by Judith Gould
He watched her closely. “Unless my eyes deceive me, and they usually don’t, she’s with the president-elect’s wife.”
“Hmmm.” Anouk forgot herself for a moment and frowned before remembering the surgeon’s admonition: frowning causes those facial lines to deepen. Swiftly she cleared her face of expression.
Merde! she murmured to herself. She didn’t like this complication one little bit. Of course, she had heard that Doris Bucklin and Rosamund Moss were friends. But did she have to catch the two women lunching together today of all days? That certainly threw a wrench into her plans. If she approached Doris, the two women were likely to think that she was trying to suck up to the First Lady—as if she, Anouk de Riscal, the acknowledged queen bee of New York society, needed to buzz about doing that!
“Well?” Dafydd asked after a moment.
Anouk turned to him with a blank look. “Well what, darling?”
“What are you waiting for?” He waved a hand airily. “Don’t mind me. Go on and do your dirty deed.”
“You’re horrible.” She laughed, getting up.
“So are you.”
It took Anouk nearly five minutes to table-hop her way to the back of the dining room. Everywhere, she had to stop and acknowledge greetings and exchange a word or two with familiar smiling faces. But she had developed the quick escape into an art form. Her “I’ll call you later, darling” was the perfect way to keep greetings short and sweet. She’d been using the line for so many years, people swore she’d had it trademarked.
Pretending to have just noticed Doris, she waggled her glossy fingertips and approached.
Four Secret Service men rose as one to intercept her. Startled, she frowned and raised her eyebrows at Doris.
Rosamund Moss called them off, and they let Anouk by.
Anouk’s shameless smile dazzled. “Doris! How felicitous that I should run into you.”
“Y-yes?” Doris Bucklin asked, flustered. Her face was glowing with embarrassment and her ears were on fire. Which was understandable, considering she had walked in on Antonio bent bare-assed over his desk just a short time earlier and was now face-to-face with the second-to-last person on earth she wanted to run into—his wife. With an effort, she managed to recover her aplomb enough to gesture to Roz and say, “Y-you know Mrs. Moss, I presume?”
Anouk’s beautiful topaz eyes shifted to the new First Lady. “Only from television and newspapers.” Smiling, she held out her hand and shook Roz’s warmly. “I’m Anouk de Riscal. Congratulations on your successful election.”
Roz laughed. “It wasn’t mine; it was the party’s and the President’s. But thank you all the same.”
“If you like, I’ll get Antonio to do your wardrobe. For nothing. He would be honored.”
“I’m afraid the country wouldn’t take well to that, Mrs. de Riscal. It would be perceived as a payoff.” But Roz’s eyes ate up Anouk’s outfit. “I do so love his designs,” she added wistfully.
Anouk smiled mysteriously and winked. “We will work something out, then.” Unabashedly she turned back to Doris. “I was going to call you and apologize, darling. I feel so badly that you had to suffer such embarrassment because of Klas.”
“Klas?” Doris stared at her in genuine bafflement.
“Klas Claussen, my husband’s assistant. He did something bad, and you walked in.” Anouk sighed dramatically. “I would have died a thousand deaths, myself. Pleeeeease, accept my most sincere apologies.”
Doris took a gulp of her water, wishing it were vodka. She couldn’t believe it. The woman really was without scruples! Doris would have gladly bet the entire Bucklin fortune that Anouk knew perfectly well that it was Antonio she’d walked in on, not Klas Claussen. And here the French-born queen of the bitches stood, lying casually through her teeth!
Undeterred by Doris’ obvious incredulity, Anouk said, “To appease, Antonio will give you three outfits. A present.” She was well aware that Doris suspected she knew the truth. Not that it mattered in the long run. The social amenities were being observed, a formal apology was being extended (by Anouk de Riscal, no less—what more could any woman want!), and the slightly less-than-plausible excuse, while not a word of it had to be believed, glossed over the incident.
“I ... I couldn’t accept three dresses,” Doris protested weakly.
“Not three dresses” Anouk corrected her. “Three gowns. ‘Special Label,’ just like mine. One-of-a-kind couture. No one has others like it.”
