Scruples Two (37 page)

“You do?” This was not the sort of comment Sasha would normally dignify with her whole attention, but she had a new respect for Gigi. Her friend was playing a deep game with Zach, and although Sasha had resolved not to ask her a single direct question, anything Gigi said might be taken as a clue to her masterful and still mysterious plan of attack.

“You know how their wives always look so beatific and blissed-out in photographs—didn’t you see that picture in the papers this morning of that old Mormon who got caught with a dozen wives, even though they’re not supposed to do that anymore?”

“What about it?”

“It struck me that they looked more peaceful than any group of women I’ve seen in years. Then it hit me—Kappa Kappa Mormon! Twelve women and one guy, that’s about the right proportion for happiness.”

“Gigi, you know how Sasha Nevsky feels—three guys and one girl is the right proportion.”

“But has it made you all that happy? You keep complaining that they’re all so inexperienced, so un-grown-up, immature, even the best of them. Have you thought about taking your talents to a retirement community? Try to un-think, Sasha, and then
rethink
. Bring the cells of your great brain to bear on this setup. Eleven other women you really like, eleven women you have fun with, eleven women you can talk to the way you can
never
talk to a man—and then you’d have your kids running around freely with a huge bunch of half brothers and sisters, so they’d be taken care of better than any woman could do by herself, and there’d be almost no housework because you’ve got twelve pairs of hands to do it. On the downside, you’d probably only get laid a few times a month, but so what? Sex is overrated, admit it, and you’d have no reason to be jealous, because the other wives wouldn’t get more than you.”

“Hmmm. I don’t know. I reserve my judgment on sex, but I bet there’d have to be at least one wife everyone hates,” Sasha said thoughtfully.

“And the one that everybody else wants to be like—the homecoming queen combined with Miss Congeniality—but she’d be so nice you couldn’t envy her.” Gigi sat cross-legged on the floor, clasping a wide-sleeved bed jacket made of lavender georgette crepe trimmed with cream-colored Margot lace encrusted with French rosebuds that she had destined for Dolly’s Christmas present.

“But what about your individuality? You’d lose it, wouldn’t you, in the mob?”

“Why? Is having exclusive rights on some man what makes you an individual? You’d be exactly, precisely the same person you are, except that you’d know what the future holds, you’d have no anxiety about men and their wicked wicked ways, no free-floating depression, no possible fear of loneliness, no getting older except with a whole gang who are getting older at the same rate—Sasha, it’s ideal! You could stop living a life based on your relationship with men and just live!” Gigi spoke with such ringing, passionate conviction that Sasha looked at her in alarm.

“You make a convincing case. Do I have some time to think about it before I join?”

“Take as much as you want,” Gigi said generously. “It’s illegal anyway, but I love the idea.”

Yes, Sasha thought, she could see why being a Mormon wife would appeal to Gigi. Any girl who was pursuing Zach with Gigi’s breathtaking success and brilliant dissimulations must have heard about all the broken hearts he’d caused, all the dramas of jealousy. Right now Gigi had the upper hand, even if she didn’t know it, but with Zach’s history she must be seriously worried about keeping him once she’d got him. Kappa Kappa Mormon, with Zach as the head of the family, might seem like the solution. Maybe it
was
the solution?

“If I don’t get my Christmas presents all settled today, I’m not giving any,” Gigi said. “I think this is just perfect for Billy.” She put down the bed jacket and held up a short, all-but-transparent wisp of delicate black lace hanging from tiny black satin straps, and danced it in front of Sasha’s eyes.

“It was made in the early 1920s—they called this ‘camiknickers.’ See, it’s a chemise and wide-leg panties all in one. You’d wear a black garter belt and black silk stockings with it. Hasn’t it got that French feeling? I’ve written the card. Want to hear it?”

“Sure,” Sasha said enviously. She and Billy were about the same size, and those camiknickers would be perfect for her.

