Scruples Two

by Judith Krantz

  “I have daughters to worry about, too.”

  “Don’t waste time worrying,” Billy said, suddenly serious. “It doesn’t help. The things you pick to worry about don’t happen, and then you find out that you wish they had, because they wouldn’t have been that bad after all compared to what did happen.”

  Sasha Nevsky sat on the floor, surrounded by half-packed suitcases, and gave herself up to a gloomy fit of disappointment and anticipated disaster. She had many reasons not to want to leave her pleasantly messy room-and-a-half without a view on a rundown street off West End Avenue. She had been coerced into giving up her very own inviolate place, by God, to move across town to a newly furnished, luxurious apartment in the very center of the best part of the East Side that she was going to have to share, share, with Gigi Orsini, who was almost four years younger than she, a girl whom she barely remembered as a sort of Munchkin with pounds of awful hair, a girl who looked as if she hadn’t reached puberty. Sasha was perfectly aware that her mother had sold her down the river to Billy Ikehorn, and all for the sake of solicitous, round-the-clock doormen, a guarded service entrance and an elevator that was still run by a real live man, not just by pushbuttons. She was going to have to give up her privacy, her priceless, hard-won privacy so necessary for her complicated life, just because her mother wanted her to live in a good neighborhood in a safe building.

  But when Sasha’s mother, Tatiana Orloff Nevsky, that terrorist gypsy, took to a notion, no member of her family dared to cross her, a fact Sasha accepted bleakly. It had been difficult enough getting permission to move out on her own, and she was still keeping a discreetly low profile, because of the nature of her particular calling. Her mother had opposed her job for a year, before giving in and letting Sasha exercise her talent, but, as she reminded her daughter regularly, her permission had been given on a temporary basis.

  How could one tiny, bright-eyed woman manage to be so powerful as to prevent her daughter from using her own abilities for so long? Sasha wondered. What gave her mother the unquestioned and absolute rule she enjoyed in the wide family circle? If she could ever figure out what invisible but unquestioned moral authority made her mother the unrivaled boss lady of six families, each one of them headed by one of her mother’s five younger sisters, all born Orloffs, she’d look for those qualities in herself, develop them, Sasha resolved, and take over the world.

  Glumly, sorting out panty hose by color, Sasha reviewed her twenty-two years of life. She was the Nevsky misfit, the all-but-disgrace to the entire close-knit Russian Jewish tribe of the Orloff sisters, the only one among the host of her talented cousins who couldn’t sing, couldn’t act, couldn’t play any musical instrument and, tragedy of tragedies, couldn’t dance. She couldn’t tap, couldn’t attempt ballet, couldn’t even manage a simple time step, she had no fucking rhythm in a family in which babies were born auditioning for Hal Prince.

  Family Thanksgivings had been the worst, Sasha decided. She’d have to sit there, hating her too-tall, too-skinny, untalented self and listen to tales of musicals past and musicals present and future, on Broadway or off, revivals or tours, for old musicals never died. When they stopped swapping musical stories, she’d heard endless accounts of her cousins’ lessons and recitals and triumphs in dance and music school, of her aunts’ hopes and plans for them, all the while wondering what she would do in life, for academically she had nothing much to boast of either. Her native shrewdness, her quick mind, had never translated into the good marks that might have commanded a little respect.

  She knew what the rest of the family thought of her. They pitied her in their boisterous, good-natured way if they ever bothered to think about her at all; she was their family wet sparrow shivering on a branch, a harmless stick of a girl, Tatiana’s one failure, overlooked and unconsidered, without any of the necessary juices that went into the rich Orloff-Nevsky stew. She used to look at herself in the mirror and persuade herself that there was nothing really wrong with the way she looked, but as soon as she found herself within the Orloff-Nevsky circle, Sasha became so uncomfortable that she made herself as inconspicuous as possible, withdrawing into whatever corner she could find. Whatever looks she possessed she hid, hunching her shoulders forward and slumping, making herself as plain and small as possible, with the instinct of the outsider for protective coloration. She knew that if any of the family were to notice evidence of the smallest attempt to make herself attractive, it would become the major news of the day, sure to be commented on with a deluge of too much well-meant surprise, too much encouragement, too much advice. Only the constant loving reassurance of her brilliant older brother, Zachary, a many-talented boy five years older than she, had kept up Sasha’s self-esteem during those formative years.

