Spring Collection (49 page)

G
ood morning, Monsieur Lombardi! What a triumph!” Necker’s secretary gushed in excitement at speaking to the hero of the hour. “Monsieur Necker will see you right away, as soon as he gets off the phone. May I offer my congratulations on your great achievement! This morning all Paris is talking about nothing but your collection—it’s sublime!”

“Thank you, Madame, but the week of the spring collections is just starting,” Marco said modestly. “Who knows how the editors will rave about other designers? I’m just happy that they liked what I showed them.”

“Liked? They adored it! The front page of every newspaper in Paris! And how wise of you to choose both girls … I thought it was impossible to pick which one was the most beautiful.”

“So did I. Although there is much that is more important in a woman than mere beauty, wouldn’t you say?” Marco asked her, automatically turning on his charm for any woman who might someday prove useful.

What the devil was taking Necker so long, he wondered. He’d been requested to come to Necker’s office before lunch, in spite of the fact that yesterday seemed to have lasted forty-eight hours, and now he was being kept waiting for a mere phone call.

Probably Necker was having a last-minute consultation
with his lawyers before beginning the renegotiation of his contract, Marco told himself. Obviously Necker understood that to keep him happy after last night’s triumph, a triumph that rivaled Saint-Laurent’s first collection, he must be given a piece of the business. An unhappy designer was the last thing Necker would want. And he would be a most unhappy, most unproductive designer unless a highly satisfactory piece of the house of Lombardi belonged to him. A percentage of the ready-to-wear line, the accessories, the licensing, the perfume … he was a rich man at last. Everything he’d been working toward lay within his grasp. But he’d been wrong not to have brought a lawyer with him. Even Coco Chanel had never made more than a ten percent royalty on her “No. 5” although she’d fought the Wertheimer family for it all her life. He’d sign nothing today, he’d hold out until he was certain he was getting the most lucrative deal possible.

“Please go in, Monsieur Lombardi. I’m so sorry you had to wait.”

Jacques Necker was standing up, behind his desk, as Marco, repressing his grin of anticipation, advanced toward him, his hand outstretched for the usual handshake.

“No, Lombardi. I will not touch your hand.”

“What?”

“I will not touch the hand of a man who drugs a model he has already overworked into a state of frenzy.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Goddess
, Lombardi.” His words came across the desk with the force of an expertly thrown knife. “I know what you gave Tinker, I know why she acted the way she did. This morning, Miss Loring and I investigated the entire episode. We questioned the other models, we questioned the makeup man who was the last person close to her after you took her into a private room. We know what you made her do, how you took sickening advantage of that helpless, drugged girl who trusted you. You deserve to go to prison for that.”

“The girl’s quite out of her mind,” Marco replied, springing into indignation without a quiver of hesitation. “You must be equally mad to listen to a raving neurotic with no talent. She’d make up anything, anything at all, to excuse herself. Her first day in Paris that little tramp had already picked up a boyfriend, some American, ask anyone, Necker, they all know about him, but her real fantasy has always been about me. I had nothing to do with her except professionally, no one in my entourage ever saw anything wrong—a makeup man, no, please, don’t make me laugh. I see what you’re trying to do, Necker. This is only an excuse not to give me a fair piece of the profits. It won’t work. I know that I’m worth a fortune to you, I know my bottom line, and I know it’s all that matters.”

“Your bottom line, profitable though it will be, is no longer my concern, Lombardi. We’re not in business together anymore, so don’t waste your time lying to me. You have a new employer now, try to convince her.”

“A new—?”

“I’ve sold your services. I found a buyer for your contract with one phone call to my old friend, Mrs. Peaches Wilcox. I warned her about you, of course, in complete detail, but she said she’s perfectly aware of the kind of man you are. She’s often told me that she wanted to own a couture house and she has more than enough money to finance one. She also acquired the contracts of Jordan Dancer and April Nyquist, so you can do nothing to change their positions. From now on, Lombardi, Mrs. Wilcox is your only boss. Your future is entirely up to her. You’d better do your best to please her in all things, even in her smallest whims. Mrs. Wilcox has always enjoyed the exercise of power. She’ll be a most exacting employer.”

“No! I refuse!”

