Hanging by a Thread (2 page)

Nicole Katz, Ltd.

Valerie, our receptionist since Christmas, is too deeply engrossed in what I assume is a personal phone call (frown line snuggled neatly between her dark brows, liberal use of “Ohmigod!”) to acknowledge my return as I pass the desk. Whatever. She's twenty-one. Engaged. Working at Nicole Katz is not exactly her life's goal. A year from now, she will be remembered only as what's-her-name, that brunette receptionist we had a while back, name started with a
V,
maybe? And she will undoubtedly remember me as the short, chunky chick who wore all those strange hats and weird clothes.

Our relationship is based on mutual dismissability.

I yank open one side of the double glass door and walk into the showroom. Which, I observe on a sigh, has been visited in my absence by a small but potent explosive device. Rumpled, discarded samples and fabric swatches obliterate every pseudo-Chinese surface; Joy and leftover cigarette smoke duke it out for air rights. Nikky's personal handiwork, would be my guess. The devastation is even more grotesque in the harsh winter daylight blaring through the wall-to-wall windows overlooking the Hudson.

The woman is a total nutcase, but she's a successful nutcase.

“Where is it, where is it?” I hear the instant the door shooshes closed, cutting off Valerie's next “Ohmig—” Before I can answer, Jock, the draper, lunges at me, snatching the box from my hands with only a glancing leer at my wool-swathed chest. “You got a size 8, right?”

Having done this at least a dozen times in the past year, I do know the drill. “Yes, Jock,” I say, yanking off my hat and shrugging out of my father's camel topcoat, then one of his Pierre Cardin suit jackets (both altered to fit me), wedging the lot into the mirrored closet next to the showroom doors. I tug
down the hem of one of my mother's Villager sweaters, circa 1968. The dusty rose one with the ivory and blue design across the yoke. Starr has already informed me she wants it when she gets big. We'll see.

My desperately-needs-a-trim layered hair crackles like a miniature electrical storm around my head. My Telly Monster imitation. This does not stop Jock from grabbing me, plastering his (not exactly impressive) crotch against my hip and planting a big, sloppy kiss on my cheek. Then he's off to do what a draper's gotta do. I hope, for his sake, he got more out of our little encounter than I did.

Oh, Giaccomo Andretti's basically harmless, his lothario complex notwithstanding. He's just a bit doughy and married for my taste. And his view of his skills as a draper is a tad skewed. Jock sees himself as a world-class pattern maker. That he hasn't draped an original pattern since Dinkins was mayor is beside the point.

Not that the Versace will be recognizable once its progeny have Nikky's label in them. She's not stupid. The lapel will be wider or narrower or ditched altogether; the skirt will be longer or shorter or slit up the back if this one's slit up the sides; the fabric will be a print if this one's a solid or solid if this one's a stripe, silk instead of linen, a fine wool instead of gabardine.

In other words, this so-called “designer” doesn't have an original idea rattling around underneath her Bucks County Matron silver pageboy. Her “classic” fit is derived from, quite simply, other designers' slopers.

Yep. By three o'clock this afternoon, Jock will have carefully dissected the Versace and traced the pattern from it. By noon tomorrow, Olympia, Jock's best seamstress, will have so carefully reconstructed it no one will ever know it was apart. And by the next morning, I will have returned said suit to the salesgirl, with the sorrowful explanation my sister didn't like it, after all.

And for this I spent four years at FIT.

Divested of my contraband goods, I hie myself to what passes for my office this week—a banquet table crammed into a corner of the bookkeeper's office. Apparently my boss can't quite figure out what I do or where to put me. She only knows she can't do without me. Or so she says. Which is fine by me. Making myself indispensable is what I do best.

And yes, I've asked for an office. Repeatedly. Nikky keeps saying, “You're absolutely right, darling, I've simply got to do something about that….” and then she promptly forgets about it.

Before you ask, “And you're here why?” two words:

Benefits package.

A stack of new orders awaits me. In Nikky's completely indecipherable handwriting. Of course, even if the woman weren't writing in some ancient Indo-European dialect, since she routinely leaves out things like, oh, sizes and colors…

At least, these seem to be mostly reorders. So in theory, if I look up the stores' original orders, I should be able to figure it out.

In theory.

Long red nails a blur at her calculator, Angelique, the bookkeeper du jour, doesn't even glance over. “Thought you'd like that,” she says in her Jamaican accent. Nikki is nothing if not an equal-opportunity employer. In the past three months, we've had one Italian, one Chinese, and two Jewish bookkeepers of various genders and sexual orientations. And now Angelique, who I give two more weeks, tops. Especially as her crankiness indicators have been rising quite nicely over the past few days. It takes a special person to work here. Sane people need not apply.

