“Mesdames, this is the Eurydice Suite. It has three bedrooms. Mademoiselles Ono and Bonner, you will be sharing a very nice bath; Mademoiselle Beale, you will be in the pink room. This suite is the crown jewel of Hôtel Le Narcisse. It is done in a Charles X style, the penultimate king of France. Follow me, please.”
He brought Cat and Bess to the first of their adjoining rooms, painted an opulent royal blue with a canopied king bed. “Mesdames, in here?” They peeked into the enormous wood-paneled closet and marble bath that adjoined it with its exact twin, another king bedroom done in green, then nodded enthusiastically.
“I’ll go green,” Cat said, walking through to the other side.
“Very good. Mademoiselle Beale, follow me,” the concierge continued.
Bess kicked off her shoes, hopped up on the blue bed, and started jumping. Cat saw her and laughed. “Get down!” she yelled. “He’s gonna catch you!”
Bess winked, bounced up and down a few more times, then sprang onto the floor. “Come on,” she said, running into the green room, grabbing Cat’s hand and leading her into the marble bath. She climbed fully clothed into the empty tub, a Jacuzzi-sized marble pool that could easily seat six, facing the domes of Sacré-Coeur through the window.
“I’m going to pass out in here later,” she declared. “This is ridiculous.”
Cat sat on the tub’s edge, picking up bottles of bath products by Panacea, a boutique brand from the UK. They each uncapped one labeled “Tangerine Dream” and breathed in the bright scent.
“I was hoping we might get upgraded, but I never imagined this,” Bess said.
At that moment, the little concierge appeared again, perching at the door and clearing his throat loudly. “Mesdames, what can we get for you?”
“A full breakfast for three, please,” Bess ordered before Cat could get in a “Rien, merci.” “Coffee, juice, pastries, fruit, everything you can put together, and some champagne as well. Thank you.”
He nodded. “Someone will be back with that right away, mesdames. Enjoy your stay.” And with that, he backed out of the space and disappeared.
“Bess, we just had breakfast on the plane,” Cat chided.
Bess rolled her eyes. “I’m on jet-lag hours. I can’t control it. Besides, it’s exhausting being us, and Margot’s paying for everything. Let’s order lobster and steak and caviar later when we’re drunk.” She jumped out of the tub, yelling, “Molly! Where’d you go?”
Cat wandered through the suite, marveling at the chef’s kitchen, the dressing room, the beautifully appointed living room, and the foyer. She found doors leading onto the enormous private terrace, a wraparound 360-degree platform from which she could see all of Paris. It was so opulent and sumptuous that Cat half expected to see Caesar wander out of the kitchen and vomit into a velvet bag. She gazed down at the Tuileries, the gardens that were the centerpiece of Paris Fashion Week, and took in the crowds of fashionable people milling along its wide paths and circular ponds. Even the tourists looked good from up here.
Paris was home to the ten official members of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, most of whom would be presenting their prêt-à-porter lines in the various palaces surrounding the Tuileries, so-called ready-to-wear collections that would be snapped up by buyers for stores like Barneys, Bergdorf’s, Ikram, and Harrods. RAGE would cover as many of them as they could. Cat, in addition to making front-row appearances at the shows and presentations, would try to negotiate exclusive image rights to some of the dresses for upcoming shoots, while Paula met with their European audit team for the annual assessment of various local labor practices. Their first required appearance was tonight, at a dinner catered in the Tuileries on behalf of Cy Bianco, an American jeweler who had relocated to Paris in 1994. Tomorrow they would attend a luncheon for LVMH, which was an unofficial presentation for an up-and-coming designer from Algeria, and then prep the shoot; Thursday morning they’d be up bright and early to shoot Bridle. Then: Fashion Week. It was overwhelming.
Bess wandered out onto the terrace. Molly followed and immediately positioned the women against the edge of the terrace for a Photogram of Cat and Bess with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Bess grinned and jumped up in the air for the shot; Cat pulled down her sunglasses and glared. Bess captioned it, #goodgirlbess & #badgirlcat have landed…on your shoulder, PARIS! who wants to show us around?? before tagging the hotel and uploading it to the RAGE feeds. Within minutes there were thousands of replies in dozens of languages.
