by Denise Irwin
“Daniella, j'adore vous plus que n'importe quelle femme j'ai tous connus.”
During the flight to Paris, Daniella wondered if in fact, Michal was capable of a monogamous relationship. She hoped that he was. She knew that she’d be heartbroken if he just lied to her. She said her new name in her head, Daniella Bagot. It had a very nice ring to it.
It was mid-afternoon when her plane landed in Paris. Daniella took a cab to her shop. When she entered, there was chaos in every direction she looked. No one realized she was home, there were people she’d never met in her lobby, and Annette was desperately working as quickly as she could to answer the ringing phones. When she spotted Grant, he looked frazzled. She stood still a few minutes assessing the situation before diving into what appeared to resemble the New York Stock Exchange floor during heavy trading. Her cover was busted when Grant spied her standing quietly against the wall. He rushed to her side.
She laughed when Grant told her in a voice full of panic, “Daniella, j'adore vous plus que n'importe quelle femme j'ai tous connus.”
“Grant, I was watching and find that things are not out of control. You’re doing a great job managing the situation, so maybe I should go back to the Riviera and not mess up your organization.”
“Oh non, ne laissez pas moi seul dans cette folie.”
“It only looks like madness.”
Grant clearly shaken took hold of her arm, “Daniella, I do not know where to start.”
“Well if you insist, tell me what you want me to do.”
His face was aghast, “Je veux vous pour prendre en charge. Je veux que vous me dire quoi faire. Il y a tellement des gens qui veulent parler avec vous.”
“If I understood you correctly, you want me to take charge of what appears to be chaos, is that right?”
“S'il vous plaît, puisque je perds piste de tout le monde.”
“Have you put together a list of callers and what each is looking for?”
“Yes I have.”
“Wonderful. The girls look as though they have everything under control, so grab your list and meet me in my office.”
While she waited for Grant, Daniella called Michal. When he answered the phone, she told him, “You would not believe my shop. There are people everywhere. Grant is so anxious, I’m afraid he’s going to have a heart attack.”
He chuckled into the phone, “It sounds to me that you won in the end. Shall I send Samanta home to Paris on the next flight?”
“Not just yet. I need to see if these callers are legit. If they are, I’ll need her. If not, she can enjoy her vacation.”
“Okay. I will take her to dinner this evening. She told me she was shocked that you offered her a position.”
“Tell her the offer is good, her designs on such short notice were more than adequate. Grant is coming through the door, so I need to go.”
“Daniella je t'aime.”
“I love you too.”
“Grant, you need to chill a little until we know what we really have, okay?”
“I am trying to chill as you say.”
“You’re not doing a very good job. Hand me the lists that you have so far.”
When she went through the lists of contact information, Daniella was amazed at the detail her staff provided. She sorted the piles geographically, and then chronologically. After going through the sorted lists, she told Grant, “Make sure you tell everyone that they did a great job in taking messages. There is enough detail to start making appointments. Let’s start with the callers who are located closest to the shop. I’d like to spend an hour with each customer, so if we make the first appointment at let’s say, 9:00, then take an hour lunch break at 12:00. We can resume at 1:00 and take the last appointment at 6:00. We’ll be able to schedule nine appointments a day. If you make the appointments, everyone else can handle the phones, and incoming traffic.”
“Mademoiselle, when do you want to start?”
“I’d like to see the first person tomorrow.”
“What do we do if we have to design clothes for these women?”
“Samanta Laroque may join our House. I’ll call and see how soon she can resign from the House of Victoria.”
Grant choked out, “Vous peut embaucher Samanta Laroque au travail pour vous ?”
“We ran into one another at the hotel. She said she would like to work for me. I asked her to sketch out some rough designs, which I reviewed over breakfast this morning. She’s good. I’m shocked that her current house underutilizes her talent.”
Grant shook his head mumbling under his breath as he walked out of her office. “Je ne comprendrai jamais femmes américaines.”
Samanta answered her cell phone on the first ring. “Samanta, this is Daniella, we need you. How soon can you start with my House?”
“If you are calling me so soon, you must have an immense amount of work. I will call them and tell them I resign the end of next week, so that would enable me to be free to work for you starting Monday, April 26.”
“That would be wonderful. I will start the first round of interviews tomorrow morning. We will interview nine customers per day. I will start the designs late in the evening. When you arrive, in order to provide our customers their new outfits in a timely fashion, we will divide the customer list between the two of us. That way, we can interview eighteen women per day.”
She heard Samanta gasp, “I heard that gasp. We have that many women to contact.”
“Daniella, je suis très heureux que vous me permettra de travailler à votre maison.”
“Work is the operative word. If we actually design half of the names on the lists Grant has kept, we’ll work like dogs.”
“Travail acharné est bon pour l'âme.”
Daniella chuckled, “If that’s true, you will have a good enough soul to last you a lifetime. Enjoy the remainder of your vacation since I don’t know when you’ll get the next one.”
“Michal va être tellement heureux d'entendre que vous ont été rappelés à Paris pour une bonne raison. Il me dit qu'il a proposé le mariage avec vous. Je suis heureux de vous deux. Il mérite une bonne femme qui peut lui rappelle bien.”
