Jeremy followed from the hallway with a fabric swatch for a stretch panel and glanced at the expensively shod feet. “You got the red,” he said, tossing Laura the fabric. She caught it in midair.
Ruby tilted her leg so Laura could see the shoe from the side. It was a stiletto, naturally, with straps shaped like an art deco window panel and a heel curving at an angle made possible by some technology that had been unavailable two years before. “The black was too serious,” she said.
He stepped behind her and looked from behind. He and Ruby had developed an odd relationship, like siblings who tolerated each other because Mom was watching.
“There were five pairs of those in the entire city,” he said, “in your size, I mean.” That was a lovely taunt. Ruby wore size eight and a half, big even for her height at five-seven, which Jeremy knew from the gold shoe-buckle incident six months prior. “Did you hear?” He slipped the pattern Laura was working on across her desk. “Dymphna Bastille had them special ordered, and Thomasina Wente went to Plohound and managed to get them instead. There was a scene at Grotto.”
Laura spread out the foot-square of fabric. He stretched the fabric, and she measured it, punching the number into a calculator.
“Oh, a scene at Grotto,” Laura said dryly. “Imagine.” She handed Jeremy a ruler.
He measured across the widest point of the bust. “I don’t know how either one of them got the spoon out of their nose long enough to fight about shoes. Add another quarter here, and I think we’re okay.”
Ruby chimed in, “Don’t say stuff like that.”
“She not bothering with the spoon anymore?” he asked.
“It’s not right, Jeremy. You shouldn’t spread rumors.” Ruby’s sense of social right and wrong wouldn’t let it drop as a joke.
Laura glanced at Jeremy, hoping he wouldn’t make another cutting remark because she couldn’t stop her sister from being who she was. Laura needed his help, and she needed things to be pleasant between the two of them. He took a second to regard Ruby, looking at her a little sideways, pursing his lips slightly as if he had to keep words from tumbling out.
Laura couldn’t stand the silence. “Oh, Ruby, come on! You know Thomasina gossips with the worst of them and spends forever in the bathroom like all the other girls. And Jeremy, you know better than to say anything to Ruby about her friends. I mean, my God, just try and say anything bad about me, even if it’s true, and she’ll take your eye out with one of those heels. Now, get out of here. I have work to do.”
Maybe that last bit took it too far. He didn’t like being told what to do even if she was half-joking. Or maybe she’d given him the moment he needed to think of a way to make his point and, quite possibly, he was making that point for her benefit, because she was blind, dumb, and tired.
“Thomasina’s an eight and a half, isn’t she?” Without waiting for an answer, he winked at Laura before heading back to his own factory floor, which she knew he managed to keep going by taking handfuls of drugs while no one was looking and maintaining a five- to ten-mile a day running habit to strengthen his lungs.
He had been trying to tell her something. Either Ruby was borrowing Thomasina’s shoes, or the model had snapped them from under Dymphna because Ruby couldn’t afford full-price limited-run Jimmy Choos. Nor did her sister have the connections to get them. Anyone could see that. Anyone could see that the relationship between the designer and the supermodel had gone rogue, except Laura. She had just put her head back into the pattern and thanked the stars above and the gods of geometry that the tension had left the room.
“Laura Carnegie!” Roquelle interrupted her reverie, standing over her, a bit too close, with a smile a little too stretched. “You left before the cleanup yesterday. I was looking for you.” To Sunny, she said, “Push my nine up half an hour and shift the rest. Shift my eleven thirty to tomorrow lunch and move that to the usual breakfast at Marlene X.” Without waiting for a response, she led Laura past reception, into the guts of the agency with its matching cubbies and equally well-coordinated assistants.
At the end of the line was an office. Unnecessarily huge, like an Escalade where an Accord would suffice, it had the look of a room that wasn’t used fully. The wood floors weren’t worn anywhere. The leather on the couches was pristine, and the desk looked as if nothing on it had been moved in months, except a duster flicking across it.
