Lovers

by Judith Krantz

  This dress had nothing in common, except for the fabric, with the lavender chiffon dress, that dream she’d worn to Sasha’s wedding to Josh Hillman, that balletic bridesmaid’s dress. Nor, she brooded, forgetting the party for a minute, was she the same person she’d been roughly two and a half years ago. So much had happened to her: she’d pushed herself out of the nest of Scruples Two; she’d made the hard decision, the all-but-unthinkable decision, about her lack of a future with Zach; she’d discovered her first enemy in Victoria Frost, and learned the limits of what she was willing to do for success; she’d had two lovers and been roughly initiated into the dangerous whirlpools of masculine jealousy and possessiveness; she’d begun to develop a knack for inventing twists on existing businesses; she’d even brought herself to buy a grown-up dress instead of putting together her usual bits and pieces. Whatever it all added up to, she’d changed, Gigi realized, and if one of the changes had been like taking a saw and cutting off a limb, it had not been avoidable. Was change ever avoidable, once you’d seen the need for it, she asked herself, as if the mirror could give her an answer.

  Pushing aside fruitless philosophical speculation, Gigi turned away from her questioning eyes and stood sideways, inspecting herself critically. Tonight she looked shamelessly sinuous and as unblushingly voluptuous as any essentially slender girl could look, she realized with a rush of pleasure. She’d let her hair grow longer than it had ever been since she came to California. Now it reached between her chin and her shoulders, and like a bright fall of autumnal plumage it ruffled in a winged swaying movement whenever she moved her head. There was no need to add one more thing besides her gilded sandals, Gigi resolved, as she put away her jewelry. This dress had a statement to make, and even a bracelet would dilute that statement of—what, exactly? Of course … the perfect hostess: collected, composed, unflappable, welcoming, self-possessed, and adult. Especially … adult.

  An hour later, with the party in full swing, and dinner still to be served, Gigi was able to relax and move through the crowded rooms with that particularly heady satisfaction that only a triumphant hostess knows—a sense of victory over all the mingled inner fears and self-doubts that hospitality on any grand scale produces; over the complications of logistics and invitation lists; over whether a party can be carried off as it has been imagined, or whether it will miss in spirit or execution.

  This party had been a smash from the minute the first guests arrived. The Scruples Two people, who, like everyone else in Los Angeles, thought of themselves as being in two businesses, their own and show business, were thrilled to meet the Hollywood crowd, who were equally pleased to find a new and eager audience for their sense of their own importance. The guests had all dressed up in their best, unusual in this casual town, but something about the idea of a wedding reception had appealed to their normally defective dress code.

  The sense of occasion was almost visibly hanging in the air, as real as the lanterns and the full moon, and Gigi’s mood waltzed and eddied and spun to the music as she flew from guest to guest in her gilded sandals. She felt as if the champagne she’d been drinking had lifted her a few inches above the ground. She should give more parties! Yes … this could be her First Annual Harvest Moon Ball … at Christmas she’d have a Twelfth Night party, just when people were feeling the post-New Year’s Eve letdown … on April Fool’s Day she’d have a masked ball at which everyone had to dress in red … she paused for a moment, near the front door, between one group and another.

  Her giddy sense of insubstantiality suddenly shattered as Zach appeared, almost filling the doorway with his shoulders. Gigi felt a deep shock, an unmixed shock of pure glad remembrance, as the party disappeared around her. There was a moment in which neither of them did anything but stare at each other. Braced as they both had been for this meeting, nothing had prepared them for the disappearance of the passage of time. As if their year of separation had never existed, they found themselves deep inside the unquestioned middle of a long intimacy.

  “Waternixie green,” Zach blurted in surprise, startled out of his determined cool. “You never dared to wear it in public.”

  Gigi gasped, speechless. She had forgotten the color of a costume he’d had dyed especially for Ariel in a production of The Tempest, a fabulously effective collection of scraps and straps, so revealing that she’d been too shy to borrow it for a costume party, but not too shy to wear it for him.

  “It wasn’t the color, it was the f-fit,” she justified herself, stuttering slightly.

