Scruples Two (24 page)

There was a silence as both Spider and Billy sat still, not eating. It was a bold and original idea that had never occurred to either of them before.

“Well …” Billy murmured, unwilling to admit how much the idea immediately tempted her. She was almost ashamed of how proud she had become of her stores; she identified herself with them in a visceral way; they were her triumphs. She knew how well she photographed, how well she wore clothes … Why not?

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I would never have thought of it—Spider, what do you think?”

“Right off the bat? Okay, I think it’s … risky.”

“Why risky?” Billy demanded.

“I don’t know that you’d want to be the symbol of the Scruples customer,” he said, groping for words. “Look, Billy, I have to deal with them directly, and ninety-nine and nine-tenths of one percent of them can’t wear clothes the way you can. They’re used to seeing photographs of models looking better than they ever will, but you’re a real person, and that could be annoying to them, a kind of turn-off. And there’s more—”

“What?” she asked impatiently.

“You’ve often told me that you hated being on those lists of the ten richest women in America, and constantly being identified that way in the media, every time your name is used, right?”

“Right.”

“So appearing in the ads, wearing the latest styles, would make you just that much more of a target. You’d be more envied than you are already. That’s not a good idea. Ultimately it could work against you … women would see the pictures and think, ‘Oh no, not Billy Ikehorn
again
wearing a dress that probably costs a fortune … it’s so easy for her, she owns the damn store and she’s so damn thin, but it’s too expensive for me and I couldn’t carry it off anyway’ … that sort of thing.”

“You’re right, Spider,” Billy said, hiding her regret imperfectly.

“I know you’re right,” Cora de Lioncourt said, hiding her disappointment perfectly. “It’s that kind of sensitivity, that kind of understanding of women’s psyches that makes you so unusual, Spider. I see the pitfalls now.… the idea goes into my wastepaper basket.”

“But it’s a marvelous idea for someone else, Cora,” Billy protested, “probably a designer, a woman designer who happens to design for her own body type … someday I’m sure someone will do it. I do think you’re clever!”

“Well, thank you,” she said, showing her perfect teeth. “Then maybe I’ll put it in my ‘file and don’t forget’ file.”

“Whatever you decide Cora, I’m thrilled that you’re going to be helping us with the big party in the fall, after Labor Day,” Billy said.

Spider continued to eat his turbot. This was the first he’d heard of any party, but he wasn’t about to ask questions, not right after spiking Cora de what’s-her-name’s guns.

“It’s going to be really hard,” Cora said, “to plan something that will top the party you gave when the first Scruples opened. I know that Spider was singlehandedly responsible for that huge success—it was a party that showed genius, Spider, and I doubt that I can arrange anything half as good, but I mean to try. For New Yorkers to be trumped by a big party in Los Angeles … well! They’re going to expect the fall celebration to be incredible and they’ll be picky, Billy, picky as the devil. They hate competition from the provinces. If they don’t believe New York is the center of the universe, how can they justify living here?”

“Spider, I didn’t have a chance to tell you about this before lunch,” Billy said, “but the last time I was here, Cora suggested it.”

“I see. So Cora’s going to help?”

“After all, Spider, it makes sense. We never officially celebrated when we opened, and we really should have had a big party for the publicity if no other reason. New York isn’t your town, the way L.A. is, and it certainly isn’t my town, but it
is
Cora’s town. We need someone here on the spot who knows all the right people to use for food and flowers and music and decor, someone who can add the newest interesting names to our guest list … I haven’t any doubt that it’s a good idea.”

“All I want besides the fun of doing it,” Cora said, “is for Spider to pick out a dress for me to buy to wear to the party. I crave that famous Spider Elliott experience.”

“I think you have your own look down to perfection, Cora, you know as well as I do that you don’t need me,” Spider said, pleasantly but unsmiling.

