The Rothman Scandal (56 page)

“He's certainly been consistent with his color scheme, hasn't he?” Alex murmured.

“Sit down,” Rodney McCulloch said, and she settled herself in one of the long black plush sofas, accepting the glass of wine he handed her, and he seated himself opposite her, briefly disappearing behind the bouquet of silk flowers. “Get these damn flowers out of the way,” he said, pushing aside the vase and coming into view again. “Now, you know me. I don't like to beat around the bush. I like to get right down to brass tacks, and not waste time with any bullshit. We're doing this for Maudie, right? And we're going to do it
right
—right? No shortcuts. Now Maudie's a good-looking broad—hell, you'll see that when you meet her—but the thing is, she doesn't have a hell of a lot of class. I think that's why these fancy New York broads have been high-hatting her, giving her the snoot. Hell, I've seen the way some of 'em look at her. They look at her like they're looking at a plate of spoiled fish.” He twisted his face into an exaggerated expression of disgust. “But, hell, why should she have any class? She grew up on a beet farm on the plains of Manitoba, where the nearest thing to a big town, Winnipeg, was six hundred miles away. Maudie's people were poor, dirt poor. Uneducated. Maudie never went past high school, not like you—”

“I'm a country girl myself, darlin',” Alex said. “And I never went beyond high school, either. Your wife and I should have a lot in common.”

His eyes widened. “No kidding? I figured you for one of those finishing-school types. Well, I guess that just proves that what I want done for Maudie can be done, which gets back to Maudie's problem—no class. Hell, I know she's got no class, and I've told her she's got no class, and
she
knows she's got no class. But what the hell to do about it? That's what has us stumped. It's not that I don't let her spend money. Hell, Maudie spends a damn fortune on clothes, and I let her, but she still doesn't look quite right, and that's where you come in. When I bring Maudie down here, I want you to look her up and down and tell us just exactly what's wrong with her. Start at the top, with her hairdo. Then go to her jewelry”—he pronounced it
joolery
—“and then the dress she's wearing, the stockings, the shoes, the whole thing, top to bottom.”

“Now wait a minute, Rodney,” she said easily, taking a sip of wine. “Surely you don't expect me to let your nice wife walk in here and immediately begin telling her what's wrong with her—a woman I've just met.”

He looked surprised. “Why not? That's what I've told her you're going to do. That's what she expects. Your candy opinion. Wasn't that part of our deal? You get my money to start a new magazine. I get you to class-up Maudie.”

“To begin with, darlin', we don't have a deal. Not yet, anyway. For another thing, your wife is a human being, not a dressmaker's dummy. If I'm going to help her in any way, I'll need to get to know her. I'll need to get my eye in. That's an expression we use in the fashion business—‘getting your eye in.' It means getting the feel of the person, her personality, her—”

“I told you the problem. She has no class. She has no personality.”

“Come, come, Rodney. Everyone has a personality.”

“Not her! I ought to know, I'm married to the broad. That's why we both want you to come right out and tell her, flat out, what's wrong with her. No bullshitting around the bush.”

“And if Maudie doesn't like what I tell her?”

“She'll damn well like it! 'Cause that's what I've told her she's going to do. She's going to do what you tell her to do, and I've told her so! Maudie will do what she's told.”

Alex wondered briefly if this was the sort of man—even for all the money in the world—she would ever want to back her in a new magazine venture, a man who treated women as though they were wind-up dolls. She pushed this thought aside. “Do you want this makeover on your wife for
her
—or for yourself, Rodney?” she asked him.

He cast his eyes downward. “My Maudie's not happy,” he said. “She's not happy in New York. She wants to go back to Manitoba. I don't want to lose her, Alex. I don't think I could stand it if I lost her. I love her. I want to make my Maudie happy.” And she thought she saw tears standing in his eyes.

“And you're sure this is the way to do it?”

“It's a way to try,” he said.

“Very well. Then when do I get to meet the lady?”

He jumped to his feet and moved quickly to the gilt-bannistered, black-carpeted staircase that curved upward to the floor above.
“Maudie!”
he bellowed. “You can come down now. We're ready for you!”

