Scruples Two (45 page)

Zach.… all alone, no doubt blaming himself unnecessarily for Gigi’s silly tumble, needing comfort, feeling blue and lonely. Zach, still being idealistic and old-fashioned and sentimental. Zach at his most vulnerable. Zach alone and going to waste.

“I’ll just go and check on them,” Pandora said to Nick. “Have you got the key to your room?” He handed it to her and she slipped out of the bar and nipped up the stairs, congratulating herself on recognizing an opportunity when it fell in her lap. That was how Harpers organized their lives while other people daydreamed profitlessly.

Quietly Pandora stood outside the half-open door to Zach and Nick’s room. Why hadn’t Nick told her it wasn’t locked? The room was so small that she could see almost all of it. Zach lay sprawled on his back on the far bed, lit only by the light on the night table that stood between the twin beds. She could see at once that he had fallen asleep on the edge of the bed in the heat of the room. His ski boots were kicked to one side of the wall, his ski pants were hanging from the bedpost, but he still wore his Jockey shorts. A bathrobe lay on the bed by his hand, as if he anticipated having to fling it on. Pandora stepped through the doorway and closed the door firmly but quietly behind her, tiptoeing noiselessly, in her supple, felt-soled boots, to Zach’s bed.

Gigi settled back in bed, feeling oddly comfortable, all things considered. The powerful injections that the doctor had given her before he tried to set her leg had worked immediately, and the pain pills that followed had an effect that showed no sign of beginning to wear off. She was floating pleasantly, and the knowledge that she had an ordinary broken leg seemed more reassuring than otherwise. It could have been so much worse.

Gigi closed her eyes for a while, hoping to sleep, until she became aware that she was trying to push away the uneasy consciousness that she had been deliberately unkind to Zach at the hospital. Could she still maintain that he’d been unfair to her up on the mountain? He’d just told her that he loved her, told her straight out, for the first time, that she was the only girl in the world for him, and kissing—considerable kissing—under those circumstances was understandable, wasn’t it? Even Sasha’s code would have to allow that at such a time a man didn’t deserve to suffer. So what if she’d seen a look of victory in his eyes? Didn’t that fairly reflect those long moments in which she’d finally let herself kiss him back as she had yearned to for so long? Did she have to react as violently as an insulted maiden in a Victorian novel?

As Gigi replayed exactly what had happened, as she figured out why she’d gone flying downhill like Harold Lloyd, she knew that she couldn’t blame her broken leg only on Zach. Lying there in the snow, waiting in awful pain and loneliness for help to come, she’d been so frightened that she’d turned her fear and pain into rage, building up a case against Zach to take her mind off her terror, but in fact until she had wrenched herself out of his secure grasp, she’d been safe enough up on the mountain. He’d skied carefully and considerately all the way, although he should never, ever have lured her into taking the risk. But recklessness
was
Zach, for him it wasn’t even recklessness but a conviction that almost anything could be done if you had the courage to take a chance. She’d known it and she’d had a choice.

Thinking it over in her languid haze, Gigi clearly understood that she was angry at herself, not at Zach. But she’d taken her anger out on him at the hospital. When he’d told her, while he and Nick were helping her upstairs, that he was going to stay in his room next door in case she needed something, she hadn’t responded by so much as a nod. Or a blink. Not so much as a disdainful sniff. As if even rejection was too good for him.

He’d been so abjectly miserable. Hadn’t she almost.… enjoyed?… well, yes,
enjoyed
seeing mighty, dominating, all-wise Zach Nevsky reduced almost to tears by her accident?

