by Rona Jaffe
Lizzie looked embarrassed and took her coffee into the bedroom.
“Well, I don’t care when you come home,” Elaine said. “Just have a good time, you bastard. You can come home next Tishah b’ab for all I care.” She hung up and snatched the Bloody Mary Gerry had made her off the bar. She took several big gulps and turned on Libra. “You knew it all the time, didn’t you? You don’t tell me anything either. Why are you men always in cahoots?”
“Maybe because you women are always in cahoots,” Libra said calmly.
“Oh, I’d like to throw this drink right in your face!”
“Do it and you won’t get another one.”
Elaine stamped into the bedroom and slammed the door.
“I’m afraid her days with him are numbered,” Libra said to Gerry. “She’s too old.”
“Too old?”
“She’s going on twenty-six. That’s too old for him. He married her when she was sixteen, right after she won the Miss Bensonhurst crown. She’d told them she was eighteen. She was disqualified, but she married the judge. His other two wives were teen-agers too, and he divorced them when they reached senility, or twenty-one, which is the same thing as far as he’s concerned. Elaine’s lasted the longest. But the handwriting’s on the wall.”
“How old is he?” Gerry asked.
“He’ll be forty next week,” Libra said. “And it’s killing him.”
“Wow!”
“Don’t act so surprised. You’ve been around.”
“I know, but I still feel awfully sorry for both of them.”
“She knew what she was getting into,” Libra said, giving her a shrewd look. “Don’t all you girls know? Huh?”
“I guess so,” Gerry said. There was no point in telling him a sixteen-year-old girl was not exactly rational; she didn’t want another fight with him this early in the day. She thought of Mad Daddy’s fans in the hotel corridor the day before, who loved him because they thought he was so safely unapproachable. Wouldn’t they be surprised to know one of them could even be the next Mrs. Mad Daddy if she played her cards right.
“She’ll get a lot of money when he dumps her,” Libra said. “Daddy is going to become a very rich man this year when he starts that midnight show. One thing he’s always been is generous with alimony. He pays until he’s broke, out of guilt, and as soon as the lady in question remarries and the alimony stops, he always dumps the next wife so he has to pay through the nose again. It’s either bad timing or his Jewish sense of guilt. Elaine will take all she can get, too. She’s no fool.”
“Do they have any children?”
“They have a beautiful little girl, four years old. She looks just like Elaine. And he has two kids with wife number one, and a kid with number two. He thinks if you get married you have to procreate instantly. Luckily for him both his other wives married very rich guys. They were still young and beautiful when he dumped them. Elaine will get along.”
“She drinks a lot,” Gerry said.
“Oh, as soon as they get divorced she’ll go off the sauce so fast it’ll look like it’s out of style. She’s too smart to let herself become a drunk and lose her looks. The former Miss Bensonhurst knows very well how to take care of herself.”
Well, Gerry thought, it’s none of my business. Still, she was feeling depressed. She was relieved when the doorbell rang and she had to let Franco in.
Franco was a slender, pale-looking young man about twenty-five who looked older at first glance because he was completely bald. He had evidently decided that thinning hair was worse than a Yul Brynner haircut, so he had carefully shaved off any vestige of hair that nature had left him. He was wearing an expensive-looking Irish hand-knit turtleneck sweater, rust-colored suede pants, and a fleece-lined suede car coat. Libra could go into the leather business, she thought.
“It’s cold out today,” Franco said.
“If you’d wear some hair you wouldn’t be so cold,” Libra told him. “This is my new assistant, Gerry Thompson. This is Franco.”
They shook hands. Franco gave Gerry his coat and she hung it up in the closet. “One thing I like about your dump, Libra,” Franco said, “is that you always keep it so warm. You must know when I’m coming.”
“I only have to ask your models,” Libra said. He turned to Gerry. “Franco looks like a fruit, but he’s really a super-stud.”
“Oh, I like boys, too,” Franco said. He smiled at Gerry. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“No,” she murmured politely, giving him a sweet smile because she was going to have to work with this creep, and took out a cigarette.
