Lovers (38 page)

Ben hunted in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a black velvet box. “I forgot,” Ben said, opening it and taking out the emerald and diamond earrings, “I completely forgot until just now. I couldn’t resist buying them anyway. Since you wouldn’t let me give them to you, will you wear them for me, here, tonight?”

“That depends,” Gigi said thoughtfully, not taking the huge, desirable jewels from the palm of his hand, not even looking at them, looking around the room as if it held an answer. On what
did
it depend, she wondered distantly as she played for time. From the instant that Ben had kissed her in the gondola, she’d been unable to rely on her brain. Where now was the girl who’d so wisely meditated, this very morning, on the reasons for not flirting with Ben Winthrop? How had she been swept away so quickly into precisely the situation she’d been scrupulously careful to avoid from the minute she’d found herself on a plane to Venice? She’d had a choice, even after he’d kissed her, she’d had a choice right up till the minute she’d gone to his room. Was
this love? With Zach she had never had to ask herself that question, with Zach it had always been love from the first moment. With Davy she had known that it was not. With Ben she only knew that she didn’t know.

“Depends on what?” Ben repeated, as she paused.

Gigi shook herself mentally and remembered something she’d forgotten. “On whether you’ll look out of the window now or not. I mean
really
look, not just outside but also at the tables near us and
at
the windows too, not just through them, look as if you’re seeing the entire thing for the very first time, taking it in as a whole.”

“For how long?”

“Three minutes.”

“Here.” He handed her his wristwatch. “You can time me to the second as well as tell the phases of the moon, the time in twelve different zones, the signs of the zodiac, almost anything except the chances of the Celtics.”

“I have zodiac karma,” Gigi said while she watched Ben looking intently across the room. “I always have the most promising horoscopes. Even in different magazines.”

“I have parking-space karma,” he answered, moving the focus of his eyes beyond the busy waiters and well-dressed patrons to the dark sky and water outside. “I can always get one, in any city at any time of day. May I give you my parking-space karma? Or isn’t that allowed either?”

“I don’t think you can give away your personal karma.”

“Who says so? As a matter of fact, my karma automatically comes with the earrings—when you put them on.”

“Oh no, I don’t think so. Not unless I give them back to you at the end of the evening, without the slightest objection from you.”

“You’re such a stickler for form,” he complained, knowing she had read his intention.

“Form follows substance.”

“I believe that what you’re actually trying to say is ‘form follows function,’ which doesn’t apply. Aren’t the three minutes up?”

“Almost. What I’m actually trying to say is that if I wear the earrings tonight, I’ll only be borrowing them for a few hours. Understood?”

“Absolutely. Can I stop now, and look at you?”

Gigi looked at his watch, waited two seconds, and said, “Time’s up.”

Ben turned his eyes away from the windows and stretched out his open palm. With a series of deliberate and leisurely movements, Gigi took off the small jet earrings she was wearing, put them in her purse, took each of the heavy, dangling emeralds from his hand, and fastened them one by one to her earlobes.

“If stars could dance …” Ben said, unable to take his eyes off her, or to finish his phrase. “Don’t you want a mirror?” he said instead.

“I remember exactly how they looked when I tried them on,” she answered, moving closer to him on the banquette. “I’m feeling self-conscious enough just now without looking at myself. Don’t you want to know why I wanted you to look at this particular space as if you’d never seen it before?”

“Is it some kind of ritual?”

“On the way back from Mestre I suddenly had an idea, maybe the most interesting idea I’ve ever had—I was going to tell you about it when I’d thought it over, and then … oddly enough … it went entirely out of my mind. Then, when you brought out these earrings, for some reason my idea came back, fully formed.”

“Fully formed,” Ben repeated mechanically, saturated with a feeling of privilege as his eyes caressed and possessed Gigi.

“You’re not paying attention,” she cried, and slid away from him.

“If I do, will you come back here?”

“First, listen,” she said solemnly. “This is serious. Those three freighters you bought today do
not
have to be junked and sold as scrap metal. They’re exceptionally graceful ships with particularly elegant hulls. True beauties.
They could be turned into an entirely new kind of cruise ship—”

“What! Who the hell’s interested in cruise ships?” he interrupted, astonished and almost offended at the way her mind worked at the damnedest times.

