Mistral's Daughter (72 page)

At
least tomorrow, with Fauve off to Europe, she had a reason to be at her desk on
Monday
—
lovely Monday on which there might just be some sort of
emergency resulting from the weekend activities of two hundred high-spirited
girls, to say nothing of eighty healthy boys, Maggy thought with glee.
 
Trouble.
 
She was in the mood for trouble.
 
Maybe, she told herself hopefully, there would be the sort of really
nasty mess that everyone thought went on all the time in the model business
but, in reality, rarely occurred.
 
Or, if
nothing happened on this particular Monday, during the next two weeks that
Fauve would be away, something must surely go wrong.
 
She'd take Loulou to lunch.
 
They hadn't had a good juicy talk in
weeks.
 
But as usual, the first order of
business was to smuggle the mail back without anyone noticing, Maggy thought,
remembering the suitcase she had stashed away upstairs in her little sitting
room, a suitcase jammed as full as possible with a random selection of the
hundreds of pieces of mail that arrived every week, from hopeful would-be
models.

At
Lunel, as at the other agencies, this mail was routinely opened and examined by
a booker-trainee or even by the receptionist, both of whom were perfectly well
qualified to pick out any picture that should be referred to someone with more
experience.
 
Maggy managed to get her
hands on some of these lowly communications, from which, in the history of the
agency, only a few models had ever been found, and she brought them up to the
country every Thursday night.
 
Over the
weekend, at odd times, when Darcy was busy elsewhere, she'd dart off to this
treasure trove and, with a busy letter opener, she'd go through every last
piece of mail.
 
There was always that
chance...
 
always the possibility
of...
 
lightning...
 
she thought as she cut open each and every
envelope as eagerly as if it had been the most tempting of surprise
packages.
 
She hadn't discovered her
last model yet.
 
You never knew!

Fauve
shepherded her five tall charges, as different from the hurrying Romans all
around them as if they were a wandering band of wild gazelles, toward an empty
table that she had miraculously spotted on the sidewalk terrace of the
Pasticceria Rosati.

"Sit!"
she commanded briskly, knowing from past experience that the successful capture
of a table at Rosati's was like winning at musical chairs.
 
Except for Fauve, who had visited Rome once,
none of the group had ever been to Rome before.
 
They all had the day free to get over jet lag before the models were due
to start work and Fauve had chosen Rosati's for their prelunch drink because of
its location on the Piazza del Popolo, that swooningly baroque ensemble of
twin domed churches, the Bernini Fountain, the Rameses obelisk and the
ceremonial gate of the Via Flaminia.

The
piazza had been designed three hundred years earlier to impress the traveler as
he first entered the Eternal City and it had succeeded so brilliantly that it
almost seemed sacrilegious to sit and order a campari in a setting of such
imperial pomp and ceremony.
 
Yet that was
Rome, the distillation of Rome, the unequaled theatricality of daily life in
which laundry was hung out to dry on palaces designed by Michelangelo, a simple
restaurant occupied the house in which Lucrezia Borgia was born, and children
played tag in the gardens of the Villa Medici.

Nothing
can surprise the citizens of Rome, nothing can impress them.
 
They are a race that keeps itself aloof,
reserved and private, notably taciturn toward tourists.
 
They have had to share their city with
pilgrims since the days of the Caesars.
 
To Romans everyone else on the face of the earth is a mere provincial and
they turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the never lessening flood of visitors
who surround them.
 
There is only one
exception, only one kind of stranger for whom the Roman will turn his head.

"Lordy,"
said Arkansas, "don't all these folks just look so friendly?"

Without
surprise Fauve scanned the fascinated faces all around them, not even bothering
to hide their interest.
 
Never, in the
history of modeling, had there been such a worldwide passion for American
girls, tall, skinny, dashing girls with acres of hair in which the wind always
seemed to be moving, with a strong yet innocent sensuality, brandishing
excessive beauty and new-coined youth.
 
The Old World couldn't seem to produce anything like these superb creatures
with their laughing ease and their raging glamour who stormed Europe.

American
photographic models now presented the new collection of fashion designers who,
only a few years ago, would not have considered showing their clothes on anyone
but the house models on whom they had been fitted, European girls who knew how
to walk on a runway ten times more professionally than any American who
normally worked in front of a camera.
 
