The Ghost of Greenwich Village: A Novel (11 page)

“You used the phrase ‘being worn’ twice. Watch that—it’s not only repetitive, it’s passive voice,” said Donald who, annoyingly, was right. Eve hadn’t realized he’d be able to hear the TV through her brain.

“Now, that was nice.”

“Thank you, Donald.”

—
LEGENDARY DESIGNER
MATTHIAS KLIEG
.

The camera pulled back, revealing Klieg. Tall and lithe with solemn gray eyes and gleaming white hair receding from a patrician forehead. He nodded at Hap.

Eve leaned forward and watched as Hap followed her line of questioning precisely. He and Klieg chatted their way through the succession of dresses as if they were old friends. Hap even had Eve convinced he was an authority on Cheops.

“So what did you think?” asked Eve happily when it was over. But Donald was long gone.

   • • •

That afternoon Eve decided she could risk the elevator and walk to her office through the gauntlet of
Smell
’s front offices. She noticed or imagined several hard stares as she threaded her way
among the cubicles, and her heart started to pound. After the long hike down to writers’ row, she saw Mark, Quirine, Cassandra, Steve, and Russell with their heads huddled together. They stopped talking when they saw her.

“Well,” said Russell, peering over his glasses at her with new interest. “You certainly know how to make a second impression.”

Eve slung her bag off her shoulder. “What’s going on?”

Quirine bounced up and down on the balls of her feet. “Go in your office. Now.” The others nodded in unison.

Eve pushed open the door. Inside, taking up most of the small room, sat a Matthias Klieg original, threaded onto a slim Lucite pole atop one of the designer’s custom platforms.

“Klieg’s people sent it over this morning after the interview,” said Steve. “I heard it took, like, three guys to get it in and out of the freight elevator.”

Eve opened the card taped to the pole, her heart racing.

“It’s got to be worth hundreds of thousands,” said Russell.

“But, Mark,” said Cassandra sharply, “she can’t keep it. We’re not allowed to accept gifts. Conflict of interest. If she keeps it, we’ll have to tell Giles.”

What’s her problem?
wondered Eve. “He just wants me to borrow it,” she said. The shimmering teal gown was, in Klieg fashion, a marvel of engineering: Over a silk underdress, a resin shell had been constructed, consisting of a series of waves that surrounded the wearer from the bust down to the knee. The
dress sparkled under the fluorescent lights, winking at its drab surroundings. Its surface was awash in seed pearls, crystals, semiprecious stones, and enormous, jewel-encrusted fish.

Quirine approached the dress. “How does he do it?” she asked, peering closely at the place where two waves met. “He’s a magician.”

Cassandra flounced out of the room. The others, smiling politely, mumbled various things and filed out behind her. Mark stopped in the doorway. He looked at her quizzically. “First the bouillabaisse, now this. Do you always attract so much attention?”

Thinking back over her life before the last few days, Eve almost had to laugh. “Uh, no,” she said.

E
ve asked Vadis to be her date at the gala and suddenly it was as if the two failed jobs and anchor vomit had never happened. Eve couldn’t contain her elation. She counted the days, then the hours, then the minutes before the party. She was going out on the town in New York.

Because of the elaborate costume, she was allowed to dress in one of the museum’s executive offices, and she took special care with her appearance: She put her chin-length hair up with turquoise seahorse pins she’d bought at one of the antiques stores on Bleecker, applied pearly eye shadow that brought out the greenish flecks in her eyes, and swept a deep red lipstick across the pointed pucker of her lips.

“A Klieg’s never looked so good,” said Vadis as they stood at the entrance to the fete. “Of course, the fact that you’re the only one in a Klieg under sixty doesn’t hurt.” Eve enjoyed the curious looks of fellow party guests. Only five or six other women were wearing Kliegs; the rest were on display around the room, lit from within like multicolored planets, orbited by tuxedos and caviar blini.

