“I’m going to cultivate Georgie’s attitude toward life,” Sally said, her voice fairly singing as she came to the end of the card. “She knew what was really important. Her butlers couldn’t complain either.”
“She could never have achieved all that with a name like Mary-Jane,” Dawn said thoughtfully, as she eyed the pink Pierrot-ruffled pajamas with longing. While Sally had been reading, Rosa had been lovingly clutching a hemstitched white crepe de chine petticoat and matching camisole, both decorated with bows of white satin ribbon, destined for Emily Gatherum.
“Oh, go on all of you and try everything on,” Sasha cried, exasperated at herself for having imagined that she could just show and tell while her friends were visibly aching to put on the lingerie. “Try everything on. Carefully. Just give me back the ruffled PJs—they’re too small for any of us.”
Sasha slipped into her own black lace camiknickers as the others were dressing, all of them deliberately holding back the quick movements of their experienced hands so that they could put on the unfamiliar lingerie with caution. They walked about, getting the feel of the garments, and soon they pranced, paraded and capered, admiring themselves and each other with delighted, flushed faces.
In front of the full-length mirrors, four women with glorious bodies; each felt that she had slipped through a little hole in the fabric of time and seen herself as she might have been in another, far more romantic and provocative life, each of them transformed by the aura of belonging within the circle of an endlessly repeatable moment. Gigi’s cards had given them the clues they needed to feel that each garment wasn’t merely an example of antique lingerie but a tangible connection to a piquant, attainable dream, sealed with a promise of timelessness, a dream in which they could so easily imagine themselves starring. They felt sensuously alert to another world, in a graceful and right relationship to an erotic sensitivity they hadn’t known before.
There was a knock on the door. “You ladies decent?” Mr. Jimmy called.
Rosa, Dawn and Sally froze and looked at Sasha in consternation, as if they’d been caught playing dress-up in the attic.
“Stop it, all of you,” Sasha scolded. “It’s still our lunch hour, and anyway, he’s such a darling, let’s give him a treat. Come on in, Mr. Jimmy,” she called. “We’re no less decent than we usually are.”
“In a half hour there’ll be some buyers from Higbee’s and.… what’s going on here?” Mr. Jimmy asked, looking around in amazement. He had never seen his girls with such dreamy, unbusinesslike, happy faces.
“I’m Nora,” Sasha said, stepping forward and kissing him on his forehead, “and tonight you and I have a late date—we’re going to dance and dance till dawn.”
“I’m Georgie,” Sally said, “and I have the feeling that you just may get the job as my new butler.”
“I’m Lola-Antoinette,” Rosa said, wearing Sasha’s white satin pajamas. “And I want to thank you for the emeralds … you really shouldn’t have … but since you did …” She too kissed him on his forehead.
“Hey, come on,” Mr. Jimmy grinned, “are you girls trying to put me out of business? Say, where’d you find these things anyway? I can almost remember.… well, never mind what I can almost remember, I couldn’t be that old.”
“My roommate, Gigi, collects antique lingerie,” Sasha explained. “She’s giving these as Christmas presents. I brought them in to show everybody.… oh, and the cards, you’ve got to read the cards and look at the sketches to understand the concept.” She handed him Nora’s card and he sat down and read it through.
“We may be dancing tonight, Nora, but I’m not shipping out tomorrow,” Mr. Jimmy said, laughing. “Let’s see your card, Sally.” He read it quickly and gave her the smile that had sold five million girdles. “The new butler, huh? Well, thanks for the thought, Georgie. I’ll have to take it up with my accountant.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Jimmy,” Sally cooed. “Georgie’s butlers didn’t stay long … as I see it, her only problem was she wore out her help.”
“Read mine,” Rosa and Dawn both clamored together, waving their cards.
“I wish I could, but I came in to tell you that we’ve got half a dozen buyers coming in who didn’t order enough for Christmas even though I warned them, so battle stations, girls, get ready to show the holiday line again. Hey, Sasha, do you think you could get me together with your friend? I’d like to know a little more about this—and you come too, of course.”
“I’ll work it out,” Sasha said, hearing a tone of interest in Mr. Jimmy’s benevolent voice that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.
“Let’s do it as soon as we can. I gather that Nora and Georgie went in for immediate gratification, and so do I.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
“Have you done a lot of writing, Gigi?” Mr. Jimmy asked after he had finished ordering for the three of them in the northern Italian restaurant that he had suggested for dinner.
“No, nothing, not unless you count those cards. Sasha probably told you that I’m in the catering business.… I’m a food person, basically. I started to get interested in antique lingerie a few years ago, but until Sasha’s last birthday I’d never given anyone a piece of my collection—I thought that the white satin pajamas looked like something only Sasha deserved to have. She inspired my first card and my first little drawing.”
“That would be Lola-Antoinette, the lady to whom I generously gave the emeralds—the outfit Rosa was wearing?”
