Scruples

by Judith Krantz

  “Assez?” Valentine’s lusty temper finally snapped.

  “What did you say, you guttersnipe, you—”

  “I said ‘enough!’ I would not stay here for anything. You will find out that you’re wrong, but nobody may talk to me like that—never! I do not stand for it!” Valentine ran to her office, picked up her handbag, and left the office without speaking to anyone she passed on the way. She found a cab and gave him her address. Only then did she begin to shake. She didn’t cry—just shook and shook. It was all so fucking silly, all so fucking sad.

  “Aren’t we the fun couple?” Spider said brightly.

  “Who do you think you are, Elliott, Woody Allen?” Valentine answered.

  “No moxie, that’s your trouble—why do foreigners never have a sense of comedic irony?” he complained.

  “If you sounded any more jolly, I’d take you out and shoot you.” Valentine tried to joke, but she was more concerned about the way Spider was lacerating himself than about her own jobless situation. Her crazy Elliott, so resilient, so skillful, so valiant, was like a fearless bullfighter who had just been badly gored for the first time. Even demolished as he was, he still wanted to sound hard-boiled.

  “Do you know you’ve got great tits?”

  “Elliott!”

  “Just trying to change the subject—cheer you up. And they are—small but great, perky, pointy, piquant—lots of nice words that start with a ‘p.’ ”

  “Piss off!”

  “Aw, come off it, Valentine. How about some tender, loving care?”

  “Red or white?”

  “Whichever is open.” He leaned back in her big chair and drank a glassful of wine in one long gulp. He had started on vodka at home—quite a lot of vodka—but then he remembered, thank God, that Valentine was in her room—he’d hate to get drunk by himself. He had burned Melanie’s letter, but every word of it crawled through his mind like endless subtitles to a very bad German horror movie. And this had been going on for three days and nights. Valentine, even Valentine, especially Valentine, must never know what had happened.

  “More wine?” she said.

  “Since you insist. Hey, I delivered a job today.” Valentine raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Would I kid you? My first job in almost three weeks. Girl drifted in, couple, three days ago, and wanted me to take test shots for modeling. Gorgeous but hopeless, a numero uno hooker if ever I saw one; no way she could work except for Hustler. But I shot three rolls anyway. The sexiest pictures I’ve done in my life. Why the fuck not? She came back to pick them up today and plotzed for joy all over the studio. It was Make-a-Hooker-Happy Day. I wouldn’t let her pay—at least I can still give it away. Why don’t I open another bottle?” he said, opening it as he spoke.

  “Elliott. Some food?”

  “You have a fetish about nourishment, my tootsie. Let’s talk about you. I don’t like the way you’re behaving.”

  “What!” She sat up, feisty.

  “Yeah—you should be out looking for a job instead of just sitting here drinking all that wine. Bad for the liver. Prince isn’t the only game in town. I’m not going to play agent this time—you don’t need one.”

  “Stuff that.”

  “Stuff ’em all—stuff ’em all, the long and the short and the tall,” Spider sang to himself.

  “I have no intention of ever working on Seventh Avenue again. Enough is enough! It’s finished—you couldn’t drag me there.”

  “Can’t say as I blame you. But what’ll you do?”

  “Take in washing. Look, I’ve saved my money. It’s nothing I have to decide today.”

  “Wish I could say the same.” Spider looked dismal. If some jobs didn’t come in his agent had warned him that he couldn’t afford to keep the studio—in fact, his agent was about to jump ship; he could see all the signs. Oh, what the fuck! “I wanna propose a toast—to the two most talented people in New York who are not yet on Welfare.” Spider drained another glass of wine and poured out some more, slopping it on the floor. “Sorry ’bout that—I’ll just drink from bottle—easier that way.” He weaved over to the bed and flopped down, taking a long pull on the bottle.

  The phone rang. Valentine was startled. She’d only been out of work a week. She wondered who would be calling her here so late in the afternoon of a working day.

  “Yes?”