Vadis, in a black jersey gown with a plunging neckline, curled
her left hand around an imaginary glass and held two fingers of her right straight out as if clutching a cigarette between them, her signal during college that she was ready to party. They made their way over to the bar, accepted two champagne cocktails, and toasted each other amid the churning social whirl.

“Girl,”
said Vadis, sweeping her eyes over the room, which looked eerily beautiful in low, bluish light, “you’ve done it.”

“Done what?” asked Eve.

“Put us squarely in the position to make shit happen.”

“Hmmm?”

“Parties like this … we’ll meet everyone. I knew I was onto something when I put you up for this job.” Vadis took a lusty slurp of her drink.

Eve said nothing. She’d gotten the distinct impression from Mark that being invited to “parties like this” was not just unusual but unheard of. She reached for a shrimp on a passing tray and took a thoughtful bite.

They stood for a few moments, waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, Vadis searched out a promising mark. “Middle-aged ponytail at two o’clock,” she said. “
Has
to be in music.” She took a couple of strides and struck up a conversation with a self-consciously hip-looking man wearing a gold wristwatch the size of a saucer. A minute or so later, while he removed a business card from his wallet, Vadis turned to Eve with an impish smile and mouthed,
Rolling Stone
.

Eve smiled back, scratching lightly at the stitches on her arm. She looked down at the puffer fish near her waist. A rich orange-brown, its spots appeared traced with diamond dust. Someone jostled her and Eve moved back. The initial interest she’d inspired seemed to have evaporated. She wondered if she should try to enter someone else’s conversation, but that didn’t look easy. The crowd, mostly older and wearing the safe combination of black and diamonds, was absorbed in itself. Groups of twos and threes gathered, glancing furtively at one another and whispering.
Eve heard snippets of conversations: “… Went to Fieldston with my husband and still refused to second his nomination to the board.…” “That acquisition was a
scandal
, an outrage.…” She ordered another drink and was just wondering when Vadis might come back, when a stooped, lanky man with bifocals and a large Adam’s apple appeared next to her.

“Don’t tell me,” he said, thumping a pencil against the Klieg catalogue. “ ‘Deep Blue See’?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What you’ve got on.”

“Oh. Yes,” said Eve, uncomfortable under the man’s beady gaze.

“Looks a little big on you. How come you’re wearing it?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“What I mean is, what’s your connection here? Who do you know?”

Eve wanted to say it was none of his business, but the answer to his question proved more satisfying. “Well, actually, I know Mr. Klieg.”

“Nice try. Nobody knows him. Now, my friend over there thinks your father’s on the donor committee but I said—”

“Miss Eve,” came a voice from her left. Matthias Klieg stepped between her and the Adam’s apple, neatly ending his inquisition. The designer took her in with raised eyebrows and an abbreviated bow. “Enchanted.”

Eve did a double take. Matthias Klieg, in person! If Penelope could see her now. Eve straightened her five-foot-three-inch frame, wanting to show the dress off to its best effect. “Thank you for inviting me. It was incredibly kind of you.”

“It was not my intention to be kind. That dress was to be worn by Dame Alchist, but she called earlier in the week to say she was ill, and I hated to display it on a stand. It looks better when it moves.” His eyes moved over the room.

Eve nodded and took a long sip of champagne. She’d so
believed she and Klieg had shared a connection on the phone, a particular intimacy, like strangers who’d been trapped together in an elevator. She tried to think of something to say. “My mother was such a fan of your work.” Not very original, but at least it was the truth. Klieg nodded absently, looking bored and, if Eve wasn’t mistaken, miserable. “Aren’t you enjoying the evening?” she asked. It was a celebration of his life and work, after all. “You look like you’d rather be sweeping the Rue de Montaigne.”

This was met by silence. Eve looked away. Then Klieg cleared his throat. “This is not my scene, shall we say,” he said, exhaling heavily before swigging what looked like Campari.

“Not as much fun as your Paris days?” Eve ventured.

“Hardly. This is small talk. Small people. Small lives. Nothing irks me more. In Paris, well, forgive my hubris, but I like to think we discussed things that mattered.”

