Satin Dreams (34 page)

“Please don’t be frightened,” he said. “I have a message to deliver.”
 

It was the voice on the telephone; Alix recognized it at once. He was very much the way she’d expected him to be: young, well-dressed in a black business suit and topcoat, his hair thinning on top. He wore eyeglasses.
 

Alix wasn’t surprised that they were dealing out in the open now. They were getting anxious, she knew. She clutched her coat around her, waiting.
 

“If you come back now, there’ll be no problem.” The same familiar voice, but now without the bullying arrogance. “I’m instructed to tell you anything you want is okay.”
 

The baker’s van was in sight. “I appreciate the message.” It was, actually, a major concession. “I’ll think about it.”
 

“When will you let us know?” He hesitated, not wanting to let her go, but not blocking her. He had his orders.
 

“Later,” Alix murmured. “It will have to be later. After tonight.”
 

La Fantaisie

The Show

Twenty

Jack Storm had personally invited Donald and Ivana Trump, Michael and Diandra Douglas, Mica Urtegun, Ann Bass and Nan Kempner to the
Bal des Oiseaux Blancs,
so it came as quite a surprise that instead of meeting his guests at the airport, limousines were sent for them while Jack and Peter Frank had lunch with an Italian clothing manufacturer about setting up a chain of Maison Louvel boutiques, like those of Bennetton in the United States.
 

That left Candy Dobbs in charge, with Brooksie Goodman on site at the opera.
 

“You mean,” Alix said, “Jack won’t be here, at the Maison Louvel, until later?”
 

The public relations woman had charged into the salon for the third or fourth time looking for their shipment of white shoes that, Papagallo swore, had already been delivered.
 

“Alix, honey, don’t sweat it. Jack
needs
a good deal right now.” The other woman looked around somewhat hysterically. “Especially after the rumor that’s going around New York that somebody’s been buying up our corporate paper.” She wrung her hands. “Oh, God, I don’t see any large gold carton that says ‘Papagallo’ on it, do you?”
 

“Corporate paper?” Alix followed her, seemingly to look for the box of shoes, but actually to keep Candace out of the atelier where they were nervously waiting to hear from
Richard et Cie
about the
fantaisie
costumes. “But that’s short-term notes, isn’t it?” When Candy didn’t answer, rummaging distractedly in a pile of empty ostrich feather boxes, she said, “You mean, someone’s buying up Storm King loans in New York.”
 

“Goodness gracious, beautiful, airhead models aren’t supposed to know about things like that! Honestly, Alix, there’s some damned crisis with the Jackson Storm empire every quarter. Oh, Christ,” Candy screamed, loudly enough to make Alix jump, “a large gold carton that says ‘Papagallo’?” She grabbed a box from under the receptionist’s table. “Here are the damned shoes. They’ve been here all the time!”
 

They heard the telephones in the second-floor offices ringing again. As they had been ringing, in bursts, all morning. Media coverage was still gaining momentum. Trini, Jackson Storm’s secretary, called down the stairs for Candy.
 

“Here,” the PR woman said, thrusting the shoe boxes at Alix, “you take them up to the atelier and make sure they get loaded on the vans along with the rest of the stuff for the opera.”
 

Alix had seen enough to know that Candy, like everyone else, assumed the atelier was working quietly making last-minute adjustments on the costumes for the models’ six o’clock arrival.
 

Alix couldn’t bear to go back to the atelier. Nannette and Sylvie only made her jitters worse. The two seamstresses had locked themselves in to make telephone calls to the dry cleaners in Pantin each step of the way. So far five of Gilles’s beautiful bird designs had survived the initial hand cleaning and had been hung up to dry.
 

At two o’clock
Richard et Cie
reported some of the feathers had come loose on an owl design, and the plant foreman’s mother, a dressmaker, had been called in to sew them back on. “Oh
mon Dieu, non!
” Nannette had screamed into the receiver, “that is couture work. Tell them to leave it alone!”
 

The plant foreman’s mother had been insulted. The owl costume looked good, the manager had assured them, and there was no need to panic. Telephone communications, however, had been indefinitely suspended while feelings cooled off.
 

On the floor above, Gilles was locked in his design room solving last-minute problems with the “egret” dresses with the help of two Sophie Litvak models and the temporary seamstresses.
 

The design room and the atelier were barricaded islands of quiet. The rest of Maison Louvel was a madhouse. The caterer, the elegant old Grande Cascade, a client of Brooksie Goodman’s, was having logistical problems with the opera foyer. The Grande Cascade’s assistant manager and two chefs were waiting impatiently for Jackson Storm, but Candace Dobbs had not had the courage to tell them Jack wasn’t expected back at the Maison Louvel. The headdresses to go with
the fantaisies
had been delivered. Alix found a safe place in the cloth storage room until Sylvie could tag them for the costumes.
 

Alix lingered for a moment at a front window, looking down into the rue des Benedictines. Two French television news vans were already parked on the far side, but she didn’t think they would cause any trouble. So far, their secret was still intact. Hopefully no one would question Domenic’s bakery van when it came to deliver the dry-cleaned costumes.
 

Abdul and Karim had worked until late morning scrubbing down the walls of the atelier so that no telltale odor of fire lingered. Nannette and Sylvie had not even gone home; the two women had caught naps on the big atelier worktable, and Domenic had brought them coffee and
pain et beurre
at eight-thirty.
 

One troublesome spot remained. Princess Jackie was nowhere to be found. No one from Prince Alessio’s staff had called inquiring about her, so it was assumed she was at home. They could only keep their fingers crossed that their design starlet would put in an appearance, as scheduled, with her father at the ball that night.
 

