Daisy giggled wickedly. She had a pretty shrewd idea of Anabel’s life history.
Anabel looked at her sharply with the eternal, invaluable complicity of females. Although they were speaking of Kiki they were both thinking of Shannon. He’s a good man, and you deserve this—go to it! Anabel’s glance told Daisy. Don’t jump to conclusions, Daisy’s eyes warned Anabel, as clearly as if she had spoken.
24
What do you mean I ‘tried so hard to get him’? I’d never sink so low,” Kiki fulminated.
“Selective memory,” Daisy marveled.
“You’re the one who forgets. Who was a free agent? Footloose, jaunty, jolly, lighthearted, having the most wonderful time in the best of all possible worlds? ME! You never saw me go out with the same guy for two nights in a row,” Kiki swaggered.
“Or in the same bed for more than three months at a time,” Daisy replied.
“Oh, that. You know, Daisy, you have a sort of shit-eating grin now that I get a good look at you. And you used to be almost pretty.” Kiki hunched her bare shoulders in a way which indicated clearly that she had given up on her friend. Dressed only in a pair of unqualifiedly indecent black lace underpants from Frederick’s of Hollywood, she pawed in an idle way through a pile of spidery, suggestive garter belts, some black, some red. Around her neck she had draped a pair of thin black nylon stockings with seams down the back.
“Just answer some questions for me,” Daisy said patiently. “Do you actually hate him?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Kiki answered in a disobliging voice. “Hate is too strong a word to use—indifferent might be more like it.”
“Does he bore you?”
“Not totally—he just doesn’t fascinate me. My God, Daisy, the world is full of men, absolutely crammed with them. Do you realize how many men there are out there? Each one different, each one with some particular kink or craziness or talent or charm or sweetness that you’ll never know about because you’re too lazy to investigate them? You really lack something—tempérament I think they call it in France—it’s what makes great amorous women, the legendary lovers—George Sand, Ninon de Lenclos and me, damn it, only you won’t admit it.”
“I’ll admit it,” Daisy said in a conciliatory voice. “You were really something.”
“I still am!” Kiki objected like a bad angel. She shook her head until her hair looked like a ball of tumbling tumbleweed, and her tanned naked breasts quivered in indignation.
“When you make love,” Daisy asked, “can you tell him how it feels—you know—tell him that you like this or that, or do it more, or three inches farther to the left—can you tell him things like that just as easily and freely as if he were rubbing your back?”
“Well, naturally,” Kiki said in a mean-spirited tone. “But so what?”
“Just asking, just indulging my prurient curiosity.”
“Indulge mine—what about Patrick Shannon?” Kiki asked, suddenly fizzing with interest “Just precisely what is going on with you two?”
“We’re getting to know each other,” Daisy answered with dignity.
“Oh-ho—so you won’t answer the kind of questions you expect me to answer.”
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Is he in love with you?” Kiki pounced.
“He’s very … attentive.”
“You mean he hasn’t said anything definite, hasn’t asked you to marry him?” Kiki put aside her own troubles. She’d been so busy complaining that she just hadn’t had time to interrogate Daisy.
“No, and that’s the way I prefer it.”
“Keeping him at a safe distance, like your other men, is that what’s happening?”
“The distance is too narrow to be called safe. There’s a confusion—he’s so much there—I love to watch him dealing with the world, but he’s so dominating that it scares me … a little anyway. Or maybe a lot I find myself wondering if he doesn’t intend to run everybody and everything, and yet I can tell him almost anything and count on him to understand. Still … I’m not absolutely sure that it isn’t just another one of his many ways of getting what he wants. I just don’t know. Sometimes—it’s so right, so honorable—and then I’ll find myself wondering if he doesn’t think of me as just another acquisition, like having the Elstree company embodied in one person. One thing is clear—he’s totally in love with that whole ‘Princess Daisy’ idea. And I don’t like that one bit! Oh, shit, I’m mixed up.”
“But is he a good lover?” Kiki probed. Daisy blushed. “Hmmm?” hummed Kiki encouragingly. “You promised you’d tell.”
