Princess Daisy

by Judith Krantz

  Venice was an audible shock, Daisy thought, looking out of the window of her room directly onto the Grand Canal, still hearing the slap of little waves against the side of the vaporetto. It didn’t matter how much one had read about Venice or how far back in memory one had known that it was built on water, the reality came as a total surprise. It was impossible, she realized, to imagine Venice. In spite of the thousands of paintings it had inspired, it had to be experienced to become real, and even as a reality, it seemed improbable, as if she had, like Alice, gone through the looking glass into a land of wonders, a play world, insubstantial, so romantic that it was almost ridiculous, a city that was one vast composition of great art, presumably dying and crumbling for hundreds of years, yet still vital, the inexhaustible subject of so much prose that there was nothing left to be said about it, yet millions of words had not drained one drop of magic from it. What ambitious creatures men were, after all, to have even attempted such a city!

  Across the canal, in the middle of the moonlit night, she could plainly see the dome of Santa Maria della Salute, that supreme masterpiece of Venetian Baroque. The fact that it was actually exactly where it should be was somehow miraculous and unexpected.… Daisy wouldn’t be surprised if it had vanished by morning, nor if it remained standing long after New York and London had been reduced to rubble.

  Tomorrow, at 7:00, she had to be up to start work, Daisy realized with a start, turning back to her high-ceilinged room, gay with striped blue-and-white satin walls and pink brocade draperies. That meant five hours sleep at the most. Luckily she had been able to nap a little on the trip over. North had sat in the front aisle seat of the first-class compartment, where he had room to stretch out his legs, and Daisy had taken a vacant seat several rows behind, so that she wouldn’t disturb him. She knew that before a shoot as complicated as this one promised to be, he liked to withdraw into himself even more than usual, in preparation for the energy he would be pouring out during the next few days. As she got ready for bed Daisy wondered if, as she had plotted, she was going to be able to return to New York by way of London so that she could see Dani. She hadn’t been able to go to Europe at Christmas this year. The two large oils and six watercolors she had done had just covered Danielle’s expenses, so Daisy had been forced to choose to make the money rather than to make the trip. It had been too long, oh, really much too long, she thought, since she’d seen either Danielle or Anabel. She had decided not to ask North about taking the extra days off until the shoot was almost over. Then, with London so near, it would be difficult for him to refuse and her ticket could be rewritten at a minimum of expense.

  Wearily, Daisy pulled off the ancient jeans, T-shirt and British Army Commando jacket—fifty cents at a church jumble sale in London five years ago—that she’d worn on the plane and hadn’t had off since they left New York. She took a shower, a long, languorous shower, very different from the brief “working” shower she was used to at home, which, dictated by the inadequate plumbing, she told Kiki was as much fun as bathing with a Water Pik.™ Her nightwear was ordered from the Montgomery Ward catalogue, an old-fashioned straight-top vest in pink cotton with a drawstring around the top of the camisole and ribbon straps. Instead of the matching bloomers, Daisy wore purple satin basketball shorts, and her man’s dressing gown was from Sulka, a dark-red, figured silk with a shawl collar, still in excellent condition after twenty-five years, even if it swept the floor in a way it had never been intended to. Her mind jumbled with practical considerations and the waiting excitement of Venice, Daisy fell into a light and confused sleep, full of fragmentary dreams.

  When her traveling alarm clock went off, she was glad to jump out of bed and run to the window, the dreams disappearing in the promising, water-refracted light of morning. Dazzled, almost paralyzed with wonder, she stared at the view until she shook herself out of her reverie. It was really insane, she thought, to be expected to work here. They should have come a week earlier just to get acclimated to the beauty. But perhaps even a month wouldn’t have been enough. Bitterly she envied North his day of sightseeing and promised herself as she dressed rapidly that she’d get everything checked out so efficiently and quickly today that she’d have a few hours, at least, to roam around by herself before the others arrived.

  Late that afternoon, when North finally wandered back to the hotel, he found Daisy waiting for him right inside the entrance, curled up in a chair.

  “All set?” he asked her.

  “Not exactly.”

  “What d’ya mean? If everything isn’t buttoned down, why are you hanging around the lobby? Isn’t there something you have to do?”

  Daisy stood up, her hands on her hips, her feet apart, her energy restored.

  “North, hold it.” She put up a hand like a traffic cop. “It seems we have a small problem.”

  “You and your problems,” he said indifferently. “My feet hurt.” He started for the desk to get his room key. She followed and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “North?”

  “Oh, what the hell is it? Honestly, Daisy, isn’t it your job to worry about the little things? Oh, all right, tell me … there’s a permit missing, the gondola’s painted the wrong color, one of the models has a pimple? Improvise—how many times have I told you? Improvise, Daisy. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times—you take care of the little things and I’ll make it come out all right once I start working.”

  “Do you think you could get Alitalia to go back to work?”

  “Why worry about Alitalia—we’re working for Pan Am. Christ, Daisy, you have no sense of proportion,” he said, turning away in exasperation.

  Behind him she said softly, “None of the other airlines is landing in Italy, North. Sympathy strike.” He spun around. “Wingo and the models can’t get here.”

