The Crasher Page 7

  It was a great moment, but she blew it, saying too hurriedly over her shoulder, “Ginny Walker.” Even to her, it sounded like “gin and water.” Too late she realized she should have practiced using the name of the French fashion editor, her passport into the show.

  It was already ten minutes past showtime, yet she was amazed—and horrified—to find hordes of people, as many men as women, of every age, color and fashion peculiarity, pushing, shoving, forcing her to rush along with them down a wide entrance hall, lined with booths offering free Evian, free newspapers and even hair-color forecasts from Clairol.

  It was Armageddon. Even if she wanted to linger, to soak up every molecule of her first New York fashion show, it was impossible. If she stopped short, she was sure everyone would trample her into the floor.

  It wasn’t at all what she’d expected. There was no way anyone could see what anyone else was wearing, let alone show off any fashion style of one’s own. There was no way she could find Alex to see his startled admiration at the way she looked.

  Figures of speech came to mind: a pride of lions… a gaggle of geese… more like a herd of elephants trampling wildly on as they did in that wonderful old movie Elephant Walk In common with Alex she was mad about old movies. They were so inspirational.

  “Move… show your tickets… show your tickets… move!” bellowed tough-looking guards.

  Buyers, editors, hip and chic nobodys like herself were waving little green tickets, except she didn’t have a little green ticket. She was acid-green with envy, but not deterred. Heart-skipping adrenaline pushed her forward. Nobody seemed to be taking the green tickets, which added to her up-yours optimism.

  A strong bebop beat of music started up from behind a huge white wall at the end of the hall, the magic wall which stood between the charging elephants and the arena and runway where the action was obviously about to begin.

  Somehow she’d ended up sandwiched between an oversized black man—he had to be at least six foot six—wearing an odd cocoon-shaped cloak and an older woman with hair so sleek and close to her head it reminded Ginny of her old labrador who’d died in Boston.

  It was as if they were glued together. They all made a frantic rush for the opening in the white wall. The guard stationed there obviously knew her companions, because as she copied them, waving her arms about, pantomiming important lateness, he ushered them inside to darkness.

  “This way, Miss mumble mumble… Mr. mumble mumble.” To Ginny’s frustration she couldn’t hear the names, but both haughtily followed the guard’s pointing finger, without a care in the world. They were “known”; they took it for granted good seats, perhaps the best seats, were waiting for them in the packed-from-floor-to-rafters huge tent.

  The guard put up his hand like some prison warden as Ginny attempted to follow them, putting on her best bored, superior expression. Before he could ask her for anything, let alone a little green ticket, she peered bleakly over the audience at an imaginary seat assignment.

  She couldn’t believe her luck. With a scream of excitement, she spotted Alex across the runway, talking animatedly to a man as assured-looking as himself.

  “Alex, Alex,” she yelled, but of course in the din there was no way he could hear her.

  “Ticket, seat number.”

  Ginny looked in her mother’s moire purse in a bored, disgusted way. Then, well rehearsed in Queens, lifted her hand dismissively, as if green tickets were totally unimportant, saying in a charming French accent, “I’m Elise Marathaux, from French Elle.”

  The guard looked, if possible, more bored and disgusted than she did. “You’ll have to go back to the front. I don’t have the checklist here, miss. You saw the sign. Check at the desk first if you don’t have a ticket.”

  “But this is im-poss-ee-ble! The crowds… it is im-poss-ee-ble,” she said again, in impeccable pigeon French. “I am Elise Marathaux.” She pointed to Alex. “There is my art director.”

  There was a hiss from behind and a heavy, henna-streaked woman cut in front of her. “Annie Jourdan,” she said, handing the guard a green ticket. “Elle magazine.”

  Ginny swallowed hard. Could she die now, please, and go straight to heaven?

  The guard looked at the ticket; looked at Ginny, then at Madame Henna. “Is French Elle in your row?” He made it sound like ‘ell. He indicated Ginny. “She’s from your French crowd.”

