Indiscretions - Elizabeth Adler [112]
“I’ve asked the Johnsons,” she snapped. “They’re at the Ritz and I bumped into her today at the Givenchy boutique. I don’t want Paris tagging along, she’ll be too morbid and want to talk about her mother.”
“Bullshit,” said Stan, picking up the phone and asking for the number in surprisingly good French.
He lit a cigar and waited while Jessie glared at him. Those damned cigars always smelled up the whole place.
Paris looked beautiful. She was as thin as a rail, passionately pale, with short-cropped hair and wide-angle cheekbones. Thinness became her, but not starvation. She’d faced that fact after the disaster of her show when her ambitions lay in ruins and her bank balance was zero. Not just her bank balance; she’d lost her sisters’ money too. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she felt responsible and had determined to repay them, she might have killed herself that night—especially when Olympe didn’t call.
Olympe had been the one bright spark on the scene, the one possible link between failure and success. Olympe knew everyone; people in the fashion world would listen to her, they respected her opinion. When Didi had told her that she had been there, that she’d caught the end of the show and said it was fabulous, Paris had hoped that maybe Olympe would help. Especially after that night. She shuddered as she remembered … it was better not to remember. There are things in everyone’s life that they’re ashamed of, she told herself in those low moments when she reran events in her mind—usually in bed, alone, in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep.
She climbed the steps to her atelier wearily. It had been a long day at Mitsoko’s, where she was working as a model. It had been the only thing left to do, all she was fit for now that she was a proven failure as a designer. The irony was that she had got the job with Mitsoko, when it was because of him that her show had failed—or would it have failed anyway? She slid the key into the lock, still thinking about Mitsoko. That was why her hair was short—all Mitsoko’s girls had to cut their hair, it was his look for the spring. Closing the door behind her she flung her big satchel onto her drawing board, stacked now with books and magazines instead of designs. Then she picked up the little white cat—it had been a sort of consolation gift from Didi—that ran across to greet her, hurling urgent meows into the air.
“Of course, love,” she murmured into its fur, hugging its warm little presence to her; at least she had someone to come home to.
Her only satisfaction from the whole Mitsoko scene had come when Finola, flaunting her position as a star model, had succumbed to Mitsoko’s command to cut off her hair. Without that flowing blond mane she’d looked like a lanky schoolgirl with features about as distinguished as a Barbie doll’s—all the drama was gone. Mitsoko wanted drama—elegantly chiseled noses, long, long necks, dramatic mouths, flaring cheeks—he wanted bones, and suddenly Finola didn’t have them. He’d never used her since, and it was taking ages to grow back her hair.
Paris gave the cat a kiss on top of its white head and took the packet of chicken from her bag to the “kitchen,” cutting it up small for her hungry friend. “There you go, Alice.” She put the dish on the floor and the cat crouched over it eagerly. She didn’t know why she called the cat Alice, something to do with a cat in Alice in Wonderland perhaps—she remembered Jenny reading it to them and they’d all loved it. She didn’t want to think about Jenny tonight, either, no point in rehashing that again. At least, thought Paris, kicking off her shoes and pouring herself a glass of white wine from the fridge, I’ve learned to face up to the future realistically, instead of crying over the past.
The phone rang. That would be either Didi, checking in as he did every night, just to chat and see that she was okay, or Alain Marcus, a young and talented photographer with whom she had half promised to go to a gallery opening and possibly dinner afterward.