Spring Collection (34 page)

“You know, Justine, I’m a little worried about you. Here you are, stuck in New York, when by all rights you really
should
be in Paris making absolutely sure that each of your girls is okay. But you can’t leave by your own admission because, of all your employees, Frankie is the only one who’s totally trustworthy. None of your bookers can take over the agency for you, can they? What does that tell me? That your shop is paper thin in management. How can you grow quickly in that situation?”

“You’re kind to be concerned about me, Dart,” Justine said coolly. “However, I’ve managed to keep growing at a rate that personally I feel comfortable
with. Comfort and total control are important to me. I like being the boss, and I wouldn’t want to share that position with anyone else. To each his own.”

“I understand what you’re saying, Justine, I used to feel the same way, but I didn’t really start getting anywhere until I hired the right people, even before I could afford them, and made myself learn to delegate. When I think that even though Necker himself personally picked all three of your models, you actually didn’t
go
to Paris … the man owns two other fashion houses, for God’s sake—you could
pack
them with your girls if you chose to use your charms on him. I’d never have wasted such a clear shot.”

“Dart, what makes you think that Lombardi didn’t choose the girls himself?” Justine asked, going pale.

“Marco Lombardi and I have been the greatest of pals for years. Old, old buddies, veterans of the model wars you might say. He was so furious when Necker crammed your girls down his throat that he picked up a phone to complain to me for half an hour. How can you be sure that our charming mutual friend, that well-known scamp of a Marco, is being halfway decent to them? How do you know they’re behaving themselves? Hmmm? We all know something about the temptations of Paris, don’t we?”

“Frankie reports to me and there haven’t been any problems.” Justine managed to keep her voice level and light and semi-amused. Why was this insulting piece of vermin pushing his horror of a country-life nose into her business?

“Well, good for Frankie, but in your place, I’d be in Paris no matter what I missed in New York. I’m leaving in a few days as a matter of fact. Which brings me to my pitch, Justine.”

“I’ve been wondering when you’d get around to it,” Justine said, not bothering to suppress a chilly smile.

“You accepted my invitation, so you must be curious to know why I invited you to lunch.”

“Perhaps a touch curious, Dart, but mostly polite.
How many times could I turn down your flattering invitation?”

“I’m never ashamed to be persistent. Justine, you know how big Benedict is. I run a magnificent, well-oiled machine. We cover every branch of the business, and we make a fortune in commissions, yet I don’t feel we’ve gone nearly as far as we can go. There’s room to expand and this is the perfect moment to do it.”

“Go for it, Dart,” Justine said encouragingly. “Rah, team!”

“Be serious, Justine. I’d like to buy Loring Model Management at a price you’d be more than satisfied with and sign you to a long-term management contract on your own terms. It would be a win-win proposition. You’d come out of it with a significant fortune, you’d still be working in the field you’ve chosen, but you wouldn’t have any financial responsibilities. No more Friday paydays, no more worry about your line of credit, no more concerns that a key booker might leave and take some of your best girls with her—all that would become Benedict’s problem and Benedict is big enough to absorb them easily. You’d be free to do what you do so brilliantly: find promising girls and develop them into stars.”

“Win-win? Who would I report to, Dart?”

“You’d run your own division, absolutely. And of course you could bring Frankie with you.”

“But who would I report to?”

“Well, in the final analysis, you and I would have a pow-wow every now and then, but your contract would spell out the terms of the issues on which you’d defer to my judgment.”

“So I’d report to you, and there’d be an area in which you’d have the last word. Have I got that right?”

“Correct. I can’t pay a lot of money for your business and then give you an absolutely free rein … that wouldn’t make sense. But there’s no reason we can’t hammer out an agreement that’s satisfactory to both of us.”

“It wouldn’t work. I’m not interested, Dart.”

“Look Justine, you haven’t had time to give this any real consideration. Don’t answer now, just think about it. But let me ask you this, do you realize that you’re a slave to your agency? It’s run in an old-fashioned way, as if you lived over a candy store. On the other hand, in spite of all my responsibilities, I have enough strong second management working in my shop so that whenever I feel like it, I can run off with Mary Beth and relax at our place in Hobe Sound. And when the kids are out of school we manage to get away for a real family vacation, a month, even six weeks.”

“Relaxation’s not my cup of tea, unless it’s just a weekend.”

“You’re being deliberately frivolous, Justine. You know perfectly well what I mean. You’re more than young enough to pick and choose from a hundred eligible guys—you should get married, have children, entertain, buy a place in the country, garden, travel—I don’t have to spell out all the possibilities but they’re as real as that salad you’re eating. It’s all out there for you but you’ve chosen to marry your business. That’s not healthy.”

“I could also sew my own clothes, Dart. I’ll think about getting a life,” Justine said sharply. Necker, Aiden, now Martha Stewart advice from a turd! Just what she’d needed.

“Look, we both know I’m not saying this because I’m disinterested. I really and truly
need
your talent at my shop,” Dart said, undeterred. If you don’t want to sell Loring Management outright we could still work out a different kind of agreement, some form of partnership, that would free you of business problems, afford me the benefit of your brains and give you a fair percentage of all the profits I’m positive we’d make together.”

“Sorry, Dart, but I don’t want to work with anyone as a partner. I like my independence.”

“With all due respect, Justine, you must realize how vulnerable you are running what’s essentially a two-woman shop. For example, what if somebody took
it into his head to offer Frankie twice the salary you pay her? She gets seventy-five thousand a year—a hundred-and-fifty wouldn’t be out of line, if you ask me, considering how good she is.”