“And it looked just right on her, although we’re completely different types,” Sasha said.
“About how long does it take you to write a card like that?” Mr. Jimmy inquired curiously.
“It depends,” Gigi said. “Sometimes I get the idea right away and sometimes I have to think for a while, but once I get going, about half an hour, if it’s a long one.”
“You did at least six or seven in one afternoon just the other day,” Sasha reminded her. “Maybe more.”
“Christmas pressure,” Gigi said, shrugging modestly. She liked Mr. Jimmy just as much as Sasha had assured her she would. He had the most honest red face she’d ever seen, and an adorable fringe of white hair. He was about her height except that he probably weighed at least a hundred and fifty pounds more than she did. If he had on a red velvet suit he could go to work as the fattest, most cherubic Santa in the bell-ringing business in a second, Gigi thought, watching him drink his second martini. Even his nose had the right red lines in it.
“Gigi …” Mr. Jimmy turned to her abruptly. “This is a business dinner and polite people aren’t supposed to get to the business part until they’ve finished their main course, but to hell with that—I have a proposition to make to you.”
“About my antique lingerie?”
“Yes, but much more than that. If I’d seen your old things just sitting on a shelf somewhere, I wouldn’t have had this idea, but the way Sasha and the girls reacted to them and the cards you wrote came together in my head the other afternoon. I’ve been looking around for a way to increase our share of the lingerie market. Competition’s getting rougher all the time, everybody’s ads are getting better and better, but Herman Brothers, big as we are, hasn’t been particularly innovative lately. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and you got me thinking along new lines. What if I found a whole bunch of antique lingerie items that could be expertly reproduced to look like the real thing, sized them all the way up the range from four to fourteen, and created an entirely new collection, using advertising that would employ your cards as copy and your drawings as the illustrations? How does that strike you?”
“But … but … I don’t know anything about advertising,” Gigi gulped.
“I do, believe me, it’s not a sacred mystery. All you’d have to do is write the cards and do the drawings and—”
“Mr. Jimmy, hold on here. Gigi looks through hundreds of garments in dozens of little stores before she finds one that she buys,” Sasha interrupted. “She’s emot
ionally involved in them, they speak to her. She couldn’t write about lingerie she didn’t have a personal feeling for.”
“She wouldn’t have to. I’d send Gigi out in style with a couple of people to help her and she could find the lingerie herself, or I could send scouts out all over the country to buy exceptional pieces and Gigi could decide which ones she responded to. The collection would always be Gigi’s choice … she’s got the touch. I’d be the one to decide if her choices were too impractical to be reproduced at a price, but basically we’d get together on it and have a meeting of minds, and you, Sasha, could referee the whole process.”
“Wait a minute, Mr. Jimmy,” Gigi protested, “you keep talking about ‘reproducing’ them. The whole point to my lingerie is that everything’s unique, one of a kind, the real thing.”
“Well, they couldn’t be that, Gigi,” he said resolutely. “Not in a huge business like Herman Brothers. There’s no getting around the fact that they’d be reproductions, but look at it this way—they’d be the best reproductions you could ever hope to find, using only natural fibers, real silks, real laces and so on. If they didn’t look and feel like the real thing, they wouldn’t sell. I’m thinking about a very high-end and exclusive line of garments, for carefully selected stores. The reproductions wouldn’t have anything cheap about them, including their price, but we’d be spreading the romance of wearing a piece of almost-antique lingerie to thousands of women who couldn’t have it otherwise, because they don’t know where to find these items. In fact, they don’t even know they want them yet. But they will, they will!”
“Hmmm.” Gigi felt torn between his enthusiasm and her reluctance to broadcast something that had been her private, intimate pleasure, something she shared only with a few close friends in mind. “ ‘Almost-antique’—did you just invent that?”
“I must have,” he said proudly. “Not bad, is it?”
“But, excuse me, Mr. Jimmy, is it honest to call something brand-new an almost-antique?”
“Gigi, I think you’re being a little overscrupulous here,” Sasha broke in. “Nothing is legally antique until it’s over a hundred years old. Your lingerie is mostly about sixty years old, maximum eighty. You don’t call it ‘secondhand underwear,’ do you? But that’s what it is.” Couldn’t Gigi hear opportunity when it came knocking at the door? she thought, her mouth watering at the thought of a new line.
“Girls, girls, let’s not split hairs, we’re getting away from my idea,” Mr. Jimmy said expansively. “I couldn’t do it without Gigi’s choice of lingerie, without her words and drawings. I was thinking of starting small, a collection containing about thirty items. And if the buyers don’t go for it, which, frankly, would surprise me, there’s no risk, because I’ll be putting up all the money to get this thing off the ground.”
“Speaking of which …” Sasha said meaningfully, dipping her tongue in her sherry like a bear after honey.