Doris Bucklin’s eyes glittered. She couldn’t believe it!
Special Label. Those two words packed a wallop to make her salivate. Merely having hundreds of millions of dollars was not enough to secure an item of Antonio de Riscal’s Special Label line. Antonio had to offer it—and only to a handful of superior people did he grant this supreme honor.
“The apology is accepted,” Doris found herself saying before she knew what she was doing.
“Excellent, darling.” Anouk was positively beaming. “You will love what Antonio makes for you. Just call his secretary ...” She frowned. “No, better yet, call me. I will arrange everything.” She switched gears adroitly; one last bribe should sew Doris’ lips shut once and for all—and earn her undying gratitude in the process. “By the way. We are giving a dinner party tonight. I was so hoping you could come.”
“I . . .” Doris was positively delirious. She’d been trying to crash into the ionosphere of society for years and had never quite made it.
“Good. I take that as an acceptance, yes?” Anouk glanced behind her at the sea of tables stretching to the front of the restaurant. “I’m so sorry, but I must run now. My luncheon date probably thinks I deserted him.”
Doris looked up at her. “Of ... of course. Thank you for . . . for dropping by.”
“The pleasure is all mine.” Anouk smiled down at her. “The party starts at eight-thirty. You may bring any man you like, or I will seat you with someone faaaabulous. Oh, and it is formal.”
Anouk shook Rosamund Moss’s hand again and leaned down to blow a kiss past a bewildered Doris Bucklin’s left ear. Then she confidently retraced her way back to her own table.
There. Mentally she clapped dirt off her hands. She’d done what she’d come to do. One piece of dirty laundry was out of the way.
Now she had to deal with Klas and Liz.
Chapter 11
“Olympia, luv!” The great Alfredo Toscani called out as he rushed toward her. He was still ten steps away when he extended both arms.
“Alfredo,” Olympia squealed lavishly in return. “Darling.” They embraced lightly and she blew three perfunctory kisses past each of his ears. “I do appreciate your doing this on such short notice.”
“For you, Olympia, I move heaven and earth!”
She smiled her absolutely brightest smile.
Shirley could only stare. For her, after being so long among the grimy troglodytes who called themselves the Satan’s Warriors, Alfredo Toscani’s polite manners and scrubbed cleanliness came as something of a shock.
Now that bold colors were all the rage, Alfredo wore white—in this case, blinding, immaculate flannel and silk that showed Italian tailoring—as if it were the height of summer, which it certainly seemed like in his town house, with its radiating heat and luxuriant tropical foliage.
Alfredo Toscani was short and lean, with dark Italian good looks. From a distance, with his trim, wiry figure and quick youthful movements, it wasn’t hard to mistake him for twenty years younger.
Actually in his mid-fifties, Alfredo looked rich and broadcast success from every pore. He wouldn’t have had it any other way. His teeth were so absolutely perfect and white they had to have been either capped or bonded, and his black hair, recently a contrivance of Botticelli ringlets, until copied by a horde of others, was now pulled back into a pony tail.
Shirley didn’t know it for the extravagantly expensive rug it was; Olympia, who did, never let on that she was the wiser. Toupees were a subject best left unmenti
oned.
Olympia smiled and pulled Shirley forward like a sweepstakes prize. “Here she is, Alfredo!” Her voice held barely subdued excitement, and her eyes gleamed triumphantly. “Well? What do you think?”
Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, Alfredo began to walk slow, professionally appraising circles around Shirley, who could almost hear his sharp eyes clicking like a camera shutter.
Like Dorothy after she’d been swept up in the tornado and deposited in Oz, Shirley suddenly found herself the object of curiosity from a strange assortment of creatures. She was not used to so much frank attention, and she kept averting her gaze and flushing hotly.
After a good three minutes Alfredo turned his attention from her back to Olympia. “What do I think?” he cried in astonishment. “Why, she’s breathtaking, Olympia! Simply exquisite from every angle!” Alfredo made a circle with his thumb and forefinger and kissed it extravagantly. “She’s an angel! For once, you actually underpraised one of your girls! What a figure! What facial bones! What hair!” Stepping forward, he grabbed Shirley’s jaw and moved her face this way and that. “Where on earth did you find her?”