How had it all started? She’d first met Zach at one of the Nevsky family celebrations, and even though he was Sasha’s much-discussed brother, it had seemed excessively flattering to her the way every female, every aunt, niece and cousin in the room had clustered around him, vying for his attention. He’d been involved with an actress then, according to Sasha who monitored his affairs, and then with another actress. No woman could resist Zach, Sasha declared proudly, and no woman could keep his interest for long. Wasn’t it then, long ago, that she had set her will against Zach, the red-hot center of his feverish theatrical world, the darling of the drama critics, the unquestioned King of Off Broadway? Wasn’t it then that she had determined that if ever, by any chance, they had anything to do with each other, she’d keep him at arm’s length? Oh, yes, Gigi told herself, she’d played a stern, hard game with him, as sweetly prudish, as daintily prickly, as demurely standoffish, as any clever virgin fishing for a husband with a substantial income in a Trollope novel. It was a wonder she hadn’t insisted that he call her Miss Orsini. She’d played a good game—but played it too long, and she had a broken fibula to prove it. Gigi sighed euphorically. Oh, she wanted Zach, wonderful Zach, she wanted to tell him everything she’d been thinking, she wanted him to know she loved him, and he was just next door. The problem was the room didn’t have a phone and Pandora had thoughtlessly closed the door of their bedroom as she left for the bar, too quickly for Gigi to shout after her.

She’d managed fairly well on her crutches before, Gigi thought, consideringly. But then both Nick and Zach had been hovering over her so she’d known she couldn’t fall. The doctor had assured her that it was safe to stand on her walking cast, even to go up and down stairs, and Zach was so near. Still, why take a childish chance? What if she slipped in trying to get to the door, and broke her other leg? Hadn’t she faced enough danger for one day? She shuddered as she remembered the mountain and closed her eyes, unable to make up her mind. She didn’t
feel
sensible, that was the problem.

Pandora stood over Zach and surveyed the situation. He was plunged into the deep sleep of total exhaustion, as wiped out as if he’d taken knockout drops. It was the first time she had seen him without his characteristic expression of energetic command. Her breath caught in her throat as she looked at his splendid body, all but naked, powerful but utterly abandoned to unconsciousness. Oh, she loved having him like this, helpless and defenseless. She loved the big, rounded, passive lump of his limp genitals. She’d never had a man utterly in her power, never before experienced the immediate rush of heat that invaded her at the sight of a man she had wanted, but hadn’t yet conquered, delivered so entirely into her rule. An insistent, welcome pulse started to beat heavily between her legs as speedily, and in absolute silence, Pandora stripped off all her clothes and let them slide to the floor, never taking her gaze away from Zach’s unprotected nakedness, measuring it with expert, covetous eyes. Softly she removed the bathrobe from the mattress and lightly lowered her slender body into its place, lying sideways, next to Zach but not touching him, supporting herself on one elbow, her chin on her hand, so that she could watch his face.

Zach never moved as she lay down; his deep, regular breathing didn’t change. Pandora reached down and inserted her hand stealthily into the fly of his shorts and stretched her right hand out flat over his penis, exerting no pressure at all. It felt downy, wrinkled, and soft-skinned, and as her palm recognized its length she felt herself grow almost unbearably wet. She scrutinized his face as she made her tentative contact with his flesh, and saw no change in his unconsciousness. Curbing herself strictly, she waited until, under the delicate warmth of her motionless hand, Zach’s organ began to grow fatter, less limp, unmistakably awakening as he slept. Still he lay quietly, undisturbed, and soon she judged that it was safe to curve her fingers around him and begin to increase the pressure on his penis in the most adroit fashion, faintly, slightly, so that gradually, very gradually, while he slumbered on, his penis rose and nudged her fingers so that she had to spread them to accommodate him. Better and better, Pandora thought, intoxicated but still disciplined, her fingers maintaining their cuddling, feathering motions, better and better than she would ever have imagined. Soon she managed to gently widen the opening of his fly, and his penis, freed from the restriction of the fabric, but still guided by her touch, rose straight into the air. She kept her whole hand lightly circled around it, as it jerked and jumped in irregular beats, continuing to fill and stiffen until it lay on his stomach, pointing upward toward his waist. Zach sighed deeply in his sleep, moved his head, but showed no signs of waking. Pandora waited as long as she could to fully savor the sight of his magnificent arousal. He would never belong so utterly to anyone else, she thought triumphantly. Not like this. Finally, unable to hold herself back any longer, she opened her fingers, softly released his shaft, and shifted her position with the utmost care, so that she held herself spread above Zach’s body, straddling him with both her knees, balanced easily on one arm and the flat of her hand, suspended, hovering over him like a slim golden and white predator.

