Scruples (27 page)

“Yes. Well—until Friday then—” She left his office precipitously, realizing too late that she would probably see Wilton a dozen times before Friday in the course of her work.

Valentine arrived at Alan Wilton’s door wearing a short, soft, black chiffon dress with an open matching jacket, trimmed in black satin ribbons, of her own design and workmanship, which Balmain would have been proud to acknowledge. She expected to find his home decorated in the spirit of his office, which incorporated all the executive clichés of gray-flannel walls, a black-and-white geometric David Hicks carpet, and furniture of polished steel and glass, an office as severely masculine and strictly organized as the man himself.

But when Wilton answered her ring he led her into a duplex that combined fantasy and fine art in bewildering profusion. A collection of rare Art Deco furniture was placed on brilliant Persian carpets; eighteenth-century Chinese chairs stood on either side of a splendid naked Greek torso of Alexander the Great; sinuous Cambodian dragons guarded an upright Ptolemaic sarcophagus. The colors were all rich and dark—wines, bronzes, lacquered shiny black, and terra-cotta. Mirrors were everywhere, competing for space with books, antique Chinese wall hangings, framed photographs, and small Cubist paintings, two Braques, one Picasso, several Légers. Leather and velvet sofas were partly covered with fur throws and unexpected pillows in silver and gold lamé. On every table stood an amazing clutter of vases and small sòulptures, Lalique and Gallé glass, Chinese ceramics, Assyrian stone figures, flexible metal fish. It was an apartment at once so personal that Valentine imagined that if she had the time to absorb and analyze it, she would know the man who had created it, yet it was so full of surprising contrasts and ambiguous juxtapositions that it might as well have been designed as camouflage.

Valentine was speechless. This was such a complete work of art that she really felt nothing yet but astonishment. Wilton waited, drinking in with pleasure this reaction on the part of his guest.

“I see,” she finally said, “that you do not believe that ‘less is more.’ ”

He gave her the first entirely open smile she had seen on his face. “I’ve always thought old Corbusier was unnecessarily dogmatic about that,” he answered, and began to show her around the two floors and the small formal garden with unabashed pride in his treasures. From the minute he had answered the door, Valentine had ceased to feel frightened by him. He seemed a different man entirely in his own home. He hadn’t
mentioned
“dear, old Pierre” once, and she felt, somehow, that he didn’t intend to tease her ever again.

Valentine had been taken aback when Wilton had mentioned dining at Lutèce. Even after a mere three or four months in New York she knew its reputation as the most expensive restaurant in town, supreme in its standards of haute cuisine. She expected the kind of grandeur she had read about in French magazines when they described the glories of Maxim’s or Lasserre. Instead, she found it was a narrow, friendly brownstone, with a tiny bar. They climbed up a steep, open, circular iron staircase into a small cream-and-pink room, lit entirely by candles, overlooking a garden filled with roses and other tables. There was not a single note of ostentation, yet the room breathed depths of luxury and comfort because of the use of the finest materials: heavy, pink linen tablecloths and napkins, fresh roses in bud vases, fine crystal, and solid-silver flatware. Even the waiters, in their long, white aprons, were protective and approving, instead of exuding the stiff pomposity that Valentine had dreaded in anticipation. As they drank Lillet on the rocks in delicate, round goblets with long, thin stems, Valentine inspected the menu, which, to her surprise, had no prices on it. Later she discovered that only the host’s menu had the prices listed, a delicate way of making the guest unself-conscious about the cost of his choice. Let the host wince—or, if he had to wince, let him stay away.

Although some of Valentine’s strange sense of shyness had been dissipated in Wilton’s apartment, where his objects provided a safe topic of conversation, after the business of ordering was over she suddenly wondered what on earth they were going to talk about during dinner. As if he sensed, her new attack of uneasiness, Wilton began to tell her about the history of the restaurant. He had been coming there since it opened.

