Scruples Two (51 page)

“I’ve got them in my handbag,” Billy said as the two girls looked at each other in amazement. Reading glasses?

“Right, handbags give you gentlewomen the advan-a quarter,” Billy said, laughing for the first time that morning.

“What can I call you collectively that no one will jump on me for?”

“Women,” Billy said. “Ladies,” Sasha offered.

“Guys,” Gigi said. “Call us, ‘you guys,’ it’s the only safe way to go.”

“Okay, guys, what does this mess on the rug tell us?”

Gigi, who by this time had added her cape, blazer, belt and turtleneck sweater to the pile of clothes, spoke up.

“It tells me that you’re all a bunch of unsentimental, practical-minded, color-blind copycats who wouldn’t know what to do with an accessory if it wrapped itself around your neck, like poor Isadora Duncan’s scarf.”

“So noted.” Spider grinned at her indulgently. Gigi had tucked the thin, plum-colored, long-sleeved pullover, which fit her slender frame closely, into her jeans, and pinned the bunch of violets at her throat. Her intricate silver earrings dangled to her shoulders, and her orange hair stood away from her face as indignantly as if she were a badly surprised cat. Half of her looked ready to play the harp on the concert stage, he thought, the other half to ride the range.

“Well,” Sasha said, “aside from the fact that Billy and I think alike, only she does it on her feet five times quicker than I do, I’m the only one who brought a dress. After a fire destroyed your apartment, you’d be eating out a lot—didn’t anybody realize that but me?”

“I’ve got the skirt to my red suit, and two shirts, the black chiffon and the white silk—that makes the equivalent of two dresses for me,” Billy observed.

“And I’ve got my blazer,” Spider said, “and a dress shirt. No tie, but I could always buy one if I had to. I could join you guys in the restaurant without causing you shame.”

“And so could I,” Gigi said, “if I put on my velvet pants. The cowboy boots go
anywhere.”

“By a dress,” Sasha insisted, “I mean a sexy dress. Your blouses aren’t specifically sexy, Billy, and neither is Gigi’s sweater.”

“Sasha’s right,” Spider said. “And Sasha’s wrong. Sexy isn’t what’s low-cut or fits like your second skin, sexy is your attitude when you wear it.”

“Oh, Spider, don’t start trying to sell us our own old clothes,” Billy said, remembering how he used to tutor women in what to wear and how to wear it.

“Just making an observation for the record, Billy. Anybody else got anything else to say?”

“Yes,” Billy said. “With the exception of Sasha’s dress, every single thing we each packed is a separate. Pants, jackets, sweaters, blouses. Only one skirt, mine. Only Sasha and Gigi thought about their feet. We could all wear Spider’s wardrobe, if his things were cut for women. What we have here, with the exception of Gigi’s accessories, and Sasha’s dress, is a theme. Am I following your thought process, Spider?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t get it,” Gigi said. “Are you talking unisex?”

“I think I get it, but I don’t think I like it. I think you’re talking boring and safe, Billy,” Sasha said plaintively. “I hate gifty clothes, but I hate dull clothes just as much.”

“No,” Billy said, getting up and prowling around the circle of couches, picking her words thoughtfully and slowly, “what I’m talking about is concentrating on a collection of the
best possible separate pieces
that we’ll totally
rethink
to give them a unique twist … let’s think of them as
new classics
that can be combined in dozens of different ways to make capsule wardrobes for most ordinary, real-life situations. You don’t want to even try to sell special-occasion dresses by catalog … women like to shop for them. Or fitted, tailored suits either. Of course, we’ll hire our own designers—but yes, totally
versatile separates
that can be dressed up or down.”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” Spider said.

“Thank you, Mr. Elliott. In France they call people who say things like that ‘inspectors of finished work.’ ”

“Classics?” Gigi asked, her face falling in disappointment. “I never wear classics.”

“But you do, Gigi,” Sasha said, “only you wear them in weird colors and weird combinations and they’re always too big or too small or eleventh-hand, but you’ve got a jacket, pants, and sweaters, just like everybody else.”

“Oh. So I do.” Gigi looked crestfallen. Classics! “What about accessories?” she demanded.

“That’s where I think you let the catalog customers do their own thing,” Spider said.