“The best—oh—better than that! But that’s no reason to get a fix on the future. I’m not ready to even think about making decisions. I don’t want to jump into anything prematurely. I want to stay the way I am, and I’m not going to get deeply emotionally involved …”
Kiki jumped on her like a hellcat. “But you’re the one who’s telling me to let myself be corralled, captured, rounded-up and branded and tied up in chains like a galley slave! Daisy Valensky, you have one hell of a nerve! How dare you give me advice when you’re not ready to get involved! Of all the revolting clichés!”
“Well,” said Daisy mildly, “it’s not my wedding day, those three hundred people downstairs in your mother’s living room aren’t waiting to see me get married, I’m not the one with eight bridesmaids and eight ushers, to say nothing of a groom, all dithering around and wondering why you’re locked in here with me and when you’re coming out.”
“It’s all his fault!” Kiki cried, her slender body looking as forlorn as if she were a kitten who’d been left out in the wet all night. “That smooth-tongued advertising man, I should never ever have let him talk me into this. Oh, Christ, what a horrible mistake.”
“You’re the one who’s a cliché, darling Kiki. You’re just like all the others before they get married, don’t you realize?” Daisy asked kindly.
“They’re the clichés, I’m the real thing!” Kiki stormed. “What am I going to do? Is it too late to call it off? No, it’s never too late. Who cares what people say? Daisy, look, I won’t ask you ever again to do anything for me, but could you just go and find my mother and tell her to call it off? She can handle it, she’s good at organizing things. I think she’d take it better coming from you.” She looked at Daisy with low cunning.
Daisy shook her head. “Tergiversations. I should have known.”
“What the hell are they? Don’t change the subject!”
“Repeated changes of attitude or opinion—Kiki, you know perfectly well that your mother would never call it off. And even if she did, would that make you happy? How long would it take for you to change your mind again? Nope. You’re going through this if I have to haul you down there myself. But you’d be more comfortable if you put on your wedding dress first.”
“You’re a cold hard bitch, Daisy Valensky, and I’ll never forgive you as long as I live.”
“Oh,” said Daisy, looking out of the window of Kiki’s bedroom, “I just saw Peter Spivak drive up. Here comes the judge! We’re practically in business.”
“No!” Kiki said frantically. “I can’t!”
“Do it one day at a time, Kiki. The way AA tells people to give up drinking, just one day at a time. Don’t sit around thinking about how you’ll feel living with the same man for fifty years—just ask yourself if you could stand being married to Luke until tomorrow morning—or even just till midnight tonight. Could you possibly endure it? Just till midnight?”
“I suppose,” Kiki said sulkily.
“Well, that’s all you have to do. Tomorrow you can get divorced. Okay?”
“I see right through you—you know I won’t want to get divorced tomorrow. Nobody ever got divorced the day after she got married. It’s unheard of. That whole number is just more of the kind of scheming that got me into this!” Kiki accused her.
“Right, I admit it. But now get dressed! On the double!” Daisy sounded as menac
ing as if she were talking to Wingo.
Kiki chose a red lace garter belt and put on the black stockings, hooking them carefully into the red satin snaps and straightening the seams with gloomy attention.
“I love your underwear,” said Daisy. “It’s so suitable.”
“Damn it, Daisy, if I have to wear white at least I’ll know that what’s on underneath isn’t Miss Grosse Pointe Virgin of the Year,” Kiki said, stepping defiantly into a pair of plain white satin pumps. “Fuck-me stockings without fuck-me shoes,” she said sadly. Glaring at Daisy, she opened the closet where her white satin wedding dress was hanging, draped in plastic to keep it spotless.
“I think I’m supposed to be doing that,” Daisy said, jumping up. Her chiffon dress was the color of spring grass and her hair was worn in plaited coils over her ears. She had on flat green slippers so she wouldn’t tower over Kiki any more than was absolutely necessary. Daisy carefully slipped the wedding dress out of its protective wrappings and unzipped it so that Kiki could put it on. She held it by the shoulders and fluttered it temptingly at Kiki, the way a bullfighter attracts a fighting bull. “Ole, anybody?”
