Lovers (15 page)

The Collins brothers, Gigi thought, either hired their secretaries for their efficiency, or their wives hired them for their safety. As far as she could judge, the brothers were all in their early to middle thirties, and each of them, in spite of a strong family resemblance to each other, was a different variety of dark and handsome. And impassive. She had never seen such a lack of expression, neither friendly nor unfriendly, neither bored nor anticipatory, but empty of everything except the steady, almost unblinking attention of their dark eyes under their dark brows.

Their faces remained blank as Victoria went through her paces, explaining how Frost/Rourke/Bernheim, with its clever researchers and state-of-the-art media buying department, was uniquely qualified to determine and position the ads for Indigo Seas, how closely FRB would work with the San Francisco-based swimwear company, how any one of them was ready to get on a plane at a moment’s notice to work out even the smallest detail, how perfect a match FRB was for a company like Indigo Seas.

She was impressive, on target, strong and smooth, Gigi thought. She’d never seen this particular Victoria Frost, and she wanted to applaud when Victoria sat down. George Collins thanked her with the briefest of words.

Archie and Byron spoke second and third, presenting other aspects of the FRB story, including their own years of experience in New York, the youth and strength of the agency, its innovative handling of the accounts it had won
in the last year, and their availability to the Collins brothers in their personal creative capacities. They mentioned Gigi’s work in creating the Scruples Two catalog and David’s three Belding Bowl Awards for artwork. Each of them was as convincing as Victoria had been, their different personalities meshing into such a desirable unit that Gigi found herself amazed that she hadn’t joined the agency the first time they asked. Obviously they had pitched her at a lower level of intensity than they reserved for potential clients.

As she heard Byron winding up, Gigi took a slow sip of water, wishing desperately for an ice cube to suck on. Her lips were glued together and she had no spit in her mouth. If only she and Davy had been seated side by side, he could have held her sweating hand under the table.

Gigi tried to focus only on the clients, looking at the brothers for some signal, something at all that would reveal that they were a tiny bit impressed, not just exceptionally polite speechless, expressionless mimes, but found nothing except dignity, solemnity, unmoving attention, and a level of grooming that far outdid Arch and By. Their suits, their shirts, their ties, their shoes, their haircuts, even their fingernails were all beyond perfection, if there was such a thing—beyond, Gigi thought, even the distinction and elegance cultivated by her own father, Vito Orsini.

Bella figura
. As the words popped into her mind, she knew instantly that the Collins brothers were Italians by heritage. No American businessman without Italian blood would lavish the time, money, and attention that were necessary to look the way they did. To present a
bella figura
to the world, no matter what was going on inside, was an Italian tradition that reached from the nobility to the peasants. She’d seen her father maintain his
bella figura
when he was the laughingstock of all Hollywood, when he owed money everywhere and was barely scraping by on credit … Archie gave her an elbow in the ribs, and she realized that Byron had just said, “Now Gigi Orsini and David Melville,
our creative team, will show you the ads we’ve prepared.”

Gigi got up, feeling as light as an arrow speeding from a bow. David was going to lift the heavy pieces of cardboard and she was going to talk the clients through them, since he was art and she was copy. But first, she thought, tingling, a little native pride. These brothers were three young Vito Orsinis and they didn’t scare her one little bit. Not one
piccolo
bit.

“My name,” she said, slowly and proudly, looking George Collins straight in the eye, “is Graziella Giovanna Orsini.” George Collins blinked. John Collins blinked. Henry Collins blinked. Even the secretaries, Gigi saw, exchanged a quick glance. David gave her a look of astonishment, but what would a Congregationalist know about the importance of being Italian?

In the next fifteen minutes she showed them a dozen ads, designed to incorporate all the copy points that Victoria had demanded, written in Gigi’s own intimate, one-on-one prose, and accompanied by David’s sketches of a woman who, although not actually bone-thin, could not have been more than ten pounds above a model’s ideal weight, a gently rounded woman, attractive, highly idealized, and acceptable to Victoria Frost.

They were good ads, but not great ads. Gigi knew it and David knew it. They were a great deal better than what Indigo Seas had been running, but they didn’t zoom. As she finished she watched the Collins brothers and saw George’s shoulders lift an all-but-imperceptible shrug. “Eh!” she could hear him thinking, dismissively. Gigi could read Italian body language instantly, and she knew he had judged the ads and found them far from exceptional. Not bad, just not exciting.

Gigi looked at David and gave him the wink they had agreed on. He turned and zipped open another portfolio. One by one, Gigi showed the audience the ads she and David had first created, never turning to look at the table behind her, where the rest of the pitch team was seated.

Each of the ads had been photographed on a beautiful former model who had developed more liberal
abbondanza
than either of them had originally imagined. She was … unquestionably overweight … even very overweight by the standards of every woman, but somehow on her the pounds looked good—firm and shapely and mysteriously right.
Abundant
The last two ads were new. One showed the big, happy, luscious model halfway out of the swimming pool, grabbing the arm of a handsome, fully clad, and obviously fascinated cowboy. The copy line said, “Come on in—the water’s Abbondanza!” In the final ad, the model and the cowboy were immersed in the water up to their shoulders, hugging and laughing into each other’s eyes, and the copy line asked, “Are you happy to see me—or is it just my Abbondanza?”

A hush fell over the meeting room as Gigi finished. George Collins thanked her.

“Will you excuse us while we adjourn?” he added, addressing Gigi.

“Prego,”
Gigi said.
Prego
, one of the few words of Italian her father had taught her, that most useful word you can never misuse under any circumstances, the word that means everything from “please be my guest” to “of course” to “excuse me” to “would you mind if I walked in front of you” to “by all means.”

Behind her she felt, rather than saw, Victoria beaming death rays at her head.

