Satin Dreams (30 page)

Cold tears of humiliation welled up in her eyes. Embarrassingly, a tear slid down her cheek.
 

He liked that. The feral black eyes devoured her misery.
 

“But no marry,” the voice grated tinnily from the depths of the limousine. “A girl like you for Niko, no marry.”
 

The claw hand gestured, and Alix felt herself pulled back. The chauffeur stepped forward and closed the silver door.
 

“Thank you,” the bodyguard said politely. He adjusted the opulent fur around her shoulders with excruciating, impersonal courtesy. “Mr. Palliades wants to thank you very much for seeing him.”
 

Inside the car, a voice was still squeaking. “No marry. Tell her no marry.”
 

The chauffeur and bodyguard got in the front of the Rolls Royce. After a few seconds, it pulled away from the curb.

La Trame

The Woof

Seventeen

“Jeez, it’s a monster,” Peter Frank said under his breath. Peter had never been inside the Paris Opera, although he’d passed by its wedding-cake exterior many times. He’d just come from the airport and was looking for Jack. People were swarming all over the grand foyer, trying to get through a rehearsal for the
fantaisie
show for Wednesday’s ball.
 

From the vast, entrance-level foyer, he could see the Y of the massive grand staircase. The stairs were huge, slippery, and treacherous—quite impossible for even the most experienced models to navigate.
 

Nothing’s going to work right in all this,
Pete thought.
We might as well rent Ringling Brothers Circus, all three rings. And blow up half of Paris for a finale.
 

“Oh, there you are, Pete!” Candace Dobbs flapped her hands despairingly. “God, will you look at this? Gilles has already had ten goddamned nervous breakdowns over that staircase, because no matter what you put on it, the models just look like midgets. You don’t see anything except this—this—” She waved helplessly at the foyer’s overwhelming decor.
 

“I’m looking for Jack.” As far as Peter was concerned, nothing was ever accomplished in the fashion world without intensive mass hysteria. “Have you seen him?”
 

Beyond Candace, Gilles Vasse was directing the models on the stairs. The mannequins from the Bettina and Sophie Litvak agencies, Paris’s best, were wearing various makeshift draperies for rehearsal, not the final costumes, which were kept in secrecy. Princess Jacqueline, in leather pants, biker’s boots, and a forties-style silver fox jacket, was noisily competing for attention with the
Fortune
magazine writer, Chris Forbes.
 

At Gilles’s shouted instructions, Alix descended the stairs in what looked like a swimsuit covered with muslin leaves, her head almost completely obscured by a cardboard facsimile of a towering headdress. Behind Alix, a dozen models, scattered to the right and left on the stairs, waited their turns, most in street clothes, all wearing the impromptu cardboard headpieces. Peter could hear Gilles’s instructions and Alix’s low, reassuring answer. She started back up the stairs. As she did so, Princess Jacqueline called out to her. Alix smiled and waved but kept on going.
 

Admiringly, Peter gave Alix points. She seemed to be holding things together. Ordinarily Gilles went up in smoke whenever Princess Jackie was within two hundred yards. Alix made a joking remark to the models on the upper stairs, keeping the tension manageable.
 

Above them, triple marble arches rose as the opera’s staircase split to the arms of the Y. Midway, a wrought-iron balcony bisected the arches; above this ran a balustraded level with three more rococo arches, each centered with
fin de siècle
electric torcheres and then, in magnificent multicolored splendor, a floodlit vaulted ceiling with a mural depicting Phoebus, the sun god, preparing to drive his chariot drawn by snorting, rearing steeds across the heavens, accompanied by nymphs and winged angelic figures in flowing robes.
 

The problem was obvious, even to an amateur observer. The curly, sculpted, gilded, outsized, gaudily magnificent background of the Paris Opera foyer reduced anything to trivia, even a
fantaisie
show of Gilles Vasse’s designs worn by Paris’s most beautiful models. It was even hard to keep one’s eyes on Alix and her incomparable long legs as she started back up the stairs.
 

“Did anybody,” Peter looked around cautiously, because the writer from
Fortune
magazine, Chris Forbes, was not far away, “take a look at this place before we booked it?”
 

Candy Dobbs moaned. “Believe me, I tried hard for the Pompidou center, but nobody wanted to listen. This was Jack’s idea, remember?” She went on rapidly, “Brooksie Goodman negotiated all morning with the opera’s assistant manager, but they won’t let us put up scenery because they say it’s their policy, no alterations. Oh, Peter, we’ve only got two days left! And those goddamned black iron torcheres right at the top!” She gave another loud groan. “How can people see the show when the lights are right in their eyes?”
 

At that moment Brooksie Goodman passed them, her stout form enclosed in a flowing purple caftan. She was trailed by two electricians with ladders. “Where’s Monsieur Blum?” At Candy Dobbs’s blank look, the Paris publicity woman said, “The orchestra leader. We need him for the
son et lumière
.”
 

Ms. Goodman, Peter knew, was now working for them full time as a consultant, which added her services to the list of extra seamstresses, press agents, secretaries, and security guards that currently had them way over budget.
 

“I don’t know, Brooksie, I don’t know.” Candace turned to Peter, lowering her voice. “That’s another thing. We’ve got this expert who does the
son et lumière
at Les Invalides; it’s costing us a damned fortune to have him light the show and coordinate the music, and Gilles had this big row with him over what lights they’re going to use when the girls come down the staircase—”
 

“I need Jack,” Peter said impatiently. He’d seen enough of the chaos at the opera. He didn’t need to be reminded the
Bal des Oiseaux Blancs
was just two days away. “I just flew in from New York, Candy, I’ve got a taxi waiting outside.”
 

