Spring Collection

by Judith Krantz

  “Why are you smiling to yourself?” Tinker asked.

  “I—I didn’t hear you wake up.”

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “I’m not sure, maybe an hour, maybe more,” he said, sitting up on the floor.

  “Thank you for covering me up,” Tinker said, emerging from the parka and stretching lazily. “It must have been jet lag.”

  “How do you feel?” he asked anxiously.

  “As if I’ve been asleep for days. Born this instant, like a chick right out of the egg.”

  “You mean you don’t remember anything?”

  “Hmmm … no,” she said in judicious wonder. “Dear me … goodness, gracious.… I just remember looking at your pictures, and then, after that … it’s all a blank. Say, who took my boots off?”

  “The Tooth Fairy,” Tom said. He sat down on the couch, scooped her into his arms and kissed her. “Does that bring back anything?”

  “I’m not sure … barely … just a little.” She seemed doubtful.

  “Do you like it?” he asked and kissed her again, beginning to quiver. He should never have let her go to sleep, he thought, never have let her out of his arms, her emotions weren’t involved like his. And yet, if she hadn’t slept, would he have understood so quickly how he felt about her?

  “Like it? Oh, yes,” Tinker answered. “I like it fine.”

  “Are you still shy?”

  “Ummm,” Tinker growled in disbelief, “did I actually say that?”

  “Don’t you remember anything?”

  “Well … maybe … I can’t really say for sure.” She gave him a small, infinitely provocative smile, signaling that she was prepared to toy with him until she wearied of the game. She was falling back on flirtation, reaching automatically for a technique that had worked in the past, Tom thought, but he wouldn’t let her. He believed in her shyness and he knew that only shock therapy could drive it away.

  “I made something for you,” Tom told Tinker, pulling away purposefully and reaching down for the sketch pad he’d left on the rug. “It’s a likeness,” he said, giving it to her and holding up a candle so that she could see it clearly.

  “Oh,” said Tinker, in surprise. Then, she bent her head so that she could read his words in the candlelight. “Oh,” she said again, in a changed voice, a tiny flame of a voice, an incandescent voice. “Do you mean it, Tom?”

  “Yes, God help me.”

  Tinker sat silently a moment, her head still bent, while he held his breath. Finally he put the candle and the sketch pad back on the rug and with his finger, lifted her chin and tilted her head toward him. His heart lurched when he saw the tears welling in her eyes.

  “I know you’re shy, but help me out here,” Tom said. “Is this good news?”

  Tinker nodded slightly and the trembling tears escaped her eyes and started down her cheeks.

  “Do you like me?” he asked her. First she shook her head and then nodded vigorously. “You don’t just like me, you like me a lot?” he interpreted. She nodded even more fiercely. “You might … possibly … love me?” he asked so softly that if she didn’t want to answer she could pretend she hadn’t heard. Tinker forced herself to look him in the eyes and inclined her head in a tiny, single inclination of her head, a mute but unmistakable avowal. Then, galvanized, she threw her arms around his neck with all her strength and pulled him down so that they lay sprawled in a tumble. She scrambled on top of him and kissed Tom vehemently all over his face and his neck. “Here and here and here,” she said voraciously, made suddenly savage by the need to imprint every available inch of him with her lips, until he started to laugh because she was tickling his ears and her elbows were sticking into his chest.

  “Hold off,” he gasped, catching her hands in his. “Where do we go from here? Please, Tinker, darling Tinker, talk to me. I know you can, when you’re in the mood, you’ve talked before.”

  “Where would you normally go?” she asked.

  “There’s nothing normal about this. I’ve just fallen in love for the first time in my life.”

  “Me too.”

  “You finally said it,” he cried in jubilation.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You just this second said you were in love with me,” Tom insisted.

  “No I didn’t. You jumped to a conclusion. I, Tinker Grant, am in love with you, Tom Strauss. Now I’ve said it. Ouff … I feel better now.”

  “Say it again!”

  “Make me,” she challenged him.

  “Oh, you’re asking for it, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Is that a threat? Or a promise?” she crooned.