“As you choose. It makes absolutely no difference to me. Mrs. Wilcox now has a lock on your services as a designer. She alone can decide how much she’ll spend to produce your next collection. Down to the price of a yard of fabric, down to the last button on the last dress,
your working freedom will be up to her. I believe you’ll find she has a vast, untapped talent for domination. In effect, she
owns
you, Lombardi, at least as a designer. If you refuse to work for her, you’re prohibited by law from working for another couture house for five years. Still, slavery no longer exists. If you prefer, you can always go into any other line of work. Pimping would suit your talents. Mrs. Wilcox expects you for lunch in her suite in half an hour. You’d better hurry, she doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

“Frankie, where were our brains?” Justine asked, as they ate lunch together in their suite. “Shouldn’t we have expected that there’d be this much publicity? I have a stack of requests for interviews with the girls from damn near every place on earth but the former Yugoslavia, and that’s probably on its way. CNN, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, the BBC, Canal Plus, Tele Luxembourg—you name it, and they all want it today or tomorrow. All the big magazines want cover stories, the major newspapers want Sunday magazine stories, and as for the fashion press …!” She threw up her hands. “Don’t even ask.”

“And Maude and Mike have scooped them all! I bet Maxi’ll rush out a special issue of
Zing.”
Frankie gloated, gleeful and proud. “It’s become a bigger story than if they’d won Oscars—maybe because there are two of them, twin Cinderellas, black and white, unknown until yesterday, both making all that money and both guaranteed to be public faces for years. The public’s panting to know all about them. Your old dad certainly made the right decision.”

“Don’t you
adore
him! And, all else aside, is he or is he not the best-looking thing you’ve ever seen?”

“Worship. Revere. Venerate—adore’s too small a word. But, for his age, Mike’s the best-looking thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Thanks for not telling me what an idiot I was.”

“I can’t find words strong enough. But I’m working on it.”

“Oh, Frankie, what are we going to do? We need the best PR experts, we need advice and we’ve got to get back to Loring Management, the business will be going to hell with both of us away. I’m totally confused.”

“I suppose I could go back,” Frankie volunteered with a visible lack of sincerity or even a trace of integrity.

“Oh, sure, you’re prepared to miss all the fun, leaving Mike still here, taking a whole new set of pictures of April and Jordan together … tell me another.”

“You could go back,” Frankie suggested sweetly.

“And leave my father? No way!”

“Let’s all go back together,” Frankie said, in a sudden rush of inspiration. “I’m sure your father would come with us. We’d wait and do the PR in New York, do it carefully. Remember that just because the media’s making all these demands doesn’t mean we have to give in to them. Let’s play hard to get, pick and choose. We don’t want to wear out April and Jordan and doing PR’s an absolute bitch no matter how important it is. Remember, Mike’s pictures take priority and he can do them in New York. Your father said he wanted to meet Aiden as soon as possible, anyway.”

“You’re a genius!” Justine jumped up excitedly. “Okay, let’s get organized. Start making phone calls.”

“Justine, grab hold of yourself,” Frankie said patiently. “There’s nobody we have to tell except your father. The concierge can worry about the tickets.”

“You’ve been living in a luxury hotel for too long, Miss Severino.”

“I can’t wait to get out of here. Enough is enough.”

“Pining for Brooklyn, are you?”

“Pining for real life.”

“But what about Tinker?” Justine asked anxiously.

“My God, I’d forgotten … what’s she going to do? Stay here with Tom or come back to New York and make a fortune doing ads?—the latest fax from the office said every ad agency and fashion magazine in New York wanted her.”

“Tinker’s going to have to make that decision herself. I can’t begin to advise her on her love life … it’s definitely not my field of expertise.”

That evening, at dusk, Jordan sat alone at a quiet table in the Ritz Bar, too preoccupied to notice that almost everyone in the amber-lit room had recognized her and was glancing in her direction with curiosity and admiration—politely concealed, but still inescapable.

She was early for her appointment. Jordan barely touched her lips to a glass of white wine, thinking fiercely that the only true humiliation would lie in
not
speaking, in not having the courage to bring to light the discoveries she had made about herself. Probably she’d regret this decision for years, she told herself, tilting her chin resolutely, but if she didn’t speak out, lifelong regret was not a probability but a certainty. Humiliation couldn’t kill her, could it?