As he spoke, he thought that there was absolutely no need to give such a party. It would cost a fucking fortune and the New York Scruples was already doing three times as much business per square foot than any other store in town. If they needed publicity, which they didn’t, it was to be had for peanuts, but since Billy obviously wanted to throw a monster bash, why not? It couldn’t hurt, not the way those ads would hurt, so why should he throw cold water on her plan?

The only thing was, there had been plenty of time for Billy to tell him about it before lunch—weeks, in fact, since Cora had come up with the idea—so why had she waited to spring it on him until Cora was there to back her up? No, he didn’t like the Lioncourt even a little bit. And flattery would get her nowhere.

After lunch, for which no check was presented, as it never was to Cora de Lioncourt, she dropped in on several antiques dealers before returning home. As she had expected, she saw nothing worth a second of her time, but she wanted to reject and reject, and reject again, with pointed, spiteful, accurately disdainful words, to vent some of the rage Spider Elliott had aroused in her. Christ, she hated men like that! Handsome, uselessly handsome, dismissive, with minds of their own.

Men with influence over rich women were her natural enemies, and a man like Spider, an impervious man, a man who resisted her and didn’t hesitate to speak his mind, was the worst of all. Rich women were her prey, and Billy Ikehorn was the biggest of all the big game that had ever come her way; she’d been stalking her slowly and carefully and successfully since she first met her, and she’d invited Spider to lunch with them in order to take his measure. He was distinctly bad news, Cora thought, as she returned to her apartment and made herself a cup of tea before she went to her desk to look over her accounts.

Absently she studied the list of the five expensive new restaurants in town where she had arrangements. Her fees were all paid in cash—Cora insisted on
liquide
—for bringing parties of friends for lunch or dinner, with the checks taken care of by the restaurants themselves. Le Train Bleu had waited two months for her to bring Billy Ikehorn, and tomorrow there would be a mention in a well-read gossip column; they owed her a handsome bonus. Although she charged a yearly rate, payable in advance, she made no promises to the restaurant owners. She guaranteed to bring the right people when they opened and for a while afterwards, but the success of the place depended entirely on factors she couldn’t control. If a restaurant didn’t catch on, she dropped it instantly, for she couldn’t afford to take her friends anywhere that was half-empty.

Restaurants were the least of her business, she thought, but dependable. They closed and opened at an amazing rate in the city, and she only agreed to work with the best, recommended to her by members of the network she had built up in the past seven years of residence.

The first year had been grindingly tough, and Cora de Lioncourt had often stiffened her resolve by repeating to herself that she was in a period of investment; not a dime could be expected to come in until she had established herself. The move had been made twice as hard by the discovery that her dollars bought less in New York than her francs did in Paris, so that decorating her apartment and maintaining her standard of living forced her to take a bite into her capital. Nobody in New York gave discounts for cash, not even the shoe repairman, the apartment painter or the lady who cleaned her teeth—what was wrong with these Americans, who had taxes to pay just like everybody else? But she stuck to her plan. Her New York friends had indeed entertained for her, and once her apartment was ready, Cora promptly invited them back, in well-thought-out combinations, adding the best of the new people she had met, particularly anyone connected in any way with the media.

In Paris the media didn’t have the social importance they had in New York. The French newspapers contained reviews of movies, plays and books, but where society was concerned, they were stuck in the Stone Age. French newspapers and magazines didn’t contain lifestyle pages or society gossip columns that told people what parties were being given by which hostess; who was wearing what on each occasion; who had been seen lunching where, with whom; who had just bought a new place and intended to gut and redecorate it; who had gone on vacation with what group of friends, or what charity balls were being planned by what group of women.

The French gave almost nothing to charity; their private parties were closed to the press, ladies lunched together at home, and everyone knew where the few women who could still afford the couture dressed. People wisely played down their wealth for fear of the tax inspectors.

