Princess Daisy (67 page)

“I suppose,” Kiki said sulkily.

“Well, that’s all you have to do. Tomorrow you can get divorced. Okay?”

“I see right through you—you know I won’t want to get divorced tomorrow.
Nobody
ever got divorced the day after she got married. It’s unheard of. That whole number is just more of the kind of scheming that got me into this!” Kiki accused her.

“Right, I admit it. But now get dressed! On the double!” Daisy sounded as menacing as if she were talking to Wingo.

Kiki chose a red lace garter belt and put on the black stockings, hooking them carefully into the red satin snaps and straightening the seams with gloomy attention.

“I love your underwear,” said Daisy. “It’s so suitable.”

“Damn it, Daisy, if I have to wear white at least I’ll know that what’s on underneath isn’t Miss Grosse Pointe Virgin of the Year,” Kiki said, stepping defiantly into a pair of plain white satin pumps. “Fuck-me stockings without fuck-me shoes,” she said sadly. Glaring at Daisy, she opened the closet where her white satin wedding dress was hanging, draped in plastic to keep it spotless.

“I think I’m supposed to be doing that,” Daisy said, jumping up. Her chiffon dress was the color of spring grass and her hair was worn in plaited coils over her ears. She had on flat green slippers so she wouldn’t tower over Kiki any more than was absolutely necessary. Daisy carefully slipped the wedding dress out of its protective wrappings and unzipped it so that Kiki could put it on. She held it by the shoulders and fluttered it temptingly at Kiki, the way a bullfighter attracts a fighting bull. “
Ole
, anybody?”

“Oh, shit … 
olé
 …” said Kiki grudgingly. “As if I had a choice.”

“Girls? Girls? Aren’t you ready yet?” Eleanor Kavanaugh’s nervous voice was heard through the locked door. She’d been completely dressed for over an hour now. The wedding was unquestionably going to be late.

“We’re getting there, Aunt Ellie,” Daisy answered. Kiki pulled a horrible face but said nothing.

“Can I come in?”

“Ah—we’ll be out in a sec,” Daisy called.

“Do you need any help, Daisy darling?” she quavered. She couldn’t have the vapors, Eleanor Kavanaugh told herself. They would wrinkle her dress.

“How about …” Kiki began, but Daisy put her hand over her mouth.

“No, we’ve got everything we need, Aunt Ellie,” Daisy said. “Honestly. Why don’t you just go downstairs for a minute.”

“I was just going to ask for some Valium,” Kiki whispered cantankerously.

“I’ve
got
Valium.”

“You do?”

“Did you think I was going to let Theseus disgrace us?” Both girls looked at the lurcher,
sitting
calmly and happily on a pillow, with a woven satin basket full of baby’s breath, white orchids and freesia tied under his chin, a leash of white velvet around his neck. “He’s doped to the eyeballs,” Daisy said, proudly.

“A stoned flower dog!”

“Couldn’t take a chance.”

“Oh, Daisy, darling, you’d do that for me?” Kiki wailed.

“Of course. Now why don’t you put on that dress, for me? Hmmm?”

Slowly Kiki allowed Daisy to hook her into the full-skirted dress, the white of the best quality whipping cream,
the white of a baked Alaska, the white of a meringue glacé. She finally looked at herself in the full-length mirror and a seraphic smile began to touch her lips. Daisy, encouraged by this sign, asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“All my old lovers. Just think if they could see me now—they’d be
sick
with envy.”

“Is that any way for a bride to feel?”

“It’s the
only
way … imagine, getting married if you didn’t have any old lovers, what a bizarre idea!”

Jerry Kavanaugh, Kiki’s father, in his morning coat and striped pants, now knocked on the door. “Kiki, for heaven’s sake, when are you going to be ready? Everyone’s waiting. My Lord, Kiki, don’t just hang around in there, girl—get moving.”

“We’re coming right out, Uncle Jerry,” Daisy assured him at the top of her voice. “Kiki, let me put on the veil, quickly now, no more kidding around. They’re playing your song.”

“What song?”

“ ‘Here Comes the Bride.’ ”

Kiki paled, kissed Daisy on the cheek and squared her shoulders. “It’s all so fucking grown-up!” she murmured plaintively as she walked toward the door and the future.

