Spring Collection (48 page)

“How’d he get you to listen to reason?” Jordan asked curiously.

“It’s so strange, Jordan, I don’t seem to really remember … he just made sense.” Tinker knit her brows for a second and then, still smiling, gave up trying to catch the fleeting memory.

“Girls! Girls!” came Marco’s voice. “Everyone get in position. We start in three minutes. Up here, right at the entrance, behind the curtain, quick, quick, watch your feet, don’t step on any hems, shoes
on
everybody, cigarettes
out
, not another drop of champagne, in line, you know your order, come on girls!”

“I have a feeling he means us,” Jordan said nervously. “Give me a kiss, Tinker. And you too, April, baby. Oh, good luck to all of us! What are they playing? It sounds so familiar, it’s on the tip of my tongue.…”

“ ‘Goody Goody,’ again,” April answered. “I guess it’s suitable.”

With an indifferent toss of her head, Tinker thrust her arms into the all-but-luminous flood of organza roses and led the way to the beginning of the line. She stood straight and light and beautiful beyond beautiful, looking at Marco as blankly as if she’d never seen him before.

Lined up immediately behind Tinker, Jordan couldn’t stop herself from leaning slightly forward and peering through a tiny gap in the curtain. She gasped at the sight of the immense room packed with glittering, expectant people, all of their eyes, eyes that had seen it all too many times, trained on the beginning of the runway, as ready for defeat or victory as any crowd at a bullfight.

Last night Jordan had become familiar with the circular runways, but she’d denied the potential presence of an audience, even to herself. She forced her eyes away from the curtain with a quick prayer. Deep breathing, she thought. Deep breathing. Tinker still stood calmly, barely tapping her foot, smiling with a vague eagerness.

As the exciting syncopated sound of Chicago blended into the soulful ballad, “Sophisticated Lady,” Marco gave Tinker a slight push. “Go!” he ordered. She turned to him with a bewildered look. “But it’s not a tango,” she murmured.

“This isn’t the moment to joke! Remember what I told you. Now go! You’re on!”

Tinker shrugged her shoulders with a hint of resignation, adjusted the cape to its best advantage, pulled herself up high from her waist and moved smoothly and gracefully onto the wide runway.

Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, Tinker thought, blocking out the rhythm of the orchestra. To the pounding, inescapable beat of the tango in her head she stalked forward, haughty, territorial, magnificent, her proudly angled head held high on elongated neck, her hands positioned to clasp a nonexistent partner.

The room fell quiet, people fascinated by this original
concept of presentation. Yes, it was excellent, the clever, sweet nostalgia of the unusual musical arrangements combined with the majesty of the classic dance pose, unexpected, original, above all, original. A girl dancing a tango like a giant cat, ignoring the familiar foxtrot, yes, amusing, different, not seen before.
Génial, quoi!

A barrage of motor-driven flashbulbs went off from the photographers’ vantage point, illuminating the scene with continuous bolts of white light. Down the concentric circles of the runway Tinker continued in her swooping tango, never losing her poise, never faltering.

Tinker had been instructed to stop as close to the photographers as possible before she opened the cape and revealed her dress. As she reached the perfect spot she executed a
corte
, lifting her left arm high, her right arm pointing toward the runway, bending her left knee and sinking down on it, in the formal bow to signal the end of the dance. Then she straightened up, turned toward the photographers and let the cape slip off her shoulders, revealing the dress beneath, turning slowly so that everyone could see it. Applause filled the room as she whirled faster and faster, her pale coral-red hair flying above the many flamenco fluted skirts of barely darker coral chiffon, in as dramatic a moment as even the jaded fashion media could ask for.

Tinker lifted the cape from the runway and with a practiced gesture threw it into the air, where it seemed to hang for seconds. She tangoed back up the runway to more applause and retrieved the cape, even as Chicago swung into the fast beat of “Take the A Train.” Tinker raised her arms and flung the cape back toward the photographers. She continued to dance toward the mass of pale yellow flowers, picked up the cape and launched it up the runway with the same sweeping movement as before. She swiveled, and retrieved it once again. She reversed, utterly unable to break loose from the tyranny of the rhythm that had been imprinted in her brain. Just as she was about to raise her laden arms for the fourth time she slipped
suddenly, in the middle of a step, swayed dangerously, fell heavily to both knees and knelt on all fours during interminable seconds on the runway before she managed to rise, awkwardly and unsteadily to face the orchestra.

