Lovers (49 page)

“Right. But what about using interior decorators?”

“Spider, they’re not for the busy working mother, any more than she can afford to hire a personal shopper.”

“If you say so, God knows, interior decorators are one of your areas of expertise.”

He looked, Billy thought, as if he were repressing a desire to indulge his sense of the ludicrous at her expense. Didn’t he realize how earnestly she’d thought this through?

“The whole point of buying from a catalog,” Billy said, watching Spider carefully, “is to get a rock-bottom price, because essentially a catalog is nothing more than a convenient and well-presented warehouse.”

“I know all that, Billy, it’s my business,” Spider said impatiently. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“The Scruples Home would present the basics, the essentials for five different kinds of homes: urban traditional, classic modern, American country, French farmhouse, western ranch house. Five perfect sofas, five perfect armchairs, five dining tables for multiple uses, five loveseats, five coffee tables, five headboards, and so on—you get the picture—and they’d all be able to be used together or separately, our principle of mix-and-match that makes the Prince collection so successful.” Billy looked at Spider to see if she could get any feedback from him, but he looked as puzzled as before.

“Spider! Pay attention! Our Scruples customer could decorate by herself, without leaving her home. She could finally find that French country headboard she’s always wanted but never could find, she could order the elegant loveseat from one of the collections and a modern expandable dining table from another, and get her place finished at last—we’re assuming that she isn’t living in crates—or if she’s just getting married or starting fresh with a one-room
studio apartment, she could do all the indispensable basics from The Scruples Home, and when she has the time to spend, she can stamp it with her own individuality with things she picks up here and there at flea markets and junk shops.
But she’d have her basics at wholesale.”

“That loveseat,” Spider asked, “what would it be covered in?”

“I figured plain muslin upholstery on everything upholstered, plus a choice of slipcovers.”

“Slipcovers!
Jesus, Billy, that’s asking for inventory disaster. How many different fabrics would you have to carry to give your customer enough of a choice?”

“I think six would do it to start. Some sort of neutral, washable, textured fabric, like a duck or a seersucker, a black and white stripe in cotton, three basic mixable color choices in solid cotton, and one great floral. The customers could add sets of slipcovers as they went along. When needed, I’d keep adding new fabrics.” Billy spoke proudly. The slipcovers, she knew, were her most amusing and innovative part of the entire idea. They were dirt-cheap to manufacture, practical to use, and fun to switch around.

“Look, let’s not talk about the slipcovers yet,” Spider said, trying to control his vision of Billy ending up with tens of thousands of yards of unwanted fabric. The next thing he knew, she’d be starting a remnant store. “What sort of pricing are you talking about?”

“Based on what I saw when I did this place with my decorator, the low-end wholesale on a decent three-pillow sofa would be about six hundred; a good, solid farmhouse table that would seat eight people would run about four-fifty—”

“But didn’t you redecorate about three years ago?”

“More or less.”

“Oh, Billy, Billy—prices have zoomed since then, and you’re talking about major money here, even at what used to be the low end. Anyway, how did you happen to find out about low-end prices?”

“I went everywhere with my decorator—I didn’t trust
him to make a decision without me—and we were doing the staff rooms.”

“Staff! Billy, aren’t you playing lady of the manor? You’re planning a furniture catalog for the Scruples Two customer, a tasteful woman with a healthy middle-class income. She’s not going to furnish in stuff intended for your live-in help.”

“Damn it, Spider, do you think I bought anything that wasn’t really comfortable and good-looking for those rooms? Do you think I expected the people who work here to live in squalor? Is that what you think of me?”

“Calm down, darling, of course I don’t. I just think you’re being impractical, basing this on your taste, not that of real people.”

“You’re wrong,” Billy flashed. “I’m turning my back on what I buy for myself. I’m using my taste but not my extravagance. The chair you’re sitting on was five thousand dollars in plain muslin, before the fabric was ordered from France, which added another nine hundred dollars, plus labor costs for quilting and upholstery and shipping and sales tax. And that was minus the decorator’s one-third markup. Believe me, I okayed every single bill.”

