Satin Dreams (35 page)

“Alix, darling.” The Storm King of mass-market fashion ignored the disheveled seamstress. “Alix is the most beautiful model in Paris and fantastic at take-charge,” he told the people with him. “She runs everything she puts her hands on. You’ll see her tonight at the show. And here,” he said, indicating the way with a courtly flourish, “is the showroom, the heart of any couture establishment.”
 

The New York VIPs followed Jackson Storm into the salon where seventeen Paris models in curlers and bikini panties greeted them with loud, dismayed screams.
 

Nannette clutched Alix. Her eyes were riveted to the three men coming up the grand staircase carrying the plastic garment bags of Parisian dry cleaners. “
Mon Dieu
, what is this?”
 

The Alsatians broke into huge smiles.
 

“Oh no,” Alix groaned, trying to block their way. “No—no, upstairs! Not in the salon!”
 

She was too late. Jackson Storm and his friends had backed out of the salon onto the landing and into the dry cleaners, who held the bulky plastic bags full of Gilles’s precious costumes over their heads to keep them from being crushed.
 

“What’s all this?” Jackson Storm asked Alix as he ushered Nan Kempner ahead of him.
 

“Last-minute deliveries,” she managed, smiling.
 

“I told you Alix is a treasure,” Jack announced. “She’s got a great future with us.”
 

Alix could hardly wait to hear the cage of the elevator, full of Jackson Storm and his guests, descending. In the next second, she pushed the dry-cleaning men inside the salon.
 

The models crowded around the dry cleaners as the transparent bags were laid out on the salon’s bergeres and tables. Sylvie came rushing in.
 

“Careful, careful of the hair!” the hair stylist shouted. Nannette already had a bag open and was lifting out a white satin pouf gown with a long, fantastical lace train.
 

Gilles’s costumes, Alix saw with a rush a relief, looked as white as they’d been yesterday, before the fire.
 

Sylvie held up a train of lace on a sheer silk background.
 

“The trimming has come unraveled. Oh my God, what will we do? We’ll never make it!”
 

“It’s too bad,” one of the big Alsatians observed, “we didn’t know more about this material; we would have done the job more quickly. It’s not new, is it?” With a thick forefinger he pressed back a paisleylike curl of lace against the gauze.
 

“What are you doing?” Nannette thrust herself in between. “Why is this lace sticking up like that?”
 

“The rosin is old.” The big blond dry cleaner fingered the edge appreciatively. “They don’t use this process anymore. But we did a nice job,” he said, turning to Alix. “How do you like it?”
 

Sylvie clutched her head. “We have to get these costumes upstairs, to sew the sequins, all the passementerie back on.” She looked around. “Do any of these models know how to sew?”
 

At that moment Gilles Vasse appeared at the door.
 

Their designer’s face was drawn with fatigue and strangely splotched with glue, and he looked even more whipcord slender in his black jeans and turtleneck sweater. He held a paper bag in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich in the other. Behind him were the rest of the models in their completed egret costumes, and three exhausted-looking seamstresses.
 

“
Ca va bien?
” Gilles said, rather distantly. “How’s everything going?”
 

He looked around at the chaos of the salon, the piles of costumes in plastic bags, the gawking, half-naked models, Alix, Nannette, Sylvie, and three burly Alsatian dry cleaners, as though this were all very normal. He took another bite of his wife’s pâté and crisp roll. “Are you all ready in here?”
 

“Oh, yes,” Nannette said loudly before anyone could speak. “All goes very well.”
 

Gilles gave them an approving smile.
 

“Thank God,” he said, taking another bite of his lunch, “we’ve come this far without anything terrible happening.”

Twenty-One

Snow began to fall a few minutes before eight o’clock. The American television crew taping from their mobile unit in the Place de l’Opera had to take cover under umbrellas, but the video cameras kept rolling on the floodlit facade of the grand old opera house where, in a trick of super-powered lighting, the snowflakes had turned into ethereal filigree.
 

