For a brief moment, Lacy shut her eyes. She had a fleeting thought that if perhaps she willed herself somewhere hard enough, whatever good fairy there was left in the universe would reach down into the screaming, surging uproar of the Zebra Lounge and lift her gently away. To someplace like Butte, Montana, or New Delhi, India. Because the agonized figure, she distinctly remembered, was Mr. Irving Fishman’s photographer-dress-designer son-in-law from Queens.
Even Candy O’Neill, struggling with the disco-dress boxes for the fashion show, was beginning to look noticeably pale. Candy’s face turned positively chalky as the hulking form of Harvard’s public-relations man bent and shouted something before he left them to make his way through the wall of bodies to the bandstand.
“Something terrible has just happened,” the redheaded model tried to scream over the riveting sounds of “Take My Body.” “What Pottsy just told me.”
Lacy shook her head, able to see Candy’s lips moving but not hear her frantic words. She felt as though she couldn’t move from the sight of the truly incredible crowd that had been assembled in the pink plaster spaces of the lounge’s main room and that had been, according to Pottsy, prevailed upon to attend by half the male models in the city. It wasn’t hard to recognize such well-known faces as the nationally famous talk-show host trying to hide behind a sequined plaster partition, the former governor of New York State and a U.S. Army general in civilian clothes. It was virtually impossible to ignore most of the starting lineup of the Jets, several stars from the New York Rangers, the alternate chorus from the Radio City Rockettes, most of the upper school of the Art Students League and the regular patrons of the Zebra Lounge in chrome-plated bicycle chains, Mohawk coiffures of various colors and leather knee boots with giant spurs. She couldn’t see anything that remotely resembled tacky, trendy, enchantingly neon-colored disco outfits in all the milling, screaming mob that filled the Zebra.
“I said,” Candy shrieked, her mouth close to Lacy’s ear, “Pottsy tells me the models from the yoga school didn’t show up!”
The next morning it was quite unnecessary to carry extra copies of The New York Times and the New York Daily News into Fad magazine’s editorial room. As Lacy passed from the elevator area into makeup and copy editing, there were already half a dozen writers collected around both newspapers, fascinated with their front pages.
When Lacy reached Jamie Hatworth’s office, the assistant editor looked up and said blandly as she studied her own New York Daily News, “There was good television coverage on the Today show this morning, too. But I got the impression the TV news teams only got there after the fire started. Is that you?” the editor asked, pointing to the front page of the Daily News, where a rather indistinct but ravishingly long-legged figure in a revealing satin dress decorated with the head of Elton John in bugle beads across the front followed in the footsteps of two firemen. They were carrying out the thrashing body of a punk rocker in leather tights and a hangman’s mask from the pink-sequined maw of the Zebra Lounge.
“I’m hoping and praying nobody recognizes me,” Lacy whispered, throwing the extra copies of the newspapers she’d brought into Jamie’s overflowing wastepaper basket, vastly relieved that she was not, apparently, going to be fired on first sight.
“Actually,” Lacy said, “I can explain everything. I’m so tired. I haven’t been to bed at all because I had to shower and wash the smoke and soot out of my hair. But then nobody warned me that the fashion show was supposed to end with a sound and light display by the Fishman Brothers’ designer, Mr. Birnbaum. That’s how the fire started.”
“It’s probably the most extensive news coverage I’ve ever seen of a Seventh Avenue dress line,” the assistant editor said. “Maybe this Boston P.R. man is a genius after all. Did you notice that the Russians have offered to let us inspect their missiles, and the Times has moved that story onto page two, inside, so they could carry that great photograph of a Rockette carrying out Joe Namath with all the smoke and flames behind them?”
“That was my friend Candy, not a Rockette,” Lacy pointed out, “and I hope you notice she’s wearing Fishman Brothers Disco Queen in a princess cut. Actually, Candy was on the stage when the sound and light show shorted out, which happened, the firemen said, because of all the rain and the roof was leaking. Nobody was hurt,” Lacy said with a faint shudder, “but when I got home I just started shaking, thinking about all those people jammed in there like that.”