“I hoped it was going to be a success from the first day,” he said, “but I was absolutely sure of it on the day I heard the owner, André Surmain, refuse to serve a regular customer iced tea with his dinner, although the man swore that if he didn’t get his iced tea he would never set foot in the place again.”

“I don’t understand,” Valentine said, confused.

“I knew that the place hadn’t begun to break even yet, but there was André, so determined to maintain the standards of French cooking that he preferred to lose a good customer than do what he considered an abomination, a desecration of great food. With nerve like that—he had to be a little crazy—how could he fail? And the man never did come back either.”

Valentine felt a return of her natural self-confidence. She wouldn’t let anyone drink iced tea here either, certainly not with the roast duckling garnished with poached white peaches she was eating.

Alan Wilton felt something stir inside that had been dormant for many years. It was an enchanting child, indeed. He had suspected it would be. So young, so innocent, in spite of its airs, so amazingly unspoiled in spite of its beauty. How restful, how touching, to show it a bit of the world. And how well it knew how to accentuate its type—slender as a young boy, tiny breasts, a curly, short cap of absurdly red hair above the simplicity of the black chiffon—how very well done.

During the next five weeks Valentine had dinner with Alan Wilton some fourteen times. He introduced her to the authentic, noisy bistro atmosphere of Le Veau d’Or; the subdued, badly lit reverse chic of Pearl’s, where the thrill came not so much from the Chinese food, which no one ever admitted was only fair, but from the feeling of being a member of a privileged elite who had made it their own; and to the very special charm of Patsy’s, an unpretentious but expensive West Side Italian restaurant where entrenched Democratic Party politicians, and men whose methods of business did not encourage investigation, dined on some of the best Italian food outside of Milan. Mainly they ate at Lutècé, sometimes downstairs in the less formal, slightly larger dining room, sometimes outside in the garden, protected by awnings and tall lamps, which radiated heat on chilly nights, sometimes in the room in which they had first sat. Slowly Valentine came to know Wilton a little better. He was a man who had the trick of offering tiny bits of information about himself at odd moments and at the same time managed to convey, wordlessly, the fact that probing questions were not just unwelcome but out of the question. He had two sons, both young teenagers; he had been divorced for five years after a marriage of twelve years; his wife had remarried and was living happily in Locust Valley.

He never discussed business with Valentine. In fact, his chief interest seemed to be in Valentine herself, in her past life, which she gradually described to him in full detail. It was a relief to her to be able to stop misrepresenting herself. Now that she was really a designer’s assistant she could admit the truth about her years at Balmain. Yet somehow she didn’t feel free to be as easy and open with him as she was with Elliott. Although she could now relax with Wilton, his perfect manners constrained her own impetuous frankness.

She puzzled endlessly about her relationship to him. Everyone in the office knew they were seeing each other, since he had his secretary make all his restaurant reservations. Valentine managed to evade the questions her friend the receptionist and some of the more important women in the workrooms slyly tried to put to her. She thought she understood Sergio’s attitude completely. The more often she saw Alan, the more frigidly vicious Sergio became. Only natural, considering that she was a potential competitor for his own job with the unfair advantage of being involved in a man-woman relationship with the boss.

But was she? That was the stone at the heart of the question. They had established a pattern in their evenings. She met Alan at his home for a drink, they went out to eat, they had a brandy or two in a bar after strolling a while, and then he took her home in a taxi, insisting on seeing her all the way up to her door. He invariably kissed her goodnight on both cheeks, in the French manner, but he never came in, although, after the first three evenings, Valentine always invited him to do so.