Still he slept, although he mumbled something in his sleep and moved his head from side to side. She looked down to make sure that the entrance to her thighs was poised a little farther down his body than the swollen tip of his organ. Her free hand slowly and expertly lifted the heavy rod and fed it slowly, easily, inch by rigid inch, into her hungry, waiting body. One of Zach’s eyelids opened a slit as he almost woke, and then fell shut again. Pandora tightened her inner muscles, relaxed them and tightened them again, just enough to provide a distinct pulsation. Zach started to move within her as both his eyelids opened.

“What?” he gasped, utterly confused and disoriented. Pandora was silent, tense and spellbound with her galloping need as, for the first time, she dared to move her hips and bottom backward and forward in an irresistibly insistent rhythm. Zach, still not entirely awake, rolled over, automatically holding her in his arms, instinctively keeping himself rooted inside her. He pinioned her to the mattress and blinked blankly down at her face. “What the hell …?” he whispered thickly, wonderingly. Still she said nothing, but finally allowed herself to abandon the agonizingly slow, acutely voluptuous curb she had so guilefully imposed on herself. She thrust her pelvis upward in a lawless frenzy so that he would penetrate her as profoundly as possible. Zach, excruciatingly inflamed, rammed into her body in an animalistic reflex. Their bodies were locked together, Pandora’s naked legs were wrapped around his back, and Zach was rutting deeply inside her, both of them grunting with unchained hunger, when Gigi pushed open the door. She staggered back against the wall, unable to move or to turn her eyes away. The two on the bed were unaware of everything as they moved quickly toward their rapid, uncomplicated, barbarous climax and fell apart heavily, groaning in relief, eyes closed.

Released from her trance, in a frantic desire to escape, Gigi maneuvered too quickly on her crutches and banged her cast loudly against the door. Zach raised his head, looked up and caught a glimpse of her face just as she managed to turn her back. He gaped at her, stunned into immobility, as she started clumsily to negotiate the corridor, leaving the door swinging open. In unutterable shock he saw himself as Gigi must have seen him. He pulled himself out of Pandora in a huge lurch, struggled to a standing position and futilely attempted to put on his ski pants.

“And just where do you think you’re going?” Pandora demanded in silky displeasure, her eyelids still closed. No man had ever left her body with such an ungentlemanly lack of ceremony.

“You crazy bitch! I could kill you for this!”

Her eyes flew open in disbelief.
“What!
What’s wrong with you?”

“Gigi saw us.”

“So what if she did?”

“Get the hell out of here!” Zach shouted, and slumped into a chair, finally realizing that he couldn’t follow his insane determination to run after Gigi. What could he say that she would believe? That anyone would ever believe?

“Zach! Is that any way to treat a lady?” Pandora asked, trying to turn it into a joke. In her confident, reliable and often-reinforced opinion, she’d been unforgettable. But not crazy-bitch-unforgettable. Really, Zach was simply unhinged tonight. To say nothing of ungrateful. “Get out,” he repeated, in a tone of such menace that she wiped herself off hastily on the top sheet and dressed as if the floor were on fire. She slammed the door and stood irresolutely in the hallway. She couldn’t go back to the room, God knows.

Pandora shrugged her shoulders petulantly, checked her clothes to make sure they were on straight, rearranged her hair in a series of practiced pats and started downstairs in the direction of the bar, her patrician beauty only heightened by the brilliant color in her cheeks and the hungry, unsatisfied appetite in her eyes. Certainly not Nick, she decided, he didn’t deserve to get lucky tonight, but the bar was full of great-looking guys. She was just getting started, she thought, with an interior smile. A quickie was never enough, not even what must have been the slowest quickie in history. When Zach started to remember how good she was, he’d be sorry indeed that he’d sent her away. By tomorrow he’d be hanging around like a hungry puppy, begging to be fed again. No chance of that. Harpers are never to be dismissed.

