Princess Daisy (59 page)

“I hope you realize that we could have meant a great deal to each other, Daisy. We could have had a wonderful relationship.” His voice and expression would have caused ten cobras, a dozen pythons and at least three boa constrictors to lie down and coo.

Daisy listened to him in silence and put on her coat. As she reached the door, she turned back.

“North, if you found yourself stuck on a desert island
with no phone service, you’d have a relationship with a coconut.”

“I don’t know what to be more excited about,” said Kiki, “and I may have a nervous breakdown from indecision.” She dallied with Luke’s beard and asked, “Did you know your eyes are exactly the color of seedless green grapes?”

“You have problems, lady,” Luke agreed. “Tell the doctor about them and I’ll make you all well.” He settled her more comfortably against his shoulder and pulled the covers up over them.

“Well, on one hand Daisy’s going to be rich and famous and be a star in commercials, which is wonderful and thrilling and makes me very happy, and on the other hand my mother is coming to town and she wants to meet your mother and your mother wants to meet my mother, which is terrible and awful and makes me sick to my stomach.”

“But it’s only natural that they want to meet, poor baby—their children are going to get married. They are going to be
mishpocha
for the rest of their lives, so they’re a touch curious about each other. Plus you’ve been hiding me from your mother long enough.”

“What? What are they going to be? It sounds revolting. Oh, God, you never told me about that before!” wailed Kiki indignantly.

“It means, ah, sort of relatives, or maybe relatives by marriage—something like that, I can’t be a hundred percent positive. You know my mother has always discouraged the use of a single Yiddish word—puts me at a hell of a disadvantage sometimes … maybe I should take lessons? But it’s plenty serious, believe me. A
mishpocha
is a
mishpocha
forever!”

“But why do we have to
be
there when they meet? Couldn’t we just make a lunch reservation for the two of them at some very nice restaurant and let them introduce themselves to each other?” Kiki suggested, nervousness making her sound like a ten-year-old.

“I’m not too sure about the protocol of getting engaged, but I know that your suggestion is strictly inadmissible. Don’t even think about it. God—but it
would
be wonderful to miss it. Eleanor Kavanaugh, the queen of the Grosse Pointe Country Club, and Barbara Hammerstein, the queen of the Harmonie Club, neither of which will admit
members of the other’s religious persuasion—except as tokens, if at that—
mishpocha!
”

“Please stop saying that word,” Kiki pleaded. “There must be some nicer way to put it.”

“
Mishpocha
has nothing to do with niceness—it’s a condition of life, visited upon you by your children, and if you’re lucky it isn’t quite as bad as any of Job’s afflictions, but you have nothing to say about it—you take it as it comes and moan a lot in private. Try to think of this as an interesting episode in the joyful ongoing relationship between the Christians and the Jews.”

“I think it’s going to be more like the Six-Day War,” Kiki said ominously. “Luke, do you have to … I mean, are you planning to? …”

“Go on—you can ask me anything,” he encouraged her.

“Wear a … hat? At the wedding?”

“Good heavens, of course not. Why should I? Unless you think I look good in one. It might be rather chic with my beard, at that. Perhaps a homburg, or maybe a derby. After all, I am piss-elegant, or so they tell me.”

“But I thought you
had
to,” Kiki said, bewildered.

“Not when you’re being married by a judge,” Luke laughed. “But, of course, sweetheart, if you’d prefer a rabbi—no? Well then, we could always elope.”

“What, and break my mother’s heart? I’m the only daughter she has, you unspeakable cad. I’ve explained why we have to wait till summer for the wedding—there’s the trousseau to get together, thousands of engagement parties
and
we have to wait for all my cousins to get out of school, or else someone would miss the wedding.”

“God forbid!” sighed Luke with resignation.

“And then I have to have eight bridesmaids and Daisy as my maid of honor and my brothers for ushers—you’ll have to dig up six more from somewhere—and now, of course, we can’t have the bishop, but I never liked him anyway. Mother’s taken the judge part very well, considering that she’s been planning my wedding since I was confirmed.”

“I doubt that she ever dreamed it would be a triumph for ecumenism,” Luke laughed wickedly. “We must all take the broad view,” he said as superciliously as possible, wondering where he could find six presentable ushers. He’d be laughed out of the Art Director’s Club.

“Oh, fuck you, Luke Hammerstein!”