“Let’s go out,” Cat suggested. “I need a walk and some fresh air.”
“What about breakfast?” Bess asked.
“Let Molly eat it. We can grab something as we walk.”
“Sure,” Bess agreed, grabbing her handbag. “I’m game.”
They left Molly behind to unpack their bags; all the clothes for their upcoming events would need to be steamed and hung out before their first appearance that evening. Bess and Cat spent the next four hours, their only real free time on the entire trip, walking in a triangle to the east and back. They strolled through the Marais and the Bastille toward Place de la République; down cobblestone alleys and big crowded high streets, taking in the people and the clothing and the stores, the air and the noise and the smells, both good and bad. Their Photogram feeds kept lighting up with suggestions from fans the world over—stop here, stop there, you’re close to my favorite store in the world—and they happily followed as many of the tips as they could. A small crop of photographers kept pace, staying ahead of them and just behind as they entered shop after shop; but they didn’t mind—this way they never had to pay for anything at all.
Five minutes after they walked back through the door of the Eurydice Suite, their two local makeup artists for the week arrived. Bibi and Edith—two little brunettes with skin so clear and hair so stylishly filthy that Cat immediately trusted them—rolled in with huge suitcases of product chatting a mile a minute about how much they loved RAGE. Half of their sentences were in French or verlan, a kind of inverted Parisian slang, the other half in extremely broken English, and they descended on Cat and Bess with a fury.
Bibi rubbed Cat’s head like it was a bowling ball, smiling broadly and cracking her gum. Edith started pulling on the ends of Bess’s hair and poked her earlobes, then lit a cigarette without bothering to look around for an ashtray.
“I love it,” Bibi said to Cat in halting English, her accent thick as cheese. “Votre crâne est un rêve.” (Your skull is a dream.)
“Merci, eh?” Cat replied automatically, her accent perfect. “Mes cheveux étaient le cauchemar.” (My hair was the nightmare.) Cat signaled Molly for an ashtray. Bibi and Edith squealed.
“Thank fucking Christ,” they replied in French simultaneously.
“Our English is so bad,” Edith said, with relief and absolutely no embarrassment. “We didn’t know if you spoke French. We were so worried.”
Bibi nodded her head and took a drag of Edith’s cigarette. “Let’s talk details. What are you thinking for tonight?”
“I don’t even care. Let me just hop in the shower,” Cat volunteered. “I need ten minutes. You can choose,” she said, pointing to the area where Molly had been diligently steaming and hanging potential outfits. Edith pursed her lips and sighed.
“Okay, we’ll figure something out.”
“Should I get in the other shower? Do you guys want me to wash my hair?” Bess asked Bibi and Edith, who screamed “NON!” in reply.
“This is Paris; clean hair is for ugly people,” Edith followed up in her broken English. “Just a…” She gestured, at a loss for the words, pointing to Bess’s armpits. “When you make a quick soaping? For the efficiency?” Suddenly, the answer dawned on her. “Whore! Whore’s bath! Yes? You understand?”
“Yes.” Bess laughed. “It’s my favorite kind. I’ll be right back.”
Edith gave her a thumbs-up, then lit a fresh cigarette off the old one and dropped the butt in the nearest vase. Bibi cracked her gum again
.
“New York City,” Edith said in a fake John Wayne–style American accent as she stared at Molly’s boiler suit, this one upgraded to a thick navy crepe from the mechanic’s poly she’d worn a month ago. Beale was stitched on the pocket in elegant script. “She looks like a janitor, no?” to Bibi in French.
“They love that shit,” Bibi pointed out. “They are obsessed with the proletariat. The men in New York look like dockworkers. Think about the jogging pant they’re wearing. Athleisure. So silly. Crass.”
Molly, who understood only “New York,” “le jogging,” and “athleisure,” pointed to a stretchy silk crop top she’d selected that had a kind of athletic appeal.
“Non non non non non!” Edith snapped. “Opposite.”
Molly held up an extremely small dress. Edith nodded. “Better,” she said. “Comfortable doesn’t look good.”
“Beauty is, how you say, full of pain,” Bibi insisted.
Molly nodded in reply, though she wasn’t entirely sure anymore that this was true.
