Scruples Two

by Judith Krantz

  18

  Spider, was this really necessary?” Billy asked rebelliously as she marched into his office, carrying a large shopping bag from Saks. “I feel like a fool playing parlor games.”

  “Humor me, Billy, sit down, put the bag down, and we’ll wait for the others.”

  “Don’t tell me I’m the first?”

  “Actually, you’re a few minutes early.”

  “Probably because I’m the only one who didn’t cheat,” Billy said suspiciously, as she settled herself on one of the two large semicircular sofas that faced each other at one end of the office high in the same Century City office tower that housed the law firm of Strassberger, Lipkin and Hillman.

  “I heard that,” Sasha said, rushing into the large room in a flurry. “I didn’t cheat, Spider said five minutes and I took five minutes exactly.” She carefully deposited her bulging shopping bag next to Billy’s. “I’ve been terrified that this thing would burst wide open all the way here.”

  “You should use two bags, one inside the other, like I did,” Billy said. “Two identical shopping bags have roughly the tensile strength of a piece of luggage.”

  “Really?” Sasha asked, impressed.

  “I have no scientific proof, but it works.”

  “Oh, don’t tell me you’re all here already,” Gigi wailed plaintively, as she came into the office, swinging a shopping bag from her arm. “I had to stop to get gas.” She was enveloped in an almost floor-length garment and she moved rather stiffly, although the cast on her leg had been removed two weeks ago. She sat down next to Sasha, put her bag on the rug, and waited expectantly.

  “All present and accounted for,” Spider announced as he closed the door to his office and sat down opposite the three women. “Now, isn’t this nice? Which of you gentlewomen wants coffee?”

  “This is not ‘nice,’ ” Billy muttered, “it’s like some kind of sick New Age consciousness-raising coven or an AA meeting. Why don’t you get up and say, ‘My name is Spider and I’m addicted to cross-dressing?’ ”

  “Coffee, Billy?” Spider asked. “Maybe a Danish?”

  “No thanks, I’ve finished breakfast,” she snapped.

  “Gigi, Sasha?”

  Both of them declined, too eager to see the contents of the others’ shopping bags to be interested in anything that would require waiting.

  “Who wants to go first?” Spider asked. None of them answered. “Sasha, how about you?”

  “Why me?”

  “Well … let’s see … in the first place, because I said so. In the second place, because you’re the one who collects catalogs. If it weren’t for you, none of us would be here. In the third place, you have the fattest shopping bag, and it’s splitting down the side as I speak.”

  “All right,” Sasha agreed, “but you all have to realize that I still haven’t bought any clothes for California, so I had to pick from a completely urban closet.”

  “Look, gentlewomen all, this is not a competition. I simply suggested—” Spider said.

  “Suggested?” Billy said, with a cranky toss of her dark curls. “You insisted.”

  “Correct. I insisted that you each spend exactly five minutes in your closets, imagining that a fire was approaching rapidly, and you had to choose whatever absolutely indispensable items of clothing you could pack into one paper shopping bag. The Five-Minute Fire Drill Wardrobe. It doesn’t matter where you live, Sasha, or for what climate you dress, or for what kind of life, the only thing that matters is what kinds of things you picked. As I said yesterday, you will not be judged on the contents of your bag.”

  He’d never expected Billy to be so resistant to his idea, Spider thought, but then he’d never seen the size of Billy’s closet. Or was it that she didn’t like doing exactly what he’d asked Gigi and Sasha to do? Was she so used to being the boss of any enterprise that she felt uncomfortable as a team player? This February morning was their first official day in the planning phase of Scruples Two, and maybe she was just nervous, afraid of failure, although failure in the shopping-bag experiment wasn’t possible. Perhaps he should have suggested having this meeting in her office, but since his contained the comfortable circle of couches, and since he and Billy were equal financial partners in this venture, he hadn’t thought it mattered.

