Authors: Rona Jaffe
“Never mind, Elaine,” Lizzie said. “He’ll be back today and you can punch him in the mouth.”
“I’m not going to punch him,” Elaine said. “I’m going to buy Franco’s whole collection. That’ll be a body blow.”
The phone rang. Gerry answered it. It was Atlantic City for Libra.
“Yeah, baby,” Libra said into the phone. “How’s everything? You’re going to the Toy Convention? Yeah. Yeah. Well, she’s here now; do you want to speak to her?” He waved at Elaine. “It’s your husband.”
Elaine undulated out of the chair like a lion cub and stalked across the room to take the telephone receiver Libra was holding out to her. “When are you coming home?” she said to Mad Daddy.
There was a long silence. He was evidently explaining. Elaine bit her lip. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me today’s show was taped?” she screamed. “You don’t tell me anything. I could have gone down there with you; I didn’t have to stay here and be bored to death. Why don’t you ever tell me anything? Don’t you care about me at all?”
Lizzie looked embarrassed and took her coffee into the bedroom.
“Well, I don’t care when you come home,” Elaine said. “Just have a good time, you bastard. You can come home next Tishah b’ab for all I care.” She hung up and snatched the Bloody Mary Gerry had made her off the bar. She took several big gulps and turned on Libra. “You knew it all the time, didn’t you? You don’t tell me anything either. Why are you men always in cahoots?”
“Maybe because you women are always in cahoots,” Libra said calmly.
“Oh, I’d like to throw this drink right in your face!”
“Do it and you won’t get another one.”
Elaine stamped into the bedroom and slammed the door.
“I’m afraid her days with him are numbered,” Libra said to Gerry. “She’s too old.”
“Too old?”
“She’s going on twenty-six. That’s too old for him. He married her when she was sixteen, right after she won the Miss Bensonhurst crown. She’d told them she was eighteen. She was disqualified, but she married the judge. His other two wives were teen-agers too, and he divorced them when they reached senility, or twenty-one, which is the same thing as far as he’s concerned. Elaine’s lasted the longest. But the handwriting’s on the wall.”
“How old is
he?
” Gerry asked.
“He’ll be forty next week,” Libra said. “And it’s killing him.”
“Wow!”
“Don’t act so surprised. You’ve been around.”
“I know, but I still feel awfully sorry for both of them.”
“She knew what she was getting into,” Libra said, giving her a shrewd look. “Don’t all you girls know? Huh?”
“I guess so,” Gerry said. There was no point in telling him a sixteen-year-old girl was not exactly rational; she didn’t want another fight with him this early in the day. She thought of Mad Daddy’s fans in the hotel corridor the day before, who loved him because they thought he was so safely unapproachable. Wouldn’t they be surprised to know one of them could even be the next Mrs. Mad Daddy if she played her cards right.
“She’ll get a lot of money when he dumps her,” Libra said. “Daddy is going to become a very rich man this year when he starts that midnight show. One thing he’s always been is generous with alimony. He pays until he’s broke, out of guilt, and as soon as the lady in question remarries and the alimony stops, he always dumps the next wife so he has to pay through the nose again. It’s either bad timing or his Jewish sense of guilt. Elaine will take all she can get, too. She’s no fool.”
“Do they have any children?”
“They have a beautiful little girl, four years old. She looks just like Elaine. And he has two kids with wife number one, and a kid with number two. He thinks if you get married you have to procreate instantly. Luckily for him both his other wives married very rich guys. They were still young and beautiful when he dumped them. Elaine will get along.”
“She drinks a lot,” Gerry said.
“Oh, as soon as they get divorced she’ll go off the sauce so fast it’ll look like it’s out of style. She’s too smart to let herself become a drunk and lose her looks. The former Miss Bensonhurst knows very well how to take care of herself.”
Well
, Gerry thought,
it’s none of my business
. Still, she was feeling depressed. She was relieved when the doorbell rang and she had to let Franco in.
Franco was a slender, pale-looking young man about twenty-five who looked older at first glance because he was completely bald. He had evidently decided that thinning hair was worse than a Yul Brynner haircut, so he had carefully shaved off any vestige of hair that nature had left him. He was wearing an expensive-looking Irish hand-knit turtleneck sweater, rust-colored suede pants, and a fleece-lined suede car coat.