“You are, Ben Winthrop.”

“Darling, for Christ’s sake, I told you I had interests in shipping, but I never said anything about cruise ships, that’s a totally different industry. Why are we even talking about it?”

“Oh, I know you’re not interested,” she said dismissively, waving away his objections, “but you should be. Imagine a cruise ship that’s the equivalent of the Cipriani: elegant but not too large, exclusive, wildly expensive, and perfect in the smallest detail. A ship that would constantly give you the experience of being in this restaurant. Those freighters we saw could become ships like that, with only one class and only one kind of accommodation—
suites—
super-luxurious suites carrying a strictly limited number of people in the greatest possible style at the highest possible prices.”

“How,” asked Ben, suddenly shifting into another gear and giving her an entirely different kind of attention, “just exactly
how
would you know that there’s any need for that kind of ship?”

“From the Collinses, the owners of Indigo Seas—they adore taking cruises, all of them, as a family, and they do it twice a year, leaving the kids at home. Yet they never stop complaining about the small size of the first-class staterooms and the fact that the big cruise lines all carry three classes of passengers. People pay tremendously different prices for their tickets, but essentially, once on board, they all get the same trip and use the same public rooms and restaurants.”

“But they need three classes in order to operate at a profit, like planes.”

“No, as I see it, the real problem is that they start out with such enormous ships that their huge operating expenses
force them to fill up too many staterooms,” Gigi said. “Ben, I know it sounds undemocratic, and I’m not saying it isn’t, but now, as ever—maybe more than ever—people with enough money to take really expensive trips want to mingle with people who have the same amount of money. It’s just like the people in this room, busy looking each other over and delighted to see that everyone is as rich as they are.”

“How do you know that?”

“Since I’ve put these earrings on, I’ve had about a dozen appraising and deeply approving glances from people who looked at me before and let their eyes just slide by me without any more interest than they’d give any other girl. Well,” Gigi amended, striving for punctilious honesty, “maybe a little more, but not much. But now, wearing these emeralds, I’m more than merely acceptable, I’m one of them, and they’re thrilled to acknowledge it.”

“Assuming that what you say is right,” Ben went on, “the fact is that freighters simply aren’t cruise ships.”

“Those freighters aren’t necessarily freighters, either. What they really are, Fabio Severini told me, are ‘empty boxes that float,’ ” Gigi insisted.
“They could easily become cruise ships
. He also told me that it takes only half the time and half the money to completely refit a ship, once you’ve built the hull and the engine. There are three engines in Trieste that were made especially for those ships—”

“You’re sure?” Ben’s voice became casual as his mind started to race at her information.

“Positive. His father’s trying to sell them—”

“That’s hopeless, those engines are custom-designed for particular ships, and take years to get.”

“Oh no! Then the Severinis are finished.” Gigi was surprised at her sense of loss at this knowledge. Yet she’d been afraid of it all along. The ruin of the Severinis’ family-owned ship building business was one of her strongest reasons for wanting to save the freighters. But if they could recoup the money they’d paid for the engines, they would
still have capital to work with. The freighters wouldn’t be a total loss.

“Ben, if
you
bought the engines—you’ve already got the hulls—then you could convert them into the most perfect little gems! Hire the best ship designers in the business! In one step, you could own your own cruise line! Why not? Give me one reason why it’s not a great idea.” Gigi was aflame with her particular kind of enthusiasm that felt utterly at home in seven-league boots.

“Hey, calm down, darling. There’s more to running a cruise line than just owning the ships.”

“There’s more to building a mall than just owning the land!”

“But I know all about how to do that already.” His voice was strangely blank, Gigi thought, considering her wonderful new idea.

“Don’t you want a new challenge, Ben?” she probed, trying to engage his imagination.

He didn’t answer her. He didn’t even hear her question. Ben had an uncanny gift for knowing the exact moment at which any new idea and the climate of the times were in magic sympathy. Gigi had stumbled upon such an idea. He had already appropriated it.

