Fire in the Wind

by Alexandra Sellers

  She recollected herself and grew flustered. "Oh, but I mean—you're a creative person, you're a designer. It's different for you! I know in the advertising department—their offices are on the other side of this floor—there was a terrible fuss with all the art-department people until Mr. Conrad came down and said the artists and copywriters could wear what they liked...."

  Vanessa laughed and the woman smiled appreciatively. Although they had been introduced on Thursday, Vanessa was trying in vain to remember her name. If they talked much longer the woman was bound to notice.

  "You wouldn't think a pair of blue jeans would cause such a fuss, would you?" she went on. "But there was a lot of talk about creative freedom and the like, and Mr. Conrad said he didn't care what anybody wore to the office. They could come naked for all he cared, he said, as long as they did their work. And the next time something as insignificant as that required his executive decision he'd be looking for someone to fire. Now, of course, blue jeans are the least of it. If that was all we saw we'd be lucky!"

  The two women laughed together for a moment. Then the office manager showed her the location of the photocopy room, the staff lunch-room and the ladies'.

  "Please call me Vanessa," Vanessa said the next time she was called Mrs. Standish, hoping they hadn't been introduced by their first names.

  But the office manager smiled and said, "My first name is Celeste. My mother was a Francophile."

  Vanessa blinked. "I'm sorry, a what?" she asked.

  "She loved all things French," Celeste explained. "My brother changed Pierre to Peter when he was twelve, but what can you do with Celeste?"

  "But it's a lovely name," protested Vanessa.

  "Unfortunately it didn't sit too well with Meadows when I was single and it's only a little better now with B—"

  "Mrs. Boyd, you're wanted on the telephone," a young woman called, and with a brief apology Celeste Boyd left her.

  Vanessa wandered back to her new office and spent the rest of the morning absorbed in designs for a spring line. She had no idea how much time had passed when the phone rang, but was not surprised to see her watch saying nearly one o'clock. She was used to time disappearing when she was working.

  "Busy?" asked Robert's voice in her ear.

  "Yes, but I can stop," she said.

  "No, don't stop," he answered. "I'll be quick: I just wanted you to know that Jake has agreed to have Concorp buy that building and lease us the space."

  It was hard not to be delighted by that, in spite of everything. But after a few minutes Vanessa asked casually, because she had to know, "Was it a good business proposition for him, Robert?"

  "Oh, well, it was neither here nor there, really, as far as Concorp is concerned." He chuckled. "Jake said he'd do it purely for the sake of your fine eyes."

  Chapter 11

  Vanessa flung down her felt-marker pen with such violence that the fat black smear it made cut right across the pencilled outline of the model she was sketching. She leaned back in the ridiculous executive leather chair they had given her and cursed Jake Conrad with a peculiarly comforting fluency.

  After a few minutes her rage subsided, and Vanessa's eyes narrowed as she began to think constructively. She was not going to let him get away with it. She felt determination clench in her spine. Jake Conrad had slapped her face and she was damned well going to slap his. Metaphorically.

  How? She had neither the money nor the power to—oh, she wished she had the money to buy Fraser Valley Helicopter and throw it casually down in front of him! That would feel good! That would probably be worth a few diamond bracelets, all right!

  Diamonds... the nerve of him comparing her to the kind of woman who would ask for jewellery on Sunday morning! Diamonds! As if she—how would he feel if a woman handed over a little velvet box the morning after with a couple of garish jewelled cuff links in it?

  How, indeed?

  A slow delicious smile curved Vanessa's mouth and angry delight sparkled in her eyes. She licked her lips as though she could already taste her revenge and it was sweet.

  * * *

  "I'm afraid he's very busy, Mrs. Standish," Jake's secretary said with apologetic firmness an hour and a half later. "He's leaving this afternoon for—"

  Vanessa nodded. "That's quite all right." She laid the small box, elegantly wrapped in jeweller's paper, on the centre of the secretary's desk. "Would you just see that he gets that before he leaves, please? It's very important."

