Armani Angels (18 page)

‘The thing is, Chantelle, I've thought Peter's wonderful for years now, because, after all, he is. And he's never held back showing me the same kind of friendship. We have a lot in common; we laugh at the same things and he and I are usually buddies at conferences and mutual advisors on the work stuff, you know? He's often called me for my advice and I him. But suddenly it's changed. I don't know what's done it. We had a wonderful dinner together last time I was in New York.'

‘Oh, yes?' Chantelle's ears pricked.

‘No, that's the thing, nothing happened. But even though nothing happened, I still walked away filled with guilt.'

‘Did you want something to happen?' Chantelle asked.

‘Oh, God, no, I'm married,' Gemma said very quickly.

‘Think back to that night, when you guys parted ways, then answer me again,' Chantelle said. ‘Close your eyes.'

Feeling a little foolish about closing her eyes in a busy South Yarra eatery, Gemma did as Chantelle asked. Her mind instantly went back to the Blue Bar where they'd had drinks after The Round Table restaurant.

It was a room that had been designed one hundred years ago by someone who'd had subtle seduction as their muse. The lighting was dim, supplied by brass chandeliers dotted around the room and a single tea light on each circular table. The materials used in the decor were dark, raw and earthy. The walls' wainscoting was tactile in its rough edges and silken grain, the ornate carvings of the timber bar depicting the hedonistic image of Pan with his wine, grapes and stringed instruments. Thanks to the room's humble dimensions, their chairs were placed well within the other's personal space, encasing them in sultry ox-blood leather as Norah Jones's harmonies embraced their ears.

Gemma was suddenly back there. She remembered how damn sexy that room had been. After they'd left the restaurant she excused herself to visit the ladies' room and he'd said he'd meet her on the other side of the lobby in the bar. He'd get them a table, he'd said. When she walked into the dim, cosy, warm space he'd raised one arm from the tight spot in the far corner. She'd walked over and he'd acted as though they hadn't just spent two hours at dinner together. He'd stood and greeted her all over again. This time she knew it was to be a kiss on the cheek so didn't bother putting out her hand. But she hadn't moved her head quite as much to the right as was necessary and the kiss had half fallen on her lips. She'd hardly remembered what it was like to be kissed.

‘Is this table okay? It was the last one,' Peter had said. The table itself was barely the size of a large pizza tray and was wedged into the corner. The door to the kitchen needed to open, which forced the two chairs on the far side to be at twenty degrees to each other. ‘It's perfect,' she'd said and cursed herself as her voice cracked. Sitting centimetres apart, they'd resumed their business talk as if they both knew that conversation of the mundane variety was the sole ingredient in that heady moment that was keeping them both from tasting what was really cooking.

They'd only had one drink but, oh, how long they'd made their Manhattans stretch. Tiny mouse sips as if the drink was an hourglass and they were the ones controlling the time they had remaining in each other's company. At one am the bartender came over and murmured to them that the bar was closed but they were welcome to stay. This intrusion had brought their close banter crashing to an abrupt end. It was late. Work was tomorrow. She was married.
Married.

As she lay in bed that night willing herself to hold onto that floating feeling she'd been buoyed by all evening, the guilt started scratching at her like an allergy, chasing the whisper-soft loveliness away. But, Gemma had told herself as sleep finally took her at three am, what have I got to be guilty about? Nothing happened. That night, she'd dreamed about Peter Blakely. The next morning she couldn't get to the office quickly enough to see him again.

‘Now, answer me again.' Her friend's voice gently intruded onto the daydream. ‘Did you want something to happen?'

‘Oh, God, yes,' she breathed in answer to Chantelle's question, her eyes still closed.

‘Julian!' Oscar's deep baritone boomed through the apartment to reach Julian as he was rifling through a cardboard box on the dining table. He froze. Oh, shit, in trouble again. Now what? He followed the voice into the apartment's spare bedroom cum office to find Oscar standing in front of the wardrobe door glaring at the tower of boxes bulging from the interior.

‘What?' Julian knew exactly what was bothering Oscar. His partner hated it when Julian's job impacted on their space. But Julian didn't have the time or energy for a tiff. His patience was wearing extremely thin. He was running behind on his to-do list and he had to get to the Dame's place.

‘What?' Oscar repeated. ‘Where are my coats? It's raining. And what in the hell are all these boxes doing here? They're clogging up the hallway, they're in the cupboard, they're even under the beds.' He was facing Julian with his hands on his hips.

Julian rolled his eyes, folded his arms and thrust out one hip. ‘Honestly, you're a precious princess, Oscar. It's just for a little while. The Dame doesn't like her space cluttered.'

‘Oh, and I do? Why do
you
have to be the storage unit? Can't you find a warehouse or something?'

‘Well, I would; it's just that I need to access all this stuff for photography and meetings and things.'

‘What in the hell is
in
all these boxes?' Oscar asked, peering into the one that was threatening to fall onto his foot.