Candice Bloom was thinking. She stood, as always, with her hands thrust deep into her pockets, leaning slightly backward, her sharp hipbones tilted prominently forward. Candice, who never let anyone call her Candy twice, squeaked with chic and had refused one excellent job in California on the grounds that there was simply nowhere there to shop for shoes. Her assistant, Jenny Antonio, waited patiently for her instructions.

“Call Grossinger’s,” she said, finally, “and the Concord. Find out the total capacity of their snow-making machines and how long it takes before the stuff will start to melt in mid-September, assuming that we don’t have our usual heat wave, which, in itself, would be a miracle. And ask what it costs to rent them.
Tu comprends?
Oh, and get the Parks Department on the phone for me. Something tells me I have to get a permit for this. Where are the proofs for the invitation?”

“What if Grossinger’s and the Concord are using their machines themselves? Don’t they have skiing practically all
year round?” Jenny asked, with the eager and bright-eyed intelligence of her twenty-three years.

Candice looked at her in stupefaction. “Jenny, you don’t know much about how Supracorp works yet, do you? We’re giving The Great Russian Winter Palace Party of this or any other year, we’re taking over the entire Tavern on the Green in Central Park to launch the Princess Daisy line—and that means
snow
—even if we have to
buy
snow-making machines or build them. Just get on the phone and stop asking silly questions.
Vraiment!
I bet you don’t even have the answers for me on the troikas?”

“Any carriage drawn by three horses can count as a troika, so we don’t have to find actual sleds. Just the carriages and a hell of a lot of horses.”

“One problem solved and ten thousand to go,” Candice brooded. “When is my meeting with Warner Le Roy to discuss the menu?”

“He wanted to make it tomorrow at lunch, but that’s when you and Daisy are having lunch with Leo Lerman for the ‘People Are Talking About’ column, so I said I’d call back.”

“Good. This is really the ultimate crunch,” Candice Bloom said with a gloomy relish. “It’s all very well to run commercials and print ads—and thank God they’re all done—but without P.R. you can forget your enormous impact because you don’t get free editorial space, and without free space you might just as well not exist Now get out that folder again and let’s take another look at it. Okay—we have all the fashion magazines and
WWD
, but they had to give us the space—look at the advertising dollars they’re getting. And
Cosmo’s
promised us something, also Trudy Owett’s spread will run next month in the
Journal
Here are the clips from AP, UPI, Reuters and the Chicago Trib Syndicate. So far so good. But we haven’t heard from the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and I want them.
Merde!
Where did you put my list of columnists? Why hasn’t Shirley Eder called back, damn it? Try her in Vegas … or at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Has Liz Smith confirmed? Only a maybe? The Today Show’ is still being negative and Mike Douglas and Dinah all want to know what Daisy can talk about. Merv, bless him, said yes—next month sometime. But the others insist on a theme, damn it, and they don’t give a shit that she’s a gorgeous princess.” Candice prowled around her office in disgust. “
Shtick!
They want
shtick
from a princess, a hook,
some peg to hang her on—it’d be easier if she were a stand-up comic on roller skates.”

“You can’t really blame them,” Jenny ventured.

“I don’t. I know their problems better than mine. But Shannon isn’t going to give me brownie points for being turned down for even the best reasons. We’ve been trying—and not doing badly under the circumstances—to create an instant celebrity. But Daisy’s not famous for being famous, like a Gabor, she’s not a designer, she’s not a major heiress, she’s always avoided publicity like the plague—so we had to start from ground zero. Sure, her father was a hot-shot playboy and her mother was a legend in her time, only all that was over twenty years ago and who remembers? Francesca Vernon never made another movie after she married Stash Valensky; she just disappeared.” Candice assumed her habitual expression of discouraged optimism as her secretary buzzed her for a phone call.

“Put her through.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and hissed excitedly. “It’s Jane, my old, so-called friend from
People
. That bitch has been dodging my calls for practically half a year.
Now
she’s decided to call! It’s got to be bad news.” Both Jenny and Candice waited galvanized.