“I’m not late, am I?” Jacques Necker asked, sitting down beside her.

“No, I was early.” She turned to look at him and the sight of her profile lightened the hearts of the people privileged to see it.

“Jordan, I know the reason why you wanted to see me alone.”

“Do you really?” Her eyebrows raised in wonder and the bridge of her nose twitched delightfully as they lifted, although her lips remained pressed together seriously.

“Yes, and I refuse, absolutely refuse, to listen to it. Not one word. There’s nothing to thank me for. Whatever you think, I didn’t choose you because you’re black or—”

“I know you didn’t, Jacques. I won fair and square, the same as April. We’re much better together than apart … more interesting by light years, but each of us could have done the job by herself.”

“I know that, everyone knows that, but then …?”

“Then why did I want to see you alone?”

“It can’t be to say good-bye, since we’re all going to New York together tomorrow, so what—”

“Jacques, I need your advice,” Jordan said gravely. “I would never have asked for it if you and Justine hadn’t gotten together at last. You weren’t in a fit condition to listen to me or advise me until you’d found your daughter and she’d found you, but now.…” her determination faltered and her words dried up.

“Jordan, there isn’t anything you can’t ask me, don’t you know that by now?”

Necker bent toward her, thinking that no matter how beautiful she’d seemed to him before, the look on her face, a look of blinding courage blended with intense timidity, touched his heart more deeply than any smile of hers ever had.

“Jordan!
We’ve had so many long talks together, in just two weeks we’ve discussed so many things I’ve never spoken of to anyone, don’t you realize that you’ve become my friend? My only friend, as a matter of fact, I’ve never had time for friends, male or female. Come on, think how I always feed you,” Necker said, trying to ease the terrible emotional tension he felt in her, “isn’t that enough to make you confide in me? Have you been hiding some sort of trouble because I was so upset about Justine? You should have told me, you shouldn’t keep things from me, not for any reason.”

“It’s not … a trouble exactly, but a problem.”

“A problem with a man?” he asked, his face hardening.

“Yes, with a man. A man old enough to be my father.”

“What’s he done to you?
If he’s done anything, he won’t get away with it!”

“Jacques, lower your voice, people can hear you,” Jordan protested.

“I don’t give a damn, not if some old bastard has hurt you.”

“He’s not old, he’s not a bastard, he hasn’t hurt
me, not yet, anyway, but possibly, quiet possibly he will.…” She grew mute again, her courage faltering.

“For heaven’s sake, Jordan, you’re driving me crazy with all this mystery. Just say it!”

Her eyes looked intently into the glass of wine, and her hands gripped the stem of the glass. “I’ve fallen in love with you.”

Jordan spoke in a level, emotionless tone she’d been practicing for days, trying to say the words every way but backward, so that she wouldn’t shame herself or alarm him.

“That’s not possible,” Necker said after an empty, echoing minute, in a voice squeezed dry of expression.

“Would I say such a thing if I weren’t sure?” Jordan asked, determined to continue to sound reasonable. “Believe me, it wasn’t my intention, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I had to tell you before we left for New York. Once the PR starts, I won’t have a minute to be alone with you.”

“You can
not
be in love with me,” he said, sounding as sure of his right to pronounce the words as if he were a judge handing down a sentence.

“Jesus, Jacques Necker, you are a stupid,
stupid
man!” Jordan cried, her composure lost to a boiling whisper, tossing her short curls in reaction from her hard-won calm. “Do you want me to have my love notarized, you damned cautious Swiss? Even a saint wouldn’t have spent hour after hour listening to you talk about how rotten you’d been, unless she were falling in love with you, you idiot! You know
nothing
about women. Less than nothing!”

“That seems unfortunately obvious,” Necker said dryly.

At least he’s still sitting here and listening, Jordan thought, as she continued. “You asked me about my life, as no one ever has before, and you were truly interested, I could tell. You listened, because you cared about me, or at least I was dumb enough to think so. You managed to find reasons to take me out, and we both knew it wasn’t merely to expand my French
culture, didn’t we? And this last week, having dinner almost every night, can you still pretend that it was only to talk about Justine?”