  "Of course," said Jean, taking charge of the box in the calmly competent manner of one who can be counted on, and Vanessa left her knowing that sometime today Jake would be opening that box....

  In the end she had settled on a ring. A gold ring with six small diamonds set in a circle. It was the sort of thing that Tom Marx wore on his little finger, though less flashy. But Jake Conrad wasn't Tom Marx. He didn't wear jewellery of any sort that she had ever seen, and Vanessa knew that men who didn't wear jewellery often despised men who did. She hoped that the ring, which was really quite beautiful—he couldn't fault her on taste, whatever he would think of her intention—would nevertheless insult him.

  "Thank you for a wonderful night," she had written on the little card inside and had signed it, "V."

  Laughter bubbled inside her when she thought of it, but it had been an expensive revenge. It had cost her a tidy share of the money she had brought with her, a combination of her savings and the money she had got subletting her New York apartment.

  It meant her new apartment would not be decorated as beautifully as she had planned, not right away. And it meant she would have only her pay check to fall back on in an emergency. Speaking relatively, it meant she had spent much more on his ring than Jake had spent on her building, she thought, and he would know it. She would have loved to see his face when he opened it.

  She didn't see his face. Nor, it turned out, was she likely to, for some time to come. At the end of that week, when Vanessa finally cracked and phoned Jake's secretary to find out when he would be back in town, the answer was, not for several weeks. He was going to be in England and in Saudi Arabia and the Lord only knew how many countries in between, and there was no certainty when he would be back. Yes, he had been given the little package before he left—but though he was in regular telephone communication with his secretary, there had never been any mention of a message for Mrs. Standish.

  * * *

  There were times when Vanessa thought she was packing more work into July than she usually did in a year. She left the hotel well before eight every morning and often did not get back until after nine or ten at night.

  And she was working on all fronts: designing the spring collection was only one part of her day. Usually the day began with a meeting with Robert, followed by meetings with what seemed dozens of other people: sewers and finishers, union representatives, fabric salespeople, pattern makers, cutters, design assistants and a whirl of others.

  In between, she was constantly on the phone or studying sales brochures. Her first priority had been to try to hire a production manager and an office manager so that much of the work could be delegated to them. Although after the first week there were several excellent applicants to choose from for an office manager, not one likely prospect turned up for the post of production manager.

  "Robert, we're not offering a big enough salary," Vanessa said again one morning, for this was their biggest area of disagreement. Robert was in charge of cost, and he liked to Keep Cost Down.

  He said, "We're offering the going market rate, Vanessa. If you go above what your competitors are paying on salary your cost per item goes up and your price goes up, and then you're not competitive. Believe me, you've got a very low profit margin already in this business."

  If there was one thing she knew from her time with TopMarx it was that there was a very low profit margin in ladies' ready-to-wear.

  Vanessa sighed. "Robert," she said wearily, "I don't know anything about production. You don't know anything about pro
duction. We have got to have a very good production manager, and ideally we should have someone from Vancouver. That means we have to steal from a competitor. It would be nice if we could find someone who's unhappy and already wants a change, but, Robert, they aren't answering the ads. Whoever is out there is not going to come without some real inducement."

  "Let's give it another day or two," said Robert, and Vanessa shook her head helplessly. They had had nearly the same conversation two days before.

  "Two more days and that's all," she said. "Robert, I'm snowed under with work the production manager should be doing. We have got to get that factory set up and ready to go—"

  "All right, two more days," he agreed.

  She tried to save her afternoons for designing the spring line, though most often she didn't manage to settle to that till four or five in the evening, when her phone stopped ringing. Then she worked right through supper and on into the evening. The hotel staff had come to recognize her, and when she didn't get in till nine or ten for dinner, they would cluck their tongues at her and say she would wear herself to the bone. Sometimes, if the restaurant was closed by the time she got in, she would find that the night staff in the kitchen had saved her a meal.