“We’ll wait to talk about this someplace else,” Archie said with a strangled sound. Archie, Byron, and Victoria sat in total silence. Gigi and David made an unnecessarily lengthy and neat production of putting the cardboards back into their portfolios, not daring to glance at each other for fear of falling into a fit of crazy laughter, since they had nothing left to lose.

The connecting door opened, and everyone from Indigo Seas returned to the room and settled in their seats, except for one of the secretaries, who sat down next to George Collins.

With a big smile, George Collins indicated the secretary. “I wish to present my mother, the Signora Eleonora Colonna,” he announced. “We all work for her. Mama?”

“I like your work,” Signora Colonna said with grave approval, standing up and sweeping her eyes over the FRB team. As soon as she spoke, her great personal power was evident. “My two younger sisters like your work,” she said, turning to indicate the two women who were still seated in the back. “My sons like your work. I am the originator and patent holder of the bra cup and the power-net panel, and you are the only agency to understand that no thin woman would wear them. There is no need to wait to tell you that you have the account. Welcome to Indigo Seas.”

“Grazia mille,”
Gigi said, since everyone else seemed to have lost their voices. They were two of the other words she knew in Italian.

“Prego
, Graziella Giovanna,” the older woman said, giving her a very personal smile. “You knew we were Italian? Your famous research department, perhaps?”

“Not until I recognized the
bella figura
of your sons,” Gigi answered.

“Then why did you dress in the colors of the Italian flag, Graziella Giovanna?”

“I’m … superstitious,” Gigi said, improvising wildly. “My father, Vito Orsini, always said they were lucky colors.”

“And your mother? She is Italian also?”

“No, Irish. Also a green and white flag, but with orange.”

“Ah—so that explains your hair.”

“No, Signora Colonna. Peroxide.”

“You’ll come up to San Francisco. There are too many men in the office. I have good boys—Giorgio, Enrico, and Gianni—all wonderful boys, but I should have, had a daughter. My sisters and I will show you our new designs, pick your brains. You have style. No
abbondanza
, but a great deal of style.”

“Grazia
, Signora Colonna. With pleasure, Signora Colonna.”

“Prego
, Graziella Giovanna.” She took Gigi’s hand in hers. “I look forward to your visit. I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll set the date. Perhaps you will spend the night and meet my grandchildren. Also all boys—eh, what can one do?”

Around them the Indigo Seas people were shaking hands with Archie, Byron, Victoria, and Davy, laughing and talking in an explosion of the tension they had all been under, but around Signora Colonna and Gigi there was the circle of respect everyone instinctively accorded to the head of the clan and the person she had clearly singled out of all the group from Frost/Rourke/Bernheim.

O
n Gigi’s first day at FRB, Victoria Frost sat in her office, not even attempting to eat the fruit salad Polly had brought her, still enraged at the thought of Archie, Byron, Gigi, and the expensive lunch they were unquestionably consuming at that very minute. How dare they hire a new copywriter whom she hadn’t stamped with her approval? How dare they take her out to lunch as if advertising were one big party and there was no urgent work to be done?

She’d told Archie, after two creative teams had come close to burning out on the Indigo Seas pitch, that he should take time off from everything, especially his exhausting social life, dig in, and work on the job himself—no one had ever decreed that swimwear copy had to be written by a woman. But he’d wriggled out of a job he didn’t feel qualified to tackle just long enough for Gigi to come along. She wasn’t even a woman, she was nothing but a twit, a full-of-herself brat who thought that because she’d
had a certain little lucky success in the catalog business, she could make the switch to advertising with no knowledge or background. Her partners had clearly lost their judgment.

The girl had the brand of cuteness that she personally most disapproved of and men, those predictable fools, found enticing. Couldn’t they see that it was all manufactured by obviously dyed red hair, deliberately overdone mascara, a sexy little body, and animal high spirits? The only thing she didn’t dislike about Gigi Orsini was her suit. You could always recognize Prince’s cut and the quality of his fabric, but they were wasted on this flamboyant creature who’d undoubtedly feel more at home in rhinestones. It was almost incredible that she’d been more or less brought up by Billy Ikehorn, who, if she had nothing else, had taste. When she’d still lived in New York, Victoria remembered, and the branch of Scruples had been open, she’d been able to find exactly her sort of clothes there, as had her mother, whose type was so different from her own, yet just as discriminating.

Yes, she and her mother, Millicent Frost Caldwell, were entirely unalike, but no one could say that either one of them was easy to please.

Although the very last thing in the world she wanted was a child, Millicent Frost, at twenty-one, was already far too much of a bred-in-the-bone copywriter to give her daughter anything but a name that possessed the desirable note of regal and historic resonance that her own mother had neglected in naming her after a favorite aunt. She called her baby Victoria with the indifferent agreement of her husband, Dan Frost, to whom an infant was as much of an inconvenience as it was to her.

The Frosts had married far too quickly, as people did in the conservative climate of 1951, and Victoria was born aggravatingly soon, a mere year later, forcing her irritated mother to take ten days off from her job at a good-sized agency, Jack Abbott & Partners, where she was already
regarded as the most interesting and original young mind in the shop. She was clearly a golden girl and she wore with effortless ease a charisma that was composed of pure kinetic energy and innate charm, carefully covering what Millicent was clever enough to know was an unseemly amount of ambition. She was a tiny, vivacious blonde, pretty in a delicate way, and possessed the priceless gift of striking both men and women as nonthreatening. Millicent Frost remained charismatic up till the moment of childbirth, charismatic even in her annoyance at spending time interviewing potential nurses, and doubly charismatic as she returned triumphantly to work, leaving Victoria in the care of a strong-minded, dependable young woman from Zurich, named Lori Shaefer.