Scruples (2 page)

Maggie MacGregor felt both depleted and electrified by the adrenaline of acquisition. She had just spent at least seven thousand dollars for clothes to wear on camera during the next two months and ordered an entire wardrobe for the Cannes Film Festival, which she would be covering in May. The festival wardrobe had cost an additional twelve thousand dollars for clothes that would be made by Halston and Adolfo in New York in special colors and fabrics just for her and delivered in time for her trip, or she’d have someone’s head on a platter. Naturally, it was stipulated in her contract that the ganefs at the network paid. No way she’d spend her own money like that.

If anyone had ever tried to convince her, ten years ago, when she was a short, jouncingly plump teenager named Shirley Silverstein, daughter of the owner of the biggest hardware store in tiny Fort John, Rhode Island, that spending nineteen thousand dollars on clothes was hard work, she would have—laughed? No, Maggie reflected, even back then she was ambitious enough to have been able to imagine such a situation and smart enough to understand that it involved a lot of psychic strain to say nothing of what it did to her feet. She just wouldn’t have thought of it in any relation to herself. Even now it hadn’t become routine, although, at twenty-six, she was a television superpower, as tough as—many thought tougher than—Mike Wallace, and a hell of a lot less obvious about it; even prettier than Dan Rather, and blessed with an inborn talent for interviewing as strong in its own way as the talent that makes Beverly Sills sing. She had her own network show in the choicest cut of prime time. For a half hour every weekend more than a good third of the television sets in the United States were tuned in to Maggie as she reported, with the help of a faithful crew who had virtually grown minicams out of their shoulders, the inside news of show business, particularly the film industry; tightly researched, completely authoritative stories, which had nothing in common with the tiny turds of coy gossip that were served up only three years ago to an incurably curious public.

Right now she was just an exhausted female whose Betty Boop-round black eyes had seen so many dresses in the last three hours that they were all jumbled around in her sassy head. But the network insisted that if she reported on show business she had to look as if she belonged in that glamorous world. As she waited for Spider Elliott to come in and tell her which of the outfits she had chosen were absolutely right for her, she looked disarmingly disheveled, her bangs and black hair separating into a dozen cowlicks. She didn’t bother to look in the mirror. Maggie knew that no matter how much money she spent, the only time she looked put together was during the half hour after the studio makeup man and hairdresser had finished with her just before she went on camera.

Spider knocked and Maggie merely answered, “Help!” He came in and shut the door behind him and leaned against the wall of the dressing room, looking at her both quizzically and tenderly.

“Hey, Spidy, did you study leaning from old Fred Astaire movies? Just like you practiced walking and sitting down? Where’s your top hat?” Maggie asked.

“Don’t try to change the subject. I know you. You probably bought stuff you can’t wear and you’re trying to put me on the defensive.”

“You,” she said, enunciating clearly, “are a putz, a schmekel, a schmuck, a schlong, and a shvantz. And a WASP putz, at that.”

“Her ladyship.” Spider kissed her hand. “You’re a class act, kid. I may be just an ex-UCLA beach bum, but I know when I’m being called a prick. So, you have a guilty conscience and I haven’t even seen the clothes? One thing I’ll never understand about women, Maggie—why, when you call a man a prick, is it considered an insult? ‘Eunuch,’ now that would really hurt.”

Maggie made a throaty sound of resignation. She knew already that she’d gone a bit overboard on those evening dresses for Cannes. Spider, that cock-sucker, could read minds, female minds, no question about it. Where did such a gorgeous stud get his gift for women? As Maggie well knew, it was rare in a red-blooded American heterosexual, that quick, instinctive intuition that no system of psychology could explain. And as horny as a whole herd of young goats too.

Spider pressed a button and Maggie’s saleswoman, placid, well-bred Rosel Korman, popped her head in the door.

“Rosel, would you please get Maggie’s new things for us?” Spider asked, with a smile. Spider and Maggie were the best of friends, but she felt a quiver of apprehension as Rosel disappeared. He was such a fucking dictator. On the other hand, he was always right. She knew already that he wouldn’t let her keep that batwing Bill Blass she loved so much. But no matter what he did to frustrate her, there was a bond between them based on the sweetness of non-possession. They cherished not having had each other because it created a current of continual warmth, which, they both knew, was more important to them than sex. Sex they could, and did, get everywhere. Warmth was rare.

