The Crasher Page 17

  Although an hour ago Ginny had wanted only to tell Poppy what she thought of her poor manners, now she was longing for her help to extricate herself.

  There had to be something in her expression that Poppy recognized only too well, Poppy who surely knew all about lecherous advances.

  Without a trace of embarrassment, she said, “So there you are, Ginny. We’ve been looking all over for you. You’re at the wrong table. We’ve been saving your place. Svank is joining us for coffee. He’s dying to meet you.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ONE SVANK PLAZA, NEW YORK CITY

  The twenty-one tables were centered with three-foot moss-covered malachite candelabra, also entwined with mauve, yellow, and white exotic orchids. Beneath the napkins—mauve, yellow, and white to match, each one embroidered with the guest’s name—small boxes nestled, wrapped in heavy white paper and sealed with a wax seal from Bulgari. They contained expensive, personalized gifts. The tablecloths were woven with silver thread and each chair was slipcovered in silver damask tied with heavy, silver-tasseled ropes.

  It was hard to imagine a more wondrous sight, but the host, known for his singular sangfroid, with emphasis on the froid, and celebrated for his equally phlegmatic name, Svank, not only showed no pleasure, his jowly polished face was tight with rage.

  “Where is she?” he hissed to the giant who rarely left his side. “Where is she?” he repeated, making the three words sound like a threat.

  The giant’s voice trembled. “The car went to collect her, boss, but Evie said she hadn’t come back—”

  “Come back from where?”

  “Evie wasn’t sure.”

  The usual impassive countenance was back in place, but Svank’s measured tone was menacing. “We don’t pay Evie not to be sure, do we? You know what to do about Evie. Now go find the girl, and I suggest you don’t come back without her.”

  The giant, whose name, Hugo Humphrey, always caused titters behind his considerable back, muttered, “Yes, boss, yes Mr. Svank.”

  Hugo loped, head down, into the marble vestibule of the penthouse forty floors high over Central Park, commanding majestic views of Manhattan from all points of the compass. At the elevator bank, disguised with antique latticework domes, his cellular phone rang.

  “Yep, yep, what is it?”

  As he listened, his whole demeanor and posture changed. From whipped dog to fanged wolf, Hugo Humphrey straightened up, all six feet eight inches of him, and loped back to his master. An ingratiating smile cracked across his moon of a face. “It’s okay, boss. She—” He hastily corrected himself as Svank scowled. “Ms. Poppy’s on her way up—er—with the designer of her dress.”

  Only one finger tapping the ormolu surface of a commode gave any sign that Svank continued to be displeased, but his voice was quiet as he commanded, “Go see Evie. Show her how we cure amnesia.”

  When Hugo continued to hover nervously, Svank imperiously flicked him away with his hand. “Go. I don’t need you for an hour.”

  As Humphrey disappeared into the elevator, Svank cursed himself for acting so out of character, for indulging an idiosyncrasy he rarely allowed himself. This evening, with the Rosa Brueckner matter decided and nothing too arduous clouding the U.S. business horizon, he had given in to sentimentality and deliberately arranged to arrive an hour before his guests. Why?

  It had nothing to do with approving or disapproving arrangements that had been made, or with checking up on his people. He had other people to do that. In fact, he had specifically directed that the small army of assistants who were always on hand to supervise his rare social events would be gone before his arrival. And they had gone, after ensuring that the distinguished decorating maestro Robert Isabell and his team had literally left no leaf unturned, no bud out of place.

  He took it for granted that he had the best that money—enormous money—could buy, not only superb food from his international chefs, but experienced food tasters, who “designed” delectable, memorable menus with every guest’s religious or allergic rules taken into account. One was a food critic from a major newspaper who enjoyed augmenting his salary this way. Svank also took it for granted that his personal food taster would already be in the hotel-size professional kitchen, sampling every piece of food his palate would encounter.

  So why was he so miserably alone in the splendor of his residence, one of many he maintained throughout the world? He had come early to enjoy, he’d thought, an hour alone with Poppy, savoring her and the sumptuous setting his money had wrought, sparing a moment or two to look back, although no one would know it, least of all Poppy Gan, comparing what he had now to what little he had had once.