But now the business of haute couture was like a tiny, luxuriously kept
pet poodle that drew behind it a great freight train of mass-produced products
that were sold under the name of each designer. Dresses were still made by hand
in Paris, in London and in Rome, but the few rich customers who bought them, no
matter how young, were referred to as "dinosaurs" because they were
members of a breed that had all but vanished from the earth.

Yet,
fashion shows had never been so theatrical, nor so spectacular.
 
Models were hired at great expense from every
major model agency in New York and flown to Europe for the collections because
the vast amount of publicity they generated was immediately reflected in sales
of licensed goods in stores from Indiana to Oslo, from Tokyo to Hamburg.

The
hectic fever, the mounting craze for American models, had spread to European
fashion magazines and it had become routine for Maggy and Wilhelmina and Eileen
Ford to send their most promising new models to live in Paris or Rome for three
months at a time.
 
Once there, the
unknown girl would immediately be booked by the best photographers, all of whom
were avid for the gloriously fresh American faces.
 
She'd learn how to wear clothes that were
more expensive and intricate than anything made in the United States;
top-flight hairdressers and makeup artists would experiment with her looks
until she knew the furthest limits of her potential; and she'd be able to build
up her book with dozens of pictures from Italian
Bazaar
and French
Vogue
as well as from the many other fashion magazines published abroad.
 
When this relatively raw, high school beauty
queen came home, burnished, exotic, glossy and no longer wide-eyed, from the
finishing school of Paris or Rome, she was more firmly launched in the business
than if she'd spent two or three years of steady growth in New York.

If
she came home.

Maggy
and Fauve were well aware of the hazards of sending their models to Europe.
Although most of them lived in private homes and all of them were booked by
local agencies who kept in close contact with Lunel, there was a list without
limit of things that could go wrong with young girls far from home.
  
Someone from the Lunel Agency went to Europe
every few months to make sure that all was well with them and, on this trip,
Fauve was charged with looking in on all the Lunel models working in Europe as
well as to make sure that Arkansas and the four other models who had been hired
to do the shows for Valentino in Rome, for Armani and Versace in Milan, and
Saint Laurent and Dior in Paris, kept to their demanding schedules.

"What
did I tell you about Roman men?" she asked Arkansas, who was smiling shyly
at the next table.

"Not
to trust them worth a damn," Arkansas said, her smile widening.

"And
who do you suppose are those men you are grinning at?"

"Well,
Lord knows, they
might
be foreigners like us.
 
They aren't wearing name tags, Fauve. You
know why you're so suspicious?
 
It's
because you're a city person.
 
Why,
you're positively unfriendly.
 
They look
just perfectly fine to me."

"And
you look just fine to them.
 
Oh, dear
God, is it going to be like this for two whole weeks?
 
No, don't answer.
 
It's going to get worse.
 
This is only the beginning."

"But,
Fauve," protested Angel, one of the latest crop from South Carolina, the
state that mysteriously provided more high fashion models than any other,
"my mama told me that if a girl doesn't get her fanny pinched in Rome it's
positively an insult.
 
She said it's the
custom of the country and I'll look like a hick if I get all uptight about
it."

"The
latest on Italian pickpockets is while that one pinches you the other grabs
your wallet
—
so much for Roman admiration.
 
Tell your mama that times have changed,"
Fauve said ominously.

"Are
we supposed to spend the entire next two weeks working?
 
What about dinner?
 
We all need nourishment," remonstrated
Ivy Columbo in her Boston accent.
 
Intelligent Ivy had been accepted by Radcliffe and Lunel in the same
week.
 
Higher education never stood a
chance.

"Look,"
said Fauve, "in Milan the men are different, more businesslike, slightly
less dangerous.
 
When we get to Milan you
can go out to dinner if you still have the strength to leave the hotel after
the day's work, which I doubt.
 
But in
Rome, stick with me.
 
I promised to take
you all to the best restaurants, didn't I?"

Fauve
looked around at the circle of rebellious faces.
 
A waiter approached bringing a bottle of
wine.

"The
gentlemen at the next table wish to offer the ladies a glass of wine," he
said.

Fauve
waved him away. "Thank the gentlemen but tell them the ladies' religion
requires them to pay for their own drinks."

"Aw,
shucks," Arkansas said.

