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‘Now I know I’m really in trouble. Nuclear holocaust wouldn’t wake you.’
‘Well. It wasn’t just the collection,’ Defina admitted. ‘Tangela came in at six this morning and made so much goddamn noise I couldn’t get back to sleep.’ More beautiful even than Defina had been, Tangela was giving both of them a lot of trouble. Karen sighed. If Tangela had been out all night it wouldn’t be a good afternoon in the fitting rooms.
Mrs Cruz scurried in with two cups, steaming full of cafe Cubano. Silently she put them down on Karen’s work table and scurried out. Karen sank into the glove-leather swivel chair behind her work table and sighed again.
She had hired Defina just a few months after she’d hired Mrs Cruz, more than a dozen years ago. Defina had been tall, black, beautiful, and hungry. She was still all four, but had put on forty or fifty pounds since then. Naomi Sims had made the cover of Fashions of the Times back in 1967 but it had taken a lot longer for women of color to be accepted on the runways. Out of desperation, when she was broke, Karen had employed Defina as a runway model in her first show, and she’d been the first Seventh Avenue designer to use a black model. Both the clothes and Defina had been a sensation, and they’d worked together ever since: through Karen’s marriage, Defina’s various affairs, through the birth of Defina’s daughter – Tangela was Karen’s godchild – and on and on. Defina ran the showroom and modelling staff now, handling the sales force and sometimes even taking orders. Karen and Defina were more than close: they were a living diary for one another. They remembered the small day-to-day memories of more than a decade of working together, often for ten or twelve or fifteen hours a day.
‘Listen, there were plenty of times you stayed out all night back when you were eighteen,’ Karen reminded her. ‘That’s what you do when you’re young.’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t let no guy start fucking me on the kitchen table and wake up my mama.’ Defina shook her head. ‘He had her panties off and her bare black ass was pressed down against my white marble-topped table like dough on a pie tin. He’d climbed up onto the table and had his Johnson out when I walked in.’ She shook her head.
‘What did you do?’
‘I threw his sorry ass out of my house! That’s my house, my kitchen, and my goddamn table. I don’t need to sponge up no funky pubic hairs of his off of it.’ Defina was a big woman – close to six foot tall – and Karen knew she was quite capable of throwing a man out of her elegant townhouse on East 138th Street. She’d done it many times before.
Now Defina crossed her arms, turned away, and stared out the window. ‘You know the saddest thing? I stopped myself – for only a minute – and wondered if I wasn’t just a little bit jealous. I mean, I know the man is worthless dogmeat, but I doubted myself for a moment. You know, it’s been almost half a year since I got any. Probably be more than that till I do get any.’ Defina shook her head.
Karen patted her shoulder. ‘Hey, just remember. It isn’t you. It’s New York in the nineties. None of my single girlfriends can find a decent man. If I wasn’t with Jeffrey, I’d kill myself.’
‘Well, just try being single, almost forty, and a black woman. Forget it! There ain’t no one out there for me. Any black man with a brain, a job, and a Johnson that’s working is chained down by the bitch he’s already with.’ Defina shook her head.
She dropped the street argot. Sometimes Karen felt Dee used it to protect herself. Defina sighed. ‘I don’t have to tell you how hard it is. I get lonely but I don’t want to settle. And I don’t want a white man. Not that I’ve had too many offers lately.’ She shook her head. ‘But what kind of example is that for Tangela? I chose to raise her in Harlem. I wanted her to be black, to be proud. But I also wanted her to be educated, to know all three Mets: the opera, the museum of art, and the baseball team. Maybe I’ve pushed her too hard. I knew it would be confusing for her, making her exceptional, but in her generation there are other educated, cultured blacks. Doctors’ sons. Lawyers’ sons. They’re going to be good men. That’s why it’s so important that Tangela meets a good man now, not some drug-dealing trash like this poor excuse for a pecker.’
Karen patted Defina again, then walked across the room to her chair. The big black woman turned to her and brightened. ‘I know what I’ll do,’ she said, going back to street talk. ‘I’m gonna put a hex on him,’ Defina said. ‘Gonna see Madame Renault and put a hex on him.’
Karen never knew whether Defina was serious or not when she talked about hexing. She knew that Defina did visit Madame Renault often and wasn’t sure whether the woman was a palm reader, a voodooer, or something worse. Karen didn’t like to inquire.
