The bird costumes had been taken down from the long pipe that ran the length of the room and placed on the worktable. Some were in silk covers. Most were not. Alix saw at once that the material was no longer white. Princess Jackie’s joint had set fire to not only the muslin toiles, but also other objects on the littered floor. The plastic silver-and-gold Mylar trimming. All the fluffy ostrich and goose feathers. Even the sequins. The dense smoke had left a yellow-brown film on everything. Gilles’s beautiful fantaisies looked as though they had been dripped in tobacco juice.
Alix was familiar with most of the costumes but not all; the atelier had been full of part-time and temporary seamstresses for the past week, and she’d had her own costumes to worry about, especially Princess Jackie’s “flamingo” design.
Oh Lord—that, too. “Have you seen Princess Jackie’s flamingo?” she asked.
Nannette snorted. “Naturally, that is not touched. She hung it in the design room.”
Well, so much for that, Alix thought, sighing.
With a new appreciation for Gilles’s genius, she stood back and looked at the fantaisies spread out on the worktable.
Heavenly Lace was truly awful, at least for the job Jackson Storm had instructed Gilles to do. The heat-processed lace didn’t really lend itself to Gilles’s space-age designs.
But somehow, miraculously, Gilles had turned the scratchy lace into dreamy creations. Big, sumptuous skirts were fluffed up in lacy poufs to expose the models’ long, shapely legs. Silver beads, sequins, and other glitter were spread lavishly over tail feathers. Laminated lace had even been wired in frames to form spreading wings.
Lacy wings? Alix peered at a creation Karim was just taking down from its hanger. It didn’t look bad at all. If only it were still white...
They gathered around the table, a sad little group beneath the bright fluorescent lights of the atelier, brought together by the hysteria that had mushroomed.
“We’ve got to tell Jackson Storm,” Alix said. “I don’t see that we have any other choice.”
The Bal des Oiseaux Blancs at the opera would go on. There was no stopping it at this late date, but there would be no show. Without the highly publicized costumes featuring Heavenly Lace, it would be a major debacle. Hardly anyone would believe a story of a fire in the atelier; it sounded too pat. No, the last-minute cancellation of the show would raise the suspicions of the press and the fashion experts.
“This will kill Gilles,” Nannette whispered.
They knew she was right.
Gilles would be the scapegoat. His designs were so disastrous, rumor has it that his employer, Jackson Storm, called off the show at the last minute! That, cynical Parisians would say, was the true story. Never mind the trumped-up one about an atelier fire.
But the “true” story, involving their apprentice designer would probably be even worse if it got out. Worldwide headlines. “Pot-Smoking Princess Destroys American Couture Collection.”
“If this were the States,” Alix said under her breath, “we might consider getting them dry cleaned.”
Nannette looked at Sylvie.
Alix frowned. “But all the passementerie, the feathers and sequins, the mylar fringe, would have to be taken off.”
Staring at each other, both women nodded quickly.
“It’s too bad.” Alix sighed. “We haven’t got time.”
Sylvie was positively itching to speak. “I have two cousins who can help. They work for Claude Montana, but I will swear them to secrecy!”
Nannette said, “My nephew is the plant manager in Pantin for Richard et Cie.”
Plant manager? It was Alix’s turn to stare. Richard et Cie?
That was the name of the famous French dry-cleaning house, noted for their skill with delicate fabrics. And, Alix knew, fabulously expensive.
“They are Alsatians, like me,” Sylvie cried, “and very good. For this sort of opportunity they will do a wonderful job!”
Alix knew it wouldn’t work. “How many costumes are there?”
Nannette said quickly, “Ten. Gilles has the other seven in his office upstairs. He is still having trouble with those, so he keeps them up there hoping to get them finished.”
Ten. Ten complicated, fancy costumes. Alix’s mind was working furiously. It was probably impossible. No dry cleaner in Paris would take on a job that size in just a few hours. And the fact that they were originals by a famous young couturier made it worse; there was the question of liability.
