The Crasher Read online

  It was also the kind of place where her mother would immediately start looking for the fire exit. There was no sense of time or place here, no noise, no trace of climate, of day or night.

  Ginny sat stiffly on the edge of a fat cushioned banquette, waiting for something momentous to happen, still trying to hold back her forgiveness. The problem was, now she wasn’t altogether sure who was in the right and who was in the wrong. At that moment the most delicious-looking piña colada appeared before her.

  Where was all this glamorous treatment leading? As she took a sip she decided to push her suspicions aside. There was, after all, something deliriously sinful about drinking the most exquisite drink in living memory at barely five o’clock in the afternoon. And to think that less than thirty minutes ago the extent of her expectations had been a cup of coffee or a glass of jug wine with Robb Sinclair.

  “Sony I haven’t been in touch,” Alex said abruptly. “Some urgent business came up in Europe—I had to fly to Switzerland right after the Klein show.”

  If this was Alex doing penance she decided she’d put up with his offhand behavior and bad moods—providing they didn’t crop up too often. To help give the ugly, suspicious side of her nature a slight concussion she took another swig of the piña.

  She waited. Silence, then, swinging a carefree arm around her space on the banquette, Alex continued, “I’m so proud of you, Ginny. I hear you’re on the way to becoming the youngest person at Pace ever to get a B.A. in finance—and in record time. Congratulations!”

  As she had already been told this was probably so, she nodded with what she hoped was humility, laughing giddily the next second when Alex added, “with your father taking full credit, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  The piña colada couldn’t drown out her real problem, which was that once again, in no time at all, Alex was mesmerizing her. She had never met anyone remotely like him, who could make her laugh hysterically one minute and the next, trigger her into a serious debate on the Dalai Lama. With her limited social circle she didn’t suppose she ever would.

  Alcohol sometimes made her father maudlin, melancholy; and just occasionally it had that effect on her. Before the tears she felt lurking plopped into her regal glass, Alex gave her a squeeze and to her surprise said, “After working your guts out, you deserve something special. Name your desire… I’ve just closed on a big deal, so the sky’s the limit.”

  For a minute she had lockjaw, then, thank God, remembering her parlous state, came to her senses. “Retail math, merchandising planning and gross margins.” She couldn’t believe she’d said it.

  Alex looked put out. “What are you talking about? I thought you’d say a trip to Paris, an Hermès bag, a… a… oh, I don’t know, young women are a strange breed.”

  “It’s some courses I long to take at FIT…”

  “But you’re already taking courses there and turning into a salesgirl on weekends to pay for them…” The way he said “turning into a salesgirl” was not complimentary.

  She wasn’t deterred. Seeing a shining light at the end of a long, dark tunnel, Ginny began to develop a speech in her head on how incredibly valuable she’d discovered FIT to be and how terrified she was she wouldn’t be able to afford to go there much longer without some extra financial help.

  Alex removed his arm and sank back into the cushions. “You know your parents think I influence you too much, don’t you, Gin?” He could change the subject faster than a cloud covered the sun.

  “Well, you do influence me. What’s wrong with that? They should be thrilled I have you as a role model and not some creep who doesn’t know a… a… Hockney from a… a…”

  “Hallmark,” he supplied instantly. Then, “Hold it. Hold it right there.” He took a camera from his pocket.

  “Why?”

  “I love that look of yours.” He snapped away. “It’s the bored, aloof countenance of a cheetah.”

  “Oh, Alex, I do love you.”

  She did, too. Pretense and poses hadn’t a chance. Her parents were right. He did influence her too much and she did care for him too much. It had always been like that, ever since in her distant memory she remembered first meeting him when he came to visit with his mother, her father’s clever sister. How old had she been? About four, so he must have been fourteen or fifteen, thrilling her even then with his devilish smile and sophistication. If only he wasn’t her cousin…

  “And I love you, too, cheetah, but…” His voice was unusually serious. “I worry about you. You’re brainy, creative, as cute as a button, but just when you should be having the most fun, you’re all work and no play. You’re too choosy.”