“Oh, around,” Olympia said quickly. She had lit another cigarette and waved it to indicate elusive faraway places. She wasn’t about to give away any information until she’d perfected a fictional biography for Shirley.
Alfredo eyed the old woman shrewdly. “Ah, I see,” he said approvingly. “You’re playing your cards close to the chest. Very wise, Olympia.”
Shirley felt too nervous to be pleased by the extravagant words being bandied about. Exquisite? she thought. Breathtaking? An angel? No one had ever directed such lavish praise on her before. Her stepfather had called her a “devil,” her own mother had once accused her of being a “wanton whore,” and to the Satan’s Warriors she was simply known as “Snake’s ole lady.” It had never occurred to her that she was beautiful, that she could use that beauty to make something of herself. It had seemed enough that, after a puberty spent agonizing over being too tall, too bony, and having too many sharp facial angles that pretty girls with perfect retrousse noses just didn’t have, she had somehow turned into a rather pleasant-looking eighteen-year-old.
Now that she thought about it, even Snake, whom she had never heard complimenting anyone or anything, had called her “foxy” when he was in a particularly expansive mood. Still, that didn’t mean she was beautiful.
To Shirley, beautiful women had always been those she had seen on TV—Cybill Shepherd, perhaps, or Jaclyn Smith or Victoria Principal—distant, unreachable creatures who might as well have been from another planet. Women who were always expensively dressed, beautifully groomed, and who gave off an indefinable aura of glamour and quality—something a patched-Levi’s, no-makeup, duffle-jacketed “ole lady” was surely not.
Now, however, the accolades were suddenly being heaped upon her. “Exquisite”—such a disturbing word. “Beautiful”—also disturbing. “Pretty”—now, that would have been easier to handle. Maybe, she thought, she was on Candid Camera and didn’t know it.
But no, they were too serious for that.
But what could there be about her for them to get so serious about?
Alfredo raised an arm and imperiously clicked his fingers. Silent as a wraith, a beautiful, feline black girl with a shaved head, giant gold hoop earrings, and olive fatigues made of parachute silk slid in through a doorway.
“Panther, be a luv and take . . . ?” Alfredo looked questioningly at Olympia.
“Billie Dawn,” Olympia said quickly, changing Shirley’s name to that of the character’s in Born Yesterday she’d loved.
Shirley started to protest. What was wrong with her own name? But things were moving too quickly for her to get a word in edgewise.
“Take Billie Dawn to Preparation,” Alfredo decreed. “She’ll have the works.” Then, to Shirley, he said: “Run along, Billie Dawn. There’s no need to be nervous. There’s really nothing to it. Just relax and be yourself.”
Relax! Shirley stared at him. He had to be kidding!
Chapter 12
The Shirley Goodman Resources Center of the Fashion Institute of Technology is a concrete-and-glass structure deposited on Seventh Avenue between Twenty-sixth and Twenty-seventh streets. As architecture goes, it is sterile, unlovely, and characterless—features that neither endeared themselves to Anouk nor escaped her attention; she simply pushed through the double glass doors with a speed that precluded her having to look at the despised building.
The two-story white-marble-floored lobby was no better, so bare it looked positively naked. Anouk, walking confidently, as always with a clear destination in mind, skirted the single piece of furniture, the reception desk, and headed straight for the Samuel I. and Mitzi Newhouse Gallery, located directly behind it.
Her step slowed and she stiffened with displeasure; Liz Schreck was already waiting outside the gallery entrance, pointedly gazing at her wristwatch and frowning.
No matter how many times Anouk had seen Liz over the years, she still felt amusement—and was always more than slightly taken aback— when she found herself face-to-face with the woman’s startling reality. For Liz Schreck was, if anything, bad taste at its epitome. The unkind bright lights bathed her in a surreal glare and accentuated the hideousness of her bluish fake-fur coat, causing the acrylic hairs to glitter with a chemical sheen while making her towering orange coiffure, tented with a sheer pink scarf, look like something manufactured. As if it would squeak when you squeezed it.