  “You’ve let your hair grow,” he said, half-admiring, half-wistful.

  “So have you.”

  “My producer won’t give me time for a haircut.”

  “Why don’t you complain to your agent?”

  Gigi remembered the times she’d circled him in the bathroom, dodging his kisses, giving him an emergency trim with her manicure scissors when his hair had, as hair does, grown too long overnight.

  “Well,” Zach said, and stopped.

  Without a stage direction, without a line, without a prompter, his mind went blank. She was intolerably lovable, but if he couldn’t, at the very least, tell her that, what would be safe to say? If he looked closely into her eyes, it would be worth his life, it would be like taking bare electric wires in his hands.

  “Well,” Gigi echoed, swaying toward him slightly, wondering frantically what she could say next that wouldn’t trigger another memory of their life together. Automatically she thrust her champagne glass at him.

  “What should I do with it?” Zach asked.

  “Drink it.”

  “This glass seems to be empty.”

  “Oh, sorry—here, give it back to me. Why don’t you go greet the bride and groom and get a drink?”

  “Bride and groom?” He looked at her in confusion. From the minute he’d walked in the door, he’d forgotten the reason he was here in the unbounded sweetness of looking at Gigi again.

  “Sasha and Vito,” she managed to remember, thinking that she’d never seen Zach confused before, not Zach, who habitually dominated any occasion with his firecracker laugh and his long-shoreman’s build and his flaming focused will.

  “Oh … them. Right! I should say hello. That’s why I came, isn’t it? Where are they?”

  “At the head of the stairs, in the living room.”

  Gigi blushed so deeply that she could see the flood of color reaching her breasts. The head of the stairs was where she had last set eyes on Zach, that was where she had told him to leave.

  “I’ll find them,” Zach said. “You have more guests coming.”

  The front door opened behind him and Ben Winthrop walked into the hallway. In his purposeful, rapid way he ignored Zach, going straight up to Gigi.

  “Hello, my darling,” he said, kissing her lightly on the lips. “Sorry I’m late—I couldn’t end the meeting a minute sooner. You look enchanting, but if ever a dress cried out for emeralds, this one does. Why didn’t you tell me what you were going to wear? I’d have brought them over.”

  “Ben, this is Zach Nevsky. Zach, Ben Winthrop.”

  “Nevsky? You must be the brother of the bride,” Ben said affably, as they shook hands. “I’ve heard so much about Sasha from Gigi that I can’t believe I haven’t met her yet. Or Gigi’s father, for that matter,” he added with his slow, confident smile. “I suspect her of hiding me from her family. Come on, darling, lead me to the guests of honor so I can finally congratulate them.”

  Gigi turned and scampered up the staircase, letting the two men follow her in any order they pleased, her only desire to melt away, dissolve, disappear, vanish, hide under the bed. What devil had inspired her to allow Ben to invite himself tonight? At the time it had seemed like a natural way to have him meet Vito and Sasha casually, without making too much of a production out of it, but she’d failed to imagine him and Zach together. Some adult hostess she’d turned out to be!

  Maybe, she thought in a panic close to an anxiety attack, all her hostess-pri
de forgotten, maybe they’d cancel each other out, both so dominating by nature that they wouldn’t even notice the other. Why didn’t she know any meek men? Someone nice and mild and easygoing? Like Davy Melville …

  So this, at last, was Mr. Wonderful, Sasha thought, as she greeted Ben with fascination. Yes, sexy as hell, she had to admit, and masterfully self-assured. They talked easily together as her shrewd mind worked busily, appraising him. Although Ben was slightly taller than Vito, there was a specific quality, an aura about him, that instantly recalled several of the noticeably short men she’d known in New York who’d always stood tall on their invisible money. Even if you hadn’t known about Ben’s wealth, Sasha thought, you could sense it in his stance, in his attractive underreaching, in his deliberate lack of any overt attempt to charm. He knew he would charm anyway, this intelligent guy with his bookish look, and he was as sure of his welcome as any man could be. In fact, now that she thought about it, wasn’t it almost indecent for him to be so cool when he was meeting his beloved’s family for the first time? He must be a great fuck. Typically Gigi, not to have mentioned that. She was characteristically unwilling to share dick-trivia, a selfish trait that Sasha deplored.