  Heavy henna looked at her in distaste. “Who are you?”

  With a deep breath, trying one more time, “Elise Marathaux.”

  “No, you’re not. She’s already here… down there.” She glared at Ginny as she pointed an accusing finger. “This isn’t the first time people have tried this.” She turned to the guard. “Check her ID. Call Security. It’s time you caught on to these imposters…”

  There was a blast of music as a spotlight illuminated a model stepping onto the runway. To Ginny she might as well have been on the moon.

  Heavy henna looked torn between wanting to take her seat and making sure Ginny was put on death row. Calvin Klein won. She walked in the direction of her row, shouting over her shoulder to the guard, “See you take care of her.”

  Like a wannabe Elise Marathaux, Ginny pointed again to Alex. “That’s my cousin. I’m sure he’s saving my seat for me.”

  “I thought you said he’s your art director.”

  A miracle occurred. Alex looked up and straight in Ginny’s direction.

  She waved frantically, shouting again, “Alex, Alex.”

  He saw her, but what did he do?

  He gave her a perfunctory wave, then looked back at the runway, indicating with his body language a total lack of interest.

  She was stunned, her desire to see the show wiped out. Alex had turned his back on her. She couldn’t remember feeling more lost, more bereft. Tears welled up in her eyes. Now, she wasn’t acting.

  “Sorry, miss. You can’t come in without a seat number. See for yourself, there isn’t one left in the entire place.”

  The guard must have seen the look of imminent suicide on her face. He became human, almost fatherly. Although she no longer cared about anything, he said, “You won’t see much, but you can stand here in the doorway if you like.”

  He was right. She couldn’t see anything or anyone, and no one, thank God, could see her, as deflated as an overcooked soufflé. At least he wasn’t calling for Security to lock her up.

  She mumbled her thanks as he walked away.

  She had played hooky from business school for nothing. It reminded her of that terrible day in Dallas when despite all her efforts to stand out in a crowd, she’d failed to be discovered either by Monsieur Robespier or by MTV.

  This was far worse. Her best friend, her longtime confidant, her own cousin, had not only neglected to come to her aid, he had publicly spurned her. Blood thicker than water? She would never feel the same about Alex again, she was sure.

  “If I tell you the stock market will likely go higher this year, but also higher volatility can be expected and maybe a two hundred fifty to six hundred correction during the summer, what would you say are the reasons for the wider price swings?”

  The Wall Street forecaster, who came to lecture to the business class at Pace University every month, looked around the room with his customary lack of enthusiasm.

  Ginny put her hand up. “More money is pouring into the market, but investors are nervous due to growing signs of economic weakness.”

  There were the usual hostile currents blowing around her, but she lifted her chin and plunged on, realizing as she spoke that despite attempts to correct it, there was still a residue of her father’s pompous, professorial tone in her voice. Tough luck. “The fat profits realized from currency conversions by multinational companies like Svank Securities, carried out when the dollar’s value was declining, will dry up as the dollar’s value rises.”

  “Exactly, Ms. Walker.”

  It was as easy as raising a hem to her. She didn’t care two cents that her grasp o
f business would never win her any popularity contests among the other would-be tycoons, people whom she hoped—after graduation—never to see again.

  FIT was so different from Pace. At FIT everyone was so into getting his own construction right, no one thought about one-upmanship—certainly not at evening class anyway. Perhaps it was different being a full-time day student, when everyone had a chance to do real design, when the best got shown at a fancy annual event, attended by retailers and the fashion press. Ginny tried not to think about it.

  She was working around the clock to get her finance degree locked up as soon as possible. She was getting there faster than even she’d expected, but oh, she was so tired. At Bloomie’s last weekend she’d told a customer who couldn’t read the price on a particularly hideous lamp that it was far too expensive and she shouldn’t consider buying it. Luckily she’d thought Ginny was joking and laughed her head off, but she didn’t buy the lamp and Ginny shuddered to think of her supervisor ever hearing about it.