Chapter Seventeen
Lou Lucas perched on the edge of a green metal chair in the Tuileries Gardens, yellow dust clinging to her platform Skechers, and watched the entrance of Hôtel Le Narcisse through her birding binoculars. She wore huge plastic sunglasses, a cheap straw fedora from Canal Street, and a sweatshirt depicting a cartoon of a tabby cat sitting on the Golden Gate Bridge over tight bedazzled jeans, along with brown lipstick and chipped pink nail polish.
She had gone incognito.
Despite the hordes of photographers stalking the square kilometer around her, she hadn’t been—thus far—noticed by anyone at all, not even other tourists. She sipped from a venti Starbucks paper cup with “double caramel latte whip” written on the side, though it held plain black coffee without sugar or milk; her zip-top plastic tote bag, emblazoned with a rhinestone version of the Eiffel Tower, had “La Vie en Rose” written on it with purple glitter. Yes, she thought, fingering the tacky rhinestone rings she’d picked up at the airport, it’s as good as wearing an invisibility cloak.
The November issue would land on the doorsteps of their subscribers in ten days and on newsstands in two weeks; slightly late, but better late than never. Not a single person had seen the complete article, save for Margot, Paula, and Courtney Sacks in Legal, all of whom had seemed fully satisfied by Lou’s hard work.
Luckily, no one else seemed to care about November at all; they’d written it off completely after Callie died, and now the entire RAGE staff was far too caught up packing for their trip to Paris. All thirty of them would arrive here the following night, to see the shows and sights on Margot’s dime.
It won’t take long, she told herself, for everything to start falling into place. The November story really was the most salacious thing she’d ever read in her life. She could barely believe she’d written it. The words had come out practically in a dream. She’d never felt so empowered.
Lou pulled a vanilla-flavored Ensure out of her purse, inserted a straw, and consumed her lunch with the birding binoculars still pressed to her face. She watched hordes of socialites pour into the entrance of Le Narcisse. No, she thought, it wouldn’t be long now.
She drained the can with a loud throttling noise, threw it and the straw toward the nearest trash can, then felt the sudden lethargy of digestion take over. Eager to combat the unwelcome fatigue, she took out her hand cream and rubbed it vigorously into her papery skin. Her heartbeat increased and her lethargy disappeared. She put on her headphones, selected Wagner from her playlist, and let the music wash through her as she continued her stakeout.
Detective Mark Hutton, camped out in his office, rifled through the final set of boxes of New York State filings, all of them filled with tax ID numbers associated with Bedford Organics, LLC.
Bedford Organics’ annual tax returns had—as expected—listed the shareholders as a set of shell corporations. After filing a request for the returns of those companies, and then the companies that made up those companies, and the companies that made up those companies, Hutton was finally getting close to the center of the matryoshka doll, though now he faced almost a thousand corporations that had been somehow associated with Bedford Organics. He still marveled at the fact that Cardoso had run it as a legitimate entity; without Cat’s involvement, no one would have ever looked twice at what seemed to be a law-abiding, tax-paying small business. Vittoria had hidden in plain sight. He was hoping everyone else who’d owned shares in the LLC had done the same.
The biggest money, he reasoned, would have been the start-up capital. That’s what Hutton was really looking for.
He’d instructed the team of junior FBI agents tasked with aiding his document review to look for three things: One, a corporation that owned shares in multiple entities leading back to Bedford Organics, LLC. Two, an incorporation date that was similar to that of Bedford Organics. Three, a New York City address. He was certain the start-up money was local. It had to be, since the business had run only on word of mouth.
Only a few dozen corporations fit his requirements thus far. They had sixteen more boxes to go.
He poured himself another cup of coffee and got back to work.
As Bibi put the finishing touches on her eyeliner, Cat found herself feeling drowsy. She was stunned at how powerful the jet lag seemed to be on this trip. After getting out of the shower she’d been overwhelmed by a combination of euphoria, nausea, and adrenaline; balancing on the edge of the tub, she’d primed her airplane-dry skin with lotion and tried to pull herself together. But the longer she sat in this stuffy hotel room, with Bibi’s cigarette smoke and the scent of burning hair coming from Edith’s straightener, the sicker she felt.