“You must have known some interesting people.”

“They were the best days of my life.” He looked down at the floor. “Inside an old man is always a young man, a young man shaped by his friends. Though now all I have of them are memories.”

Eve presumed she was still young herself. But what friends would she have to think so wistfully of when she was sixty-five or whatever Klieg was? She’d called Audrey and Sandy, her friends from the golfing community, a few times since being here, but all they talked about was the new pool by the green and the fact that Ryan seemed mad for Corinne, which they seemed to think would bother her. At this moment they would be at the clubhouse in their Lily Pulitzer dresses, sipping wine spritzers and droning on about whose husband made more money. She’d known them since her father moved the family to Rolling Links after Penelope died. They were nice enough girls, girls she felt comfortable with in the manner of a child who hangs on to a doll she’s long since outgrown but whose countenance she couldn’t
imagine her bedroom shelf without. But they never asked anything about her or about New York. Recently, she’d given up on tending their limp friendship from afar. Eve knew she would survive this shedding of friends, as she was not unaccustomed to loneliness. But she’d always seen this condition as something to be withstood for the moment. She’d never thought of it as memories she wasn’t storing up for her future.

“Aren’t you still in touch with them?” she asked Klieg.

“Not really. A few are dead already. And though we were all artists, we were a dissimilar group. The sculptors, like Pierre, used to bicker with the painters. René had a terrible temper and—”

“Pierre Cavel? René LaForge?”

“Yes. And the musicians butted heads with the actors. Lars and Ian would debate so loudly that they had no voice left at the end of the evening.”

“Lars Andersen—the Danish experimental pianist? And you don’t mean Ian Bellingham—head of RADA?” Eve couldn’t believe the list of names that tripped off Klieg’s tongue. Pierre Cavel, René LaForge, Lars Andersen, Ian Bellingham—they’d been known as Europe’s “Postwar Four.” They’d been a symbol of how Europe’s countries could come together after the wreckage and form stronger bonds than they’d shared before.

“Yes, they are all quite well known—now. Back then it was a different story. We faced parents shocked that we’d left home, disappointed that we hadn’t become bankers or doctors. Most of us were desperate for money, not to mention attention and reassurance. As a result, everyone became determined to establish the superiority of his own art, even his own art form. We fought constantly and were thrown out of cafés almost every night.”

“But you’re smiling.”

“I’m thinking of one particular friend. I was quite low in the pecking order as an aspiring ‘dressmaker,’ and he took me under his wing.”

“How?”

“He made the others understand that design was not just sewing clothes for life-sized dolls. He explained it to them in an almost academic way—better than I ever could—so they ‘got it.’ He—helped me.” Klieg trailed off here, running his finger around the rim of his glass.

Just then Vadis, looking so pleased with herself she was almost throwing off sparks, sidled up to Eve, taking her by the upper arm. “Can you get away? There’s a guy who wants to meet you,” she whispered.

Someone wanted to meet her? Lead the way. She turned to go but something in Klieg’s posture made her stop. He seemed so alone. “I’m not sure—” she whispered to Vadis.

Vadis cupped Eve’s ear. “Look, I don’t want you to burn this bridge or anything, but this guy’s real cute. And he’s a little closer to your age.”

Eve glanced at Klieg and tried to read his expression. He was the guest of honor, surely he wanted to mingle? Yet he made no move to circulate. “I’m sorry,” she said, “my friend here has asked me to—”

“Please, Miss Eve. I am old but not senile.” He turned to go but as his eyes moved over her face he stopped and gazed at her for a long moment, as if seeing her for the first time. Several seconds of this strange suspension went by and then Klieg swallowed as if his throat felt tender. He gave another shallow bow and departed toward a group of cooing, leathery socialites at the bar.

“Okay, try to look cool.” Vadis pulled Eve toward the other side of the room. Eve looked over her shoulder toward Klieg but the crowd had swallowed him up. “This guy Alex is connected,” assured Vadis. “Rich. And perfect for you. I think he’s even got a collar stay on.”