That is, Alix mused, watching the television camera focus on her at the window, if Princess Jacqueline was still in one piece. “Accidentally” setting fire to the atelier with a discarded joint of marijuana had a message in it that she found disturbing.
 

It was just past four o’clock, she saw by her wristwatch. They had a little over five hours to go.
 

A can of grease crayons turned over as the telephone rang at Gilles’s design table and he made a scrambling lunge for it. The call, he knew, could only be from one person.
 

“Darling?” Lisianne’s voice said softly. Was there the merest hesitation, or did he imagine it? “Does all go well?”
 

Gilles cast a frantic look at the two models wearing egret costumes and the seamstress at their feet trying to find out why the skirts bunched up unbecomingly above their knees instead of gently rounding into the desired poufs. They had been fighting the problem for hours.
 

“Everything goes well,” Gilles said, faking cheerfulness. “I—I can leave at any time. Are you lying down?”
 

Lisianne had promised that she would call him the minute even the most minor twinges of pain began.
 

“How far apart are your contractions?” Gilles had knocked a bottle of India ink off the edge of the board. The models and the seamstresses looked up, startled.
 

“Gilles,” his wife said, “are you calm?”
 

“I am very calm,” he assured her, sliding out of his seat. “I will take you to the hospital now. It is best not to wait.”
 

“Gilles, no.” He heard Lisianne’s tinkling laugh, a sound he hadn’t heard in days. “My darling, I have only called you to wish you well,” she told him. “This is your big night. You don’t think I would spoil it for you by doing such a gauche thing as having our baby, do you?”
 

“Don’t say that,” he said fiercely. “Nothing in the world is as important to me as you. I think I should leave now, Lisianne, to be with you. You’re not feeling well, are you?”
 

“Are you mad?” Lisianne’s amused voice was entrancing. Gilles mopped his sweating face absently with the fixative rag. “All that you have worked for just to come home and sit with your pregnant wife? Gilles, don’t be foolish.” The lighthearted laugh again. “I will be watching you on television. It is very exciting. They have been interviewing the celebrities who will be there tonight.”
 

“I haven’t been watching. I’ve been too busy.” Gilles ran exploring fingers over the sticky fixative the rag had left on his cheek. “Thank you for the marvelous lunch of sandwiches and the fruit,” he remembered to say. “You look after me too well.”
 

“Don’t forget to eat it,” his wife told him, “there is enough for both lunch and dinner. You will work through both of them, I know you, Gilles. You will be too busy at the opera to think to eat any of the lovely food there.”
 

“Lisianne—” he began.
 

“I am very fine,” she murmured tenderly. “My darling, remember that I love you.” Again he thought he heard that queer hesitation. “And that I always will.”
 

Gilles listened to the humming sound that meant that his wife had hung up. Why, he was thinking, had those simple words sounded so ... unusual, when Lisianne said them every day?
 

At six o’clock the models from the Bettina and Sophie Litvak agencies arrived, tall, beautiful, and willowy, to prepare for the show. With them came three hair stylists to do the final brushing out. Alix moved the group into the salon. The costumes still hadn’t arrived from the dry cleaners.
 

A few minutes later Sylvie let Alix squeeze into the atelier through a barely opened door.
 

“Don’t ask me where they are,” Nannette shouted. “I have spent the day talking on the telephone to these people, explaining that the costumes are supposed to be here by five. Never work with Alsatians, they are totally unreliable.”
 

“They can’t hold them back because of what you said to that terrible woman, the seamstress,” Sylvie wailed.
 

“Did anybody mention how they turned out?” Alix wanted to know. “Did the smoke stains come out?”
 

“They don’t say anything.” Nannette glanced at Sylvie bitterly. “We have given them too much money. What will you do for your jewelry,” she flung at Alix, “if we have no costumes tonight? Do you think they will give your earrings back?”
 

More calmly, Sylvie took Alix’s arm and drew her aside. “Are the television people still in the rue des Benedictines? What will they do if they see Domenic bringing in the costumes? Suppose Monsieur Jackson Storm should arrive at that moment?”
 

“It will work out,” Alix soothed her. Though she didn’t know what they would do if the costumes had been permanently damaged. Alix thought of Gilles still working in his studio on the floor above. It would be devastating to have to break the news that the costumes had been ruined just as they were walking out the door on their way to the Paris Opera.
 

“Try them again,” Nannette ordered, pointing to the telephone.
 

As Sylvie started dialing, Alix went back downstairs to the salon.
 

Candy and her French PR staffers had left to dress for the pre-ball cocktail party at the Ritz. The Maison Louvel’s newly decorated showroom had become an informal dressing room where the models were having their hair blow-dried. A few were already trying on the giant plastic and mylar fringe headdresses. The elegant salon already had the typically chaotic look of a changing area.
 

Alix suddenly remembered the shoes and turned back toward the atelier to fetch the Papagallo boxes. Nannette met her in the hallway. The stout little Frenchwoman looked desperate.
 

“It is now six-thirty,” she hissed. “Those robbers in Patin have ruined the costumes and are afraid to tell us! They will never deliver them. They will go back to Alsace, where they will hide in the coal mines and never be found!”
 

But Alix suddenly covered the seamstress’s lips with her index finger, saying, “
Hush
.”
 

They could hear the rattle of the brass elevator cage coming up, and there was no mistaking the telltale baritone of Jackson Storm, conducting a tour for his VIP guests.
 

The elevator cage opened on the landing outside the salon, and Jackson Storm stepped out. He was still dressed for his luncheon engagement in a gray business suit and pearl homburg with a mink-lined topcoat thrown dashingly about his shoulders. His hair sparkled with snow drops, his heavy, handsome features were flushed.