Scruples Read online

  Now Rosel reappeared, followed by her assistant wheeling a heavy rolling cart with a rack. A white linen slipcover concealed the contents. Billy Orsini had devised this system as one way of maintaining the customer’s privacy at Scruples, a privacy almost nonexistent in most of the other expensive shops of Beverly Hills. Rosel left them as soon as she had unveiled the clothes. Spider always worked with the customers alone, their interchange undiluted by the saleswomen, who had a habit of falling in love with the dress that would have looked well on them rather than on the woman who would wear it. Together he and Maggie went through her choices. Some of them Spider passed on without comment, some he eliminated, some he asked Maggie to try on before he made his decision, which she did behind the four-panel screen in one corner of the large room. When they had got through the lot, Spider picked up the phone and asked the chef to send up a big pot of Earl Grey tea, a bottle of V.S.O.P., and a tray of fresh caviar and smoked-salmon sandwiches.

  “We’ll have your blood-sugar level back to normal in no time,” he reassured the exhausted girl. As they shared the strong tea, laced well with brandy, they both relaxed with the sense of a difficult job accomplished.

  “You realize, Maggie,” Spider said lazily, “that you still haven’t picked out the most important dress of all.”

  “Huh?” She was groggy with relief and fatigue and her back hurt.

  “What are you going to wear for the Academy Awards, little one?”

  “Who knows? Something. Haven’t I bought enough, you momser?”

  “Not yet. Are you trying to ruin my reputation? That monster rally is beamed by satellite all over the world—audience of one hundred fifty million. That’s three hundred million eyes looking at you. You’d better wear something pretty special.”

  “Oh, shit, Spider, you’re giving me the chills.”

  “You’ve never been head honcho on an Award show before. We’d better get Valentine to design something really special for you.”

  “Valentine?” Maggie’s eyes were uncertain. She had never bought custom-made clothes because her schedule was too tight to allow for many fittings.

  “Yep. And don’t worry, you’ll find the time. Don’t you want to astonish the whole fucking world?”

  “Spider,” she said gratefully, “if I kissed your feet, you wouldn’t think I was coming on to you, would you?”

  “You don’t have the strength,” he answered. “Just stay put and answer a few questions. What are Vito’s chances for the nomination? Just between us.”

  “Only fair, good, or excellent, depending. There are seven other pictures out there that made a good number of the ten-best lists and have lots of backing behind them. Obviously, I want him to get one … but I wouldn’t bet my next paycheck on it.”

  “How can you know as little as I do?” Spider complained.

  “That’s show business. Is Billy showing any signs of wear and tear? She’s really addicted to that divine wop she married.”

  “Wear and tear? Obsession is more like it. But then she never has gone in for mild emotions, not since I’ve known her. If there were a few more weeks to wait, she’d wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and see Lady Macbeth. Hell, I like Vito and he’s a very talented guy, but sometimes I wish she’d married someone who did something less dangerous, like sky diving or Grand Prix racing.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Worse.”

  While Maggie and Spider were talking, Billy was restlessly studying some of the stock of the gift section of Scruples, prowling around in a thief’s paradise of Chinese export armorial cachepots, Victorian silver cookie jars, eighteenth-century beaded evening bags, French shoe buckles of rose-cut diamonds, Battersea candlesticks, and Georgian snuffboxes, the corner she called “the pillaging of Peking.” Simultaneously she kept a discreet eye on the backgammon tables in the pub where six men were having a friendly game while they waited for their women to finish shopping, a game at which probably not less than three thousand dollars would change hands. Scruples had developed into the most popular unorganized yet exclusive men’s club in town. Billy managed, at the same time, to notice the two women from Texas who had each just bought four identical vicuna lap robes lined in chinchilla, mink, nutria, and, for a giggle, mole dyed in beige, brown, and white stripes. Sisters? Best friends? She had never been able to understand women who shopped together and bought the same things. An abomination. Her irritation at the two women was, Billy realized, merely a reflection of her growing annoyance that Valentine wasn’t finished yet. Damn and blast her client, Muffie Woodstock, that leathery creature. And Spider, why the hell wasn’t he around?