  She was so shocked by this switch in direction, she took a long sip of the delicious drink to prepare for the worst

  “It’s not altogether your fault. Graham and Virginia have brought you up to look down your nose too much, to be too picky. For instance, why don’t you go out with this Robb character you told me about? You might find he has hidden depths.”

  She’d forgotten she’d told Alex about the creep, forgotten she’d embellished Sinclair’s winks and hanging around to make it sound as if she was the much sought after prey of a Tom Cruise look-alike, tycoon-in-the-making kind of character. How embarrassing.

  In a little-girl voice she despised, she said, “I thought I told you he’s already tied up.” She couldn’t resist adding, “or down, if you ask me. He wanted to break it off, but…” she paused, trying to think how a Tom Cruise tycoon-type personality would handle a three-way situation. It came out in a rush. “He’s engaged to the daughter of some trillionaire who’s going to set him up in business and I wouldn’t let him do…”

  She couldn’t finish the sentence, because Alex was laughing so hard. She tried not to laugh herself, and instead began to fume. “Stop it, Alex. Stop making fun of me. I’m not picky; I’m not choosy.”

  Alex poked her in the ribs. “What’s the long face for? Wasn’t that Robb—the Tom Cruise look-alike—with you, coming out of class?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “The fair Tom Cruise, the one trying to grow a beard for his next part? The one with the brass ring in his ear?”

  Now she was half crying, half screaming with laughter. Alex put a light hand across her mouth. “Shush, you’ll get us both thrown out of here. Time to get down to business.”

  The cloud was back across the sun. She was right to be suspicious. Why was Alex, a Wall Street heavy, carrying a camera? Why had he turned into a shutterbug this afternoon? She tensed up. Now she was going to hear the real reason for Alex picking her up.

  “This fashion design business is infecting your whole personality. I mean it’s taken over your life.” He looked at her reflectively. “I met a model the other day in Europe—in Dusseldorf, to be precise. She was home visiting her family.”

  “How cozy.” She hoped he got the lack of enthusiasm in her voice. She leaned forward as his arm encircled her space again.

  “It was Claudia Schiffer on her home turf.” Alex gave the laugh she usually adored, short, slightly mocking at the absurdity of life. “She was discovered dancing in a Dusseldorf disco, you know. She’s absolutely gorgeous.”

  “How cozy,” she said again, immediately feeling foolish.

  Despite the “your-parents-worry-I-influence-you-too-much” garbage, was it possible Alex was acting as an emissary of her mother in bringing her to his jewel box of a club?

  “Remember when I told you once what constitutes the real importance, influence, of a top designer today?” He wasn’t expecting an answer. “Well, Ginny, there’s a new era of influence emerging, my little duckling…”

  She was too depressed to remind him she’d looked like a bored cheetah half a glass of piña colada ago.

  “The supermodels, they’re beginning to replace movie stars as icons, influences, and they’re earning incredible bucks, huge bucks because”—another Alex laugh—“they are huge; they’re literally tita
ns of beauty. Schiffer told me she’s five eleven, and Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford—”

  “She’s much shorter and has a mole,” Ginny interrupted sulkily.

  “And thanks God for it every night. How much d’you think these beanstalks are getting for a sitting?”

  “A sitting?”

  “A photo shoot.”

  “I haven’t a clue.” Couldn’t her superperceptive cousin realize her anger was so heavy, it was hanging in the Doubles air like a bomb waiting to explode?

  Of course he realized, but he was so secure he made matters worse. He chucked her under the chin.

  “Don’t do that!”

  “D’you know why I did it?”

  No answer.

  “You have a dream of a chin, a pointy little chin which makes you—”

  “Pretty!” she snarled out the word, having heard her mother say it more times than she could count and now certain where her faithless cousin was headed.

