Princess Daisy (43 page)

Luke had been to SoHo a number of times before, since no advertising man he knew would miss the opportunity to see the big new works that were displayed in the galleries; but mainly he’d stuck to quick visits to 420 Broadway, where the major uptown dealers had their downtown branches: Leo Castelli, Sonnabend and André Emmerich.

Today he’d seen a SoHo he’d overlooked, the SoHo of people who actually lived here, a SoHo in which the Porcelli Brothers displayed fresh honeycomb tripe in the window of their butcher shop; in which a little kid walking a bike had stopped Kiki at a corner and asked, “Miss, could you cross me, please?”; in which a sign proclaiming P
ERSIAN CAT FOUND
was displayed in the window of the M and D Grocery, a shabby, old-fashioned store which nevertheless had a freezer full of expensive Häagen-Dazs ice cream and shelves on which salted nuts shared the space with religious pictures and ten kinds of yogurt; a SoHo where, in the Mandala Workshop, you could buy a symbol representing the Jungian effort to reunify the self, made of hand crochet and stained glass. This SoHo was one of exotic contrasts. J. Volpe, General Machinist, was next door to a gallery which offered prints of “erotic
food”; stores selling plumbing supplies and the A and P Cordage Co. existed cheek to jowl with the Jack Gallery with its Erté and Jean Cocteau watercolors.

Kiki looked at Luke shrewdly. He was in SoHo shock … she knew the signs. She had planned to have dinner at The Ballroom but the enormous mural on the wall opposite their table would only intensify his discomfort, showing as it did, in vivid photo-realist fashion, nineteen of SoHo’s most famous artists and citizens, including Larry Rivers and Robert Indiana.

“I know what you need,” she told Luke.

“Now what?”

“Chinese food.’ ”

“By God, you’re right! It’s the only thing I could eat. How did you know?”

“You’re Jewish—it’s simple—when Jews go into culture shock the only thing that brings them back is deli or Chinese. We gentiles feel better right away if we just sit around and watch white bread burning.”

“Don’t you mean toasting?” he asked limply.

“No, burning, like a Yule log. Come on, we’ll go to the Oh-Ho-So. It’s right across the street.”

Since no one had yet taken their order they unceremoniously picked up their baskets, left The Ballroom, crossed the street and staggered into the bar at the Chinese restaurant: a most welcoming bar crowded with worn, green velvet loveseats and chairs of carved wood, no two alike, all pulled up around tables which were made from a clutter of Victorian leftovers and, when the Victoriana failed, battered sewing-machine tables.

In the light of the jukebox, Kiki’s umber eyes were shot with sparks of opals, yellow diamonds and glee.

“The gentleman will have a double Wild Turkey on the rocks,” she told the waiter, “and I’ll have some hard cider. Now let’s talk about the other night. Why didn’t you want to make love? Were you really too tired?” she asked Luke, with her bawdiest smile.

“Shit—just when you start to coddle me, like a real woman, you turn all aggressive. Wait till after the egg roll, won’t you?”

“All I meant was
I
wasn’t too tired—and I’d had to handle Theseus all day. So how come? Are you shy … do you wait till the third date—have you religious scruples?”

“
After
the egg roll,” he reminded her mildly. He had the
equilibrium of strength. Luke was fully aware of his forces, so he didn’t mind revealing his weaknesses. He’d never met the woman who was a match for him—it was his secret pride. Three older sisters had taught him more about women than he needed to know, he had once liked to say, although he was aware that those had become fighting words in recent years. He saw Kiki sizing him up with the skill of a Monte Carlo, croupier, no, make that a pit boss in Vegas. He smiled at her faintly, tauntingly.

“You know what you remind me of?” she said heatedly. “Those crypto-Greek heads in the Met from five hundred B.C.—they all have the same smug, superior, secretive smile—not even the decency to
pretend
to be honest—total conceit that has lasted for three thousand years.”

“
After
the egg roll.”

“All right—but then—watch out!”

“Do you always warn your intended victims?”

“I try to be fair. Men are, in many ways, more fragile than women.”

Luke sighed, looking, giving Kiki the feeling that he was like nothing so much as a whole pile of presents that she was itching to unwrap.

“Okay, we’ll talk about other people. Tell me about your mother,” Kiki suggested.

“My mother is an arch-conservative. She never redecorates. We still have art deco.”