“Leave her alone,” Libra said calmly. “She’s a bright girl. I’m going to leave her in charge of the office when I’m out of town.”
“Then we certainly must get better acquainted,” Franco said to Gerry. He leaned over with a gold lighter and lit her cigarette, smiling at her again.
Lizzie and Elaine came out of the bedroom. “Congratulations, Franco!” they chorused happily, and Lizzie kissed him on the cheek.
“Time Magazine!” Franco said triumphantly. “I bought up all the copies on my local newsstand, and then I put half of them back because I didn’t want my neighborhood to be deprived of the good news. It’s really a dilemma, you know, wanting all the copies for yourself and wanting the world to read them too. I guess I should have bought one copy at each newsstand on the East Side. I think I’m going to make a coffee table top out of the write-up; paste them all together and lacquer them.”
“Wait a while,” Libra said. “I’ll get you the cover of Time one day.”
“That’s what we have to talk about,” Franco said. He glanced at the ladies, evidently wanting them out.
“Lizzie and Elaine, scat,” Libra said. “The Pope’s audience is over. Gerry stays.”
Lizzie and Elaine gave him dirty looks. Elaine picked up the pitcher of Bloody Marys and the two women went back into the bedroom.
“That’s what I like,” Franco said to Libra. “Instant obedience. My models never listen to me until I yell at them.”
“That’s because you bang them,” Libra said. He sat down and Franco and Gerry sat down too. “Now, Franco, what I want to discuss with you is this: a naked model is a brilliant idea, but you can’t top it and you can’t sell it on the street. Your next collection … your whole next collection … has to be completely unusual, new, breath-taking. You’ve done one mind-bender with your bride’s dress, but your new collection has to change the face of fashion all over the country. I don’t want your collection to be like any of your others and I don’t want it to be like anybody else’s. Have you got any ideas?”
“What about the look I gave Silky and the Satins?”
“Out,” said Libra. “That’s new for a singing group because singing groups copy other singing groups and they never have a new idea. You put them in something that’s good for the girl on the street and everybody says ‘Wow!’ They think that’s unusual. No, I want your new collection to stop people in their tracks; I want them to say, “There goes a Franco.’”
“Yeah,” Franco said dispiritedly. He chewed a nail.
Libra looked up at the framed oil painting of Sylvia Polydor, as if for guidance. It was as if he was looking at a painting of the Madonna to see if a divine ray of inspiration would be given to him. Then his face lighted up and he sprang to his feet and began pacing the room. “Shoulder pads!” he cried. “Peplums! Snoods! Platform shoes with ankle straps and nailheads around the platform! Wedgies with hollow lucite heels with goldfish swimming in them!”
“Yeah!” Franco cried, springing to his feet, too. “The Gilda Look! I saw that movie again on television last night. God, Rita Hayworth was the sexiest woman in the world!”
“Nobody was as sexy as Sylvia Polydor,” Libra said.
“Do you think she would wear my clothes?”
“Everybody will be wearing your clothes,” said Libra. “I’ll get Nelson to do the snoods. He can braid them out of that damn Dynel he’s so in love wi
th. And you can give them … stockings with seams! Oh, my God, Lizzie’s going to look terrible—two feet tall with shoulder pads and a peplum. Well, I guess there are some sacrifices even I must make for your career.”
“I’ll go home and start on the sketches right now,” Franco said. He grabbed Libra’s hands in his. “Ole, ole, Matador, we’re in business!”
“Don’t Matador me, you bald freak,” Libra said, not entirely unmoved by Franco’s show of affectionate gratitude. “You’re as Spanish as I am. And don’t forget the beads on the peplums for evening.”
“Oh, it’s beautiful, beautiful,” Franco said happily. “Gerry, I can’t wait to see you in the Gilda Look.”
“I already have long red hair,” Gerry said, thinking she’d rather die than wear any of the things he was proposing.
“I have a brilliant idea,” Franco said. “Will you be here later this afternoon?”
“Probably,” Libra said.
“Well, you be here,” Franco said, and grabbed his car coat out of the closet and was gone.
