Billy looked at her defiant face and held her peace. This could only be a momentary rejection of a field in which Gigi had already made brilliant progress, not something to take seriously. It was her broken heart speaking, not her ambition.
“Gloom and doom, doom and gloom,” Sasha muttered, eating the pâté with an excellent appetite. “What a lousy holiday season. If it weren’t for Marcel here, I’d catch your mood, but Marcel is one happy cat. I hoped I’d get some consolation from my catalogs, but even the new Neiman Marcus Christmas Book has let me down.… again. What on earth made them think I’d want an electronic bicycle that’s hooked up to a giant TV with two hours of programmed scenery, so you don’t get bored while you bike—for twenty thousand dollars in real American money? This has to be a new low. Billy, did you ever see the ‘ComRo 1’ they offered last year? No? Imagine a big, ugly robot that opens doors, takes out trash, sweeps, waters the plants, and walks the dog, at only fifteen thousand bucks! At those prices I can open my own doors, thank you very much! And look at this! Fourteen thousand dollars for a tunic and pants from Galanos!… I’d sooner learn to sew!” Sasha kicked with exasperation at the pile of Christmas catalogs that she’d been collecting for years. “At least the year before last, Neiman’s had a cute ostrich that was only fifteen hundred, relatively speaking a bargain … if you happen to live on a ranch.”
“Why do you hang on to those things, if they make you so mad?” Billy asked, amused and curious. She’d never seen anyone with a catalog collection before.
“Because they’re there, I guess. It’s some sort of sick addiction. It’s not as if I ordered much from them, just an item or two for my aunts to keep me on their lists. They all show the same obvious, predictable Christmas merchandise, whether it’s B. Altman or Bonwit’s or Sakowitz or Marshall Field or Jordan Marsh or Saks or Bloomie’s—excruciatingly dull suits and dresses, overly fluffy blouses, overly fancy sweaters, overly expensive furs—wait a minute, here’s a wild Russian Barguzin sable cape for a hundred thousand, no less, which I’d happily take, to warm my wild Russian heart, but only if Mr. Marcus gave it to me for love—excruciatingly dull dresses and suits, just what you would expect every man with a fear of shopping would order for his wife or daughter or sister, but nothing a woman would ever buy for herself, nothing exciting, just reworking of last year’s stuff that I know by heart, and boring, boring, boring. Not necessary. Not young!”
“You’re just not a catalog customer,” Billy decided. “You have too much style of your own.”
“I could be,” Sasha said thoughtfully. “I could be. Anybody could be. Oh well, at least Neiman’s is better than the other department stores—they try to be different … I kind of craved that ostrich. The other catalogs, the ones that don’t come from the big department stores, concentrate on safe jewelry that wouldn’t thrill any woman, or watches—there are a zillion watch catalogs—or gifts from places like Tiffany and Gump’s. Maybe I should go realistic and send for Sears, Roebuck. Or I could move to the woods and get L.L. Bean. My problem is I want catalogs to be about fashion. To think I’m still silly enough to wait all year long for them to come, as if I somehow believe that this year, finally, I’m going to be surprised. It’s pitiful, purely pitiful.”
“Maybe it’s like giving yourself a lot of Christmas presents you don’t have to pay for or return,” Gigi suggested, trying to be responsive to complaints she’d heard many times before, since Sasha ruffled disapprovingly through her catalogs at many odd hours, even in her bath, treating them as if they were a form of literature. Gigi felt she owed it to Sasha to try to show some interest after her awful remarks about Mr. Jimmy. How could she possibly tell Sasha the real reason she’d been so pessimistic, the real reason why she didn’t believe in anything anymore? Sasha loved Zach, and she couldn’t put her in the position of having to choose between them.
