Полная версия
Fashionably Late
They spent a couple more hours in the market and wound up having a late lunch at Mad 61, the other hot restaurant in the basement of Barney’s. Karen was depressed, and Defina, as always, sensed her mood.
‘Best shoes,’ Defina demanded.
It was an old game that they had been playing for years. It needed no introduction.
‘Roger Vivier’s.’
Defina raised her head, paused only a moment, and nodded. Sometimes it wasn’t so easy, and they argued for days. ‘Best florist,’ Karen popped back.
‘Renny,’ Defina answered with a shrug, as if everyone knew that. ‘Best knock-offs.’
‘For bags? Or dresses? Or what?’
‘Gowns.’
‘Victor Costa. Give me one that’s hard.’
‘Bags.’
‘José Suráez.’
Defina shook her head. ‘Those aren’t knock-offs. They don’t have the labels but they’re the exact same bag made by the same manufacturer. Except for Hermès.’
‘They’re still knock-offs. If they don’t have the label, then they’re not originals.’
‘If a tree falls in a forest …’ Karen had to smile. With her nonsense, Defina had lifted her mood. She didn’t even call Jeffrey to cancel, and she forgot – once again – to call Lisa.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cut and Dried
For weeks Karen’s already frantic life had been interrupted by the camera crew from Elle Halle’s show. Richard, the director, had told her to ignore them, to go on with life as she usually lived it. But of course that was impossible. For one thing, she had to worry about how she looked all the time they were around. What would it do for her image if she looked like ca-ca on toast? Karen knew that in person she had the energy and style to carry herself pretty well, but the camera was not her friend. Despite her talent and her energy, the camera wasn’t fooled. It simply reported the facts. Karen knew she wasn’t very pretty, that she wasn’t thin enough, and that she wasn’t young anymore. The camera reduced her to a minimum. This wasn’t paranoia: Janet had a whole shelf of scrapbooks with clippings and pictures in them and Karen didn’t look really good in any of them. But Jeffrey and Mercedes had insisted that
Karen was dreading it. They were going to shoot it this afternoon and Karen felt as if she were going in for double root canal. Given the choice, she’d prefer the dental work. Because she had no illusions: despite her smile and her soft voice, Elle Halle liked to do extractions and she never used anesthetic. Her forte was getting hold of some decaying psyche part and tugging until her victim gave it up, showing the rotten root and all. Gently elicited confessions and tears were what spiced up an interview. Although Elle seemed empathic and warm to the television audience that loved her and loyally tuned her in, Karen had to wonder about a woman whose life work it was to expose the pain of another on national television.
Karen had already met Elle twice. Both times the woman, tall, blonde, smooth, and commanding, had seemed pleasant. But that was what everyone said about Belle – if they didn’t know her. ‘Oh, come on,’ Mercedes said as Karen got ready to leave for the studio. ‘It’s not that bad.’
‘Didn’t someone say that to Marie Antoinette right before the blade hit?’
Mercedes raised her eyebrows. ‘Have you talked to a doctor about this martyr issue?’ she asked dryly. She looked at her wristwatch. ‘Come on. Let’s go. You don’t want to piss these people off by being fashionably late.’
‘Where’s Jeffrey?’ Karen asked as she picked up her coat.
‘He’s in with Casey and the financial guys.’ Mercedes raised her eyebrows. That must mean NormCo people. She paused. ‘He’s not going to come.’
‘What do you mean?’ Karen felt her face go pale, the blood draining down to her heart, which began thumping uncomfortably. ‘He has to come,’ she said. ‘I can’t do this alone.’
‘You’re not alone, Karen.’ Mercedes reminded her. ‘I’m coming with you.’
Karen didn’t bother to be polite. She shook her head. To manage this she needed someone she liked to be with her. ‘Defina,’ she said. ‘We have to get Defina.’ God, this would be too much to do alone. She couldn’t face the ordeal of selling herself, of being herself, and talking not about her clothes but about her life to twenty million people without some support. Why did people care about a designer’s personal life anyway? Didn’t her clothes speak for her?