16

I
don’t understand why she’s still so upset,” Billy said worriedly as she and Sasha sat in the kitchen of the apartment Sasha shared with Gigi. It was a Saturday and Sasha wasn’t working, so they had taken advantage of the opportunity to meet in the kitchen for their first private talk. “She should have started to bounce back by now, bruises and all, don’t you think?”

Gigi had arrived back in New York with her broken leg a few hours after Billy had arrived from Paris and moved back into her apartment at the Carlyle. That had been four days ago, days in which Billy had spent much of her time keeping Gigi company and making sure that she was fed. In the evenings she’d divided her time between Gigi and Sasha’s place and Jessica’s apartment, finding that mere constant, casual communion with three women, who knew nothing of what had happened with Sam, was like a poultice on her raw pain and anger.

“If it were just her leg, I’d agree with you, but now I know for sure it’s got to be something that happened with Zach,” Sasha replied. “He hasn’t phoned since she got back, that’s not like him at all, and she hasn’t mentioned his name, which used to be slipped into every sentence she spoke. I suspect a good old-fashioned broken heart and I’d like to break his goddamned head for him, but I’m afraid to ask her straight out—there’s something so closed in and hurt and pinched about her face—she’s never been like this before—it keeps me from being my usual inquisitive self. And then … since it concerns Zach I feel I should stay out of it.”

“But, Sasha, you must know exactly what was going on between them. He’s your brother, she’s your roommate, you two are the same generation, how
can
you not know?”

“Billy, if I had a clue I promise I’d tell you every detail, but I never understood it. Whatever was going on was out of a time warp—”

“Not a love affair?”

“Not what anybody normal would call a love affair. No touching—”

“No touching?
Come on!”

“They must both be mentally sick. How any woman, given a chance, could not touch Zach …”

“Or any man not touch Gigi.…”

Billy and Sasha looked at each other in complete understanding, not of Zach and Gigi, but of each other. Over the last few days they had discovered that they were deeply compatible in the mysterious way in which women of different ages, backgrounds and life experience can sometimes find themselves comfortable, even intuitive, with each other, in spite of their not knowing each other well.

“We’d better unpack this lunch hamper from La Grenouille,” Billy said, “while it’s still hot. I ordered this morning and had my driver pick it up—I thought we could all use a hot lunch, instead of more sandwiches.”

“An army travels on its stomach, and three women can make an army … even with one walking wounded, one about to be unemployed and one.… whatever you are,” Sasha said delicately. Billy wasn’t her imperious, astonishing self almost as much as Gigi wasn’t herself. Or more.

“Maybe someday I’ll tell you, if I ever figure it out myself.” She couldn’t bullshit clear-eyed Sasha, Billy thought, even if she wanted to.

“At least it doesn’t involve Zach.”

“The Orloffs and the Nevskys are in the clear on this one,” Billy said, producing a smile.

“That’s lucky. I feel guilty enough as it is. Come on in the living room, Billy. We can have a picnic while I show you a picture of the condo I may decide not to buy in Hawaii. Or then again, I may. I need a bigger audience for my catalog collection.”

“Catalog? Do you mean
Previews?
I keep a stack of them at the hotel, to remind me that I can always buy a plantation or a ranch or an island in Maine, or all three, for that matter, as well as a castle in Spain. My escape routes.”

“But you don’t—you really
could
, after all, and you don’t—why not?”

“I guess I’m just not a country girl. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself,” Billy said thoughtfully. “Most women who have a number of houses use them to lead the kind of heavy-duty social round that doesn’t attract me. I like to keep busy, seriously busy. I’d have to learn the cattle business or take up shooting wild ducks or lobster fishing—not my bag. Gigi, are you ready for some of this pâté?”

“No thanks.”

“But you should try to eat something, baby. You’ve been losing weight in front of my eyes and you didn’t have any to lose,” Billy said, looking at Gigi with worry.

“I promise to have some of the chicken when you both get around to it,” she temporized.