“My mother redecorates every year. We’re just getting art deco.”

“My mother warned me that if I ever marry a beautiful gentile girl, one day she’ll turn out to be just another old
shiksa—shiksa
is the only Yiddish word she knows.”

“My mother believes that the way to break in a sable coat is to wear it to a Japanese restaurant the first day it comes from the furrier. She orders sukiyaki cooked at the table, and sits in the coat during the whole meal. It takes about a week to air it out, but after that the coat knows that she’s the boss. Also I think she’s an anti-Semite.”

“My mother is such an anti-Semite that when her club started letting in Russian Jews, instead of only German Jews, she left it.”

“My mother’s worse than that. She took a course in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in case my father ever got a heart attack and then, when she was in a bank, a man had a heart attack right in front of her and she didn’t try to save him because he was so repulsive looking she was
afraid of catching whatever he might have had … and he died right there in front of her.”

“Jesus! Did she really?” Luke said, fascinated. Kiki was winning the mother-game.

“No, but it did happen to her real-estate lady,” Kiki admitted.

“My mother doesn’t have real-estate ladies,” Luke said with a cool smile.

“Don’t you ever move? You have to have a real-estate lady to buy a house.”

“My mother doesn’t believe in moving—it’s nouveau. She just has …”

“The apartment on Park Avenue and the house in … Pound Ridge … and the place in Westhampton—no, East Hampton—right?”

“Almost—how’d you get so close?”

“It figured. I think we have the same mother only they don’t know it.”

“Do you realize,” Luke said moodily, “that five times more people buy pet food than buy baby food? Isn’t that horrifying?”

“No, dummy. It’s because babies grow up and start to eat like people but pets eat pet food all of their lives.”

“You’re not entirely stupid,” Luke said, reluctantly. Most people reacted to the pet-food statistics with dependable indignation.

“Do you want to hold hands?” Kiki asked hopefully.

“Not during lobster Cantonese!” he said scandalized.

“You lack passion,” Kiki warned, looking yearningly at his mouth—there was something about a man’s mouth, presented between a mustache and a beard, which made it so much more edible looking than if it just sat there on his face surrounded by skin.

“You’re just saying that to make me prove to you that I’m not boring. It won’t work.” Luke applied himself to his lobster with calm relish. Kiki looked at him in dismay. This wasn’t going right at all. Most men, in her large experience, had no defenses against a well-mounted, absolutely shameless attack. Bewildered, confused, flattered, they fell for it, and once they’d fallen for the idea they were only a step away from falling for her. Luke made her uneasy … she had the feeling that somewhere she’d gotten her act wrong, but she’d started out with him as she had with dozens of others and now the pattern had been set
Maybe he
was
just hungry. Maybe he
had
just been tired. With Daisy away for the weekend, and the provisions she bought for breakfast and lunch tomorrow, she still had lots of time to work on this unexpectedly stubborn customer. She really
had
to have him.

“Could you please bring us some hot tea,” she asked a passing waiter, “and some optimistic fortune cookies?”

The Friday following her weekend in Middlebury, Daisy found the studio unexpectedly peaceful. North had gone off for a week’s vacation, the first in over a year, so there was no production meeting scheduled until the middle of the next week. There were myriad details for her to check in the office, but she was pleased when Nick-the-Greek and Wingo Sparks invited her to have lunch with them. Normally she ate lunch at her desk, with a sandwich in one hand and the phone in another.

Once the waiter had brought them their food, Nick said casually, “So how’s the job going, kid? You holding up all right? I mean, we all know it isn’t easy working for North. Sometimes I get the idea that he doesn’t realize what you’re worth.”

“He’s not exactly given to praise, but when he doesn’t foam at the mouth, I know I’ve done a good job,” Daisy shrugged.

“So you’re willing to settle for that kind of validation?” Wingo asked.

“Why not? Is there something wrong with that?” Daisy wasn’t about to complain to her coworkers.

“Lots wrong,” said Nick. “It’s like being satisfied with crumbs from a rich man’s table,
campesina
, and I, Nick-the-Greek, am here to tell you that in no way is it enough.”

“What are you trying to start, Nick?” Daisy asked curiously. “You get your commissions and they’re hardly crumbs.”

“You want to tell her, Wingo?” Nick asked the young cameraman.