“No,” Sasha answered Gigi, between bites of chicken and endive, as Billy listened with interest. “I don’t think it’s exactly that. Reading catalogs, disappointing as they always are, is more like going shopping when I don’t have the time to waste in a crowded store, or the money for impulse buying. It’s basically a fantasy trip, I guess. A cheap thrill. See, all this stuff in the catalogs is actually available—it’s not like a fashion magazine, where they show clothes that aren’t in the stores yet. With a catalog, all I have to do is call a toll-free number and it’s mine—so even if I don’t want it and can’t afford it I’m having the fun of being impossibly choosy without a salesgirl glowering at me. I can turn down a diamond necklace and one of those china Boehm birds for almost five hundred dollars, and a Vuitton bag and thirty different velour bathrobes that all look alike—and I can feel that I’m above temptation. It’s probably the nun-like, non-consumer side of my personality trying to grow. Next year I’m going to throw them all out unopened because they’ll just be more of the same.”
“I bet you don’t,” Gigi said morosely.
“You’re right … as I said, I’m an optimist. And would I want to be the last person on my block not to know about the new 1983 Neiman Marcus His-Her gift? And how come it isn’t Her-His?”
“Is a lot of your fascination just curiosity?” Billy asked.
“In the beginning, Billy, when they first arrive, yes, but look how tattered some of these are … you’d think they were children’s books … I swear I know them by heart. It’s got to be some sort of character flaw, but at least I share it with a lot of other people. Billy, here’s that condo I mentioned I was considering buying.” Sasha handed Billy the Neiman’s 1982 Christmas Book, and Gigi looked at a photograph of Hanalei Plantation in Kauai, a vast acreage of land set on a blue and emerald bay that had been used as a location for the movie of South Pacific.
“What condo?” Billy wondered. “This is a view from the air, it covers dozens of miles.”
“Read it! Right down at the bottom of the page it says that they’re building furnished condos with what they call ‘Bali High’ sunset views—isn’t it gorgeous?” Sasha sounded deeply possessive.
“Starting at one million two hundred thousand? Isn’t that …?”
“Expensive? So? It can’t ruin Sasha Nevsky to dream. Mark Twain said no girl was ever ruined by a book. Since I’m not going to buy the knee socks with jingle bells or the whipsnake—whipsnake?—sounds kinky—handbag, I can also not buy the condo. It’s more fun to not buy the condo. It makes me feel richer.”
“I think I’m starting to understand, or maybe I’m getting more confused,” Billy laughed. Sasha was so spirited that she didn’t understand how Gigi couldn’t look just a little more cheerful.
“Look at this, Billy,” Sasha said, flourishing the B. Altman catalog. “Here’s a hostess gown for over four hundred dollars—just two pieces of pure silk, two sleeves, a little smocking and embroidery at the neck, and since it says ‘made in India,’ you know the labor wasn’t expensive. They’re getting away with murder.”
“Over four hundred? Let me see that,” Gigi asked. “Oh, how awful.… maybe it’s the photo.” She examined the picture closely, her pale face alert for the first time since she’d come home with her leg in a cast.
“Maybe it’s the style,” Sasha answered acidly.
“Maybe.…” Gigi said, and stopped. “Forget it.”
“Maybe what?” Billy insisted. “Come on, Gigi, maybe what?”
“Well.… what if … just what if.… I did get a whole collection together, the way I was going to for Mr. Jimmy, and have it copied and sell it … by catalog? No, that’s a terrible idea. Me? A catalog? I don’t know the first thing about catalogs.”
“Of course you do,” Sasha objected. “I own every decent catalog published in the last five years, and you’ve been through every page of every last one of them with me, Gigi Orsini, and a lot of them twice.”
“True, but they’re all so big and fancy and only for Christmas. My lingerie is different from what people are used to, and all I have to sell is the lingerie, not
all that other stuff—hams and jams and dog’s sunglasses—lingerie’s not enough to fill a catalog. They put tons of stuff on every page.”
“I think Gigi’s right about that, Sasha,” Billy said. “You need a lot of merchandise and you need a name. Every one of these catalogs you have here is from a famous store; people order from them largely because the gift box has instant name recognition and it comes from a place they consider to have status, like Neiman’s or Tiffany. Nobody’s ever heard of Gigi Orsini … not yet.”
