Lovers

by Judith Krantz

  “Stop that!” she said in a low voice, conscious of the interested eyes of the squadron of draftsmen who were discreetly enjoying the novelty of this visit.

  He gave her another healthy pinch. “Malls don’t have to cross oceans, carrying picky passengers. It takes at least fifty thousand computer drawings to plan one ship, and that’s only to help the engineers and designers find the best solutions to the space, not to replace the human design process, so you deserve far worse than a little pinch or two.”

  “Miss Orsini, would you like to see the Sizione Maestra?” Olsen asked.

  “That depends,” Gigi said cautiously. It sounded like the sewage system.

  “The master section drawing, through the midship, deck by deck.”

  “Please! Lead me to it!”

  She and Ben took another elevator, accompanied by Hansen and Olsen, to the third floor, where even more draftsmen worked at even more computers. They went to a large office at the back of the room, where Gigi was introduced to Captain Dahl, Eustace Jones, and a third man, Renzo Montegardini, the naval architect in charge of all the design work necessary to turn the empty hull of a freighter into the finest cruise ship that had ever sailed the seven seas.

  Montegardini, Gigi saw at once, was more central to this entire enterprise than anyone except Ben, who merely signed checks. Even Hansen deferred to this tall, gaunt man in his fifties, who wore clothes as well as Vito Orsini did, and had an immediate charm. As he bent over her hand to kiss it, she felt as if she’d been knighted.

  “So, at last I meet the young lady whose genial inspiration caused me to leave my dear Genoa, my beloved studio, my apprentices, and my other clients.”

  “You make me feel guilty,” Gigi said, using her eyelashes with unrestrained abandon.

  “Do not waste your sympathy on me, most kind and lovely Miss Orsini. I am a convert to the New World. I love New York, my wife loves New York, even my wife’s cats love New York. And this is truly a magnificent challenge. Always before, I have worked on a ship from the first rough sketch. Here the problems are fascinating, but since the lines of the ship are splendid, there is no problem that cannot be solved.”

  “Then you approve of the ship’s lines?”

  “I salute them. I doubt that I could have done much better myself, and nobody in Italy has ever called me a modest man, except, of course, my wife, who knows my inner self. However, all other things remained to be done. I started with the funnel—but you know that—”

  “I know nothing!” Gigi exclaimed, and then remembered her manners. “Except about the fuel storage and the water storage and the kitchens …”

  “Ah, these engineers, they always start with practical matters. A malady professional, even a mania, but we forgive them their obsessions, since a ship must sail. You see, Miss Orsini, the funnel is paramount. It sets the silhouette of the ship, the signature of the ship, the style and romance of the ship, much like the cut of your enchanting jacket from my wife’s friend Lagerfeld.” He turned to the back wall of his office, where a covered painting hung.

  “Be still, my heart,” Gigi breathed into Ben’s ear.

  “The funnel?”

  “Renzo, you fool. He didn’t say he was married, did he?”

  Ben planted his hand firmly on her ass and left it there while Montegardini drew back a cloth from a painting of the Winthrop Emerald. Gigi’s heart battered her chest in excitement and joy as she studied it and tried to see what it could possibly have in common with the gray freighters she had seen in Mestre.

  Yes, the configurations of the bow and the stern were identical, but everything else belonged to another universe. Four new decks rose from the former main deck, sweeping back from the prow of the ship in one clean, positive line toward the great twin funnels that stood athwart the stern, their shapes a statement of adventure and grace she had never expected, and one that she recognized was entirely individual. The entire ship was white except for the single slash of emerald green that traversed every foot of the longest point of its hull, from prow to stern. There was a wide emerald green band on each of the white funnels, just below the round metallic smokestacks. Each of the four new decks was striped by a continuous line of blue window glass. In the middle of the topmost sun deck rose a tall structure like an angular open staircase, on which signal flags were flying. Although the painting was made of the ship at rest on a still sea, it seemed to be plunging forward, as if it were a spacecraft rather than an object that had to obey the laws of gravity, yet at the same time it proclaimed man’s profound and simple relationship to the sea.