The news announcer lifted his microphone. “Well, the weather’s giving us a show of its own ‘heavenly lace,’“ he enthused. “An appropriate gift from mother nature on this night of stars at the Paris Heart Fund’s
Bal des Oiseaux Blancs
, where American fashion mogul Jackson Storm will open a special
fantaisie
show using his spectacular new fabric, Heavenly Lace, in costumes by the Paris designer, Gilles Vasse. I would say,” he went on as the cameras moved past for a shot of the limousine traffic snarled in the Place de l’Opera, “the fashion show will have to be truly tremendous to rival the heaven’s own lacy show going on out here.”
 

The TV newsman dropped his microphone for a moment. He’d been doing voice-over “color” for an hour and he was getting tired of fashion chit chat. Where in hell were the celebrities?
 

“Here are some new arrivals,” he said quickly as the cameraman focused on the line of Daimlers and Rolls Royces emptying passengers at the foot of the Opera’s steps.
 

The men alighting from the limousines were attired in the white tie and tails of formal dress, but the women, bundled in furs against the cold, wore extravagant interpretations of surreal birds: great sparkling white bouffant gowns, exotic headdresses, some with bird beaks with masks attached, all in a sumptuous display of jewels, velvet, satins—even yards of white lace.
 

“Ah, here’s a real surprise,” the announcer exclaimed. The camera picked up the Duchess of York, the former Sarah Ferguson’s red head brilliant in the spotlights with Prince Andrew beside her. “Royalty here tonight was a pretty well-kept secret.” The newsman bubbled with excitement. “But it certainly tops off a fantastic, star-studded evening.”
 

“Fergie” wore a simple white satin dress by Givenchy. Prince Andrew carried his wife’s feathered mask and grinned at the crowds as they hurried up the opera’s red velvet-covered steps.
 

Immediately behind them, Balkan Prince Alessio Medivani stepped out of his Rolls Royce attired in a black opera cape that billowed out to reveal formal evening clothes draped with red ribbon and diamond court decorations. With Prince Medivani were his daughters, Princess Catherine, the eldest, now married to a French businessman, and Princess Jacqueline. The younger girl wore an extravagant satin costume, very décolleté, and carried her feather and sequin headdress in one hand. The dress and mask were not white, but a dazzling shade of crimson.
 

The news announcer was rapt. Rebellious Princess Jackie had lived up to her reputation. She was going to be the only female at the
Bal des Oiseaux Blancs
attired in something other than the obligatory white.
 

The Medivani Rolls Royce moved on. Closing the space were several opulent stretch limousines that stopped to let out notable VIPs from New York, the Louis de Brissacs, father-and-son silk manufacturers of Heavenly Lace and their wives, and finally the great Storm King himself.
 

Like the Duke and Duchess of York minutes before, the floodlights seemed to focus on Jack Storm as though he were the only star of the star-studded evening. There was a ripple of applause from the chilly crowd of Parisian onlookers gathered at the opera steps. Jack Storm turned and waved and gave his famous dazzling grin.
 

“There he is,” the TV newsman said, “America’s Jackson Storm, savoring his hour of triumph here in Paris, where over five hundred of Europe’s and America’s elite will gather tonight. Despite the unconfirmed rumors—” He paused, rummaging through his bulletins. “of a takeover of Jackson Storm International by an as-yet unidentified European corporation. Here in Paris, Mr. Storm has not been available for comment.”
 

“I can’t believe it,” Candace Dobbs cried, “I refuse to believe it. Something like that can’t be happening, not at a time like this!”
 

The long mezzanine in the opera house had been converted to dressing rooms. The area was crowded with models and seamstresses trying to cope with fashion show mishaps. Some of the Papagallo shoes had been left behind at the Maison Louvel. The seams in the two owl costumes appeared to be mysteriously opening up. And an egret model was sick to her stomach from nerves and threatened to throw up. And Candace Dobbs, who should have been downstairs overseeing the press and television crews, was only adding to the calamity in the dressing room.
 

