Lovers (50 page)

“I
hired Bill and Ed Russo. I discovered them,” Billy yelled at him. “They’re my friends and you know it. Advertising was my department. How
dare
you fire them without talking to me about it?”

“Shit, Billy, you haven’t been participating in daily decisions since before the kids were born. The Russos aren’t doing a good enough job, and that’s that. I don’t ask you how to zip up my pants in the morning.”

“What a crappy, infantile cliché. You sound eight years old. Did you remember that Gigi made it clear that under no circumstances was she going to solicit our account when she changed jobs?”

“I did. Victoria said Gigi was comfortable with it now.”

“Oh, Victoria told you that, did she, and you believed her?”

“How could she lie about it?”

“I don’t know, but I’m certain that Victoria Frost is no expert on Gigi, they can barely be civil to each other.”

“That’s not the impression I got,” Spider said grimly, watching Billy in disgust. Did she have any idea how she looked, laying down the law as if her first husband’s money had earned her the right to decide anything she chose?

“You fell for Victoria Frost’s pitch, and now you’re ready to trample on Gigi’s feelings the way you trample on mine. Listen to me, Spider. I own as much of Scruples Two as you do. You can’t ignore me. You can’t put me in your pocket and go your merry way. You
will
call Victoria Frost in the morning. You
will
tell her that you’ve changed your mind. Period. You
will
consult me about choosing a new agency. Period. You
will not
fire the Russos until I’ve looked into the problem and decided if they should have another chance.
Do you hear me?
Just because you don’t respect Gigi doesn’t mean that you can get away with not respecting me.”

Spider walked over to her and took her by one arm, holding her in a painfully rough grip, making it impossible for her to move away.

“No one can respect a woman whose way of making her point is withholding sex, screeching like a fishwife, and displaying her amazing aptitude for pussy-whipping.”

“Take that back!”

“I will not!” he shouted, “It’s the truth. And you know it.”

“Get out of my bedroom. Go sleep somewhere else. You make me sick. And don’t forget a single one of my instructions.” Her voice was pulverizingly arrogant.

“Billy, you don’t want to do this, believe me.”

“Don’t tell me what I want. You don’t know what I want. You don’t know me. Unfortunately I know you only too well. You’re contemptible.”

“I’m out of here,” Spider said, in a tone so calm and condescending that it made Billy want to kill him with every muscle she had. “I’m leaving so that I don’t put you over my knee and give you the good spanking you deserve.”

In the morning, when he went to his bathroom, Spider found a sheet of paper next to his shaving mirror.

There was nothing else, not even a signature. Spider rushed into Billy’s bathroom and saw evidence that she’d packed some of her makeup. In her closet, the mess of clothes on the floor showed that she’d been in there picking out enough to fill a suitcase.

He called down to Burgo O’Sullivan on the house phone.

“When did Mrs. Elliott leave?”

“A limo came for her about an hour ago, Mr. Elliott.”

“Thanks, Burgo. Please tell the chef I won’t be having breakfast at home.”

She’d be on the first plane to New York by now, Spider figured. Going to ground at Jessica’s, no doubt, her usual refuge in times of trouble. It was just as well, all things considered, although her note was ridiculously dramatic. God knows, he didn’t want to see her today.

As Spider shaved, he told himself that Jessica had a way of making Billy listen to things she wouldn’t take from anybody else. It was Jessica who’d made her understand Vito, of all people, at least long enough to stay married to him for more than a few weeks. It was wise, much-put-upon, much-loved and loving Jessica who understood the art of compromise that Billy was too bloody rich and too incredibly stubborn to accept without a fight to the finish.

She’d send for the children, would she? Over his dead body, she’d send for the children.

Filled with righteous indignation, Spider rushed off to his office where his first act was to call the Russo brothers and tell them that they no longer had the Scruples Two account.

“There’s just one problem,” Sasha said to Vito as they walked on the sand in Santa Barbara, hand in hand. “Gigi’s going to have to invite Zach to our wedding reception—at the place they lived in together.”

“He’s only one guest out of a whole crowd. Gigi doesn’t have to do anything but say hello to him—not even goodbye, if he leaves without making a point of it, as I’m sure he will,” Vito said reassuringly. “But she can’t expect him not to be there, he’s practically a relative now or something. Even if Billy were giving the reception, they’d both have to come—it’s for us, after all.”

“Honestly, wouldn’t you think people could just get along with each other after they’ve broken up? It’d be so much easier for everybody, and so much more civilized.”

“No, actually, I wouldn’t. How do you feel about Josh coming?”

“Oh, my God! Gigi’s not going to invite him too?”

“She’s known him forever, and politeness demands that she invite him,” Vito said, and gave a judicious sigh. “But—I warned her that he was off our list.”

“You
are
rotten, Vito, you said that just to torment me.”

“I adore tormenting you. You torment so enchantingly.”

“Don’t push your luck, big boy.”

“You have a certain low streak of Jean Harlow in you, Sasha, or is it Mae West?”

“You remind me of—of—George Raft.”

“Now you’ve gone too far. You’ve provoked me.”

“And just what are you going to do about it?”

“Wait and see.”

“Wait till when, Georgie?”

“Now is as good a time as any.”

“Vito, no, not on the beach! Stop it!”