  She had been too carefully raised to watch for behavioral clues, slip-ups in speech, any kind of evidence of a moving day around the corner, not to be able to sniff “trouble,” even from her once-beloved A.

  “No, you’re not pretty,” he went on as smooth as silk, “well, not conventionally so, but you have a cheeky urchin look, emphasized by that pointy chin of yours, which, as I’ve explained to your perceptive mama, might make you eminently photographable.”

  The bomb exploded. “I can’t believe it; I can’t believe that you’re actually talking about me becoming a model.” Ginny took a good slug of her drink. “For the one and only time in my life I agree with my father. I’d rather do anything, serve hamburgers at McDonald’s, spray scent at Bloomingdale’s or make selling lamps there my lifelong career, than strut along a runway. It’s brainless, it’s mindless. I want to use my brain, not my body. I thought you understood I want to be a designer.”

  The tears were out in the open, one fast after the other down her cheeks. She no longer cared.

  Apparently neither did Alex. He leaned back, as cool and as unperturbed, Ginny thought, as Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. For the first time she was tempted to slap him across the face, hard.

  “How d’you plan to go about that?”

  Playing for time to think of an answer that would finish the discussion, Ginny took another long sip and made a disgusting slurping sound as she dredged up what was left at the bottom of the glass.

  Alex beckoned and another piña colada appeared.

  Ginny protested, but he ignored her, repeating the question. “How do you intend to become a designer?”

  She was ready. Well, almost. “I’ll start as a design assistant, a gofer, a dupe maker, a fitter, anything with one of the fashion greats.”

  Alex raised an eyebrow sardonically. “Who d’you have in mind?”

  Before she could start on the list, Alex put his arm around her, not just the banquette, and because it was so unusual, she wanted to burst into tears and have him kiss every tear away. Instead, she shut up like a tortoise and sort of withdrew her head (and pointy chin) into his shoulder.

  “Listen to me for a minute?”

  She brought out her tortoise, duckling, cheetah head to nod yes.

  “After meeting Fräulein Schiffer I looked at the economics of what’s happening to lucky girls like her. I did some research on the kind of money they’re making. I tell you it shocked the pants off me. I had no idea! These top girls are very young, under or just over twenty, and they’re making millions. I told your mother she’s both right…”

  Within his arm, he felt her stiffen, then relax again as he continued, ”… and wrong. I don’t agree at all that you should ever step on a runway—or at least not until you’ve begun to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars and the top designers are begging for you.”

  She was raging again, but said nothing.

  “She understands that you want to be a designer and she thinks one day you will be—and a successful one, too.”

  His words startled her so much, she sat upright. Mother thought she could be a successful designer? Since when?

  “I think so, too, but you’re going to need capital, lots of capital. Ideas alone do not a successful designer make. Even a talent like Carolyne Roehm never made it, despite having so many of her then-husband’s millions behind her.”

  She was beginning to feel less betrayed and took a furtive sip of colada number two. It was twice as good as the first. She wanted to purr or quack or make some kind of cheerful cheetah sound.

  “Mother has a problem,” she said slowly. “She reads too many romantic novels. She thinks once I’m up there strutting my stuff, some multi-zillionaire will come along and sweep me away to never-never land.”

  Alex said earnestly, “It’s not on the runway you’ll meet Mr. Zillionaire—” He broke off as a stunning pale brunette in a dark red, beautifully cut velvet suit glided across the floor of the still empty restaurant to a far dark corner. She was followed by a heavyset, equally pale man.

  Night people, Ginny thought with awe, glamorous, gorgeous people who are super-pale because they never see the sun and only appear after dark.

  As Alex continued to stare after them, Ginny said, “Wow! What a beauty. Who is she? She looks like a prima ballerina…”

  Alex grinned. “Prima donna’s more like it. That, my dear, is Dolores Relato Peet, out of money, but not out of luck.”

  Ginny stared enviously at the couple, now engrossed in each other. “What d’you mean?”

