s skeptical expression. “And dieting.” That was probably more embarrassing, because it was the truth. “I’ve had to—I put on two kilos.”
 

“
Two
kilos?” Nannette hauled her middle-aged bulk up the last stairs to the storeroom attic. “Baby Jesus, what an affliction!”
 

“It will be, if I haven’t lost it by the time we fit the costumes for the opera.”
 

“True, true.” The Frenchwoman eyed Alix’s reed-slim figure, adding, under her breath, “
Deux kilos!
”
 

Alix waited on the iron steps under the skylight while the fitter found the keys to the storeroom. “Well, now that the house is empty, who knows? Maybe it will give our holy fathers the ghosts a rest.”
 

“What holy fathers?” Alix wanted to know.
 

“Ah, the ghosts,” Nannette said mysteriously. “Don’t you know we are supposed to have ghosts here, of the monks?”
 

When Alix laughed, she looked at her reprovingly. “Don’t be so smart. This was once a monastery up here on the way to Montmartre. They taught us about it in school. There were many monks on this side of the Seine, with many houses of holy orders.”
 

The key in the lock turned, and the door to the storeroom opened. Nannette shoved it back and groped along the wall for the light switch.
 

“Under this house there is a crypt from the holy fathers’ chapter house. I have seen it many times. That is where the street gets its name, you know, the rue des Benedictines, from their order. There were tombs of two knights down there. We used to say they were Crusaders. But that is all sealed up now.”
 

At the click of the switch, a naked light bulb overhead came on. The room was filled with rows and rows of clothing hanging from horizontal iron pipes.
 

“Up here,” the fitter went on, “during the war when Hitler’s army was in Paris, the Resistance fighters hid in the room behind this. No one knew they were here except Mademoiselle Claude, the
couturiere
. These are her clothes you see hanging here. During the war the
Maquis
went out down below, through the crypt and right into the sewers. The same way these crazy children of Khomeini did with their illegal drugs.”
 

Nannette put down the empty thread boxes and dusted her hands. “There was a big raid. Did you see it on television, when they brought out these Iranians that were making drugs up here? To capture them the police shot up the stairs. That’s why it was necessary to replace all the marble above the fourth floor.”
 

Alix remembered reading something of the sort; she hadn’t connected it with the old Maison Louvel. She put down her boxes to examine the rows of hanging clothes. The fabrics were beautiful. Even in the storage room’s dim light she could see the ruby gleam of velvet, the glimmer of gold lame and cloudlike chiffon. If they were in style, the clothes would be worth a fortune.
 

“It was not too long ago,” the other woman said. “Maybe a year.”
 

“Does Jackson Storm know about it?” Alix said without much interest.
 

“Oh yes, he was here. He had just bought the old place.” The excitement in the fitter’s voice died away. “The Americans, they rush on to the next thing. One month passed here, and it was like nothing had happened. Besides, that was not the only incident with Iranians and drugs in Paris that year. It was very violent.”
 

They heard a door slam not too many floors below, then the quick stamping of feet descending the marble staircase. It could only be one person. No one else went that fast. Or that angrily.
 

“
Merde
, Gilles is giving up.” Nannette looked at her wristwatch. “That boy is driving himself mad. Now he goes home—and that wife of his is useless.”
 

Alix knew Gilles would be upset, later, when he remembered that he’d left without wishing anyone a Joyeux Noel. “Jack Storm doesn’t really listen when Gilles tries to tell him he’s not a theatrical costume designer.”
 

That had been the subject of Gilles’s latest rousing fight with their employer.
 

Nannette shrugged. “I told you, Americans do not listen to anything.” She bent to push aside the hanging dresses and check the stacks of brown paper-wrapped bolts of laminated lace that were stored there. “We have too much of this stuff they brought up from Lyon.” She sniffed and made a face.
 

Alix thought of Gilles working all morning in the design room with the door locked, still struggling desperately with the creation of whimsical bird costumes that, as far as anybody knew, would be only used once, for Jackson Storm’s extravaganza publicizing the “new” laminated lace fabric.
 

Then there was Gilles’s running war with their apprentice designer, Princess Jacqueline. Jackson Storm had given his approval for the princess to work for Alix exclusively, creating an original, starring
fantaisie
for her to wear in the show.
 

Alix, of course, was Gilles’s model; he designed for her, in fact, depended on her for the basic look for his collections. The screaming row that had reverberated through the Maison Louvel had been typically French, with both parties throwing their hearts—and voices—into it.
 

Jackson Storm had forced a compromise. Alix was to wear Princess Jackie’s “flamingo” creation first in the show and change into Gilles’s for the finale.
 

“One more of these failures to communicate,” a gaunt Candace Dobbs had threatened, “and I take up the offer to go with Guess jeans.”
 

Nannette stepped back to the doorway. “Are we through?” Seeing Alix still rummaging among the clothes on the racks, she clucked, “Come, this is no way to spend a holiday, up here with Mademoiselle Claude’s things. Come to the guild party with us at St. Laurent’s. Everyone gets a little drunk. We’re all one big family no matter who we work for. You’ll have a good time.”
 

Alix shook her head. “I don’t need to get drunk. It will give me big circles under my eyes.”
 

“
Phagh
, not you.” The other woman turned off the light and Alix reluctantly came out of the racks. “Nothing bothers your looks. Come, no one is waiting for you,” she added significantly.
 

Nannette was right. Nicholas Palliades’s chauffeured Daimler, which usually waited for her, had not been parked in the rue des Benedictines since the press party. She knew Nicholas hadn’t given up; he was furiously jealous of Chris Forbes—and the whole male population of Paris. He was probably just out of town.
 

She was grateful not to have that pressure, if only for a few days.
 

When she’d fainted in front of the television cameras and Nicholas had grabbed her to keep her from falling to the floor, his true identity had suddenly clarified in that last split second of sanity. He was Nicholas—not one of her demons. But the look in those burning black eyes had been so alarmed, so filled with fierce emotion, Alix had been relieved that he’d disappeared in the crowd shortly after she’d recovered.
 

They went back down the stairs.
 

“Thank you anyway, Nannette,” Alix said. She put her hand on the fitter’s arm. The atelier always treated her well. They clucked over her like mothers, and seemed to dislike Jackson Storm, but curiously, not Nicholas Palliades. “I do have something else to do.”
 

On Christmas Eve the Sorbonne’s music school held a recital by honor students and a small reception afterward. Alix had pictured herself standing in the back of the room and watching the concert, not a part of it anymore but, she discovered with surprise, no longer wishing she were. Things had changed.
 

“I’m going to have a good time,” she assured her.
 

The Christmas Eve visit back to the Sorbonne was a revelation. Alix had not expected to be remembered, much less welcomed enthusiastically. But in the comparatively short time she’d studied for her advanced music degree, she had made friends, and they were glad to see her. The concert was exciting, the Mozart piano concerto, one of Alix’s favorites, spectacular. Afterward more than a dozen students went to a nearby cafe for dinner, making so much noise over their food and wine they could hardly hear the bells of Paris’s churches calling the faithful to Christmas Eve mass.
 

The bells were still ringing when Alix took a cab across the Pont de Grenelle back to the rue Boulanvilliers. The night was clear, and millions of cold diamond stars lit the ink-blue sky. She had just paid the taxi driver when someone jumped out of a doorway just ahead and ran toward her.
 

“Mademoiselle!” Karim took her by the arm and half-dragged her toward the street. “You must come. Only you can help. It’s the princess!”