“Hi, Jane—
pas mal
, and you? Good. Princess Daisy? No, we haven’t definitely got a go-ahead from any other news magazine yet but it’s all in the works.
Exclusively? Merde!
Jane, I’d give my all to say yes, but I just don’t think my boss would agree. After all
Time
and
Newsweek
and
New York
, you should pardon the expression, all have departments she’ll fit into perfectly.
A COVER STORY!
Are you sure? No, no, I didn’t mean that … but it’s just that I’d have to promise him and if it didn’t work out I’d be looking for a job.
Definitely?
You said definitely? Ah ha. Ah ha. I see. He’s absolutely right. I couldn’t agree more. Ah ha. Got it. Look, let me check it out with the man and I’ll get back to you within a half-hour. A quarter of an hour. Right. Bye.”

She put down the phone with the stunned care of one who has just handled an artifact which has been buried for five thousand years, and that proves the existence of another civilization.

“It’s
incroyable
,” Candice said in a remote voice.

“I don’t get it—you pitched them a story—but a
cover?
”

“She said that her boss is tired of having eight out of ten cover stories coming right out of Hollywood or the tube—he thinks the West Coast is trying to take over, in spite of the fact that the editorial department is here. He says
People’s
turning into nothing but a fan magazine. He wants something different, something high-fashion and elegant and New York—and he fell in love with the pictures of Daisy we sent over. Also he had a mad crush on Francesca Vernon when he was young—saw all her movies a dozen times—he says Daisy has her eyes.”

“My God,” Jenny said slowly.

“Jenny, this is fucking unreal and you may never see it happen twice so don’t get big ideas, but now you understand the fatal fascination of public relations. And my analyst had the nerve to hint that I had a Snow White complex—he suspects that in my heart of hearts I’m waiting for my prince to come.” She laughed shortly and gleefully. “Well the prince just did! Wait till I tell my doctor that!”

“What’ll he say?” Jenny asked curiously.

“Nothing—Good Lord, Jenny, you are an innocent—it’s the principle of the thing. It proves my analyst doesn’t know
everything
. Oh, shit, if he doesn’t know
everything
maybe he doesn’t know
anything.
” She opened her mouth in a grimace of worry.

“The other day you told me that analysts were only human,” Jenny reminded her.

“Jenny, this whole thing is too deep for you. You’re not neurotic enough. But you will be. Je
t’assure
. How long has it been since Jane called?”

“About a minute.”

“Too soon to call back. I don’t want to seem overeager.”

“But you said you’d have to check with Shannon, and he’s in Tokyo again.”

“Check? On a
People
cover? Not while I’m alive! You don’t think I need his permission for this?”

“Exactly two minutes,” Jenny said helpfully.

“Balls! I may not last Oh, wow!” Cynical, blase Candice Bloom did a frenetic Irish jig in the center of her office carpet. She stopped and faced her astonished assistant “Bet you didn’t know the only four magazines you have to stock at any magazine stand in the whole United States—the must magazines?” Without waiting for a reply, she recited the four sacred names. “
Playboy, Penthouse, Cosmo
and
People
—as long as you have those four, you can pick and choose from among hundreds of others from Field
and Stream
to
Commentary
, but the big four are the ones that keep a newsstand going. Without them, you’re dead. End of second lesson for today. What was your first?”

“If Shannon wants snow, we get snow.”

“
Très bien, très bien!
You may make a P.R. person someday. Then you can afford your own analyst.”

A week later Daisy hesitated rebelliously outside the ostentatiously discreet studio of Danillo, the world’s most celebrated portrait photographer. She held Theseus’s leash tightly as she studied the inconspicuous door behind which was a brownstone as narrow as any private house in Manhattan. The door itself was adorned only by a single push button and a small brass plate which bore the initial D.

The emotion with which Daisy faced the door was divided into equal parts of resolution and reluctance. Earlier that morning, as she was getting ready to leave, Kiki had telephoned and offered to take Theseus off her hands while she was sitting for this all-important photograph, but Daisy had refused. She knew perfectly well that clinging to Theseus was a sign of her precariously ambiguous feelings toward the process which would be put into high gear by today’s session. She knew how childish it was, and she had also decided that she didn’t give a good goddamn. The idea that
People
was actually going to do a cover story on her made the reality of the disappearance of her privacy seem far more palpable than had the making of the commercials, the interviews or posing for the ads. Nothing Candice Bloom had planned for her had quite seemed
real
until this moment, and now everything seemed focused on the inescapability of the next few hours. Yet her obligation to go through with the sitting was stronger than her premonitions, and she pushed firmly on the maliciously unimpressive button.