Libra could go into the leather business
, she thought.
“It’s cold out today,” Franco said.
“If you’d wear some hair you wouldn’t be so cold,” Libra told him. “This is my new assistant, Gerry Thompson. This is Franco.”
They shook hands. Franco gave Gerry his coat and she hung it up in the closet. “One thing I like about your dump, Libra,” Franco said, “is that you always keep it so warm. You must know when I’m coming.”
“I only have to ask your models,” Libra said. He turned to Gerry. “Franco looks like a fruit, but he’s really a super-stud.”
“Oh, I like boys, too,” Franco said. He smiled at Gerry. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“No,” she murmured politely, giving him a sweet smile because she was going to have to work with this creep, and took out a cigarette.
“Leave her alone,” Libra said calmly. “She’s a bright girl. I’m going to leave her in charge of the office when I’m out of town.”
“Then we certainly must get better acquainted,” Franco said to Gerry. He leaned over with a gold lighter and lit her cigarette, smiling at her again.
Lizzie and Elaine came out of the bedroom. “Congratulations, Franco!” they chorused happily, and Lizzie kissed him on the cheek.
“
Time
Magazine!” Franco said triumphantly. “I bought up all the copies on my local newsstand, and then I put half of them back because I didn’t want my neighborhood to be deprived of the good news. It’s really a dilemma, you know, wanting all the copies for yourself and wanting the world to read them too. I guess I should have bought one copy at each newsstand on the East Side. I think I’m going to make a coffee table top out of the write-up; paste them all together and lacquer them.”
“Wait a while,” Libra said. “I’ll get you the cover of
Time
one day.”
“That’s what we have to talk about,” Franco said. He glanced at the ladies, evidently wanting them out.
“Lizzie and Elaine, scat,” Libra said. “The Pope’s audience is over. Gerry stays.”
Lizzie and Elaine gave him dirty looks. Elaine picked up the pitcher of Bloody Marys and the two women went back into the bedroom.
“That’s what I like,” Franco said to Libra. “Instant obedience. My models never listen to me until I yell at them.”
“That’s because you bang them,” Libra said. He sat down and Franco and Gerry sat down too. “Now, Franco, what I want to discuss with you is this: a naked model is a brilliant idea, but you can’t top it and you can’t sell it on the street. Your next collection … your whole next collection … has to be completely unusual, new, breath-taking. You’ve done one mind-bender with your bride’s dress, but your new collection has to change the face of fashion all over the country. I don’t want your collection to be like any of your others and I don’t want it to be like anybody else’s. Have you got any ideas?”
“What about the look I gave Silky and the Satins?”
“Out,” said Libra. “That’s new for a singing group because singing groups copy other singing groups and they never have a new idea. You put them in something that’s good for the girl on the street and everybody says ‘Wow!’ They think that’s unusual. No, I want your new collection to stop people in their tracks; I want them to say, “There goes a Franco.’”
“Yeah,” Franco said dispiritedly. He chewed a nail.
Libra looked up at the framed oil painting of Sylvia Polydor, as if for guidance. It was as if he was looking at a painting of the Madonna to see if a divine ray of inspiration would be given to him. Then his face lighted up and he sprang to his feet and began pacing the room. “Shoulder pads!” he cried. “Peplums! Snoods! Platform shoes with ankle straps and nailheads around the platform! Wedgies with hollow lucite heels with goldfish swimming in them!”
“Yeah!” Franco cried, springing to his feet, too. “The Gilda Look! I saw that movie again on television last night. God, Rita Hayworth was the sexiest woman in the world!”
“Nobody was as sexy as Sylvia Polydor,” Libra said.
“Do you think she would wear my clothes?”
“Everybody will be wearing your clothes,” said Libra. “I’ll get Nelson to do the snoods. He can braid them out of that damn Dynel he’s so in love with. And you can give them … stockings with seams! Oh, my God, Lizzie’s going to look terrible—two feet tall with shoulder pads and a peplum. Well, I guess there are some sacrifices even I must make for your career.”
“I’ll go home and start on the sketches right now,” Franco said. He grabbed Libra’s hands in his. “Ole, ole, Matador, we’re in business!”
“Don’t Matador me, you bald freak,” Libra said, not entirely unmoved by Franco’s show of affectionate gratitude. “You’re as Spanish as I am. And don’t forget the beads on the peplums for evening.”
