Spring Collection (28 page)

Embarrassed, Justine pulled out of his arms, sat down and reached for her moisturizer and lip gloss. Jealousy was an emotion she despised and she’d been caught out in it.

“Did that courier get you to sign those papers?” he asked as he put on his clothes.

“Courier?” she asked.

“The guy I let in. He was obviously okay. He was prepared to wait for you outside, all day if necessary, but I took pity on him. He told me he’d been trying to deliver that crate to you for days but the blizzard prevented him from even taking off for New York.”

“Taking off? Where did he come from?”

“Paris. I assumed it was something you expected.”

“This whole thing is a mystery,” Justine shrugged, as she expertly darkened her eyebrows.

“Don’t you want to know what it is? A special hand-delivered mystery in a big packing crate?”

“I guess,” she muttered, distracted as she hunted for her mascara.

“Come on, you won’t be able to get that thing open by yourself. I’ll do it for you and then you can go back to your office if you really have to. Haven’t you noticed that it’s getting warm in here?”

Abruptly Justine put down the unused mascara wand. “Oh, Aiden,
it is
! How wonderful!”

“The new furnace is working,” he said with relief. “Shouldn’t we celebrate that with a half-day holiday?”

“We’ve just had a holiday,” Justine protested.

“No, it was an act of God, that’s not the same thing at all.”

“Will I ever win a discussion with you?”

“Once every year. Now, do you want to fiddle with your lashes or do you want to know what’s in that crate?”

“Why don’t you open the crate while I put on my mascara. I’ll be down in a minute.”

“Right.”

“Once every year,” Justine thought, he’d said it so naturally, with such casual conviction. A week ago she hadn’t known him. A week ago she hadn’t known herself.

A few minutes later, wearing charcoal-grey wool trousers and matching sweaters, Justine watched as Aiden finished opening the crate.

“They weren’t taking any chances, whatever it is,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything packed like this. Give me a hand, darling.”

Aiden and Justine carefully removed the packing material that was wedged tightly around the
bonheur-du-jour
until he was able to pick it up and set it down lightly on the hall rug. They were both struck momentarily dumb with astonishment at the sight of the small writing table whose richness of ornamentation and utter elegance of line spoke more eloquently of its provenance than could any museum curator.

“My God, it’s fucking incredible!” Aiden said finally.

“I’m afraid to touch it,” Justine murmured. “There’s got to be a mistake. That can’t possibly be for me.”

“I saw the delivery instructions, they were explicit. I wanted to sign for it but the guy said only Mademoiselle Loring could do that. Look at those legs—sycamore from paradise, and the carving is nothing short of genius.” Aiden bent over the writing desk with
its marquetry veneers and inlaid plaques of porcelain in wonder. “What workmanship! Justine, this is a museum piece.”

“How shabby it makes everything else look,” Justine said in a detached tone of voice. The jewel of a writing table, on its slender, high, ormolu-decorated legs, stood on her faded, tattered, garage sale rag rug with what struck her as haughty disdain, that of a purebred horse that had found itself in a livery stable.

“You’d certainly think twice before you used it,” Aiden said slowly. “It’s in perfect condition—not exactly your kind of thing. Is this your birthday, or something?”

“No.”

“Well aren’t you going to open the drawers—there must be a card in one of them.”

Justine stood motionless. Nobody but Necker could have sent her this rich and useless toy.

“Or, do you know who sent it?” Aiden asked in a voice he tried to keep neutral.

“Now you’re the one who sounds suspicious,” Justine snapped.

“This is the kind of fine French furniture that’s called ‘priceless,’ Justine. Credit my course in Decorative Arts 101—but even priceless furniture has a price. Depending on who this belonged to, it could be in the millions.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!”

Alarmed and flustered, Justine opened each of the three square drawers, equal in size, that formed the top of the
bonheur-du-jour
and found nothing but elaborate compartments that divided the deep drawers for storage. Beneath the writing surface of the desk were three more drawers, and it was in the middle one, raised to give knee room, that she found a white envelope. She ripped it open and gave the card inside a quick glance.

“I’m counting the hours. J. N.”

Justine stuffed the card back into the envelope and quickly shut the drawer on it.

