Indiscretions (2 page)

Paris leapt guiltily from the tall chair in front of the drawing board. She’d invited Amadeo Vitrazzi for drinks at eight, and now it was ten minutes before the hour. Oh, God, she hadn’t realized it was so late! She glanced around the one large room, whose skylights let in the glowering gray of an October evening in the city for which she was named. That was another of Jenny’s eccentric ideas—naming each of her three daughters so oddly. If they’d all lived in Los Angeles as kids it wouldn’t have been so bad, but to live in Paris and be
called
Paris had been a childhood burden she didn’t care to remember. It was only when she was sixteen and developing her very own individual sense of style that she had felt she could live up to its promise.

The long attic studio, together with a tiny bathroom and a minuscule kitchen, was both her home and her workroom and it was, as usual, desperately untidy, awash beneath a sea of half-finished and discarded sketches and a flurry of fabric samples. But despite its disarray it had—like Paris herself—an offbeat, inviting charm.

Leaving the lamp on over the drawing board she crossed to the living end of her abode and began frantically plumping up the caramel velvet cushions on the antique sleigh bed that she’d bought with Jenny’s last birthday money and which served as both bed and sofa in her meagerly furnished atelier. A pair of ancient velvet theater curtains, picked up at auction, and faded from their original bold color, had been cut to form a spread for the bed and act as a room divider, hanging from an
ornate brass rail effectively bisecting the living area from her “kitchen” and bathroom. Their apricot glow gave a feeling of intimacy to the living end of the white-walled expanse of the atelier itself. Most of the room was taken up by the drawing board, cutting table, and stacks of industrial shelving that held bolts of fabrics and the patterns for her designs, and their colors glowed as vividly as a Matisse against the deliberately neutral interior of the room.

After a long day at her drawing board when her eyes were dazzled with the colors conjured up from her own palette, Paris found it restful in the evening to settle back into an almost monochrome environment. When I’ve really “made it,” she thought, then I shall have an all-white apartment on the Boulevard St. Germain with only a permitted gleam of chrome and steel, maybe some wonderful modern Lalique and some antique mercury glass, but that will be it! Meanwhile, she thought with a sigh, it’ll have to be this.

Oh, my God, she was wasting time, it was now five minutes to eight, she must take a shower and get herself together. Amadeo Vitrazzi was Italian and hopefully he would run true to type and be late. She fled through the velvet curtains, casting off her working gear of jeans and sweatshirt as she went. The tiny bathroom gleamed with white tiles she had laid herself, fitting them into place laboriously one by one with a grout mixture that hadn’t been quite sticky enough, so that now she constantly seemed to be replacing one or another of them. Paris had infinite patience when it came to design; she just wasn’t so good at the practicalities.

The water was almost hot enough tonight and the shower felt good as she soaped her spare, elegant body, pleased with its long leanness. Thank God she had inherited Jenny’s legs, and Jenny’s deep blue eyes, but Paris
had thick dark lashes and her skin was creamy—like her father’s, she supposed.

The bell sounded sharply through the atelier, startling her. Could Amadeo be here already? Oh, no, it was the telephone—God, wouldn’t you know it, just as she’d got in the shower. Flinging a towel around herself, she ran dripping across the wooden floorboards to her desk, reaching for the phone. The ringing had stopped. Oh, damn it, who could it have been? Amadeo saying he couldn’t make it? Oh, no, please let it not be that. Amadeo was important, she needed him. Or at least she needed his silk—the fabulous, softest, most luxurious silk from his factories near Lake Como. Satin-backed silks and Charmeuse silks and crêpe de Chine and slithers of satin that would feel like molten light on the body of a woman wearing Paris’s new designs. If only she could get it at the right price—and on credit. Oh, Amadeo Vitrazzi, she thought clutching the towel around her and still hovering near the phone, you don’t know how important you are to me!