“Nikky said to tell you Harry needs these ASAP so he can figure out the cutting schedules and get them to the subs.”

The subcontractors. Better known as the sweatshops that
permeate the relentlessly drab real estate over on 10th and 11th Avenues, filled with seamstresses who speak a dozen different languages, none of which happen to be English. Skirts that retail for two-four-eight-hundred bucks, cut out by the dozens by powersaws on fifty-foot long cutting tables, stitched together by industrial sewing machines that sound like 747 engines, for which the sub gets a few bucks a skirt. Which is not what the seamstresses get, believe me. But hey—Nikky can say her products are American-made.

Of course, I can't sit at my ersatz desk because my chair is piled with samples dumped there by God-knows-who. So I gather them up—from the current fall line, we're all sick to death of them—and haul them back to the showroom, thinking maybe I should straighten out the showroom before Sally, Nikki's saleswoman, sees it.

“
Je
-sus!”

Too late.

I shoulder my way through the swinging door, my arms full, to be greeted by large, horrified blue eyes. Sally Baines is the epitome of elegant, with her softly waved, ash-blond hair and her restrained makeup. Today our lovely, slim, fiftyish Sally is tastefully attired, as usual, in Nikki's (cough) designs—a creamy silk blouse tucked into a challis skirt in navy and dark green and cranberry paisley, a matching shawl draped artfully over her shoulders and caught with a gold and pearl pin.

“An hour, I was gone.” The words are softly spoken, precisely English-accented. “If that. How can she do this much damage in one bloody
hour?
”

This is a rhetorical question.

“Come on,” I say, hefting the samples in my arms up onto the rack, then turning to the nearest mangled heap. “I'll help.”

I hear the ghosts of anyone who's ever lived with me laughing their heads off. Okay, so I'm not exactly known as the Queen of Tidy.

Just as Sally and I are cleaning up the last of the debris, in this case lipstick-marked coffee cups and full ashtrays, Nikki sweeps in through the doors, swathed in Autumn Haze mink and looking as fresh as three-day-old kuchen. She scans the now-clean room (I'm brought to mind of those insurance commercials where the destruction is undone by running the film backwards), then beams at us as much as the Botox will allow.

“You two are absolute angels,” she says, sweeping over to me to give me a one-armed hug. “
Angels.
I would have straightened up myself later, you know that—”

Sally and I avoid looking at each other.

“—but I got stuck at lunch with my attorney and time just got away from me. Did you get the suit? Is Harold here? Did my daughter call?”

“Yes, I don't think so, and not that I know of,” I said, wondering why she doesn't ask Vanessa or Virginia or whatever the hell her name is, since, um, she's the one paid to answer the phone?

Harold, by the way, is Nikky's husband. You'll undoubtedly meet him later. Lucky you.

Nikky goes on about whatever it is Nikky goes on about for another thirty seconds or so, then sweeps into the back to assuredly wreak more havoc, leaving a zillion startled molecules in her wake. Ten seconds later, the yelling starts.

So Harold
is
here. He has a teensy office, way in the back (where all good bogeymen live) just large enough for him to run his own business from. And what business might that be, you ask? Okay…picture some Lower East Side bargain emporium, racks and racks of sleazy little tops for $5.99. Those are Harold's. He actually hires a—picture quotation marks drawn in the air—
designer
to crank out these things, which are then produced someplace where monsoons and leeches are taken seriously. We all try to ignore him, but unfortunately he periodically emerges from his lair, snarling and snapping, to
fight with his wife and piss me—and everybody else—off. An occupation in which he is apparently presently engaged.

Sally bequeaths me a sympathetic glance as I haul in a breath, close my eyes and reenter the Twilight Zone. However, I think as I return to my cubbyhole and begin logging all those orders onto the computer so I can print out the cutting list so Harry, our production manager, can order fabric and send specs over to the subs, compared to some jobs I could name, this one is downright cushy. There is that medical plan, for one thing. And I tell myself, as I often do, that one must endure a certain amount of indignity on the way to the top, if for no other reason than to be able to enjoy inflicting similar indignities on those underneath you when you get there.

It's all part of some divine plan. Or at least, part of
my
plan. After five agonizing years on salesfloors and in buyer's offices, Seventh Avenue is a major, major step. “Assistant to name designer,” the ad had said.

Yeah, well, she has a name all right. But then, so do we all.