“You were modeling?” Jamie Hatworth said, raising her eyebrows. “Is that why you were wearing Irving Fishman’s disco dress in the Daily News photograph?”
Lacy eased herself tiredly into a chair after having swept a pile of back issues of Marie-France onto the floor. “Well, you see,” she went on, lightly massaging her aching, sleepless head with the tips of her fingers, “none of the girls from the yoga school Pottsy owns showed up to model the clothes because their bus driver didn’t want to make the trip from Bayonne in the storm. And that left just Candy and me. I couldn’t really let Candy do it alone, now could I? Not just one poor model in front of all that howling mob with that punk-rock band, and then Mr. Birnbaum’s sound and light show he was going to start up for the grand finale. It was my story,” Lacy said, drawing herself up with as much pride as she could muster after a hectic, sleepless, twenty-four hours. “Actually,” she admitted, “nobody was paying much attention until the sparks started cascading all over the stage when the wiring for the light show shorted out. The whole place really loved it, you know how people in New York are. They were clapping and yelling until, of course, they realized the Zebra Lounge was actually on fire. The New York Times reporters,” Lacy sighed, “and the Daily News didn’t come until the fire engines arrived. So The Village Voice and Rolling Stone have the only eyewitness coverage from inside. I was so busy trying to get people turned in the right direction to go out the fire-exit doors in the back instead of the front, which was jammed up, that I didn’t notice the television-news crews had arrived.”
“Fantastic,” the assistant editor muttered. “Absolutely fantastic. I haven’t seen media coverage on Today and Good Morning America like that since the last Iranian hostage situation. Irving Fishman will be ecstatic. The Harvard nut case’s reputation is made in public relations.
“Although,” the small pretty woman said, looking up and smiling wryly, “it sounds like you and your girlfriend did most of the work.”
“Poor Candy,” Lacy said with genuine regret. “This hasn’t been too great for her, after all the work she put into Pottsy’s promotion. Because after the electrical connections under the roof were shorting out and just making the most spectacular fountains of blue and red flames, these two figures came sort of creeping out where, ah...”
To her embarrassment, Lacy found herself blushing. “Well, Pottsy was making out with the girl singer from the punk-rock band in this crawl space under the stage when the floorboards started to smoke. I was on the runway showing a Fishman Brothers Tacky-Max number in a sort of a mauve-plum color. When I turned around, there was this totally nude figure of Pottsy in front of me. I hate to say this, but all those weird people thought it was part of the fashion show, and it just blew them away. They were screaming and applauding and yelling for more, and then, of course, just as Pottsy was running around trying to get his pants on, the fire department came and plowed right through the dance floor with this enormous canvas hose.”
“And your friend?” Jamie wanted to know, holding a finger to her brow in a gesture that effectively hid her face.
“Never wants to see Pottsy again,” Lacy said with a sigh. “Candy has definitely had it with Harvard.”
“Well,” the other woman said, stroking her eyelids as though they pained her, “it’s not, strictly speaking, a Fad fashion story. But I think Gloria might just go with it. I’d approach it as an exclusive eyewitness account but definitely not as if you were participating in any way. Like actually modeling Irving Fishman’s clothes. Although at this point, I don�
��t think anybody really cares.”
“You mean you want it?” Lacy said in a low, strained voice. “You mean you really want it? You want me to write ... all this after all? You mean it’s not a total ... disaster?”
“It all depends on your first draft,” the assistant editor said, closing her eyes.
In spite of her headache and her sleeplessness, Lacy managed a raggedly brilliant All-American Girl smile. “Believe me, Jamie, I can promise you I’ll never get involved in public relations again. I never liked it to begin with, anyway. What I want,” she added fervently, “is just to settle down to the peace and quiet we usually have around here.”
Seven
But peace and quiet was not to be.