“I can’t tell anyone how to dry clean laminated lace,” Alix groaned. “We don’t know anything about it, and there’re only a few hours left. The ball is today.” She sat down on a stack of boxes. “God, tonight!”
Nannette looked formidable and grim as she folded her plump arms. “Nonsense. It is silk. It is lace. Both are done at Paris cleaners all the time.”
“We’ll have to tell Gilles.” Alix hated to say it. “We couldn’t just send the costumes out. He’d miss them.”
The women exchanged looks again. “Gilles will be working upstairs,” Sylvie said firmly. “It will be six o’clock before we need the models for the final fitting. The girls don’t report any earlier, and he won’t, either.”
“Domenic has his bakery’s van downstairs,” Nannette said. “We can use it to transport the costumes to the Pantin plant. They will open up the shop if you give permission for the work, Mademoiselle Alix.”
“If I give permission?”
“Ah, poor Gilles,” Sylvie cried emotionally. “It has been so unfair! We must do our best to help him.”
“I really don’t think,” Alix began, “that we—”
Abdul interrupted from the doorway, “It is everything, mademoiselle. It is our whole employment.”
Alix couldn’t argue with that. But how could she give permission? She was just a model—not a principal in the company.
She put her head in her hands and stared down at the jogging shoes she’d thrown on in a hurry. Nikes—not Keds. She couldn’t help wondering where Princess Jackie was now. Was it still the same night she’d made love to Nicholas Palliades, and slept in his arms?
“I suppose I could give permission,” Alix said slowly. She knew she was going to hate herself for it. “Everything else is crazy. Why not this?”
“There is one more problem,” Sylvie said. She looked over Alix’s head at Nannette. “We must have a deposit.”
Alix raked her fingers through her hair. “What kind of money are we talking about?” When Nannette told her, she gasped. “How many hundred thousand francs?”
“They would do it without the money,” Sylvie cried, sincerely. “But there is the liability—”
Ah, yes, the liability. Abdul and Karim and the two French women were looking at her expectantly. Nothing like this had ever happened to Alix; no one had ever asked her help, no one had ever solicited her management skills before.
“I don’t have any money.” She could see they didn’t believe her. They knew about Nicholas Palliades.
Then a sudden, brilliant thought brought Alix to her feet.
“Will they accept jewels as collateral?” she cried. “Like diamond earrings—with two fairly large emeralds?”
The night sky was growing only slightly gray in the east. It was only a few steps from the rue des Benedictines to the rue Cambon, but the street was still dark. The streetlamp at the entrance to the old maison did not shed much light on the corner. Alix stumbled a little on the curbing as she hurried toward Domenic’s van.
She still couldn’t believe Nannette and Sylvie had entrusted her with the plan to rescue Gilles’s costumes. She, who had never been a part of anything, who had spent most of her life insisting on what was due her from others, was now being called on to help. She was actually granting permission for this scheme. Even if, Alix thought hurrying down the street, her authority was questionable.
If there was any one thing that nagged at her, it was the realization she’d offered Nicholas Palliades’s earrings as a d
eposit for the dry cleaning.
A figure stepped out of the shadows. Alix was so busy with her thoughts, she didn’t notice him until it was too late to get out of his way.
“Please don’t be frightened,” he said. “I have a message to deliver.”
It was the voice on the telephone; Alix recognized it at once. He was very much the way she’d expected him to be: young, well-dressed in a black business suit and topcoat, his hair thinning on top. He wore eyeglasses.
Alix wasn’t surprised that they were dealing out in the open now. They were getting anxious, she knew. She clutched her coat around her, waiting.
“If you come back now, there’ll be no problem.” The same familiar voice, but now without the bullying arrogance. “I’m instructed to tell you anything you want is okay.”
The baker’s van was in sight. “I appreciate the message.” It was, actually, a major concession. “I’ll think about it.”
“When will you let us know?” He hesitated, not wanting to let her go, but not blocking her. He had his orders.
“Later,” Alix murmured. “It will have to be later. After tonight.”