“God damn it!” Tinker stood stock-still and screamed at the top of her voice. “Can’t you asshole motherfuckers play a tango for Christ’s sake? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Chicago played on while an entire roomful of people froze in their seats. Only Jacques Necker had the wit to move instantly. He jumped up from his table in the center of the room near the end of the runway, and leapt up three steps, moving swiftly toward Tinker where she still stood motionless, her hands on her hips, glaring at the musicians.

“Allow me, Tinker, my dear,” he said with a smile, taking the cape away from her. He clasped one arm tightly around her waist, and, with a cheerful salute to the photographers, he led her firmly back down the steps, across half the room, guiding her smoothly between the tables until he’d reached the exit that led to the reception room.

April and Jordan immediately appeared on the runway, smiling brilliantly, arms linked in defiance of Marco’s orders, the attention of the crowd quickly diverted toward the startling pair swaying toward each other in their huge skirts and sparkling boleros.

“Stay here, Frankie!” Justine commanded. “I’m going after Tinker. We can’t make a group exit. That Cravate Rouge must have seen enough to realize he doesn’t dare let her get away from him.”

Slipping deftly around the edge of the room, behind the round tables, Justine managed to leave without attracting attention. The large reception room was empty. On one side lay the beauty salon, jammed with models and dressers, on the other the locker room. Justine poked her head into the beauty salon. There was nothing in the disciplined hush, the unbroken backstage silence that lay over the assembled company, to indicate
that Tinker was in there. She turned away and walked quietly, unseen, toward the doorway to the locker room.

“Why did you stop me, Mr. Necker?” Justine heard Tinker’s voice ask plaintively.

Justine froze, unable to make the slightest move forward.
Necker?

“I was doing so well, I just lost my balance for a second, that’s all,” Tinker continued, “why did you make me leave the runway? People liked me, didn’t they? The Goddess was working fine, wasn’t it? I was doing so well, it’s not fair—”

“Goddess?”

“The cocktail that Marco … oh, I forgot, it’s a secret. But, why,
why
did you stop me?”

“You were wearing yourself out showing the cape—I was worried about you, that’s all. But you were marvelous, Tinker, you were delightful, every minute, the press loved you, everybody loved you, you’re warmer now, with the cape around you, aren’t you? It’s all right, Tinker, yes, cry, cry as much as you like, my poor girl, I understand, you’re disappointed, it’s been a long day but now everything’s going to be all right.”

“I want Justine,” Tinker’s voice said on a rising sob. “Oh, I want Justine!”

“So do I, God help me, Tinker, so do I,” Jacques Necker said, his voice stiff with pain.

“But I
need
Justine, Mr. Necker, I want to see her.”

“I’ll send for her as soon as I can, Tinker. But first you have to go back to the dressing room.”

“Why can’t she come in here where it’s quiet?” Tinker demanded childishly, still weeping.

“Please, Tinker, let me help you up.”

“
No
! I don’t want to, they’ll all laugh at me, I need Justine.”

“I know Tinker,
I know
. Please, stand up, Tinker, let me take you back—”

“I’m here, Tinker,” Justine called, making herself walk forward on trembling legs. “I’m here.”

“Oh, Justine!” Tinker sobbed. “Justine, hold me tight!”

Justine sank down on the long bench on which Tinker and Necker were sitting and took the girl in her arms. Tinker gave herself over to a full-blown flood of uncontrolled weeping, burying her face in Justine’s shoulder.

Over the top of Tinker’s head Justine’s eyes met those of Jacques Necker. Before he could turn his face away, she saw how they burned with naked longing, eyes that were so much like those she had faced in every mirror for as long as she could remember.

For a long moment the three of them sat motionless on the bench in the locker room of the Ritz health club, the crying girl and the silent, stiff figures of the father and daughter. When Justine spoke, her voice was unsteady. The same eyes, she thought, the same expression, the same hairline, the same coloring, even the geometry of his features … anyone who saw them together would know.…

“I didn’t realize—I thought you were a Cravate Rouge,” she said. “Thank you for acting so quickly.”