“Oh no, that’s where I think you should give them an idea of what to do,” Gigi replied, incensed. “Take Sasha’s black cardigan—I could make it look fifteen or twenty-five different ways with the right accessories. If we sold the ultimate, perfect, best black cardigan in the world and didn’t have a double spread of pictures of different ways in which you could wear it, we wouldn’t be giving our customers the service they deserve!”

“And when we get someone to design our ultimate cardigan, the Scruples Two cardigan,” Billy said, “we should offer it in a range of colors. Not everybody wants to wear black, lots of women can’t. We need at least six basic colors … gray, navy, camel—”

“Deep, deep purple, heartbroken lavender, sort of an autumnal mossy-misty green, a blissful blue, between delphinium and the sky at twilight, a kind of ultimate pink, not shocking pink, not baby pink or raspberry, but definitely an important pink, a smoky beige that isn’t too yellow or too brown …” Gigi stopped, waiting for more inspiration.

“Guys! Hold it for a second,” Spider said. “Before we get bogged down in details, are we agreed on the main thrust of Scruples Two: classic, versatile, newly imagined separates? Real clothes for real women? It has
never
been done before in the long history of catalogs.”

“One minute! What about my antique lingerie?” Gigi protested.

“And I promised Jessica to do a section for the discontinued woman, all those things she can’t find anymore,” Billy said.

“I told three of my aunts that I guaranteed them a section where they could find wonderful things for themselves. They’re all still beautiful and they love clothes and are willing to pay good money for them, but they weigh over two hundred pounds,” Sasha informed them. “Each.”

“All those things will be included,” Spider said. “Isn’t that right, Billy? But the meat and potatoes of Scruples Two, the part where we make most of our money, is, as I see it, the separates you need year in and year out.”

“Will it be published four times a year?” Sasha asked, not willing to give up her hobby horse.

“I hadn’t started to think about frequency,” Spider admitted.

“I think it’s essential or it isn’t fashion,” Sasha insisted.

“Sasha’s right,” Billy said. “We’ve got to be thinking in terms of the next selling season long, long before we send the first one out.”

“For those technical details we need a catalog person,” Spider said firmly. “We have to hire the best person in the catalog world, somebody who’s lived a catalog life. None of us knows what kind of pricing we’re talking about, what kind of mailing lists, what inventory problems we might have. Guys, we don’t know fuck-all about catalogs, we just know that Scruples Two is going to be a howling success.”

“We can hire ten people who know that stuff, Spider,” Billy assured him, “but we can’t hire somebody who invented the Five-Minute Fire Drill Wardrobe. You
were
getting us to lead you to the theme that way, weren’t you?”

“Sort of.”

“I love that ‘ah, shucks, it weren’t nothin’, ma’am,’ look you get, Spider,” Gigi said.

“Just a hunch, Gigi,” Spider said modestly.

Spider’s desk phone buzzed. Startled out of his concentration on the catalog, he picked it up with annoyance. “Who? Oh, okay, sure, send him in.

“It’s Josh Hillman,” he said, turning to Billy. “He’s got those papers we’re supposed to sign today; they have to be witnessed.”

“Why would one of the top lawyers in L.A. leave his office to bring them here himself?” Billy asked.

“It’s got to be pure curiosity. He’s dying to know exactly what we’re up to.”

“Oh, I haven’t seen Josh in years!” Gigi cried. “Is he still the most eligible man in Beverly Hills?”

“So I understand,” Billy answered, shrugging, as Sasha quickly slipped out of the room by another door that led to a ladies’ room.

Gigi rushed to give Josh a big hug and kiss, realizing as she saw him that she’d never really looked at him as a man before. She must have been too much of a kid, or too hung up on her imaginary visions of the young Marlon Brando, to realize that a man in his forties wasn’t too old to fall into the handsome category. His eyes were many shades grayer than the sprinkling of gray in his short hair; he was as lithe as ever, even taller than Spider, and his high cheekbones, quizzical glance, clever mouth and sardonic smile all combined to make him a man of clear distinction.

“Garage sale?” Josh asked Billy, holding Gigi by the waist and looking at the mountain of clothes.

“It’s a kind of contest,” she said protectively. She still hadn’t told Josh exactly what business she was going into with Spider, but had just asked him to draw up the partnership papers.