  “Valentine, it’s Billy Ikehorn. I’m in California. I don’t know what to say—I simply could not be more upset. I just heard what happened last week from one of my sales staff who’s an old buddy of Jimbo’s. It’s incredibly unfair and it’s all my fault. Entirely.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “Of course you think I’m a bitch and I certainly was a prize that day. But nothing is going right out here. Scruples is the most beautiful store in the world and I’ve got nothing to sell, no one to organize it. I was in that rotten, stinking mood because the whole thing is falling apart—you can’t imagine how awful it is.”

  “Dear me.”

  “I don’t blame you for being bitter, Valentine, but you’ve got to believe that when I wrote that letter I thought it might do you some good.”

  “Wrong.”

  “I know that now. Prince and I have made up. You’ll be hearing from him—that’s what I wanted to tell you—he just doesn’t know how to approach you after—”

  “I won’t talk to him.”

  “It was that bad?”

  “Worse.”

  “Your mind is made up?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that! Valentine, come out here and work for me. You can write your own ticket. I’m desperate for a designer—without couture we’re just another expensive store. And you’ll go to Paris for the collections. Of course, I’d want you to be my buyer too. You can go to New York as often as you want to. I’ve decided that I’m just not about to spend my entire life in those elevators on Seventh Avenue—too grim.”

  “You don’t want much, do you? A designer, a buyer—how about a lady’s maid?”

  “At least listen to my offer, Valentine. Eighty thousand dollars a year and five percent of the profits.”

  Valentine, stunned, didn’t answer. Then her wild Irish spirit took over. “A hundred thousand. Who knows if there will be any profits?”

  “Well, in that case it would be straight salary, no profit participation,” Billy answered.

  “No way, Mrs. Ikehorn. Why not be optimistic? Maybe there will be profits. The five percent stands.”

  “But that’s a fortune!”

  “Take it or leave it. Either you need me or you don’t.”

  “Oh, all right—it’s a deal.”

  “And, of course, my partner gets seventy-five thousand and two and a half percent.”

  “Your partner?”

  “Peter Elliott. The best salesman in the world, lots of retailing experience. He will be able to reorganize Scruples to your complete satisfaction, I have not the slightest doubt.”

  “Since when do you have a partner, Valentine?”

  “Since when have we exchanged confidences, Mrs. Ikehorn?”

  “But I’ve never even heard of him.”

  “Since when are you a retailer? Excuse me, but it is necessary to face facts.”

  Billy was momentarily silenced by Valentine’s effrontery. Still, anyone who thought she could afford to speak to her that way must know what she was doing.

  “All of this goes very much against my grain, Valentine, but I’m simply too busy to quibble. I’ll hire the two of you, and believe me, I expect you to produce. There won’t be any contracts.”

  “We must have one-year contracts, Mrs. Ikehorn. After that—I’m not worried.”

  Billy didn’t hesitate. Scruples was losing money at an almost incredible rate. Not that it made the slightest difference to her; she could afford it indefinitely, but the figures would look so embarrassing when they were published in Women’s Wear. It was worse than embarrassing—it was a waking, unendin
g nightmare. People would laugh at her and the one thing in the world she must never be, never again as long as she lived, was a figure of fun. She had to turn the operation of Scruples into a success. Scruples must be faultless.

  “When can the two of you get here?” the asked. Valentine calculated rapidly. Today was Wednesday. If they started getting ready now and took the plane Sunday—

  “Next Monday. Will you please make hotel reservations for us? At your expense, of course. But just until we find places to live.”

  “I’ll get rooms for you at the Beverly Wilshire. It’s just down the street from Scruples.”

  “Indeed? That will be convenient for a twelve-hour day,” Valentine said.

  “Eighteen hours,” Billy laughed, having gotten her way.

  “Until Monday then, Mrs. Ikehorn.”

  “Good-bye, Valentine. I feel so much better about your losing your job now. All it’s cost me is a couple hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Not quite all that much. But don’t forget the seven and a half percent.”