“Oh, it’s beautiful, beautiful,” Franco said happily. “Gerry, I can’t wait to see you in the Gilda Look.”
“I already have long red hair,” Gerry said, thinking she’d rather die than wear any of the things he was proposing.
“I have a brilliant idea,” Franco said. “Will you be here later this afternoon?”
“Probably,” Libra said.
“Well, you be here,” Franco said, and grabbed his car coat out of the closet and was gone.
Libra looked triumphant. He gave Gerry his Cheshire Cat grin. “That’s how a genius does business,” he said. “And don’t you forget it. I don’t want you to tell anyone, promise me. Fashion secrets are more carefully kept than government secrets. Tell no one a word of this.”
“I won’t,” she promised. She wouldn’t have told anyone anyway, because one thing she didn’t want them to think was that she worked for a crazy man.
Libra went off to a luncheon appointment, Lizzie and Elaine had lobster and champagne sent up at Libra’s expense to soothe their egos, and Gerry went out to Chock Full O’Nuts. She was saving her money for the new furniture she was planning to buy for her new, lovely apartment.
At four o’clock when Lizzie was at her shrink, Elaine had gone home, and Libra was giving Gerry dictation, Franco appeared again. At first Gerry didn’t even know who it was. Franco was wearing a flowing auburn paste-on wig, the hair rippling down to his shoulders, with a Gilda wave flopping over one eye.
“Good God!” Libra said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“What do you think of that?” Franco said proudly. “I have a new image too.”
“You’ll have to learn not to sweat,” Libra said drily. “Your net’s popping.”
Franco ran his finger around the net. “Oh, my, so it is.” He produced a bottle of spirit gum from his coat pocket and reglued the net where it had sprung away from his temple. “Long hair is in for men,” Franco said, “and I’m sick and tired of your cracks about my bald head.”
“I’d grown rather fond of your bald head,” Libra said.
“Well, you’ll just have to miss it,” Franco said smugly. “No, seriously, this isn’t for me—it’s the wig I’m going to put on every single one of my models.”
The telephone rang. It was Dick Devere.
“Hello, Gerry. What’s new in that lunatic asylum?”
“Oh, nothing much,” she said. “We have a man here in a brand-new long red wig with a Gilda wave, and a bottle of glue in his hand.”
“It sounds like Nelson,” Dick said.
“It’s Franco.”
Franco was still at the mirror, tossing his head to watch the hair ripple in the afternoon sunlight.
“Would you like to speak to Mr. Libra?”
“As a matter of fact,” Dick said, “I called to talk to you, Gerry.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t sound so nervous,” he said. “It’s nothing bad.”
“It’s just that it’s a little hectic here,” she said.
“That’s why I think we should have lunch. Are you free tomorrow?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Gerry lied.
“Well, I have a rehearsal in the afternoon, so we can’t have a drink—how about lunch the day after tomorrow?”
“I don’t know … I might not be able to get out. I just started here and there are a lot of things I have to do.”
“One of the things you have to do,” said Dick Devere, “is get to know the clients. How about the day after tomorrow?”
He was right, of course. She couldn’t fool him by lying; he was obviously too smart for that. All Libra’s clients were important to him and therefore they had to be important to her. What was she going to do? She wished Dick would say something about Silky and bring it out into the open—either say he and Silky were just friends or say that Silky was his girl and he wanted to see
her
for purely professional reasons, to be nice or polite or something.
“I’m sure you have a lot more important things to do than spend a couple of hours with the secretary,” she said, not at all coyly, trying at the same time not to sound bitchy.
He laughed. “Secretary? Did you just get demoted?”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean. Unless you mean that you think I’ve been rude and you don’t like me.”
“Oh, no, it’s not that,” Gerry said quickly. Franco was still in love with his mirror image, but Libra was looking at her and she realized she’d better terminate this discussion in a hurry or Libra would. “Whatever you say would be fine.”
“I’ll pick you up at the office on Thursday then, at one o’clock. Write it down.”
“All right. See you then.”
She hung up and gave Libra a weak smile.
“Who was that who preferred you to me?” Libra asked.
“Dick Devere,” she said.
“Good. I want everybody to like you.”
Oh God
, Gerry thought,
in that case I’d better call Silky and take her to lunch. If she’ll go
…