“Oh, shit … olé …” said Kiki grudgingly. “As if I had a choice.”
“Girls? Girls? Aren’t you ready yet?” Eleanor Kavanaugh’s nervous voice was heard through the locked door. She’d been completely dressed for over an hour now. The wedding was unquestionably going to be late.
“We’re getting there, Aunt Ellie,” Daisy answered. Kiki pulled a horrible face but said nothing.
“Can I come in?”
“Ah—we’ll be out in a sec,” Daisy called.
“Do you need any help, Daisy darling?” she quavered. She couldn’t have the vapors, Eleanor Kavanaugh told herself. They would wrinkle her dress.
“How about …” Kiki began, but Daisy put her hand over her mouth.
“No, we’ve got everything we need, Aunt Ellie,” Daisy said. “Honestly. Why don’t you just go downstairs for a minute.”
“I was just going to ask for some Valium,” Kiki whispered cantankerously.
“I’ve got Valium.”
“You do?”
“Did you think I was going to let Theseus disgrace us?” Both girls looked at the lurcher, sitting calmly and happily on a pillow, with a woven satin basket full of baby’s breath, white orchids and freesia tied under his chin, a leash of white velvet around his neck. “He’s doped to the eyeballs,” Daisy said, proudly.
“A stoned flower dog!”
“Couldn’t take a chance.”
“Oh, Daisy, darling, you’d do that for me?” Kiki wailed.
“Of course. Now why don’t you put on that dress, for me? Hmmm?”
Slowly Kiki allowed Daisy to hook her into the full-skirted dress, the white of the best quality whipping cream, the white of a baked Alaska, the white of a meringue glacé. She finally looked at herself in the full-length mirror and a seraphic smile began to touch her lips. Daisy, encouraged by this sign, asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“All my old lovers. Just think if they could see me now—they’d be sick with envy.”
“Is that any way for a bride to feel?”
“It’s the only way … imagine, getting married if you didn’t have any old lovers, what a bizarre idea!”
Jerry Kavanaugh, Kiki’s father, in his morning coat and striped pants, now knocked on the door. “Kiki, for heaven’s sake, when are you going to be ready? Everyone’s waiting. My Lord, Kiki, don’t just hang around in there, girl—get moving.”
“We’re coming right out, Uncle Jerry,” Daisy assured him at the top of her voice. “Kiki, let me put on the veil, quickly now, no more kidding around. They’re playing your song.”
“What song?”
“ ‘Here Comes the Bride.’ ”
Kiki paled, kissed Daisy on the cheek and squared her shoulders. “It’s all so fucking grown-up!” she murmured plaintively as she walked toward the door and the future.
Candice Bloom was thinking. She stood, as always, with her hands thrust deep into her pockets, leaning slightly backward, her sharp hipbones tilted prominently forward. Candice, who never let anyone call her Candy twice, squeaked with chic and had refused one excellent job in California on the grounds that there was simply nowhere there to shop for shoes. Her assistant, Jenny Antonio, waited patiently for her instructions.
“Call Grossinger’s,” she said, finally, “and the Concord. Find out the total capacity of their snow-making machines and how long it takes before the stuff will start to melt in mid-September, assuming that we don’t have our usual heat wave, which, in itself, would be a miracle. And ask what it costs to rent them. Tu comprends? Oh, and get the Parks Department on the phone for me. Something tells me I have to get a permit for this. Where are the proofs for the invitation?”
“What if Grossinger’s and the Concord are using their machines themselves? Don’t they have skiing practically all year round?” Jenny asked, with the eager and bright-eyed intelligence of her twenty-three years.
Candice looked at her in stupefaction. “Jenny, you don’t know much about how Supracorp works yet, do you? We’re giving The Great Russian Winter Palace Party of this or any other year, we’re taking over the entire Tavern on the Green in Central Park to launch the Princess Daisy line—and that means snow—even if we have to buy snow-making machines or build them. Just get on the phone and stop asking silly questions. Vraiment! I bet you don’t even have the answers for me on the troikas?”