Roquelle sat on a couch and indicated for Laura to sit in the one opposite. The air had a sharp, distinct peppermint smell. On the table between the sofas, a tray was filled with hot coffee and tea, juice, rolls, and an ashtray shaped like a crescent moon. A turquoise globe was suspended above the ashtray by a brass rod the circumference of a pencil.
Roquelle pushed a button at the top of the globe. “Smoke?” The globe snapped open with a mechanical click, and a variety of cigarettes protruded like sunrays drawn by a meticulous child.
“No, thanks.” She was disconcerted by the cigarettes, a fact her host seemed to relish.
“I love showing off this thing. Nineteen twenties. Of course, it’s illegal to smoke in here, but most of the new girls are from countries without uptight rules. It makes them comfortable when they see their brand in there.”
“It doesn’t smell like smoke in here at all.”
“We keep after it. So. What was it you wanted?”
Laura, incapable of lying outright, had to find a way there by strategic use of the truth. She took out the White Rose brochure. “I found this in my sister’s things. This girl here, on the cover, I met her at Baxter City with Rolf Wente, but I didn’t get her name. I want to use her, and I was thinking, if you could track her down or if you represented her or if you wanted to represent her, well, she’s exactly the right thing.”
Roquelle studied the photo. “A little pretty for your brand, don’t you think?”
That actually was not an insult to the girl or the Sartorial brand.
“Maybe, but we’re trying sweet-as-edgy instead of edgy-as-edgy.”
“Interesting, and is she represented?”
“Have you heard of the Pandora Agency? I think this might have been a Thomasina thing, and since she’s not around anymore?”
Roquelle smirked. “That’s not a modeling agency, dear.”
Laura paused, cleared her throat, and ticked off everything she could have meant.
The agent cut off her thoughts with, “Why don’t you just use Rowena? She was fabulous for you, and she’s an untapped commodity. Poor girl hangs with the other hopefuls at Marlene X every morning like a lost puppy. The other morning, she was hovering around Penelope Sidewinder, eating a crème brûlée, and then she sat there, like she was saying, ‘Look, I’m not puking.’” She laughed, then sighed.
“What kind of agency is it?”
“The kind with girls, dear. Pretty ones. Really, you can’t be this naïve.” She would not be sidetracked.
“So, you never saw her here? No headshot?”
“No, sorry. You can still run her through us if you find her. Better to have someone agented for all the usual reasons.” That was the common line. Using agented models protected designers from lawsuits and entanglements. It also protected them from worker’s comp payments, insurance, 1099s, and other gnarly tax forms. Fifteen percent of salaries were lopped right off the top for the privilege. Over the course of a generation, designers, models, and magazines had bought the logic hook, line, and sinker without questioning what the occasional lawsuit would cost versus the additional salaries negotiated by the agents. There seemed to be entire economies built around middlemen and gatekeepers, but every time Laura tried to think of a way around it, the actual job of designing got in the way.
Roquelle stood up as if to let Laura know it was time to leave.
Just as she was thinking that had been the biggest waste of time of the week, she spotted a wet bar in the corner. On it were two upside-down chintz teacups with saucers leaning in tribute, and a pile of compacts and lipsticks. Roquelle was quit
e the klepto.
CHAPTER 15.
Laura exited the elevator in the 38th Street building, passed Jeremy’s showroom, waved to Renee, and turned a couple of corners to get to her own showroom.
She heard voices: Corky talking about dye methods he knew nothing about, a woman’s mumble with a deep southern accent—must be Nordstrom’s, their buyer was from Kentucky—and finally, Ruby’s laugh as she reacted to whatever the Southern Belle had said.
Suddenly, Laura was sure she would die a thousand deaths if she went in there right then. She wasn’t needed, only obligated. The elevator dinged as she rounded the bend in the hall, and a herd of giraffes poured out, all legs and necks and nice smells. She figured they must be there for a Jeremy fitting. His show was the next day. She caught sight of Rowena and Heather Dahl, and turned right around to head toward the bathroom.