“Wait a minute, Billy, what you just said about recognition, did you hear yourself?” Gigi asked, suddenly excited. “You’re absolutely right, it takes recognition, that’s the key—Billy, what about Scruples?”
“Scruples?” Billy said blankly. “What are you talking about?”
“Scruples—a catalog like Scruples!”
“Oh please, Gigi!” Billy said, instantly offended. “Scruples was the most exclusive specialty store in the world. Scruples would never, never have had a catalog! I would not have allowed it, not in a million years. And anyway, there are no Scruples anymore. No, absolutely not!”
“But listen, Billy, that’s the thing, there are no more stores, but the Scruples name and reputation and mystique and status have never lost their power. It’s only been … what?… not even two years … you could bring it back, but in a different form … the first really great catalog for fashion!”
“Oh, Gigi, do you have any idea of how expensive we were?” Billy snapped, deeply irritated. “There were enough women in Beverly Hills and New York and Chicago to support three boutiques, not big department stores, but large boutiques located in the centers of wealthy areas. The other Scruples were all in other countries. Most people never had the kind of money you needed to shop at Scruples, and the ones who did certainly don’t shop by mail order! Mail order! Even if I liked the idea … and I have to say I most definitely don’t … you could never sell clothes as expensive as Scruples’ clothes without fitting rooms and perfect alterations and personal attention—no, it couldn’t work, it simply can not be done.”
“But what if the clothes weren’t so expensive?” Gigi insisted. “What if they were affordable?”
“Then they wouldn’t reflect Scruples. It’s out of the question.” Billy spoke angrily. Gigi simply had no idea why the idea of Scruples as a catalog assaulted and damaged her memories of her perfect store, her exquisite, exclusive boutique, the dream she had created to satisfy no one but herself, the dream that was over forever.
“Billy,” Gigi said intently, “Scruples was a concept before it worked—remember how you told me that you started with one concept—to bring the elegance of Dior to Beverly Hills—and then Spider changed it into a fun Disneyland for grownups? Why couldn’t you change it again? Make it a moderate-priced concept, but with just as much taste? Call the catalog Scruples Two, so people wouldn’t think it was the same thing.… it would be about taste and quality and the youth and style that Sasha keeps wanting—”
“And it wouldn’t have to arrive only at Christmas, like the others,” Sasha interrupted, galvanized. “It wouldn’t have to contain this gifty-gifty stuff—it could come twice—or maybe even four times—a year, the way the stores change their merchandise by the season. Oh, Billy, it could be done! I’m your customer, Gigi’s your customer, even you might find out that you’d be your own customer!”
“Scruples Two,” Gigi said. “Just the name alone makes it different—the Two’ part shows that it’s not trying to be like the store, it’s its own self.” She grabbed her crutches and got up to get the photocopies of her cards. “Look, Billy, it could have a section for my antique lingerie, with these cards as copy—come on, read them, Billy. Hell, I could write the whole catalog if I had to, couldn’t I, Sasha? How hard could it be? I couldn’t get the merchandise designed or made, but you could, Billy, and Sasha could help, and … oh, Billy! You’ve got to say yes!”
“No.”
“No?” Gigi asked reflexively. She knew that when Billy said no, she meant it.
“No, and I’d really rather change the subject.” Billy got up from the floor, where she’d been sitting eating lunch from the coffee table. She was all but trembling with a violent rage she didn’t want the girls to see, a rage she couldn’t explain to herself. “I’m supposed to be getting my hair cut this afternoon and I’m late already. Gigi, you still haven’t had anything to eat. I’ll call later.” She wrapped herself hastily in her coachman’s mink coat and in seconds the front door had closed behind her.
“Was it something I said?” Sasha asked.
“Something we both said, I guess,” Gigi answered. “The last time I saw her that mad, she divorced my father.”
