“Dahgs can be trained properly, even in invahranments like New York,” the Ivy League hunk said in an accent in which every nasal vowel dropped from his lips like a freeze-dried Boston baked bean. “That’s what I keep telling deah Candycane.”
“Yes, no,” Lacy replied as the Doberman, activated by the sounds of Back Bay aristocracy, alternated vicious snarls with a distinct retching noise. “Candy, I don’t know that I’m up to all this,” she pleaded. “That is, I’m going to be awfully busy tonight.
“I have to—I have to—I have to work up a promotion for a dress manufacturer,” she cried, inspired. “Why don’t you and Pottsy just take Sicky-Poo for a walk down Broadway?”
“Promotion?” the massive date said interestedly, throwing caution to the winds to step even closer. “My mahster’s degree focused on public relations, actuahlly.”
“My goodness, Lacy, are you doing P.R. now?” the model asked. “I thought you just got a job on Fad magazine.”
“I did, I have,” Lacy puffed, holding a convulsing Sicky-Poo down with her knee. “Actually, I’m not doing publicity for Mr. Fishman. I’m, ah, looking for someone to take his account. What he needs is, uh, a fashion promotion at a restaurant or hotel,” Lacy managed, moving her foot out from under Sicky-Poo’s unattractively slavering jaws. “Yes, well, maybe a press party. Mr. Fishman’s got a really promising line of disco dresses.”
Before Lacy could insist that Candy take her Doberman back to her own apartment before he had a complete mental and physical collapse brought on, apparently, by proximity to Harvard’s male model, those booming accents observed, “Press potties ahr my true métier, deah lady.”
“He doesn’t have a budget,” Lacy cried. Her life was too complicated for male models with a master’s in public relations. Just once she was going to let trouble pass her by. “It’s OK if Sicky-Poo stays the night,” Lacy tried to say as the Doberman dropped to the floor, exhausted, and rolled over on his back. “Just pick him up in the morning.”
It was too late. Harvard’s gift to masculine beauty, giant economy size, stuck a hand that could cradle a football helmet as easily as a jellybean against her door to hold it open. “Deah lady,” his elegant consonants trumpeted, “a budget’s no problem. Not when a genuiahn creative experience is involved. Do the brothers Fishman have an address where Ahr could reach them?”
“No budget,” Lacy cried. Sicky-Poo closed his eyes, all four legs extended and gave a convincing imitation of a death rattle. “Oh, Candy, you and your damned dog ... No money,” she said more loudly, looking Harrison Salstonstall Potts IV straight in his bright-blue eyes. “I mean, you probably won’t get paid. Do you hear me?”
His genial Revolutionary countenance beamed down at her. “Loud and cleah, sweet lady,” the Boston accents responded. “Fortunahtly, Ahr have a small independent income.”
Six
By modest independent income, Harvard’s gift to public relations meant about $130 million dollars largely held in trust by the Bank of Boston. So Harrison Salstonstall Potts IV, Lacy realized, really could afford to regard his degree in public relations as a “genuahn creative experience.” Even so, she was stunned to hear a few days later that Pottsy had been to see Irving Fishman and that Fishman Brothers Frocks and Superior Sportswear had given him their account for an almost no-budget promotion for their new disco-dress line.
“What did your crazy date promise poor Mr. Fishman?” Lacy wailed to her friend. “Don’t you know I’m not supposed to be doing this sort of thing? I’m not supposed to be giving fashion advice—I’m a magazine writer. I’m not supposed to be turning flaky millionaire male models loose on anybody I’m interviewing! It’s going to get me fired.”
“Pottsy wouldn’t let a thing like that happen,” the redheaded model said reprovingly. “He could always buy the magazine. Next to public relations, Pottsy is really serious about being a publisher. He even has a novel he’s working on.”
“Publisher? Novel?” Lacy replied with a faint scream. “Now I know I’m in trouble!”
The next morning Lacy hurried to Jamie Hatworth’s office to reveal the whole story about advising Fishman Brothers on their disco-dress line and how Harrison Salstonstall Potts happened to get involved it it. To Lacy’s vast relief, the assistant editor put her baby sitter on “hold” to listen quite sympathetically.