“Josh, you’re the first to see the seed of Scruples Two,” Spider announced.

“I thought it was going to be another store, there’s an awful lot of money being spent on designer clothes these days.”

“Not a store, and not a lot of money,” Spider said like a proud father, not noticing that Billy was trying to signal him with her eyes to keep quiet about their plans. “We’re going to create the first great fashion catalog based on the essential clothes no woman can live without. The twenty percent of the stuff she buys that she wears ninety percent of the time.”

“Where’d you get that statistic?” Josh asked, raising his eyebrows dubiously.

“Pravda
. But ask any woman, Josh, and she’ll confirm it. And we’re going to publicize it in a way no one has ever dreamed of publicizing a catalog before. Billy’s going to be on every national television show that has a female audience, from ‘Good Morning America’ and ‘Today’ to Phil to Oprah, and on all the major local shows, the way writers tour for new books, showing people how our pieces work together—”

“I am going to do
what!”
Billy almost shouted, astonished. What the hell made him think she’d go on television?

“Of course—with three models to show the clothes while you explain the theme—with the fire drill this morning, I forgot to mention it. The idea came to me last night after we looked over your new jet. The travel wouldn’t be tough, and shows will be fighting over a chance to get you. Of course we’ve got to give a huge press party, the way we did for Scruples, long before the first catalog is mailed, maybe one here, one in New York and one in Chicago—maybe Dallas?
—
I’ll work that out with our PR people—”

“What PR people?” Billy gasped.

“The ones we’re going to hire, of course,” Spider said briskly, getting up and striding around the room in excitement. “Another thing, we should send out specially designed Scruples Two clothes hangers with every piece of merchandise that needs one, nothing more annoying than not enough hangers, isn’t that right, Josh? And I’ve just realized that Gigi should do a lot of TV too with her accessory ideas, television producers are always looking for show-and-tell stuff.”

“Spider!” Gigi squeaked, but he paid no attention to her, carried away by his ideas. “We’re going to advertise in selected markets in national magazines—no catalog has ever advertised—and Scruples Two is free, so we’ll get a terrific response.”

“How about skywriters, Spider?” Billy asked, “and the Goodyear blimp saying, ‘Welcome home, January’?”

“On target, Billy, on target,” he said, looking as if he were about to burst into a chorus of “Seventy-six Trombones.”

“Maybe a little too cute, but I like your thinking. I always liked your thinking.” He stopped to blow her a kiss, before he continued. “We’ll send a special Scruples Two tape measure and a life-size wall chart to every new customer so we can establish their exact size, and then we’ll have fewer returns—of course we’ll take returns without question—”

“Nobody, nobody does that!” Billy said, outraged.

“That’s why we have to. The only way to capture a mail-order customer with a new kind of catalog she’s never seen before is to give her the chance to return what she doesn’t like without any valid reason. If she doesn’t have that option, she’ll look but not order. Billy, I know it might cost us a lot at first, but we’ll build our customers’ trust, we’ll learn what merchandise works and what doesn’t, and we’ll more than make it back in the long run. Right, Billy, do we agree?”

“We agree,” she smiled, finally won over by his enthusiasm. Why shouldn’t they use the Goodyear blimp? Before the football games? No, that would probably be too expensive, but the blimp didn’t only work on Super Bowl Sunday. And why not TV commercials? Lester Weinstock had bartered his old television shows for tons of commercial time, and she could buy it from him at a substantial discount. Absolutely TV!

“And,” Spider went on, “at least in the first issue, we ought to run a major contest, maybe customers could send us pictures of how they combine our separates and the winner gets to come out here in Billy’s jet and go on a shopping spree with all you guys on Rodeo Drive and also gets one of everything in the catalog—we ought to have more than one winner, what about a baker’s dozen?—and Sasha could—”

“Sasha could what?” Sasha asked as she came back into the room wearing her lucky red dress and high-heeled black pumps into which she’d just changed. A total silence fell as she moved toward them with the walk of dignified yet delicately wanton energy that had sold enough panties and bras to reach to the moon, a creature of sheen and luster, dark fire and dark, dark red rubies, her limp jersey dress transformed into the most perfectly cut garment in the world, its long sleeves only adding to the shock of the deeply cut neckline from which her breasts rose halfway in their white splendor.