“Speaking of which, ladies, Gigi will get a piece of the profit on every piece we sell, but not until I know if this is going to be a success or not.”
“I was thinking of another system,” Sasha said smoothly, “an advance against royalties, like they have in the book business. Since Gigi’d be picking the lingerie, writing the copy and doing the drawings, she’d be acting in the capacity of editor, author and illustrator. She should get a certain amount when she agrees to put in the time to do this for you, she should get another amount when she’s completed all the work so that you’re ready to start manufacturing. That way, if you don’t make a profit, God forbid, she’d still be paid back fairly for all her hard work. Otherwise she’s done it all for nothing. After all, Mr. Jimmy, thirty cards! And drawings! Thirty new women to invent!”
“Interesting approach,” Mr. Jimmy grumbled. “But would it make me a gentleman book publisher instead of a garmento?”
Listening intently, Gigi realized that, scruples about authenticity aside, she was excited by Mr. Jimmy’s idea. It was pure fun for her to search for lingerie and create cards, but she’d never realized there was a way to make money from it. She cleared her throat.
“My literary agent, Miss Nevsky, has found a solution that I find workable,” Gigi announced, sounding exactly like Emily Gatherum at her most authoritative. “Of course, she’ll have to negotiate the terms of the advance against royalties with you, Mr. Jimmy, while I’m not present, for which she’ll receive the customary agent’s fee. The creative person shouldn’t have anything to do with the business side. It’s bruising to the psyche. Just thinking about it makes me queasy.”
“Gigi’s the sensitive, fragile one of the two of us, Mr. Jimmy,” Sasha said. “I’m the ruthless agent. Nothing makes me feel queasy. So shall we discuss the advance tomorrow, in your office? I see our food coming, and I never like to eat lobster Fra Diavolo and talk money at the same time.”
14
Madame Ikehorn?” Mademoiselle Hélène, the gouvernante of the second floor at the Ritz, tapped lightly at Billy’s bedroom door for the fourth time that morning. Yesterday the chambermaids had reported that there were Do Not Disturb signs on all of the doors to Billy’s suite and they had been unable to make up the room. This in itself was not remarkable—privacy might be highly desirable for such a length of time—but on the other hand such lengthy repose was invariably accompanied by several calls to room service. However, Mademoiselle Hélène had checked with room service and they had filled no orders from the suite since teatime the day before yesterday. The concierge, when she questioned him, answered that Madame Ikehorn had returned from the opera before midnight on Thursday and had not left the hotel since. That meant, Mademoiselle Hélène calculated, that her most curiously erratic guest had remained in her room now for two nights and one full day, as well as this entire morning, without ordering anything to eat, or being seen by any of the staff.
Madame Ikehorn had been at the Ritz for so long, and they were all so accustomed to the irregular hours at which she came and went, that until now her reclusion had been taken to be just another of her varied caprices. Today, however, measures must be taken.
The young woman in her smart black suit tapped once more and then inserted the passkey in the lock. The door was chained shut on the inside.
“Madame Ikehorn,” she called through the small opening, “are you all right? Can you hear me? It’s Mademoiselle Hélène.”
“Go away and leave me alone.” Billy’s voice came from the bed. The room was totally dark, the shutters closed and the curtains pulled, although it was almost noon in Paris.
“Madame, are you ill? I’ll have a doctor come immediately.”
“I’m fine. Just leave me alone.”
“But, Madame, you have had nothing to eat for almost two days.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“But, Madame—”
“Stop bothering me! What do I have to do to get some peace and quiet around here?”
The gouvernante closed the door softly. At least Madame Ikehorn was alive. She hadn’t slipped in the tub and drowned; she hadn’t fallen on a wet tile floor, hit her head and bled to death; she wasn’t lying unconscious in her bed. For the moment Mademoiselle Hélène’s mind was eased, but she was determined to keep a close watch on the situation as she gave her orders to the floor staff. They were to watch the suite and let her know immediately when anyone came out or entered. No one should be allowed to go hungry long at the Ritz in Paris, and even worse, be subjected to sleeping on the same sheets for two nights in a row.
Lying in a tight ball under the frail armor of bedclothes that was her only protection from reality, Billy tried to go back to sleep without success. When she’d returned from Sam’s studio she’d taken a massive combination of tranquilizers and sleeping pills to take the edge off her utter anguish. She’d ranted and raved out loud at the walls, still trying to explain to Sam—it was all so monstrously unfair, so bitterly unjust!—and at the same time she’d felt as incredulously abandoned as if Sam had suddenly died
in her arms. She’d ached for a single word of understanding as she feverishly paced back and forth through the rooms of her suite, as if one or another room would make any difference to her dry-eyed, impotent despair, offer any comfort, any sign that there was still hope. Finally the pills had started to take effect and she’d rolled into bed for an endless night of hideous, half-awake, fragmented sleep during which she’d kept seeing the look on his face as Sam told her that she disgusted him.
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