  “So what?” he said in renewed irritation. “Worse things have happened. Haven’t you contacted models from Rome? If I can’t use the girls I picked I’ll use others, and I’ll manage without Wingo. Rome is full of cameramen—and beautiful women.”

  “The trains are on strike too,” Daisy said softly.

  “Tell them to drive, damn it! If they start now they’ll be here by tomorrow. If they’d started when you found out about the strike, I bet they could have been here by now,” he added accusingly.

  “The technicians are out on strike too. No crew, North. There’s nobody in Italy to handle the equipment, which, incidentally, is sitting somewhere between Rome and here. No camera, no brutes, no fey lights, no clapboard, no dolly, not even a stopwatch—nodal And that’s why I didn’t book models from Rome.”

  “All right, very funny, very clever. Didn’t it occur to you that we could drive to France or Switzerland and shoot there? Get ready to leave,” North snapped.

  “Shoot the Piazza San Marco and the pigeons and gondolas in France or Switzerland?” Daisy asked sweetly.

  “But, damn it to hell, call New York! You know that the agency can rewrite the story board in an hour if they have to—”

  “The strike,” said Daisy slowing, lingering delightedly on every word, “has most unfortunately spread to the telephone system and the telegraph system. If some of those birds outside are carrier pigeons … Otherwise we’re stuck here.”

  “That’s insane! Daisy, you’re not trying! Call up and rent a car. We’ll take a motorboat to dry land and drive to the nearest border and call New York from there. Let them pick out an alternative location—Pan Am goes everywhere. Why the hell did you have to wait for me to get back to figure out something as simple as that? Why aren’t you packed? What’s the matter with you—you’re slipping badly!”

  “The car-rental people are out on strike. So is the gondoliers cooperative, and the vaporettos as well,” Daisy said, her black eyes so dark that the dance of joy and amusement in the depths of her pupils was almost concealed.

  “Shit! Daisy, they can’t do this to me!”

  “I’ll tell them you said so,” Daisy said, “when t
hey’ve gone back to work.”

  “It’s … it’s … uncivilized!” shouted North, waving his arms around the princely lobby of the hotel which had been the residence of a doge in the sixteenth century.

  “Why don’t we try to be philosophical, North? It’s not as if we can do anything about it,” Daisy suggested calmly.

  Daisy had been thoroughly enchanted by the events of the day. As each avenue of escape closed, as, finding her phone useless, she went down to the lobby to keep in touch with news of the spreading strikes that the reception desk relayed from the radio, every moment became more pleasurable. She felt something invading her which she had difficulty in recognizing until she finally identified it as a sense of leisure … she remembered how leisure felt from college vacations. The charmingly attentive hotel employees, of whom there were two to every one of the hotel’s hundred guests, joined in her holiday mood—for tomorrow, who knew, might they not be out on strike too? It was just the right weather for a strike, one of them had pointed out to Daisy. She agreed with him completely. If there was one thing in the world she could have wished for in Venice it would be a few days outside of time. And the hall porter assured her that no guests at the Gritti Palace had ever starved. Even if they had to eat buffet style, the management was prepared. At the worst, the principessa might have to make her own bed.

  “Philosophical?” North was outraged. Events did not do things to him, he did things to them. “We’re locked up here as if this were the Middle Ages and you talk philosophical?”

  “There is still one way out,” Daisy said faintly.

  “What, for Christ’s sake!” he roared.

  “We could … swim.”

  North swung around wrathfully and looked at his demented producer. At his gaze Daisy squeaked with suppressed laughter until she sounded like a whistling teapot about to come to a boil.

  “Arnie’s …” she sputtered before she was shaken by great outright howls of mirth, “Arnie’s … face!”

  The vision of Arnie Greene’s mournful visage prophesying his inevitable hepatitis appeared before North’s eyes and his face splintered slowly, reluctantly, but unconditionally, with laughter.

  The hall porter and the doorman looked at the two Americans, shaken by spasms of hilarity, and shrugged smilingly at each other. The young principessa, the concierge thought, dressed rather unsuitably for the daughter of Prince Stash Valensky, who had been a faithful guest before his death, always coming to Venice for a week or two in September after the polo was over in Deauville. Only this morning she had come downstairs in man’s white pants and a striped purple-and-white soccer jersey. But perhaps it was a new fashion?

  “You planned this whole thing, didn’t you?” North gasped, getting control of himself.

  “It wasn’t easy,” Daisy admitted modestly.

  “A whole country shut down so you could get a day off—nothing to it.”

  “I’m efficient, I grant you, but I couldn’t have pulled it off in New York—too many gypsy cabs.”

  “Have you checked our gypsy gondolas?”

  “A boy in a rowboat is the best I could find.”

  “Where to? I’ve got to have a drink before the bartenders go on strike.” North felt giddy. The combination of a day in Venice with the complete collapse of the support system he took for granted, made him feel like a kid let out of school just before an exam.

  “Harry’s Bar?” Daisy suggested.

  “You mean like tourists?”

  “Of course … but I have to change first. And you need a bath. I’ll meet you down here in an hour. Actually, I think we can walk there—I’ve got a map.”