  Suddenly, Gigi realized that she had been standing in a roomful of silent men, gaping without any verbal reaction at the picture of the Winthrop Emerald. She turned to Montegardini with a gesture of despair. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You’ve already said it,” he told her, smiling. “Four minutes of silence, that tells me I’ve succeeded.”

  “Beyond any dream,” she told him.

  “Gigi,” Ben said, almost impatiently, “I knew you’d love it, but you’ve got to look at the Sizione Maestra.” He held up a sheaf of large sheets of rustling paper, held tightly together by metal clamps at one end. “Until you’ve seen these, you really haven’t got a clue—”

  “Ecco, Bennito, I have a feeling that Miss Orsini has seen enough of these drawings for now,” Renzo Montegardini said. “She looks as if she may be suffering from the famous fatigue of the blueprint. Why don’t you show her the model suites, the fully appointed section of the restaurant, and the owner’s suite, and then come back downstairs, if Miss Orsini still cares to look at these master plans today?”

  “It’s not blueprint fatigue, it’s bliss,” Gigi said. “But you’re right, I don’t want to spoil the impression of the painting by looking at the innards of that glorious ship right away.”

  “Whatever you say,” Ben said, putting down the master plans reluctantly. “You coming with us, Renzo?”

  “How not? I must see if la bella signorina approves.”

  “You’ve made another conquest,” Ben muttered at Gigi as the parade of men followed them back to the elevator.

  “How come he calls you by your first name and nobody else does?”

  “He calls everybody whatever he chooses. He’s the naval architect, the artist, and we’re just the drones.”

  “Poor darling drone. How I pity you. But after all, it’s your name on the side of the ship.”

  “He allowed me that much,” Ben agreed, as they stood in the back of the small elevator, packed now by Montegardini, Olsen, Hansen, Dahl, Jones, St. Hubert, and Zamboni, none of whom intended to miss a moment of Gigi’s reaction to the model rooms. Ben’s hand was now pressed between the cheeks of her ass, although nobody could notice it, and his middle finger was moving firmly in an insistent rhythm, held back from its objective only by Gigi’s firmly clenched muscles and Monsieur Lagerfeld’s tweed.

  “I won’t get out of the elevator unless you stop that,” she said, her low voice pitched to be unheard by the others, who were busily arguing all around them. “They’re so polite that they’ll stand back to let me go first, so we’ll be stuck right here into the middle of next week.”

  Ben withdrew his hand as they stopped at the next floor. When they emerged, followed by the six men, Gigi looked around and, with a rapid glance, took in a group of model rooms that would take at least an hour to inspect in detail.

  “Tell me about the owner’s suite,” she queried, turning away to question Ben. “I didn’t know there was going to be one.”

  “There’ll be one on each ship, twice as big as each of the other suites.”

  “All for you, poor drone?”

  “Only if I’m aboard, otherwise for the most VIP of VIPs.”

  “Could I see that first, please? Just the two of us?”

  “But—”

  “Aren’t you the man who signs the checks?”

  “Gentlemen,” Ben said, “I’m going to show Miss Orsin
i the owner’s suite myself. We’ll join you in a minute.”

  The model rooms had been designed to the precise scale of the ship, so that their walls, like partitions, stopped well short of the high ceilings of the warehouse. As Gigi stepped into the owner’s suite, she heard the solid thunk of the door as it closed behind them, yet at the same time she could hear the conversation of the men who had been left to mill around outside and look for imperfections.

  “Alone at last,” she said to Ben, twirling around and around and kicking off her shoes.

  “Come on, sweetheart, stop kidding. Isn’t this incredible! Look at it, for God’s sake, have you ever seen anything like it? And this is just the bedroom. Wait till you see the sitting room, the kitchen, the dining room, the sun deck, the baths, and the walk-in closets. There’s almost a thousand feet of space here. Every detail’s complete, except for the things that the design teams are still looking for in Europe.”