  Abruptly disgusted with the people around her, she walked to one of the four sets of double doors on the north and south sides of the main salon of Scruples and looked out at the formal gardens that surrounded the store like an oasis. Dwarf privet and gray santolina were set in intricate patterns in front of the tall boxwood hedges that shielded Scruples on three sides. Two dozen varieties of geraniums, in antique terra-cotta urns, were already in full bloom, brought in from Billy’s own greenhouses. She could smell the fruitwood-and-eucalyptus fire that snapped behind an ornate brass fire screen in the Edwardian winter garden at the far end of the salon and hear the murmur of voices as a few late shoppers drank tea and champagne. But none of these familiar sights and sounds could quiet her nervous agitation.

  Valentine O’Neill, in her design studio, had been enjoying herself thoroughly all afternoon. Mrs. Ames Woodstock presented the kind of challenge she enjoyed, a woman who was terrified by beautiful clothes yet was going to be forced by circumstances—and Valentine—to wear them and wear them with panache. Nor did Valentine underestimate the princely amount that Mrs. Woodstock’s millionaire husband, wise in the diplomacy of international oil and just appointed ambassador to France, was willing to pay for the privilege of having an entire wardrobe made to order at Scruples. No Frenchwoman would.

  Although Valentine hadn’t lived in Paris for five years and was half Irish on her father’s side, now, at twenty-six, she remained as unmistakably French as the Eiffel Tower. The final, secret detail of what made her so French, in defiance of her wild Irish coloring, might have been in the whimsical tilt of her lips or in her slender, deliriously pointed nose with its three freckles or in the speculative glint in her eyes, light green as young leaves. She had mermaid eyes in a small, white face, an alive, alive face, which never fell into dullness or fixed itself in a pout. She was as alert as a vixen, as humorous as the song by Maurice Chevalier after which her homesick war-bride mother had named her. There was, under Valentine’s ever-changing expressions, a bedrock of sturdy reasonableness, a base of stubborn French logic, which was all too often combined with her quick Celtic temper. Even her cap of short, red curls, Mrs. Woodstock thought apprehensively, as Valentine draped another length of silk over her shoulder, was the most assertive, even aggressive, hair she had ever seen.

  Muffie Woodstock had the bewildered expression of a woman who has always lived in pants, peacefully breeding her dogs and riding her horses, and now finds herself being shown a sketch of the dress she will be wearing to a gala reception at the residence of the president of France.

  “But, Valentine, it’s rather, well, I don’t know—” she said helplessly. Washington had advised her that she’d need at least half a dozen suits suitable for ladies’ luncheons, a number of “small-dinner” dresses, and a minimum of a dozen full evening dresses and coats for the diplomatic round.

  “But, Mrs. Woodstock, I do” said Valentine, who had spent most of her childhood tucked away in the corner of a great atelier in the couture house of Pierre Balmain in Paris, watching ball gowns being made while she did her homework. She was totally confident and she was determined to make this nice woman confident too.

  “You do not like the idea of a gala, then, Mrs. Woodstock?”

  “Good heavens, I loathe it, my dear.”

  “But Mrs. Woodstock, you carry yourself very well
.”

  “I do?”

  “And you have the very best, truly the best kind of a body for clothes. I am not flattering you. If there were defects we would work together to hide them. But you are very tall, very thin, and you walk so well. I know exactly the kind of evening clothes you think are ‘proper’—simple, unpretentious, quiet, just like everyone else’s, with perhaps a small jewel at the neck—am I right? Ah, I thought so—and they are indeed proper at your chalet in Sun Valley, at your ranch in Colorado, at your estate in Santa Barbara. But at the Elysée Palace! At the Paris Opéra! At the big embassy parties! No, never, you would feel silly, improper, out of place. Only if you dress like all the other women there will you be able to feel that comfortable, inconspicuous way you like to feel. It’s interesting, is it not? Only by being very, very chic will you not look wrong, different, foreign.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Muffie Woodstock said reluctantly, but convinced by Valentine’s last three terrifying words.