“You bet I do. Listen, Daisy, Nick and I have been talking. We both think that we could go into business for ourselves. Nick’s the best rep in the city—he knows where all the accounts are who want the North look but don’t want to pay North’s prices. North thinks of me as just a cameraman, but I can do his stuff, too—lots of guys are
director-cameramen. It took me five years to get my cameraman’s card—but I could be a director tomorrow just by saying I’m one. And I’m good—”

“How do you know?” Daisy challenged.

“I’ve been watching him long enough—I’m on to his tricks … and face it, how hard is it to direct a commercial?”

“This is what we have in mind,” Nick interrupted Wingo. “We want to start our own shop but we want you with us … as a partner and producer. You wouldn’t have to invest a dime, but you’d get a third share in the profits. Once I’m free of North, I could go out and sell Wingo—I’ve got a piss pot of prospects lined up. The reason we want you is because you happen to be the best producer anywhere—you work harder, you can talk people into doing anything for you, you watch the money as if it were your own, you double check everything—so, lucky lady, you get a free ride on this deal.”

“You and Wingo and I would just up and leave—taking the store with us?” Daisy asked.

“It wouldn’t be exactly that,” Wingo protested. “North could replace each of us … eventually … nobody’s indispensable.”

“Yes, eventually—but meanwhile he’d be crippled for how long? You’re talking rip-off, Nick,” Daisy said, in growing anger.

“Tough shit,” Nick said, carelessly. “This is a rip-off business.”

“Nick,” Daisy asked, “who gave you your first chance at repping—who took you out of that ad agency and taught you the ropes? Who showed you where to dress and encouraged you to let loose your natural chutzpah and okayed your expense accounts for those first months when you were getting nowhere? North, right? And Wingo, just who the hell hired you on a regular basis instead of using a free-lance cameraman like almost everyone else? How many days a year would you be working if you were merely another free lance? And who was the only person willing to take a chance on a kid who had
just
gotten his card? Most directors go for experience—they don’t want to touch a raw kid … too much trouble. And how come you think you’re such a hot-shot director when all you know is what you’ve
seen
North do? Don’t you understand that you don’t know
why
he does it, or
how
he gets his ideas? Perfect proof is that you think it’s
easy
to direct a
commercial—maybe it is—a bad commercial or even a fair commercial. But a
good
commercial? A commercial you don’t absolutely hate when it interrupts your favorite television show? A commercial that doesn’t make you want to vomit with the sheer banality of it? A commercial that looks so good you remember it a week later? Or even a month later, when you’ve seen thousands of others since? What’s more, you don’t know word one about casting. Alix and I only make a selection of possibilities, North does all the final casting and that’s essential to the success of a commerical.”

“Shit, Daisy, if you’re going to talk about loyalty …” Nick interrupted in disgust.

“You’re goddamned right I’m talking about loyalty. I remember the time you got drunk and came on so crudely with that gal art director from BBD and O that we lost the job, and I remember the time you were so anxious to get those big beer spots that you gave them a Y and R firm bid without checking with Arnie and we lost money every day we worked, and I remember the time—or rather the times—when North was going crazy on shoots because of client interference and you showed up too late to take them to lunch and get them out of his hair for a few hours, and I remember …”

“Shut the fuck up, Daisy,” Nick said, looking sick.

“The hell I will—My point is that all those times North got furious, but he
didn’t
go looking for another rep—he stuck to you because he had a commitment to you and you’re more good than you are bad—but when you’re bad, you’re
horrid!
”

“But North’s so rude to you …” Wingo started, defensively.

“That’s my problem,” she snapped, “and I don’t need your sympathy. He’s rude because he never works any way but under tension. There isn’t a minute that the time pressure isn’t getting to him. If somebody can screw up, somebody
will
screw up … and he knows it. It’s my business to keep the confusion to a minimum. There’s
nothing
personal in his rudeness—I’m an extension of his work and he doesn’t need to play Sir Walter Raleigh with me. As a matter of fact, you two are only extensions of his work, too. Nick, if you weren’t selling North, you just might have to work for a living. Wingo, if you didn’t have North checking each shot before you roll a foot of film, I wonder just what your work would be like? You’ve both
had a good ride on his back. I’m not saying you don’t have talent, Wingo—just that you aren’t ready to be a director-cameraman yet, and that for you and Nick to get together behind his back and try to steal off with everything he’s given you both in terms of learning and experience and confidence—and to try to get me to go with you—that’s the lowest kind of ingratitude!”