Anouk sailed toward her with regal dignity. “My dear Liz!” she said warmly. “I do so appreciate your coming early.”
“Mrs. de Riscal.” Liz’s raspy smoker’s voice was polite enough, but the eyes in her tilted-back head were hard and accusing. Anouk could see at once that Liz would not be as easy as Doris Bucklin. Liz could be quite unforgiving. And mercilessly virtuous. Righteousness, wounded pride, defiance, and a puritanical moral code anchored Liz Schreck firmly in life.
“Everyone will be arriving for the memorial service in a few minutes,” Anouk said. “Why don’t we go to the downstairs gallery so we can talk without being interrupted?” Without waiting for Liz to respond, she took the woman gently but firmly by the arm and steered her to the stairs down to the gallery on the lower level.
It was like going from a huge bare box into an exotic fashion jungle. The exhibit on display, “Surrealism in Fashion,” was mounted in a confusing maze of hushed rooms and corridors. The dark walls and carpeting gave the galleries a tomblike feeling, and the bizarre fashions were set off splendidly against this neutral backdrop. Every display was bathed in its own pool of light.
Anouk was so mesmerized by the exhibit that she nearly forgot her reason for being there. She made a mental note to return in a few days. Only a true connoisseur of fashion—and if ever there was one, it was she—could fully appreciate the show. Every item transcended mere fashion. Each was a work of art. Wearable sculpture.
And exotic! There was a bizarre metal bustier with corkscrew “nipples,” a studded leather jacket-and-tights combo with a chrome-plated codpiece, a startling gown of overlapping silk chiffon leaves, a feather dress that would transform its wearer into an exotic bird, and another that, with arms outstretched, made its wearer into a walking, breathing curtain, complete with swagged valance and rod.
Liz following, Anouk peeked into the various rooms until she found one empty of people. “At last,” she said in relieved tones, “privacy.”
Liz looked around the room disapprovingly. It had a table set for dinner—with hats made to resemble various foods at each place setting. “Well?” she prompted with her usual ruthless let’s-get-down-to-business manner. “I’m all ears.”
Anouk nodded. “I wanted to speak to you about my husband,” she said smoothly.
“What about him?” Liz was eyeing her cautiously.
Tugging her long black gloves off her fingers, Anouk said slowly, “He told me what . . . transpired this morning.” She
looked and sounded splendidly in control, her every gesture and syllable of such cool grace and assurance that no one could have guessed how ill-at-ease she really felt. For even if it killed her, Anouk de Riscal was never one to show her vulnerable underbelly—not ever. “Needless to say,” she added, “Antonio is extremely embarrassed.”
“I shouldn’t wonder.” Liz sniffed virtuously. “But he couldn’t be more embarrassed than I am.”
“Liz, if you will let me explain—”
“What’s to explain? I saw what he was doing, Mrs. de Riscal. To tell you the truth, I’m not all that certain I can ever face him again.”
“I cannot blame you for feeling offended, Liz, really I cannot.” Anouk’s eyes flicked regularly to the doorway behind her, in case anyone strayed within earshot. “I know what you saw must surely have come as a shock ... all the more so since you have been so devoted to Antonio for so many years. However, I know you are a fair woman. Please, I urge you: try to understand him. He is so talented, so . . . so special. I know he has this . . . weakness . . .” She sighed. “What I am trying to say, Liz, is this: it takes a special mind to be as creative as Antonio is. But sometimes creativity has a darker side to it. Antonio’s does, I know. But he fights that side of himself; truly he does. I am afraid, though, that he . . . sometimes slips.”
“He slips?” Liz stared at Anouk in disbelief. “Is that what you call it? Well, I’ll tell you! From the impression I got, I wouldn’t doubt it if he slips regularly.” She took a fortifying wheezy breath. “And I don’t think I can work for him any longer.”
“Liz!” Anouk feigned shock. “Surely you cannot be serious. You know how fond Antonio is of you! Why, he counts on you to make everything run smoothly. Without you, the business would be a shambles.”
“Well, he should have thought about that before.”
“Look at it this way,” Anouk said calmly. “If Antonio were . . . oh . . . addicted to cocaine, wouldn’t you try to help him recover?”