Wilton had subtle charm and formidable glamour. Valentine had never been courted by a man she took seriously, and she was beginning to fall more and more under his spell. He was the first man of the world she had ever known, but she had no basis of comparison to use as a yardstick to judge his impeccable behavior. After fourteen dinners she certainly expected something more than the kind of kiss one French general gives to another on dress parade! More and more frequently she found herself staring at his full mouth, imagining what it would feel like to her lips, until, with a start of realization, she dropped her eyes. Sometimes she noted a strange flash of what looked like pain in his expression, and she would hurry to distract him with an anecdote on the mad pace at Balmain’s because she feared, for no reason she knew, whatever it was that he might have been about to say. Yet, what
was
he waiting for? Was there something she was supposed to do? Some sign, some word? Did he think he was too old for her? Was she perhaps not his type? No, that, she concluded, was just not possible. No man would spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars to feed a woman who wasn’t his type, common sense told her that and common sense never failed. Perhaps because she didn’t know the right way to flirt, perhaps he was frightfully shy deep down inside, perhaps he had been so hurt by women that he didn’t want to get involved, perhaps—

Valentine was disgusted with herself. All these fake wonders and doubts when what she really wanted to know was when she was going to bed with Alan Wilton? Her twenty-second birthday had passed and she was still so intact a virgin that if she had still been a practicing Catholic she could have gone to confession without a blush. Why, even that dolt of an Elliott had never made a move—

Bitterly, she remembered a recent conversation she had had with a runaway model who had come to Wilton’s to have some of the new collection fitted on her for a fashion show. She was a flip creature with a Cockney whine as aggressive as her pelvic bones.

“Do you mean that Spider the Cocksman is your neighbor? What perfectly fabulous luck!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You know, that’s considered vulgar in England but terribly grand in New York. I wonder why?”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“That expression you just used, ‘I beg your pardon.’ ”

“Spare me a wandering mind,” Valentine snapped, “what did you mean exactly about Elliott?”

“He’s a bloody famous stud—you do understand ‘stud,’ Valentine? Not to put too fine a point on it, he fucks early and often. Ever at the ready is our Spider—and he specializes in the most ravishing creatures. I’ve never had a good whack at the man myself, worse luck, but I hear he’s fantastically good.”

“Salope. Conasse!”

“What did you call me?”

“A gossip,” said Valentine, who had used two words that, roughly translated, mean, respectively, “pig of a slut” and “dirty cunt.”

“Well, gossip is the soul of this business, I always say. So—I take it you haven’t had a tumble with the old darling. Not to mind, dearie, he probably thinks of you as a sister. I hear he adores his sisters—ouch! That hurt!”

“Sorry,” said Valentine, removing the pin.

So where did that leave her? A sister to Elliott—not that she’d have him anyway, she thought savagely, the promiscuous, disgusting pig—and a question mark to Alan Wilton. There must be something wrong with her.

A week later when Alan Wilton suggested that Valentine return to his place for a drink after dinner, she felt a sharp snap of relief. She’d seen enough movies to know that it was the classic seduction ploy. Now that he’d finally made his move, she was enchanted with herself for having waited without betraying her impatience.

When they had left his apartment earlier in the evening, he had turned off almost all the lights, and now he made no move to light them again. With endearing nervousness he poured them each a large brandy, and silently, trembling slightly, he guided Valentine’s elbow with his warm hand, leading her to his bedroom. He disappeared into his bathroom and Valentine gulped the brandy quickly, kicked off her shoes, and went to stand by the window, looking out at the dark garden. Her mind refused to work. She just stared outside as if she might see something vitally important if she kept on looking long enough. Suddenly she realized that Alan was standing closely behind her, entirely naked, kissing the back of her neck, unbuttoning the tiny buttons that ran down the back of her dress. “Lovely, lovely,” he murmured, slipping off her dress, undoing her bra, pushing down her half-slip. She tried to turn to face him, but he held her firmly with her back to him as he slid off her wisp of underpants. His fingers slowly traced the line of her backbone and her rib cage, his hands came around to clasp her breasts briefly and then returned to their delicate, deliberate celebration of her back, gradually reaching her small, firm bottom. There he lingered a long while, cupping her buttocks in his hands with hot, eager fingers, squeezing them together and then, alternately, flirting with the line that separated one from another until gradually he had worked a finger in between them for an inch or two. Valentine felt his penis rise and grow stiff against her back, but still he had said only “lovely,” repeated over and over.