La Fantaisie
The Show
Twenty
Jack Storm had personally invited Donald and Ivana Trump, Michael and Diandra Douglas, Mica Urtegun, Ann Bass and Nan Kempner to the Bal des Oiseaux Blancs, so it came as quite a surprise that instead of meeting his guests at the airport, limousines were sent for them while Jack and Peter Frank had lunch with an Italian clothing manufacturer about setting up a chain of Maison Louvel boutiques, like those of Bennetton in the United States.
That left Candy Dobbs in charge, with Brooksie Goodman on site at the opera.
“You mean,” Alix said, “Jack won’t be here, at the Maison Louvel, until later?”
The public relations woman had charged into the salon for the third or fourth time looking for their shipment of white shoes that, Papagallo swore, had already been delivered.
“Alix, honey, don’t sweat it. Jack needs a good deal right now.” The other woman looked around somewhat hysterically. “Especially after the rumor that’s going around New York that somebody’s been buying up our corporate paper.” She wrung her hands. “Oh, God, I don’t see any large gold carton that says ‘Papagallo’ on it, do you?”
“Corporate paper?” Alix followed her, seemingly to look for the box of shoes, but actually to keep Candace out of the atelier where they were nervously waiting to hear from Richard et Cie about the fantaisie costumes. “But that’s short-term notes, isn’t it?” When Candy didn’t answer, rummaging distractedly in a pile of empty ostrich feather boxes, she said, “You mean, someone’s buying up Storm King loans in New York.”
“Goodness gracious, beautiful, airhead models aren’t supposed to know about things like that! Honestly, Alix, there’s some damned crisis with the Jackson Storm empire every quarter. Oh, Christ,” Candy screamed, loudly enough to make Alix jump, “a large gold carton that says ‘Papagallo’?” She grabbed a box from under the receptionist’s table. “Here are the damned shoes. They’ve been here all the time!”
They heard the telephones in the second-floor offices ringing again. As they had been ringing, in bursts, all morning. Media coverage was still gaining momentum. Trini, Jackson Storm’s secretary, called down the stairs for Candy.
“Here,” the PR woman said, thrusting the shoe boxes at Alix, “you take them up to the atelier and make sure they get loaded on the vans along with the rest of the stuff for the opera.”
Alix had seen enough to know that Candy, like everyone else, assumed the atelier was working quietly making last-minute adjustments on the costumes for the models’ six o’clock arrival.
Alix couldn’t bear to go back to the atelier. Nannette and Sylvie only made her jitters worse. The two seamstresses had locked themselves in to make telephone calls to the dry cleaners in Pantin each step of the way. So far five of Gilles’s beautiful bird designs had survived the initial hand cleaning and had been hung up to dry.
At two o’clock Richard et Cie reported some of the feathers had come loose on an owl design, and the plant foreman’s mother, a dressmaker, had been called in to sew them back on. “Oh mon Dieu, non!” Nannette had screamed into the receiver, “that is couture work. Tell them to leave it alone!”
The plant foreman’s mother had been insulted. The owl costume looked good, the manager had assured them, and there was no need to panic. Telephone communications, however, had been indefinitely suspended while feelings cooled off.
On the floor above, Gilles was locked in his design room solving last-minute problems with the “egret” dresses with the help of two Sophie Litvak models and the temporary seamstresses.
The design room and the atelier were barricaded islands of quiet. The rest of Maison Louvel was a madhouse. The caterer, the elegant old Grande Cascade, a client of Brooksie Goodman’s, was having logistical problems with the opera foyer. The Grande Cascade’s assistant manager and two chefs were waiting impatiently for Jackson Storm, but Candace Dobbs had not had the courage to tell them Jack wasn’t expected back at the Maison Louvel. The headdresses to go with the fantaisies had been delivered. Alix found a safe place in the cloth storage room until Sylvie could tag them for the costumes.
Alix lingered for a moment at a front window, looking down into the rue des Benedictines. Two French television news vans were already parked on the far side, but she didn’t think they would cause any trouble. So far, their secret was still intact. Hopefully no one would question Domenic’s bakery van when it came to deliver the dry-cleaned costumes.