“Lord have mercy, lady. You do have expensive taste.”

“I can afford it,” Billy snapped. “That chair is comfortable beyond belief, built to last until doomsday, the fabric is hand-screened pure linen, the upholsterer was the most expensive in California—the Scruples Home armchairs won’t
look
all that different—an armchair is an armchair—but I have no illusions that they’ll be the same. They won’t be stuffed in hundred-percent down, or built by hand, or detailed in the same way. Spider, you can buy an excellent reproduction of an antique chest of drawers for five hundred dollars, or you can buy the Philadelphia original at auction for a million bucks—”

“Don’t tell me they give the same pleasure.”

“They
both
give pleasure! Spider, here’s where you’re just not getting this idea, where you’re just not listening. If I hire the right designers, the best designers possible at any
price, and give them a firm mandate to make handsome but uncomplicated furniture, and if I strictly limit the choices and sell a lot of pieces, this thing will fly!”

Spider got up and walked over to the desk and started scribbling on a pad. As he worked, Billy watched him silently, feeling her fury building at each unasked-for scratch of his pencil.

“The way I figure it,” he said finally, “your basic fully furnished living dining room would run into at least four thousand dollars and change, and that’s without even a lamp to see what you’ve bought.”

“Carpets, lamps, accessories—of course I thought of them for another department in the catalog, surely that’s obvious,” Billy said defensively. “There are all sorts of terrific items available at low prices that you haven’t a clue about—”

“And how would you know, oh, princess of the eight-thousand-dollar armchair?”

“Because I subscribe to shelter magazines, from the most expensive to the cheapest, I always thought I should have studied to be a decorator—”

“Aha! Now I know where all this is coming from! So you wanted to be a decorator—you never told me that—I wonder why. The Scruples Home is just as impractical as Scruples was the first day I walked in there and found an exact reproduction of the Paris Dior showroom, smack in the center of Beverly Hills.”

“Spider, will you
never
let me forget that? This is totally different, this is based on everything I’ve learned from Scruples and Scruples Two. I’ve had a liberal education in marketing, and there’s a real need for this—”

“Hold on a minute,” Spider said, putting his hand up in a peremptory gesture, as if to stop traffic. “Scruples Two has a money-back guarantee, no questions asked, or we wouldn’t do any business. Right? So your customer orders everything for her living room-dining room, and when the pieces come, she finds out that she just doesn’t like the way they look—maybe they’re the wrong color or size because
she measured wrong, or her husband doesn’t like them or whatever—what does she do now—send them back?”

“Yes.” Billy glared at him. “I’ll find a way.”

“Oh, Billy, have you even thought about the added cost of shipping all this stuff to her in the first place? And have you realized how big a warehouse you’d need? Something the size of Kentucky, if you want my opinion. And how does your customer unpack the crates when they’re delivered and get the stuff in the house—if she works, how can she even make sure she’s at home when they’re delivered, come to think of it, and, worst of all, if she decides to return something, how the hell does she pack it up? These are all bulky items—a three-pillow sofa isn’t something you can return to sender at the post office. Trouble, Billy, you’re buying nothing but trouble. And what happens when you make a mistake—we’ve made plenty at Scruples Two, so you’d be bound to make mistakes—and no one wants a French country headboard and you’re stuck with two thousand of them, or everyone wants them and you need twenty thousand of them in a hurry?”

“How many more pails of cold water do you have ready to dump on my idea?” Billy was physically assaulted by his words. She looked at him and hated him.

“I hate to be negative, but somebody has to tell you that it simply isn’t a practical plan. It’s a lovely fantasy, a well-meaning fantasy, but it isn’t businesslike. Scruples Two was businesslike from the very beginning. You didn’t think it was, until I convinced you, but this … no, it won’t work.”

“It will!”
Billy said passionately. “I’ll do it with my own money and you’ll see!”

“Yeah, well, of course there’s always that choice, isn’t there?” Spider drawled, in a voice that had suddenly gone absolutely flat.