Even as he spoke, Peter saw the
Fortune
magazine writer close his notebooks and walk over to Alix. The redheaded model jumped up from her seat on the stairs, smiling. The look of pleasure on her face was unmistakable.
 

Another complication
, he thought, frowning. He wondered if Jack knew this was going on. He looked around, but Nicholas Palliades was apparently not there.
 

Well, no one could complain if Alix preferred to hang out with the
Fortune
magazine writer. Jack might raise hell, but only privately; relationships with the press were as touchy as those with financial investors. Besides, there was no way they could force the girl to limit herself to young Palliades.
 

Peter hesitated as the models started down the grand staircase. “What the hell’s the cardboard on their heads for?”
 

“Gilles is redoing the headdresses, making them bigger.” Candy’s eyes were on a man and woman who had just come in through the door to the
grande salle.
“We’ve got to do something to keep the models from coming on like the Seven Dwarfs against this background. Oh, God,” she cried, “I knew it! We’ve got reporters sneaking in here again!”
 

Peter grabbed her arm. “Don’t freak out, Candy. We’ve had the press before.”
 

“Oh my God,” Candace cried, “they’re going for the princess! They can’t shoot her in those damned S and M clothes she’s wearing!”
 

Peter Frank watched Candy rush toward the reporters. Where in the hell was Jack? he wondered. It wasn’t like him to go off like this, with nobody minding the store.
 

In his suite at the Plaza Athenee, Jackson Storm was talking to his lawyer in New York, speaking words, after almost two decades of married life, he’d never imagined himself uttering.
 

“I’m telling you, Sam, we’re discussing legal separation. If not actually divorce.” Jack stopped, hearing his own words with unaccustomed bitterness. If this was what Marianna wanted, then this is what she would get.
 

“Desertion,” he said heavily. “She’s taken the girls and deserted me. I couldn’t even find her at Christmas! I went all the way out to Tahoe, that’s where she told me they’d be, only to find they’d taken off for the house in St. Croix. Do you know how goddamned humiliating that was?”
 

“Jack,” his lawyer said in New York. “Marianna says it was an honest mistake. They didn’t really expect you back from Paris what with all the priority time you’ve been spending over there. And it’s not desertion, Jack. Right now Marianna’s at home in Connecticut. The girls are at school. She’s still legally occupying the family residence.”
 

Jackson Storm made a strangling sound. “Christ, whose side are you on? She’s been talking to you, hasn’t she, Sam?”
 

He could almost see Marianna on the telephone to Sam Edelstein, his lawyer—
their
lawyer—imperiously telling her version of things. Marianna was always imperious, he fumed; it was one of the most annoying things about her. Her attitude, even after all these years, stank.
 

“Listen, it was no damned mistake that she tore out of Tahoe in a big damned hurry and rushed the girls off to St. Croix! That took planning, Sam,
planning
, because she knew I was coming. She practically told me to come to Tahoe when I called her from Paris.”
 

“All right, Jack, all right,” his lawyer conceded. “Maybe Marianna’s temper got the better of her this time.”
 

“
This
time?” the unflappable emperor of New York fashion roared. “Do you
know
my wife? Because I’m just asking, Sam. Are we talking
temper
, or what?”
 

“The women, Jack,” the lawyer reminded him calmly. “I mean, the women
all these years.
Look, consider what it’s been like for her. For Marianna, your wife.”
 

Jackson Storm stared, distracted, at the huge bouquet of roses and hothouse lilies that the Plaza Athenee provided every day. It suddenly occurred to him how sick and tired he was of hotel rooms, even when they were luxurious suites in a deluxe five-star accommodation in Paris. Christmas in New York at the Fifth Avenue condo had been the same way. He’d ended up eating Christmas dinner at Ratner’s kosher restaurant on Fourteenth Street, just like the old days.
 

“We had an understanding,” Jack said, a little hoarsely.
 

“The hell you did,” Sam said. “You never discussed these other women.”
 

“But Marianna, ah—she knew what was going on.”
 

“You’re a skirt-chaser, Jack,” the voice of his longtime friend came over the wire. “First it was the girls in the Seventh Avenue loft, years ago, remember? Who would do anything to model the old Storm King lines? Then the chicks from the big-time modeling agencies who wanted to make a name for themselves? How about,” the lawyer’s voice went on relentlessly, “the television jeans girl, Sam Laredo? Everybody knew, it wasn’t exactly a secret. So, let me ask you—where was Marianna all this time?”
 

Jack took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead. “Listen, Sam, I provided for that woman like you wouldn’t believe—jewels, furs, a decent home. Jesus, not
one
decent home,
four
of them! And I’m not neglecting her,” he said, raising his voice over protests in New York. “I’m still sleeping with her—”
 

His voice trailed off.
When?
When was the last time? A couple of months ago? Since they got back from the Acapulco trip last spring? Jack acknowledged it might have been as long as that. Knowing Marianna, no wonder she was on a goddamned rampage.
 

Dismayed, he wondered if this new, upsetting estrangement might be permanent. Staring at the bouquet of hothouse flowers before him, Jack suddenly didn’t know how he felt about that. Did he want to be single again? There would be some sort of property settlement. Could he choose the house he wanted? The condo in Manhattan? Without a lot of haggling? Would there be a woman, girl, he was interested in, later?
 

Jack hesitated. The charming woman he’d met on the Concorde coming to Paris had been an entrancing dinner partner and had great potential as a bed partner. Except once in his suite at the Plaza Athenee, she had confided that she looked forward to talking to him about a career change. She’d always, she declared, wanted to be a dress designer.
 

Jackson Storm had heard the line many times before, and it always had the same effect. In this instance he’d been charming, he’d been suave, he’d kept his cool. He’d called the lady a cab and wished her well on her visit to her husband in Germany.