  But, all that aside, as far as Ben Winthrop was concerned, Sasha concluded, a little self-consciousness, a real touch of genuine nervousness, even awkwardness would be in order here, under these delicate circumstances, if only as a tribute to Gigi.

  My God, Sasha thought as Zach came up and enveloped her in a huge hug, Ben Winthrop didn’t deserve to replace her brother in Gigi’s life. He would never love her in the same hopelessly wholehearted way Zach did, because he didn’t have as much heart to love with. And Sasha Nevsky Orsini knew a thing or two about hearts, as well as about great fucks, she told herself, as she and Ben continued to chat and, adroitly, she found an opportunity to hint about a ride in his jet.

  “Well, of course, I’d be delighted, any time that suits you, but I have an even better idea,” Ben said to her. “Why don’t you and Vito fly to the party in Venice with Gigi and me, as my guests?”

  “Oh, Vito, what do you think? Is there a chance we could go?” Sasha turned to him, full of excitement.

  “Well … that depends,” Vito said slowly, seized by surprise at the unexpected invitation.

  “On what?” Sasha implored him. Even if it was a PR junket, a party in Venice!

  “We’ve just wrapped the picture … now the editor’s making his assembly, that takes a week or so, then Zach has a couple of months for his director’s cut …”

  “Then you’d absolutely be free in ten days,” Ben pointed out.

  “Theoretically, yes,” Vito replied reluctantly, hating to be rushed into any plan he hadn’t initiated. But how could he deny Sasha anything she wanted?

  “Wonderful! I’ll count on it.” He turned to Gigi. “Darling, you’ll make all the arrangements, won’t you? I think a suite at the Gritti would be best. Then Sasha and Vito could wave at you from across the canal.”

  Oh, they could, could they, Vito said to himself in deep, well-hidden irritation. He’d be triple-fucked if he’d lean out a hotel window and wave at his daughter lodged in this guy’s place. He was a modern father and he’d accepted the fact that his daughter was … in all probability … chances were … not quite, not altogether a virgin … but he didn’t like to have his nose rubbed in the reality of the details of her private life. Some things shouldn’t be brought to the light of day, especially not in public. There was something … indelicate … about the otherwise smooth Ben Winthrop. Look at the way he kept his arm around Gigi’s shoulders, oblivious to her rigidly uptight posture. Winthrop had the speed, nerve, and throwaway elegance of a tap dancer, so why didn’t the guy have any respect for body language?

  Zach had gone to lean against a couch on the far side of the room, where he was quickly surrounded by a group of friends from past productions. Every minute, he found himself glancing quickly at Vito and Sasha, who still stood at the top of the stairs greeting late arrivals. Gigi and Ben Winthrop were lost to sight in the maze of other rooms. He had planned to be long gone by this time, but now he was one with Othello. Could he leave while Winthrop was here? Could Othello tell Iago to take a hike, he’d never listen to another word? So that green called for emeralds, did it? If ever a color would be destroyed by emeralds it was delicate waternixie green. What a pompous asshole, what an insufferable, self-satisfied, smiling, damned villain!

  Finally, under Zach’s close observation, Gigi and Ben rejoined Sasha and Vito, standing with their backs to him.

  “It’s almost time to serve dinner,” Gigi told them.

  She could feel Ben’s hand slipping below her waist until it was planted firmly on her ass. She brushed it away with a small whisking motion that she trusted wouldn’t be noticed by her father.

  “Sasha, have all your guests arrived?” Gigi asked.

  “If they haven’t, they’re late,” Sasha answered, indifferent to the possible latecomers.

  “My friends are all accounted for,” Vito assured Gigi.

  Ben Winthrop, not to be denied, put his hand back on the curve of Gigi’s bottom and let it rest there caressingly.

  “Stop that,” Gigi hissed sideways at him under the babble of the party.

