Shades of Fortune (11 page)

Much later, she has the dream. It is a dream she has had before, though not lately, and it is a dream that, even as she dreams it, she knows is only a dream, and she knows that she will awaken from it, and always at the same point. In it, she is a little girl again, and in a car somewhere, and suddenly there is a terrible screeching of brakes, and a loud crash, and a large dark object flying up across the sky, and people screaming everywhere, and then there are only her mother's screams and sobs. This is where she invariably awakens, with her mother's screams, never finding out what the screams mean, or what has happened.

Awake, she realizes that the sound that awoke her was the sound of her husband's bedroom door closing across the hall. From the digital clock at her bedside, she sees that it is ten minutes of three, and she realizes that he has not come into her room to kiss her good night, the way he usually does.

On the beach at St.-Jean-de-Luz, you covered my feet with sand, and then my legs, and then my belly, and then my arms, and then my breasts, until I was covered with sand all the way up to my neck, and all that was sticking out of me was the head. And you said that now I had a figure just like Mae West's, and then you kissed me on the lips and said that even if I got to be as old and fat and bloated-looking as Mae West, you'd still love me.

Mimi told me all of this, much later.

4

It is now ten o'clock the following morning, and Mimi and her advertising director, Mark Segal, sit in the small conference room of the Miray offices at 666 Fifth Avenue. Mimi is perched on one end of the conference table, and Mark sits at the other, and between them, spread out across the table, are the pasteups for the print advertising and the storyboards for the television commercials for the new Mireille campaign. Seated a short distance away from them, trying to be unobtrusive, is Jim Greenway, whom Mimi has invited to follow her about during a somewhat atypical business day. It is atypical because it is not every day that the final details are worked out for a fifty-million-dollar campaign that will spell either success or failure for a brand-new range of products in a notoriously fickle marketplace.

There is tension in the air as Segal, an athletic-looking young redhead with a fiery beard, in jeans and shirtsleeves, holds up one after another of the ads and storyboards for Mimi's inspection. At first, no one speaks. All the ads, which feature the Mireille Couple in various romantic locales and situations, are signed with the line, which is Mark Segal's, “Mireille … at last the miracle fragrance.” The television commercials, which are designed to expand on the situations depicted in the print ads, also close with this signature line. Watching Mimi's reactions closely, Segal nervously flexes the biceps of his right arm.

Finally, he says, “Something's bothering you—I can tell. What is it?”

Mimi continues to study the photographs of the two models. Then she says, “She's lovely, there's no doubt about it. Lovely. She's got just the look I want. Of course, you'd hope that with looks like that would go just a little
glimmer
of intelligence, but in her case there just isn't any. It doesn't seem fair, does it—that a girl who can sparkle like that in front of a camera should be such a dim bulb in real life? But it doesn't matter. She looks … simply wonderful. I wouldn't change a thing about her.”

“Fortunately, only Sherrill's friends will get to see her in real life,” Mark says.

“If we decide to use her live in any in-store promotions, just make sure she's not allowed to open her mouth. They were both at my house for dinner last night, and you should have seen her trying to figure out which fork to use. It's sad, isn't it? You'd want a girl like that to have
every
thing, wouldn't you? But all she is is a gorgeous face.”

“That's about all you can say about most of these girls,” he says.

“Well, maybe the exposure we'll give her will help her wise up—go to charm school, or something. But it's not her I'm worried about, Mark. It's
him
. Why does he seem too …”

“Pretty?”

“Yes. That's it, exactly. Here's the case of a boy who, when you see him in the flesh, looks nice and wholesome—rugged, outdoorsy, like he belongs on a ski slope, or on top of a diving board, or sculling with the Yale crew. But in front of a camera, he seems to go all … soft, somehow.”

“Effeminate, you mean?”

“Not effeminate, exactly. Just … soft. Do you see what I mean, Mark?”

“Yes, I'm afraid I do.”

“Can we screen the first commercial again, Mark?”

“Sure,” he says. He dims the lights, the screen descends from its recess in the conference room ceiling, and the video projector begins to roll.