  “Oh, Tinker, you’re going to drive me mad, aren’t you?”

  “Time will tell,” she answered, pulling off her sweater. “Time will soon tell,” she repeated, as she slithered out of her ski pants and lay smiling in all her supremely young and tender beauty on the white couch.

  Holding his breath, Tom touched his fingertip to the faint rose of one nipple and felt it rise immediately. Mad, utterly mad, he thought to himself as he threw off his clothes. She would make him mad and she would make him whole and she would be everything in the world to him.

  11

  Frankie is in a rage,” April confided to Maude Callender when they encountered each other at the lobby newsstand. “Just because Tinker didn’t sleep here last night she’s acting like it’s my fault—since when I am supposed to be in charge of bed check?”

  “When did you see Tinker last?” Maude asked with interest.

  “Last night at dinner. Then she took off alone with one of the guys and Jordan and I went to another club and danced for a few hours. Now Jordan’s gone off too and I’ve been left on my lonesome. Frankie’s dragging me to the Louvre after lunch, she says we haven’t been exposed to any French culture yet. Exposed! She sounds like my grandmother with Beethoven when I was twelve. She didn’t want to listen when I told her there must be more fun things to do in Paris than look at a lot of pictures. Frankie’s turned into a tyrant, and I’m her only target.”

  “Come have lunch with me instead,” Maude suggested. “I’ll show you the real Paris, or a small slice of it, anyway. I’ve lived here on and off for years and it’s taken that long to scratch the surface of this city. You’d be surprised how little time I’ve spent in the Louvre.”

  “Thanks, Maude, you’re the answer to a prayer. I’ll leave Frankie a message. Meet you down here in five minutes, okay?”

  “Perfect.” And it was perfect, Maude thought. She’d almost despaired of getting one of the girls alone without their omnipresent minder, Miss Severino. The first rule of any interviewer’s working life is “get rid of the minder.” It doesn’t matter if the murder is an official PR rep, a designated chaperone or an amateur friend, sister or mother, even a child. The presence of any third person changes the dynamics of an interview. The interviewer can’t ask questions as freely and the person being interviewed never responds as openly. The official interview atmosphere never progresses into a free-wheeling conversation. Both parties consciously or unconsciously censor themselves even if all the minder does is sit in a corner, eyes downcast, pretending to read a magazine.

  And it was ideal that April was the first model to escape Frankie’s supervision, Maude thought. She had picked April for the winner of the Lombardi contract from the start, she’d been rooting for her from the moment they’d all met at the airport. April simply outclassed either of the others. April had deep, deep class, she personified the kind of beauty that was internationally recognized as the outer sign of breeding, quality and social standing.

  Maude Callender came from an old Rhode Island family, rich in civic background and philanthropic tradition as well as in worldly possessions. Her private income was more than enough for her to live on handsomely; her work gave her that necessary position on the ladder of fame that is essential for any single woman who intends to be part of the New York City social world. Maude had always quietly main
tained her belief in the importance of class, that politically incorrect concept she subversively upheld in today’s world. It would be an interesting challenge, she thought, to find out more about April. The girl’s bone structure was responsible for the regal look that was her second nature, but it told her no more about April’s inner life than what you could guess about Garbo from seeing her in the movies.

  She would give the girl a glimpse of the Left Bank, Maude decided. All any of the girls had seen so far had been a few places devoted to retail luxury, this overblown hotel and those clubs they went to. No, Frankie would have nothing to bitch about, try though she would.

  In less than a half hour Maude and April were settled snugly in a tiny, cozy Russian restaurant, La Chaika, hidden on the Rue de l’Abbé de l’Epée, a tiny winding street deep in the Left Bank. Maude threw her dark green double-breasted coachman’s coat, with its rows of polished buttons, high collar and wide swinging skirt, over an empty chair. She wore a suit of black broadcloth, its tightly fitted jacket worn over a green brocade waistcoat which provided a rich background for the starched ruffles of her white cotton shirt with its high-tied ascot. Her short blond hair was brushed forward in shaggy bangs that reached all the way to her eyebrows, and she looked like a wise, witty and wealthy don at Oxford sometime in the early nineteenth century. Only the way her gold watch chain stretched over her swelling breasts, and the eye makeup she used so cleverly, indicated that she was a woman and a most appealing woman at that. April sat tall and grave in her pale pink cashmere sweater, her single string of pearls her only ornament, her hair slipping straight forward over her breasts like twin scarves of gold silk. Exquisitely proper and perfectly groomed, she looked as if she were bursting with a grievance.