Actually, Nicole isn't her real name. My guess is Rivkah Katz didn't quite project the image she was looking for. Not much call for babushkas in the Hamptons. But for all her hard work (cough), for all her stuff isn't cheap (as opposed to her husband's stuff, which redefines the word), you won't find Nicole Katz Designs in Bendel's or Barney's or Bloomie's. You won't find Gwyneth or Renee or Julia sporting her togs. Anna Wintour isn't wetting her pants to get a sneak peek at her fall line.

You will, however, find her clothes tucked away in Better Sportswear in Macy's or L&T or Dayton's, in boutiques catering to well-off women of a certain age. You might catch the broad-stroked sketches splashed across a full page in the
Times
twice a year, showcasing her pretty silk blouses and fine wool skirts; a cashmere twinset; a suit, suspiciously familiar. Pricey enough to be taken seriously by many, but not pricey enough
to be taken seriously by those who—supposedly—count. No doubt about it, Nikky Katz is solidly second tier. But she'll never be first tier, never have her clothes mentioned in the same breath as Prada or Klein (either one) or Versace.

The thing is, though, she's in a damn good position for someone whose talent is limited to sticking with the tried-and-true. And for knowing which designs to knock off. Hey—the woman's raking it in hand over fist, producing a stable product that continues to sell by dint of its
not
being subject to the whims of the rich, bored twenty-somethings that fuel the upper echelons of the fashion industry. Her customers depend on her to give them what works, and in twenty years, she hadn't disappointed them yet.

All in all, not a bad gig. Especially as she's all but invisible, way up here in her snug little niche, her customers clinging to her like bees to a hive. Neither the big designers nor the young and hungry newbies want her market share. Ergo, in one of the most fatuous, unpredictable, unstable industries in the world, Nikky Katz's business is as solid and safe as Fort Knox.

Which is why she's my idol.

N
ow before you say, “You are one totally sick puppy,” hear me out.

God knows, I don't emulate the woman personally. But you better believe I admire her success. And I count myself blessed for the chance to suck every bit of knowledge about the biz out of her. Because while I may be totally over the moon about fashion, I can't design my way out of a paper bag any more than she can. And I figure, hey, if Nikky Katz can make it, then there's hope for me.

Granted, I've known how to sew since I was five. I can make up anything from a pattern, and I'm a magician at alterations, if I say so myself. I can rework and adapt with the best of 'em. But let me tell you, I've got more filled sketchbooks than you can possibly imagine crammed in my closet at home, without a single creative, original, hot idea among them. In fact, my design teachers at FIT kindly suggested I
switch to merchandising, because I was wasting their time and my money otherwise.

So, yep, forget the designing. Somebody else can design…and I'll do the marketing. Because that, I
am
good at. Yeah, I know, most people would consider drawing the pretty pictures and playing with the fabrics the “fun stuff.” But see, it's the whole philosophy of fashion that fascinates me so much: whatever it is that drives people—women, primarily—to wear what they wear. How we
costume
ourselves, choosing each article of clothing, each accessory, to telegraph to the world who we are. Or who we think we are. Or, in many cases, who we'd like to be. Even the most casually donned attire says something, if nothing other than that the wearer doesn't give a damn.

For me, the rush doesn't come from designing a garment, but from figuring out why it appeals. I mean, that scene back at the store? Honey, watching all those women get worked up got
me
worked up. Like fashion porn. And I got a real early start—not to mention all the cute shoes I wanted—hanging out at my family's shoe store in Queens when I was a kid. I learned early on that the relationship between a woman and what she chooses to put on her body is a sacred thing. And I knew I had to be part of it, even if I was woefully untalented.

So. Working for Nikky Katz is my dream job, for the moment. And until she figures out what to do with me, I get to do a little bit of everything. I can deal with a little yelling, a little craziness, now and then if it helps me reach my goal….

The phone rings on Angelique's desk. She answers it, says, “It's for you.”

One day maybe I'll have my own desk with my own extension.

One day maybe I'll be able to get a phone call without my heart clogging my throat.

But it's nothing scary, only Tina, my best friend since she,
her mother and two older sisters moved across the street from us when I was five. Tina's married to my other best friend, Luke Scardinare. His family—he's one of six brothers—and mine have lived next door to each other my whole life. Luke used to make my life miserable on a regular basis and I'd kill with my bare hands anybody who even thinks about bad-mouthing him. Which is the same way I feel about Tina, even though she didn't make my life miserable on a regular basis.