  “I’ve been walking all day. Tell the rowboat boy to wait.”

  “Yes, boss.” North found himself smiling at Daisy. He supposed there really wasn’t anything specific he could fault her with … at least not until he found out more about this strike for himself.

  Back in her room, Daisy hesitated among the dresses she had packed, just in case something came up that she couldn’t do in her work clothes. She felt entirely feckless, as weightless as an astronaut. She picked the most elaborate dress she owned, a Vionnet gown from the mid-1920s. Kiki had insisted that she take the bare-armed chemise, skimpier than a slip, cut on the bias from black velvet. It had the deepest possible rounded neckline held up only by shoulder straps of crystal beads. The same beads were embroidered on the velvet in wide, fantastic circles, in a descending oval, so that it looked like a long necklace and the hem hung in two rippling points on either side of Daisy’s body, showing a flick of knees in front. It was a dress that must once have caused a major scandal. Black velvet in September? Why not? thought Daisy as she unbraided her hair. The style of the dress indicated a sophisticated hairdo, but she didn’t have sophisticated hair, Daisy realized, as the Venetian light tangled in the blonde strands. She lifted it in both hands, extended her arms at full length still holding onto her hair and whirled around and around. What to do, what to do? She wasn’t in a chignon mood or in a braid mood—she was in a crystal mood. Finally she parted her hair in the middle, took several yards of silver ribbon she’d saved from a Hallmark commercial and twined it around so that some of the most flighty locks were held back from her face, the rest flowing loose. She flung on the cape of green and silver-shot lamé made in the same period as the dress by a now unknown firm called Cheruit and went down to the lobby, more romantic than any heroine ever painted by Tiepolo or Giovanni Bellini.

  North was waiting, ready to leave. Not much of a drinker, he was unusually anxious for a drink. Alcohol was supposed to be a depressant, wasn’t it? A depressant might help counteract the dangerously free-floating feeling in the atmosphere tonight. He needed to be brought back to earth, and there was no damn earth here—only the rippling reflections on the canal which made everything tipsy to start with. Where the hell was Daisy? Why was she keeping him waiting? He couldn’t remember ever having to wait for Daisy since he’d started employing her.

  “Dio! Che bellissima! Bellissima!” the hall porter said behind him.

  “Bellissima!” echoed the doorman and the passing waiter and two men lounging about the lobby.

  “Well,” said North, looking at Daisy. Now he really needed a drink.

  “A Mimosa, Signorina, or perhaps a Bellini?” the waiter suggested. North looked around at the long, narrow, famous room.

  “Do you make a martini? I mean a dry martini?” he asked, dubiously.

  “Fifteen to one, Sir. On the rocks?”

  “A double. Daisy?”

  “What’s a Mimosa?” she asked the waiter.

  “Champagne and fresh orange juice, Signorina.”

  “Oh, yes, please.” The waiter showed no signs of leaving. He simply stood there looking at Daisy, expressing the most pure admiration with every inch of his wrinkled face.

  “We’ll have our drinks now,” North said flatly, breaking the spell and sending the waiter hurrying off.

  “So,” North said in a voice which invested the syllable with discovery, mistrust and surprise and belligerence.

  “ ‘So’?” asked Daisy with slightly fake innocence. “What does that mean? Do you think just because it looks as if nobody in Venice is worried, there isn’t really any strike?”

  “So this is what you look like when you’re not working, and so you must be putting on quite an act at the studio, and so I really don’t know a hell of a lot about you, and so this is what you get up as soon as you have a chance.”

  “So?” Daisy shrugged blithely. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to figure out. I know there’s something.”

  “North, North, go with the flow.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m not sure, but it sounds just right for this time and this place. How’s your martini?”

  “Adequate,” he said grudgingly. It was the best martini he’d ever had in his life. “How’s your orange juice?”
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  “Pure heaven, absolute bliss, total delight, a dream, a vision, a revelation …”

  “You mean you’d like another?”

  “How could you tell?”

  “There was something … just a touch … almost but not quite a hint … an intimation.”

  “Very good, North,” Daisy approved. “When you start with intimations you’re getting there.”

  “Where, getting where?”

  “Into the flow.”

  “I see.”

  “I thought you would. I’ve always considered you a fairly quick study,” Daisy said airily, whirling her champagne glass between her fingers.

  “Calm affrontery—that’s your game after hours. Damning with faint praise.”

  “I think flattery is tacky.”

  “I’m just surprised that you didn’t say that when other people said I was stupid, you defended me.”

  “Wrong. When other people say you’re an absolute shit, I defend you.” Daisy smiled angelically.

  “Christ! Wait till we get back to the mainland! Waiter, a butterfly net for the lady please, and two more drinks.”

  “I’m having fun,” Daisy announced.

  “So am I,” said North, startled and newly suspicious.

  “Feels odd, doesn’t it?”

  “Very. But I don’t think it will do any permanent damage. Unless we got used to it, of course,” North said thoughtfully.

  “You mean that fun’s fun but real life isn’t supposed to be fun, at least not this much?”