Fashionably Late (14 page)

“Oh, great. Let’s let NormCo ruin our product line.”

“You’re talking like you don’t have a choice. Do like Nancy Reagan said: Just say no.”

” Karen lifted her head to try and see the mother and daughter as they consulted over another possible purchase. “Nothing is that easy,” she told Defina.

They spent a couple more hours in the market and wound up having a late lunch at Mad 61, the other hot restaurant in the basement of Barney’s.

Karen was depressed, and Defina, as always, sensed her mood.

“Best shoes,” Defina demanded.

It was an old game that they had been playing for years. It needed no introduction.

“Roger Vivier’s.”

Defina raised her head, paused only a moment, and nodded. Sometimes it wasn’t so easy, and they argued for days. “Best florist,” Karen popped back.

“Renny,” Defina answered with a shrug, as if everyone knew that. “Best knock-offs.”

“For bags? Or dresses? Or what?”

“Gowns.”

“Victor Costa. Give me one that’s hard.”

“Bags.”

“Jose Suarez.”

Defina shook her head. “Those aren’t knock-offs. They don’t have the labels but they’re the exact same bag made by the same manufacturer.

Except for Hermes.”

“They’re still knock-offs. If they don’t have the label, then they’re not originals.”

“If a tree falls in a forest…” Karen had to smile. With her nonsense, Defina had lifted her mood. She didn’t even call Jeffrey to cancel, and she forgotţonce againţto call Lisa.

For weeks Karen’s already frantic life had been interrupted by the camera crew from Elle Halle’s show. Richard, the director, had told her to ignore them, to go on with life as she usually lived it. But of course that was impossible. For one thing, she had to worry about how she looked all the time they were around. What would it do for her image if she looked like ca-ca on toast? Karen knew that in person she had the energy and style to carry herself pretty well, but the camera was not her friend. Despite her talent and her energy, the camera wasn’t fooled.

It simply reported the facts. Karen knew she wasn’t very pretty, that she wasn’t thin enough, and that she wasn’t young anymore. The camera reduced her to her minimum. This wasn’t paranoia: Janet had a whole shelf of scrapbooks with clippings and pictures in them and Karen didn’t look really good in any of them. But Jeffrey and Mercedes had insisted that VIKInc jump at the opportunity to be featured in one of Elle Halle’s classy, hour-long “Looks.” And now, all that was left to complete “Elle Halle Looks at Karen Kahn” was the interview with Elle Halle herself.

Karen was dreading it. They were going to shoot it this afternoon and Karen felt as if she were going in for a double root canal. Given the choice, she’d prefer the dental work. Because she had no illusions: despite her smile and her soft voice, Elle Halle liked to do extractions and she never used anesthetic. Her forte was getting hold of some decaying psyche part and tugging until her victim gave it up, showing the rotten root and all. Gently elicited confessions and tears were what spiced up an interview. Although Elle seemed empathic and warm to the television audience that loved her and loyally tuned her in, Karen had to wonder about a woman whose life work it was to expose the pain of another on national television.

Karen had already met Elle twice. Both times the woman, tall, blonde, smooth, and commanding, had seemed pleasant. But that was what everyone said about Belleţif they didn’t know her. “Oh, come on,” Mercedes said as Karen got ready to leave for the studio. “It’s not that bad.”

“Didn’t someone say that to Marie Antionette right before the blade hit?”

Mercedes raised her eyebrows. “Have you talked to a doctor about this martyr issue?” she asked dryly. She looked at her wristwatch. “Come on.

Let’s go. You don’t want to piss these people off by being fashionably late.”

“Where is Jeffrey?” Karen asked as she picked up her coat.

“He’s in with Casey and the financial guys.” Mercedes raised her eyebrows. That must mean NormCo people. She paused. “He’s not going to come.”

“What do you mean?” Karen felt her face go pale, the blood draining down to her heart, which began thumping uncomfortably. “He has to come,” she said. “I can’t do this alone.”

“You’re not alone, Karen.” Mercedes reminded her. “I’m coming with you.”

Karen didn’t bother to be polite. She shook her head. To manage this she needed someone she liked to be with her. “Defina,” she said. “We have to get Defina.” God, this would be too much to do alone. She couldn’t face the ordeal of selling herself, of being herself, and talking not about her clothes but about her life to twenty million people without some support. Why did people care about a designer’s personal life anyway? Didn’t her clothes speak for her?