Slowly, and with a certain amount of deliberation and precision, Maude McCulloch began her descent down the gilded staircase from where she had been waiting, perhaps not entirely out of earshot, somewhere in the upper reaches of the apartment. What Alex saw was a tall woman, slender but not thin, with fair skin and large dark eyes behind tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses, and thick, curly chestnut hair that was probably not its original color. As she descended the staircase, looking neither to the right nor left, she wore a shy but determined half-smile. She had dressed to match her living room, in a gold cashmere sweater with a cowl neck, the sleeves pushed up above her elbows to reveal many chunky gold bracelets at her wrists, and a hip-hugging leather miniskirt in a zebra print. Alex's first thought was that, though the miniskirt might have been a mistake, this was a woman not without a certain chic. If you saw her for the first time, in a crowd, you would take a second look.

“Rodney says you're going to do me over from scratch,” Maude McCulloch said as she crossed the room. “Well, this is scratch.” She patted her zebra skirt smartly. “Or as close to scratch as I can get unless I came down in my underwear.” She sat, crossing her long legs at the knee, and let one black patent pump dangle from her toe. There was something a little defensive in the way she presented herself, but Alex decided to ignore this.

“I'm delighted to meet you, Mrs. McCulloch,” she said.

“It's Maude,” she said, and with her index finger she fished out a cigarette from a gold and crystal box on the onyx table, tapped it on the back of her wrist, and lighted it with a gold table lighter. Between pursed lips, she blew out a long, thin stream of smoke, her chin held high, her gaze fixed on some indeterminate point in space between the others in the room and the lacquered ceiling. Maude McCulloch was not a beautiful woman, but she was certainly handsome, with high cheekbones, and there was a certain resolute set to her jawline that suggested both fixity of purpose and repressed desire. As she held her cigarette to her lips, Alex could not help noticing that her fingernails had been bitten to the quick. Also, small pinched lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes indicated that her life had not been an entirely easy one. Certainly marriage to Rodney McCulloch had been no lotus land, and briefly Alex wondered whether Rodney had ever beaten his wife. Then she decided that he probably had not.

Yet there was something about Maude McCulloch that suggested that she had long ago struck a deal with this man and the life he offered her, difficult though it was, and that, to the best of her ability, she had kept her end of the bargain, through good times and disasters. Alex's first impression of Maude McCulloch was that she was a straight shooter. Her second impression was that she was a tough cookie—an unhappy tough cookie, but still a tough one.

“Look,” Maude McCulloch said, slapping her skirt again, “I don't always dress like this. I don't even think I look good in miniskirts. I only wore this because Rodney—but never mind. In my closets upstairs, I've got clothes by all the top designers. He makes me buy them. I've got dresses by Chanel, Dior, Ungaro, Valentino, Adolfo, Lacroix—” She looked at her husband for the first time. “Rodney, why are we wasting this poor woman's time?” she asked.

“Hey, that's a swell idea,” he said, hunching forward in the sofa. “Why don't you take Alex upstairs, and go through all your closets? She'll tell you which outfits are fashionable, and worth saving, and which can be tossed out. Easy! Ha-ha-ha.”

“Oh, I don't think I need to do that,” Alex murmured. “I'm sure Maude has many beautiful clothes.” She turned to his wife. “Maude, suppose you tell me what it is you want—what you think I might be able to do for you.”

“She wants to be in Mona's column,” he said. “She wants to meet the right people, and not have them look at her like she's a plate of spoiled fish.” He made his spoiled-fish face again.

“Well, that part's easy,” Alex said. “Mona's certainly aware of who you are. But I'll give you a little hint. As a newspaperwoman, Mona doesn't make a lot of money, and so the people Mona writes about supplement her income with little gifts.”

“You mean you can
buy
your way into Mona's column?” Rodney said. “Why, that's like being a whore!”