  Until. Until she’d grown into her splendid set of assets at a much later age than usual. Maybe the Orloff-Nevskys, a naturally lean and fairly flat-chested group, with typical dancers’ well-muscled legs and spinal flexibility, didn’t think it was an asset to have the prettiest pair of perfectly shaped tits and the most delicately emphatic of rounded asses and the most desirably tiny waist in the world, but another group of people did, and would pay for them, and so she, formerly an ungifted, hopeless, skinny wretch, she, Sasha Nevsky, had turned into the top lingerie model on Seventh Avenue.

  The top. A lingerie showroom was as close to a theater as she’d ever get, Sasha realized, but if there had still been a Ziegfeld, she’d have been his lead showgirl because she walked like a divinity. Sasha Nevsky, she mused, thinking of herself in the third person as she often did, walked with a pure inspiration no dance lessons could have taught, she walked with a natural and inimitable mixture of exactly enough sass and exactly enough sexiness and exactly enough dignity to display the expensive panties and bras and slips and nightgowns manufactured by Herman Brothers, in a way that caused them to jump out of the showroom into department stores and specialty shops all over America.

  The fact that Herman Brothers had been in business for almost a hundred years and was one of the most solid and respected lingerie firms in the United States, hadn’t been enough to convince her mother that working there wasn’t a form of white slavery. It had taken a visit to their impressive offices and a long talk with Mr. Jimmy, son of one of the original Herman brothers and now the stout, white-haired, bon-vivant owner of the firm, a man known for his benevolence and kindliness, to persuade Tatiana Nevsky to allow her daughter to take a job that paid her as much as any gypsy earned in a month, and, more important, paid it regularly.

  Sasha had been working for Mr. Jimmy for over a year, and the same sense of drama that served her in the Herman Brothers showroom had been translated into her daily life. She straightened up to her full height of five feet nine, threw back her glorious shoulders, learned the minimum she needed to know about hair and makeup to give her native beauty full play, and carefully began to buy the kinds of clothes she had always dreamed about when she read fashion magazines. However, she never allowed the new Sasha to go to family parties, for her mother’s worst fears about the immorality of the lingerie world would only have been confirmed by the sight of such a sinister difference in her quiet but safely innocent and unblemished daughter.

  But now, just when she’d totally settled into her new job, Sasha thought, where the working hours were not too demanding, the colleagues pleasant and the gossip splendidly instructive, now, when she’d just about acclimated her plants to the gloom of her room-and-a-half, now that she was on the verge of planning to straighten out her closets, now that her cat, Marcel, was finally housebroken, now that her three most favored dates had been allotted their time in her strict schedule, she, Sasha Nevsky, the magnificent one, was to be uprooted and moved to a place so classy that it wasn’t even near a subway!

  Of course, she could take the bus crosstown and change on Eighth Avenue, she could even take taxis on her salary, but she was saving her money fervently so that one day she could open her own lingerie shop. If there was one thing Sasha N
evsky knew about, she told herself, it was what women wanted to wear under their clothes.

  She couldn’t dance, but there was a future for her in retailing, she’d bet on it. She’d also bet that Gigi Orsini wore white cotton underpants and didn’t even need a bra. Obviously, with Billy Ikehorn as her stepmother, the dumpy nonentity she remembered must have become a spoiled bossy brat. And probably still a virgin.

  Gigi explored her new apartment tentatively, opening and closing linen and china and glassware closets filled with unfamiliar wares, including a sterling silver service for twelve and a complete Limoges tea service. Every shelf in the kitchen was crowded with supplies, the fridge was bulging. What had Billy been thinking of? Did she expect her to be giving dinner parties?

  Gigi felt like a burglar casing the joint, rather than the legitimate occupant. She’d slept here alone last night, on one of the two new beds in her room, after seeing Billy off to Paris, and no place had ever seemed so frighteningly quiet, although she knew that the building was as well guarded as a harem at the height of the Ottoman Empire. It was the first time in her life she’d been alone at night, all on her own, she realized, wondering uneasily when Sasha Nevsky would arrive.

  The last time they’d seen each other must have been something like five years ago, Gigi thought, counting backwards to another life, and if they had talked she didn’t remember it, for the almost-four-year age gap that separated them had been all but unbridgeable. However, she remembered Sasha because she’d been so silent, visibly not at home in her skin, gawky and ill at ease, not one of the bubblingly attractive and competitively lively offspring of the Orloff sisters.