As he sat there, looking absentminded, Ben Winthrop’s brain was sorting through the names of the experts who would tell him which key people to hire away from established cruise lines; he calculated the fire-sale deal he could make on the engines; he took a dozen mental notes on a dozen subjects related to cruises on which he needed to educate himself rapidly, for he knew,
precisely
, that in 1984, rich people were making and spending money as they had never spent it before in modern times. The cruise industry had not yet responded to this new wave of shamelessly lavish spending. There was a great deal of money waiting to be made, and no time to be lost.

“Ben!
You’re not even listening to what I’m saying,” Gigi cried, aggrieved. “Just think—you could call it the Winthrop Line.”

“And I suppose you’d want to call the first ship the
Winthrop Emerald?”
He responded all but automatically.

“Well—it might be sort of corny … still, it might be something to consider. How do you feel about it?” If she could get him thinking about giving a ship a name, Gigi told herself gleefully, maybe he’d begin to consider the cruise-line idea seriously.

“I like it,” he said, suddenly turning to her and snapping into a completely different mode of attention. “It’s easy to remember, and it will commemorate the way you look tonight. When you christen the ship the
Winthrop Emerald
, maybe you’ll let me lend you the earrings again for the occasion.”

“You mean—you’re going to do it!
You are!
I can tell from your eyes! You’re not teasing.”

“Of course I’m not,” Ben said with surprise. “I’d never joke about a business matter. Gigi, it’s a superb idea, an idea waiting to happen, but let’s not even discuss the advertising budget until I know more about a business that’s still a mystery to me.”

Gigi’s mouth fell open. She hadn’t been trolling for another account, it hadn’t crossed her mind. On the other hand, fair was fair, it had been her idea. Did she want to see it go to Chiat/Day? She was far from possessing the kind of total professionalism for which he gave her credit.

“There’s only one problem,” Ben said with a sigh of regret. “This is the equivalent of having a mall explode. If only you hadn’t mentioned it tonight … if only you’d had your stroke of genius a few days later. We’ll have to start back first thing tomorrow so that I can get into it immediately.”

“I’d have to be leaving anyway,” Gigi agreed mournfully. “I haven’t wanted to admit it, even to myself, but there’s a definite limit to the amount of time I can be expected to be spending usefully in New York. Archie’s probably foaming at the mouth in impatience as we sit here.”

“If we leave tomorrow, we pick up six hours between
here and New York. You and Jack Taylor can work all weekend on The Enchanted Attic, and I’ll send you back to L.A. on Sunday in plenty of time to have a decent night’s sleep before you have to be in the office. I’ll telex my secretary the minute we get back from dinner, and she’ll line everything up for you. Vendors don’t mind hustle.”

“Oh, Ben, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I feel so torn. I’m thrilled about the
Winthrop Emerald
and I’m miserable about leaving Venice.”

“Darling, darling—don’t you understand that we’ll be back, many many times? You never have to say good-bye to Venice.”

“Have you heard from Gigi?” Sasha asked Billy as they sat in the twins’ nursery, observing their children having their first play date. It was such a warm day that the three babies were wearing only their diapers and little cotton shirts. All of them were at the stage of the lightning-crawl, and they had been enclosed on a soft rug inside a huge octagonal playpen with clear Lucite panels. Hal and Max, Billy’s nine-month-old twins, were fascinated by little Nellie, who was two weeks older than they were. Although there were two of them, each outweighing her by at least five pounds, the tiny girl was clearly dominating them by the divine right of females.

“Sort of,” Billy answered. “I called New York, and the hotel operator told me she was out, and then I got a message from Ben Winthrop’s secretary, telling me she’d be phoning at eight the next morning.”

“Why is that ‘sort of’? Didn’t she call?”

“No, she called, but she had almost no time to talk,” Billy replied, irked. “I thought she’d want to tell me all about what she’d accomplished, but she said it was too complicated to go into till she got back. When I think of some of the really complicated things we’ve discussed on the phone! Ha! The Enchanted Attic is the least of it, believe me. I had the feeling she couldn’t wait to get off the phone.”