Cat stood up and darted toward the terrace. “I just need some fresh air,” she yelled in French, throwing open the doors and lying down on the nearest patio lounger. She closed her eyes and let the sounds of Paris come up around her. Her head was swimming. The light was starting to take on the pink tinge of the city’s iodine-tinted streetlights as dusk fell on the streets around the Tuileries, and she blinked weakly, feeling as though the light were moving through her.
Bess stood up and walked out to Cat, who was practically passed out. “What do you need, Kit-Kat?” she asked sympathetically. “Have you eaten enough today?”
“I had toast and that pain aux raisins,” Cat replied.
“That was hours ago. I’m gonna order you something,” Bess said decisively, walking toward the Dalí lobster phone that had been placed on top of the piano. She punched in a zero.
“Hello,” she said in French, “I would like some steaks, rare please, with salad and bottles of fizzy water. Yes, as soon as possible. Thank you.”
“Maybe I need a cigarette,” Cat wondered aloud.
Bibi handed her a Gauloises Blonde, lighting it with a plastic Bic adorned with the phrase “Don’t Stop the Party.” She pulled up a chair.
“Edith and I have made a very good look for you tonight,” she announced in her broken English. “Ready?”
Cat nodded in reply. Bibi held out her compact, a weighty gold disk lined with mother-of-pearl, and snapped it open loudly.
Cat gasped. Bibi had managed to elongate her lashes, brows, and eyes without any makeup lines appearing at all, and her lips had been stained a brownish mauve, but the color almost looked natural—there was no trace of product. Her skin was whiter and smoother than ever, as though they’d been able to sandblast and bleach it into perfection.
“Bibi, it’s so French!” she exclaimed.
“No-makeup makeup,” Bibi replied proudly. “But with a little bit of this monarchy shit”—she gestured toward the suite’s Charles X decor—“thrown on top. White face, dark lips, like Marie Antoinette.”
Bibi looked at her watch. “Time to get dressed,” she said forcefully, clearly accustomed to corraling temperamental clotheshorses. She stubbed out the cigarette and dragged Cat back inside the suite.
“You better go to the toilet,” Edith
commanded them both. “It might be your last chance.”
While Cat sat in the bathroom, she idly coated her fingers in the beautiful, thick eucalyptus-scented hand cream that had been placed on the back of the toilet. I’m getting old, Cat thought. I need to start taking better care of myself when I travel. She rifled through her cosmetics bag and chewed half an Adderall, hoping the amphetamines would jump-start her lethargic body. As if by magic or psychosomatic expectation, she felt an immediate boost.
When she returned from the bathroom, Cat was unceremoniously squeezed into a hateful rubber bodice, to lift what was left of her breasts and smooth over the rocky vertebrae of her back, the sharp angles of her hipbones. After that she was stitched into an astonishingly tight dove-gray suede dress that ended mid-calf, the neckline laser-cut in triangle shapes, as though it had been hemmed with the world’s biggest pinking shears. Bibi fitted Cat’s feet into bleach-white patent leather stilettos, while Edith pinched Bess into an ecru minidress—made of the same fine suede as Cat’s dress—that barely covered her buttcheeks. Bess’s long legs ended in a pair of sculpted greige suede open-toe heels, held fast to her ankles with nearly invisible PVC straps.
As Cat stared into the gilded mirror they’d dragged into the living room, she wanted to laugh at the irony of it all: I’m completely fucking immobilized, a dictator’s mistress, tits pouring out of my dress, everything I always hated.
But after a moment passed, Cat didn’t laugh after all. The look was part Antwerp avant-garde and part real-life princess. If only twelve-year-old Cat could see me now, she thought, remembering the stings of adolescence, she’d be so excited to grow up.
Bibi drew a seam on the backs of Bess’s legs, as though it were the 1940s and stockings were scarce, while Edith picked out their jewelry: piles of gold and diamond necklaces made by Cy Bianco, the designer being honored at tonight’s dinner. She piled them first onto Bess, and then Cat. The necklaces felt like a pair of reins looped around her neck. As they walked to the door, the bell rang: their steaks had finally arrived. “Right away” in France meant at least an hour.
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