Satin Doll

by Davis, Maggie;

  She tilted her head back to feel the sun, inviting the first moments of relaxation she’d known all week. I’m in a swimming pool in France, she told herself, closing her eyes. I’m doing all sorts of strange things these days.

  A body came churning to her through the water, and a sun-streaked head and muscular shoulders broke the surface beside her. Streams of wet dripped from strands of brown-gold hair that stuck to Alain’s forehead and tiny beads appeared on his eyelashes. The water was so clear that the man beside her had only to look down and see her high, firm breasts inches away from his brown-skinned chest. Alain put one hand on the side of the pool, treading water. “Are you having a good time?”

  “Yes, it’s nice.” She floated beside him, letting her body dangle straight down, moving her legs only a little to stay in one place. She felt rather than saw Marilou and the de Bergeracs’ guests studiously ignoring them.

  “Samantha.” His voice was urgent. “You must come away with me to spend a few days at my house in the country.” He was looking openly now at her bare breasts. “You are so beautiful. I want to touch you. I want so much to make love to you. Come away with me now. Today.”

  She lowered her head slowly to look at him. “You know I can’t. I’ve got the show to do.”

  “Yes, you can. If you wanted me, my darling, you would. But you do not want me as much as I want you. Admit it.”

  It sounded like they were quarreling, she thought, looking around. “I can’t.” He knew how hard she was working. It was a crazy idea, insisting that she go away with him on the spur of the moment. She pushed away from the wall with one hand and stroked down the pool. He followed her, swimming alongside her.

  “Marilou has said something to you,” he accused. He splashed along a few powerful strokes, and then his feet touched bottom and he stood up, looking like a bronzed Greek god rising from the glittering water, piercing her with his eyes. “Samantha, for God’s sake, come to my house and let me be alone with you. I will explain everything. Don’t you want me?” he said a little desperately. “Tomorrow, will you come tomorrow?”

  Tomorrow was out of the question. Why was he making her choose? she wondered. Because he’d seen her in a topless bikini and suddenly couldn’t wait? “Alain, please don’t bug me,” she said, shaking her head. It was getting embarrassing. “Maybe later, after the show.”

  She hadn’t answered all the questions in her mind about Alain des Baux, and she didn’t think, now, that she ever would.

  The bright July sunshine of midtown Manhattan beamed onto the empty secretary’s station in front of Jack Storm’s executive offices. This particular Saturday afternoon a large group of people were waiting their turn to see him. A worried-looking Jean Ruiz of fashion coordination, carrying several pages of a typewritten report on the Plaza Hotel showing of the Storm King’s ski-wear line, stood with two visibly weary layout artists holding the final run of show-cards. A wafer-thin, dramatic brunette model in full makeup, wearing the bright red jumpsuit for the Waldorf show, leaned against the secretary’s desk and furtively smoked a cigarette.

  Peter Frank approached from the elevators, Mindy Ferragamo from her executive suite on the other side of the thirty-ninth floor, and they met at the group of fashion people standing just outside Jack Storm’s office.

  “We’re doing the same thing?” Peter Frank asked.

  Mindy pulled her glasses down from the top of her head and fitted them to her nose. She peered at the paper Peter was holding. “The Egoiste article on the Maison Louvel?”

  He shook his head. “A cablegram from a Paris modeling agency asking for confirmation of an order for four models on July twenty-second.”

  “Christ,” Mindy said under her breath. She stared at the Jackson Storm vice president in charge of operations for a long moment. Then she said, “This ought to be fun.”

  She pushed past Jean Ruiz and the layout artists and walked into the president’s office, an assured, brisk little figure in black, the only person who could interrupt Jack Storm on a Saturday afternoon without feeling the force of his wrath.

  When the president of the world-famous Jackson Storm empire lifted his silver head, they could see from the look on his face that he was as tired as everyone around him this hot, hectic weekend. “What—what, what?” he barked impatiently.

  Mindy exchanged looks with Peter Frank. It wasn’t a good sign when Jack used his Seventh Avenue voice.

  “Paris,” she said flatly. She reached across the desk to lay two newspaper clippings in front of him.