Janet looked up from her desk and smelled crisis in the air. ‘Defina hasn’t come in yet,’ she told her boss.
Karen felt her hands begin to shake. She would go into Jeffrey’s office. She would stop the meeting. Whatever it was, this was more important. She couldn’t go over there, do this big deal, be examined under Elle Halle’s microscope, without knowing that Jeffrey was rooting for her.
From the beginning, it was Jeffrey who had believed that there was not only more recognition due to her but also more money to be had in the recognition.
He’d been a graduate student studying painting when she was at design school. She was so inexperienced, so very green. She’d never dated in high school – she’d gone to the prom with Carl. She’d been slow to mature. She hadn’t even gotten her period until she was fourteen! So of course Jeffrey had dazzled her. So much so that she had virtually followed him around, doing errands for him and picking his stuff up, a sort of human golden retriever to his elegant Afghan hound. And he was a hound. Jeffrey had liked her and had bedded her, but she had known there was no commitment there. He slept with a lot of girls at school. All the pretty ones, and Karen. Jeffrey had made it clear that she amused him and that they were friends, but there was nothing more forthcoming. Though she adored him, she was smart enough not to ever tell him so and she never expected anything more.
Once she’d graduated, it was only through her efforts that they had kept in touch. He’d never called her, but he seemed pleased to hear from her. When she’d gotten out of school, she’d been lucky enough to snag a job working for Liz Rubin, who was a legend, the first woman sportswear designer to have her own Seventh Avenue company. Karen had started as just one of a half-dozen assistants, but within six months she’d been moved up to Liz’s special assistant. They worked together according to Liz’s hours: sometimes Karen would get a call at eleven-thirty at night and she and the tiny older woman would work until dawn. Karen suspected that sometimes Liz – like Karen’s idol, Coco Chanel – called not because she was inspired but because she was lonely. But if that were the case, the other woman had never opened up. Always distant, always authoritarian, always in control, Liz had taught Karen more in the sixteen months that they worked together than Karen had learned in all her years of design study. Soon only work and Liz made up Karen’s life. It was a busy time, and Karen wasn’t unhappy. Because, though Liz never spoke about her feelings for Karen, Karen felt they were there.
Naturally, during that busy time, Karen had lost touch with Jeffrey. In fact, she’d lost touch with almost all her friends, except Carl. For her there had only been work. One of the reasons Liz had chosen her, Karen always believed, was because no matter what demands Liz put on her, Karen had never said no. She’d always been a hard and willing worker and, as her reward, Liz gave her more and more work to do.
And she hadn’t minded that she got no credit. The idea of her own name on a label had simply not occurred to Karen. After all, she was only twenty-two. She just wanted to do her garments her own way. But that became the rub. Because after the first few months of working closely with Liz, Karen hadn’t been able to stop herself from voicing her opinions. Once she’d gotten over her awe of Liz Rubin, she’d said what she felt, and sometimes her opinions seemed to have gone right for the jugular. ‘That’s boring, Liz,’ she would say, and make a suggestion or sketch an alternative. They’d argue. Karen always figured Liz liked her because of her opinions. She’d been wrong. She remembered the last fight: it had been over button placement on a jacket. Liz, never one to hide her light under a bushel, had altered a design of Karen’s and screamed at her when Karen insisted that the buttons be again placed asymmetrically. ‘It’s just a gimmick,’ Liz had cried. ‘The jacket is a classic. At Liz Rubin, we do classics.’ Karen had looked at her fiercely. ‘Well, I do what’s right. And these buttons, on my jacket, have to slant across the front.’
Funny that a few buttons could cause so much trouble. They changed Karen’s whole life. Liz had fired her.
Karen hadn’t been able to believe it. Because she knew she’d been right. To her it seemed simple – anyone should see it. Especially Liz. Karen just hadn’t thought of the politics and ego involved. She knew the news of her leaving would cause rejoicing among the other assistants, the ones she had bypassed. But it wasn’t just her pride that was hurt. Cold as she was, Liz Rubin had represented something more to Karen than just a job or a paycheck. Liz was like Karen and it was the first time that Karen had ever met anyone like that. Liz had shown her what she could be and it hurt Karen to be discarded that way.