Daniella chortled, “We’ll see who ends up minding who. You know as well as I that Michal has a wandering eye. He loves women.”
“Why Daniella, French men always have wandering eyes. What counts is who they come home to.”
By evening, Grant had scheduled her first nine interviews. He told her he would continue working on the list and schedule the next set.
“Daniella, puis-je demander une question personnelle ?”
“Of course, you can.”
“Vous avez dit que vous avez embauché Samanta Laroque de travailler avec vous ?”
“She’s a good designer, so yes, I hired her. Since I told you that I had hired her, you want to know how I feel about hiring her after she slept with Michal.”
“Il n'est certainement pas mon entreprise, mais je me demande cette question.”
Daniella wasn’t sure if this was the right moment to tell him, but what the hell, he’d hear about it when Michal returned home.
“Samanta was vacationing in the Riviera when we arrived. I have to be honest and tell you that I wasn’t sure what to think. When she approached Michal and me, she said that she was impressed with the risk we’d taken and said she wanted to join us if we’d have her.”
“Elle a demandé un emploi ?”
“Funny, isn’t it?”
“Sont Michal et Mademoiselle Laroque encore vacances à Cannes ?”
“Yes, they are still in Cannes.”
“N'êtes-vous pas inquiet que Michal peut devenir grimpante dans ses actions avec elle ?”
“Michal drove with me to the airport. He proposed marriage in the car.”
Grant’s jaw dropped open, “Daniella, voulez-vous dire qu'il vous a demandé de se marier avec lui ?”
Daniella was smiling as she watched her manager’s facial expressions, “That, he did.”
“Don’t fall over, but I said yes.”
Grant looked as if he’d been struck by lightning. “Do you think I should have told him no when he asked?”
“I am speechless at the moment. I am trying to…how do you Americans say it? Ah yes, I am trying to get my head around it. I did not think Michal would ever propose to any woman.”
Daniella giggled, she didn’t want Grant to know that she felt the same way. “Grant, let’s lock up the shop and head home. We’re going to be busier than one armed paper hangers.”
Grant giggled as he tried to visualize what one armed paper hangers looked like.
When she reached to turn her desk light off, she remembered Edith Marshall. “Grant, I need you to schedule one more appointment for me.” She handed him Edith Marshall’s contact number. “I met this woman in Cannes; she’d like me to design her gown for the Academy Awards. I promised her I would call as soon as I returned to Paris.”
“Yes Mademoiselle, I will take care of it first thing in the morning.”
When Daniella locked the shop door, she was busted tired. It’d been a long day and she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. On the way to her apartment, she stopped for dinner. She ordered a Quiche Lorraine with a side salad along with a glass of wine. The wine would reduce the excitement building in her body. She sat alone at her table enjoying the glory. The award winning Houses were in Cannes reveling in their successes while she’d been called back to Paris to help design clothes for women across Europe.
The days raced past as she and her staff worked from early morning until late into the evening. When Michal returned to Paris, she would have dinner with him, and then return to the shop to prepare the designs for Charlene to create her patterns. After the first week, she could see that her staff, overstressed and exhausted, needed to rest. She asked that they take the weekends off to be with their families; however, when she came into the shop on the weekends, they were there chattering and singing to the radio.
The shop had transformed into an assembly line. Daniella met with the customer, sketched the designs, and when the customer approved them, the designs went to Charlene, Michelle, and Annette. From there, her seamstresses took over, custom fitting the outfit for the client.
When Samanta showed for her first day of work, she dug in alongside Daniella. She completed her interviews timely, sketched her designs at one of Daniella’s spare tables and passed them to Daniella for approval.
“Samanta, these are just fine. I really do not see a need to pass them through me. Give them directly to Charlene.”
Daniella knew that Michal was perturbed with her late hours. There were nights when she climbed into bed to lay beside her fiancée, well after midnight. She told herself that he understood the nature of her work, when new customers order designs, those customers demand that her attention remain focused. If he was struggling with that concept, there was nothing she could do to alleviate his frustration. Daniella vowed to give him her full attention when business slowed enough to allow her that time.
Daniella’s bank account grew in leaps and bounds as her customers picked up their clothes. Even with the overtime she was paying her staff, she was clearly becoming a rich woman. Each week, she tucked a little away. This flood of sales would not last forever, so the money she invested would keep her shop afloat when the river bed dried up.
After several weeks of grueling work, Daniella saw light at the end of the tunnel. While the calls were still coming in steadily, Charlene was able to work at a less stressful pace. Instead of projecting a delivery time of one month to their customers, Annette was scheduling final fittings two weeks after the customer’s first appointment. Together they were doing eighteen interviews per day, dumping eighteen new designs onto Charlene’s strong shoulders. She and Samanta were able to catch their breath when the schedule reduced to twelve daily interviews.
One Friday afternoon, Daniella invited Samanta and Grant to join her for a drink before going home. They chatted about their customers over wine and duck liver pâté. Grant asked Samanta what she thought about her first afternoon appointment that day.