  Again he tapped his impeccably manicured finger irritably on the commode, waiting for Poppy’s arrival. She had spoiled everything, the way women always spoiled everything. He had become a sentimental fool, which was dangerous, for why was he giving the party anyway?

  He disliked society, and rarely socialized, invariably regarding people, however lofty their credentials or loaded. their bank accounts, as wanting something from him. He was giving this party for Poppy, because it was her twenty-first birthday, the reason there were twenty-one of everything. But she obviously didn’t appreciate it, and because of that she’d have to pay, as all the women in his life eventually had had to pay.

  When the elevator doors opened, another giant preceded the two young women who slithered out, both visibly nervous.

  “Pussy,” Poppy cried. “Oh, Gaaawwwd, I hope you’re not too mad at me, I know I’m just the tiniest bit late, but I was suddenly scared shitless you might not like my birthday outfit, so I had to find Ginny and bring her with me in case you wanted any last-minute alterations. You remember Ginny, don’t you? She’s made the most marvelous dress for—”

  She stopped in mid sentence. There was something in Svank’s eyes as he came up close to her, ignoring Ginny, who was carrying a garment bag and a small suitcase.

  As Svank lifted his hand as if to slap Poppy across the face, Ginny shut her eyes. It all happened so quickly, she couldn’t be sure if his movement turned into a blow or a fierce caress. Surely it had to be the latter?

  When she opened her eyes, Poppy was standing motionless as Svank, without a word, walked into another room and carefully shut the door.

  The painful silence was broken by the busy sound of television news coming from behind the closed door.

  Suddenly, all business, Poppy said overly brightly, “Okay, Ginny, let’s go to work. Follow me.” She teetered on stiletto heels toward the heavily chintzed room Ginny knew she called her own.

  Poppy was work, all right. She had been nothing but frustration and work since the Waldorf fiasco almost a month ago, when, remaining on the dais, Svank had not come to the table, so Ginny had yet to meet him properly.

  Having tea with Ginny the next afternoon, Poppy had apologized again, explaining with a long face, “Svank rules the roost. I often don’t know, I swear, Ginny, which country I’ll be sleeping in at the end of a day. It’s terrible.”

  She had shown Ginny the typed agenda she received from Svank’s office every week, telling her where and when she was supposed to be on parade. “But often I go where this sheet tells me—to the office or the penthouse or the mansion—and he’s not there. But then if I’m not where he expects me to be when he wants me, brrrrrhhh…” Poppy had shivered dramatically.

  The birthday dress had been plotted that afternoon among the elaborate silver and gold tea urns of New York’s Palace Hotel, with Ginny sketching out a design she thought of as schizophrenic, a dress with multiple personalities, finely tailored on the one hand—in midnight blue hammered satin— yet cut so “close to the bone,” it followed every one of Poppy’s stupendous curves, conveying major seduction without being revealing or playing any peekaboo.

  Poppy had told her that at her birthday dinner there would be “a lotta top-drawer business people from Svank’s businesses around the world,” as well as what she called “a lot
ta New York glitterati,” pronounced “glitteray.” Without actually putting it into words, she’d conveyed that she was letting Ginny design something for this extra-special event to make up for the lost Waldorf opportunity. But disagreements had started almost at once, with Poppy insisting on a halter neck, “so I don’t look too straitlaced.”

  Over several days Ginny had negotiated, trading flamboyance for fashion, Poppy’s love affair with low necklines, frills and furbelows for streamlined elegance. She’d finally had to give in to the halter neck in exchange for abolishing the thigh-high slits Poppy angled for in the far from simple cut of the straight-as-a-Grecian-column skirt.

  Instead of slits (“old fashioned,” Ginny insisted), she had pleased Poppy, and herself, by setting a small bow tantalizingly on the lower back, at the point where the slow curve of Poppy’s buttocks began. The size of the bow caused more cajoling and argument, not to mention the ripping and resewing of seams and darts.

