“Aw, fuck ’em,” Glynnis said. “The press always gets everything wrong.” She threw the newspaper onto the coffee table in disgust, and sprang up onto her feet. Glynnis was chunky—in fact, she was fat—but had the energy of a gymnast. As a person, she was adorable, but as a client, she was every fashion designer’s worst nightmare, being no taller than five foot two. But Glynnis had called her that morning at eight a.m. having just heard the news of her nomination, begging Victory to dress her. Victory, she insisted, was the only one who wouldn’t try to put her in, as Glynnis said, “Some goddamned prom gown.”
Spring sunlight was coming in through the bank of windows in the front of her office, and for a moment, Victory felt wistful, thinking about how much she loved her life right now. Could it get any better, she thought, than sitting in her own office at the company she’d built from the ground up, and having just been named one of New York’s Fifty Most Powerful Women (it didn’t necessarily mean anything, but it was always nice to be recognized), and dressing Glynnis Rourke for the Oscars? Glynnis was just the beginning, of course; in the next few days she’d be inundated with requests from actresses and their stylists, all looking for the perfect gown—and indeed, Jenny Cadine’s stylist had already called. She would be almost perfectly happy, she thought, to just continue on like this forever. But of course, she couldn’t do that. In the next few days, she had to make the biggest decision of her life . . .
“Glynnis?” Victory asked, looking up at Glynnis, who was bouncing around, punching the air like a boxer. “Did you ever think that all this would happen to you?”
“That’s a question I ask myself all the time,” Glynnis said, taking a swipe at an imaginary opponent. “When you’re a kid, you have an idea in your head that you want to be rich and famous, but you don’t really know what that is. Then you come to New York, and you see it, and you wonder how the hell you’re ever going to get there. But you love what you do, and you keep doin’ it, and then you get a couple a’ breaks maybe, and you start to get somewhere. But getting to here, well, it’s like you happened to get on the right train. Those numb-nuts in Hollywood always say the universe decides”—punch, punch—“but that’s because most of ’em are so lame they can’t even take responsibility for wipin’ their own butts. But there’s something to it, I think. And if you get the opportunities, you gotta go with it. ’Course, you gotta be willing to pay the price, which is that you got assholes trying to kill you all the time and control you.” Glynnis fell into the chair exhausted, but in a moment recovered enough to jab the newspaper with her finger. “You gonna take that deal?” she asked.
Victory sighed, rubbing her bottom lip. “It’s a lot of money,” she said. “And I want to make money. I always think that we lie when we say that making money isn’t important—after all, if you look around, there’s no way to have real power without money, and that’s why men still rule the world, isn’t it? But I don’t know . . .”
“Well, lemme tell ya something,” Glynnis said, speaking out of the side of her mouth. “Making a couple a’ million is hard. But making twenty million is really hard. And then after you make it, guess what? For some weirdo reason, which I still haven’t quite figured out, it isn’t that much different from having two million. Hell, you know? It’s not even a plane.”
“Could be NetJet miles, though,” Victory said. And she suddenly felt pensive again. Where else could you find women like Glynnis and Wendy and Nico except New York? Certainly not in Paris, she thought, where even the women who were successful conducted themselves like they were a specialized species of overbred dog, with their scarves and their simple tweed skirts and their aloof demeanor. They never talked about money, and they never talked about taking over the world. Goddammit, she thought. She liked talking about money. And she liked talking about taking over the world. Even if it never happened, it was still exciting to think about it.
She picked up her sketch and stood up, walking to the long table under the window. “The problem is that it seems like easy money,” she said. “Twenty-five million to buy the company, and my name. I don’t trust easy money, Glyn, there’s always a catch. By the way, I’m thinking Beatles for you for the Oscars. Specifically Abbey Road; John Lennon in that white suit.”
“A suit, eh? I like that,” Glynnis said, jumping up and bouncing over to the table.
“Doll, you’re going to love whatever I put on you,” Victory said, playfully chiding her. “Don’t question the designer. Do you think you could go barefoot like Paul McCartney? And walk with your toes up?”
“Whaddya? Crazy?” Glynnis exclaimed, taking this suggestion in the teasing manner in which it was intended. “They won’t let you in without shoes—Julia Roberts tried it once, I think. It’s got something to do with the health code.”
“You remember that image of the Beatles on the cover of Abbey Road, don’t you?” Victory asked. “We’re going to do long pants, big bells pooling around your feet; long silk shirt, loose, light blue but not baby blue, something icy to set off your dark hair, and then a thin dark-blue heavy silk tie knotted at the breastbone and then the jacket—short, gorgeous light blue plaid with red and yellow threads—deceptively casual because it’s going to be covered in clear sequins.”
“Wow,” Glynnis exclaimed, holding up the drawing. “How the hell did you do that?”
“It’s what I do. I can’t figure out how you do what you do either.”