I realize she's asking if we can meet up at Pinky's, a bar a couple blocks from where I live. “I need to talk,” she says, her voice giving nothing away, which is unusual for Tina because usually her voice gives
everything
away. Twelve years ago she says to me, “Does this lipstick make me look slutty?” and I instantly knew she and Luke had done it for the first time.

“Sure, okay. What's up?”

“I'll tell you when I see you. Seven okay?”

“Eight, eight-fifteen would be better.” Her Queens accent calls to mine, buried deep beneath the Manhattan persona I apply like makeup every morning. “I gotta read to Starr at seven.”

“Couldn't you skip it, just this once?”

Tina and Luke don't have kids, even though they've been married for five years already. They don't talk about it, and I don't pry, but I know Luke's mother, Frances, wonders. Tina's mother is blessedly no longer close enough to inflict direct damage. Although my guess is Tina and her sisters will be mopping up the fallout from their childhood for some time. On the outside, Tina's your typical smartmouthed Outerborough Broad; on the inside, thanks to Dear Old Mom, she's a tangled mass of insecurities.

“No, I can't skip it, I promised her this morning.”

There's a tiny pause, like when a reporter halfway around the world doesn't answer the New York anchor's question right away. “Okay, fine,” she says on a sigh, and hangs up. I'm
tempted to feel guilty, until I realize if it was that important I would have heard it in her voice. Or she would have been sobbing and incoherent, like she was that time Luke and she broke up their senior year. Of course, they were back together before the weekend was out, although not before Tina had gone through three boxes of tissues and two pans of brownies. Not a fun weekend. Well, except for the brownies, which she shared.

Before I have a chance to cancel my guilt trip, I get another call. Angelique hands it over. Judging from her expression, I'm guessing she's finding this an interesting way to break the afternoon's tedium.

It's Luke this time. “You gonna be home tonight? I need to talk.”

Gee—you don't suppose these two calls are related, do you? And why, out of the approximately eight million relatives these two have between them, do they pick me to help them sort through whatever it is this time?

Because they always have, that's why. Because they know they can trust me.

I'm quiet for too long, I guess, because Luke says, “Shit— Tina already called you, huh?”

And the cornerstone of my trustworthiness? An ironclad policy of not lying. Unless I absolutely have to. “Uh…yeah. She did.”

That gets another “Shit” and a very heavy sigh. Then: “She say anything?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I'm sure,” I say, thinking even admitting her wanting to talk is probably a confidence violation. However, telling him we're meeting up at Pinky's definitely is. I can't help it, I've always been protective of Tina. Probably more than is good for her, I know, but I can't help it. Although my wanting
to shield her from life's doo-doo is nothing compared to how Luke treats her. The term “spun glass” comes to mind.

“Hey,” I say. “What's going on?”

“Gotta go, I'll talk to you later.”

And
he
hangs up.

Luke and Tina. My very own reality show. With extra cheese.

“He sounds sexy,” Angelique says after I hand back the phone.

Sexy? Luke? Yeah, I suppose. In that heavy-lidded Italian thug kind of way. Not that Luke's a thug, but put him in tight jeans and a T-shirt, dangle a cigarette from his lips, put lifts in his shoes, and you got it.

“Married friend.”

“How married?”

“Very. Five years. To the woman who called earlier, in fact. They're nuts about each other, have been since ninth grade.”

“Huh.” Some keys click. “Bet that voice sounds even better in the dark.”

She may have a point. However, as I've been listening to Luke since we were communicating in monosyllables and grabbing our Gerber teething biscuits out of each other's hands, I can't say as his voice has made much of an impression on me. Okay, maybe once or twice, in a weak, deluded moment, but not for a long time.

A very long time.

“He's a plumber,” I say, don't ask me why. “Well, plumbing contractor. Works for his father.”

“Hey. Plumbers make good money. And they'll never be out of work.”

This is true. “But he's married,” I repeat, realizing this is the first real conversation Angelique and I have ever had. And possibly the last, if I win the how-long's-she-gonna-last pool. “To my best friend.”

After more paper shuffling and clicking, Angelique says, “So. You have a boyfriend?”

I don't have the time or energy to deal with a puppy, what on earth would I do with a boyfriend? This, however, doesn't stop images from springing to mind. Involving things one might do with boyfriends and various appendages attached thereto. I quickly, if regretfully, push the images away.

“Not at the moment. My old one broke and I never got around to replacing him.” I then add, tempted to look around furtively and lower my voice, “I have a daughter, though.”

Her dark eyes light up. “Me, too! How old is yours?”

“Five going on forty. Her birthday was a couple of days ago.”