  “Stop what?” he asked, cupping the flesh beneath the thin chiffon even more insistently. “I can’t resist you in this dress.” She was irresistible in her delicious, prudish confusion, couldn’t she understand what a tribute it was that he teased her?

  Zach didn’t know that he’d moved across the room in three large steps, until he spun Ben around by the shoulder and punched him hard in the eye. Ben staggered back, immediately recovered his balance, and went for Zach with the concentrated determination of the college boxing champion he’d been.

  The two grunting men pummeled each other viciously for moments that were frozen in unreality. Almost no one in the room had ever witnessed a fistfight, except on the screen, and they were in such an elated mood that the sudden explosion of rage seemed part of the evening’s excitement. Gigi and Sasha clutched each other, immobilized by sheer astonishment, while Vito stood back in kingly dignity, protecting them with his arm, and watched the fight like a professional referee. Whatever had started it, his money was definitely on Zach, for sheer size and motivation, although Ben had him on form.

  Burgo O’Sullivan, veteran of many a barroom brawl, appeared out of the bewildered crowd and, with the help of the Jones brothers, eventually separated the fighters, both of them badly bloodied but still on their feet.

  “Oh, Gigi, those jealous thugs have ruined your wonderful party,” Sasha wailed.

  “Oh, no!” Gigi laughed, mysteriously elated. “They’ve made it a night to remember.”

  She picked up a bunch of radishes that was rolling on the floor, stuck it behind her ear, and signaled the caterer to begin to serve dinner. So this, Gigi thought, was what it was like to be Helen of Troy.

  19

  This is worse than an arranged marriage,” Byron muttered through tense lips as he, Archie, and Victoria waited for the elevator to take them up to Beach Casuals. “I feel as if I’m about to lift the veil from the unknown face of a woman with whom I have to spend the rest of my life—someone my mother picked out because she was wholesome.”

  “Butch up, By,” Archie advised, rearranging the knot in his tie for the tenth time in two minutes. “Look at Victoria, she’s as collected as Queen Elizabeth. Terrific suit, Victoria.”

  “Thank you, Archie. I thought the occasion called for something new.”

  Victoria Frost smiled thinly at her partners. She was as nervous as they were, as they stood waiting in the bustling lobby of the large Seventh Avenue building, but her professional armor was impeccable. She wore a slim black cashmere suit with the point of a plain white linen pocket handkerchief punctuating the jacket, an otherwise unadorned three-button suit that had cost two thousand dollars. Only a few women in the world would guess what she’d pai
d for the flawless suit, but no one who looked at her, no matter how casually, would take her for anything less than a woman of sovereign stature and importance.

  Her head had never been so regally poised; her classically beautiful features were so composed and her eyes so focused on maintaining their calm that they were as blank as if she had turned into a statue. On her exceptionally lovely earlobes she wore superbly simple black pearl earrings. The perfection of her skin was lent its only touch of life by her meticulously applied bright red lipstick.

  It was ridiculous to be this tense, Victoria thought angrily, trying to breathe deeply. This wasn’t a pitch, this was a first meeting with a new client.

  Harris Reeves, who had decided that he wanted to meet them on an informal basis before they were introduced to the rest of his management, had set this convocation at ten-thirty in the morning for coffee in his office.

  Tomorrow they would begin the intense work of getting to know the Beach Casuals people and the culture of the huge company, but this afternoon was empty of engagements, so Victoria had used her free time to make an appointment with Joe Devane of Oak Hill Foods, for she never came to New York for any length of time without paying a call on him.

  She’d never make the basic mistake of taking any client for granted, but Archie and Byron had such a long record of doing remarkable work for Oak Hill that seeing Joe was as close to a proforma meeting as you could get in the agency business, Victoria thought, trying to take her mind off the meeting with Harris Reeves by looking forward to a half hour of friendly banter with Joe Devane. He had never expressed anything but satisfaction over the way his accounts were being handled, and his budget for Answer Soups, Lean and Mean Breads, and Thinline Desserts had grown from twenty million to twenty-five million in two years, as market demand increased.