“Okay, but I’ll hold you to it. Now I have a confession to make. I’ve been dying to open your Christmas present since I got back, and last night, when I went back to my place for dinner, I gave in to the temptation. Darling, it’s so incredibly beautiful, I’ve never had anything like it! The minute I put it on I felt like another woman, I
became
Georgie—who had a hell of a lot more fun than Billy—and I just couldn’t take it off. If I say so myself, I looked divine in it, so romantic, so alluring.… even without a butler in sight, alas. I read the card to Jessica over the phone and she insisted that I read it again to David when he came back from the office. They couldn’t get over it—the violinist at the Café de Paris … the rope of pink pearls … Georgie inventing mascara—they never knew you had an imagination like that. I’m taking it over tonight so they can see the robe and the wonderful sketch of me with the three battling butlers. Poor Jessie’s dying to open her present, but the Strausses always celebrate an all-out Hanukkah, and after that they do a big Christmas, so she doesn’t dare. Thank you, Gigi, truly it’s the most enchanting and original present I’ve ever had.”

“I knew you’d like it when I found it,” Gigi said, mustering a trace of animation.

“What are you giving Jessie? I promise I won’t even hint to her.”

“Ruffled pink pajamas, they’re French, circa 1920s, and I’m pretty sure they’re just her size.”

“What does the card say?”

“It’s in the package now, but Sasha made Xerox copies of all of the cards when we thought we were going to start a lingerie line with Mr. Jimmy.”

“Poor Mr. Jimmy,” Billy said. “Even though I never knew him, I know I would have doted on him. Imagine, dropping dead of a heart attack in the middle of a poker game, with a winning hand—”

“Here today, gone tomorrow,” Gigi interrupted. “Maybe it was all for the best. He’d had a good life and he didn’t suffer for a second. And since he was a bachelor …”

“Really, Gigi, you’re absolutely heartless!” Sasha protested. “What about me? I worked for him for years, I loved the man, I’m the one who misses him desperately. And what about the fact that his only heir, his nephew the shrink, has closed the deal to sell the company to Warner’s? Ha! Would that all shrinks moved so fast. And Warner’s has all the models they need—what is Sasha Nevsky going to do for a living after the papers are signed? Here today, gone tomorrow—is that all you can say about poor Mr. Jimmy? Really, Gigi, you should be ashamed of yourself!”

“And it was a damn good idea too, copying antique lingerie, nobody’s doing it,” Billy added. “I’m so sorry about your hopes being dashed like that, both of you.”

“If you like the idea, why don’t you go into business with us?” Sasha suggested. “You could start a new company and do just what he was planning to do.”

“What! No. Oh, Sasha, no, I don’t think so. I can’t possibly imagine myself competing on Seventh Avenue after owning Scruples … it feels totally wrong, it
is
totally wrong, and that’s an end to it.” Billy shook her head vigorously. Did Sasha have the slightest idea of what the tight elite of the innerwear industry would think of her as a new entry with Gigi’s whimsical idea? She’d be a laughingstock, going from Scruples into such a small, if charming, undertaking. “Why don’t you take your idea to another company? I could easily make introductions for you and Gigi.”

“No thanks, Billy,” Gigi said hastily, before Sasha could answer. “It was one thing with Mr. Jimmy … I felt safe with him, even though it took me a while to agree to it, but it was his idea, not mine.
He
came after
me
. I wouldn’t want to propose something so special to a bunch of strangers.”

“I would,” Sasha said vigorously, preventing her cat from getting into the pâté.

“That’s because you’re an Orloff,” Gigi said listlessly.

“If you weren’t such a sad case I’d take that as an insult,” Sasha replied. “I’ll assume you mean that I have more resistance to bad luck than you do, more fortitude, more optimism.”

“Whatever you say.”

“A broken leg won’t last forever, and the Gatherum was surprisingly decent about it, even if she did scream at you on the phone for half an hour. After all, she’s holding your job for you.”