“You said that, Rodney, not I,” Alex said with a smile. “But Mona doesn't accept money. She'll accept gifts, though. A case of champagne. A pound of caviar. But Mona likes jewelry best, rubies in particular. She also likes to be taken out to lunch. All you need to do, Maude, is invite Mona to lunch at Mortimer's. Then follow it up with a little something—nothing too lavish, just a little something from Van Cleef's or Cartier. That'll get you mentioned in Mona's column at least once a week for the next six months. By then, it will be Christmas—time for another little gift. Simple.”

“Make a note of that, Maudie,” her husband said. “Mortimer's. Van Cleef. Cartier. Something for the whore.”

“But Maude,” Alex said. “You still haven't told me what
you
want.”

“She wants to be in fashion, she wants to be in style. She wants—”

“Rodney, will you please stop answering all her questions for me?” his wife said sharply. “You haven't let me get a word in edgewise, for Christ's sake!” He sat back, looking chagrined.

“She's right. Let's hear from Maude,” Alex said.

“I told you what Maudie wants. She wants—” But Alex shushed him with a gesture.

“What I want,”
Maude said, taking a long drag on her cigarette, “isn't really a hell of a lot when you get right down to it. But there are a few things. I'd like to be taken a little bit seriously, for one thing. I'd like to be treated like a human being, for another. I'd like to be listened to from time to time. From time to time, I'd like a little attention to be paid. People pay attention to Rodney because he's made all this money. Because he's made all this money, they think he must be smart. Well, I happen to be smart, too. I may not have much formal education, but I happen to have a brain! Do you know that this so-called financial genius that I married can't do long division? Do you know that this so-called financial genius even has trouble with addition and subtraction? Do you know that he can't even balance his personal checkbook? I have to do that for him. There are other things I could tell you about this man I married. He says he made his first big money from inventing flavored pacifiers. He made his first big money as a butter salesman—selling fourteen-ounce pounds of butter off a truck. He doesn't tell
that
to the reporters from
Time
magazine. I've gotten used to all that. I'm used to his vulgarity and his boorishness and his crudity and his insensitivity and his cruelty, and his going ‘Ha-ha-ha' every time he says something that isn't funny. He doesn't mind being called the Billionaire Bumpkin, because it happens to have the word
billionaire
in it, but all the bumpkin business is mostly an act, anyway. Do you know his dentist has begged him to let him straighten and cap his teeth? But he won't have it done because he thinks crooked teeth make him look sincere. Why do you think he combs his hair the way he does? Why does he insist on wearing suits that don't fit? So people will say he's a genius hayseed. But what am I supposed to be? His bumpkinette? What am I supposed to be noticed for? Meanwhile, I've raised his seven children for him. I've—”

“Wait,” Alex said. “Tell me about the children. You've just given me an idea.”

“Well, none of them are dopers, none of them are dropouts, none of them are in jail, if that's what you mean. The kids are all doing fine.”

“What if Maude McCulloch were noticed in New York for
motherhood?
For being a superb mother.”

“What's motherhood got to do with fashion?” her husband wanted to know.

“Nothing. That's just it. But it's something to be noticed for, which is what Maude wants. These so-called fashionable New York women aren't interested in being mothers. Pregnant is the last thing any of them wants to be. My friend Lenny Liebling calls them the Razor Blades.”

“Nah, I don't like it,” Rodney said.

“Shut up, Rodney,” his wife said. “
I like it!
”

“But what about fashion? Clothes? Style? Class?”

“Fashion and style and class are more than just clothes,” Alex said. “But I do believe that every smart woman who wants to be taken seriously should have some sort of what I call a fashion signature. It doesn't need to be much. This triple strand of pearls I always wear, for instance. That happens to be mine. I don't know how it got to be, but it did.”

“Okay, give Maudie a fashion signature, then. And make it a good one.”

“Rodney, will you please shut
up!
”

“Try something for me, Maude,” Alex said. “Pull your hair back away from your face.” Maude McCulloch pulled her hair back with both hands, and twisted it at the back of her neck. “Yes, I like your hair that way. You have lovely skin, and a lovely wide forehead. What if your fashion signature were a little Chanel-type bow at the back of your head? You could have different bows for different outfits.”