Karen had sat alone in her apartment crying for two days. She had no one to talk to, nothing to do. (There was a limit to how much she could lean on Carl.) She realized then that she had no life, aside from work. She called home, but Belle was no help and Lisa was still just a kid in school who worshiped her older sister. So, in desperation, Karen called Jeffrey, who was sharing a ratty, lower Broadway loft with Perry Silverman. (Jeffrey’s parents had offered him a pied-à-terre on Sutton Place but he felt it was too bourgeois.) Perry and Jeffrey invited her over and had taken her out, gotten her drunk, and comforted her. She was sure they probably also privately laughed at her naive misery. ‘It’s just a job,’ Jeffrey had said. And Karen had tried, despite a tongue made less articulate than ever by all the bourbon, to explain that it was more than that.
‘Why would she fire me?’ Karen cried over and over again. ‘Why?’
Jeffrey had listened and then had laughed. He laughed! But somehow, this comforted her. ‘She was jealous,’ he said, ‘because you were right. She does “classics.” You do originals. And you had the nerve to tell her.’
‘Is that what I did?’ Karen had asked, amazed.
‘Of course,’ Jeffrey said, as if anyone would know that. As if Karen should have. ‘And she resented you for it,’ he added. ‘She used you, but she resented you.’ He put his arm around Karen while she cried some more on his shoulder. Then he took her to bed.
After that night, Karen had not cried again. She spent more than a month looking for a job by day and sleeping with Jeffrey most nights. In some strange way, the loss of Liz was made up for by having Jeffrey in her life again. She told him each evening about her day’s adventures and interviews. She was thrilled when she at last got not one but two offers. She asked him which she should take, then she was shocked when he encouraged her to turn them both down. ‘C’mon,’ he told her, ‘you don’t want to be some no-name house designer. Look what you’ve done already. You did most of Liz Rubin’s fall line. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone. You just need an opportunity to shine. You need someone to believe in you.’
It was then she had gotten the offer from Blithe Spirits to do her own line of sportswear. Moderate-priced, but a little higher-quality than most. It wasn’t Seventh Avenue, but it would have her name on it. Karen Lipsky for Blithe Spirits. Jeffrey’s advice had been right, and she’d gotten the chance because she’d listened to him. It was an unbelievable opportunity for a girl only two years out of school, but before she had a chance to jump at it, she’d gotten more good advice from Jeffrey. ‘Turn them down,’ he said. ‘Tell them that you’ve gotten an offer for twice as much money.’
‘But I haven’t,’ she cried.
Jeffrey had laughed. ‘So?’
‘I should lie?’ she asked. Neither Belle nor Arnold had taught her that. But Jeffrey had nodded. ‘What if they find out I’m lying? What if they tell me to take the other job?’
‘They won’t,’ Jeffrey laughed. And he ruffled her hair as if she were a puppy. ‘Try it tomorrow. You’ll see I’m right.’
And he was. She’d been petrified, as frightened then as she was of Elle Halle now. But she’d bluffed, hands wet with sweat. And, at last, she’d gotten the job at quadruple the pay she’d been making with Liz. She had, for the first time, more money than she had time to spend. Not that the money was so great, but she had no free time at all – she’d had an unbelievably hectic schedule putting a line together alone.
Just when it was about to be shown, she’d called Jeffrey. They’d been seeing a lot less of each other because of her crazy work schedule. ‘Can I come over?’ she had asked, the way she always did. ‘I’m scared that the whole thing is a mistake. Can I stay overnight?’ The silence at the other end of the phone had been ominous. What was wrong? Something had changed. She’d been too busy with the work to have noticed anything before.
‘Karen,’ Jeffrey had told her gently. ‘You know how much I like you. But you have to know this: I’m engaged to be married.’
Devastated, she’d gone to Carl, of course. ‘I should have told him I loved him,’ she wept. ‘I should have kept calling.’
‘No, you shouldn’t have. He’d have dropped you quicker. At least now you have your pride.’