Two days later, as the staff of Fad magazine filed into their vast, overcrowded editorial room, managing editor Gloria Farnham, wearing a truly spectacular Ted Lapidus ultrasuede poncho and matching slacks, met them with a vaguely pained smile.
“Well, sweeties,” she called out over their early-morning editorial racket, “I hate to tell you this, but today’s schedules are going to come absolutely unglued, so don’t do anything important!” As the magazine staff stopped what they were doing and turned to her, she went on, “Well, actually, what’s happened is—the new owners have called an employees’ meeting.”
After a moment’s shocked silence someone in the crowd cried, “New owners?”
“Just read your announcements,” Gloria said, looking around her. “My God, where are the new announcements about the employees’ meeting, anyway? Well, when you find them, don’t forget to assemble in the auditorium in half an hour.”
It was Jamie Hatworth who found the stack of neatly typed announcements under the art department’s morning delivery of coffee and Danish. “I don’t think I can cope with this,” she cried. “People were saying we’d been sold out to a conglomerate, and I refused to believe them. But it’s true! Look at this.”
Mike, the layout artist, finally read the announcements aloud for those who didn’t get their copies.
“There will be an important employees’ meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the large assembly room on the twelfth floor today to introduce Fad Publishing Group’s new corporate owners. Please attend.”
No one waited for nine-thirty to arrive. They all filed silently out to the elevators. In the hallway, Lacy murmured to Jamie Hatworth that perhaps the new owners would do something about getting the junior writers their desks.
“Don’t push it,” the editor said out of the corner of her mouth. “We may not be needing desks by five o’clock.”
The large auditorium for the Fad Publishing Group on the twelfth floor was rapidly filling up by the time Lacy, Jamie Hatworth and the layout artist arrived. They had to take whatever seats they could find together, which turned out to be the less desirable ones on the extreme left and in the fifth row, right under the podium. Too close, the layout artist observed, for what was going to happen.
“What’s going to happen?” Jamie Hatworth asked under her breath. “Do we get a cigarette and a blindfold? Steak and lobster for our last meal?”
“Actually these are the conglomerate guys,” the layout artist said in a low voice as they slid into their seats. “The brass over the Fad Publishing brass is coming to look us over. From the scuttlebutt I heard this morning, this conglomerate crowd who bought us out are tigers, wolves from Wall Street that are hooked into several California banks.” He twisted his body in his seat as if to sniff the air. “Do I smell fear in here? Half this crowd knows they won’t be here in six months. Not with hardnoses like Michael Echevarria.”
The layout artist produced a rolled-up copy of People magazine and passed it across Jamie Hatworth’s lap to Lacy. “Read it and weep,” he said sotto voce. “It’s a profile of our new masters.”
As Lacy opened the copy of People, there was a stir in the auditorium. The buzz of conversation died out as half a dozen men in business suits came on stage and grouped around the podium.
It was true, Lacy could see, the figures on the stage all looked rather wolfish, with their trim bodies, their hard-jawed faces, all wearing three-piece Brooks Brothers-style suits in dark gray or charcoal pin stripes. The “Wall Street wolves” were neat, compact, deadly. Except for a man who was two or three inches taller than the rest and who wore a continental-cut fine black Italian silk-and-worsted suit that fit his powerful, V-shaped frame like vinyl.
The group of executives parted respectfully as the tall man stepped to the podium and laid down a sheet of notes. He lifted his expensively styled dark head and viewed the assembled Fad employees through eyes that said he was all too accustomed to corporate takeovers. His shirt was white silk and the French cuffs that showed a fraction of an inch above his strong, tanned wrists were graced with heavy gold cuff links. He wore a plainly stated, exquisite blue-white diamond set in yellow gold on his left hand.
“Michael Echevarria,” the layout artist muttered, reaching over the assistant editor to poke a finger at the copy of People magazine in Lacy’s lap. “Father Basque, mother Irish, raised in an orphanage, used to be dock hand, stable boy at Belmont. Also construction worker, real-estate tycoon, moved in on the stock market like Ghengis Khan three years ago at age thirty-four.”