Janet looked up from her desk and smelled crisis in the air. “Defina hasn’t come in yet,” she told her boss.

Karen felt her hands begin to shake. She would go into Jeffrey’s office. She would stop the meeting. Whatever it was, this was more important. She couldn’t go over there, do this big deal, be examined under Elle Halle’s microscope, without knowing that Jeffrey was rooting for her.

From the beginning, it was Jeffrey who had believed that there was not only more recognition due to her but also more money to he had in the recognition.

He’d been a graduate student studying painting when she was at design school. She was so inexperienced, so very green. She’d never dated in high schoolţshe’d gone to the prom with Carl. She’d been slow to mature.

She hadn’t even gotten her period until she was fourteen! So of course Jeffrey had dazzled her. So much so that she had virtually followed him around, doing errands for him and picking his stuff up, a sort of human golden retriever to his elegant Afghan hound. And he was a hound. Jeffrey had liked her and had bedded her, but she had known there was no commitment there. He slept with a lot of girls at school.

All the pretty ones, and Karen. Jeffrey had made it clear that she amused him and that they were friends, but there was nothing more forthcoming. Though she adored him, she was smart enough not to ever tell him so and she never expected anything more.

Once she’d graduated, it was only through her efforts that they had kept in touch. He’d never called her, but he seemed pleased to hear from her. When she’d gotten out of school, she’d been lucky enough to snag a job working for Liz Rubin, who was a legend, the first woman sportswear designer to have her own Seventh Avenue company. Karen had started as just one of a halfdozen assistants, but within six months she’d been moved up to Liz’s special assistant. They worked together according to Liz’s hours: sometimes Karen would get a call at eleven-thirty at night and she and the tiny older woman would work until dawn. Karen suspected that sometimes Lizţ like Karen’s idol, Coco Chanelţcalled not because she was inspired but because she was lonely. But if that were the case, the other woman had never opened up. Always distant, always authoritarian, always in control, Liz had taught Karen more in the sixteen months that they worked together than Karen had learned in all of her years of design study. Soon only work and Liz made up Karen’s life. It was a busy time, and Karen wasn’t unhappy. Because, though Liz never spoke about her feelings for Karen, Karen felt they were there.

Naturally, during that busy time, Karen had lost touch with Jeffrey.

In fact, she’d lost touch with almost all her friends, except Carl.

For her there had only been work. One of the reasons Liz had chosen her, Karen always believed, was because no matter what demands Liz put on her, Karen had never said no. She’d always been a hard and willing worker and, as her reward, Liz gave her more and more work to do.

And she hadn’t minded that she got no credit. The idea of her own name on a label had simply not occurred to Karen. After all, she was only twenty-two. She just wanted to do her garments her own way. But that became the rub. Because after the first few months of working closely with Liz, Karen hadn’t been able to stop herself from voicing her opinions. Once she’d gotten over her awe of Liz Rubin, she’d said what she felt, and sometimes her opinions seemed to have gone right for the jugular. “That’s boring, Liz,” she would say, and make a suggestion or sketch an alternative. They’d argue. Karen always figured Liz liked her because of opinions. She’d been wrong. She remembered the last fight: it had been over button placement on a jacket. Liz, never one to hide her light under a bushel, had altered a design of Karen’s and screamed at her when Karen insisted that the buttons be again placed asymmetrically.

“It’s just a gimmick,” Liz had cried. “The jacket is a classic. At Liz Rubin, we do classics.” Karen had looked at her fiercely. “Well, l do what’s right. And these buttons, on my jacket, have to slant across the front.”

Funny that a few buttons could cause so much trouble. They changed Karen’s whole life. Liz had fired her.

Karen hadn’t been able to believe it. Because she knew she’d been right. To her it seemed simpleţanyone should see it. Especially Liz.

Karen just hadn’t thought of the politics and ego involved. She knew the news of her leaving would cause rejoicing among the other assistants, the ones she had bypassed. But it wasn’t just her pride that was hurt.

Cold as she was, Liz Rubin had represented something more to Karen than just a job or a paycheck. Liz was like Karen and it was the first time that Karen had ever met anyone like that. Liz had shown her what she could be and it hurt Karen to be discarded that way.