‘Ooh, it's divine, looky here,' Julian said, his stuff-love overcoming his impatience. ‘These are from Arcadia, the jewellery sponsor: little key chains or bag tags in the shape of a fab stiletto. Gorge? They're for the goody bags.'

‘So it's all trinkets?' Oscar wasn't impressed with the ‘gorge' key chains at all.

‘Well, the ones in the hallway are make-up purses from Estée Lauder, the ones under the beds are flyers to go in each goody bag and I've got 500 Terry's Chocolate Oranges in the living room behind the couch.'

‘The question remains; where are my coats?' Oscar repeated, obviously deciding he cared little about the contents of the boxes.

‘Ooh, you're grumpy. Up there. You reach, I need a chair to get up to that cupboard.'

Oscar opened the square door above the wardrobe easily. Four of his coats fell onto his head. ‘Juuulian,' he boomed from beneath a long camel Burberry waterproof number.

Julian couldn't help but giggle as he rushed to his partner's aid, glad that he had a minute to get his mirth under control. By the time Oscar wriggled out of the mountain of material, his hair was dishevelled, but at least Julian wasn't grinning any longer. Oscar certainly wasn't.

Oscar pulled on the coat that had just vacated his dome and tweaked his hair in the mirror on the door.

‘I'm going to work. Do something about this, will you?' And he picked up his satchel and walked to the door. As he left, he called out over his shoulder, ‘I honestly don't know why you are so devoted to her. The stories you come home with make her sound like a real demon diva. You can't let her push you around like this.'

Julian followed him to the front door. ‘It's complicated,' he said as he brushed flecks of black fluff from Oscar's broad shoulders.

‘Well, I'll be glad when this party is over. Goodbye,' he said pseudo-grumpily and kissed Julian. ‘I can't stay mad at you,' were his final words before the door shut behind him.

‘The big lug.' Julian smiled and rushed back to the spare room to pick up all of Oscar's coats to hang them in their bedroom closet. He'd make room by storing his own winter clothes somewhere. Where exactly, he didn't know.

As he attempted to fix the wardrobe situation, he thought back ten years to how he had first started working with Dame Frances. Oh, he'd been so nervous on his first day. He'd also felt guilty to take on the job – considering his utter hatred for the woman. But he'd been desperate.

During the 1990s the Dame had had a charming male companion, Frederick Wellington, whom polite society had taken at face value to be the Dame's chaperone, otherwise known back in the 1950s as her ‘walker'. Frederick had been Melbourne's most admired milliner and topped the elegant heads of the elite every Melbourne Cup Carnival. He had always provided the Dame's Carnival chapeau free of charge as she would rave about his skills in the press, which was largely the cause of his success as a milliner extraordinaire. The two had become firm friends, and most presumed, although he was many years her junior, that he was in a relationship with the widowed Dame Frances.

Both Frederick and Dame Frances were old school when it came to the protocols of society. It didn't matter how many Elton Johns, Rock Hudsons, Oscar Wildes or Karl Lagerfelds flounced out of the closet, Frederick Wellington chose to keep his personal life private and the Dame's friendship made a perfect front.

Frederick's personal life involved a penchant for pretty young men. Julian Goodstead, in particular. They'd met when Julian had been working as a waiter at a private function for men only on a small unheard-of island just north of the Whitsundays. Their host was a ‘married' Hollywood actor, most famous for the macho, tough-guy image that he portrayed as Brock Kingston in a series of films. By the time he was up to film number five he was one of the world's wealthiest men, certainly the richest in Hollywood. He needed to keep his annual group vacation a secret, which was why he chose an island in Australia, far away from the prying lenses of his home-town's paparazzi.

It had been going for five years, although this was Julian's first time serving at it. Julian had had to sign numerous contracts and confidentiality agreements in order to get the job, promising to his keeping the location, the guests and any ‘activities' he might witness a secret.

Julian had come from a farming community in outback South Australia. He'd grown up with three brothers and a father who were so macho they treated their weekly rodeo competition like a light stroll. Julian had been picked on at school, at home and at the rodeo (especially the day he'd dressed in denim hotpants and a gold cowboy hat), so much so that he'd ended up limping away from the town at nineteen years old after a particularly thorough beating from the locals at the pub where he tended bar.

To have made his way at twenty-four years old to this glittering affair on the secret island was a dream come true for the little pansy from the bush. Not only was Julian very popular with the other waiters at the ten-day resort party, but he also became extremely popular with the guests. Especially with Frederick Wellington.

Their relationship blossomed and continued when they returned to Melbourne. During the next eight years, there were often times when Julian was hurt that Frederick insisted on keeping the nature of their relationship a secret, but the expensive clothes, holidays and trinkets went some way to making up for it. The two men lived as a couple, under the ruse of Julian being Frederick's live-in valet and PA.

Then tragedy struck. Frederick had been HIV-positive for twenty years. Julian had known about this, and the couple had been extremely careful, but still, when Frederick eventually contracted AIDS, it was devastating. Julian and the Dame had cared for their friend until he died at home, aged fifty-nine.