“Look, darling, you don’t owe me any explanations,” Aiden said, looking at her closed face. “We’re both grown up and what’s past is past. But if there’s someone in your life who’s important to you—because obviously you’re important to him—I want to know if you’re serious about him. It’s for my own self-protection—although it’s already much too late for that.”

“There’s nobody in my life,” Justine said angrily.

“Okay, if you say so.”

“You don’t sound convinced,” she accused him.

“I’ve just realized how little I know about you.”

“I don’t know one damn thing more about you than you do about me.”

“Nobody’s sending me wildly expensive presents, you can count on that.”

“Aiden, that’s rotten.”

“Just realistic.”

She was not going to tell him. Justine thought clearly in the midst of her anger. Basically she knew very little about him. Sex, especially the kind of sex that made you wild enough to do things you’d never dreamed of, was the least trustworthy thing about any man, so why should she confide the deepest secret she’d ever had to him? If he wanted to think she had a rich lover, let him. Why shouldn’t she have one? Or ten?

“I have to get back to the office,” she said coldly. “I’d be grateful if you’d put that thing somewhere where your guys won’t bump into it.”

“Am I going to see you tonight?”

“No, I don’t think so. I need some time to myself.”

“Fine. Have it your own way,” he said, his voice stiff and formal with hurt. “But don’t forget to write whoever sent you this gem a very grateful thank-you note.”

M
arco Lombardi walked restlessly and without any fixed purpose around his big workroom; panic and the attempt to flee panic the elements that kept him moving. The level of his anxiety twisted higher and higher as each day whirled past, bringing the test of his first collection. During his years as an assistant designer he had been impatiently convinced that he possessed a major talent and only the lack of proper backing was keeping him from proving it. Now, with little more than a week remaining before the possibility of overnight success, to his furious disbelief all his plans seemed to be crumbling. He had a sick feeling in his bones, an intimation of potential failure.

That very morning he’d ordered the entire collection brought into the workroom, not caring that, as was normal in the couture, much of it still lacked finishing touches: crucial embroidery hadn’t been delivered from the specialists; buttons and zippers hadn’t been placed; even some seams were still only basted. He’d slashed through the racks of suits, dresses and evening gowns, brutally throwing to the floor more than half the collection. Better to show nothing, he’d informed his stunned staff, in a high, cold fury, than to show anything that wasn’t perfect. Take everything away, he’d ordered, and never let him see those misbegotten rags again. The women scurried about, scooping up the offending garments with little chucks
of commiseration, intending to hide them on their hangers in the ateliers until his mood changed.

Marco called for his house fitting model, the great Janine whom Necker had gone to great lengths to hire. He ordered her to try on each of the outfits that had survived his purge. Janine, a plain, supremely professional woman of thirty-five, with a famously faultless body on which even the least of designs would hang with chic, stood in perfect composure as he went on a rampage, pulling off sleeves, snipping off collars, cursing as he repinned skirts. Janine was weighing the merits of a new recipe, her usual train of thought during hours such as these, which came about with regularity at any house in the couture, when she realized that Lombardi had stopped in front of her.

“It would make it easier for me, Janine, if you weren’t so utterly and totally uninvolved, if you weren’t such a bore to look at, if you weren’t merely a stupid, untalented, bourgeois housewife at heart, if you could bring yourself to pay any attention at all to the creative process.”

Janine looked him in the face with no change of expression except a tiny contemptuous lift of her eyebrows. She unzipped the slim, pale grey peau de soie sheath she was wearing, folded it and handed it neatly to Marco. All activity in the fitting room came to a halt. “Adieu, Monsieur,” Janine said in a carrying, utterly final voice, stepping out of her shoes. Disdaining the peignoir that was provided for her, she removed herself and her valuable bones from the room, clad only in her own tiny lace panties.

There were a half-dozen jobs she could have for the asking, jobs where her measurements brought her nothing but admiration, Janine thought as she walked away. No designer, not even in his worst frenzy of self-doubt, and they all had them, had ever had the poor judgment to blame
her
before, Janine reflected, as she paraded magnificently up the stairs to the locker where she kept her street clothes. She did not predict success for this new Italian boy, whose indisputable prettiness
could never make up for his temper. And, of course, his display of vile, foreign manners would be held against him for years. She herself could hardly wait to tell her best friend, the chief fitting model at Chanel.