“How the hell do you know what she makes?” Justine asked, startled and angry.

“I asked her. I’m the guy who offered her double. And don’t bother to say I’m a bastard, it was strictly business. I figured that if I didn’t, someone else would.”

“She never told me.”

“Probably because she didn’t want to seem to be pressing for a raise you couldn’t afford. But the day might come, Justine, when she changes her mind. As I said, persistence pays off.”

“Look, do you really want to know why I won’t join forces with you, Dart, in spite of the very favorable conditions you’ve spelled out?”

“Of course I do, because it doesn’t add up, and you’re a sensible woman.”

“The business of renting out beautiful young females should only be done by someone who’s deeply concerned with what happens to the girls, someone who sees them as individual human beings, each one precious in her own way. As it is now, there are too many girls who don’t get a contract without sleeping with an important man at a given agency or who can’t get a booking without sleeping with the client. There’s too much pimping the new girls to photographers and their reps. Young women who go into modeling are exposed to enough inevitable shit about their weight, their looks and their stamina without being pressured into sex.”

“How can you stay in the business if you think it’s so terrible?”

“Because someone, as you said about trying to hire Frankie, has to do it, and at least with me there’s no abuse.”

“So, you consider yourself a version of a mother superior?” he asked with a nasty edge to his voice.

“Dart, let me give you an example of the kind of
thing I’m talking about here. There’s an agency in this town in which girls are divided, unofficially, into three groups. There’s a group known as the ‘Untouchables’—the girls who are great enough to get contracts anywhere. They’re left strictly alone, spoiled like princesses, sexual favors are never required of them. Then there’s a second group, known as the ‘Maybes.’ They’re watched carefully and brought along to see which of them has genuine potential. If they have what it takes they become ‘Untouchables.’ The others, unofficially again, are demoted into a third group, known as the ‘Troops.’ ”

“Where do you pick up this stuff?”

“The Troops,” Justine continued, “no matter how pretty they are, will never have a chance to get to the top. They’re not told that fact in so many words, of course, but they’re destined to have ordinary careers: catalog work, small print jobs, all the nonglamorous mid-level kind of thing every agency needs. They’ll never do high fashion or television or runway, but they make good money for themselves and accumulate steady commissions for the agency—”

“Justine, every shop in town including yours has more girls like that than any other kind. Only civilians don’t know how tiny the percentage is of the so-called supermodels … we’re talking about less than two dozen out of hundreds and hundreds of girls. Thousands if you count the girls outside of New York.”

“The owner of this agency I’m talking about,” Justine said, disregarding his interruption, “regards all the Troops as his private harem. When he wants to … use … them, all he does is tell them where and when to show up. They either comply or they’re asked to leave the agency. There’s no shortage of would-be models, is there, Dart, especially at the mid-level? Now, until the girl gets to this man’s place, she never knows if she’ll be alone with him, or if there’ll be other girls working on him, or strange men she’ll be required to service, or even other girls she’ll be expected to perform with. And there’s a lot of drugs around—a strong possibility exists
that she may try them, possibly for the first time. Oh, I forgot, this scene only takes place at lunch. The amazing thing is that the agency owner who stages these … lunches … is happily married, with great kids, a real pillar of the community. What’s more, his wife has never suspected a thing. No one would be cruel enough to tell her.”

“And you actually believe that rumor? Where’d you hear all this nonsense?”

“Everywhere, Dart,
everywhere
. That’s why I’m never planning to go into business with anybody else. You never know what’s under the rock in someone’s backyard until you move into his house.”

“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug. “Stay out there on your own, if that’s what makes you happy. But you’d better invest in some long johns made out of cashmere, you’re going to need them during that long, cold, risky winter when the wind blows and other agencies start raiding your bookers and your girls.”

“I’ve survived so far—in my pure silk scanties. Do you mind if I skip coffee? I have to get back to my candy store.”

“Good-bye, Justine. I won’t forget to tell Marco about our lunch when I call him, he’ll be interested in news of an old friend.”

Justine walked quickly out of the restaurant, without shaking hands. She’d known from the inflection in his voice when he was talking about “that scamp, Marco” that he was letting her know that he was in full possession of the details of her shameful, humiliating affair with Lombardi. Men like the two of them would never fail to report such conquests to each other, boasting about them in full detail. But for Dart to use it as ammunition so many years later, ammunition to soften her up, ammunition to put her in her place, before he made his buyout proposition! Wouldn’t a really smart man have realized that it was the last thing he should have mentioned? And wouldn’t a really smart man have avoided threatening her with raids on her
agency when she’d made it plain that she knew what went on in his private lunches?

No, Justine told herself, it was simpler than that. Dart Benedict saw no difference between her and the girls he preyed on. He’d worked on her with the same combination of bullying and the promise of rewards that made them do his bidding. He wanted to fuck her brains, not her body—that was the only difference. And this was to have been the lunch in which her professionalism would be engaged, a lunch without emotions, without pressure, without an agenda of presumption.

As Justine hurried back to her office she tried to put any further thought of Dart Benedict out of her mind. He’d made an enemy and she’d made an enemy. So much for the business lunch. From now on it was a tuna sandwich, alone at her desk.

Later that afternoon her secretary put a letter from Frankie on Justine’s desk. It had arrived by overnight Federal Express from Paris.