  It was an exciting and rewarding time, and she felt that everyone around her wanted her to succeed. From time to time the secretaries of Concorp came in to admire the sketches, which by now were covering the walls of the once sterile little office, and they freely offered advice and information and their opinions about whether they would or wouldn't buy some design she had just conceived.

  For at least an hour every day Vanessa "browsed."

  That meant that, rain and shine, she walked the streets of Vancouver's downtown core, studying the window displays in clothing stores, watching women in the streets, browsing item by item through women's departments in stores. She was opening herself to suggestion, nuance, getting a crash course in the "feeling" of Canadian design.

  Their bid on the factory equipment and machinery was accepted, and without much ado Concorp purchased the grey brick building that housed the bankrupt factory.

  But there was no one to move into it. She didn't have even half the sewers she needed, and the response to the ads for cutters and pressers and the other people needed remained obstinately and depressingly low.

  "Robert," she said finally, "if you don't let me offer more than the current market rate for a production manager tomorrow, we may as well declare bankruptcy right now. We've got to give somewhere, and I need a production manager!"

  After that things smoothed out. The production manager they had been waiting for was quite willing to run the risk of starting with a new company for a substantial raise in salary.

  Ted Loomis had twenty years of experience and he knew the town well. He knew whom to approach and what to offer them, and by the last week of July the labour problem was solved.

  "I've found you a prize," Robert said one morning shortly before they were due to shift base to the grey brick building that would be their new home.

  "I know you have," Vanessa replied with feeling. "Ted told me yesterday that he's got us another cutter, and that means—"

  "I wasn't talking about Ted," Robert said. "This is another prize."

  "Yes?" Vanessa's ears pricked up.

  "I have just talked to a dynamite salesman named Gilles Dufour who seems willing to take on your line in Montreal."

  "Great!" said Vanessa.

  Robert raised a hand. "That isn't the whole story. Gilles has some very good connections with buyers. He mentioned to me the possibility of being able to bring with him a contract for a standard cut of women's slacks that one of the big chains—he hasn't said which—will market under their own label. There would also be the possibility of a contract for a jacket of your own design."

  "Robert, I don't want to start off being a production house for someone else's label," she began. "That's for—"

  "Don't want it?" he repeated incredulously. "Are you crazy?"

  "Robert, you don't understand," she began. "A contract like—"

  He said, "I understand that a contract like this right now—" his forefinger most uncharacteristically was tapping his desk top in his urgency to make a point "—would allow our whole production line to start up immediately. While you're involved with a few people in turning out samples for the spring line, the factory can be in full operation. It's a bread-and-butter proposition, Vanessa, and we're not so plump in the pocket that we can afford to turn down bread and butter. And it would help pay Ted's wages," he muttered in an aside.

  She leaned forward over the desk. "Robert, it is a favourite ploy of large retail organizations to give big contracts to small manufacturers and encourage them to expand their operation on the expectations."

  "And?" he demanded. He was disappointed; he had expected her to be thrilled.

  "And then one year there's no big contract, and the over-extended manufacturer goes bankrupt, and who buys out the firm lock, stock and barrel?"

  "The retail organization," Robert said. "All right, Vanessa, but—"

  "And with no heartache or elbow grease whatsoever the retailer has a nice cheap little factory that will churn out nothing but wretched undershirts or pyjamas under the store's label. That may be bread and butter, Robert, but if so it's poisoned."

  "Vanessa, we are not going to overextend ourselves—"

  "This year, " she interjected in a mutter.

  "And we aren't going to expand. What I'm hoping we'll be able to do is go for a piece of the action just big enough for us to handle. There's no reason for us to get into difficulties with it."

  This argument she lost. Gilles Dufour signed on as salesman in Quebec and within a week produced the order for wool-polyester slacks to be manufactured under the label of Fairway, one of the big chain stores.