Libra looked triumphant. He gave Gerry his Cheshire Cat grin. “That’s how a genius does business,” he said. “And don’t you forget it. I don’t want you to tell anyone, promise me. Fashion secrets are more carefully kept than government secrets. Tell no one a word of this.”
“I won’t,” she promised. She wouldn’t have told anyone anyway, because one thing she didn’t want them to think was that she worked for a crazy man.
Libra went off to a luncheon appointment, Lizzie and Elaine had lobster and champagne sent up at Libra’s expense to soothe their egos, and Gerry went out to Chock Full O’Nuts. She was saving her money for the new furniture she was planning to buy for her new, lovely apartment.
At four o’clock when Lizzie was at her shrink, Elaine had gone home, and Libra was giving Gerry dictation, Franco appeared again. At first Gerry didn’t even know who it was. Franco was wearing a flowing auburn paste-on wig, the hair rippling down to his shoulders, with a Gilda wave flopping over one eye.
“Good God!” Libra said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“What do you think of that?” Franco said proudly. “I have a new image too.”
“You’ll have to learn not to sweat,” Libra said drily. “Your net’s popping.”
Franco ran his finger around the net. “Oh, my, so it is.” He produced a bottle of spirit gum from his coat pocket and reglued the net where it had sprung away from his temple. “Long hair is in for men,” Franco said, “and I’m sick and tired of your cracks about my bald head.”
“I’d grown rather fond of your bald head,” Libra said.
“Well, you’ll just have to miss it,” Franco said smugly. “No, seriously, this isn’t for me—it’s the wig I’m going to put on every single one of my models.”
The telephone rang. It was Dick Devere.
“Hello, Gerry. What’s new in that lunatic asylum?”
“Oh, nothing much,” she said. “We have a man here in a brand-new long red wig with a Gilda wave, and a bottle of glue in his hand.”
“It sounds like Nelson,” Dick said.
“It’s Franco.”
Franco was still at the mirror, tossing his head to watch the hair ripple in the afternoon sunlight.
“Would you like to speak to Mr. Libra?”
“As a matter of fact,” Dick said, “I called to talk to you, Gerry.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t sound so nervous,” he said. “It’s nothing bad.”
“It’s just that it’s a little hectic here,” she said.
“That’s why I think we should have lunch. Are you free tomorrow?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Gerry lied.
“Well, I have a rehearsal in the afternoon, so we can’t have a drink—how about lunch the day after tomorrow?”
“I don’t know … I might not be able to get out. I just started here and there are a lot of things I have to do.”
“One of the things you have to do,” said Dick Devere, “is get to know the clients. How about the day after tomorrow?”
He was right, of course. She couldn’t fool him by lying; he was obviously too smart for that. All Libra’s clients were important to him and therefore they had to be important to her. What was she going to do? She wished Dick would say something about Silky and bring it out into the open—either say he and Silky were just friends or say that Silky was his girl and he wanted to see her for purely professional reasons, to be nice or polite or something.
“I’m sure you have a lot more important things to do than spend a couple of hours with the secretary,” she said, not at all coyly, trying at the same time not to sound bitchy.
He laughed. “Secretary? Did you just get demoted?”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean. Unless you mean that you think I’ve been rude and you don’t like me.”
“Oh, no, it’s not that,” Gerry said quickly. Franco was still in love with his mirror image, but Libra was looking at her and she realized she’d better terminate this discussion in a hurry or Libra would. “Whatever you say would be fine.”
“I’ll pick you up at the office on Thursday then, at one o’clock. Write it down.”
“All right. See you then.”
She hung up and gave Libra a weak smile.
“Who was that who preferred you to me?” Libra asked.
“Dick Devere,” she said.
“Good. I want everybody to like you.”