The scene is the dock in front of the Seawanhaka Yacht Club in Oyster Bay, a balmy summer afternoon; sunlight on the blue water of Long Island Sound refracts the camera's eye with diamond flashes. Through these flashes, we see a snappy yawl-rigged sailboat move into view, the Mireille Man at the tiller, in dark blue jeans, bare to the waist. There is a bright sting of music. The camera then moves to pick up:

The Girl, standing on the dock, waving to him, all in white, her skirts blowing in the breeze.

T
HE
G
IRL
: You're late!

T
HE
B
OY
: Tricky winds!

We see the boy maneuver the sailboat expertly to the dock and throw a line, which she catches and lashes around an upright pier. Then we watch as he holds up both arms, as she steps into them, and as he lifts her lightly down to the deck. He nuzzles her shoulder. Then, in close-up:

T
HE
B
OY
: Hey! What's that you're wearing? You smell brand-new!

T
HE
G
IRL
: It is brand-new! It's Mireille—by Miray!

We watch him as, nostrils flared, he nuzzles her some more, drinking in her scent with obvious pleasure and excitement; nuzzles her shoulder, her cheekbones, her ear lobe, and finally brushes her lips with his. There is another musical sting, a clear, high, bright electronic chord.

T
HE
B
OY
: You smell … miraculous!

Once more the screen fills up with diamondlike flashes of sunlight refracted on water as, simultaneously, the legend travels across the screen:
Mireille … at last the miracle fragrance
.

The screen goes blank, and the lights come up again.

“Do you see what I mean?” Mimi says after a moment. “A soft look. What can we do, Mark, to make him have a harder edge?”

He says nothing.

“His face has no
corners
to it. Do you agree?”

He nods, frowning, looking unhappy, and flexes his biceps several more times.

Suddenly Mimi picks up a grease pencil from the table, and, pulling out the storyboard for the commercial they have just screened, she makes a mark across the face of Dirk Gordon. “I think I have it,” she says.

“What is it?”

“What if we gave him a scar, Mark?”

“A scar?”

“Yes—like a dueling scar. Across one cheek. It would break up that dumb
symmetry
. And it would give him a history, like—”

“Like the Hathaway man with the eyepatch?”

“
Exactly,
” Mimi says. “Only this would be more exciting than an eyepatch. How did that good-looking man get that ugly scar? the viewer will wonder. In some barroom brawl? Defending some maiden's honor? In some nasty accident? Or on the lacrosse field in some really rugged play? Smashed in the face by a hockey puck? See what I mean?”

Mark Segal scratches his red beard thoughtfully. “I see what you mean, but—”

“But what?”

“I don't know how little Dirkie-boy will feel about us turning him into Scarface,” he says.

“Well,” she says with a little laugh, “we do have him under contract, don't we? It's really up to us how we decide to make him look, Mark.”

“That's true, but—”

“Again, but what?”

“You're talking about reshooting the entire campaign, Mimi.”

“Look,” she says, “maybe for the print ads we can airbrush in the scar. If that doesn't work—”

“Then what?”

“Then, I guess we reshoot. It's not the first time we've had to do that.”

“You're also talking about reshooting three thirty-second television commercials. You can't airbrush TV film. Do you know how much that's going to cost?”

“Of course I do. But Mark, I honestly think that the scar could make all the difference—between an excellent campaign and one that's
spectacular
. I think we've got to try it, Mark, don't you?”

He is scowling now. “Well …”

“Really, Mark. Because this is the most important product launch we've ever done.”

“The most important
ever?
How come?”

“It just is. All at once it is—for reasons I can't go into right now. Just take my word for it. This campaign can't just be successful. It's got to be
sensationally
successful.”

He shrugs. “If you say so,” he says.

“Let's try it with the airbrush first. Give the head shots of Dirk to the art department, and have them experiment with scars. Have them try different kinds of scars. Tell them I want some real tough-looking scars. Once we see the airbrushing, then we'll decide—”

The door to the conference room opens, and it is Mimi's secretary, Mrs. Hanna. “Mr. Michael Horowitz, Miss Myerson,” she says. “Returning your call.”