  * * *

  Feeling like an overworked juggler, Vanessa found another brightly coloured ball added to those that hovered mercilessly in the air above her: on the first weekend of August she had to move into her apartment.

  She set aside the whole weekend for the move, planning to spend Saturday getting the furniture in and unpacking and Sunday doing all the little odd jobs that make a place home. But the furniture, which was due from New York on Saturday morning, did not arrive on schedule. Vanessa and Maria Dawe, Robert's wife, waited all day in the empty apartment, sitting on the bare uneven floorboards, playing cards and reading newspapers and phoning the moving company in New York at intervals. Finally, at four in the afternoon, after five calls to New York, the information finally emerged that the furniture would arrive Sunday.

  "Well, that's really rotten!" exclaimed Maria, lying on the floor now in a jumble of very thoroughly read Saturday papers, lazily patting Vanessa's neighbour's cat, who had formed his own welcoming committee. "Why couldn't they have told you that this morning?"

  "It's in Vancouver!" Vanessa shrieked, raising her arms heavenward. "All this time I've been phoning New York and the furniture has been in storage in Vancouver for a whole month!"

  "What?" Maria sat up and abruptly dislodged the beautiful furry cat, who stalked off indignantly. "How the hell can that be? It's supposed to have been in transit from New York for three days!"

  "When they asked me where I wanted it stored, I said New York," Vanessa explained. "But now it seems that someone marked it for storage here in Vancouver. So all the time they've been reassuring me that it was on its way, they actually didn't have any idea where it was. They found it twenty minutes ago. Here in Vancouver. But they can't send it till tomorrow because it's too late to start loading and their drivers have all been scheduled elsewhere for today."

  "Give me that phone," Maria said in minatory tones. "Where's the number?"

  It was as Italian as opera. Maria snorted and yelled and shook her fist and even cursed in Italian. "I've never been to Italy in my life except the summer I was sixteen," she giggled parenthetically to Vanessa during a pause in the electrifying conve
rsation she was carrying on with the hapless dispatcher at the other end of the line. Her black curls seemed to spark with electricity.

  The dispatcher was no match for her, and with a new respect Vanessa began to understand where Robert got his skill in vigorous debate: he practised at home.

  "It'll be here by seven-thirty," Maria said as, after twenty minutes of nearly non-stop argument, she hung up the phone.

  "I'm not surprised," Vanessa laughed. "No wonder I lost the argument about those wretched slacks."

  "What?"

  Vanessa explained, to shouted laughter from Maria. But after a moment Maria's black eyes sobered and she asked, "Vanessa, is Jake Conrad in love with you?"

  Vanessa was caught very much off guard. "I—uh, in love with me? I—no. I don't know, Maria. Why do you ask?"

  "Robert will kill me if I tell you, but it's so fascinating. And a little bit worrying. Robert says Jake's gone crazy with this company of yours. He's doing all kinds of things he'd never normally do."

  A kind of panic clutched at Vanessa's heart for a moment, then she shook herself to calm. "Such as?" she asked.

  "Well, such as—you know Gilles Dufour?"

  "Yes, he's our—"

  "He's your Montreal salesman. I know. Did you also know that he's what Robert calls 'Jake's tame salesman'?"

  "What?" Vanessa whispered.

  "The company whose line Gilles dropped to pick up yours was Designwear. Designwear is—"

  "It's Jake's." Vanessa's heart was beating with a combination of fear and excitement. Fear because it was so strange, excitement because... because surely it was a sign that he loved her?

  "Well, and Robert says Gilles is an excellent, hard-working salesman, but the kind of pull that got you the Fairway contract he doesn't have."

  "What? But then how...?"

  Maria waved her finger admonishingly. "Jake, that's how. Robert says Jake plays tennis with the guy who's the western-district manager of Fairway's, and if anyone used pull, it's Jake, not Gilles."

  "Well—"

  "And then there's the business of Robert. Not that Robert didn't want to work with you, Vanessa, it's just that...." She trailed off.