Nothing To Lose (A fat girl novel) (15 page)

Each day, Burdie’s was more familiar. She became used to the lights, the vignettes of summer-to-come, shoppers taking the escalator steps two at a time, a mannequin family of happy campers smiling nonstop at the hot dogs on their propane stove. Her spare time was spent sleeping off the weariness of a round trip to Newark and finding something suitable to wear each day. One night on a talk show, a diet doctor asked the audience to hold one of their shoes out at arm’s length for five minutes. After one minute, all but a few arms were down in weariness. “That,” he said, “Is how much energy it takes to carry about one extra pound of body weight. Now multiply by ten or twenty and you’ll see why you’re so tired. April saw. She had to multiply by sixty.

Each Monday, she, along with Erica and three other writers, went to Alan Leed’s office to view the ‘hot’ soft goods items for the week – the stars that would pull in the customers who would then impulse buy all the other merchandise.

Soft goods included dresses, coats, children’s clothes. Some soft goods were hard – shoes and handbags – and some hard goods were soft – tablecloths and sheets. But mostly, hard goods were very hard – washing machines, televisions and furniture.

The hottest item of the week for April was the soft goods merchandise manager, Alan Leeds. From the first day she had seen him, he had made her remember sex and how it felt to want it, although she didn’t particularly like him. He was clean and healthy-looking. His nose was peeling, making him appear boyish and innocent. Reddish hair peeked out of his immaculate shirt cuffs. She often fantasized that he was fondling her in the office. He didn’t know she was alive.

“We’re having a fur sale in time for Easter,” Herman Schildkraut was holding a pale beige mink stole on a curved, padded hanger. He looked exactly like Franklin Roosevelt.

“So what else is new?” said Erica.

“Stoles,” said Ralph, ignoring her. “Male skins, fully let out. Hush-hush designer.”

“Why is it always male skins?” Erica was irritated. “Female skins are no good?”

“No.” Ralph looked puzzled. “They’re good.”

“Then why don’t they ever say ‘all-female skins?”

“I don’t know. It’s always been male skins, fully let out.”

“So what’s so special about the stoles?” She was poised with her pencil.

“They’re designer stoles.”

“What designer?”

“We can’t say.”

“Oh, Cassini again?”

“No. Not Cassini.”

“Then, who?”

“Schiaparelli.”

“Yeah …so why can’t we say Schiaparelli? Isn’t he dead?”

“It’s a she.”

“Isn’t she dead?”

“I don’t know. But we’re selling them at well below retail so we can’t mention the name. That’s the deal.”

“We can’t say it rhymes with Chantilly?”

“That’s confusing.”

“So what do we say? Hush hush designer stoles, well below her usual price?”

“Doesn’t sound strong enough.”

“At this ridiculous price, we had to cut out the label – but you can sew it back on at home.”

“Hey, that’s good. That’s good. I like that.”

“Wonderful.”

April looked at Erica with awe. She was a walking headline machine.

In between presentations, Alan Leeds stared at Susan Scott, the stylist who chose the accessories for the ads and managed the photography sessions. Susan was always exquisitely coiffed and dressed. On warm days, she wore pleated batiste shirtwaists with baby tucks and linen coats. Her makeup was always fresh. She was self-centered but not mean or rude. The men all wanted her. They wanted to take her to dinner and to parties because she looked good on a man’s arm.

“Whose dress is that?” asked Alan, examining Susan’s chocolate brown dirndl-skirted dress.

“It’s mine.” She blinked and bobbed a headful of curls.

“You know what I mean.” Alan’s smile was out of all proportion to the joke. He played it gruff but you could see his hunger for her mounting.

April countered this exchange with a fantasy that Alan Leeds was fondling her breasts while dictating a letter into a machine. He had one big clean hand inside her dress while the other held the mike. “Doris, take a letter to Joe Greenberg at White Stag,” he said into the mike. “Dear Joe: are you aware that we’re not getting our orders within the time promised?” (Well-padded fingers would be searching out well-padded spots.) “The whole shipment of jogging shorts and tank tops missed our peak week…” (He was pointing with his mike to his own throbbing organ and she got busy.)

His boyishness prompted her to give him boyish dialogue: Could I park my car in your garage? Could I put my bread in your box? Could I put my hot dog in your bun?

Jason Bucci, the budget coat buyer, who was next in line to present his merchandise, interrupted her reverie. Jason was radically thin. He looked like the poor relative of the main gangster, taken in out of family loyalty.

“What have you got, Jason?” asked Alan.

“Let me say this.” Jason stood over Erica but spoke to Alan. “If the ad doesn’t say sale, sale, sale, you can forget about it.”

“Jason, we’re not going to say sale, sale, sale,” said Erica dryly.

“No, of course, not. You might sell something.” Again he turned to Alan. “You wanna write poetry or you wanna sell coats?”

“We’re not writing poetry,” replied Erica calmly. She began to inspect the stitching on the coat Jason held up. “We can say something interesting.”

“What interesting? They’re the same coats I bought last year and the same coats I’ll buy next year. They’re coats. Wool coats. Lightweight wool coats with three buttons down the front and a modified balmacaan sleeve. The same women will buy them, too. Not the women who bought one last year but the women who bought one two years ago.”

Erica was not listening. “Just the coat you want for spring,” she said, as if reading it off the ceiling. “Light-weight. Three button closing. Flattering balmacaan sleeve. Would you believe only thirty-nine dollars?”

“I don’t want to say that,” said Jason.

“Well, that’s what we’re going to say,” hummed Erica. “Or something like that.”

“Alan, for crissakes, it’s my ass if they don’t sell.”

“How can you sell wool coats for thirty-nine dollars?” Alan brought his chair and body upright.