Spider Elliott, at thirty-two, was, in Maggie’s opinion, one of the most attractive men in the world, and she was in the business of observing the mechanics of what makes men and women attractive. Her shrewd, measuring eyes were trained to miss nothing of the workings of seduction; if a performer is not also a seducer of some sort or another, he or she will never become a star. Certain obvious things were in Spider’s favor, she thought. The All-American Golden Boy with a great body never goes out of style. And he had the hair, the naturally blond hair that had turned a darker, richer, more streaky gold as he grew up. And he had the eyes, Viking eyes, as blue as if they reflected nothing but the sea. They squinched almost closed when he smiled, as he had at Rosel, and the semisunburst of lines at the corner of each eye deepened, making him look merry and wise, as if he’d been somewhere very far away and had many a good tale to tell. He even had that nose, broken in some long-forgotten high-school football game, and a tiny chip in one front tooth, which lent an agreeable toughness to his face. But basically, Maggie decided, it was Spider’s very special knack for moving through a woman’s mind, trading easily in her idiom, speaking directly to her, cutting across the barriers of masculinity and femininity without any of the warping caused by fag bullshit that did the trick. He had a passionate absorption with the sensuous secrets of raw femaleness, which drew him naturally into the center stage of the erotic-narcissistic atmosphere that reigned at Scruples, as essential a masculine counterpoint as a pasha in his harem. And no matter how cunt-happy he was, he was never unprofessional. If the men of Bevely Hills, La Jolla, or Santa Barbara had guessed of Spider’s underground reputation as a dedicated, world-class cocksman, spread through impeccably firsthand reports, they might not have paid their women’s staggering Scruples’ bills with such good-humored resignation.

Now Rosel reappeared, followed by her assistant wheeling a heavy rolling cart with a rack. A white linen slipcover concealed the contents. Billy Orsini had devised this system as one way of maintaining the customer’s privacy at Scruples, a privacy almost nonexistent in most of the other expensive shops of Beverly Hills. Rosel left them as soon as she had unveiled the clothes. Spider always worked with the customers alone, their interchange undiluted by the saleswomen, who had a habit of falling in love with the dress that would have looked well on them rather than on the woman who would wear it. Together he and Maggie went through her choices. Some of them Spider passed on without comment, some he eliminated, some he asked Maggie to try on before he made his decision, which she did behind the four-panel screen in one corner of the large room. When they had got through the lot, Spider picked up the phone and asked the chef to send up a big pot of Earl Grey tea, a bottle of V.S.O.P., and a tray of fresh caviar and smoked-salmon sandwiches.

“We’ll have your blood-sugar level back to normal in no time,” he reassured the exhausted girl. As they shared the strong tea, laced well with brandy, they both relaxed with the sense of a difficult job accomplished.

“You realize, Maggie,” Spider said lazily, “that you still haven’t picked out the most important dress of all.”

“Huh?” She was groggy with relief and fatigue and her back hurt.

“What are you going to wear for the Academy Awards, little one?”

“Who knows? Something. Haven’t I bought enough, you momser?”

“Not yet. Are you trying to ruin my reputation? That monster rally is beamed by satellite all over the world—audience of one hundred fifty million. That’s
three hundred million eyes
looking at you. You’d better wear something pretty special.”

“Oh, shit, Spider, you’re giving me the chills.”

“You’ve never been head honcho on an Award show before. We’d better get Valentine to design something really special for you.”

“Valentine?” Maggie’s eyes were uncertain. She had never bought custom-made clothes because her schedule was too tight to allow for many fittings.

“Yep. And don’t worry, you’ll find the time. Don’t you want to astonish the whole fucking world?”

“Spider,” she said gratefully, “if I kissed your feet, you wouldn’t think I was coming on to you, would you?”

“You don’t have the strength,” he answered. “Just stay put and answer a few questions. What are Vito’s chances for the nomination? Just between us.”

