‘Please, Leila.’ She nodded and pulled. The covers came off in one swoop. Twelve new handbags designed by me, sewn and assembled in a workshop in the Bronx, now gleamed under a string of spotlights.
I heard a collective intake of breath, then a silence that lasted a century. Giles and Geoffrey and Thorne were the first to break the silence with applause. The women followed suit, adding praise. ‘Gorgeous.’ ‘Fabulous.’ ‘You did it again.’ Geoffrey whistled. ‘Way out’ came from Giles. Thorne’s gaze stayed fixed on me and said nothing.
Olivia came rushing over, leaned into me and whispered, ‘The one with the purple silk and red suede. That one’s mine. It’ll pick up the accents of a dress I bought this very morning. It’s perfect. I’ll pay you the usual two thousand dollars not to make another one like it.’
I laughed.
‘All right, I’ll go as high as two five.’ This was a game we played every year. She would pick a bag, make her offer. I would laugh. She’d add another $500. The actual selling price to private clients was $1600.
‘It’s a deal,’ I said. Olivia Farrington was obsessed by handbags. She always wanted one of mine only for herself. Always the most colourful one. I knew her tastes and had made this one especially for her. I didn’t mind not selling it to anyone else. She only cared about the colour combination, not the design. I could duplicate the bag in every colour except purple and red. The other women were busy picking up the bags, opening them, exchanging opinions, still stealing glances at Archer Thorne. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Leila follow them to make sure nothing got spilled on the bags.
The WWD reporter walked up to me, a handsome woman in her sixties with short silver hair brushed back behind her ears, casually dressed in black jeans, a black jersey top and flat black ballerinas. ‘Hi, I’m Aileen Gerber.’
‘I know.’ I shook her hand. ‘Thanks for coming.’
‘I like the funky ones. They have pizzazz. They’ll be a hit with a younger crowd than you’ve got here.’
‘That’s what I’m hoping for.’ So far I’d been successful selling to the forty-and-up crowd.
‘I’d like to come over with a photographer tomorrow,’ Aileen said. ‘Shoot the bags, do a brief interview.’ Suddenly Thorne was standing next to me, his arm pressed against my shoulder as if we were an item. I leaned away.
Aileen took a quick look at him, then came back to me, clearly not impressed with him. ‘I’ll try to get an article in the next few weeks.’
‘That would be wonderful,’ Thorne said before I could. I wanted to give him a good kick in the shins. Who the hell did he think he was?
‘It’s only a maybe. There’s not much room for anything but the fashion collections right now. I can’t promise anything.’
I grabbed Thorne’s arm and pinched hard to stop him from opening his mouth again. ‘I understand. I appreciate you taking the time.’
‘How about seven o’clock tomorrow morning?’ Aileen asked. ‘I know it’s goddamn early, but I got a lot of shows to sit through the rest of the day.’
If she’d wanted four o’clock in the morning I would have said yes. ‘Seven o’clock it is.’
‘Good. I’ll have Starbucks’ Frappuccino with my interview and some of the edibles you’ll have left over from tonight. These women feed only on egg whites. The photographer will take care of himself.’ Aileen hitched her purse strap back on her shoulder and gave Thorne a long hard stare. ‘Looks aren’t everything, you know,’ she told him. ‘And that goes for money too.’ With that she left. I could have hugged her.
Thorne was laughing. ‘You’ll have your article. Front page too. That’s a Thorne guarantee.’
‘Mr Thorne – ’
‘Archer.’
‘Mr Thorne, I don’t need your guarantee. I don’t need you. I was wrong earlier. You are intruding.’ I walked back to the table where my bags were on display and started explaining to whoever wanted to know how I had come up with each design.
By nine-thirty the place had emptied. Guests, waiters, caterer all gone. Leila and I had the place to ourselves. Well, almost. Thorne was somehow still present like that annoying buzz in my ear I sometimes got. Except this buzz was between my legs. Maybe I was hallucinating. I was that tired. I went over to the computer and shut off Jessie Ware singing ‘Imagine It Was Us’. I kicked off my too high heels, unzipped my dress in order to breathe again and dropped myself down on the couch at one end of the room. Leila started putting the cloth covers back on the handbags.
‘Don’t bother,’ I told her. ‘The WWD photographer is coming at seven. Come over here. It’s recap time.’ I watched Leila as she carefully folded the covers next to each handbag, and realigned each bag with her long thin fingers. She was thoughtful, loyal, beautiful, intelligent and bisexual, with a marked preference for women. If I wasn’t a committed heterosexual, I would have fallen in love with her. Thirty two years old, a New Jersey native, she had strong Middle Eastern looks that came from her Tunisian parents. Her thick black hair was cut in a stylish short shag. Tonight she was wearing a beaded turquoise tunic over black leggings and Moroccan-style orange slippers she’d picked up from a street vendor. She’d eavesdropped on the guests’ comments and in a few minutes she would repeat their words verbatim. I always told her she was wasted working for me. The CIA would have snapped her up in an instant and paid her a lot more than I was able to. One day, one day, I hoped, I’d be able to pay her the salary she deserved.
Finding her had been a real coup. We met in Florence six years ago, while I was attending the Santa Croce leather workshop and she was wandering round Europe on a Eurail pass. I was eating a sandwich in the church’s garden when she came in, took some photographs, then tried to pick me up. I told her I was flattered but not inclined that way, and we ended up hanging out together for the week she stayed in Florence. We promised to write, then didn’t.
A year later, just when I’d moved back to New York and was planning to start Desire, Inc., Leila e-mailed me, saying she was in New York taking a few courses at FIT in retail business management. I hired her to be my assistant, my business manager, my support, my friend. She never let me down. I really lucked out with Leila.
Now she was moving the flower vases around.
‘Stop being obsessive-compulsive and come over here. You’re making me anxious.’
‘Like you don’t do that to me every day.’ Leila grabbed two glasses and a lone standing bottle of vodka from the bar table and walked over. She poured the glasses half full and handed
one to me.
Vodka was Leila’s cure for all ills.
I looked up at her. Good news we always celebrated with champagne.
‘That bad?’
Leila said nothing, clinked glasses with me and, still standing, downed her drink in one gulp.
‘The applause, the compliments, all lies?’
‘Come on, Nicole, drink. You’ll survive.’
Vodka gave me heartburn, but so did bad news. I drank.
Leila laughed at the face I was making, then sat down next to me and gave me a hug. ‘We ran out of champagne.’
I pulled back and looked at her grinning face. ‘You bitch.’
‘You said it. Hey, I just wanted to shake you up a little, get you to stop dreaming about that god Olivia Farrington brought over.’
‘Me dreaming about that man?’ Was it so obvious? ‘If anything he’s a nightmare.’
‘You always turn a hot red when your nightmares can’t take their eyes off you?’