Julian, in his naive, youthful way, had
hated
Dame Frances with a passion. To him, she'd been his arch-nemesis. She was the one who'd attended the glittering public affairs with Frederick; she was the one who got to travel on the high-profile media junkets with his partner while Julian had to sit at home and stew in his own bitter juices.

He'd glare at the photos in the social pages of the Dame on Frederick's arm. He defaced the photos, drawing horns and moustaches on the old broad. And on the few occasions they did meet she treated him like the valet he was pretending to be, dropping her mink coat at his feet, complaining about the quality of the champagne he'd serve. The Dame acted every bit like the number-one wife, when all three members of this love triangle knew that he, Julian, was the number-one wife!

During Frederick's final weeks the Dame and Julian had squabbled over who would care for Frederick. Until finally the day came when Frederick had to say goodbye to his two loves. He'd come home from palliative care the day before. He was emaciated and breathed through an oxygen mask. Julian and the Dame had been fighting over who would bring in his morphine bag and hook it up to his drip. Frederick pulled the mask aside and the two stopped their tiff and sat on his bed, one on either side, each holding one of his hands.

‘Let's all be friends,' Frederick had rasped. Then, his eyes fluttered shut and his final words were, ‘I love you.' To this day Julian didn't know to whom the words had been directed.

After the funeral Julian had fallen into a deep slump. Frederick hadn't been fiscally very responsible and had left nothing for him to live on. What was he to do? Where was he to go? How could he go back home to the farm? Back to tending bar? Who would hire someone with a CV that stated for the past eight years he'd been a ‘valet'? He needed a job desperately. But he had nowhere to turn.

Dame Frances, the silly cow, called him to a meeting a month after Frederick had died. He'd been sulky and uncommunicative. He'd intentionally not shaved and wore his most unfashionable jeans to the meeting to prove he wasn't interested in any money-grubbing she was bound to be doing. She probably thought Frederick had left him a fortune and was most likely going to try and claim some, if not all of it, in her role of Frederick's virtual wife. Well, she would have another thing coming.

He trudged into the Dame's penthouse and slumped into a chair. She'd looked over her spectacles at him, assessing his appearance and attitude.

He waited for the vitriol the horrid old bag was bound to spill.

‘Please sit up, Julian. This isn't high school.' He sighed in the most irritating teen manner possible and pulled himself up. The Dame sighed too. ‘This isn't easy for me either, you know, Julian.'

‘Whatever,' Julian murmured.

‘You and I both loved Frederick very much. And he is gone; there's nothing we can do about that. I keep remembering his final words. His only regret during his last few years is that you and I did not get along. He often spoke to me about you and about how much he loved you, about how wonderful you were and how greatly you impacted on his life.'

‘Really?' Julian sat up even straighter, his clasped hands between his thighs. His eyes filled with tears.

‘I would very much like to honour Frederick's dying wish.'

‘You want to become
best friends
?' Julian said with not a small amount of scorn.

‘Well, perhaps that will come. But for now, I'd like to offer you a job as my personal assistant.'

‘A job?' The impact of the offer flooded into Julian's mind. A job, a real job, a respectable, highly connected job with glittering affairs to boot. This was too much, too incredible. But what a sour pill was the tablet of pride that he would need to swallow in order to take it.

Julian accepted the job the next day and started work the following week, with the guilt of being very grateful to someone he'd hated for so many years.

It hadn't taken long for their working relationship to develop into a friendship. Julian soon saw past the Dame's prickles and discovered her soft side. Many of her digs and slights were made with the best intentions and there was no one more generous than Dame Frances when it came to the perks and freebies that accompanied her role as the doyenne of Melbourne.

Shortly after taking on the job, Julian met Oscar and the Dame was most welcoming, inviting him to all the functions and having the couple over for dinner on many occasions. As the Dame now openly said, ‘I quite like the gays.'

Julian completed his wardrobe reshuffle and, satisfied that Oscar would be happy with the new clothing arrangement, hustled his bustle onto more pressing matters. As soon as his mind left his nostalgia and ventured into the territory of the Rum Ball, his heart started pounding and a prickle of sweat broke out over his entire body.

‘The list, the list. Where's the list?' he muttered as he dug through his Ralph Lauren satchel.

He had so much to do before the midday meeting. The Dame was on his case, phoning him every half-hour to remind him of yet another crucial task. He needed to organise the invitations, but he couldn't do that without finalising the sponsors. And thinking of sponsors, he needed to call those who were committed to get their cheques so that he was able to send their logo to the graphic designer. He'd been burnt before by not collecting the money in advance when a sponsor pulled out leaving their logo smack dab in the centre of all the printed material.

Then he needed to ring around to all their favourite guests and get their verbal promise of attendance. He knew that Gemma Bristol was superior in her power-friending abilities. She'd be all over MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. She would absolutely saturate the media until the Dame's function and its one embossed card invitation would appear so feeble in comparison that it would just sit on everyone's mantelpiece, ignored.