“That’s because she can’t find anybody better to work in her vile and odious business,” Gigi said with abrupt vehemence. “Arguing with the clients who want the top of the line and don’t want to pay for it; steering unsuspecting clients to the most expensive rental places and florists because that way we pick up more money on our percentages of what they charge; the perfectionist hostesses with the holes in their hearts who will never, ever be satisfied; the unending details and paperwork and the phone attached to your ear; the amount of vicious gossip about other caterers from the waiters who work for all of them—so you know that they’ve got to be gossiping everywhere about you too; the attitude that no matter how tired a kitchen worker is, he or she gets no rest. Did you know that if they so much as lean against something during a lull, somebody will spot them and say, ‘If you can lean, you can clean’? That happened to me when I started, and I’ve never forgotten it. I hate the whole stinking-to-the-core catering business, I don’t know why I ever thought I wanted to be in it, and I’ll be damned if I’ll go back to it! I’d rather get a job as a chef in a private family.”

Billy looked at her defiant face and held her peace. This could only be a momentary rejection of a field in which Gigi had already made brilliant progress, not something to take seriously. It was her broken heart speaking, not her ambition.

“Gloom and doom, doom and gloom,” Sasha muttered, eating the pâté with an excellent appetite. “What a lousy holiday season. If it weren’t for Marcel here, I’d catch your mood, but Marcel is one happy cat. I hoped I’d get some consolation from my catalogs, but even the new Neiman Marcus Christmas Book has let me down.… again. What on earth made them think I’d want an electronic bicycle that’s hooked up to a giant TV with two hours of programmed scenery, so you don’t get bored while you bike—for twenty thousand dollars in real American money? This has to be a new low. Billy, did you ever see the ‘ComRo 1’ they offered last year? No? Imagine a big, ugly robot that opens doors, takes out trash, sweeps, waters the plants, and walks the dog, at only fifteen thousand bucks! At those prices I can open my own doors, thank you very much! And look at this! Fourteen thousand dollars for a tunic and pants from Galanos!… I’d sooner learn to sew!” Sasha kicked with exasperation at the pile of Christmas catalogs that she’d been collecting for years. “At least the year before last, Neiman’s had a cute ostrich that was only fifteen hundred, relatively speaking a bargain … if you happen to live on a ranch.”

“Why do you hang on to those things, if they make you so mad?” Billy asked, amused and curious. She’d never seen anyone with a catalog collection before.

“Because they’re there, I guess. It’s some sort of sick addiction. It’s not as if I ordered much from them, just an item or two for my aunts to keep me on their lists. They all show the same obvious, predictable Christmas merchandise, whether it’s B. Altman or Bonwit’s or Sakowitz or Marshall Field or Jordan Marsh or Saks or Bloomie’s—excruciatingly dull suits and dresses, overly fluffy blouses, overly fancy sweaters, overly expensive furs—wait a minute, here’s a wild Russian Barguzin sable cape for a hundred thousand, no less, which I’d happily take, to warm my wild Russian heart, but only if Mr. Marcus gave it to me for love—excruciatingly dull dresses and suits, just what you would expect every man with a fear of shopping would order for his wife or daughter or sister, but nothing a woman would ever buy for herself, nothing exciting, just reworking of last year’s stuff that I know by heart, and boring, boring, boring. Not necessary.
Not young!”

“You’re just not a catalog customer,” Billy decided. “You have too much style of your own.”

“I could be,” Sasha said thoughtfully. “I could be. Anybody could be. Oh well, at least Neiman’s is better than the other department stores—they try to be different … I kind of craved that ostrich. The other catalogs, the ones that don’t come from the big department stores, concentrate on safe jewelry that wouldn’t thrill any woman, or watches—there are a zillion watch catalogs—or gifts from places like Tiffany and Gump’s. Maybe I should go realistic and send for Sears, Roebuck. Or I could move to the woods and get L.L. Bean. My problem is I want catalogs to be about
fashion
. To think I’m still silly enough to wait all year long for them to come, as if I somehow believe that this year, finally, I’m going to be surprised. It’s pitiful, purely pitiful.”