  Gigi crawled to the middle of the quilted beige silk bedspread of the enormous bed and flopped down so that she lay at full length. “Great mattress. Just come over here first and give me a tiny little kiss. I absolutely have to lie down for a second, I’m dizzy.”

  Ben, shrugging in impatience, sat down next to her, bent over, and kissed her briefly on the lips.

  “Oh, better than that,” Gigi whispered. “You can do much better. Try to revive me, I’m wiped out.”

  Laughing, Ben too lay back on the bedspread and put his arms around her.

  “Was it the desalination system that knocked you out, or Renzo?”

  She raised herself off the bed and stripped off her jacket. “I think it might have been the elevator ride,” she murmured. With one quick gesture she unhooked her wraparound skirt and flung it on top of her jacket. “Or maybe I’m pinched black and blue. I’d better find out the extent of the damage.” As she was speaking, she rapidly unpeeled her panty hose and her panties.

  “What the hell’s come over you?” Ben hissed at her. “There are a bunch of guys right outside this wall. They can hear you.”

  “Not if I keep my voice down,” Gigi said in her softest tone, as she bent over him in a quick motion and unzipped his fly. “Not if you don’t make a silly big old fuss.”

  “Stop that!”

  She straddled him before he knew what she was doing, and looked into his eyes. “Do you remember that old song, ‘Only Make Believe’? I think it goes, ‘Only make believe I love you, only make believe you love me.’ Something like that,” she murmured, humming softly. “Only make believe we’re alone, dear, only make believe you want me so …”

  “You’re nuts!”

  “Yes … oh, yes, Ben, the spirit of the high seas has penetrated me. I’m making believe that the wall goes right up to the ceiling and nobody can hear us,” Gigi whispered with a wicked, merciless smile as she put her warm fingers into the fly of his shorts and imprisoned his penis in both her hands.

  “Don’t!”

  “Quiet, they’ll hear you,” she admonished him, exploring the dangling length of his limp penis adroitly, each stroke of her hands reaching the soft bulb of its head, lingering there an instant, and circling it before returning to follow its almost instantly expanding length and width all the way down the base. She wasted no time on unnecessary refinements or teasing moments or alternating pressures or interesting caresses. She wanted his penis as big and hard as it could ever get, and she wanted it fast. Fast and quick and now.

  As soon as she felt him filled and pulsating, as soon as she knew he was well beyond the point of any self-control and couldn’t possibly push her off and zip himself up, she bent her lovely head and took just the fat, velvety tip of his penis in her mouth and sucked on it as strongly as she could, using her tongue and the succulent pulling membranes of her lips and cheeks with every ounce of savage energy she possessed, while she held his shaft in a firm grip so that he was imprisoned by her fingers, all sensation concentrated in his most sensitive spot. At the same time, she listened intently to the rhythm of his panting ragged breath. The instant she could tell from the tightening of his muscles and the change in his breathing that he was beginning to approach an orgasm, she pulled her mouth away and slid upward on her bare knees so that she was able, in one quick motion, to take his whole burning penis between her legs, sinking it in deeply and fully, for she had been ready to open easily to him since she’d closed the door of the owner’s suite.

  She looked down at Ben as she rode him, her breasts thrust forward under her blouse. His eyelids were clenched together in an ecstasy of excitement. “It’s up to you,” Gigi muttered, as she plunged up and down with relentless animality. “It’s up to you how much noise you make.” She never took her eyes away from his face, watching the stern concentration of pleasure spread over his features in a grimace that grew and intensified every second. His teeth were grinding and he had grabbed her bottom in both of his hands so that he could push upward into her, but she struggled successfully to retain her dominant position so that she could observe him closely. She watched as his mouth grew grimly tighter and tighter in his effort not to cry out, and she redoubled her frenzied motions until he was galloping, all will lost, toward an irresistible climax. He bit his lower lip so mercilessly that she was afraid he’d draw blood. Only then did she cover his mouth with hers so that she muffled the low, barbaric sounds that escaped as he was finally overcome by a huge, wild burst of release. As she felt him coming inside her, she permitted herself the exquisite climax she’d been holding back since she’d taken him in her mouth, but a silent climax that he was too lost in restraining the sounds of his own mad delight to notice. As soon as she could move, Gigi rolled off Ben and looked innocently up at the warehouse ceiling.