Oh God, Gerry thought, in that case I’d better call Silky and take her to lunch. If she’ll go …
Franco left to begin his sketches for the Gilda Look, and Libra kept her busy with dictation and typing so there was no time to think. But on the way home that evening Gerry began to realize that what was really bugging her was more a guilty conscience than unselfish guilt. It was flattering to have someone who was not a freak or a fool take a liking to her. She hadn’t had a date in two months. Who had she met in this office? So far, freaks and fools. Who was she likely to meet? More freaks and fools? She was too old, sophisticated, shy, and proud to go to singles’ bars. She could call up some of her old romances and say: “Hey, I’m back in New York!” but they were why she had left New York in the first place. Maybe, as her mother would say, this Dick Devere had a nice friend. He probably had plenty of them.
She stopped at the grocery and bought a small barbecued chicken and a cantaloupe. There she was, picking out the smallest chicken in the store and knowing it would still be too big for one. She was too lazy even to cook for herself. At least she wasn’t at the stage where she bought one lamb chop like an old maid. A chicken was more dignified; anyone watching her would think she had someone coming to dinner, or perhaps a husband at home to feed. Still, it was depressing. The chicken felt warm through the paper bag; something nice and warm to hold, and that was depressing too. You could make yourself forget about sex and babies you didn’t have, but it was hard to forget about loneliness. Television was interesting, but there would still be plenty of television when she was ninety years old. She saw a young couple running down the street, the girl dressed up, the man waving at a cab. She hadn’t had a date in New York in years! She didn’t want to look forward to having lunch with Dick Devere on Thursday, but in spite of herself she was looking forward to it, because she knew as well as he did that it was a date.
Why are you being so noble? she asked herself, as if she were a stranger. You’ve gone out with married men, and you believed them when they said they had nothing to say to their wives. You didn’t worry about their wives then either. Sure, you were younger, and you hadn’t learned yet what it felt like to be hurt, but why are you playing so noble now? Because Silky’s black?
You’re taking all the sins of the world on yourself and the man’s only asked you to have lunch with him, she told herself. She climbed up the three flights of stairs and let herself into her brand-new, lonely apartment with her b
rand-new, one-set-only key. She looked around the living room. It looked so clean and bare. She would have to buy some paper flowers, and candles. She wondered if she would ever invite any man to have dinner there. Sure, being single was lonely, and dating was tough, and a new apartment didn’t feel like it belonged to her yet, or she to it. She put the chicken in her immaculate kitchen, feeling like a guest in a hotel. No wonder people had invented lunch dates and dinner dates; it was awful to eat alone. She might as well be honest with herself and look forward to her lunch date on Thursday—it was the only thing she had to look forward to all week. And she could wear her new green suit that she’d brought back from Paris, the one that did all the things green was supposed to do for green eyes. God knows, if she didn’t wear it sometime it would go out of style.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mad Daddy, formerly Moishe Fellin, was in the bathtub of his room in the Albemarle Hotel in Atlantic City, accompanied by a floating Dennison of the Deep toy, about a quart of bubble bath, and a fourteen-year-old girl named Marcie, who had come backstage to ask for his autograph the night before. Marcie was a tall, gloriously sun-tanned blond girl with slender, nymphet limbs covered with the most delicate frost of platinum hair. Right now those limbs were also covered with a froth of bubble bath, and with her long straight hair held up out of the bubbles with a barrette, a few tendrils damp and escaping, he thought she was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen. He pushed the rubber fish toy to her and she pushed it back, giggling.
The bubble bath, being the new, patented Mad Daddy bubble bath that came in a plastic replica of the man himself, was the kind that got you clean by soaking, without soap. It also smelled good and gave heaps of suds. They had been in the tub for about forty-five minutes, while the radio in the room blared rock ‘n’ roll; frolicking and soaking and having a snowball fight with the suds. The Dennison of the Deep toy was just like a friend in there with them. Marcie had a nice giggle, and very friendly blue eyes. When he had met her the night before Mad Daddy had been very much attracted to her. It was only a matter of a few moments before he was buying her a frozen custard on the Boardwalk and taking her to see the Ripley’s Believe It or Not exhibit, and only a little more time before she invited herself quite coolly up to his room. He’d turned off the phone because he was sure Elaine would call to holler as soon as she found out he had taped today’s show too and was going to stay and have a good time.