“He’s got to be the weirdest public relations man I’ve ever heard of,” Lacy confessed, glad to find a shoulder to lean on, even if it was that of her immediate boss. “I don’t want to lose my job, it means more to me than I can tell you.” Honesty compelled her to add, “But I did start this whole thing. Some days I think I must be genetically defective, the way I keep opening my mouth when I’m not supposed to.”
“You haven’t lost your job,” the small, pretty assistant editor assured her. “What weirdo did what, kid? Start from the beginning.”
“I mean.” Lacy moaned, “a male model who lives in a loft in SoHo with two crazy artists and poses for them in his spare time instead of paying rent? And who’s supposed to be a millionaire only the only places he takes Candy on a date are to the Museum of Natural History on free-admission days and down to Grand Central Station to watch the stock-market reports on the big screen? You’ve got to be kidding!”
“No, I know Boston,” Jamie Hatworth said thoughtfully. “But go on.”
“It’s all my fault Pottsy’s involved in this,” Lacy said, feeling she could give way to a considerable store of subliminal guilt. The memory of what had happened just a few weeks ago in a certain bar in a certain hotel in the West as a result of her talent for saying the first thing that came into her head was still horribly clear. “Sometimes I think I need to join some antiassertiveness class somewhere,” she moaned. “One where they teach you to be so uncommunicative and withdrawn you’re practically in a coma.”
Jamie Hatworth only smiled. “So you were the one who came up with the bright idea for Irving Fishman’s new disco-dress line? We received a ton of press releases about it this morning. OK, worse things have been done around here.” She paused. “I’d tell you what, but I don’t want to encourage you.”
Lacy moaned again, uncomforted. “I know it was a sort of breach of professional ethics for me to give any sort of fashion consulting advice, but the way Mr. Fishman was headed with all those green and purple satin dresses, I just got carried away. And then I just happened to remember what public-relations people did when they got stuck with turkeys. They give a big promotion party—you know, a lavish buffet and invite the media, with gorgeous models in skimpy clothes handing out press releases. But I didn’t mean that Harrison Salstonstall Potts ought to do it!
“Actually,” Lacy said, holding her head in her hands as she propped her elbows on Jamie Hatworth’s desk among the March proofs of Fad magazine, “I thought that when Pottsy went to see Mr. Fishman to solicit his account that would be the end of it. But unfortunately Mr. Fishman remembered seeing Pottsy play tight end for Harvard several years ago, and now he thinks I’m a genius for having found him!”
“It does sound a little complicated,” the assistant editor agreed. “So your friend the Thornton model has this free-lance public-relations man she’s seeing, and he went over to Irving Fishman to get Fishman Brothers’ promotion account? And in addition to your talking Irving Fishman into a disco-dress line, he also bought the idea of a big promotion from, ah, the Harvard weirdo?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Lacy shuddered. “I mean, I’ve done plenty of public-relations shows. I used to be the girl who came out in a tiger-stripe bikini at stockholders’ meetings carrying the flow charts of profit-and-loss statements. And I’ve done plenty of sales rallies at the Atlantic City Bunny Club when I needed the money, wearing those corsets and the bunny ears and reciting poems about positive mental attitude and selling the sizzle, not the steak. But I’ve never seen anybody like Pottsy,” she admitted. “He works for practically nothing because he thinks public rela
tions is so ‘creative’!”
Jamie Hatworth was staring at Lacy with a more than usually thoughtful expression. “Can I ask you something, kid?” she said suddenly. “Do you ever date?”
“No,” Lacy said, with a quick, inadvertent grimace. It was a subject she wanted to stay away from. “I really don’t need any more distractions, honestly. I’m very career oriented. Why?”
The other woman shrugged. “Just asking. Maybe wondering where all this ... energy ... comes from.” Jamie Hatworth made some notations on the month’s assignment sheets in front of her. “I kind of like it,” she murmured, scratching her head with her pencil. “There might be a story in it, especially if there’s going to be a fashion show. The press and electronic media will be there, won’t they?”
“Oh, yes,” Lacy affirmed, not sure what Potts Productions had arranged but aware of certain sketchy plans Candy had relayed. “I’m sure they’ve all been invited.”