  Esme Jee, also in lamps, had become a good friend, making up for the loss of Toby in Dallas, whom she still missed from time to time. Esme and she were drawn together by a similar financial/parental predicament. Like Ginny, Esme still lived at home, but at least home was in Chinatown, which Ginny thought had to be incredibly fascinating, although Esme denied it. Because of her twenty-hour work days and nights, so far she hadn’t even been able to visit Esme or her cheongsams, which apparently were passed on from generation to generation, some with real gold thread. Imagine.

  Esme wanted to study art history and maybe teach or write, but her parents, like Ginny’s, insisted she go to business school. At least Esme’s father only wanted her to become an accountant. Ginny’s still had this half-baked idea that on graduation she might start a jolly little Walker School of her own, “aimed at the young market,” while her mother thought she should become a model! Incredible how obtuse parents could be.

  Something stung Ginny’s cheek. A paper dart landed on her lap.

  She glanced with supreme indifference across the aisle. Just as she’d thought. Robb Sinclair was sitting there with a self-satisfied smirk, the one he often wore above his silly tuft of fair beard, which never seemed to sprout more than a handful of hairs.

  Ginny had given him some Miracle-Gro for Christmas. He’d given her a packet of ghastly false talons in return, which was fair enough. Since beginning her heavy-duty time at the Space Asylum, as Pace University was called by some of its inmates, she’d taken to biting her nails.

  There was something different about Sinclair today, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was and she certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of glancing at him again.

  Out of the thirteen guys and nine lumpy girls in her class, Robb Sinclair, who to his credit also wore an earring in his left ear, was the only one who halfway measured up to her criteria for passable.

  As she had always done on landing anywhere in the nation, she had taken her time to make a critical survey in both the looks and brains departments of her new colleagues. The results had been dismal. Ginny had quickly come to the sorry conclusion there was no chance of a kindred spirit girlfriend among the females, let alone any love interest among the males.

  Because she was tall—yes, Mother, I know that’s an incredible advantage in the world of brain-dead models—she usually ended up dating Jolly Green Giants, the kind of men whose gray matter seemed centered in their shoulders. Or alternatively who were so square, there was no way they could fit into, yes, she’d admit it, her demanding circle.

  In one of his “cute” tailor-made courses for those five feet or under (“How to Overcome that Disadvantage”), her father quoted from a medical survey that in the job market tall people generally got chosen over short people, but for what jobs? House painter? Tree doctor? It hadn’t been her experience that the taller the man, the more intelligent or certainly the more exciting. To be fair, she knew most guys thought she was “too intense, too ambitious,” both commendable traits in her opinion.

  Over the months Sinclair was the only one to redeem himself by showing he had a mad sense of humor and some understanding of what she was all about. Yesterday he’d even commented that she was wearing kohl around her eyes. He’d recognized it because his mother worked in a beauty shop and was into “experimentation,” whatever that meant.

  As the lecture ended and she strolled out, Robb grabbed her arm in the hall. Her uninterested stare collapsed when she looked at him.

  “What d’you think?”

  She clapped her hand over her mouth to stop screaming with laughter. Robb Sinclair was wearing kohl, badly applied but still unmistakably ringing both his eyes. He winked and grinned at the same time, which she had to admit was an attractive combination. Grudgingly, she told him she admired his guts for trying something different.

  “D’you want to have a coffee, a drink?”

  Why not? She had several hours of studying to do at home, but she felt jaded, worn out. Putting it off for half an hour wouldn’t jeopardize her business future.

  “Okay.”

  Maybe this would lead to a real date. Her problem was, she didn’t know whether she wanted it or not. There had to be someone out there, someone more than the halfway passable Robb Sinclairs of the world, guys who, if they didn’t have Alex’s knowledge and sophisticated looks, at least acted more like her role-model cousin, despite his many faults.

  She had been trying to concentrate on Alex’s faults because weeks and weeks had passed without a word from him, not one word since the Klein debacle. His phone didn’t answer and she certainly wasn’t going to ask her parents if they knew where he’d gone.