‘I don’t want my pride. I want Jeffrey!’ she’d wailed like a child. And so then Carl had explained everything about men, just the way Jeffrey had explained everything about work. ‘He likes you, Karen. Of course he likes you. You’re fun, you’re funny, you’re smart. And you’re sexy. I can tell, even though I’m gay. But the Jeffreys of the world are always going to pick beauty and class and clout over funny and smart. He comes from money. She comes from more money. You’re better, but June Jarrick is the niece of a senator. It isn’t fair, but that’s the way it is.’
She saw the announcement of their engagement in the Times. Even today, ready to go downstairs to get the limo to Elle’s studio, Karen could still remember the pain of that moment and the emptiness that followed.
Her new line had been a huge success and had flown out of the stores. She’d gotten the first personal publicity she’d ever had in magazines and the fashion press. But she’d been miserable. This time work wasn’t enough. And other men were like ghosts compared to Jeffrey’s warm flesh. She got a calendar and obsessively crossed off each empty day until the black date of Jeffrey’s wedding. And then, out of nowhere, she’d gotten the call from Liz Rubin.
‘I want to see you, Karen,’ Liz had said. ‘Can you come over now?’
As always, Karen had. And she’d been shocked by Liz’s appearance. If she’d been thin before, she was skeletal now. Karen’s eyes had grown big, but she hadn’t said anything. Neither did Liz. She didn’t have to. ‘I saw your Blithe Spirits line. It was very good,’ she told Karen. It was the first and last praise Liz ever gave her. ‘Come back. Work here. I’ll need someone to take over. The doctors give me six months. I want you to do the spring collection.’
Other girls might have said no, but Karen had come back, and Liz had died on Mother’s Day that year. At twenty-five, Karen was the heiress to the throne. The press, always suckers for sentimental stories, had gone nuts over both the Liz Rubin Spring collection and Karen’s rags-to-riches story. She was called the ‘Crown Princess of Fashion.’ Carrie Donovan did a profile of her for the Times Magazine Section and she was on the cover of ‘W’. And even though her name wasn’t on the label, Karen didn’t mind because it was her homage to Liz. A memorial.
Plus, the work had also saved her from thinking about Jeffrey. She had, instead, a couple of brief affairs but always knew how many months, weeks, and days until the big social wedding. She kept the clipping announcing the engagement. She often stared at the picture of June Jarrick. Perfect June, in her simple linen dress and her double strand of real pearls. From time to time, because she couldn’t resist, Karen had drinks with Perry, ostensibly for fun but really to pump him for news. ‘Leave it, Karen,’ Carl warned her, but she picked at the wound despite the pain. Jeffrey was set to marry in another six weeks when he had sent her a note and asked to meet.
She knew she should say no, but she hadn’t, and they’d gone out for drinks. Drinks led to dinner, which led to more drinks, which led – inevitably – to bed. They’d always been good in bed.
Karen hadn’t asked any questions. They’d spent the first night making love for hours. Jeffrey had clung to her like a drowning man and she had accepted his desperation as a tribute, of sorts. The next morning she’d left early, going to work without waking him or leaving a note. He’d called her at the office an hour later. It was the first time he’d called her.
Karen wouldn’t let herself think about the fact that he was cheating on his fiancée with her, or that Jeffrey had earlier ‘cheated’ on her with his fiancée. She couldn’t think at all. She only felt that she couldn’t live without the comfort of his body and she knew without asking that he felt the same way. He came to her apartment every evening, sometimes as late as midnight, and she never questioned where he’d come from. She always let him in. She didn’t even tell Carl, because she knew he would go batshit on her. Twenty-one days before his wedding to June, Jeffrey asked Karen to marry him. ‘You’re going to be rich and famous,’ he said. ‘Karen Kahn sounds a lot better than Karen Lipsky.’ If it was an unromantic proposal, and if it came a little bit late, she comforted herself by thinking of it as fashionably late. Any guilt that she felt was smothered in the overwhelming tide of gladness. She had nothing to do with his predicament, she told herself, or the pain he was about to cause June. After all, she had known him and loved him long before.