  “Good! Then it’s settled. I’ll be ready for the first fitting in two weeks. And when you come, could you please get your jewels out of the vault and bring them with you? I need to see what you possess.”

  “How did you know I kept them in a vault?”

  “You are just not the kind of woman who would wear them more than twice a year—a shame, because I’m sure they’re magnificent.”

  Muffie Woodstock looked embarrassed. Evidently Valentine was some sort of a witch. She’d better go and buy some new shoes before she set foot in here again; Valentine would undoubtedly notice that her evening slippers had seen better days. Oh goodness gracious, why did her husband want to be an ambassador anyway?

  “Cheer up,” said Valentine. “Think of the wonderful riding you will have in the country there.”

  Muffie Woodstock brightened. One thing she really spent money on was riding boots. But … could she ride in jeans and an old sweater?

  “Valentine, while we’re at it, let’s make some riding clothes too.”

  “Oh no!” Valentine responded, scandalized. “For that you must go straight to Hermès, when you get to Paris. I can make you anything but that—it simply would not be correct.”

  As she ushered her client to the door of her studio, Valentine felt doubly delighted. Her own designs would now once again be seen in competition with the best that European couture had to offer. And Mrs. Woodstock, who had no idea of her own assets, would soon learn about them as she wore the dashingly dramatic, yet seriously elegant, clothes Valentine had planned for her. “Inconspicuous” indeed! With her height and her walk she’d equal any duchess. She’d be the talk of Paris—they’d stand on chairs to see her. And she’d learn to love it! Or perhaps not. That, unfortunately, Valentine, conjurer though she was, could not control.

  In addition to this, Valentine had once again proved to herself that she possessed the essence of conducting a commercial transaction, a talent every true Frenchwoman appreciates. Making and selling clothes was an important and significant business as far as she was concerned, even when it was conducted in this absurdly extravagant, eccentric, and lavish playland called Scruples. Once again she had proven that even in Beverly Hills, which, next to Palm Springs, is the headquarters of the worst-dressed rich women in the United States, she could provide haute couture, for those who cared about it, for whatever reason.

  Still wearing the crisp, anonymous white smock she always worked in, Valentine left her studio and went into her office, carrying the estimates for Mrs. Woodstock’s new wardrobe. Spider was there with his feet up on the worn oxblood leather of the desk they shared.

  “Oh, Elliott, I didn’t expect to see you here,” she exclaimed, suddenly uneasy. Since Christmas, only six weeks ago, since that absurd fight they had had, which had been over in a flash yet was still lingering on in the air, they had both avoided the conversations they used to have every morning before the opening of the store, sitting opposite each other at the big desk.

  “Just dropped in to tell you I’ve promised Maggie you’d make her a dress for the Oscars,” he said distantly.

  “My God,” she exclaimed. “I’d forgotten the Oscars!” She dropped into her chair. “Mrs. Woodstock put it all out of my head—perhaps I’m finally going mad?” To every important figure in the retail business in Beverly Hills, the Oscars are regarded as manna from heaven, a cause for celebration equal to New Year’s Eve. It is not who wins an Oscar that matters, but who wears what.

  “Perhaps,” Spider said in a neutral tone, which she ignored, still thinking about her lapse of memory.

  “For three whole hours I didn’t realize it exists, this Oscar business,” Valentine said in wonder. “Yet tomorrow, at last, we’ll hear who was nominated and there’ll be so many customers coming in to buy—finally they’ll know whether they go to the Awards and pray or whether they just sit at home and watch. Just think of it, for the next six weeks we will have the most awful tension, and then, for a handful of people, a few hours of happy relief, Is it not marvelous theater, keeping a whole huge industry in suspense, making the whole country argue and even care a little about the fate of a few actors, a few pictures?”

  “How condescending you sound.”

  “Not at all. It’s merely admiration, Elliott. Just put your mind on all the lovely money this comedy spreads around! The studios spend fortunes in public relations and advertising, movie ticket sales will benefit by many millions … but what do I really care about that? After all, it’s only the dresses for the big night that are our concern.”