‘What did you say to Tangela?’
‘Don’t matter what I said. Matters what she heard. Which was nothing. Purely nothing. She was passed right out. Couldn’t rouse her. Left here there, bare-assed, on the cold marble. She’ll have a hell of a backache when she comes to.’ Defina shook her head. ‘Doesn’t the girl have any shame?’ she asked. Her pink lower lip trembled.
Karen got up from her chair and crossed the room. She put her arms around Defina – no easy trick. Karen held Dee for a moment until Defina hugged her back. ‘Oh, Dee, she’ll be okay. It’s just a phase. She’s a good girl.’
Defina wiped her eyes. ‘She’s been a bitch to raise. I never counted on her being so good-looking. It’s a curse for a black woman. It draws trouble to us. She’s too pretty for her own damn good.’
Karen laughed. ‘That’s what your grandma said about you. You sound just like her.’ Defina had been raised by her paternal grandma after her own mother died of a drug overdose.
‘Well,’ Defina said, brightening, ‘that’s the truth. And I didn’t turn out too bad.’
Karen laughed. ‘Oh, you’re bad all right. I saw you flirting with that photographer at the Oakley Awards. Was he drinking age?’
‘C’est pour moi de savoir et pour vous à découvrir.’
Karen made a face. ‘It sounds fancy in French but it’s still just fourth grade “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” You’re a baby. And you still don’t know how to dress. Take that turban thing off, why don’t you? And lose the beads.’ Defina wore most of Karen’s line and looked ravishing in it. The beiges, creams, and soft browns that Karen favored worked to perfection against Defina’s deep brown skin. Defina was very black; the darkest mahogany with only the slightest red undertone. And the layers of silk, cashmere, chiffon, cotton, and linen suited her down to her undergarments. But to Karen’s complete frustration, Defina insisted on adding enough jewelry, chains, beads, amulets, and charms to open a botanica. And this didn’t include the scarves, the clacking bangle bracelets, or the batik turban.
Now Karen shook her head. ‘Jesus, you have everything hanging off your neck but the kitchen sink. You’re a woman, not a store window! What is all that stuff? Why don’t you just stick your IUD on a chain and wear it around your neck?’
‘There’s an idea,’ Defina mused. ‘But I don’t use an IUD anymore, and I don’t think punching a hole through my diaphragm would be good for my uterus. Not that it gets much use.’ Defina paused then to consider. ‘Maybe I still do have my old copper T somewhere. I like copper jewelry.’ Karen shuddered. Sometimes she couldn’t tell when Defina was putting her on. ‘So, speaking of the uterus, how did it go yesterday with the doctor of all doctors?’ Defina asked.
Karen turned her head, just a bit, away from Defina and toward the windows that looked south.
‘Okay,’ she said, but she knew she wouldn’t get away with it.
‘Yeah. And I’m first cousin to the Duchess of Kent. What’s with you, girlfriend? Still trying to keep secrets from old Defina?’
‘No. Well … Look, I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Honey, I told you over and over again: you want babies, you come with me to my herb woman and …’
‘Defina, would you stop it? You’re a Columbia University graduate and I am not going in for Santeria. No chicken’s blood will be shed in my name. I know you don’t really believe in that voodoo.’
‘It isn’t voodoo, and it isn’t Santeria, either. I wouldn’t have anything to do with that tacky, country thing. But Madame Renault has powers.’
Defina’s father was Haitian, though her mother had been from South Carolina. Raised in Harlem by her father’s mother, old Madame Pompey, Defina was into some weird stuff. For two years now, she’d been begging Karen to consult with Madame Renault on fertility, and had even gone so far as bringing Karen a little velvet bag, sewn closed, to sleep with. Only God and Madame Renault knew what was inside it. Defina had cautioned Karen not to open it, and Karen hadn’t even been tempted. It was a measure of her desperation that she had actually put the bag under her pillow for a few nights, until Ernesta found it and threw it away. Anyway, it hadn’t worked.
‘Well, I can see when a subject is closed. So, listen: I’m concerned about the Paris show. I really am.’
‘Great. Like I’m not already frantic. Can’t you undermine my self-confidence a little more? You want me to jump out the window?’
Defina laughed. ‘Knowing you, on the way down you’ll be yelling out that you want me to cut velvet.’