Karen had never asked Jeffrey what he had said to June or his family, but months later, when she was at last introduced to the Kahns, she felt the blame there. It didn’t go away when June married Perry on the rebound. If anything, it intensified. Still, she was so wrapped up in her joy of conquest, of her possession of him, that it didn’t matter. Jeffrey was and would always be her dream prince, her first love. When he told her that he was going to help her with her career, she was thrilled. When he created a business plan for her own company, she was touched. As a thirtieth birthday present he created her
She had never taken him for granted, just as she had never taken anything she had worked for and won for granted. This was her strength and her weakness. She always lived with the fear that she could lose it – the business, the money, the man. Now, at a moment when she could be consolidating everything, she felt more unsure than ever.
Mercedes was staring at her. For all of her sophistication, Mercedes might as well have been singing ‘Baby, baby, stick your head in gravy.’ Mercedes licked her thin lips and turned to Janet. ‘We’ll send the car back for Jeffrey. Send him over as soon as he’s done.’ She turned to Karen. ‘It will take you an hour to get made up and miked. I’m sure he’ll be there by then.’
Karen nodded and moved down the hall, through the showroom and to the elevator, but her heart kept beating hard and she wished she could hide in the workroom with Mrs Cruz. Jesus, wasn’t this supposed to be the fun stuff? she asked herself.
Then she thought of the photos – the pictures of herself that she had taken from Belle’s house. She would take them with her. Somehow, they seemed like a talisman. She would be safer if she had them with her. She ran back to her office, got them, and slipped them into her coat pocket.
The studio was over on West Fifty-Seventh Street, where half a dozen talk shows originated. Karen was hustled down a long green hallway and met by Paul Swift, the producer of the segment. He, in turn, introduced her to an assistant who led her through a maze of rooms to the makeup artist. Karen had already done her makeup, but the tall redhead looked at her critically. ‘I think we should start over,’ she suggested blandly. ‘The lights will wash you out. I’m going to start with a darker base, then I’m going to shade your neck and throat, get rid of the puffiness, and narrow your nose a little.’
‘Will it hurt?’ Karen asked. The girl didn’t laugh.
The redhead tucked paper towels into Karen’s collar and threw a plastic smock over the rest of her. For a while she swabbed at Karen’s face in silence. Karen used the time to get even more nervous. What would Elle want to know? Would she ask about why Karen and Jeffrey were childless? Had she found out about the NormCo deal and would she blow their secrecy on national TV? God, had they found out about Dr Goldman? Did they know she was adopted? Would they talk to Belle or Lisa? So far they hadn’t contacted either one, at least as far as Karen knew. But maybe Elle would pull a ‘This Is Your Life.’
Karen’s heart began to beat much faster and she found it hard to breathe. What if Elle Halle had found out about her adoption? What if someone on their research team had discovered her real mother, living in poverty somewhere in the Pacific Northwest? Karen Kahn, the famous designer, and her mother in rags. Wasn’t that the kind of thing that made Elle the success she was? Karen couldn’t get any air deep into her lungs. She yawned.
‘Need a bag?’ the redhead makeup artist asked.
‘What?’
‘You’re hyperventilating. Lots of people do it before the show. Need a bag? If you breathe into it you can balance your carbon dioxide. Or we can get you a Xanax. Amy Fisher had a panic attack right before she went on.’
What a comfort. Karen could’t decide if the woman was a moron or a sadist. ‘I’ll be all right,’ Karen told the girl, but she wasn’t so sure.
The redhead had finished the base coat and Karen was painted an even orange. With her round cheeks and soft chin she looked a lot like a pumpkin. The redhead began painting brown stripes alongside her nose and under her chin, then blended them with a sponge. Karen closed her eyes. She decided she would kill Mercedes, then fire her.
The girl pulled off the plastic smock at last and Karen looked into the big mirror. Actually, she didn’t look so bad. She looked rather technicolor, like herself only more so. ‘There you go,’ said the redhead.
‘Thanks,’ Karen said, and was about to compliment the job when the segment producer showed up again. He wanted her safely back in the green room. They were walking down the hall when a familiar short broad bulk approached.