“Willingly. You just put your little hand right here and sort of slide it up and down …”

Two days later, at the stroke of one o’clock, a trembling, neatly dressed Kiki, her lips quivering with fright, guided her majestic and still-beautiful mother through the doors of La Grenouille. She and Luke had picked the most elegant restaurant in New York in the hopes that the atmosphere would soften the two dragon ladies. There would be at least ten minutes worth of conversation on the topic of the flowers on the table, Luke had pointed out, and another twenty in considering the menu. Luke was already seated with his mother, a fine and youthful-looking woman in a definitive hat, a hat that would inform Grosse Pointe exactly who Barbara Fishbach Hammerstein was. Luke and his mother rose at the approach of Kiki and Eleanor Kavanaugh who was standing tall and formidable.

“Mother,” both Luke and Kiki said at the same time. Then they stopped and started over. “Mother, this is Luke’s mother,” Kiki babbled, having forgotten Luke’s last name.

Eleanor Kavanaugh extended her hand, peering closely from the near-sighted eyes on which she refused to wear glasses, and then she slowly withdrew her hand, saying questioningly, “Bobbie? Could it possibly be you, Bobbie-Bobbie Fishbach?”

“Oh my God! Ellie! Ellie Williams—I’d know you anywhere—you haven’t changed a bit!” cried Barbara Hammerstein in wonder and joy.

“Oh Bobbie!” Kiki’s mother threw herself into the arms of Luke’s mother, “Bobbie precious! I’ve always wondered what became of you.”

“You never answered my letters,” replied Barbara Hammerstein, bursting into tears.

“My parents moved so many times—I never got them. I thought you’d forgotten me.”

“Forget my best friend?” Luke’s mother said, still weeping. “Never.”

“When did all this happen?” Luke asked wildly. “How come you didn’t recognize each other’s names?”

“It was in Scarsdale—we went all the way through tenth grade together,” Eleanor Kavanaugh sniffed emotionally. “Then Grandfather went bankrupt and we had to sell the house and move—and, for heaven’s sake, Luke, just never
mind. Oh, Bobbie—isn’t it wonderful? Now we’ll be
mishpocha!
”

“How do you know
that
word?” asked Mrs. Hammerstein, recoiling.

“I’ve been practicing it for weeks, Bobbie darling. But let me kiss this son of yours … after all, he
is
going to be my
aydem
,” said Mrs. Kavanaugh, proudly reeling off the newly learned Yiddish word for son-in-law.

“Your
what?
” asked Mrs. Hammerstein.

Patrick Shannon paced the adobe tile floor of his office. It was the day after he had obtained Daisy’s agreement to represent Elstree, and he had taken the first possible opportunity to call together the people who would be involved in the new campaign, the same people from Elstree and the agency who had been at the meeting in North’s studio.

Shannon seemed to thrive on the necessity to cut through red tape, Luke thought to himself, trying to count the number of essential meetings he was missing at this very moment, back at the agency.

“We haven’t got a day to lose,” Shannon told them all, looking as determined as an outlaw chieftain who has caught sight of a fully loaded wagon train innocently crossing the prairie. “The cosmetic and fragrance industry does ten billion dollars worth of business every year, and one third of that is done between Thanksgiving and Christmastime. We’ve got to be in the stores by Thanksgiving this year to even think about breaking even. That gives us just under seven months to launch the line next September.”

“It’s not enough time, Pat,” said Hilly Bijur. “Look at what you’re talking about: new packages, new commercials, new print ads, a whole new sales pitch to the buyers …”

“Hilly, look at what we’ve got,” Pat interrupted him. “We have the basic cosmetics, a complete line. We don’t have to change anything about them except the packages, because they’re perfect—they just don’t sell. Yet. We’ve got the doors—Elstree is already carried in five thousand class retail outlets. We’ve got the shipping and the billing and the cost accounting down to a science. It’s not as if we have to start up from nothing—all we need are the trimmings, the icing on the cake. For Christ’s sake …”

“Pat …”

“Now, listen, Hilly, that new fragrance the Elstree chemists came up with last year is a
winner
. It never even had a name—now it’s called Princess Daisy and even my dog likes it. As well she should with oil of jasmine at four thousand dollars a pound. All we’ve got to do is get women to smell the perfume and try the cosmetics—they’ll like them—they’re good items.”

“Pat,” Jared Turner, the marketing director, asked, “considering that Elstree lost thirty million last year, what sort of figures have you projected for this year?”