“Candy, I don’t think it’s a good time to discuss rumors about mergers and buy outs,” Alix told her.
 

As she’d been ready for more than an hour in her first costume of the show, Princess Jackie’s “flamingo,” Alix was following Gilles from one crisis spot to the other. Gilles was in a distant vacuum, his attention fixed on his
fantaisie
clothes. And he was using Alix as a buffer to keep away the stage director, who wanted to negotiate last-minute lighting changes.
 

“Can’t you see how hectic it is right now?” Alix wished Candy Dobbs would go away. “The rumors of a takeover probably aren’t true.”
 

“It’s not a rumor—it’s true, I tell you! They’re not even sitting together! Come here and tell me what in the hell I’m going to do.”
 

The public relations woman dragged Alix past half-dressed models and into an alcove that overlooked the grand foyer below.
 

“Look—look!” Candy was so agitated, her feathered headdress was shaking. “The Greeks came in together, they got a table to themselves. There’s Jackson Storm with his table, there. I told you, they’re not even speaking!”
 

Alix looked down from behind one of the opera’s famed red velvet portieres. Hundreds of guests filled the huge foyer. The popping of flashbulbs from the Paris
Vogue
photographers, who had been given the ball’s still-photo exclusive, made bright, intermittent flares. A dance orchestra was playing, and the floor was crowded with masked and costumed couples. Spotlights shivered across the dancers and lifted to the opera’s Beaux Arts murals, the gigantic crystal chandeliers, and into the arching reaches of the vaulted ceiling. In the crowded scene below, Alix couldn’t find anyone. She supposed Nicholas Palliades was there.
 

But suddenly Alix understood what Candace Dobbs was saying. “The Greeks bought out Jackson Storm? You mean Nicholas Palliades? But that’s impossible.” The idea left her aghast. “Why would he want to do that?”
 

“Mademoiselle Alix!” Nannette came out onto the landing looking for her. “It is almost time.”
 

Candy Dobbs gathered up her taffeta skirts with one hand. “They did it—Poseidon-Palliades, the old man, that whole bunch of Greek pirates. I heard Niko Palliades is the one who’s been buying up Jack’s short-term notes in New York.”
 

Alix allowed herself to be propelled back into the dressing area by Nannette. “He is complaining—Gilles,” the seamstress said, “that the costumes smell of something.
Mon Dieu
! Naturally they smell of something—it is the dry cleaning fluid!”
 

Sylvie intercepted them, a tape measure around her neck, the fitter’s pin cushion bracelet strapped to her wrist. “Why are the owl costumes loose? It’s not the seams, I have checked.”
 

Alix looked for Gilles. The light and sound director had backed the designer against the mezzanine wall, and was shouting about changes in light cues. The grand foyer lights, the
son et lumière
man was explaining, would go down almost to darkness. When they came up the first models would already be in position on the staircase, a change from the original plan of having them parade on to music.
 

Alix said hurriedly, “Pin the owl costumes together with straight pins. Just tell the owls to be careful.”
 

Nannette dropped to her knees in front of Alix, aligning the pink feathers of the flamingo skirt that deepened to a violent peach color. “Look, something is sticking out under here, too,” she exclaimed, her voice muffled by layers of laminated lace.
 

The make-up man rushed over to give Alix’s face a last powdering and almost tripped over Nannette. Alix gave the flamingo skirt a final tug. In the distance there was the unmistakable sound of the French model being sick to her stomach.
 

When Alix looked up, a scowling Nicholas Palliades in formal evening clothes was standing there.
 

Rudi Mortessier had been watching Television France’s coverage of the
Bal des Oiseaux Blancs
while he enjoyed a late dinner at home. He got up from the table reluctantly when he heard the telephone ring.