  “She was about to be sued earlier this year for not paying her bills, said she was going to declare bankruptcy, but then Quentin Peet’s son came to the rescue…”

  “The Quentin Peet?”

  “One and the same. I heard somewhere Peet senior took a very dim view of his son making an honest woman of the divine Dolores. I’m not surprised, seeing what’s going on over there…”

  “You mean that’s not Mr. Peet’s son she’s with?”

  “No, my dear, it’s not. Now look at me.” Alex tilted her chin in his direction. “I repeat, you don’t belong on the run-way. As I’ve pointed out to Aunt V., to your mother, it’s as a model, like Schiffer, in magazines, the top magazines, that you belong. Your mother’s right, you do have model potential, taller than average, a great bod—”

  Ginny wasn’t mollified. “I’m an ectomorph as opposed to a rounded endomorph. For months mother’s been watching every forkful of food I put in my mouth…”

  “Good for her.” Alex laughed. “To go on, you have natural animal grace and…” This time when he chucked her under the chin she didn’t object, “an adorable pointy chin.”

  She loved the way he was describing her, but where was it leading? He probably thought she was still angry when she didn’t answer. It wouldn’t hurt.

  “Seriously, Gin, you may have the kind of looks that can put you up there with the big money-making girls. You may be able to make the kind of money you’ll need to set up shop on Seventh Avenue. Then, with your business degree, you can cut it like it’s never been cut before.”

  Was it the piña coladas? Dollar signs were dancing before her eyes and she could see a shining white salon with one huge sunflower decorating the reception area of Virginia Walker Fashion, Inc., or should it be Ginny Walker Fashion? V.W. wasn’t bad either, except for its Virginia Woolf connotation, which to her related to the kind of floaty, flimsy, greenery, yellowy clothes she loathed.

  “We won’t know whether you have it or not until you sit before a professional camera, so first we have to find you a photographer, because so far a photographer hasn’t found you. We have to get you a contact sheet to take to the top model agencies…”

  It all sounded so easy, but somewhere behind the colada mist was still a modicum of common sense.

  “I haven’t the time,” she moaned. “For these last exams I have to study harder than ever and still manage to get to FIT and Bloomingdale’s…”

  “Forget FIT and
Bloomingdale’s,” Alex snapped. “You don’t need FIT now, and perhaps, with your kind of creativity, you never will. You hire people to do that kind of dog’s work.”

  What did he know?

  Alex stood up. The discussion was over. For a second he hesitated, looking again in the direction of the corner where Quentin Peet’s daughter-in-law was nuzzling the ear of somebody who apparently wasn’t her husband.

  Ginny stood waiting, hoping Alex would go over, so she could follow, be introduced and get a closer look at the woman’s slinky suit.

  No, he wasn’t going. Alex took her elbow and guided her out into the vestibule, where still no one was manning the desk. Nobody came running after them with a bill, either.

  “I want you to start experimenting with looks, hair, makeup, this weekend and I’ll look into photographers.” Alex appraised her. “How tall are you? Five eight, nine?”

  “I’m not”—hiccup—“sure. About five eight, I think.”

  “I’d say you’re a tad more, but in any case get into the habit of wearing three-inch heels or higher. In fact, that’s what I’ll buy you for being such a good girl. We’ll go shopping on Saturday.”

  Goodbye Bloomingdale’s. Esme’s sweet face came to mind. It was quickly blotted out by Claudia Schiffer’s.

  As they climbed the staircase to the real world, Alex went on, “I want you to burn every pair of sneakers you own…” He heard her gasp and turned around to give her his most wicked smile. “That is, until you’re regularly on the cover of Vogue. Then you can wear them to a ball for all I care. Then, but only then, like Schiffer, you can wear what you like.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  539 EAST 55TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY

  “Ginny, it’s for you.”

  This was embarrassing. She had only been in this lovely woman’s unlovely apartment for about forty-five minutes. Her suitcase was not yet unpacked, her sewing machine was still cluttering up the tiny hall, and already she was monopolizing the telephone.