“ ‘Where Was She Going?’—that’s the title,” Gigi started, and began to read:

Her name was Nora. Yes, Nora, such a simple, good name. Complicated, suspicious men—who should have known better, but men are such fools, aren’t they?—trusted her because of it. They put their faith in her winsome, shy smile and her huge, guileless eyes and her hesitant blushes, and laid their hearts in her hands. But how could they guess that Nora wore black lace camiknickers under her prim, high-necked blouses and her proper pleated skirts? Nora should have been locked up in a tower and the key thrown away. Why? Because after one of her lovers fell into that deep sleep of total satisfaction that only a night with Nora could give, she slipped out of bed and went dancing in nothing but her camiknickers and a pair of tiny golden shoes, dancing in places the men who loved her didn’t dream existed, dancing with men she’d never see again, men who would ship out in the morning still thinking of her, men who could never, ever forget her, dancing until the moon had long set and the sun was about to rise. (Of course, Nora wore a fur cape over the camiknickers so she wouldn’t shock the taxi drivers.) Nora was always back in bed before her lover woke up—and she had to be awakened with a kiss. With so many kisses. Oh yes, Nora was too much for any one man, Nora of the dancing feet and the light, faithless, beautiful great heart
.

“Gigi!” Sasha burst into tears. “Gigi, you
can’t
give that to Billy. You know you meant it for me! Say you did, say you just wanted to see if I liked it!”

“Oh, Sasha, I didn’t mean to make you cry! Of course it’s for you! It’s pure you, not Billy at all. But it isn’t even wrapped and I haven’t done the drawing.”

“You can do all that later,” Sasha sniffed, “just let me try it on.”

She came back in two minutes, a Nora even Gigi hadn’t imagined, swept Gigi into her arms and twirled the two of them around the living room in waltz time.

“It’s divine on you,” Gigi sighed in satisfaction, when Sasha finally let her go. She’d searched high and low for something that Sasha, who wore lingerie all day long, would respond to. “Now all you need is the fur cape, and you’re set for a long night.”

“What would my never-jealous Mormon sisters-in-law think about this? Trouble in Mormon paradise, Gigi, that’s what it would be. Unless you could find one for everybody.”

“It’s one of a kind, all my things are.”

“What are you actually giving Billy?”

“This.” Gigi unfolded a heap of heavy old-gold satin and flung it over her sweater and jeans. It was much too long for her, even without the short train that puddled at her feet. From her shoulders to well below her waist, the satin was covered with a floaty layer of creamy lace that also formed the wide, scalloped sleeves. The lace was attached to the satin here and there by knots of Nattier-blue velvet bows.

“What on earth is that?”

“It’s the finest, rarest thing I have. A tea gown actually—in the early 1900s, women wore things like this when they had their intimate friends over for tea. You don’t think it’s a bit much, do you?”

“It’s perfect for Billy. Have you written the card?”

“Not yet. I have to think of just the right kind of thing—it’s what I imagine Billy wearing in her new place in Paris, on a winter afternoon like today, pouring tea for direct descendants of the characters who inspired the characters in Proust—or on a houseboat in Kashmir—or maybe in Scotland, one afternoon when it’s too rainy to go out grouse shooting …”

“Billy doesn’t shoot grouse.”

“Really, Sasha, the only trouble with you is you’re too literal-minded. It’s for any place and any time when you want to be particularly glamorous and swoopy. And these pajamas are for Jessica. They’re too small for me, so they should be just right for her,” Gigi added, shaking out two pieces of palest pink muslin, trimmed at the neck and sleeves and at the bottom of the mid-calf pantlegs in deep tiers of Pierrot-like ruffles. “It’s French, from the 1920s.… doesn’t it look like her?”

“Is it sexy enough?” Sasha sounded dubious as she preened in her black lace.

“Lingerie doesn’t always have to be sexy. This is adorable, and that’s what Jessica is. And this is for Emily Gatherum,” Gigi said, showing Sasha an almost conical black bra with holes that allowed the nipples to protrude.

“You wouldn’t!”

“No, actually it’s for me. Courtesy of Frederick’s of Hollywood, 1960. Emily wouldn’t understand it.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Miss Nevsky? It was known as ‘the courtesan’s battle dress’—and don’t even bother to try to get it away from me, either. Get that covetous look out of your eye. I need it more than you do. Now go change and give me back your Christmas present so I can finish the card and wrap it. I have these other cards to do for Dolly and Billy and Jessica and Mazie, and there’s that wonderful, chocolate-colored, silk-and-chiffon 1930s slip for Josie Speilberg, the only woman I know who still wears a full slip, and all these other linen and lace petticoats and chemises for Emily and my friends at Voyage to Bountiful—oh, how can I finish writing the cards this afternoon? I shouldn’t have let you distract me. Look how late it is.”