  At least Sasha had the retiring and backward qualities that were desirable in a roommate, since Billy had decreed with all of her authority that she couldn’t be allowed to live on her own in New York without one. Gigi had put on her most disgraceful jeans and T-shirt, her oldest and dirtiest sneakers, so that she wouldn’t frighten the timid girl with any of the sensational new clothes that Billy had bought her before she took off for Paris. However, self-respect demanded that she put on a great deal more mascara than usual and add a few touches of new color to her hair, since this was New York and Sasha Nevsky was, if nothing else, a New Yorker.

  A roommate should be invisible.… a mere presence.… a shadow … a neutral ghost who left you alone, whom you left alone, someone who respected your privacy, as you would respect hers. In 1980 it seemed bizarrely anachronistic that two girls who had nothing in common should be coerced by others into the enforced intimacy of living together. The only thing that connected them was Gigi’s mother, Mimi O’Brian, who had long ago been a friend of Tatiana Nevsky’s, and once a year Mrs. Nevsky would phone Gigi in California to find out how she was getting along.

  Gigi shook her head in dismay. She was convinced that establishing Sasha Nevsky as her roommate was Billy’s way of making sure that she had a chaperone. Although she had understood Gigi’s desire to start to earn a living, once she’d found a suitable apartment for her, Billy had attached the Nevsky girl to the deal, a girl who had undoubtedly been instructed to watch over her, just because she was older. Who knows? Sasha might even be reporting to Billy every time she had a date, if anybody ever asked her out. Fortunately there was so much room in the apartment that they would each have a widely separated bedroom and bath. She’d simply have to work out a way to keep Sasha Nevsky at a distance.

  Nervously, for she didn’t expect Sasha for an hour and she had nothing else to keep her occupied, Gigi did the first thing that came to hand in the unnaturally neat apartment, and mixed up a batch of her own bittersweet Dutch chocolate-chip cookies and put them to bake in the new oven. She was trying to take inventory of the contents of the fridge when the doorbell rang shrilly. She jumped at the sound, and wiping her hands on her apron she went to answer it, a deeply skeptical frown on her face.

  “Yes?” she said irritably to the magnificent brunette who stood there, a tall, imposing creature of frightening sophistication, her black hair piled high, wearing a superbly fitted black suit, a suspicious look on her face, a modern-day Gibson Girl of lush Edwardian beauty, tapping her high-heeled shoe impatiently and holding a gigantic white Angora cat in the crook of her arm.

  “Does Gigi Orsini live here?”

  “Why?” Gigi asked, looking up through the filigree of her bangs.

  “Does she or doesn’t she?” Sasha asked.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Sasha Nevsky.” It was true, Gigi realized with a sinking heart, seeing something in the intruder’s face that looked familiar. Her impressively tilted nose was pert but haughty, her full upper lip seemed to curl upward in an expression of inborn superiority and her out-of-fashion noble brow was splendidly courageous.

  “I’m Gigi,” she admitted reluctantly.

  “No way,” Sasha said flatly.

  “I am,” Gigi insisted, outraged.

  “Prove it. Tell me my mother’s maiden name.”

  “Stalin. And you’re just as impossible as she is.”

  “Maybe we’ll get along,” Sasha laughed, walking uninvited into the apartment, “if you like cats.”

  “Nobody mentioned one word about cats,” Gigi sputtered. “A cat is no part of this arrangement.”

  “Like hell it’s not. Those two unindicted co-conspirators, my mother and your stepmother, would have agreed on my being your roommate even if I’d brought a small zoo. You’re lucky it’s just my dear little cat.”

  “Ha! That thing’s as big as a dog, and it’s walking around like it owns this place.”

  “It does, cats own every place they go. And his name is Marcel. Where do you get your hair dyed?”

  “I do it myself … peroxide on a comb.”

  “It’s sensational. Do you do the collars and cuffs too?”

  “Huh?”

  “Pubic hair, so guys will think you’re a natural tangerine-head.”

  “No … but I will … damn! I should have thought of that myself, it’s a dead giveaway.”

  “So you’re not a virgin?”

  “Of course not,” Gigi said indignantly. “Are you?”

  “My dear,” said Sasha grandly, “you are trying, rather pathetically, to insult the Great Slut of Babylon.”