  “What the hell’s the ‘Egoiste’?” he growled. Since the clipping was in French, he pushed it aside. He lifted the story from the Paris Herald Tribune under it and began to read. After a few moments he put down his pen on the desk blotter and turned to the public relations agency executive who stood at his elbow. “Later, Freddie.” He waved his hand to the door. “Go outside and wait. I’ll get back to you in a minute.”

  When the PR man had left, Jack Storm leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “Every year I tell myself I’m going to leave town,” he murmured, “and let you people handle this damned July meshuga circus. And every year I’m back here, wading up to my ass in it. I’m the head of a multimillion-dollar garment operation and what do I spend my weekends doing in the middle of summer? Looking at a press luncheon menu from the Waldorf that’s gotten screwed up and a drek of a jumpsuit that somebody put in the Plaza show that they tell me we have to live with.” They waited for him to explode, but he only said mildly, “So tell me.”

  “She’s doing a show, Jack,” Mindy said at that same time Peter Frank put his cablegram down on the desk and said, “A Paris modeling agency is asking for verification of four models—”

  Jack held up his hand. “Jesus, you two, gimme a break!” He took up the newspaper clipping from the Paris Herald Tribune again and read it aloud. “‘One of the odder items of the week and generally overlooked by press and fashion observers is an announcement by Jackson Storm, Inc., New York, of a retrospective showing of the designs of Claude Louvel, July 22nd, 10 a.m., Maison Louvel, 3 rue des Bénédictines, Paris. No further information available at this time.’” He dropped the Herald Tribune clipping and lifted the avant-garde Egoiste article. “I can’t read French. What does this crap say?”

  Mindy shrugged. “I haven’t had time to get a translation but it’s some sort of feature on the Maison Louvel. Jack, I called Paris a few minutes ago and got the Doumer woman, who wouldn’t talk to me. Then I got some idiot who said she was the publicity person for the showing. I think she thought I was some reporter there in Paris. All I could get from her was that there was going to be a showing of some designer at the Maison Louvel on July 22nd, the same thing the Herald Tribune item said, and she asked me if I wanted an advance program. You know what this means, Jack?” Her voice rose a little. “Sammy’s doing a stunt in Paris and Jackson Storm is being credited!” She pulled off her glasses and stared at him with nearsighted agitation. “This kid has put out press releases and invitations to fashion editors in Paris for some kind of—what did they call it—retrospective? Right in the middle of the Paris fall fashion shows? If the New York press calls us, we don’t even know what information to release!”

  “And we haven’t even broken the acquisition of any of the French properties to the press,” Peter Frank volunteered. “Right now, we can’t even issue a denial, because we don’t know what the hell’s going on.”

  “Jack,” Mindy said quickly, “it’s easy to verify the sale of the Paris fashion house to us if somebody starts digging. You better call Dennis and get him to come into New York this afternoon. We need a conference. I’ll call Toby of Legal at his house in New Jersey and tell him to come in, too.”

  Jack Storm’s famous bright blue eyes narrowed as he stared at his executives standing before him. They were waiting for the first rumbling waves of his reaction to break, and he could see them bracing themselves.

  Abru
ptly, the head of the worldwide Storm King fashion empire leaned farther back in his chair, raked his fingers through his impeccably styled, platinum hair and began to laugh. He gave himself over first to chuckles, then to barks of laughter, the sound full of release from accumulated pressures of the hectic day. In a few seconds he was actually bellowing.

  Mindy Ferragamo and Peter Frank could only stand there and watch the president and chairman of the board of Jackson Storm Enterprises laughing his head off.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “This is all we need,” Brooksie cried, “a model whose mother is beating up on her! Jeez, give it up, Sammy, cancel this thing. We’re going no place and I want out!” The writer was sitting on the design-room cutting table, her shoulders slumped, her whole body expressing defeat. “What are you going to do with her anyway? Feature black and blue bruises to go with the numbers she’s modeling?”