Samanta laughed so hard, wine spewed out of her nose. “Tu veux dire la femme qui semblait qu'elle pesait trois cents livres ?”
Laughing, he responded, “Oui, c'est celui que je pense. Ce qu’ont fait elles veulent vous permet de concevoir pour elle ?”
“Elle a demandé que je concevoir une robe de mariage de sa fille. Elle m'a apporté une image de ce qu'elle veut. Quand je lui ai dit que la robe était disponible dans toute bonne robe shop, elle est devenue agitée. Elle veut un taffetas pourpre qui a les bretelles, avec des plis de corsage qui traversent de façon asymétrique à travers son corsage. Elle veut aussi une jupe complète avec l'étoile de collecte.”
Grant doubled over with laughter.
“What is so funny? I didn’t understand much of what was said.”
“Grant asked me about the afternoon appointment with a woman who wanted me to design a gown for her to wear at her daughter’s wedding. The customer in question is immense in size, weighing about three hundred pounds. She brought me a picture of what she wants. When I told her the gown was available in any good dress shop, she became agitated. She wants a purple taffeta that has shoulder straps, with bodice pleats that cross asymmetrically across her bodice. She also wants a full skirt with starburst gathering.”
Daniella looked sternly from Grant to Samanta and back again. When they thought she was seriously not happy, Daniella doubled over with laughter. “I guess we opened ourselves up when we decided to go for the designs for women of all shapes and sizes. When Michele gets that order, she’s gonna end up buying bolts of purple taffeta from every shop she can find.”
Daniella then stood, “Please stay as long as you like. I have neglected Michal for too long. Grant, if you’ll please pick up the check, I will see you all bright and early Monday morning.”
When Daniella parked the car in front of Michal’s house, she saw that the house was dark. She chastised herself since she had intended to arrive home before he went to bed. As quietly as she could, she unlocked the front door. After slowly relocking the door, she tiptoed up the staircase to his bedroom. As she ascended the stairs, she removed her clothing, leaving a trail of clothes on the steps.
When she approached the bedroom door she heard Michal snoring. The room was in total darkness. Daniella moved slowly toward the bed she couldn’t see. She inched her way toward the snoring. She felt stealthy and sexy as she sought out her handsome fiancée in the dark.
Daniella tripped over something on the floor near the foot of his bed and as she let out a panicky scream, just before she fell butt-assed naked onto the floor face down. When she tried to regain her composure, she realized that both bed table lights were on. When she stood she was facing an equally unclad woman along with her unclad fiancée.
She turned away from them and marched out of the room. Daniella gather her clothes that were strewn along the stair case. She was so angry; she threw his house key to the floor and walked naked to her car. Her blood was boiling and she’d driven several miles before she realized her clothes were on the passenger seat. Daniella pulled to the side of the road and quickly dressed.
Livid with his behavior, she stomped up the three flights of stairs. By the time she reached her apartment door, she saw red. Daniella’s answering machine indicated she had messages waiting to be heard. She looked at the inanimate object, and said to it, “Fuck you.” She then went into her bedroom. She didn’t cry this time. Daniella McPherson would never cry over Michal Bagot again.
She woke to the sound of a ringing telephone. From her bed she screamed at the phone, “Fuck you and fuck your whore too.” The phone rang consistently every fifteen minutes driving nails into her brain. She left her bed to unplug the phone from the wall.
When she reached the phone, the temptation to hear him groveling was too strong for her to
resist. She hit the play button and nearly fainted when she heard Betty’s voice. “Danny, you have to come home immediately, your grandfather is dying.”
Daniella tried to dial her grandfather’s number three times before she finally got the number right. Betty Schaffer worked for her grandfather. Her official duties were housekeeper and ranch cook. Her unofficial duty was raising Daniella. As she waited for someone in Colorado to answer the phone, her childhood flashed in her head.
Betty answered the phone, “McPherson residence, who do you wish to speak to?”
“Nana, it’s Danny, I just listened to your message.”
“Danny, your grandpa is doing his best to wait to see you before he dies.”
“Nana, I need to make one phone call and then I’ll take the first flight I can get out. Tell him I’m on my way.”
“I will child, just hurry.”
Daniella called Grant. “Grant, I must leave for the States immediately. My grandfather is dying, so I need to catch the first available flight. I need for you and Samanta to hold things together until I get home.”
“Daniella, of course you need to rush to his side. Please do not worry about us. We will be fine.”
While she packed her suitcase, her cell phone rang. The caller ID indicated that it was Michal. She looked at the phone and told it, “Fuck you.”
Chapter Four
Franktown, Colorado
The first available flight out of Paris was 4:45 that afternoon. When she calculated the time difference it was midnight in Franktown. Daniella dialed the number. She’d just hung up with Nana, so that meant she was awake.
Nana answered the phone on the first ring, “Danny, did you reserve a flight home.”
Daniella giggled, “How did you know it was me?”
“Child, we have one of those new fangled phones that have that Caller ID thing, plus we just hung up. Do you have a flight?”