The FRB offices were empty at six the next evening, except for Victoria, Archie, and Byron, who had sent everyone home early and were sitting around a table in Victoria’s office, reaching the end of their second bottle of celebratory champagne. The men were in their shirtsleeves, and had long since discarded their ties. Even Victoria had unbuttoned her all-but-ecclesiastical white blouse, rolled up her sleeves, and put her stocking feet up on the table, in the joyous spirit of the moment.

“What’s so funny about you is that you’re both so inconsistent,” Victoria Frost said, breaking the kind of dreamy, relaxed silence that sets in toward the end of a state of high euphoria. “You’re concerned about Gigi’s reaction to my getting the Scruples Two account, but you don’t worry that she got The Enchanted Attic and the Winthrop Line by sleeping with Ben Winthrop—although how much sleep they got is debatable.”

“Her business,” Archie said, and broke into song. “There’s no business like her business, there’s no business I know, everybody’s da that certain da da …”

“Accounts that depend on sexual … heat,” Victoria said, trying to choose her words carefully, since Archie and Byron had had much more to drink than she, “sexual … tension … between the client and a creative, are risky at best—what happens when Winthrop gets tired of her? That’s going to be a problem, it’s just a question of time. He’s big game. At least we know that Spider Elliott is only interested in her work.”

“Big game?” Byron asked. “You mean Arch and I aren’t big game? I have news for you, there are a lot of women who’d disagree, right, Arch?”

“Big game in the sense of big rich. No offense, Byron Bernheim the Third, you have comfortable expectations, but you’re light-years away from big, big,
big
rich. One day Gigi’s little affair will end.” Victoria was certain of her assessment.

“Not necessarily,” Archie insisted. “I’ve seen them together,
and the guy is crazy hooked on her … has a serious jones for our little Gigi. It could end in marriage.”

“So then Gigi will become the client’s wife, she’ll stop working, and move into a totally different life,” Victoria continued. “The first thing she’ll begin to think about, when the honeymoon is over, is moving the accounts to another agency where they didn’t know her when she was a working girl. There’s nothing clients’ wives enjoy more than that kind of meddling, no matter how little they know about advertising. And Gigi’d be a thousand times as bad … she knows too much.”

The three of them sat in silence, thinking of all the horror stories told about clients’ wives, tales that were a part of advertising lore. Clients’ wives were universally dreaded, and a Gigi established inside the client’s tent would be much more of a problem than a Gigi merely having an affair with the client.

“Oh, balls, let’s not spend another single second worrying about it,” Archie said expansively. “Forget the whole thing. We’ve got too much to celebrate. Victoria, don’t be such a downer, tell me about Harris Reeves again. Tell me exactly how it happened, what he said and what you said.”

“Are you serious, Arch? Like a bedtime story?” Victoria smiled so voluptuously that her face took on an erotic expression that made both Arch and By remember exactly how she’d looked the night she’d recruited them in her apartment in New York.

“It hasn’t sunk in yet,” Archie replied. “I feel like a kid who just got the whole circus for a birthday present. A real three-ring circus with elephants, lions, and bareback riders. Or maybe a casino of my own, with a racetrack thrown in. Come on, Ms. Frost, baby, don’t make me beg.”

“Yeah, come on,” Byron insisted, “I gotta hear it again too.”

“This morning, when I got in, there was a message to call Harris Reeves at Beach Casuals in New York.” Victoria stopped deliberately to enjoy the look of impatience on their faces.

“I’m begging, Victoria,” Archie pleaded. “Begging!”

“Me too. Please, Victoria, more gruel!” Byron cried. Just his luck, he thought, to be in business with a world-class cock teaser, even in the office.

“I returned his call, but he was out to lunch. Since he’s the CEO of the biggest swimwear company in the country, I sat around all morning biting my nails and waiting to call him again, wondering how long he took for lunch. At eleven, California time—am I drawing this out enough for you two kiddies?—I called him back and got the man himself. Seems he takes a short lunch. I told him I was returning his call and asked what I could do for him. And he said … and he said … let’s see, what is it exactly that comes next?”

“Victoria! I’m going to wring your exquisite fucking neck!” Archie menaced her.

“Why, Archie, if you do that, you’ll end up in the gas chamber,” she giggled.

“Victoria!”

“Oh, all right. I’ll indulge you. What babies you are! And he said he was exceptionally impressed with the work we’d done on Indigo Seas and he’d been keeping track of the increase in their sales and I said thank you very much, and he said that he’d had his VP in charge of advertising check us out completely and heard nothing but good things about us from Joe Devane and others, and I said thank you very much, and he said his current agency had gone stale, they’d had the account without competition for ten years and he’d warned them but they were stone cold dead in the water, couldn’t come up with anything exciting and new, and I said nothing except ‘ummm,’ and then he said that he wanted us to take on Beach Casuals. Like that. Just over the phone, just like that. While I was still trying to say something sensible, like ‘Thank you very much!’ Harris Reeves said that he wanted us all to fly to New York next week to meet with his people and I said we’d be thrilled and delighted and what was a good day for him and he said Wednesday and to count on being there till the weekend so
we could meet everybody involved, have discussions, all that jazz, and I said thank you very much again, and he said he felt Indigo Seas was a conflict and I said of course it was and naturally we’d resign it and he said fine and eventually we got around to the usual looking-forward-to-meeting-you formalities and the phone call was over. Are you boys happy now, or do you want me to go through it again?”