  Sasha was gingerly extracting from her bag a black vinyl trench coat lined in bright red. She sighed in relief. “Here’s what was making it so bulky. I packed the smallest things first, so I’d know how much space I had left for the big things. The coat goes over everything, rain or shine, day or night, I’ve had it three years.” She laid it on the rug in front of her feet. Next she pulled out a black cardigan sweater in a medium-weight wool. “This goes over everything too, you can use it as a jacket or by itself, over pants or a skirt. You can dress it up or down. If you unbutton the three top buttons, belt it and wear lots of necklaces, you can go anywhere at night in it, or you can wear it backwards and it makes a tunic top.”

  “How long have you had it?” Spider asked, as she placed it next to the trench coat.

  “More or less forever. Maybe five years, maybe six, it’s seen better days, but in a fire I’d take it because I don’t know where I could get another.”

  “What else is in there?” Gigi asked.

  “My favorite black pants,” Sasha said, hauling each item out one by one as she spoke, “my favorite gray pants, my one and only ancient glen plaid blazer that never goes out of style, the only pair of black high-heeled pumps I’ve ever been comfortable in, my two favorite plain white silk shirts, because with the pants, the cardigan, the coat, and shirts I could go around the world, if I had to, and my lucky dress.” She held up a limply dangling rag of red jersey. “This can’t guarantee a peak experience, but it tends to operate in my favor.”

  “How old is that thing?” Billy wondered, as impressed by Sasha’s presentation as she was by the way the girl looked. She was wearing beautifully cut navy trousers and a true red turtleneck sweater that brought out the jet of her hair and eyes. She’d matched her lipstick perfectly to the sweater. Did they come more passionately alluring than Sasha Nevsky? Billy wondered. If so, she didn’t want to know about it.

  “Four years old, but that doesn’t matter. Only the neckline matters to me in a dressy dress, and the fit.”

  “Sasha, did you just go into your closet and haul these things out in five minutes, or did you think about it beforehand?” Spider inquired.

  “Are you kidding? I made a list first. It took about twenty minutes, maybe more. I always make lists, doesn’t everybody?” Sasha asked. “And,” she added, “when I moved here last month I gave away everything I didn’t really wear a lot anymore, so there’s almost nothing left in my closet, anyway. It took me the whole five minutes to fold these things neatly and cram them into the bag. You never said we shouldn’t think about it, Spider. Actually, if I only had five minutes to think and pack, I’d take my jewelry, my cash, my credit cards, my driver’s license, my bankbook and my cat.”

  “Bravo, you get the Forbes Four Hundred humanitarian award,” Billy murmured. She knew she’d been right about Sasha. She had a rock-solid sensible brain under all those lashings of hair, that theatrically femme-fatale witchery and her deliberate use of exaggeration.

  “Great, Sasha, leave it all right there, please,” Spider directed. “Now Gigi.”

  She got up and turned around slowly. “I’m wearing all the bulky stuff,” she announced. “You didn’t say anything about getting dressed, Spider, so I used four minutes to put on my best underwear, a plum-colored pullover in a color I know I’ll never find again because there must have been a mistake in the dye vat, my turquoise turtleneck cashmere sweater that I got on Orchard Street for almost nothing, my finally broken-in white jeans, my antique silver-and-turquoise Mexican belt that cost a fortune, my favorite silver earrings, my best cowboy boots, a great pink blazer I got on sale, and this eggplant-colored cape that looks as if I stole it from Beau Brummell. It’s from a
secondhand store in Hackensack.”

  “Is that fair?” Billy demanded heatedly. “Gigi didn’t pack. No wonder she can hardly walk, she’s wearing sixteen layers of clothes.”

  “Everything’s fair if I didn’t say not to,” Spider decreed. “What’s in your shopping bag, Gigi?”

  “Since I only had a minute left, I grabbed a pair of decent brown velvet pants for places you can’t wear jeans, about a dozen different scarves, all different sizes, because they give me a dozen different looks, my best belts, the art deco costume jewelry I’ve been collecting, and the black velvet vest Billy gave me years ago because it’s still my favorite thing of all. Oh, and here’s a dear little bunch of artificial violets I couldn’t bear to leave behind.”