  “Prince will shit a brick,” Billy said with a giggle.

  “He’ll probably enjoy it,” Valentine answered, and hung up.

  She had been so engrossed in the conversation that she hadn’t paid any attention to Spider. Now she was afraid to face him. His silence was accusing. How had she dared to make such decisions for him? Why didn’t he say anything? Valentine glanced carefully through her lashes to where he lay on her bed. He was sound asleep. Obviously, he had been throughout the conversation. One thing was incontestable. He did not snore.

  Spider Elliott was as little prepared to like or even approve of Billy Ikehorn as she was of him. He had burned with anger at every detail of the high-handed and arrogant way she had treated Valentine, carelessly causing her to lose her job with Prince. The fact that Valentine had managed to con the woman into giving him a job as, God help us all, a retailer, made him suppose that she must be fundamentally stupid, a woman with such a need to grasp whatever she wanted that it destroyed her good sense.

  Billy, on the other hand, had checked with those of her women friends who read Women’s Wear as carefully as she did and none of them had ever heard of a well-known figure in retailing named Peter Elliott. And if WWD didn’t mention him, he couldn’t exist. Valentine had pulled a fast one; the guy, whoever he was, must be her lover, and Billy had no intention of letting him get away with it. She’d wait just long enough for him to make a fool of himself and then confront him. A “contract” indeed. If Valentine wanted him as some sort of half-assed assistant, she could have him, but not for the salary she had promised. Not for a tenth of it. One of the most annoying things about having money was the way people never stopped trying to separate you from it.

  Since Ellis had died, a year ago, Billy had evolved in several ways. When she found herself a widow and one of the world’s great heiresses, her first move had been to sell the prison citadel high in Bel Air and buy an estate in Holmby Hills, a comfortable four-minute drive from the shopping area of Beverly Hills. If she had planned during the five years in Bel Air what she would do when she was free to five however she liked, she would never have assumed that she would remain in California—but now it seemed like the only thing to do. Scruples was here, her exercise class was here, the women she lunched with were here. While Ellis was well, California was merely the place they went when he wanted to visit the winery at St. Helena; when he was sick it was where they had to live because of the suitable climate. Imperceptively, it had become the only logical place left in the world for her to call home.

  As Billy, punctual to the minute, stood waiting for Spider and Valentine at the entrance of Scruples, her dashing, virile beauty had never been so potent. She was the kind of woman who only reaches her peak in her thirties, and the constant, illicit lubrication of secret sexual stimulation and satisfaction from the parade of ex-medics had given her face, particularly her voracious mouth, a voluptuous ripeness and readiness that made a complex and subtle contrast to her studied perfection of dress.

  “Trouble,” thought Spider, the minute he caught sight of her.

  Billy, spotting him with Valentine at the same instant, found that she still thought with her cunt, a habit she had believed was confined to the hidden side of her life. It did not belong in her normal, daily existence and she would not permit it there—the risk was too great, too much was at stake. Her reputation, her special status, which was demonstrated by the respectful way in which the media treated her, all came from a position that put her above the crowd; her necessary safety lay in never showing a chink in her armor. These considerations had become more necessary to her every year that passed. The sight of Spider was like a punch in the gut: The impact of sheer masculinity carried without swagger or shyness, that happily sensuous aura—her practiced eye measured the insistence of his physicality and her practiced brain clamped down immediately. This was one man she could never allow herself. Too close to home. Enough of that, Billy told herself, as she advanced to greet Valentine, putting both hands on her shoulders in a gesture that was not quite a hug, yet more friendly than a handshake.

  “Welcome to California,” Billy said wholeheartedly. She was delighted to see Valentine. She needed her.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Ikehorn,” Valentine answered tensely. “This is Peter Elliott, my partner.”

  “I’m called Spider,” he said, and bent to kiss Billy’s hand with that grace he was unaware of, that early Fred Astaire grace that is either born in the bones and the muscles or will never exist, since no training can develop it. Valentine had never seen him make this gesture to any other woman but herself.