“I’m looking for a volume of one hundred million in retail sales.”

Oh, fuck and be damned, Turner thought to himself. Out loud he said reasonably, “But Avon’s the biggest cosmetic business in the world and they do a billion. You’re talking about ten percent of their business, and we’re in the hole as of now.”

“One of the things I like about this game is that you can turn it around fast,” Shannon answered, pulling some thorns out of one of his cacti in excitement “Really fast—if you just get the right handle.”

“You haven’t told us what your ad budget is going to be,” Luke broke into the conversation. All this talk about handles meant nothing without the money to back it up.

“The industry average is to spend ten percent for advertising and promotion out of every dollar of retail sales—I’m planning to double that. Based on my estimated volume, we’ll allocate twenty million dollars to Princess Daisy perfume and cosmetics.”

There goes the ballgame, thought Hilly Bijur. I wonder if Norton Simon, Inc., isn’t looking for someone to head up Max Factor for them. It’s in trouble, but not as big trouble as Elstree is going to be in.

“Twenty million dollars,” Luke said impassively, stroking his beard in a way that had Oscar Pattison and Kirbo Henry, his team of copy writer and art director, looking at each other in glee.

“And one third of it right before Christmas,” Shannon added. “That means, of course, that I’m blowing our potential profit for this year, any way you look at it, but I’m thinking in long-range terms. In two years we’ll be in good shape, in three years—the sky’s the limit.”

“But Pat,” Turner persisted, with the reckless air of a man refusing a blindfold before a firing squad, “what if
you just don’t turn Elstree around? We’ll lose another fucking fortune!”

“And the stockholders will roast my testicles for breakfast,” Shannon said cheerfully. “In a hot chili sauce, over a slow fire, to loud applause.”

“We could cut back in packaging,” Hilly Bijur said helpfully. “We have a hell of a lot of money invested in last year’s packages—maybe they could be used in some way so that they wouldn’t be a total loss.… Maybe …”

“Hilly, we’re introducing an absolutely new line—Princess Daisy—no
retreads.
” Shannon cut him off. “I thank you for thinking about economy, but this is no time to cut corners. Get your packaging designers together and tell them to go all out, full throttle—it’s got to be so classy it makes your hair stand on end. Electrify me! Spend whatever you need, but make sure the packaging reflects Daisy’s personality—nothing too modern, nothing space age, no gimmicks.”

“Right, Pat,” Hilly Bijur said, thinking that, now that Charles Revson was safely dead, it would be a good time to take a shot at a job at Revlon. He’d even take a cut in salary if he had to. “Reflects Daisy’s personality”—that girl in the carpenter’s pants—where the fuck had he put his Rolaids?

“We’ve come up with a concept or two,” Luke said, “since that last meeting with North. You were talking romance, warmth, glamour and star quality. Now that we’ve got Daisy to work with, we’ve been playing around with what Oscar here calls the Romanov approach—Princess Daisy as she would have looked back before the Revolution, dressed in period court costume, wearing the crown jewels or as close to them as we can find outside of a Russian museum …”

“Sorry, Luke, but that’s too high and mighty for my taste—I want her to be closer to the customer than that,” Shannon said instantly.

“I thought you’d feel that way,” Luke smiled. He always gave them a plausible bummer to shoot down. He continued smoothly.

“Our next concept is contemporary and I think it taps into every woman’s deep and constant desire to be attractive to men, which women’s lib doesn’t seem to have diminished by one jot or tittle, thank God. We’d film a ballroom full of dancers—or a disco full of dancers—any
and all variations on dancing, panning in from above, and then cutting closer and closer to Daisy dancing, hair flying, absolutely radiant, sensually abandoned to the music, the spirit of the dance incarnate. Then …”

“Sorry, Luke,” Shannon interrupted again, “but I don’t buy that either. It might work with just any ordinary model but since we’re dealing with a princess we’ve got to play up every inch of class, it seems to me, and that abandoned sensuality doesn’t hit the right note.” Shannon frowned. Since all the chairs in his office were taken, except the one behind his desk, which he never used unless he was alone, he was leaning against the wall. He looked like a studious boy, his black hair tumbling over his forehead down to his furrowed brows, his blue eyes concerned, the vertical lines around his wide mouth set in consideration of the problem which, for the moment, had replaced all the other business of Supracorp.