Karen had to laugh. It was the oldest joke in the rag trade: the dress manufacturer at the end of a bad season who didn’t know what to do next. In despair, he throws himself out the window, but on the way down he sees what his competitors are doing and yells up to his partner, ‘Sam! Cut vel-v-e-t!’ Karen knew that the business was in her blood that deep.
But the pressure felt more intense than ever. Maybe it was the Oakley Award that had heated everything up. But along with the rest of the stuff she had on her mind, Karen had decided that this was the season she would finally show in Paris – and she was petrified. Her fear wasn’t helping the collection. Defina’s comments weren’t helping either. ‘This stuff has got to be really good. It’s got to be great. I’m not going to get away with a little deconstruction or grunge.’
Defina pursed her lips and stuck out her tongue. It was very, very pink against her smooth black face. ‘Grunge,’ she spat dismissively. ‘The lambada of style.’ Dee’s face turned serious. ‘Look, you’ve always been different from the other designers.’
‘Yeah. For one thing all of them are gay and male.’
Defina shrugged. ‘Honey, saying “gay male fashion designer” is like saying “white Caucasian.” It’s redundant. Anyway, they’re going to be showing all kinds of wild stuff. This line can’t compete. The thing is, Karen, that none of the collection is bad. It just ain’t good.’
‘Oh, great. There’s a comfort. I’ve finally lived up to my ambition: to achieve mediocrity. And just in time for the pret. What should I do? Copy myself? You know what Chanel used to say? ‘When I can no longer create anything, I’ll be done for.’
‘Hey, Karen, don’t take it so personally. It’s a business. I figure as long as you don’t copy out of the Koran you’ll be okay. That nearly ended Claudia Schiffer’s and the Kaiser’s careers.’ Defina raised her already arched eyebrows. ‘And also try to remember that sarcasm is the devil’s weapon. I’m just trying to help.’
‘Well, you ain’t helping this morning. Do me a favor and don’t come in early again. In fact, if I see 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 photos or graphic design?’
‘A wild animal?’ Karen was completely confused. What the hell drug was he on?
‘The lion. Is it tame, then?’
Then she got it. ‘Not a lion. A line. The clothes we’re showing this season.’ He was a twit, but Karen had to admit that with her Brooklyn accent she did pronounce the word with two syllables a lot like the way he pronounced the animal name.
‘Oh. Yes. Of course. How very stupid of me.’ But Basil didn’t sound as if he was apologizing, nor as if he thought it was he who was ‘stew-pit.’ Jeffrey must be right about how bad I sound, Karen thought. She thought of her speech at the Oakley Awards and nearly blushed. Had she sounded awful? Jeffrey had asked her twice to have diction lessons but she’d refused. ‘I yam who I yam,’ she’d told him, doing a pretty good Popeye imitation to cover her hurt feelings. Maybe she should reconsider.
Basil Reed stood up. ‘Well. Very good, then. Splendid. I’m sure Bill will be riveted.’ Karen thought that if rivets should go into anyone she would like to see them through Basil Reed’s own forehead. ‘Well, I’m off then. See you Monday next.’
‘Yeah. Monday next,’ she said, and gratefully watched the twit leave her office. But before she could get back to work, the phone rang. It was her private line. Otherwise, she’d ignore it. But maybe it was Jeffrey, wanting to make up. She lifted the phone.
‘Karen, what was that you were wearing at the Waldorf?’
God, it was Belle. Karen wished she could just put the receiver down quietly and pretend this call was not going to happen. Oh well. Too late now. What in the world was her mother talking about? Belle hadn’t been to the Oakley Awards. ‘Did you see Newsday? The picture is terrible. You look big as a house. But what are you wearing? It’s all wrinkled.’
Karen hadn’t seen the papers but she knew that Mercedes spent a lot of time placing pictures from all of the social events that Karen and Jeffrey attended. And of course she’d push the Oakley Awards. Karen had started to get used to seeing her picture in the paper, and it was all for business. But she wasn’t used to Belle’s Monday morning quarterbacking. ‘It was satin, Ma. Satin wrinkles.’
‘But for pictures! For pictures, Karen. And why were you looking down? It makes you look like you have three chins.’