"Meanie!"
muttered Angel. "Spoilsport.
 
Killjoy."

"It
wouldn't hurt to be just a trifle more gracious," Ivy chimed in, shaking
out her curly black hair in a manner calculated to attract every eye on the
terrace.
 
Even Bambi One and Bambi Two,
who had said nothing until now, looked sadly at Fauve from their marvelous
eyes.

"Listen,
girls," Fauve said sternly, "this is the first morning of the first
day of this trip and you're giving me trouble already.
 
That's simply not fair, and I won't permit
it.
 
If I let anyone at all buy us a
drink, it's going to be interpreted as an invitation to join us and then we'll
have the trouble of getting rid of them, whoever they are.
 
There's just no such thing as a merely
friendly gesture from any man in Rome...
 
not only can't you accept a drink but you can't return a smile, you
can't even show that you've noticed them noticing you.
 
Their whole lives are wrapped up in seducing
women
—
Roman men are the most outrageous, untrustworthy Casanovas in
the world
—
 
you wouldn't want to
get involved with one under any circumstance.
 
Do you all understand?
 
Have I
made myself plain?
 
Not a word, not a
look, not a smile..." she said, staring at them all earnestly as she
spoke, for this was the first time that Maggy had felt she was mature enough to
be entrusted alone with the taxing job of model-wrangler.
 
She was in sole charge of this group and she
didn't want them to have any doubts about her authority.
 
Fauve was so absorbed in what she was saying
that she didn't notice the man who was threading his way to a table on the
other side of the terrace, a man who stopped, glanced at her, looked again and
turned and began to move as swiftly as possible toward her.

".
. . not even a gesture of a little finger," she finished, glaring at her
charges.
 
As she spoke the last words the
man reached her, unnoticed.
 
He stood
behind her for a moment, gazing down at her incredulously and then as all five models
raised wondering eyes at him, bent down and kissed the top of her head.
 
Fauve's mouth opened in outrage.
 
She swatted at her hair and stood up
furiously, prepared for battle.

"How...
 
dare...
 
you!" she squeaked as Eric Avigdor took her in his arms.

The
girls burst into applause but Fauve didn't hear them.

30

I've
been timing her," said Ivy quietly, "and it's been a good five
minutes since she's given us a single suspicious look."
 
She sat, with the four other models, Arkansas,
Angel, and Bambi One and Bambi Two, at a table in Dal Bolognese, a boisterous
restaurant next to Rosati's.
 
They were
eating lunch at one table while Eric and Fauve sat together at another from
which Fauve could see everything they did, although she was too far away to
hear what they were saying.

"I'm
so sick of pretending to maintain eye contact with you, Arkansas," Angel
whined.
 
"It's a good thing I can't
see but halfway across this table without my glasses.
 
Will somebody with good eyesight please tell
me if that friend of Fauve's is as heavily into irresistible as I think he
is?"

"My
old high school teacher would say you're damning him with faint praise,"
Arkansas grumbled.
 
"And why pick on
me?
 
Do your eye contact stuff with Bambi
One or Bambi Two.
 
It makes me downright
nervous."

"It's
easiest with you.
 
You're the tallest
shape I can make out," Angel explained.
 
"I think Fauve is the meanest!
 
It's all right for her to have lunch with a male person because he's an
old friend, or so she says, and to prove that he's not one of those sinister
Roman types he's got a French accent.
 
So
what?
 
I say she's a big, fat
fraud."
 

"If
you weren't practically blind you'd know he's got to be an old friend,"
Bambi Two objected.
 
"You should
have seen the way he looked at her.
 
He's
a bit more than just an acquaintance if you ask me."
 
She sighed longingly.

"Spare
me!" Angel said, annoyed.

"Don't
start to bicker, lovers," Ivy warned the four other girls.
 
"We're doing brilliantly. She's
forgotten about us.
 
Don't slouch, don't
turn around, don't get silly.
 
Who's got
the guidebook?"

"I
have," said Bambi One, arching her long neck in a manner that had caused
havoc since she was twelve.

"Well,
open it and read out loud to us," Ivy said.

"But
I'm eating," Bambi One protested.
 
"And don't call me Bambi One anymore.
 
I've just decided to change my name.
 