Abdul and Karim had worked until late morning scrubbing down the walls of the atelier so that no telltale odor of fire lingered. Nannette and Sylvie had not even gone home; the two women had caught naps on the big atelier worktable, and Domenic had brought them coffee and pain et beurre at eight-thirty.
One troublesome spot remained. Princess Jackie was nowhere to be found. No one from Prince Alessio’s staff had called inquiring about her, so it was assumed she was at home. They could only keep their fingers crossed that their design starlet would put in an appearance, as scheduled, with her father at the ball that night.
That is, Alix mused, watching the television camera focus on her at the window, if Princess Jacqueline was still in one piece. “Accidentally” setting fire to the atelier with a discarded joint of marijuana had a message in it that she found disturbing.
It was just past four o’clock, she saw by her wristwatch. They had a little over five hours to go.
A can of grease crayons turned over as the telephone rang at Gilles’s design table and he made a scrambling lunge for it. The call, he knew, could only be from one person.
“Darling?” Lisianne’s voice said softly. Was there the merest hesitation, or did he imagine it? “Does all go well?”
Gilles cast a frantic look at the two models wearing egret costumes and the seamstress at their feet trying to find out why the skirts bunched up unbecomingly above their knees instead of gently rounding into the desired poufs. They had been fighting the problem for hours.
“Everything goes well,” Gilles said, faking cheerfulness. “I—I can leave at any time. Are you lying down?”
Lisianne had promised that she would call him the minute even the most minor twinges of pain began.
“How far apart are your contractions?” Gilles had knocked a bottle of India ink off the edge of the board. The models and the seamstresses looked up, startled.
“Gilles,” his wife said, “are you calm?”
“I am very calm,” he assured her, sliding out of his seat. “I will take you to the hospital now. It is best not to wait.”
“Gilles, no.” He heard Lisianne’s tinkling laugh, a sound he hadn’t heard in days. “My darling, I have only called you to wish you well,” she told him. “This is your big night. You don’t think I would spoil it for you by doing such a gauche thing as having our baby, do you?”
“Don
’t say that,” he said fiercely. “Nothing in the world is as important to me as you. I think I should leave now, Lisianne, to be with you. You’re not feeling well, are you?”
“Are you mad?” Lisianne’s amused voice was entrancing. Gilles mopped his sweating face absently with the fixative rag. “All that you have worked for just to come home and sit with your pregnant wife? Gilles, don’t be foolish.” The lighthearted laugh again. “I will be watching you on television. It is very exciting. They have been interviewing the celebrities who will be there tonight.”
“I haven’t been watching. I’ve been too busy.” Gilles ran exploring fingers over the sticky fixative the rag had left on his cheek. “Thank you for the marvelous lunch of sandwiches and the fruit,” he remembered to say. “You look after me too well.”
“Don’t forget to eat it,” his wife told him, “there is enough for both lunch and dinner. You will work through both of them, I know you, Gilles. You will be too busy at the opera to think to eat any of the lovely food there.”
“Lisianne—” he began.
“I am very fine,” she murmured tenderly. “My darling, remember that I love you.” Again he thought he heard that queer hesitation. “And that I always will.”
Gilles listened to the humming sound that meant that his wife had hung up. Why, he was thinking, had those simple words sounded so ... unusual, when Lisianne said them every day?
At six o’clock the models from the Bettina and Sophie Litvak agencies arrived, tall, beautiful, and willowy, to prepare for the show. With them came three hair stylists to do the final brushing out. Alix moved the group into the salon. The costumes still hadn’t arrived from the dry cleaners.
A few minutes later Sylvie let Alix squeeze into the atelier through a barely opened door.
“Don’t ask me where they are,” Nannette shouted. “I have spent the day talking on the telephone to these people, explaining that the costumes are supposed to be here by five. Never work with Alsatians, they are totally unreliable.”
Satin Dreams Page 23