How could she explain to Belle what it was like to be barraged by paparazzi popping shots at you? Why, even the Queen of England had been caught once with a gloved finger up her nose! How could Karen explain to Belle that she had no choice over which angle of her was shot and that it was an honor for a picture – any picture – to get into the columns. After all, she had hired Mercedes Bernard to spend all of her time doing nothing but wooing the press to get this very result. But, of course, Belle hadn’t just called to harp. She’d want to stay on the line until the unspoken question was answered: why Belle had not been there. ‘Mother, I’ll call you back,’ Karen promised.
‘Jeffrey looks very nice,’ her mother said, and Karen almost laughed out loud. It was the same old Belle tactic: ‘Lisa calls me every day. Why can’t you?’ Karen shook her head.
‘I’ll talk to you later,’ Karen said, and hung up the phone. It rang again.
‘Karen?’ It was the unbearably nasal whine of Lenny, their accountant. ‘Look, I’m sorry to bother you,’ he began apologetically – Lenny always sounded apologetic – ‘but
KInc is going to be late paying its federal withholding tax. After last time, you made me promise to tell you if it happened again. So now you know. Don’t tell Jeffrey I told you.’
‘How much do we owe?’
‘Not a lot. About twenty-four thousand.’
‘So why don’t we pay it?’
‘Jeffrey says he needs to pay the factor.’
‘Goddamnit, Lenny! We owe it to our staff to make their tax contribution first. Plus, now we’ll have to pay penalties.’ She heard her voice rise. Well, it was no use blaming Lenny. He just did what he was told and at least he called her and warned her this time. ‘Thanks, Lenny,’ she sighed. ‘I’ll take care of it.’
Finally left alone, Karen closed her eyes and tried to regroup. She looked up to the framed Chanel quote she had over her office door. ‘Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportion.’ She usually spent the two quiet hours of her morning here, in her corner office, working on sketches. Without this time, how and what would she do with the fit models this afternoon?
She picked up the pencil. What was wrong with her? Why was she so blocked? She thought of poor Halston again: once he sold out, his first season’s line had succeeded, but after that all the rest had flopped. Was that what was bothering her? Well, she wouldn’t let it. Quickly, deftly, she threw a half-dozen lines on the page. A sleeve, a shoulder, and then the flowing line of a smock. No, she would make it a dress. She moved to the next pad and repeated the sleeve, narrowing it a bit, then sketched the shoulder and now a longer smock-like line. Not right. It looked like Kamali on a bad day. Karen swiveled her chair just a little bit to the left, starting this time with a simple rounded neckline, then the shoulders, and then the smock-like swirl. She put the pencil down and looked at the three pads. Jesus Christ. She’d just done her first maternity collection! Karen looked at the three attempted sketches, the obvious belly bulge below the breast line. She bit her lip. Was Jeffrey right? Was she obsessed? She would have sworn that she was not thinking, at least not consciously, about the visit to Dr Goldman. But her left brain clearly knew what her right brain was doing. Well, she wouldn’t need any clothes like these. She picked up the number six pencil and scribbled across all three pads. Goddamnit! The pencil point broke, and the pencil folded under the pressure of her hand and cracked in half.
Karen stood up and threw the broken pencil into the trash. She went to her purse and took out the two photos that she’d secreted in the side pocket. She stared at the sober little girl in the pictures. Then she put them away. Perhaps Jeffrey was right. Maybe searching for the mother of this little girl would open a can of worms.
Well, she would never get anything done this morning. Now it was not a question of discipline. From long experience Karen had developed her creativity muscle and had learned how to force herself to keep her ass in the chair until something developed. But she also had learned from long experience when nothing was going to happen. This, she could tell, was one of those times. Her confidence was shaken. Let’s face it, she told herself. You need to do some really good work and you’re not in any shape to do it.
‘Aunt Karen?’ Karen looked up, glad of an interruption now. Her niece, Lisa’s oldest daughter, stuck her head in around the corner of the door.
‘Stephanie! Hooray! You made it into the city in one piece! All ready for work?’ Karen smiled at her niece despite her panic. Oh, God! How could she have forgotten? Today was Stephanie’s first day in her internship, but neither Jeffrey nor Casey had been able to come up with something for her to do. Karen could just have her help out Janet, but photocopying would be such a drag. Karen had meant to do something about this before, but with all the other worries she hadn’t gotten to it.