  Ginny was used to his coming and going like the Scarlet Pimpernel, but this time she was really hurt. She’d started to act like the other Scarlett, the “I’ll-think-about-it-tomorrow” O’Hara one, as far as her cousin was concerned.

  But think of the devil (as she did every day), who should be waiting outside Pace when she sauntered forth with Sinclair? It was Alex Rossiter himself, standing beside the snazziest car she’d ever seen, long and pointed, more like a missile than an automobile, in a wonderful shade of sad green, the color of the moors where Laurence Olivier agonized over Merle Oberon in Wuthering Heights.

  In one way she wasn’t sorry that Sinclair was beside her, in another she was acutely embarrassed that Alex should see her accompanied by a guy wearing definitely non-chic eyewear. In broad daylight Sinclair looked like a freak.

  “Hi, Ginny.” Alex opened the car door as if he were her regular chauffeur. “Hop in. I’ve come to run you home.”

  Sinclair, alas, didn’t know it, but there was no contest.

  “Sorry, Robb, some other time. This is my cousin from… from out of town,” Ginny mumbled. “I don’t get to see him very often.”

  He winked and grinned at the same time again, but this time it wasn’t attractive, and she noticed that when he turned abruptly away, he slouched as he moved down the street.

  Even though the passenger door was open and Alex had already moved in to take the wheel, Ginny hovered on the sidewalk, rather than throw herself onto the seat as, alas, she knew she usually would have done. She bent down to give Alex the stare Sinclair said she was famous for in class, the one which terrified the inmates, although they’d never admit it. It didn’t terrify her cousin. He reached over and pulled her down.

  “Get in before I get a ticket.”

  She tumbled in, glad she had on a new skirt she’d made up from some ginger-colored leather Esme’s family didn’t want her to wear. It went beautifully with her chestnut hair, but she hadn’t yet worked out the color scheme for the jacket.

  As he zoomed them uptown, with no explanation for his long absence or apology for anything, Alex started snapping questions at her like a machine gun.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to the Klein show?

  “Why were you so late?

  “If you’d arrived ten minutes ear
lier, I’d have taken you to one of the best seats in the house.

  “Why are your priorities always so mixed up? Why on earth didn’t you tell me you wanted to go?”

  She was so taken aback by his onslaught, she couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  As they crossed over to Madison Avenue and passed Fifty-seventh Street and the exit for the Queensboro Bridge, Ginny finally asked, “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  So now he was treating her like a ten-year-old. All right, Mr. Rossiter, she knew how to give the cold-shoulder treatment, too.

  Alex checked the one-of-a-kind missile into what she considered to be a one-of-a-kind garage, charging for a few hours what would be a week’s house rent in Queens.

  Clutching her by the arm as if she were an escaped fugitive, Alex literally marched her a block or two down Fifth Avenue into a classy hotel called the Sherry something.

  In the ultra hushed and plushed lobby (with two, not one, Versailles-type chandeliers), there was a large, very closed-looking door with Private Club engraved on a gold plate, beneath what she first thought was the double intertwined C of the Chanel logo. It wasn’t a C. It was a large, double intertwined D.

  The door couldn’t have looked more closed, with “keep out” in invisible ink written all over it, but Alex opened it as casually as if it were his own front door. Immediately before them was a luscious-looking, deep pile, dark purple carpeted stairway. They descended down, down, down to arrive in another lobby with a beautiful antique porter’s desk where Alex casually scribbled his name in a leatherbound visitors’ book.

  “Is this called the Two D’s?” she whispered, to show him how observant she was.

  No, she learned, this strictly private, subterranean club was called Doubles, buried so far beneath Fifth Avenue and East Fifty-ninth Street that not even the most superintelligent beaver would be able to find it.

  It was so velvety and plumped-up cushiony, it was like being encased in a jewel box from Tiffany’s, which was only two blocks away, but at street level, of course.