Ah, but New York! An event hadn’t really taken place unless it was reported in the press; newspapers and magazines were rich in outlets for such news, and Cora de Lioncourt made a study of the media that covered the to-ings and fro-ings of the rich as thoroughly as an anthropologist. Her greatest stroke of luck, and she had always known she would have one piece of luck or another, had been a friendship she had developed with Harriet Toppingham, the powerful and feared editor of
Fashion and Interiors
.

The two women had met briefly several times in Paris, when the fashion editor came for the collections—they had many mutual friends—but only in New York did the acquaintanceship become an important friendship for both of them. Harriet was as totally in thrall to collector’s mania as Cora, and equally knowledgeable. They developed a genuine affection and true respect for each other as they lunched together on Saturdays and then went off to the auction at Parke Bernet, or drove out for a day to investigate country dealers; not even a suburban garage sale could fail to inspire the thrill of the hunt for women who knew that you could never guess where a great or merely desirably amusing object might turn up.

Beyond collecting, they discovered that they shared a natural affinity that went right to their hearts. Each of them had grown up unattractive and ambitious, and each of them had made a successful life by imposing her intelligence and taste on the unpromising material she had been given. Each of them was cynical; each of them mistrusted men and hated all the pretty women of the world who floated so easily through life on a cloud of admiration. Each was bitter, each was lonely, each was unstoppable. Each needed the other.

Harriet Toppingham and Cora de Lioncourt collected different kinds of objects and used them in different ways in their complicated, beloved interiors, so the element of competition, which might have been a problem, was absent. As soon as Cora’s apartment was ready to be photographed, Harriet devoted an eight-page color spread to it in one of the monthly issues of
Fashion and Interiors
.

On the day that issue appeared, Cora was not merely made, she was consecrated. No one in New York who mattered to her remained ignorant of the arrival in their city of the fascinating Comtesse Robert de Lioncourt, the custodian of a world of treasures, the well-born charmer from Charleston as well as a Chatfield of Cincinnati, who had conquered Paris and had now returned to her native land and created a setting of refinement and character, with a flavor so distinctly special, so wittily her own, that no decorator in town could have imagined it. The Sunday
New York Times Magazine
photographed her apartment for their decorating pages, as did
New York
magazine and
Town and Country
, all during Cora’s second year in the city.

New Yorkers, who were becoming a bit tired of admiring each other’s predictable art and sculpture, vied for invitations to Cora’s small dinners, where they felt as if they had been transported to another country, a country that existed outside of time and space, created by Cora’s brilliantly innovative evocation of her Paris apartment. She became celebrated and courted throughout the inner circle of the small world from which she intended to make her fortune.

Yes, dear Harriet had been the key, but she had underrated herself, Cora thought. She hadn’t realized how the profession she had invented for herself was suited to her abilities. She got up from her desk, changed into a bathrobe, and lay down on the deep couch, covered with tapestry pillows, a couch that she thought of as her office, for there Cora had established her command center with the only tools she needed for her work: three books of phone numbers, a yellow pad, pencils and a telephone.

Her first clients had been antiques dealers, for they were the breed of tradesman with whom she could deal in the most surefooted way. Cora answered the entreaties of her new friends to “take them antique hunting” by leading them to the expensive dealers with whom she had made her arrangements, receiving a large kickback on the high prices they charged. On the other hand, she thought with pride, she never allowed anyone to buy something that wasn’t worth owning. If they showed a foolish yen for an unworthy piece, she pointed out, gently but firmly, why it was wrong for them.

Next she had launched a talented young Charleston decorator, new to New York and a distant relative, who had sought her help in finding him his first big client. Cora fished about carefully, finally bringing him a recently divorced friend who was looking for someone unknown and original to decorate her new penthouse. On this transaction, and the dozens of similar deals she had made with six other carefully chosen decorators, Cora took a solid ten percent of the total the client spent. The decorators who worked with her considered the percentage reasonable since the countess never brought them clients who weren’t convinced of the necessity of using fine antiques, a belief that invariably caused the clients, sooner or later, to throw away their budgets, eyes big with delight at the thought of the grandeur of the finished project.