“Only fair, good, or excellent, depending. There are seven other pictures out there that made a good number of the ten-best lists and have lots of backing behind them. Obviously, I want him to get one … but I wouldn’t bet my next paycheck on it.”

“How can you know as little as I do?” Spider complained.

“That’s show business. Is Billy showing any signs of wear and tear? She’s really addicted to that divine wop she married.”

“Wear and tear? Obsession is more like it. But then she never has gone in for mild emotions, not since I’ve known her. If there were a few more weeks to wait, she’d wake up one morning, look in the mirror, and see Lady Macbeth. Hell, I like Vito and he’s a very talented guy, but sometimes I wish she’d married someone who did something less dangerous, like sky diving or Grand Prix racing.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

While Maggie and Spider were talking, Billy was restlessly studying some of the stock of the gift section of Scruples, prowling around in a thief’s paradise of Chinese export armorial cachepots, Victorian silver cookie jars, eighteenth-century beaded evening bags, French shoe buckles of rose-cut diamonds, Battersea candlesticks, and Georgian snuffboxes, the corner she called “the pillaging of Peking.” Simultaneously she kept a discreet eye on the backgammon tables in the pub where six men were having a friendly game while they waited for their women to finish shopping, a game at which probably not less than three thousand dollars would change hands. Scruples had developed into the most popular unorganized yet exclusive men’s club in town. Billy managed, at the same time, to notice the two women from Texas who had each just bought four identical vicuna lap robes lined in chinchilla, mink, nutria, and, for a giggle, mole dyed in beige, brown, and white stripes. Sisters? Best friends? She had never been able to understand women who shopped together and bought the same things. An abomination. Her irritation at the two women was, Billy realized, merely a reflection of her growing annoyance that Valentine wasn’t finished yet. Damn and blast her client, Muffie Woodstock, that leathery creature. And Spider, why the hell wasn’t he around?

Abruptly disgusted with the people around her, she walked to one of the four sets of double doors on the north and south sides of the main salon of Scruples and looked out at the formal gardens that surrounded the store like an oasis. Dwarf privet and gray santolina were set in intricate patterns in front of the tall boxwood hedges that shielded Scruples on three sides. Two dozen varieties of geraniums, in antique terra-cotta urns, were already in full bloom, brought in from Billy’s own greenhouses. She could smell the fruitwood-and-eucalyptus fire that snapped behind an ornate brass fire screen in the Edwardian winter garden at the far end of the salon and hear the murmur of voices as a few late shoppers drank tea and champagne. But none of these familiar sights and sounds could quiet her nervous agitation.

Valentine O’Neill, in her design studio, had been enjoying herself thoroughly all afternoon. Mrs. Ames Woodstock presented the kind of challenge she enjoyed, a woman who was terrified by beautiful clothes yet was going to be forced by circumstances—and Valentine—to wear them and wear them with panache. Nor did Valentine underestimate the princely amount that Mrs. Woodstock’s millionaire husband, wise in the diplomacy of international oil and just appointed ambassador to France, was willing to pay for the privilege of having an entire wardrobe made to order at Scruples. No Frenchwoman would.

Although Valentine hadn’t lived in Paris for five years and was half Irish on her father’s side, now, at twenty-six, she remained as unmistakably French as the Eiffel Tower. The final, secret detail of what made her so French, in defiance of her wild Irish coloring, might have been in the whimsical tilt of her lips or in her slender, deliriously pointed nose with its three freckles or in the speculative glint in her eyes, light green as young leaves. She had mermaid eyes in a small, white face, an alive, alive face, which never fell into dullness or fixed itself in a pout. She was as alert as a vixen, as humorous as the song by Maurice Chevalier after which her homesick war-bride mother had named her. There was, under Valentine’s ever-changing expressions, a bedrock of sturdy reasonableness, a base of stubborn French logic, which was all too often combined with her quick Celtic temper. Even her cap of short, red curls, Mrs. Woodstock thought apprehensively, as Valentine draped another length of silk over her shoulder, was the most assertive, even aggressive, hair she had ever seen.