“Mutual admiration society, huh?” Glynnis said. And Glynnis, who was given to passionate and dramatic outbursts, suddenly got misty-eyed. “Jeez, Vic. You’d do this for me?”
“Of course, darling.”
“It’s so cool . . . Hell, I’m going to be the coolest woman at the Oscars.” And this business now taken care of, Glynnis alighted on another topic. “If I have to go to court, whaddya think I should wear?”
“Are you going to court?” Victory asked, raising her eyebrows.
“Well, I might, see?” Glynnis explained. She plopped herself back down in the chair, scooting forward to perch on the edge. “You know how you said you were worried about B et C taking your name? I got kind of the same problem brewing. It’s with that magazine I’m doing with Splatch-Verner. ’Course this stuff is supposed to be top secret and totally confidential, b
ut we girls can trust each other.” She sat back in her chair, narrowing her eyes. Watching her expression change, Victory was reminded of the fact that while the world saw Glynnis as a wacky comedienne, in real life she was a killer businesswoman. “See? I’m kinda pissed off, Vic,” she continued. “And you don’t want to mess with me when I’m pissed off.”
Victory nodded. “What’s the problem?” she asked.
“Well,” Glynnis said, folding her arms. “You ever heard of a guy by the name of Mike Harness?”
* * *
“NICO O’NEILLY, 42,” READ the entry in the Post’s “50 Most Powerful Women.” “Don’t let her legendary cool fool you. When it comes to magazines, they don’t come any hotter. She turned the aging Bonfire magazine into Splatch-Verner’s most profitable organ—and rumor is she’ll soon be tapped to overhaul the entire three-billion-dollar magazine division.”
Nico shook her head and closed the paper, having read this now for about the tenth time that morning. It wasn’t a disaster, it just wasn’t exactly what she needed right now. She kept picturing Mike Harness, sitting in his Upper East Side apartment breakfast room (or maybe he was in his country house, in Greenwich, Connecticut), eating cereal and having an apoplectic fit over the item. If the situation were reversed, she knew she’d be having a fit right now. She imagined that Mike had already been on the phone to Victor Matrick, demanding to know what was going on. And Victor reassuring him, telling him that everything was fine and the press always got everything wrong anyway, and who more than he should know that?
Except in this case, Nico thought, they had very decidedly gotten it right. Or nearly, anyway.
She put the paper back on the Early American farm table (a steal at $10,000, Seymour had explained, because authentic Early American furniture was so limited in quantity), and went to the stairs to call her daughter. “Kat-Kat, we’re going to be late,” she called up. She looked at her watch—it was ten minutes to twelve, which meant they still had a little bit of a cushion in which to easily make it to Madison Square Garden on time. But she didn’t want to take any risks in missing Seymour. It was the day of the Westminster Dog Show; at one-thirty, the miniature dachshund class was taking place, in which Seymour was showing Petunia. Nico was convinced “Tunie” was going to win, but even if she didn’t, Nico didn’t want Seymour to stress about whether or not she and Katrina had made it.
Feeling slightly nervous and excited on Seymour’s behalf, and eager to be on their way, she walked back across the foyer, glaring at the Post. Where on earth did they get that kind of insider information? she wondered. She hadn’t told anyone other than Seymour, Victory, and Wendy about the possibility of taking Mike’s job, and she knew none of them would tell anyone. Of course, ever since that secret weekend in St. Barts with Victor, she had solidified her position as Victor’s “golden girl,” and that was the kind of thing that got noticed. Especially since she and Victor had lunch every ten days or so, and were sometimes spotted in brief, huddled conferences in the hallway or at different events. Someone, she supposed, could easily make the assumption that she was being groomed for Mike’s job—or for something bigger than her own current position. But then another possibility struck her: Perhaps Victor had planted the item himself.
It sounded far-fetched, even ridiculous, but as she’d gotten to know Victor better in the last few months, she’d realized that nothing was beyond (or even beneath) him, given the right circumstances. Victor Matrick was a crafty old bastard who used his benign and hearty Santa Claus-like manner to catch people unawares. “The most important thing in business is a persona, Nico,” he was fond of saying. “People want to know immediately what they’re dealing with. And when they think about you, you’ve got to stand out in their minds—like one of those characters in a novel.”
Nico had nodded—not everything Victor said made sense at first (he really was a little crazy, but she’d found that most super-successful people were, to put it kindly, “different,” a label she supposed she’d have to apply to herself), but when she thought about what Victor said later, she usually found some kind of brilliance in it. “That’s what you’ve got, Nico,” Victor said. “Persona. That icy coolness. Makes people think you don’t care. It terrifies the hell out of them. But underneath that Grace Kelly exterior you care passionately. Come to think of it, Grace Kelly was supposed to be quite a passionate woman herself. She had all kinds of secret lovers.”