Fashionably Late. Olivia Goldsmith

you in the office before ten A.M. ever again, you’re fired!’

      Defina stuck out her pink tongue again and turned and walked out of the office. Now she’d avoid Karen. But she’d already had her say.

      And Defina was right. Karen shouldn’t take it all so personally. Fashion was a funny thing – it was creative but it was so grounded in reality that its very limitations were its opportunities. And everything started with the body. Karen looked down at her own and sighed. She was herself a part of the baby-boomer generation that was now aging and needed forgiving clothes.

      Young bodies, beautiful bodies, were the ones that didn’t need the disguise of clothes to cover a sagging line, rounding shoulders, or a thickening trunk. Young bodies could look great in a thirty-eight-dollar sweater dress from The Gap. It was older women who needed artifice. But the irony was that only young bodies modeled the clothes. Few girls would actually be able to afford Karen’s clothing. Karen knew her clientele: women her age and older who – no matter how thin – felt they had to camouflage their bellies or their thighs – or sometimes both. Like Defina, they’d put on weight. Or the few who hadn’t still had necks and elbows and upper arms that weren’t what they had been.

      Karen’s job was to help them look great. She’d created a code for her goals. She called it ‘the three esses and the two cees’: soft, sensual, and sexy; comfortable and classy. To do it, she herself had to concentrate. She certainly hadn’t achieved it in the new collection. Now, she lined up three sketch pads on the big table in front of her. For some unknown reason, most women designers worked with the cloth on the model, while most men worked in sketches. Karen did both. She wondered, for a minute, if that made her bisexual. She grinned at her own joke, but the blank pads wiped the smile off her face. It was always hard to get started. When sketching, she worked quickly, using the three at once, so if she got stuck on something she moved to another pad before she got cold. She had already opened her drawer and pulled out a number six pencil – she felt like she needed the freedom a number six would give her – when she was interrupted. She looked up, annoyed.

      ‘Yes, Mrs Cruz?’ Very unusual for Mrs Cruz to come to the front offices again. What was up?

      ‘You want more coffee?’

      ‘No. Thanks anyway.’ She looked guiltily at her cup. She’d been so involved with Defina she’d forgotten to drink up. Now it was cold. ‘That’s okay.’

      Without a word, Mrs Cruz picked up the cup, poured off the cold coffee into a jar, and refilled Karen’s mug with fresh, steaming café Cubano. Karen picked it up and smiled for the first time that morning. It felt so good to be taken care of.

      ‘Karen, I was going to talk to you when we first came up the elevator. But then we ran into Defina. Still, I should say something. There is talk among the girls in the back. I tell them to be quiet. But they still talk. About being sold. About being fired. It isn’t good for the work. What should I say? Or maybe you should say something.’

      Karen looked over her cup at Mrs Cruz. The negotiations with NormCo were top secret – no one should know about them, but somehow rumors always spread. Well, Karen couldn’t blame the workroom women. Garment workers had always been exploited, and just because she had tried to do things differently was no reason for them not to fear for their jobs.

      Despite being the owner of the company, Karen had been raised by Arnold to consider herself part of labor. She’d taken in his passion for fairness, what Belle called his ‘pinko socialism,’ from the time she was little. Arnold wasn’t great with kids, but in his own way he’d been sweet to Karen. He’d sit in his little study and explain some complicated issue – why the farm workers were striking, for instance, and why the Lipskys shouldn’t eat grapes from California – and Karen would listen soberly. She’d sooner cut her throat than cross a picket line, even today. So she understood the fears of the women workers.

      Still, today it felt like just one more thing to deal with. And Karen wished that once, just once, someone would give her the benefit of the doubt. To believe that since she’d always hired union and paid well and fairly, that she’d continue to. That since she’d always pulled the collection together in time, that she’d manage to do it again. That since she’d always kept Jeffrey happy, she’d still manage to, even with a child. Karen sighed and put down the empty cup. Like Bill Blass, she used workers on Eighth and Ninth Avenues, not in Hong Kong. And she’d always been union.

      ‘Mrs Cruz, I guarantee nobody’s job is in jeopardy. You have my promise. Can you tell everyone that?’

      Mrs Cruz smiled and nodded. She had a sweet smile, with tiny irregular teeth, like biwa pearls. ‘I already tell them. But I tell them again. Stronger.’ She made a motion to refill Karen’s cup but Karen waved her away.

      ‘No more. I’ve got enough shpilkiss already.’ Mrs Cruz had hung around the garment center long enough to know the Yiddish word for ‘restlessness.’ She nodded and left.

      There was a knock, although the door was open, and Karen looked up to see a hand extended and fisted, ready to knock again. ‘Yeah?’ Who the hell was this? No one had appointments this early. Even Janet, Karen’s secretary, wasn’t in yet.

      ‘Hell-ow!’

      Oh, God! Karen could tell by the accent that it was Basil Reed, the Brit consultant that NormCo had sent in to do a once-over. She had found him as condescending and as annoying as was humanly possible, but she’d managed to answer most of his questions and then stay out of his way. He’d finished his ‘fact-finding mission’ and submitted his report. What the hell was he doing here now?

      ‘I know the hours you keep, so I suspected you’d be in. Hope you don’t mind me knocking you up like this, but I just had another question or two to complete my due diligence. I came in from London yesterday, so my timing is still all balled up. Thought this might work for both of us.’

      Karen blinked. Had he just said something about knocking her up? Not fucking likely with her ovaries! His accent was so ‘uppah clahss’ he was almost impossible to understand. Something about him made her want to be her most vulgar and Brooklyn. Mayfair meets Bensonhurst. A new sitcom maybe?

      Basil had poked through all of her private business. He had insisted on knowing exactly who owned

KInc stock. It had embarrassed Karen and made her feel, somehow, vulnerable. The fact was that she alone owned fifty percent. The rest was divided between Jeffrey, who had close to thirty percent, and other members of the family. When Jeffrey’s father had put up the investment capital, he had insisted on the thirty percent with another ten reserved for his wife and daughters. When he died, the thirty percent had gone to Jeffrey. But it was Arnold who had insisted that fifty percent belong to Karen. He had incorporated them, and drawn up the papers. In lieu of fees, he and Belle and Lisa and Leonard split the remaining ten percent. She hadn’t liked Basil Reed learning all that.

      ‘Come in,’ she said now. ‘Take a seat.’ It was the last thing she wanted, but she knew Jeffrey wanted her to make nice.

      ‘I’ve only one question, really. What are you going to cover in your presentation to NormCo?’

      Oh, God! They were all going to drive her crazy with this NormCo meeting! Did Basil expect her to go over cash flow, inventory, sales and marketing costs right now? ‘I thought I’d just review the line,’ she said.

      ‘The lion?’ he asked.

      ‘Yeah. The new line.’

      ‘Is this some company logo you are considering? Hasn’t one already been used? I’m afraid I don’t know anything about a lion.’

      ‘You saw it. Remember?’ Jesus, these money men! they irritated Karen so much. All they thought about was numbers and had completely negated the actual product from whence the numbers came. ‘The line,’ she repeated.

      ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember. Is it an actual wild animal, or are you talking about