Now she was really late. And so nervous! To hell with the phone, she must get dressed. Her wardrobe filled one wall and held everything she’d ever designed, and as she had never yet afforded the luxury of a model to fit them on, they were all her own size. It was a good thing she was the right shape for this business, Paris thought, flinging on a sapphire silk shift. Her fingers fumbled with the buttons and she paused and stared at herself in the mirror—no, not this. It wasn’t made from
his
silk, and she didn’t want him to think she’d ever use anything else. And not this color; she wanted him to see the color in her new designs, not be distracted by what she was wearing. The full khaki skirt and the black crunch-knit vest top were pulled together with a wide belt and her slender feet pushed into khaki canvas boots that rumpled around her ankles. Paris surveyed the result. Chic but not sexy—exactly
right. A glint of yellow and apricot on her eyelids, an expert fluff of coral blusher across the cheeks, a thin guava gloss on her lips, and she was ready. Oh, almost. A quick spray of Cristalle—mmm, it was heaven. One day she’d have her own perfumes just like Chanel. Paris stared at the poster-sized blowup of “Mademoiselle” hanging on the wall, the ancient crumpled face lit by that indomitable smile, the chin uptilted arrogantly, and the wide hat at the exact uncompromising angle—still enticing at over eighty. Her idol. She could be like Chanel, an influence, a force, in the fashion world. She knew it. It was just that no one else seemed to recognize it.
Yet
, Paris added firmly.

Ah, there was the bell. He was here. Taking a deep breath and casting a last glance at herself in the long triple mirror, Paris Haven lifted her chin and glided across to open the door, Jenny Haven’s smile lighting her lovely face.

India Haven arranged the half-dozen small watercolors of Venice along the length of the marble mantelpiece and stood back to examine them. Her gaze was critical and a frown furrowed her normally tranquil forehead. The paintings were her own, the result of three weeks’ concentrated work. She had captured the first of the autumn mists spiraling across the magical waterborne city with washes of pale color and deft brushstrokes, and set in the antique frames that India scoured the small junk shops of Rome for, they were charming.

India sighed. That described them perfectly. Charming. But not good enough for a major gallery. Still, Marella’s small boutique on the corner of Via Margutta would place them prominently in its window and they would be sold within days. Of course the card stating
boldly that these were
Watercolors by India Haven (daughter of Jenny Haven)
brought in the tourists by the droves; the boutique could sell as many as India could paint. Marella Rinaldi was a shrewd businesswoman, and if India were at the shop when a potential customer came in, the paintings and India would be displayed almost as a package deal and a quick fifty percent added to the price. They were bought mostly by Americans, for whom Jenny Haven was a public dream. India never failed to be astonished by how intimately these strangers felt they knew her mother, often recounting anecdotes about Jenny of which she herself was completely unaware. How they had met Jenny’s daughter in Rome and bought one of her paintings would be the talking point of many an Illinoian or Texan party for a long time after the holiday was forgotten.

The frown faded from India’s brow and her spirits began to rise as she collected the paintings from the mantelpiece, wrapped them in tissue, and slotted each one into a box. They fitted exactly. A lemon ribbon around the gold box, and they were the perfect gift. “Mementos of Italy by India Haven”; she remembered Fabrizio Paroli’s words with a grin. “Package them, India. You must always give them the little extra touch that they feel they are getting free, and then you can charge ten percent more.” And he was right, it worked every time. People were almost as delighted with the pretty box and its ribbon as they were with the paintings. Yes, she thought as she placed the six boxes in the bottom of her big black Gucci satchel and swung it over her shoulder, she certainly had satisfied customers. And these six would pay the rent for the next two months.

India took a quick glance in the enormous mirror surmounting the fireplace and quickly fished the lipstick from the side pocket of her bag. A flash of scarlet on her generous mouth to match the new Ginocchietti sweater,
a quick run of her hands through the spiky curls on top of her head, a smoothing of the pigtail that reached to her shoulder blades at the back, and she was ready. Or was she? Hesitantly she turned and looked more closely at her reflection. Her wide brown eyes stared back at her, the whites clear and bluish with health. Small straight nose and a generous mouth that dazzled into a smile as she looked at herself. Pretty, she thought, and sometimes charming—like the paintings. Not worth much in the major galleries, but in lesser surroundings very popular! Damn it, why didn’t Fabrizio fall in love with her? Was it that she was only five feet three? Maybe he really liked tall women. She teetered doubtfully for a moment on her high-heeled black boots. With the spiky upstanding curls and these heels, surely she looked at least five six? It was the bane of her life that she hadn’t been born taller like Paris and Vennie. They both had Jenny’s long American legs and elegant bodies that adapted themselves to almost any kind of clothes. She always had to be careful. Full bosomed since fourteen, India had been forced to the realization that though most men found her wonderfully attractive she would never have the clothes-horse figure of her sisters.