  He opened his eyes, barely able to focus.

  “Why?” he croaked.

  “Why? I thought that was what you wanted … the elevator … the hand on my ass … your finger …”

  “You’re … simply … crazy.”

  “I must have got my signals scrambled. But just think, now you’ve learned how to come without screaming the house down. That could come in handy someday.”

  “Bitch!”

  “Right on! And don’t you forget it!”

  “Oh, God, I love you!”

  “Why, thank you, Ben. Oh, dear, I can’t find my panties.”

  “Never mind them. Get dressed for heaven’s sake. Oh, shit, the bedspread!”

  “I can’t leave this room looking less neat than when I entered it. What would people think?” Gigi found her clothes, piece by piece, exactly where she had thrown them, and dressed quickly. She went to the dressing table that faced the bed and inspected herself, nodding from side to side in disapproval.

  “What’s wrong now?” Ben asked imploringly, as he mopped and smoothed the bedspread.

  “Being on top has its advantages—my hair’s fine—but I have an unmistakable just-fucked look.”

  “Oh, stop, stop! You’ve had your revenge. They won’t even know the difference.”

  “Renzo will, and all the others too, even if each one of them is a virgin.”

  “Then stay in here and cool down. Take a shower or something. I’ll tell them you don’t feel well, you have a headache.”

  “But I feel simply terrific,” Gigi announced as she put on fresh lip gloss. “I’m ready for the rest of the tour. You’ll have to replace that spread, I don’t think sperm comes out with a damp cloth, and I seem to have … ah … leaked.” She slipped into her shoes and walked to the door of the suite. “Coming?” she asked him over her shoulder as she stepped out.

  “Gentlemen,” she announced, “the view of the owner’s suite has refreshed me. I feel like a new woman—shall we continue?”

  As soon as Gigi had left for New York, Victoria Frost put into motion a plan she had been mulling over for many months. When Archie and Byron had first tried to hire Gigi, they had promised her never to go after the Scruples Two account. Gigi had been determined not to solicit that j
uicy piece of business, billing thirteen million dollars a year and certain to grow larger, because she knew that, because of her, Spider and Billy would feel obligated to give it to FRB whether they wanted to or not.

  This prospect compromised her bid for independence and her family connections in a way that made her squirm merely in contemplation, she’d explained to Arch and By. She hadn’t even considered their offer of a job until they’d agreed to the condition. Both of them had made sure that Victoria knew that Scruples Two was off limits.

  And all of them were dead wrong, Victoria decided.

  In the first place, there was no possible conflict of interest; Gigi wouldn’t be doing business with herself if the agency worked for Scruples Two, since she didn’t share in the agency’s profits. In the second place, the copy that Gigi had written for Scruples Two was one of the major reasons that the catalog had been such an instant success. And in the third place, Gigi’s unprofessionally squeamish shades of feeling, such a quaint excess of standoffishness, had no place in the advertising business. Arch and By should never have agreed to her conditions, but at the time they’d needed Gigi too much to make the necessary arguments that would have convinced her how coy and oversensitive she was being.

  More than enough time had passed since then—almost a year. Gigi had had far more than her unfair share of success on her own, to make that early agreement as meaningless as it was stupid, Victoria decided. It was time for her to step in. She had done her homework on Russo and Russo, the agency that currently had the Scruples Two account. There was no need to say anything to Byron or Archie until she’d been successful, she thought, as she telephoned Spider Elliott and made an appointment to meet him in his office.

  “Welcome to Scruples Two,” Spider said as Victoria was shown in. “It’s not every day that I meet Gigi’s boss … not that Gigi can be said to have ever had even one, in the usual sense of the word. It’s an exclusive club, you know. A caterer named Emily Gatherum and you and me. And my wife, of course, but she hasn’t been to the office since our boys were born.”