  “What’s going on?” Maude asked mildly.

  “It’s so unfair!” April exploded. “I didn’t say before where Jordan was but she’s with Necker, can you believe it? He called her this morning and invited her to visit Versailles. Only her! Just because she knows something about French furniture she gets a beautiful opportunity to work her way into Necker’s good graces … that’s favoritism if I ever saw it.” Her powerful anger was only slightly mingled with relief at being able to speak her mind.

  “That shouldn’t affect your chances unless this whole contract contest is a charade, and I don’t see how it could be considering the trouble they’ve gone to and money they’re spending,” Maude assured her.

  “How can you possibly say that? Necker owns the House of Lombardi. All he has to do is give Jordan thumbs up.”

  “That won’t happen because you’re the best for the job, April,” Maude said calmly and with utter sincerity. “You’re absolutely and clearly outstanding. I’ve told Mike that I’m concentrating heavily on you in my article—you’re going to be the star of my piece—and I warned him that he’d better have great single shots of you to go with the article. That’s one of the points of having my job. I get to shape the material from my personal point of view—it’s not true that a picture is worth a thousand words, you know, not when the writer is calling the tune.”

  “The best! Oh, Maude, thank you! I only wish I thought you were right.”

  How naively American April’s voice was, Maude thought, so uninflected, so little-girl, high and sweet, almost like the voice of a choir boy.

  “I known I’m right,” she told April. “I was there yesterday and I watched the way you showed that sweater, remember? Jordan didn’t have half your zip, her walk wasn’t sexy at all, and poor Tinker was a hopeless nonstarter. It’s lucky I bumped into you today—you can fill me in on your background while we’re here. Is this food all right for you?”

  “Oh, it’s great, it’s so … bohemian? I didn’t know they had Russian places in Paris. I’ve never had two kinds of herring in dill before. I’m trying to save room for the chicken pie I ordered.”

  “I’ll be sure to make a point of your hearty appetite,” Maude said, laughing at the wholehearted way April ate. She’d been right about the Chaika, it was like a little nest, with its feminine, comforting atmosphere. She’d always found it a good place to talk, without hovering waiters.

  “I’m lucky about calories, I can eat just about anything, but the food I grew up on was so basically boring that this is an adventure.”

  “Tell me a little bit about the Nyquist family, April. What does your father do?”

  “My dad? He’s a sweetie, a banker, but his work is basically boring too. My mother is the perennial golf champion of the local country club and she’s involved with Planned Parenthood and some local charities. Of course we all ski and sail and play tennis … the usual, you know. They’re great parents,” April said, dismissing them.

  “Brothers and sisters?”

  “One of each, both terrific. Yawn, right? I wish I could be more exotic but we’re a typical upper-middle-class family according to my sociology textbook. It may be an endangered species but that doesn’t mean it’s thrilling. It certainly won’t give you anything to write about.”

  “Yet your parents let you go to New York to model. Isn’t that unusual?”

  “Ha! They couldn’t even try to stop me. Naturally they would have preferred that I go to college but I’ve been modeling locally for years, earning pretty good money. They had to accept the fact that once I was eighteen I’d try for the big time.”

  Maude was fascinated at the way April’s face changed when she imagined her parents’ opposition. There was passion there, and contained power and a ferocity that turned the rather aloof impassivity she normally projected into the raw material of high drama.

  “Were you always the most beautiful girl in school?” Maude asked, suddenly blunt.

  “Well.…”

  “April, this isn’t a test of your modesty. I’m interested in the forces that formed you.”