  Samantha was on her knees, pinning up the hem of a bias-cut green silk dress that a softly sobbing Sophie was slated to wear in the show. She could hardly hear Brooksie over the roar of the machines steam-cleaning the carpets in the salon on the floor below. From the few words she could catch, she gathered Brooksie was trying to quit again. Sam was sick and tired of hearing it; they both knew Brooksie wouldn’t back out—she needed the money too much.

  “You can cancel out,” Brooksie insisted. “It’s not too late, Sammy. Look, I’ll help you call the hotels and leave messages for the fashion editors. They’re not going to come. Nobody’s going to come here instead of to the Mortessier show. So what’s the difference?”

  “No,” Sam said shortly. She sat back on her heels and looked up into the tear-swollen face of the Maison Louvel’s model. “Sophie, if you don’t stop crying, I won’t get this hem even. You’re shaking too much.”

  “That’s another thing.” Brooksie’s strident New York accent rose considerably. “You’re not getting any cooperation here, can’t you see that? The fitter’s not coming back. I told you yesterday when the atelier walked out, that was it.” She paused, distracted by another outburst of weeping from the willowy figure in the green silk dress. “You ever find out what she’s crying about?”

  “I don’t know. Some kind of argument with her mother,” Sam said wearily. “She won’t tell me.”

  She had come down from the apartment that morning with the sound of the argument between Sophie and Madame Doumer echoing through the building. The rapid Parisian voices were impossible to interpret. But when Sophie had slunk into the design room an hour or so later, it was plain Madame Doumer had hit her. The imprint of her mother’s fingers were still bright red on the model’s left cheek.

  “Look, I keep telling you,” Brooksie went on, “nobody’s out there. The publicity on this thing’s zero. We got two sentences in the Herald Tribune plus the Egoiste feature, and no calls on the invitations we sent to the fashion editors at their hotels. I wish you would listen to me, Sammy. Being slotted against Rudi Mortessier tomorrow morning is killing us dead. The rest of it doesn’t matter!” She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead despairingly. “Jeez, let me quit, Sammy. I’ll just take the retainer. You can forget about paying me the rest of my money, but I gotta get some sleep. I think I’m having a nervous breakdown.”

  Sam said, around a mouthful of pins, “Brooksie, do us both a favor. Go upstairs to the apartment and stretch out on my bed for an hour, will you?” She put her hands on Sophie’s hips and turned her so she could work on the back of the dress. “After you get some sleep, you can come back down and help Ulla go through the narration again.”

  The fashion show narrator they’d hired from a small modeling agency was a former Dior model with a marked Swedish accent in both French and English. After the last rehearsal at noon Sam had dismissed the models, telling them to go home and get some rest for the show tomorrow, but she had kept Ulla downstairs in the salon with orders to keep going over the script until someone could understand what she was saying.

  Now, as she looked at Brooksie slumped in her perch on the design table, Sam had to admit she wasn’t exactly the easiest person to live with these days. She’d driven everybody around her mercilessly. Brooksie looked worn out in her subdued white man-tailored shirt and brown slacks, her punk rock hairdo washed but not attended to, so that its usual jaunty spikes were now only a limp, orange-tipped black mass. Sam sighed. “You look like hell, Brooksie. Go knock off for a while.”

  The slumped figure didn’t stir. “So do you. Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

  Samantha didn’t need to answer; she knew what she’d find. She hadn’t worn makeup for days, and the freckles that dotted her nose and cheekbones were there for all the world to see. Her jeans were white with dust from the design-room floor, and she had on the same tank top she’d worn the day before, because she’d been too tired when she got out of bed that morning to look for another one. Her new soft, glistening hairstyle was scraped back into a pony tail and held by a rubber band. Tomorrow would be better, Sam told herself grimly. She was too exhausted at this point to care, but she was far from giving up.

  Sophie put her hands over her face suddenly and moaned.

  “She’s too damned stoned to model,” Brooksie told her morosely. “Look at her. I hope she can cover up that place on her cheek with makeup. It looks like it’s turning purple.”

  “Will you shut up? Sophie understands English. She knows what you’re saying. Besides, she’s not stoned, dammit. She’s trying.”

  “Yeah?” The other woman eyed the model skeptically. “She hangs out with a weird crowd, did you know that? I bet that’s what her mother got on to her for.”