“Glurk,” Lacy said, staring.
“Good morning,” the smooth, quiet voice of the black panther said to the assembled employees of the Fad Publishing Group. “I am Michael Echevarria, president and chairman of the board of Echevarria Enterprises, Incorporated, to which your company now belongs.” He bent his handsome dark head to look down at the page of notes. “I know most of you will be interested to hear that there will be no personnel changes at any level of Fad magazine and its affiliates for a period of three months.
“That,” he said, “should take care of the majority of your questions.”
“Bastard,” a male voice said quite clearly behind Lacy.
The cold gray eyes flickered over the first few rows as though the comment had been heard and noted. “However,” the president and chairman of the board of Echevarria Enterprises went on, “I’m here to announce that there will be an ongoing evaluation of all jobs during this period by the Echevarria management team”—here he made a slight jabbing motion with his hand to indicate the executives around him—”represented on the platform this morning. Fad’s new vice-president of administration, George Hanley, will give you details of how the evaluations will work shortly.”
He continued to make a rather cursory study of the first few rows of auditorium seats, not referring to his page of notes now, as though what he had to say was, in the light of all the companies he had taken over, fairly routine.
Lacy felt the grip of her first stunned paralysis fading away, to be replaced with a familiar tidal wave of panic.
It was he! This sleek, towering presence in the fine Italian suit was not Michael Echevarria, president and chairman of the board of whatever he’d said, but the whole bizarre experience of that night in the penthouse in Tulsa in the flesh! It was the black panther and Mount Rushmore and the circus aerialist, sole owners and proprietors of all that zap! bam! powie! and other phenomena! And the man who still thought Lacy Kingston was a hustler!
With the full realization of who it was up there, Lacy began to slide her long, slender model’s body down in the seat, putting her legs with some difficulty under the row in front in order to get as low as possible and out of sight. She managed to get her shaking hand over her eyes, thumb and forefinger to her temples, as though overcome by some powerful thought she had to consider. Like how she was going to get out of the large auditorium on the twelfth floor of the Fad Building in the next few minutes. She needed a hat to pull down over her face. She needed a pair of sunglasses for a disguise. She needed to turn into the White Rabbit and jump down the nearest rabbit hole.
Actually what she needed to do, she thought over waves of terror, was something practical. Like get down on her hands and knees and crawl over the legs of the
staffers from Fad until she got to the aisle, where she could just wriggle away on her stomach to the auditorium doors. Because her mind was screaming that the man on the stage who had just taken over Fad magazine was the man in Tulsa who had purchased her all-night time as a hustler. And she still had his fifteen hundred dollars!
“This means,” the cool, authoritative voice continued, “that all Fad Publishing Group jobs will, in the next few months, be subjected to intensive study, with the goal of recommending revision or replacement of personnel if necessary. In the same three-month period—”
Lacy was practically horizontal in her seat by this time, her heart pounding, one hand holding the People magazine over her head in what she hoped was a casual manner in order to hide the distinctive, telltale color of her smoky-blond hair. She had to eliminate the hair. She clamped her eyes shut. She had to eliminate the sight of her emerald eyes. Which he would undoubtedly remember looking up at him so dazedly and willingly when he had taken her in his arms and made such wonderful, passionate love to her in the penthouse that night.
“What are you doing?” Jamie Hatworth hissed as Lacy slid even lower.
Glung! went the auditorium seat, snapping into the up position as Lacy slid too far, lost her center of gravity and dropped into space. She found herself sitting on carpet-covered concrete, trapped with the seat at her back and her long, nonstop legs under the row of seats in front of her.
“—this will help assess current nonefficient procedures,” the president and chairman of the board of Echevarria Enterprises finished. His dark head swiveled in the direction of the suddenly loud and disruptive sound of one of Fad magazine’s junior writers sliding out of her seat and hitting the floor.
There was a moment of prolonged silence.
Hustle Sweet Love Page 7