In the fitting room no one dared speak. Marco threw the dress to one of the women in the room. “Have you people nothing to do but gape like morons?” he demanded furiously. “Take these clothes away and get back to work. Out, everybody, this is not the circus! You, Madame Elsa, find me a new fitting model, not another used-up cow.”

Now, several hours later, Madame Elsa was still unable to locate a single suitable fitting model available at the last minute during this frantic period in the rhythm of the couture. Too angry even to try to sketch, yet far more hideously humiliated by his loss of control in front of his employees than by the defection of Janine, Marco found himself reduced to waiting for Tinker Osborn.

The girl had the unspeakable effrontery to be three minutes late, he thought ferociously. He had promised, in a moment of weakness, to teach her how to walk, and instead of sitting here waiting when he returned from his hasty lunch, she was not even on time. His fury rose as he looked out of the window, and scanned the Rue Clément-Marot. Suddenly he spotted the unmistakable coral cloud of Tinker’s hair. The girl stood on the sidewalk, just below the window, all but buried in the embrace of a young man. Whoever he was, he was so burly in his winter coat that he’d hidden her from sight as they’d run along the street.

Tinker quickly forced herself to leave the shelter of Tom’s arms and timorously mounted the staircase to the room in which she’d been told she’d find Marco Lombardi. It was, she noted with apprehension, the same room in which she’d been disgraced. She knocked on the door and entered on his bark.

“You’re late,” he said, not looking up from the long table at which he was inspecting bolts of fabric.

“I’m terribly sorry—I ran—but we—I just couldn’t find a taxi.”

“The reason you’re staying at the Plaza is that it’s just around the corner,” he said, his voice icy. “You’re here to be at my disposal, or have you forgotten so quickly?”

“No, no, I haven’t … it’s just that I had lunch with a friend and the waiter didn’t bring the check quickly … enough …” she faltered.

“The friend I noticed from the window? Don’t expect me to swallow that one. Girls like you are the joke of every collection … not five minutes off the plane, one gulp of the air of Paris, and off you trot like a bitch in heat, panting to spread your legs for the first lout you meet. I hope you took a good bath before you came here.”

“It’s not … that’s wrong—”

“The hell it is! Save your breath. I know the story, he’s your long lost brother, your cousin, your uncle … you girls have as little shame as imagination, you’ll say anything but the truth, he’s a cock with a man attached to it, nothing more. Take off your clothes.”

“What!”

“Your clothes. I need a fitting model.”

“But … you said … my walk.…”

“A folly. I should never have agreed. However, right now I need a fitting model. Don’t remove your bra this time, try to behave as if you’re not in a striptease show. Take off your clothes or take the next plane back to New York, it’s all the same to me, but you’re absolutely useless as you are.”

It was Necker’s fault that he found himself stuck with her. Necker had saddled him with dreary Janine, Necker had never ceased to impose conditions on him that crushed his creativity, Necker who was responsible for this idiot without fire or wit, bleating her ridiculous excuses in one of those foolish American voices. God, was there no one who did anything but stand in his way?

“Go on, move! Just drop them anywhere.” Marco shouted at Tinker.

As Tinker hastened to shuck her mini-kilt and sweater she trembled with helplessness. How could he be the same man who’d charmed them all? Nobody would believe her if she told them. The only thing she was certain of was that her one chance to salvage this situation was to obey him, to do everything he asked, for he had all the power. Otherwise, she’d be out of the competition, and her chance, her unique and precious opportunity to become somebody, would be gone forever.

“Stand in the light, with your back to the big mirror, several feet away from it,” Lombardi ordered, still bent over the dozens of bolts of cloth that were piled on the table. He looked up. “For God’s sake, take those boots off. Take one step forward and stay there,” he added, staring at her with an entirely abstracted gaze that made her feel that she had turned into a dressmaker’s dummy. Tinker’s trembling stopped, replaced by the never-forgotten iron endurance that had been trained into her throughout her childhood.