“Why are you using that particular tone with me?”

“You don’t understand the first thing about finance, you’ve never had to worry about meeting a payroll or borrowing, but I don’t know a bank that would lend you a
dime on this proposal. If you want to spend your own hard-earned money on it, be my guest, but when you get into deep shit and come complaining to me, just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I promise you that.” Billy turned away with loathing from the sight of Spider’s blond head, and walked out on the balcony.

Why the fuck had she ever told him? Why hadn’t she just gone ahead and commissioned the designs herself? Had the catalog designed, set the whole thing in motion? When she’d bought the best corner in Beverly Hills and built Scruples, she had done it without asking, telling, or consulting anyone, and a great store and a great mail-order business had both been based on that impulse she’d had years before she’d laid eyes on Spider Elliott, Billy thought, shaking with rage.

Every bit of the marketing help he’d given her, help that he’d been highly paid for and could never stop reminding her of, could easily have come from someone else, hired for that purpose just as she had hired him.

Billy felt her nails digging into her palms in the excess of her fury. This whole thing was
unforgivable
. Because she had married Spider, he had the illusion that he’d become her boss. He thought he’d created Scruples Two all on his own, this ignoramus who’d never bought more than a potted plant since he’d left home, who’d been perfectly content living in rented, furnished places until he’d moved into her beautiful house with only a few clean shirts and now had the bloody nerve to set himself up as an expert on what would and wouldn’t work in home furnishing.

Billy hardly moved as she gave herself over to the thoughts that drummed in her head. She could buy a hundred of the best people in the decorating world to give her advice on the Scruples Home catalog, she could hire the editor-in-chief away from any decorating magazine to set up a phone service to help the customer pick colors, measure walls, do all the things Spider thought were so impossible
to achieve … Why didn’t he want to be helpful instead of immediately pissing all over her idea?

As Billy stood rigidly on the balcony, looking at nothing, Spider came out behind her and put his arms around her tightly.

“I know you’re angry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been so positive about everything. Maybe it could work, who knows? Why don’t you get your feet wet first, start on something smaller, like a Scruples bed-linen catalog or a Scruples bath-accessories catalog, and if those work out, then get bigger by stages?”

“Those catalogs exist, I get them by the dozen. And I don’t start small,” Billy said, so angry she could hardly utter the words. How magnanimous of him to offer her the sop of scalloped sheets and soap dishes. How thoughtless. How disrespectful.
He had no respect for her
. He never had, not now, not since she’d known him, superficially perhaps, but not deep respect.

“I’m tired,” Billy said, jerking out of his arms. “I’m going to get ready for bed.”

As she took off her clothes and sat down at her dressing table to remove her makeup, her anger and frustration continued to grow. Billy put on a bathrobe, picked up a book and went to read on a chaise longue in the bedroom, unwilling to get into the same bed with Spider until he was fast asleep. Double beds were an invention of the devil.

She was rereading the same line over and over, her malignant, assaulting, wrathful thoughts mounting and expanding, when Spider appeared from his bathroom in his pajamas.

“Good book?” he asked, trying to create a normal atmosphere before he went to sleep.

“Not particularly.”

“Then why don’t you come on over here and lie down next to me and let me apologize more effectively?”

“You have a remarkable sense of humor. I’d rather read. Even a bad book.”

“Have it your own way.” Spider turned to write something
down on the small notepad that normally lay on his bedside table. “Have you seen my pad?” he asked Billy.

“No. Why? Are you thinking of more itty-bitty catalog ideas for me?” she asked. He reduced her, damn him, he
reduced
her!

“I’ve given up on that, thanks. I just want to remind myself to call Russo and Russo tomorrow. I can’t delegate that particular job to anyone else.”

“What job?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I’ve decided to hire Frost Rourke Bernheim to handle the Scruples Two account, so I have to give the Russo boys the bad news.”

“You what?”
Billy let the book drop and jumped up.

“I just told you what. I’m changing agencies. Victoria Frost came by today and convinced me that we’re with the wrong agency. A most impressive dame.”