“Gigi, I’ll do all the gift wrapping for you—you know I do great wrapping—if you let me take everything—cards and all—to the office to show the other models. Please? They’d only be out of the house for a day, and Christmas isn’t for weeks. I’d guard them carefully.”

“Do you really think they’d be interested?” Gigi asked, tempted.

“No question. Good lingerie models need more flesh than other models—we have to be plush and luxuriant and ripe, or things would just hang on us—and sometimes, especially around Christmas, we all get depressed, thinking we’re not lean and sinewy or sylphlike enough. Yes, even Sasha Nevsky has had her doubts. It would help so much if they knew what women used to wear before panty hose came along.”

“All right … but just for one day. And you can’t take my bra. I may be needing it.”

“They’ve all seen bras like that, Gigi. It’s still being made … exactly the same style, and half the women in Des Moines have one at home,” Sasha said gently. “It’s called the ‘Saturday Night Special’. ”

“It’s a well-known phenomenon, the Christmas Blues, I read all about it in Dear Abby, there’s nothing wrong with us for feeling this way, there would almost be something wrong if we didn’t,” Dawn Levine said in an unconvincing voice, tying the belt of the cotton robe she wore in the models’ dressing room at Herman Brothers. “But Dear Abby didn’t say anything about why I’ve gained two whole revolting pounds around my waist, with Christmas still weeks away. Maybe Ann Landers will write something about psychological Christmas weight gain … couldn’t it be like a false pregnancy?” Dawn spoke without conviction, her blond hair falling to her shoulders in bright sheaves, her straight bangs almost in her doleful Irish blue eyes.

“Bah, humbug, and don’t try to cop a plea, baby,” Sally Smart replied. “If you’ve gained two pounds, and I can see from here that you have, it’s because you ate eight thousand calories of ugly fat that you didn’t metabolize—that’s the way my mother explains it to me. She says it’s her maternal duty to tell me the things other people will be too kind to say.” Sally pushed the strands of her brown pageboy behind her ears and wrinkled her freckled nose at Dawn. “Tell that to Dear Abby,” Sally advised glumly, “and let her weasel out of it. Let her try to make you believe you’re just retaining water, but don’t ask me to go along with your pathetic self-delusion.”

“Gee, thanks, Sally, you’ve made me feel a hell of a lot better,” Dawn said resentfully. “You deserve your mother, is all I can say. And she deserves an evil daughter like you. Has she told you that the tiny pimple on your chin is getting bigger by the minute and will probably be fully ripe for Christmas Eve, but it doesn’t matter since you don’t have a date that night anyway? Or for New Year’s Eve, for that matter?”

“ ‘At Christmas play and make good cheer, for Christmas comes but once a year,’ didn’t either of you two meanies ever learn that jingle in school?” inquired Rosa Modena, the third of the four lingerie models, as she inspected her legs with a harried, horrified look. “I’m getting varicose veins,” she told them with breathless conviction. “Oh, Good Lord in Heaven, there goes my career! Quick, one of you, promise me that twenty-two is too young for varicose veins!”

“Not necessarily,” Sally assured her. “They could happen anytime. And shut up about good cheer, unless you’re willing to shop for the presents I have to find for my sisters’ kids, all nine of them, the little fuckers.”

“I thought you were crazy about them,” Dawn protested.

“Not at Christmas I’m not. The kids get the good presents, they get the excitement of waiting for the big day, they love to sing those stupid carols, and all of us grownups have to go along because we don’t have the guts not to. And if you think the pimple on my chin is getting bigger, you should see the one on my ass.”

“If Sasha doesn’t get back with our sandwiches pretty soon, I’m going to cry,” Rosa announced loudly. “I hate Christmas, I hate my legs, I hate myself, I hate my boyfriend, and I particularly hate the two of you!”

“I see I’m just in time,” Sasha said, rushing into the models’ dressing room with the cardboard box of sandwiches that it had been her turn to pick up for their lunch today. “Another minute, and three perfectly decent girls who normally act like ladies would be tearing each other’s hair out. Here, eat, for God’s sake, and hush that nasty Christmas talk, pretend it’s the Fourth of July. Your magnificent Sasha Nevsky, thoughtful as ever, has brought something to cheer you up and get you through the day.”

Sasha had an expectant light in her eyes, the angle of her Gibson Girl nose was more witty than usual, her smile was full of anticipation, and the modified pompadour in which she had arranged her dark hair rose with authority.