vastly expensive custom-made ensembles for the very rich are not the profit-making end of the business. It is hard to believe that a twelve-thousand-dollar evening gown in peau de soie is a money-loser. But it is usually true. The wealthy women who shopped for custom-made clothes actually cost the designers money. Karen was only going to make money the way the other designers did: by selling cheaper goods to the mass market. It seemed like one of those nasty ironies of life: it was the middle class that was soaked for profits and that actually underwrote haute couture. As Arnold’s daughter, Karen had never felt comfortable with the deal. But she loved her work.
Now she looked at the shoddy clothes. ‘Who’s designing this shit?’ Karen asked rhetorically.
‘Well, I can see it ain’t you, baby. I wonder if Bette even looks at it? Even she isn’t this bad.’
Karen shrugged. There were fewer and fewer designers who understood how to cut. It was all about perfection of line and of material. The trick was to tame it but keep it alive. This stuff wasn’t just dead, it had never lived. God, she’d hate to have her name on something so disgusting. ‘What else does NormCo do?’ she asked.
‘Don’t they do Happening?’
‘Yeah, I think so. Let’s go check it out.’ Happening was a fairly new line of jeans and casual wear. For two years it had flown out of the stores, then NormCo had bought it last season.
They wandered around the sixth floor. Karen was starting to feel hungry, but it was way too early to think of lunch. Maybe brunch. That reminded her of Westport. ‘Hey, Dee …’
‘Hey, yourself.’
‘Want to come out to Westport for brunch this Sunday? Bring Tangela?’
‘I was wondering when you’d get around to asking me out to see Jeffrey’s house. But to eat?’ She paused to consider. ‘Karen, I love you but you’re a cripple in the kitchen.’
Karen frowned. ‘Don’t mock the afflicted. Just say I’m culinarily impaired. Anyway, don’t worry. I’m bringing it all in from the city.’
‘Honey, in that case, it’s definite.’ Defina gave Karen a big smile.
It took them another ten minutes to find Happening and ten more to go through the racks. The news wasn’t good.
‘Well,’ Defina said, ‘what they lack in design they make up for with lousy goods. What’s happened to them?’
‘NormCo?’ Karen asked. She knew that at the low end the basic rule of business was to try to do what the others in your price bracket were doing – only a little bit sooner, better, and cheaper. Happening had done it in the past but the line didn’t look like it was happening anymore.
‘Is it selling?’ Karen wondered aloud.
‘Let’s go ask a sales clerk.’
‘If we can find one.’
Because Karen was becoming too well known she always hung back on this part of their forays. She got herself busy near the try-on room while Defina went in search of sales information. While Karen waited outside a fitting room a woman walked by with her four-year-old daughter. The woman picked up a cheap cotton knit top. ‘What do you think of this color, Maggie?’ the woman asked the little girl.
‘No!’ she said. Karen was surprised at the child’s vehemence.
‘I guess it’s not your color,’ Karen said to the little girl and smiled at the woman, who was dressed in a pair of Gap jeans and a nondescript turtleneck.
The woman smiled back. ‘Oh, Maggie has always had really strong ideas about clothes,’ she said, and smiled down affectionately at her daughter. She took the child’s hand and the two of them walked away. Karen could see the crease of fat on Maggie’s arm at the elbow and the way her hair swung back and forth, neatly, as if it was cut from a single piece of cloth. From this angle Karen could just see a part of the child’s cheek, smooth as a plum and as delicious-looking.
Karen, who never cried, was blinking back tears when Defina returned to make her report. ‘Flew out of the store last season, grew roots this one,’ she told Karen.
‘Oh, great. Let’s let NormCo ruin our product line.’
‘You’re talking like you don’t have a choice. Do like Nancy Reagan said: “Just say no.’”
Karen lifted her head to try and see the mother and daughter as they consulted over another possible purchase. ‘Nothing is that easy,’ she told Defina.
They spent a couple more hours in the market and wound up having a late lunch at Mad 61, the other hot restaurant in the basement of Barney’s. Karen was depressed, and Defina, as always, sensed her mood.
‘Best shoes,’ Defina demanded.
It was an old game that they had been playing for years. It needed no introduction.
‘Roger Vivier’s.’
Defina raised her head, paused only a moment, and nodded. Sometimes it wasn’t so easy, and they argued for days. ‘Best florist,’ Karen popped back.
‘Renny,’ Defina answered with a shrug, as if everyone knew that. ‘Best knock-offs.’
‘For bags? Or dresses? Or what?’
‘Gowns.’
‘Victor Costa. Give me one that’s hard.’
‘Bags.’
‘José Suráez.’
Defina shook her head. ‘Those aren’t knock-offs. They don’t have the labels but they’re the exact same bag made by the same manufacturer. Except for Hermès.’
‘They’re still knock-offs. If they don’t have the label, then they’re not originals.’
‘If a tree falls in a forest …’ Karen had to smile. With her nonsense, Defina had lifted her mood. She didn’t even call Jeffrey to cancel, and she forgot – once again – to call Lisa.
For weeks Karen’s already frantic life had been interrupted by the camera crew from Elle Halle’s show. Richard, the director, had told her to ignore them, to go on with life as she usually lived it. But of course that was impossible. For one thing, she had to worry about how she looked all the time they were around. What would it do for her image if she looked like ca-ca on toast? Karen knew that in person she had the energy and style to carry herself pretty well, but the camera was not her friend. Despite her talent and her energy, the camera wasn’t fooled. It simply reported the facts. Karen knew she wasn’t very pretty, that she wasn’t thin enough, and that she wasn’t young anymore. The camera reduced her to a minimum. This wasn’t paranoia: Janet had a whole shelf of scrapbooks with clippings and pictures in them and Karen didn’t look really good in any of them. But Jeffrey and Mercedes had insisted that
Karen was dreading it. They were going to shoot it this afternoon and Karen felt as if she were going in for double root canal. Given the choice, she’d prefer the dental work. Because she had no illusions: despite her smile and her soft voice, Elle Halle liked to do extractions and she never used anesthetic. Her forte was getting hold of some decaying psyche part and tugging until her victim gave it up, showing the rotten root and all. Gently elicited confessions and tears were what spiced up an interview. Although Elle seemed empathic and warm to the television audience that loved her