“Any carriage drawn by three horses can count as a troika, so we don’t have to find actual sleds. Just the carriages and a hell of a lot of horses.”
“One problem solved and ten thousand to go,” Candice brooded. “When is my meeting with Warner Le Roy to discuss the menu?”
“He wanted to make it tomorrow at lunch, but that’s when you and Daisy are having lunch with Leo Lerman for the ‘People Are Talking About’ column, so I said I’d call back.”
“Good. This is really the ultimate crunch,” Candice Bloom said with a gloomy relish. “It’s all very well to run commercials and print ads—and thank God they’re all done—but without P.R. you can forget your enormous impact because you don’t get free editorial space, and without free space you might just as well not exist Now get out that folder again and let’s take another look at it. Okay—we have all the fashion magazines and WWD, but they had to give us the space—look at the advertising dollars they’re getting. And Cosmo’s promised us something, also Trudy Owett’s spread will run next month in the Journal Here are the clips from AP, UPI, Reuters and the Chicago Trib Syndicate. So far so good. But we haven’t heard from the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and I want them. Merde! Where did you put my list of columnists? Why hasn’t Shirley Eder called back, damn it? Try her in Vegas … or at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Has Liz Smith confirmed? Only a maybe? The Today Show’ is still being negative and Mike Douglas and Dinah all want to know what Daisy can talk about. Merv, bless him, said yes—next month sometime. But the others insist on a theme, damn it, and they don’t give a shit that she’s a gorgeous princess.” Candice prowled around her office in disgust. “Shtick! They want shtick from a princess, a hook, some peg to hang her on—it’d be easier if she were a stand-up comic on roller skates.”
“You can’t really blame them,” Jenny ventured.
“I don’t. I know their problems better than mine. But Shannon isn’t going to give me brownie points for being turned down for even the best reasons. We’ve been trying—and not doing badly under the circumstances—to create an instant celebrity. But Daisy’s not famous for being famous, like a Gabor, she’s not a designer, she’s not a major heiress, she’s always avoided publicity like the plague—so we had to start from ground zero. Sure, her father was a hot-shot playboy and her mother was a legend in her time, only all that was over twenty years ago and who remembers? Francesca Vernon never made another movie after she married Stash Valensky; she just disappeared.” Candice a
ssumed her habitual expression of discouraged optimism as her secretary buzzed her for a phone call.
“Put her through.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and hissed excitedly. “It’s Jane, my old, so-called friend from People. That bitch has been dodging my calls for practically half a year. Now she’s decided to call! It’s got to be bad news.” Both Jenny and Candice waited galvanized.
“Hi, Jane—pas mal, and you? Good. Princess Daisy? No, we haven’t definitely got a go-ahead from any other news magazine yet but it’s all in the works. Exclusively? Merde! Jane, I’d give my all to say yes, but I just don’t think my boss would agree. After all Time and Newsweek and New York, you should pardon the expression, all have departments she’ll fit into perfectly. A COVER STORY! Are you sure? No, no, I didn’t mean that … but it’s just that I’d have to promise him and if it didn’t work out I’d be looking for a job. Definitely? You said definitely? Ah ha. Ah ha. I see. He’s absolutely right. I couldn’t agree more. Ah ha. Got it. Look, let me check it out with the man and I’ll get back to you within a half-hour. A quarter of an hour. Right. Bye.”
She put down the phone with the stunned care of one who has just handled an artifact which has been buried for five thousand years, and that proves the existence of another civilization.
“It’s incroyable,” Candice said in a remote voice.
“I don’t get it—you pitched them a story—but a cover?”
“She said that her boss is tired of having eight out of ten cover stories coming right out of Hollywood or the tube—he thinks the West Coast is trying to take over, in spite of the fact that the editorial department is here. He says People’s turning into nothing but a fan magazine. He wants something different, something high-fashion and elegant and New York—and he fell in love with the pictures of Daisy we sent over. Also he had a mad crush on Francesca Vernon when he was young—saw all her movies a dozen times—he says Daisy has her eyes.”
Princess Daisy Page 52