My poor mom tried so hard to be original but
there are five Bambis in the business, four Dawns, seven Kellys, a dozen Kims,
seventeen Lisas, nine Heidis
—
from now on, call me...
 
Harold."

"Harold,
lover, open the guidebook.
 
You can eat
later.
 
We'll all take turns
reading," Ivy promised.
 
"Even
Angel will put her glasses on when her turn comes, won't you, Angel?"

The
table of models fell to forking up their pasta in sweet seriousness listening
intently as Harold read out of a copy of Fielding's Europe.

"'Dal
Bolognese,' " she intoned plaintively, " is a favorite meeting place
of lovely budding movie stars, gal painters and gals in the Creative Arts
—
hot spit!
 
Wouldn't you just know?
 
If I'm not budding, who the hell is?
 
And I haven't met anybody but the waiter and
the busboy
—
not even another creative arty gal, not that I'd be
interested."

"Shut
up and keep reading, Harold," Ivy commanded.
 
"Fauve just glanced in our
direction."

Harold
bent her lovely ash-blond head even closer to the fat red book and continued to
read rapidly as the girls ate with single-minded concentration, eyes held
straight, not noticing that their table was the focus of the entire
restaurant.
 
Had such a sight ever been
seen in the history of Rome?
 
Five
divinities, undoubtedly American, with eyes only for each other and some sort
of book?
 
Could they be a new kind of
religious order?
 
Could they be a cult of
lesbians?
 
And that unimaginably tall one
with the shortest flaxen hair ever seen...
 
was that the coming style, the Roman women asked themselves in
anguish?
 
If so, they were in for evil
days for only the greatest beauty could get away with a cropped head.
 
Yankees go home!

"They're
spying on us, I can feel it," Fauve said, sitting up self-consciously.

"Not
at all.
 
They're fascinated by the
guidebook like all good tourists.
 
They
seem like a charming, serious-minded group of girls," Eric said.

After
the first minutes of wild excitement in which he and Fauve had been too
surprised and flustered to say anything coherent, he had felt a totally
unexpected shyness paralyze him.
 
She had
become a woman, a disciplined, experienced, polished woman, so much in charge
of her life. What had happened to his Fauve?
 
She looked so...
 
so businesslike
in her man-tailored black cashmere blazer, her gray flannel skirt, her
low-heeled, expensive shoes and her impeccable white silk shirt.
 
Only a plaid scarf reminded him of the
deliciously crazy way she used to dress and even the plaid was subdued in
shades of gray and rust.
 
Her beauty, in
this severe garb, was only emphasized.
 
Her head was like one amazing great flower poised on a perfect
stem.
 
She seemed so much more grown up
than that tangle of pretty girls who had surrounded her.
 
No wonder she had never answered his last
letter...
 
she wasn't the same person to
whom he'd written it.

"What
are you doing in Rome?" Fauve asked with composure.
 

"I've
joined an architectural firm in Avignon and I'm here for a conference on
housing.
 
It doesn't start for a few days
but I came early.
 
An architect should
visit Rome at least once a year, no matter what his esthetic theories
are...
 
don't you agree?"

"Oh,
of course.
 
So many...
 
ruins."

"Not
just that, so many buildings from so many eras that are still in good
condition," Eric agreed, unsmilingly.

He's
forgotten about the ruins, thought Fauve miserably.
 
No wonder he never answered her last
letter.
 
But what could she have
expected?
 
She had been writing to a
twenty-year-old enthusiastic, impulsive young man, in love with ruined
aqueducts and Fauve Lunel, but now he was so grown up, so totally a man.
 
His hair still jumped up in that intractable
cowlick she had smoothed down so many times, his lower lip was as full and she
still couldn't take her eyes away from the indentation in the middle, but he
spoke with a kind of self-containedness and ease that distanced him from
her.
 
His handsomeness was fully finished
and formed, almost intimidating.

"What
a coincidence that we should both be here today," she said.

"It's
the sort of thing that happens in Rome," Eric answered casually.

"To
which all roads lead?" Fauve asked, thinking that they were making,
actually making conversation.
 
And what
did he mean by "the sort of thing"?
 
Wasn't it more than a sort of thing?

"Fauve..."
Eric began when a voice interrupted him.
 
Ivy had materialized next to their table.