  “I told you—” Sam began.

  “Look, I saw her in the rue des Capucines the other night, wrapped around some dude like you wouldn’t believe. I thought they were going to make it right there on the street.”

  “Chip, she goes out with Chip,” Sam gritted. She had to hold on to the edge of the cutting table to get to her feet, so tired that her knees wouldn’t work. She reached for a gold slub silk suit with a widely flared peplum that Sophie was also scheduled to wear and then suddenly leaned against the table, feeling she could hardly lift her arms. “That’s nothing new. Chip’s got something going with her mother, too.”

  “Who? Chip Chiswick?” Brooksie shook her head. “Nah, I know that hunk when I see him. This was some other cat, not bad-looking but skinny, dark, Middle Eastern type. Maybe he’s her dealer.”

  “Brooksie, go upstairs,” Sam cried, “and get off my back. If you aren’t going to help, at least get out of the way!”

  “You need somebody to get on your back, Sammy,” the other woman shouted back. “You’re not listening to what I’m telling you! This thing isn’t going to fly. We’re up against Rudi Mortessier’s show tomorrow, and he’s got the hottest designer in Paris. Nobody—I mean nobody—is going to come here, off the Syndicale schedule, to look at a bunch of old clothes!”

  Sam leaned across the table, her raw nerves screaming. “Just shut up, Brooksie. You’re not going to quit—you’re going to be here tomorrow and do your job. Even if you and I have to sit down and watch the whole retrospective by ourselves!”

  “You’re crazy, Sammy.” Brooksie’s face was white with strain, her eyes glittering. “You know how crazy you are, how crazy this whole thing is?” She stopped and took a deep breath. “You know, I think it was you who sold Jack Storm this idea. You did, didn’t you? You haven’t got any backup from New York. I figure you, like, sold Jackson Storm the idea that you could handle this whole stupid deal by yourself, right?” She jumped down from the table and faced her accusingly. “You’re going to blow it, kid. Hell, you’ve already blown it, but you’re too freaked out to admit it!”

  “I don’t give a damn what you think about me, about Jackson Storm,” Sam screamed. “You’re getting paid. Now just earn your damned money!”

  They stared at each other, breathing heavily. Good lord, she and Brooksie were going at each ot
her like a couple of fishwives. She knew they could be heard all over the building. She said more quietly, “Brooksie, go upstairs and lie down. I can’t take this, I’m too tired.”

  Sam turned back to Sophie, who was staring at both of them with a tear-stained face. Poor Sophie. They weren’t the only ones with problems. She wondered if Sophie were really seeing somebody other than Chip, or if Sophie just went out with a lot of men. Whatever her troubles were, the beautiful redhead wasn’t saying.

  Sam gathered up the pin box and the spools of basting thread into a little pile, while Brooksie watched her with an unforgiving expression. Maybe she was driving herself, shutting herself off from inevitable reality, plunging ahead to sure disaster, Sam thought. But what other choice did she have?

  Sam looked around the shambles of the design room. The models sent from the agency were just about what they expected, not terribly attractive and so untrained it was plain why they were still available. In desperation she had fallen back on Sophie to model the best numbers in the collection. At least the beautiful redhead was naturally talented and had the knack of making the clothes she showed look good. Sophie had been in better shape the past few days than Sam had ever seen her, until her mother had decided to slap her around.

  Just take one thing at a time, she told herself. She brushed her arm across her forehead to push back the wisps of hair that kept falling into her eyes. “Brooksie, will you go upstairs and get some sleep? This isn’t getting us anywhere, and we’re going to be up half the night the way we’re going. One of us needs to get some rest.”

  The tall blonde narrator appeared at the design-room door and peered cautiously in at the source of all the screaming. “You want to come down now, Miss Laredo? The man to fix the microphones is here.”

  “The sound man,” Sam groaned.

  The microphones, amplifiers and tape deck rented from the small electronics shop in the avenue de l’Opera had been useless during the rehearsal with the mannequins. The droning feedback had just about destroyed any attempts to synchronize the clumsy models to both the narration and the fifties music Sam had selected.