“Well, who knows?” Jamie Hatworth sighed. “Maybe we could use something strange at Fad for a change. They used to call it ‘originality’ in the old days.” She picked up Fad magazine’s assignment sheet for the month and marked it, “Fishman Brothers—Kingsley,” without looking up.
“You mean you want me to keep covering it?” Lacy breathed. “You mean go through the whole Potts Promotions disco-dress launching for Fishman Brothers Frocks and Superior Sportswear and everything?”
“Why not?” Jamie Hatworth said, picking up the telephone receiver to reconnect with her sitter. “It’s more than any of the other junior fashion writers have going for them right now, isn’t it?”
The real impact of the assistant editor’s remark hit Lacy about fifteen minutes later, when she had settled down at the clutter of the utility table in the art department the junior fashion writers shared to a rewrite of Swiss knit-top ski boots.
She was competitive, Lacy realized, staring at the words she had just written on the lighted screen of the computer terminal about knitted tops keeping the snow out of your Swiss-made equipment. After only a few weeks she was holding her own with the other four junior fashion writers. And they were all trying out for the one permanent job slot!
They were an interesting group, Lacy had found, and easy to know, mostly due to the fact that when they sat down to work at the same time at the makeshift table jammed into the art department, their elbows bumped. And of course they had to wait their turn at the terminal. It didn’t take long before they’d introduced themselves.
Ariana Lockworth was an art-history major from Wellesley who was working in fashion reporting, she told them, to finish her research on the meaning of historical and sociological influences on the changing styles in women’s clothing.
“You mean like bustles and flapper hats?” Lacy had said interestedly. “Did that sort of reflect how women felt about themselves in those days?”
“Only peripherally.” Ariana was tall, bony, and had a gloomy expression. “But it reflected how society felt about them. Today we’re into an overt decadence,” she said, eyeing Lacy’s pink denim bustier over a black cotton turtleneck, “that emphasizes breasts, nudity, legs and modern woman’s neurotic craving for accessibility.
“That,” she added hollowly, “goes far to downgrade their worth.”
“I see what you mean,” Lacy murmured thoughtfully. The part about decadence she could certainly agree with; she could hardly forget the terrible tarty Claude Montana cocktail dress and the effect it had had in Tulsa.
Nancy and Clorinda were two other members of the junior fashion writer’s group. Nancy was a former model who’d burned out doing bit parts in move videos, especially massed chorus effects with the Bee Gees, and Clorinda was an out-of-work jazz singer.
“Jazz is coming back,” the soignée black girl said a trifle belligerently. “It will replace all this dung about rap rock.”
“I never thought jazz had gone away,” Lacy said, puzzled. “It’s all my dad listens to.”
Everybody hated the fifth member of their group, Keith, a good-looking athletic type who wore black suits and red suspenders. And who had just recently come into publishing after his glorious career on Wall Street had been cut off prematurely by the stockmarket crashes.
“Don’t mind me, girls,” Keith said smugly to everyone, “I’m not really competing. I’m a management trainee.”
They knew Keith was telling the truth. While the four women scrambled and competed for the one open junior writer job, Keith was headed for the top and management levels. Where, Nancy had pointed out, the boys are.
This new break, then, was more than Lacy had ever hoped for; she had to keep pinching herself to see if she was dreaming. With an exclusive story on a successful Fishman Brothers promotion of their new disco dress, she had a chance to do a virtuoso piece of writing that could win a lead slot in the front of the magazine in some future spring issue of Fad. And after the editorial staff had gone bananas over her piece, Lacy daydreamed, managing editor Gloria Farnham would naturally submit it to the annual York Dress Design Institute Award for fashion reporting. She would get first prize and a bid from Vogue to join Condé Nast Publications. Or The New York Times. Anything was possible, she told herself deliriously.
On the crest of such wishful thinking, it was more than a little horrifying to find that Harrison Salstonstall Potts IV was planning a Potts Promotions extravaganza and fashion show at a nightclub on Forty-seventh Street off Broadway formerly called the Spearmint Patch that had been known in decades past, before lawsuits and bankruptcy disputes, as the home of the twist. Now renamed the Zebra Lounge.