  “I suppose so,” Spider answered, still without inflection. His tone of voice instantly infuriated her.

  “Oh, it’s all very well for you, this Oscar business. You run the whole store, I grant you that, Elliott, but as far as clothes go, it’s only ready-to-wear that has to concern you, just a question of which Chloé or Holly Harp your little women will decide to buy. But up here we have the real problems. You don’t have to worry about whether La Divina Streisand has gained another fifteen pounds on her already not petite derriere, which the dress, of course, must hide—and yet be skintight.” She jumped up from her chair and walked over to him, her green eyes locked in battle with his blue gaze. “You, Elliott, don’t have to worry if Raquel Welch has decided to look like a nun this year, but a nun who shows her titties, or whether Cher is convinced that she still won’t be noticed in the crowd unless she’s done up like a Zulu princess on her wedding day. And it’s not just the presenters I have to think about. What about the nominees? And the producers’ wives and the actors’ mistresses?” And, she thought wrathfully, but did not say, he also didn’t have to be constantly on the alert to fend off questions about his sexual activities. Valentine always knew, from the different shadings and tonalities of their casual inquiries to her whether Spider had not yet made love to a particular customer, whether they were in the middle of an affair, or whether the affair was over. She was adept at acting as if she knew nothing and cared less—as was the case—but she was totally sick and fed up with being subtly catechized either by Spider’s conquests or their inquisitive friends.

  “Look, Val,” Spider said in a tone of indifferent coolness, which only made her angrier, “you know the Oscar gowns aren’t what keeps Scruples profitable. We get every rich woman who sets her foot west of the Hudson. So if those touchy entertainment types are such a pain in the ass, why don’t you turn them back to Bob Mackie and Ray Aghayan and Halston and all the other boys who used to do them before you came along and latched on to some of them?”

  “Are you completely crazy—” she blurted before she caught the mockery in his eyes. Once it would have been indulgent laughter, today it was hurtful. And yet he knew, as well as she did, just how important it was to her to have captured so many of the stars of Hollywood. For all her Gallic grumbling, she wouldn’t give up a square inch of her territory, particularly when it was so recently won. Valentine was perfectly well aware that although she was now the new necromantic name on the
Beverly Hills-Bel Air circuit, it would still be a while before she became a firm fixture in the larger fashion establishment. And Spider knew it too. What the hell was wrong with him? He could certainly remember, just as well as she did, the rancidness of failure they had shared less than two years ago in New York, the dingy color of defeat. Even now they were employees, irreplaceable perhaps, but Scruples belonged to Billy Ikehorn Orsini, from the many million dollars’ worth of land on which it was built to the latest dress shipment from Seventh Avenue waiting to be picked up at the airport.

  At that moment Billy walked into the office and caught them there, glaring at each other. She cast a malevolent glance at the two of them and spoke in a voice that was low, yet so pitched that it had the power to make them both forget their anger with each other.

  “Mrs. Evans was under the impression that the two of you were working and couldn’t be disturbed. Have either of you any idea of how long I’ve been waiting for you?”

  Spider rose from his chair and turned his smile on her, a smile of thorough sensuality, innocent of any trace of guilefulness or mordant wit, a smile that held a straightforward expectation of pleasure. Usually it worked.

  “Don’t bother with that fucking wholesome smile, Spider,” Billy snapped.

  “Billy, I finished with Maggie only five minutes ago. She’s still in her fitting room getting herself together. Nobody expected you here today.”

  “I have just seen Mrs. Woodstock out,” Valentine announced with dignity, “and I should like you to see just how profitably I have spent my afternoon.” She held out her estimates. Billy ignored them.

  “Look! Goddamn it to hell, I bought a big hunk of the highest priced land in the country and built the world’s most expensive store on it and hired you two—out of the depths of unemployment, I might add—to run it and make your bloody fortunes and all I expect, just once, is that I shouldn’t have to mooch around like some kind of time-killing idiot of a customer when I need you!”