“Oh, yes,” Mimi says, hopping off the edge of the table. “I want to talk to him.” To Segal, she says, “We'll decide when we see what the art department comes up with,” and blows him a kiss.

Segal, still scowling, begins gathering up the layouts and pasteups and storyboards from the conference table. Before immediately following Mimi back to her office, Jim Greenway steps over to him and says, “What do you think of this scar idea, anyway?”

At first, Mark Segal merely grunts. Then he mutters, “Brilliant. As usual. Fucking brilliant. Simply fucking brilliant, is all I can say.”

It all began, needless to say, with one of her famous “Mimi Memos” more than two years ago, in the spring of 1985.

MIRAY CORPORATION

Interoffice Memorandum

TO: All employees

FROM: MM

(Over the years, her employees have learned that whenever they see that double
M
on an interoffice memo, something important is on the boss's mind. But that the subject of this memo should have now gained the importance that it has, they could not have guessed.)

SUBJECT: Perfume

The perfumer's art is at least 10,000 years old, and the earliest perfumes were in the form of incense. Indeed, the word derives from the Latin
per
and
fumus
, literally “through smoke.”

Ancient man, believing that the greatest offering to his gods could only be one of his most precious possessions, offered in sacrifice a domestic beast—or another human. The earliest perfumes were resinous gums such as frankincense, myrrh, cassia, and spikenard, which were sprinkled on an animal (or human) corpse before it was burned, in order to mask the stench of burning flesh. In the Bible, Noah, having survived the Flood, offered burnt animal sacrifices in gratitude, and “the Lord smelled the sweet odor”—of incense. Gradually, the burning of these resins alone replaced the sacrifices, and the burning of incense survives today in the ritual of the Catholic Church.

The logical next step was for men and women to anoint their bodies with these fragrant resins, and by 3000
B
.
C
. the Sumerians in Mesopotamia and the Egyptians in the Nile Valley were literally bathing themselves in oils and alcohols of jasmine, iris, hyacinth, and honeysuckle.

Cleopatra believed in using different scents for different parts of her body. She scented her hands with an oil of roses, crocuses, and violets, and her feet with a lotion made of almond oil, honey, cinnamon, orange blossoms, and henna.

In ancient Greece, men spurned facial cosmetics but used perfumes liberally, scenting their arms with mint, their chests with cinnamon, their hands and feet with almond oil, and their hair and eyebrows with extract of marjoram. In fact, in Greece the perfumed male became a symbol of decadence, and the Athenian statesman Solon enacted a law forbidding the sale of fragrant oils to Athenian men. The law was routinely flouted and soon went off the books.

From Greece, male scents traveled to Rome, and a Roman soldier was considered unfit for battle unless he was anointed with scent. As the Roman Empire grew, new scents appeared from conquered lands: wisteria, lilac, carnation, and vanilla. From the Far and Middle East came fragrances of cedar, pine, ginger, and mimosa.

Perfume trivia corner:
The Emperor Nero spent the equivalent of $160,000 for rose oils, rose water, and rose petals for himself and his guests for a single evening's entertainment. For the funeral of his wife Poppaea, more perfume was splashed or sprayed over the proceedings than the entire country of Arabia could produce in a year. (Even the mules in the funeral cortege were scented.)

From the East, 11th-century Crusaders brought “attar of roses,” still one of the costliest of scents. (It takes 200 pounds of damask-rose petals to produce a single ounce of attar.)

The Crusaders also brought back other perfume ingredients that had been theretofore unknown in the Western world: animal oils. These are sexual and glandular secretions, and there are essentially four of these:

Musk:
A sexual secretion from the abdomen of the musk deer of western China.

Ambergris:
A waxy substance from the stomach of the sperm whale.

Civet:
A genital secretion from both the male and female civet cat of Africa and the Far East, it can be collected regularly from captive cats without harm to the animal. On its own, it smells simply ghastly, but when blended with other essences it miraculously takes on a most agreeable odor and is an important “fixative” in fine perfumes—the fixative is what makes the scent last longer when worn.