“No.
No!
Don’t thank me, I had no idea that she was so—as you see her,” he said, looking down at Tinker. “Everything, even this poor girl, everything is my fault—the prize, the contest, everything! I should never have tried to … to force you to come to Paris, with the lure of the contest. It was unfair, utterly unfair and unforgivable, but when you returned all my letters unopened I lost my sense of what was wrong, I was ready to do anything, I
had
to see you, face-to-face, or it seemed that my life wouldn’t be worth living.”

“Why? Why did you need to see me now, after all these years?” Justine kept her eyes unreadable, her voice uninflected. She tried, and failed, to forget the words she’d overheard him say to Tinker only moments before, words of such raw yearning and hurt that they’d made her heart break in spite of herself.

“You’re my child
. I didn’t know you existed … but once I knew …”

“Where were you when I was born?” She had to ask him, she owed this much, at least, to her mother, no matter what Aiden had said.

“As far away from your mother as I could get. I was a foul coward. Faithless, gutless. I have no excuses for myself, for the young man I was. None are possible. None are admissible. That history can’t be changed.”

“Yet you wanted to see me. Why? To tell me what I knew already?”

“I hoped.…”

“You
hoped?”

“I know, I have no right to hope for anything. Yet—I admit I hoped, stupid as it was, as little as I deserved it, I was human enough to hope—I hoped that there might somehow exist a chance to know you, to find out if you were happy, to make some kind of contact—”

Necker shook his head helplessly at his inability to find the right words. “I wanted to give you … what could I give you? To give you
anything
, to make you happy if you weren’t happy, to
know
 … just to know you, one human being to another, to learn the story of your life, to ask if you distrusted men because of me, to tell you that most men aren’t as rotten as I was, to say that you shouldn’t judge them by me, to—”

“To play the father,” Justine said slowly.

“Yes! Exactly! To play the father. It was a foolish idea but I have it. I admit it, to play the father, to
have
a daughter, to
be
a father to my daughter—you can’t imagine how I want it, how I cling to it, how I dream of it … even now. Yet I’ve understood at last. I’ve come to my senses. If you don’t want to have anything to do with me, Justine, it’s your decision entirely, and I’ll accept it. I won’t bother you again.”

“Is it still up to me?”

“Do you doubt it?”

“No, I don’t doubt it … but … it’s too late.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I want … I want to play the daughter,”
Justine said in an almost inaudible voice. “Don’t ask why. I just do.”

“Justine—”

“I said not to ask why,” Justine said, scowling fiercely to keep her tears from falling.

“I won’t,” Necker said, keeping himself in check with all his forces. “Not a word. But the collection will be over in a few minutes, and I’ve got to make the announcement about who will be the Lombardi girl.”

“You? Not Marco?”

“Never Marco,” Necker said, scornfully.

“Well?”

“Jordan and April. Both of them. Okay with you?”

“Same fees for each?” Justine laughed.

“Obviously.”

“You’ll make history.”

“No, they’re the ones who will make history.”

“Poor Tinker.” Justine looked down at the now sleeping girl. “I heard what she said about Goddess—that criminal gave her some drug, it’s the only explanation. But she was never meant to do runway. I blame myself for letting her come to Paris … I know I couldn’t have stopped her, but I should have been here to watch over her
—
I was afraid of you—”

“Stop that, Justine, stop it right away,” Necker ordered firmly. “You can’t rewrite that script. Now, you sit here with Tinker, I’ll send Frankie to help you, make the announcement and come back as soon as I can. Understood?”

“Bossy, aren’t you?” Justine challenged him.

“Can you figure out a better way to do it?”

“Well, actually … no.”

“So?”

“I didn’t say bossy was bad, I merely said you were bossy. Honestly, Jacques, or whatever you want me to call you, haven’t you got something else to do than stand here arguing? Listen, they’re applauding, the bride must have come down the runway, now they’re cheering, it’s an ovation—for goodness sakes—
hurry!”

Jacques Necker stood up, sweeping Justine into his arms in a huge hug, tears streaming down his face. “So you think I’m bossy, do you, my daughter? Well then, call me Papa. For once in our lives I want to have the last word with you. It may never happen again.”