Karen had sat alone in her apartment crying for two days. She had no one to talk to, nothing to do. (There was a limit to how much she could lean on Carl.) She realized then that she had no life, aside from work.

She called home, but Belle was no help and Lisa was still just a kid in school who worshiped her older sister. So, in desperation, Karen called Jeffrey, who was sharing a ratty, lower Broadway loft with Perry Silverman. ( Jeffrey’s parents had offered him a pied-a-terre on Sutton Place but he felt it was too bourgeois.) Perry and Jeffrey invited her over and had taken her out, gotten her drunk, and comforted her. She was sure they probably also privately laughed at her naive misery. “It’s just a job,” Jeffrey had said. And Karen had tried, despite a tongue made less articulate than ever by all the bourbon, to explain that it was more than that.

“Why would she fire me?” Karen cried over and over again. “Why?”

Jeffrey had listened and then had laughed. He laughed! But somehow, this comforted her. “She was jealous,” he said, “because you were right.

She does classics.” You do originals. And you had the nerve to tell her.”

“Is that what I did?” Karen had asked, amazed.

“Of course,” Jeffrey said, as if anyone would know that. As if Karen should have. “And she resented you for it,” he added. “She used you, but she resented you.” He put his arm around Karen while she cried some more on his shoulder. Then he took her to bed.

After that night, Karen had not cried again. She spent more than a month looking for a job by day and sleeping with Jeffrey most nights.

In some strange way, the loss of Liz was made up for by having Jeffrey in her life again. She told him each evening about her day’s adventures and interviews. She was thrilled when she at last got not one but two offers. She asked him which she should take, then she was shocked when he encouraged her to turn them both down. “C’mon,” he told her, “you don’t want to be some no-name house designer. Look what you’ve done already. You did most of Liz Rubin’s fall line. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone. You just need an opportunity to shine. You need someone to believe in you.”

It was then she had gotten the offer from Blithe Spirits to do her own line of sportswear. Moderate priced, but a little higher-quality than most. It wasn’t Seventh Avenue, but it would have her name on it.

Karen Lipsky for Blithe Spirits. Jeffrey’s advice had been right, and she’d gotten the chance because she’d listened to him. It was an unbelievable opportunity for a girl only two years out of school, but before she had a chance to jump at it, she’d gotten more good advice from Jeffrey.

“Turn them down,” he said. “Tell them that you’ve gotten an offer for twice as much money.”

“But I haven’t,” she cried.

Jeffrey had laughed. “So?”

“I should lie?” she asked. Neither Belle nor Arnold had taught her that. But Jeffrey had nodded. “What if they find out I’m lying? What if they tell me to take the other job?”

“They won’t,” Jeffrey laughed. And he ruMed her hair as if she were a puppy. “Try it tomorrow. You’ll see I’m right.”

And he was. She’d been petrified, as frightened then as she was of Elle Halle now. But she’d bluffed, hands wet with sweat. And, at last, she’d gotten the job at quadruple the pay she’d been making with Liz. She had, for the first time, more money than she had time to spend. Not that the money was so great, but she had no free time at allţshe’d had an unbelievably hectic schedule putting a line together alone.

Just when it was about to be shown, she’d called Jeffrey. They’d been seeing a lot less of each other because of her crazy work schedule.

“Can I come over?” she had asked, the way she always did. “I’m scared that the whole thing is a mistake. Can I stay over tonight?” The silence at the other end of the phone had been ominous. What was wrong? Something had changed. She’d been too busy with the work to have noticed anything before.

“Karen,” Jeffrey had told her gently. “You know how much I like you.

But you have to know this: I’m engaged to be married.”

Devastated, she’d gone to Carl, of course. “I should have told him I loved him,” she wept. “I should have kept calling.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. He’d have dropped you quicker. At least now you have your pride.”

“I don’t want my pride. I want Jeffrey!” she’d wailed like a child.

And so then Carl had explained everything about men, just the way Jeffrey had explained everything about work. “He likes you Karen. Of course he likes you. You’re fun, you’re funny, you’re smart. And you’re sexy. I can tell, even though I’m gay. But the Jeffreys of the world are always going to pick beauty and class and clout over funny and smart. He comes from money. She comes from more money. You’re better, but June Jarrick is the niece of a senator. It isn’t fair, but that’s the way it is.”