  “Wow! The ideal chaperone. Do you do it for a living?”

  “Merely an avocation.”

  “What makes you think you’re so great?”

  “My reviews … all raves.” Sasha sat down and gestured at Gigi to sit down too, with the air of a gracious hostess. “If Sasha Nevsky’s reviews could be printed, I’d be world-famous. My God! Marcel likes you! He never does that!”

  Gigi looked at the long-haired animal that had jumped into her aproned lap. His purring seemed more aggressive than friendly. She hoped she wasn’t allergic to cats.

  “How many men,” Gigi asked curiously, “does it take to be a Great Slut?”

  “Three. Always three, never less, never more. You have to know exactly where to draw the line or you’re just an ordinary slut.”

  “Three at once?”

  “Really, Gigi! Consecutively, and not on the same night. Each one gets two nights a week and on Sunday I sleep alone.”

  “That’s an active sex life, but what exactly makes you a Great Slut instead of just a bimbo or a tramp?” Gigi asked, fascinated.

  “Attitude, the key is all attitude. It’s entirely a mental concept. I make all my own rules. I’m capricious, I’m arbitrary, and when I’m feeling unusually kind and at my best, I’m still erratic and wayward.”

  “Inconstant, fickle, temperamental—maybe verging on … cruel?” Gigi suggested.

  “You’ve got it,” Sasha said approvingly. “Gigi. Men Must Suffer. Those are the three key words. Remember them. Without them you’re nothing but another girl, extremely cute, I admit, in fact I’d go so far as to say way beyond cute, into individual, into special, but still just a girl. If you were a Great Slut you couldn’t lose. What’s that wonder
ful smell?”

  “Oh shit, I forgot!” Gigi jumped up and ran into the kitchen and rescued the cookies just in time. Sasha followed her curiously, and Marcel jumped up on the kitchen table and hovered meaningfully over the cookie pan.

  “As soon as they cool a bit, we can eat them,” Gigi said.

  “I should have known. Marcel was sucking up to you because he could tell you’d been making cookies. I wonder … hmmm … did you make them from a mix?”

  “A mix? Look, Sasha, you may know everything about being a Great Slut, but can’t you recognize homemade cookies when you see them? I happen to be a superb cook, and I’m only telling you that because you don’t exactly hide your own light under a bushel.”

  “Really great?”

  “One of the best.”

  “A superb cook who masters the arts of the Great Slut would be the Ultimate Slut,” Sasha said thoughtfully. “If you can teach me to cook, I’ll teach you how to be a Slut … there are a million vital details you’d never be able to imagine on your own, but you’ll have to get some decent clothes.”

  “I have decent clothes. I just wore this old stuff so I wouldn’t intimidate you.”

  “Maybe I can’t dance, Gigi, but you’re talking to a Nevsky here, and the daughter of an Orloff. We don’t intimidate.”

  “I noticed,” Gigi said. “Somehow that came across.”

  “I like you,” Sasha said. “And when I like someone, she stays liked. I’ll never make you suffer.”

  “I like you too,” Gigi said, throwing her arms around Sasha’s waist and giving her a kiss on the shoulder.

  “This could be fun,” Sasha said.

  “It’s fun already,” Gigi declared. “Do any of your victims have a friend for me? I lost a lot of time before I met you.”

  Perhaps, she thought, one day in the distant future she’d know Sasha well enough to confide in her about Quentin Browning and the mass of black-and-blue tissue she used to think of as her heart. After he’d decamped, Gigi found that some essential sense of faith in herself had vanished, some conviction about her own worth that she didn’t know she’d possessed until she’d lost it. She became convinced that she’d asked for the kick in the teeth she’d received; she’d set herself up for it, given herself to a stranger, without using any of the armor a girl was supposed to protect herself with, without pretense or holding back or coyness or any of the arts of flirtation that were taught in the movies and even at Uni High. She’d literally flung herself at him that first night, she’d latched on to Quentin like a leech, and finally he’d been driven to show her how little she meant to him, how little he respected her. No, she wasn’t a virgin, and she intended to learn as much about making men suffer as she could, but she couldn’t imagine that she’d ever be able to trust a man again. She could be a Great Slut even without a sex life. It was, as Sasha said, all in the attitude. She’d learned her lesson early, perhaps too early, but it had been necessary for the future. Her motto still held true; she regretted nothing.