  “And I’m Billy—you too, Valentine. Everyone who moves to the Coast has a whole new set of manners to learn. Well, this is Scruples. What do you think of it?” She gestured proudly toward the exquisite building that put all its splendid neighbors to shame. Spider walked to one end of the building, turned and walked the full length of the frontage, and then returned to them. “Bad windows,” he said flatly.

  “Bad! This building has already won three important architectural prizes and it’s been finished less than a year. Everyone in the art world knows about it. And you criticize the windows!” Billy was instantly outraged. “Just how would you redesign perfection?”

  “I wouldn’t touch them. Only a vandal would. But the merchandise is overwhelmed by them. This is a store, after all. It’s just a small problem, Billy, once you spot what’s wrong. I’ll find a way to get around it. No sweat. Why don’t we go inside?”

  Spider put one hand lightly in the small of each woman’s back and gently propelled them toward the double doors, nodding a greeting at the unknown doorman, grinning to himself. The windows really were a disaster. Thank God for small favors. A few more would be welcome.

  Billy could hardly wait till they received the full impact of the interior of Scruples. It was her pride and joy. She had had it modeled exactly, meticulously, and at great expense after the inside of the House of Dior in Paris.

  Spider stood stock-still inside the front doors of Scruples and looked around, sniffing the air like a hound dog. “Miss Dior,” he commented noncommittally about the perfume that pervaded the air.

  “That’s not your department,” Billy snapped, still smarting from his remark about the windows. “This place is perfect, just as it is. We’re going back to the stock rooms to look over the merchandise. I want to know exactly what you think and what your plans are for a new buying policy and—”

  “Billy, excuse me, but I don’t think so,” Spider interrupted. “We’ll get to the stock in good time, I promise you. Retailing isn’t just stock. Retailing is romance. Retailing is mystery.” Especially, he thought, to me. “I assume that your stock changes from month to month, so let’s take a look at the romance first. Ladies?” He led the way, not bothering to see if they were following, into the great room. Spider explored the interior of Scruples from top to bottom, including the underground parking garage,
without making any comment except a vague rumble in his throat, which expressed nothing at all but sounded thoughfully judgmental, at least to his ears. Valentine’s bewilderment, scarcely contained, was so strong he could almost taste it, but he paid no attention. Billy pressed her lips together repeatedly in vexation, but she was so confident that her store was impeccably elegant in its appointments and so vastly superior to all others in the size and luxury of its fitting rooms that she wasn’t sorry to give them the full treatment.

  Toward the end of the tour, Spider looked at his watch and suggested that they have lunch together and hear his comments on Scruples before they attacked the stock. Billy agreed, only because she was hungry.

  “Where is the nearest place to eat?” he asked.

  “We could go to the Brown Derby across Rodeo, but since it changed hands over a year ago, I haven’t liked it. There’s no reasonably decent place closer than La Bella Fontana in your hotel—we’ll go there.” The three of them made the two perilous crossings, rushing across Rodeo at its widest point, hopping over traffic islands, dodging cars making legal right-hand turns on the red light, and then dashing across Wilshire Boulevard, hurrying so that the light wouldn’t change before they reached safety. Finally they found themselves in a peaceful, curtained booth in La Bella Fontana, with its walls covered in red velvet, a fountain trickling in the center of the room, flowers everywhere, and, surrounding them, the atmosphere, artfully contrived, of an old-fashioned hideaway in Vienna or Budapest.

  “This is charming, Billy,” Valentine said, looking around her, happy just to be sitting down.

  “And that’s the second thing that’s wrong,” said Spider.

  “What do you mean?” Billy asked querulously. Her feet hurt.

  “Let’s suppose you were a woman who was buying lots of clothes for a trip to New York or London or a wedding or winter in Palm Springs or the Cannes Film Festival, something so important that you needed hours to pick and choose, not to mention alterations.”

  “That’s not exactly a novel thing to suppose. Scruples customers do that all the time,” Billy responded tightly.