Inside a stall, she sat on the cold seat and put her head in her hands. What the hell was she doing chasing down an Eastern European model who didn’t have an agent when she could be in the office resuscitating her business? Her failing business. She got up, determined to drop the whole thing and go help Corky, but then the door of the stall next to her slapped open, and she heard the unmistakable sounds of a woman hurling.
Laura checked under the stall. Nice shoes. Lacroix bag on the floor. A few seconds later, there was a cough, a delicate spit or two, and the rattle of the toilet paper rolling out. She decided to help by leaving before the puker did, but no luck, the stalls opened at the same time, and she was faced with Dymphna Bastille looking fresh-breathed, even if she didn’t smell it.
“Hi!” Dymphna cried as if she wasn’t a first class bitch. “How are you?” The fact that Dymphna actually took a second to ask such a question meant someone must have been watching.
Laura looked around but saw no one, just the underside of Dymphna’s chin as it masticated a wad of gum. “I’m good. You?”
The model shrugged. “I have a fitting with Jeremy in ten. They fit me when I was on a juice fast so, duh, the zipper’s pulling.” They stood at the sinks, washing hands, talking through the mirror.
“You know,” Laura said, “I was wondering, I’m trying to lose a little weight. Ruby told me about these capsules she got from Thomasina that helped.”
“Oh yeah?” Dymphna stopped making eye contact.
“They were a purply color?” Dymphna waited, so Laura made something up. “I know you don’t need any of that stuff. You’re one of those, ‘eat anything you want and lose weight anyway’ types. But me? Not as much. Anyway, I thought you might know from some of the other girls who are less, you know, natural about it.”
Dymphna looked under the stalls to make sure they were alone. “Yeah, well, they get them from Roquelle, but if you say I told you, I’ll deny it.”
Laura waved her hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell her Thomasina told me. What’s Roquelle going to do? Kill her?”
They laughed, but Laura felt dirty.
As she was about to leave, Dymphna said, “Hey, can you tell Ruby I’m sorry about Thomasina? I mean, she was a bitch, but whatever. Takes all kinds.”
Dymphna was the child of a hippie commune on East Hampton, so her street language mixed with openness to human diversity wasn’t surprising. What was shocking was that she seemed to know Ruby and the world’s most expensive supermodel were… how should she even talk to herself about it in her mind? Intimate? Sleeping together? Doing it? It all seemed weird.
Dymphna interrupted her train of thought. “What’s this?” She tapped the brochure Laura had left on the vanity.
“You know this girl?” Laura asked.
Dymphna took a closer look at the photo, jaw working like an oil derrick. “Never seen her.” She looked more closely. “No, wait.” She stopped chewing her gum for a second.
“What?”
Dymphna shook it off. “I saw her at a housewarming. Senator Machinelle just had her penthouse redone. God, it was all mirrors and marble. And the decorator was this blonde carrying a poodle. Oh Em Gee, I’m so not voting for her next time.” She handed the booklet back and started away. “I have to go.”
“Wait! Who was she with? This girl?”
Dymphna called back, “She was the decorator’s assistant.”
CHAPTER 16.
“What’s going on with your face?” Ruby asked.
Laura realized she was standing in the hallway outside the bathroom, staring at the floor. “I’m thinking.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Thomasina wanted to bring girls here, right? Find them jobs?”
“Pretty much.”
“Did she say she’d actually done it yet?”
Ruby shrugged. “We didn’t talk about that sort of thing a lot.”
Laura walked toward the elevator, pulling Ruby with her. “Are you ever going to tell me about you and Thomasina? Or are you just going to be embarrassed forever?”
“I’m not embarrassed.”
“Then, what is it?”
“You didn’t like her, not from the start, because she was rich, and rich people make you uncomfortable.”
“She was also a bitch.” She was sorry the second she said it, and Ruby didn’t waste that second making a point.
“You’d never say that about my lover if it was a man. Especially my dead lover.”