  “No shirts?” Spider asked.

  “I figured I could always buy a shirt or T-shirts—this fire isn’t going to destroy the stores too, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Actually … it took me.… well, about twelve minutes to pack my bag because I couldn’t decide which were my very favorite belts and scarves and I got hung up trying them on … I should have just taken them all,” Gigi confessed sheepishly. “I guess I flunk. I spent sixteen minutes altogether. I could have spent two hours in there.”

  “How long did it take to put in the pants and the vest?” Spider asked.

  “Less than a minute.”

  “Okay, I’m writing that all down.” He grinned at the culprit. “You can take off your cape now.” She looked so adorably guilty in her bulky clothes, covered by an eighteenth-century cape that could have been rented from a costume supply house, that he had a fugitive desire to give her a kiss of reassurance. He hadn’t realized that they were all going to take him so seriously or to try to figure out ways to get around his fire-drill suggestion. Were women more literal-minded than men? Or just these women?

  “Well,” Billy sniffed indignantly, “I see I’m the only one who stuck to the rules. I had Josie with a stopwatch inside my closet and I didn’t think about it first and make a list, or wear what I should have packed.”

  She thought of herself racing around her thirty-foot-square dressing room, practically caroming off its lavender silk walls, barefoot on the ivory carpet, banging herself black and blue on the Lucite accessory island in her haste to find the few indispensable clothes among the hundreds and hundreds of garments, so many of them never worn, that hung on the long racks. Of course, she told herself wrathfully, if the girls hadn’t taken an apartment together in West Hollywood, claiming that they were too accustomed to their independence to move into her house, she could have supervised the way in which they did their shopping bags, to make sure they didn’t cheat, as they both most certainly had.

  “Good for you, Billy. I knew you’d play fair. Now let’s see what you brought,” Spider said, as coaxingly as a first-grade teacher to a timid child on show-and-tell day, for he’d finally realized that her irascibility came from shyness rather than from anger. He’d always known Billy was shy, ever since he’d had to do all the inviting for the first Scruples party, but she managed to hide it, even from him. It was one of her most endearing qualities, although she’d never believe him if he told her, which he wouldn’t, on reflection.

  She was just barely thirty-nine, he knew, since he was eleven months younger, which made them officially the same age each year for the month between his birthday in October and hers in November, and she was probably finding it embarrassing to be placed in the same position as these younger women. Billy was used to traveling with piles of expensive luggage, she probably hadn’t packed for herself since she married Ellis Ikehorn, and she would have trouble limiting herself to a shopping bag’s worth of clothes.

  “I decided to take everything from one designer so it’d be coordinated,” Billy said, poking in her bag. “Saint Laurent, he’s the most practical. Here’s a pants suit, black, a cashmere sweater set, black, a chiffon blouse, black, a white silk shirt, a red suede boxy jacket that goes over everything like a short coat, and a matching skirt, plus a long plaid trench coat made of waterproof silk lined in quilted red satin. I don’t know how old they are exactly, but they all work together.”

  “That’s almost the same as what I have, except it’s the real thing and not the knock-off,” Sasha said in surprise.

  “And no one would know the difference,” Billy added, “unless they looked at the labels, because I picked the simplest and most classic things I have, and so did you. We could go around the world together, as a twin act, the red-and-black team.”

  “Doesn’t anyone want to see what I brought?” Spider asked.

  “You? This catalog is only for women,” Billy said, surprised.

  “It seemed only fair,” Spider responded, getting a shopping bag from behind his desk and putting it on the floor. “Okay, here’s my double-breasted blazer, a dress shirt, and my gray flannel trousers, that’s as dressed up as I ever get, and I hate to go shopping so I brought them; here’s my Burberry trench coat, a cable-stitched navy sweater my mother gave me five years ago, that I live in, a couple of favorite V-necked cashmere pullovers, three work shirts and a pair of jeans. And my reading glasses. Didn’t anybody else bring reading glasses?”

  “I’ve got them in my handbag,” Billy said as the two girls looked at each other in amazement. Reading glasses?