"Sorry,
Fauve, hate to break in on you and your friend like this, but we all thought
that since we have only one free afternoon to see the city the best thing to do
was to take one of those glass-topped bus tours with an English-speaking guide
and cram it all in."
 
Ivy had the
copy of Fielding tucked under her arm.

"This
is Ivy Columbo, Eric," Fauve said, glaring at Ivy.
 
"Eric Avigdor."

"You're
absolutely right, Miss Columbo," Eric assured her quickly.
 
"There's also a Rome by Night Tour
—
unless you're too tired from the trip over."

"Oh,
no, we're all too excited to sleep.
 
So
whenever you're ready to leave, Fauve, we'd like to get going. Nobody is
awfully hungry."

"Well..."
Fauve hesitated.
 
She couldn't just get
up and walk away from Eric, even if he wasn't
her
Eric.
 
Blast those girls, why couldn't they just eat
their lunch peacefully?
 
What the hell
was their hurry?

"Whatever
you say." Ivy stood by the table, clearly expecting a decision.
 
"We could all go to the Via Condotti if
you think the bus thing is a bore, and see the Gucci store
—
maybe
they'll have something on sale?
 
Just
let me know what you've decided and I'll tell the others so we can look it up
and read about it while you finish up here."

"But
surely, Miss Columbo, you don't want to miss the Vatican?" Eric
said.
 
He and Ivy exchanged a quick look
of instant understanding.

"Neat!
 
Terrific idea!
 
Fauve, you want to go to the Vatican, don't
you?"

"Well..."

"Aw,
gee, Fauve, make up your mind.
 
We're
wasting precious time.
 
We're all dying
to send postcards home from the Vatican."

"Oh,
damn it, Ivy, go on!
 
I'll meet you back
at the hotel.
 
I've seen the
Vatican."

Ivy
moved off to the other table, quivering with self-satisfaction.
 
She'd always known that it wasn't enough just
to be beautiful.
 
When she'd insisted on
reciting a poem she'd written about the heritage of Thomas Jefferson instead of
tap dancing, and won the Miss Teen America Contest, it hadn't been because she
couldn't tap dance up a storm.
 
Bossy old
Fauve Lunel wasn't going to stop Ivy Columbo from doing whatever it was that
Romans do while in Rome, with tall, dark, dangerous, curly-haired Roman men
with their shirts unbuttoned to the navel.

"Let's
go, lovers," she murmured as she returned to the four other girls,
"before she changes her mind.
 
That
guy is hip.
 
But no stampede.
 
I want to see a dignified, ladylike exit.
 
Arkansas, stop snickering.
 
Bambi Two, don't you dare look back at
Fauve's table, Harold, stop winking at that man..."

"Lordy,"
complained Arkansas, "some folks just can't seem to get into
La Dolce
Vita."

"Don't
bet on it," snapped Ivy.

"Shall
we walk?" asked Eric as they emerged from the restaurant into the fluid
pageantry of the Piazza del Popolo where the marble cascades of the balustrades
leading up to the Pincio Hill seemed no less in movement than the swaying pines
in the high garden of the Villa Borghese.

"Which
way?" Fauve wondered, bewildered by the need to choose.

"No
fixed destination," Eric said, taking her arm.

"That's
my favorite place.
 
Oh, I feel as if I'm
playing hooky.
 
I should be guilty,
allowing them to go alone, but I just couldn't endure the thought of the
Vatican.
 
I've only been in Rome once
before and of course I thought I had to see it
—
by the time I finally
reached the Sistine Chapel I was almost crawling.
 
But how can you go to the Vatican and miss
the chapel?
 
It's a must.
 
Obviously it would mean a lot to Ivy, but I
just couldn't face it."

"Remember
the Popes' Palace in Avignon?" Eric asked.
 
"Ever since then I've known you weren't the Vatican type.
 
It was a totally safe suggestion."

"Oh."

"You
didn't think I was going to let you go off with those girls, did you?"

"I...
wasn't sure."

"I
have a lot of things to ask you.
 
First,
did you ever go back to Félice?"

"No."

"And
you still won't tell me why?"

"No,"
Fauve said abruptly.
 
"How are your
parents?"

"Both
of them are very well.
 
Flourishing.
 
My father has retired to Villeneuve so he's
delighted that I've decided to live in Avignon.
 
What about your grandmother?
 
Is
her marriage a success?"