The Nordstrom’s buyer came out of the showroom just in time to hear. She had thick black glasses and red lipstick, and she smiled as if she and her two Binder Girls hadn’t heard an argument over a dead lover. As they crowded into the elevator, Laura had not one word to offer that could ease the tension or change the subject. Ruby mentioned something about her next appointment, and Nordstrom’s said something about lunch, and they were all out in the autumn air sixty seconds later.
“I’m sorry,” Laura said. “I suck.”
“Yes, you do. I still have to pee.” They went to Veronica’s and ordered sloppy pasta dishes.
Once Ruby got back from the bathroom, Laura asked, “Thomasina knew Bob?”
“Ivanah, mostly. She helped us get the backing if you remember.”
“No, she didn’t.”
Ruby shrugged. “Having her around didn’t hurt. It gave a good impression. Overall. That’s important even if you don’t believe it.” They ate in silence for a minute before she broke in, “You want to ask me things, but you’re afraid. Specific things, not that stupid, ‘What was going on?’ which puts all the responsibility on me to figure out what you mean. I don’t know what you’re afraid of, but it’s, like, coming off you in waves. It’s freaking me out.”
“It’s a little heavy, Rubes.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you love her?”
Apparently, Ruby expected a more mechanical question because she looked taken aback. That, however, was exactly what Laura wanted to know, not only because it could help modify the tone of subsequent questions, but because it would clue her in to how much she’d missed while her head was buried in her work.
“I did,” Ruby said, blowing cold air into the balloon of guilt Laura carried.
“I’m sorry she died.”
Ruby twirled some pasta, then pushed her plate away. “She was so nice to me. And she valued me and bought me things. She treated me better than any man I’ve ever been with, and she respected that I wasn’t ready to come out with it, and she was a total lesbian. Total. Modeling was the only thing she had that was her own, which is why she had the freak-out on the runway, but I can’t tell you how bad she felt. She had all this money and showed me her bank account and said, ‘What am I going to do with all this money if I don’t give it away?’ She was paying the rent and would have paid yours too, but you’d never have taken it. You keep talking about fair. But how was it fair that she had so much, and we’re always hurting?”
“That’s my point—”
“No, it’s mine. Because when you talk about fair, it’s about how you have less, and how you’re going to take less because of some idea t
hat you refusing help balances the books. But it doesn’t. Taking Thomasina’s money balanced the books. Throwing it back at her does nothing. It continues a cycle of unfairness.”
“I cannot believe you’re sitting here talking about a cycle of unfairness when you got what you got because you got these pounds of unfair gifts, like being tall and beautiful and still approachable and so freaking sweet people love you right away.”
“And your gifts? How is it any more fair that you were given all this talent that you get to use to make money? And she had beauty she used for the same thing? Some people get neither. So, what should I do? Not love someone, then, to keep everything equal? God, when did you get so about appearances? She was good to me, but like a grown up. She didn’t act like some stupid puppy, like a guy. It wasn’t, I don’t know, gamey? Like she just knew how I felt even before I did. And it wasn’t creepy or anything. She was all in. Once she had me and she knew it, she didn’t pull a punch.”
“Don’t get graphic, Ruby.”
“Oh, shut up. I’m not getting graphic. I’m just saying. She was… I don’t want you to get mad, but you will. Well, she kept buying me things, and one day, when we were going to talk to Jimmy about the rent?”
“Like every day in April?”
“She said, ‘Let me take care of it.’”
“You didn’t.” She felt the world was about to fall apart. She paid the rent from her patternmaking side thing, Mom paid from her retirement, and Ruby paid from her magical savings, which she suspected she was about to find out were pretty magical in that they didn’t exist.
“Well, of course I said no,” Ruby continued, “but then she showed me a bank account, one bank account, and you can’t believe how much was in there. She said, ‘All the money does is make more money.’ And what was she supposed to do with it? She could have bought the house from Jimmy, and it wouldn’t have made a dent. So why wouldn’t I just let her pay so we could have a good time together instead of me worrying and her feeling guilty?”
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