“I got a deal with Royce.”

“What’s the deal? Royce stole them from somebody?”

“You know me better than that.”

“You can’t sell wool coats for thirty-nine dollars.”

“They’re reprocessed wool.”

“It’s not virgin wool?” Alan’s eyebrows went up.

“Virgin. Virgin.” Jason’s look was contemptuous and impatient. “No such thing anymore. You know any virgins, girlie?” he turned to April and she turned to jelly. He was going to say something awful about her. She folded her hands in her lap and looked down at them. Mercifully, he looked away. “Look, you want to sell coats or you want to wait until the blacks get restless during the summer…no offense,” he turned to Selma, a black girl who wrote for children’s wear, “and come looting and burning.” The picture he was painting made him angry. “You know what you are?” he turned to Alan. “You’re Doctor No. No you can’t say this. No you can’t say that. This isn’t Saks Fifth Avenue you know. This isn’t Bonwit Teller. This is Burdie’s.” He waved his arms like a conductor asking for a larger sound. “And you,” he turned to Erica with particular contempt, “you’re Nurse No.”

No one had considered Burdie’s any less dignified than the other stores but Jason’s performance made them feel uninformed. April admired him for turning the meeting around to suit him.

“We’ll put the word sale in the ad,” said Alan soberly.

“In fourteen point type?”

“Ten.”

“Make it twelve,” said Jason.

“Out!” Alan rose from his chair. “Out…”

“Okay, okay.” He left quickly, dragging his reprocessed wool coat behind him.

“Is he trying to tell us something?” Erica asked.

“Of course not. We just opened two new stores.” His brow remained furrowed, however, and he didn’t tilt his chair back in the same careless way.

Chapter Fifteen

It took her five weeks to settle in. To stop gnawing pencils each time she placed a piece of copy on Erica’s desk for approval. During the third week, Erica sent her back five times to rewrite an ad for a bathing suit sale. She had written fifteen variations on the theme of maillots riding high on bare, tan thighs, cutouts showing more than ever before.

In the end, the huge, double-page ad had read: 20% to 30% off every swimsuit in our stock. She knew that was the best thing they could say about those damn swimsuits. Erica had been right.

It took her five weeks also to take the commute in her stride. There were a variety of trains that stopped in Newark and continued to New York. There was the Metroliner from Washington. The train from Chicago. The trains whose final destination was New York and those that continued north or south. Each had its own debris and strange newspapers.

A photograph taken on her first day appeared on a stand in front of the executive cafeteria – everyone in advertising was an executive – with the words NEW FACES under it and her name. The next day someone had written in front of her name: The Two and Only.

Don Loren, the display manager, who seemed in a position to know, said it was the photographer himself who had done it. “It’s that Nazi, Dennis,” he announced at lunch. “Who else would do a thing like that?”

“Can you confront him?” asked Erica.

“Huh? Not me, honey. He’s rough.” No one knew what Don meant. No one wanted to know.

For April, the graffiti wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was the way she looked. The photographer had caught her too glad face, startled, open, puffy. She could have been a man or woman or a gruesome child. Every time she went to lunch and got a glimpse of the photograph, her stomach muscles – wherever they were – bunched together in a knot of humiliation.

Don Loren was responsible for windows and in-store displays. He dressed the mannequins and chose the motifs. He looked like a well-dressed mannequin, too. Tall, slim, straight spine and distant. Twice a week, April met him in his workroom to get the information for writing display copy.

The first time she walked into his large, cluttered room he was systematically chipping away at the plaster face of a male mannequin on an ironing board. He looked up briefly when April entered. “The only way I can get them to buy new ones is to destroy the old ones.”

“Why do you want new ones?”

“Well, just look at these? Look at the wigs! Look at the faces. Look at the bodies. No breasts. No contours. The makeup is all wrong.” He stopped. “You here for the window copy?”

“I’m April from advertising.”

“April, huh. Why April?”

“I was born in April so they named me April.”

“Veeerry imaginative.” He looked her over. “I used to be with Oleg Cassini,” he said quickly.

“Oh.”

“I was his draper.”

“Draper?”

“Fabrics need to be draped. You have to see how everything is going to hang.”

“What happened?”

“What happened with what?”

“With Oleg Cassini?”

“Oh…that. What always happens.” He said it archly, implying things too personal to mention. April was impressed. His clothes looked as if they were pressed hourly, while he was in them. They were the most beautiful, well-fitting clothes she had ever seen on man or woman. Everything shone with the faint gleam of good silk. His hair was exquisitely cut, perfectly framing his large eyes, the broad nose, the full lips. He was one swell black.

“Your clothes are beautiful.” She couldn’t hold back.

“I spray-starch everything.” Now he was taking her in slowly, head to toe. “Give me your blouse, I’ll show you a trick.” April was appalled and hugged herself stubbornly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I don’t like women.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Come on,” he said impatiently, “take it off. You can get behind the screen.”

She took off her blouse. that was off-white with a Nehru collar and a small string tie, and handed it to him, peeking anxiously from behind the screen to see who was going to walk in and see what was going on. Don was like a magician with his iron. He held it in one hand while he wafted a mist of spray starch from high above with the other. He could have been conducting the Philharmonic. When he finished, her plain, cotton Lady Manhattan stood at attention.

When she put it back on, he stood back to admire his work. “There, you see? Isn’t that better?”

“Yes. It’s beautiful.” She adjusted her clothes and picked up her pad and pencil. “I should be getting back. They’ll be wondering what happened to me.”

“Who’s going to be wondering?” He looked annoyed. He began tossing the limbs of the mannequins into a pile in the corner.

“Erica.”

“She’s a coward underneath. Like any bully.”

“Who said she was a bully?”