“You got a picture?”

Do I have a picture, is the woman nuts? Like CIA operatives in a clandestine meeting, we drag out our wallets and compare children. I compliment Angelique on hers, already a knockout at seven. But let's be honest here, Starr is going through what I hope to hell is an awkward phase. God knows, nobody's going to mistake me for Catherine Zeta-Jones—even at her most pregnant—but my baby's skinny, she's nearsighted (like her mama), she's got all this frizzy black hair (like her Great-Gran Judith)…poor thing looks like a myopic johnny mop.

“She looks very…sweet,” Angelique says at last.

Sweet is not the word I'd choose to describe Starr, but my heart cramps anyway because I'm crazy in love with her. Even if she totally freaks me out at times. “Thanks,” I say softly.

It's kinda nice, being able to talk about my kid at work. Not something I ever thought about when I was
really
single. I mean, please—is “single mother” an oxymoron or what? “Single” implies “alone,” and God knows, the one thing you're not once you've got a kid is alone. Anyway, it's not as if nobody knows about Starr, it's just that women who aren't mothers aren't real interested in hearing about your kids. Not that I blame them. If you're not living it, it's kinda hard to understand the excitement generated by that
first dump in the toilet. Still. It gets old, pretending your children basically don't exist while you're at work. As if they're houseplants or something. Because, you know, we couldn't
possibly
be a hundred percent focused on our work if we're also worrying about our kids. Never mind that some of us can actually do two things at once. And do them well, to boot.

Nikky suddenly bursts into the office, a frantic expression overriding the Botox. “Ellie! Darling! Come quick! You have to help me!”

Exclamation points whiz past my ears. “Sure, I'll be there in a sec, right after I get this cutting list done—”

“No! This can't wait! The Volare rep just called and said the company's discontinued the floral print! Which means I have to pick a substitute! And I've got stores expecting those sundresses in six weeks!”

Even I can see there's no turning off the panic button until the crisis has been resolved. Now, you might ask (understandably enough) why the woman can't just pick a substitute fabric and be done with it. Well, there are several reasons, number one being—as you may have noticed—Nikky's brain shuts down in a crisis. Two, since several hundred thousand dollars' worth of orders are riding on this particular item, the substitute fabric has to be chosen very carefully. And three—and this is something almost no one else knows—Nikky is color-blind.

Yes, it's very rare in women. And she only has trouble distinguishing greens, which is why you'll never see any green items in her line. But she wanted a bold rose print for this particular model, and roses have leaves, and leaves are green (at least, they were in this print), so she had to rely on someone else to “see” the green for her and make sure it wasn't some ugly baby poop color or something. But I'd really like to get home on time tonight, which means I could do without the
handholding routine. However, if I don't help her, Harold will get involved, and God knows—

“Problem, Nik?”

—nobody wants that.

Nikky schools her features before turning to her husband. “Nothing, just a little detail I need to work out with Ellie.”

Droopy-lidded eyes give me the once-over; it's like being scrutinized by a jowly Kermit. Sparse strands of no-color hair cling to his liver-spotted scalp like drowning men to a life raft; underneath a white dress shirt and pleated suit pants quivers a large, amorphous body. I practically have to pin my finger to my lip to keep it from curling.

“It's that goddamn Volare, isn't it? I heard on the extension—”

A real jewel, this guy.

“—they pull a fast one on you, what?”

“They didn't pull a ‘fast one,' Harold,” Nikky says wearily, “they just discontinued the fabric for one of the items, it's no big deal—”

“Goddammit, Nikky, what the hell's the matter with you? I
told
you to dump those shysters, didn't I? Right? Didn't I tell you that, after the last time they pulled this shit? How many times you gonna let those sons of bitches do this to you before you find the balls to take your business elsewhere?”

“Oh, get over it, Harold!” Nikky crosses her arms and meets his gaze dead-on. When push comes to shove, she can stand up to him, I'll give her that. But at what price? “I'm not going to destroy a twenty-year relationship simply because they canceled a fabric on me!”

“Why do you let these sons of bitches screw you to the wall over and over, Nikky? Why? I mean, Jesus—when're you gonna stop acting like a woman and start acting like a businessperson?”

Silently, she stares him down for several seconds, then turns to me. “Come on, Ellie—”

“You stay right there,” Harold orders, jabbing a finger first at me, then his wife. “You're gonna get on that phone, and you're gonna tell those sons of bitches they will honor that order or that's the last one you'll ever place with them! Or better yet, maybe I'll let Myron give 'em a goose, let 'em know they can't get away with this shit—”