“Mrs. Ikehorn, is there something wrong?” Louis, Billy’s alarmed hairdresser, finally forced himself to ask. She’d been sitting rigidly in his chair for ten minutes after he’d finished cutting and blowing her wet hair dry, staring straight into the mirror without any expression or a single word.
Billy started. “Oh. No, Louis, as a matter of fact it’s the best haircut I’ve had in years. I was just thinking about something … Christmas shopping.…”
“Oh, don’t say those words, Mrs. Ikehorn, just don’t say those awful words,” he pleaded. “I haven’t started yet. You look smashing. Fabulous. I’d say ten years younger, maybe twelve. You must never let your hair get too long again. Those Paris hairdressers—when did they get off the boat? You made it back here just in time, another sixteenth of an inch and you’d have lost your special look. Two weeks, Mrs. Ikehorn, only two weeks between cuts, promise me?”
“I promise, Louis. Thank you. See you in two weeks.”
Billy’s limousine was waiting for her in front of the salon, and she rode back to her hotel in a brooding silence, her anger faintly mollified by the job Louis had done on her neglected head. There was probably no fury a really good haircut couldn’t diminish, she thought, but what right did those two young twits have to imagine Scruples in the form of a catalog? Who read catalogs anyway? If they came to the house you threw them out … junk mail, that’s all they were. A soon-to-be unemployed panty model and a reluctant caterer—how could they possibly have the incredible nerve to suggest using the name of Scruples to glorify a catalog of moderately priced clothes? It was sickening, like dancing on a grave, indecent!
Deep in thought, Billy stalked forbiddingly into the hotel and asked for her keys at the desk.
“Mrs. Ikehorn,” the room clerk said, “a gentleman has been waiting for you for the last three hours.”
“I don’t have any appointments, not that I remember.”
“He’s over there, Mrs. Ikehorn.” Billy turned as the room clerk pointed toward a man sitting in a chair in the lobby. He immediately got up and approached her.
“Mrs. Ikehorn?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Zach Nevsky.”
“What do you expect me to do, congratulate you?”
“Please, Mrs. Ikehorn, you’re the only person I can talk to.”
“Why should anybody in her right mind want to talk to you?” Billy asked.
“Because I can’t expect anybody else to listen to me, and I have to talk to someone.”
“Why should I give a damn about your problems?”
“Because you’re Gigi’s stepmother and guardian,” Zach insisted doggedly.
“I don’t know what that has to do with it. She hasn’t had a legal guardian for years. However, come on up, I’ll listen to you because I’m curious and that’s the only reason. Sheer curiosity as to what makes vile guys like you tick. I’m collecting lice this year.”
In the living room of Billy’s suite, Zach, without the aid of so much as a glass of water, told Billy the entire story of his day on the mountain with Gigi.
“After we got back to the lodge, I stayed in my room. I’d told her I’d be there if she needed anything and I left my door open so I could hear her. I must have been beat, absolutely beat, because I fell
asleep in the room, it was hot and I couldn’t get the window open, and the next thing I knew I woke up and, ah, I was in this sexual mode with Pandora.”
“Sexual mode?” Billy asked severely. “Just what is that supposed to mean?”
Zach looked down at his shoes. “I was lying on my back and, well … genital arousal had taken place in my sleep and Pandora was … she was … or rather I was in a posture with her in which … intromission had already occurred.” He clenched his fists, his voice as matter-of-fact as he could make it. Nick could do this better. Anybody could.
“ ‘Intromission’? Could you describe that?” Billy asked sternly.
“My … male organ was … penetrating her body. She was above me. I don’t know how she got there and until I woke up I wasn’t aware of what had taken place, but motion was taking place between her genitals and mine.”
“Motion?”
“A back-and-forth, up-and-down motion that had started in my sleep. I continued to participate in the motion because I found myself in a highly excited state of.… extreme tumescence … and I was … that’s not important, that’s not an excuse, but the thing is I continued the motion without withdrawing until the moment of ejaculation. It was afterwards that I realized that Gigi was watching.”
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