  Even a few minutes before arriving at the penthouse Poppy had been paranoid that Svank wouldn’t like what she kept calling her new “schoolmarm” look.

  “No schoolmarm ever looked like you, Poppy.” Ginny had been saying the same thing in a dozen different ways since she began work on the dress, still remembering her earlier sense of despair that whatever Poppy wore, she would always be in danger of looking like a juvenile delinquent.

  It was now seven-ten. The guests were coming at seven forty-five. After inspecting herself from every angle for a long, intense five minutes, Poppy was about to whirl away to show herself off to Svank when Ginny saw one of her false eyelashes hanging loose. That took another three minutes to fix, and Poppy fidgeted so much, Ginny wasn’t sure it would last.

  For one crazy, nostalgic second Ginny suddenly remembered Dallas and her precious box of Supreme Sables. She stared out at the Hudson River and the Jersey shore. Was she looking in the direction of Dallas, Texas? She thought so. She hadn’t come as far as she’d expected. She straightened her shoulders. But at last she was on her way, wasn’t she?

  Not more than five minutes passed before Poppy was back, trying not to cry, stumbling toward the closet where, Ginny remembered from an earlier fitting, Poppy kept some of her clothes.

  When Ginny saw Poppy’s back view, she could have wept, too. Where the bow had perched so deliciously was now an ugly rent exposing Poppy’s bare buttocks.

  “He didn’t like it?” Ginny stuttered, reddening at the absurdity of her question.

  “No, no, no. That’s not it,” Poppy wailed. “He doesn’t like me.” She moaned as she rustled through a rack of clothes, finally taking out the white Lana Turner.

  “Oh, please, Poppy, anything but that!”

  Poppy took no notice. She continued to moan like a wounded animal. “You’d better go, Ginny. I don’t want you to get blamed. It’ll all blow over. It always does.”

  But Ginny was on her knees behind Poppy, assessing the damage. “Stand still,” she commanded sharply. She opened her small suitcase. It was packed with threads, ribbons, bows, fabric samples, cords—and artificial flowers. She found what she was looking for. A pale blue satin rose with satin leaves falling from a navy blue velvet stem.

  “Stand still,” she commanded again. “You’ll wear that Lana Turner number over my dead body…”

  Poppy flinched. “Don’t joke, Ginny. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  Ginny didn’t hear her. She was too busy stitching fast, murmuring as she’d so often seen her mother do as she worked, singing a song under her breath. Ginny wasn’t singing. “This is the dress you’re going to wear tonight, Poppy,” she intoned. “This is it… or else!”

  That night, on Svank’s stiff arm, Poppy and her satin rose (which didn’t totally cover the tear in her dress) paraded themselves into the fashion headlines.

  “Derrière Delight… On her twenty-first birthday Poppy Gan initiates a new and daring soirée idea,” ran an item in Tuesday’s New York Times fashion page, while “Birthday Buttocks” was the description used, with a picture of only that part of Poppy’s torso on the front page of the New York Post. Mary Hart of TV’s Entertainment Tonight used it, too, awarded the rare privilege of covering the celebrities as they arrived at “Model Poppy Gan’s splashy birthday party given by New York’s powerful new retailer.”

  Svank! Even reading his name made Ginny feel nauseated, but at least the ugly scene had had one good result. She would never again be jealous of Poppy. The entire episode had made her look at what Alex called the A-list social scene differently. Now she understood the price the Poppys of the world could pay to lead the life Ginny had viewed with such wistful envy. If Poppy had to put up with that kind of treatment from her monster of a sugar daddy, who knew what the other women she read about in the social columns endured, women far less attractive than Ms. Gan?

  Poor Poppy. She’d traded her freedom for what? Unlimited pocket money, which could dry up at a second’s notice; luxurious residences she could never call home; expensive clothes that could be ripped from her body if she displeased the monster paying for them.

  Ginny Walker would never put up with that kind of behavior for one second, no sirree. Every time she thought about Svank’s treatment of Poppy, not to mention his crude rudeness in ignoring her own existence, it stiffened her resolve to make it on her own.