  “Right, handbags give you gentlewomen the advan-a quarter,” Billy said, laughing for the first time that morning.

  “What can I call you collectively that no one will jump on me for?”

  “Women,” Billy said. “Ladies,” Sasha offered.

  “Guys,” Gigi said. “Call us, ‘you guys,’ it’s the only safe way to go.”

  “Okay, guys, what does this mess on the rug tell us?”

  Gigi, who by this time had added her cape, blazer, belt and turtleneck sweater to the pile of clothes, spoke up.

  “It tells me that you’re all a bunch of unsentimental, practical-minded, color-blind copycats who wouldn’t know what to do with an accessory if it wrapped itself around your neck, like poor Isadora Duncan’s scarf.”

  “So noted.” Spider grinned at her indulgently. Gigi had tucked the thin, plum-colored, long-sleeved pullover, which fit her slender frame closely, into her jeans, and pinned the bunch of violets at her throat. Her intricate silver earrings dangled to her shoulders, and her orange hair stood away from her face as indignantly as if she were a badly surprised cat. Half of her looked ready to play the harp on the concert stage, he thought, the other half to ride the range.

  “Well,” Sasha said, “aside from the fact that Billy and I think alike, only she does it on her feet five times quicker than I do, I’m the only one who brought a dress. After a fire destroyed your apartment, you’d be eating out a lot—didn’t anybody realize that but me?”

  “I’ve got the skirt to my red suit, and two shirts, the black chiffon and the white silk—that makes the equivalent of two dresses for me,” Billy observed.

  “And I’ve got my blazer,” Spider said, “and a dress shirt. No tie, but I could always buy one if I had to. I could join you guys in the restaurant without causing you shame.”

  “And so could I,” Gigi said, “if I put on my velvet pants. The cowboy boots go anywhere.”

  “By a dress,” Sasha insisted, “I mean a sexy dress. Your blouses aren’t specifically sexy, Billy, and neither is Gigi’s sweater.”

  “Sasha’s right,” Spider said. “And Sasha’s wrong. Sexy isn’t what’s low-cut or fits like your second skin, sexy is your attitude when you wear it.”

  “Oh, Spider, don’t start trying to sell us our own old clothes,” Billy said, remembering how he used to tutor women in what to wear and how to wear it.

  “Just making an observation for the record, Billy. Anybody else got anything else to say?”

  “Yes,” Billy said. “With the exception of Sasha’s dress, every single thing we each packed is a separate. Pants, jackets, sweaters, blouses. Only one skirt, mine. Only Sasha and Gigi
thought about their feet. We could all wear Spider’s wardrobe, if his things were cut for women. What we have here, with the exception of Gigi’s accessories, and Sasha’s dress, is a theme. Am I following your thought process, Spider?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I don’t get it,” Gigi said. “Are you talking unisex?”

  “I think I get it, but I don’t think I like it. I think you’re talking boring and safe, Billy,” Sasha said plaintively. “I hate gifty clothes, but I hate dull clothes just as much.”

  “No,” Billy said, getting up and prowling around the circle of couches, picking her words thoughtfully and slowly, “what I’m talking about is concentrating on a collection of the best possible separate pieces that we’ll totally rethink to give them a unique twist … let’s think of them as new classics that can be combined in dozens of different ways to make capsule wardrobes for most ordinary, real-life situations. You don’t want to even try to sell special-occasion dresses by catalog … women like to shop for them. Or fitted, tailored suits either. Of course, we’ll hire our own designers—but yes, totally versatile separates that can be dressed up or down.”

  “I couldn’t have put it better myself,” Spider said.

  “Thank you, Mr. Elliott. In France they call people who say things like that ‘inspectors of finished work.’ ”

  “Classics?” Gigi asked, her face falling in disappointment. “I never wear classics.”

  “But you do, Gigi,” Sasha said, “only you wear them in weird colors and weird combinations and they’re always too big or too small or eleventh-hand, but you’ve got a jacket, pants, and sweaters, just like everybody else.”