“No, no, you need the Waldorf-Astoria,” Lacy desperately tried to explain, remembering her own rather difficult days as a promotion-shows model. “Or the New York Hilton is good. You prepare a guest list of all the buyers from the big department-store chains, as well as all the newspapers and New York television stations, and get well-known guest artists, like Mel Torme and Lainie Kazan, to donate their time. It takes weeks of organization and there are things like mailing lists—”
“Undoubtedly, deah dreamboat,” Pottsy trumpeted genially, “but what Ahr have in mind, since the brothers Fishman are relying on sheer artistic creativity and not limitless promotional funding, is a trendy, lighthotted preview in natural envahrahnments.”
“What natural envahrahnments?” Lacy cried. “I can’t understand the way you talk. You mean, you’re going to do it all on freebies?”
“Moah or less, moah or less. Thursday naht at the Zebra Lounge is not to be sniffed at, deah lady, even when one considers the owner is a personal friend of mine. And my modeling compatriots, the best-looking men in New York, if I do say so myself, have contributed generously to the guest list. Mah mastah plan is to display the brothers Fishman’s excellent creations in the haut monde of select café society, featuring le dernier cri of their fashion wholesalers’ genius. Then we will wait for the demands of the press to overwhelm us with cries for moah. And as for guest artists,” he said, patting Lacy’s head, “my roommate, a fellow of the Art Students League, has issued open invitations to the upper school, which will attend. We have virtually an ironclad commitment that Tiny Tim and his All-Girl Ukulele Orchestra will donate their time following the runway revealments.”
“You’re mad, mad,” Lacy groaned, genuinely horror struck. Unfortunately she wasn’t able to convince even Candy, who had been assigned to round up teenage models for the show from a yoga school in Bayonne, New Jersey, partly owned by Potts Industries of Marblehead, Massachusetts.
“Please listen to reason,” Lacy begged her friend. “Nobody can do a dress-promotion fashion show on freebies, not even your nutty date. You can’t bus a totally inexperienced group of girls into Manhattan to model in a fashion show without any rehearsal. You can’t have a fashion show on a Thursday night in a disco off Times Square that nobody’s ever heard of! I don’t think Mr. Fishman’s even got his demo dresses sewn. He has gotten the copyrights for the celebrity likenesses thoug
h,” she added as an afterthought. “This is my story—the one that’s going to make me famous,” Lacy wailed. “Unless that lunatic from Boston kills it completely!”
The redheaded Thornton model just sighed. “Actually, I think it’s going to work out all right,” Candy O’Neill tried to assure her. “I leave it all up to Pottsy. He says, ‘Just pray it doesn’t rain.’”
Thursday night, however, as Candy and Lacy made their way downtown in a yellow cab with arm loads of boxes of Fishman Brothers new Disco Queen dress line, midtown Manhattan was awash in a northeast storm that had swept even the Theater District bare of crowds. Harrison Salstonstall Potts was waiting for them in front of the Zebra Lounge with an umbrella and a large smile on his indestructible Revolutionary countenance.
“Bring the costumes, deah lovelies,” Pottsy shouted as they spilled from the cab and into the entrance. “Mah low-budget mastahpiece has just begun!”
“Oh, no,” Lacy breathed, staring up at the sign over the entrance advertising the Peptic Ulcers punk-rock band. The horrid sound that emerged from the Zebra Lounge penetrated even the storm’s loud roar. “Disco—not this!” she tried to explain as Pottsy swept them inside. “Little hats, chic black net stockings,” she breathed as a wall of sound assaulted them in a tunnel-like entrance painted pale pink and studded with sequins. “Not punk rockers! You need Billy Joel, Barbra Streisand, Victoria Principal—”
A tall man with a pale face wearing horn-rimmed glasses emerged from a jammed wall of bodies in what was undoubtedly the biggest crowd inside anywhere in the Times Square area that rainy night. “I’m Leonard Birnbaum,” he shouted hoarsely before a crowd of youths with shaved heads and safety pins in their noses surged out of the crowd and swept him away. “My clothes!” he screamed. “My art!”
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