  “I guess I always knew I was … oh, Lord, I hate to say ‘beautiful’ but I want to make something of myself and I can’t not know about my looks. I’m terribly ambitious, Maude, even if I try hard not to give that impression. I want to get somewhere! I want to be somebody!”

  “Don’t we all? I know exactly how you feel.”

  “What kills me is that I don’t get as much work as lots of other girls who aren’t as good-looking as I am,” April brooded. “Not by objective standards anyway. It’s a problem of range. I’m no chameleon like Tinker who can look any way she wants by lifting an eyebrow. At least that’s what Justine and Frankie have analyzed as my problem. What can you do if you don’t fit into any look but your own?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t look at it in a negative way, but as a challenge. Frankly I wonder why you haven’t tried to experiment with your look, bend it in other directions—makeup and clothes can do just about anything you want them to, after all. You can’t change your body type or bone structure, April, but that’s just about all you can’t change … I’m beginning to wonder if Loring Model Management is really the right agency for you, not that I know that much about the business. But maybe, just maybe they haven’t tried hard enough, maybe they’ve settled for your strong primary look without developing all your other possibilities. Did you ever think of that?”

  “But they’ve been so wonderful to me!” April protested, shocked. “I was thrilled when Justine signed me.”

  “Wonderful isn’t always the best thing for a career. Still, I could be wrong,” Maude said, shrugging. “Tell me, why do you think that Gabrielle d’Angelle picked you for the contest if you have such a small range?”

  “On, no question about it, my runway walk, my secret weapon. There’s a nice little contrast going with the boringly pure way I look and the way I swing my hips … I’m lucky I can pull that off.”

  “April, yesterday, when you hid your hair, what made you decide to do that?”

  “I felt I had to try something a little different. Sometimes I just can’t stand being so conventional-looking. Usually I use my Nordic blond thing to the max since it’s my strong point, but e
very once in a while the devil gets into me. You know a model called Kristen McMenamy? No? Well she’s this powerful, weird-looking girl with strong features, almost like a great-looking guy. She wasn’t getting anywhere until she shaved her eyebrows off completely and started wearing bizarre white makeup and changed her attitude to a tough ‘fuck-you and the horse you rode in on’ look—she became an overnight sensation. Nobody’s ever seen her smile. Now she’s a supermodel—she’s invented a whole new kind of beauty—and everybody fights over her for runway. Big deal, she’s androgynous! Not only that, she’s married and has a kid. How am I going to compete with that?”

  “Why would you want to look so strange?” Maude asked, fascinated with April’s knowing self-analysis that must be based on years and years of looking at magazines and comparing herself to the girls in the fashion photos.

  “Because I’m cursed with an expected look, the all-American-girl sort of Ralph Lauren look, which is fine if Polo is all you want out of life. It’s hideously boring! I look cold, I look like an ice maiden, and, what’s worse than cold, Maude, I’m uncool. Do you know what that means? Today it’s like the kiss of death. I haven’t got a speck of funk! Kate Moss in those Obsession ads? Now that’s funk. She gets out of bed naked, undoubtedly with a vile hangover and bad breath, she yawns, ugh!, her boyfriend shoots a candid and she becomes an immediate funk princess. Worse, she cleans up beautifully so she can do great runway stuff, glamour cover shots and the Calvin Klein all-American girl thing too. She damn hear convinces you that she’s an American blue blood instead of a too-short English girl with dishwater-brown hair.” The bitter envy in April’s voice rang out clearly.

  “April, it’s not just about funk or unconventionality,” Maude protested. “That’s your obsession, kiddo. You analyze your looks like an outsider and yet you end up underrating their value, in the insecure way only a professional beauty can. I’ve never known one who wasn’t down on herself, who wouldn’t pick out her only flaw and magnify it. You’ve gotten into the habit of seeing yourself in terms of the competition, instead of giving yourself the credit for being unique. You’re a rare and special type, and you will be for the entire rest of your life. You’ve got true classic beauty to fall back on, you’ll have it when Kristen McMenamy is forgotten, when Kate Moss isn’t hot any longer, you’re an American Catherine Deneuve, for heaven’s sake.”