  She would play the monsters at their own game and take them for all she could until she found a way to be independent, to build and own a thriving business, for unlike Poppy she had something she loved more than herself: her work, her passion for designing.

  “I’ll never forget what you did,” Poppy cried over the phone later that week. “Right from the first day we met, when you recommended me to Ford, you’ve always been such a friend.”

  Ginny gulped down her guilt, remembering her hypocrisy at Ford as Poppy wailed, “You’re my only true friend.”

  Perhaps she really was, because since the birthday party she certainly wanted to do what she could to help her, although she didn’t have much hope she could change anything or make Poppy see where Svank’s domination was leading.

  “You help me; I’ll help you.” It was time to put into motion the deal she’d made with Poppy at Le Cirque.

  “What are you, er, up to this week, Poppy?” She didn’t know how to proceed and stuttered, “Or rather, what are you supposed to be doing this week, so we can plan to see each other. Remember, you said I might be able to go with you to—”

  “Wait a sec. Let me look at the agenda. Oh, where did I put it?” Ginny heard rustling sounds. She could well imagine the chaos. Poppy came back on the line sounding harassed. “I’m going to get Evie…” There was a pause. “No, Evie isn’t here anymore. I’ll get someone to call you with my itinerary in a minute.”

  “Could you ask her to give me a call every week or send it over?” Ginny held her breath, wondering if she’d gone too far, but no.

  “Ab-so-lutely. And then between my dates we can work out when we can see each other.” Poppy giggled. “I guess I’d better get me some more schoolmarms; the press seems to like ’em.

  Between dates? Poppy was forgetting the purpose of the plan. Who did Poppy think she was talking to? And “schoolmarms,” for heaven’s sake!

  “You promised I could go with you sometimes, to show off my clothes, remember?” She sounded sharp, but what had she got to lose?

  “Sure, sure, Ginny. I remember. Love ya.”

  When Poppy hung up, Ginny went straight to her drawing board with a suit idea for Poppy in mind. As she sketched she told herself she was a new, much more sensible Ginny Walker, no longer inhibited about not belonging, or thinking that any of the rich-as-Croesus people, who, now she knew, often paid to go to a party, were any better than she was.

  On the contrary. She’d gotten her feet wet at the Waldorf in the so-called social swim. Now she was more than ready to dive right in the deep end. She wasn’t looking for a sugar daddy. No way. She was looking for a well-connected, wel
l-heeled backer, male or female, someone who would look at her clothes and know he or she could make money, lots of money, by investing in Ms. Ginny Walker.

  She told herself, if you want to be an actress, you go where the producers, the directors are: you move to Hollywood. If you want to be a fashion designer, you go to fashionable events attended by entrepreneurs, retail magnates, powerful manufacturers, and you stay put in New York, home of American fashion. If Poppy forgot to ask her, she’d repeat her Waldorf adventure, she’d crash again.

  With Poppy’s agenda and many major upcoming events listed in Town and Country every month she would be able to plan a proper campaign.

  “How are you making out with Poppy and the best-dressed crusade?” Alex asked.

  They were having supper on the eve of his return to Europe, where, he’d just told her, he was now “dedicated” to the business of buying and selling fine art.

  Ginny hesitated. She decided she wouldn’t tell him the ugly birthday party story—not yet, anyway. “Svank”—she couldn’t help wrinkling her nose in distaste—“he wants her on the Best Dressed list just as she is now, with everything hanging out, but I’m persevering.”

  “Atta girl! I know you are. I saw the press coverage on that extraordinary birthday suit, if you’ll excuse the expression. I was only sorry your name wasn’t mentioned as the designer. Why not? When are you going to stop being so retiring and get some credit for all that hard work?”

  Although so far Poppy had only asked her to a boring art exhibition—and then not turned up—she’d been true to her word about sending her agenda.

  Ginny had already had two glasses of wine, so it was easy to tell him her news, to prove to her sophisticated cousin she wasn’t retiring at all anymore, if indeed she’d ever been.

  “My dear Alex, I’m just starting to show off my designs at some of the best parties in town.”