“Smaller and rounder,” Jenny had told her, “that’s what you were when you were born. Of course, you’re built like your father, not me.” Fathers weren’t mentioned too often in the Haven household and India had known better than to press the matter. But smaller and rounder—though, thank heavens, never fat—was what she was still. However, she looked good for Fabrizio’s press reception; the Ginocchietti was wonderful. Italian designers were the best. Except for her sister Paris, of course, she remembered guiltily, but Paris didn’t design for her sort of figure. Italians always seemed to keep the true woman in mind when they produced clothes.

India’s high heels clattered on the marble tiles of the
floor of the Casa d’Ario and she paused for a moment to admire the curves of the staircase with its grand sweep of polished walnut rail and filigreed iron balusters. The old house where she had the first-floor apartment might be crumbling, but its beauty never failed to amaze her. If she had lots of money she’d pour it into this place, restore it to its former splendor, polish its cool rose-and-cream marble, gild its ironwork, lavish its decaying stone with careful new mortar—and banish Signora Figoli’s ancient perambulator from the front hall. Signora Figoli must be at least fifty, but she still kept the baby carriage there—just in case, she had told India with a smile. “You never know, with my husband,” she had added with a knowing wink, and India had smiled back in amazement. Signor Figoli was a mild-mannered, unremarkable little man, always quiet and polite. Oh, well, she thought with a grin as she dodged the permanent perambulator and caught the sounds of the six young Figolis apparently at war with each other again, maybe it’s those long Italian lunches that cause a population explosion—all those warm afternoon siestas with the shades drawn and a little wine still left in the bottle.

The vast wooden door clicked shut behind her and India peered across the road at her tiny Fiat to see if there were another of those ominous yellow tickets on it. She breathed a sigh of relief; no, today she was lucky. Flinging the Gucci satchel on to the minuscule backseat, she folded herself into her car and edged her way into the turbulent traffic of Rome. With luck she’d be able to drop off the paintings first and still be on time for the reception. She didn’t want to be late for that. Today was so important for Fabrizio. His Paroli Studios were launching their own line of furnishings, everything from sumptuous colorful fabrics to sleek lacquered tables, fluffy sensual sofas for lazing to severe linear chairs whose pure lines had earned themselves a place in a museum.

Paroli was famous for the best in modern Italian interior design, deriving its initial influences from Erno Sotsass and his famous Memphis design group, but Fabrizio cleverly diffused avant-garde concepts into an immediately acceptable and appealing form. India always felt that the Paroli Studios should be locked in a time capsule and buried for earthlings to open in the year 2500 as the pure example of the refinement of modern taste in our era.

Fabrizio’s supreme knack was in “humanizing” the strong spatial lines of his designs and the open areas that made his rooms flow, by adding a touch of the old. He’d hang a clouded sixteenth-century Venetian mirror over a stark burgundy lacquer console table so that the mirror’s curlicued gilded wood frame was reflected in the dense gloss of the table’s laminated wood and the mirror in turn would pick up the rich color of the table. He’d place a single exquisite satinwood box inlaid with delicate tracings of rosewood and holly alongside an astonishing streak of scarlet lamp that soared across a table like a spear. His taste was faultless, his judgment as to each piece’s value in a setting was exact, and the occasional quirk of the old contrasting with the very newest was pure genius.

Apart from that he was thirty-seven years old and incredibly handsome in a classical Florentine way, with the thick, blond, curly hair and straight-nosed profile of Michelangelo’s
David
. He was also married to a very attractive woman from Milan, heiress to an industrial fortune, with two young children whom he adored. And India had been his lover for almost a year.

The traffic was hell, as usual. Her enormous black plastic watch with the silver stars pointing the hours—bought for a few hundred lire in some tacky souvenir shop in Venice simply because she thought it had enormous style—showed, if you could deduce the gaps between
the stars correctly, that it was almost eight o’clock. Impatiently India pulled the car out of the jam of traffic on the Via Cesare Augusto and edging her two nearside wheels onto the pavement she reversed, honking down the one-way street. Immediately it seemed every horn in Rome blasted into a cacophony as car drivers shook their fists threateningly and pedestrians shrank against the stone walls of the narrow thoroughfare shouting insults to India’s grinning face. “Screw you all,” she shouted back happily in her best American, “I’m late!” India Haven had become a true Italian.