Satin Dreams

All things turn to dust

Save beauties fashioned well;

The ivory breast

Outlives the citadel.

—Theophile Gautier

Prologue

You can’t do this on your own. You’ll never make it. The voice on the transatlantic telephone line was crisply bullying. Your trust pays only, what—twenty-five or thirty thousand a year? it asked scornfully. That’s nothing for you, Catherine, the way you’re used to living. Come home. You’re only making a fool of yourself.

The girl in the bed scraped strands of thick red-gold hair back from her face. She rolled over on her stomach to squint at the clock on the night table. What time is it? she mumbled.

The clock’s glowing digital numbers said 5:30 A.M., nearly midnight in Washington, but not yet dawn in Paris. The shabby bed-sitting-room was still dark.

What do you want? Even half-awake, she knew the answer. They wanted to frighten her. Make her do what they wanted. The calls were supposed to put her off-balance. Then came threats.

She sat up, clamping the telephone receiver between bare shoulder and chin, the bright mass of her hair spilling over her naked arms and shoulders. You know, I can fix this kind of thing, she said. I can put a stop to this.

Not this time, Catherine. A few telephone calls ago, the voice had been sure it would persuade her. Now it was openly menacing. From now on, you’re going to find out how serious we are.

She shivered, drawing the bedclothes around her, the worn sheets contrasting sharply with the exquisite hand-embroidered satin nightgown she wore. Sooner or later, these disembodied voices on the transatlantic lines would get tired of threatening her. Then the pressure wouldn’t be confined to just telephone calls.

I know you’re serious, but I’m not going to be bullied, she blurted. I’ll—I’ll change my telephone number. I can even have it disconnected!

Don’t be childish, Catherine. You should be concerned with how you’re going to continue to exist this way. It paused, significantly. When so much is waiting for you here.

She knew very well what was waiting for her, how much they wanted her. She also knew that everything she was doing in Paris—where she worked, where she was living—had been investigated thoroughly.

She clutched the old blanket around her. The room was bleak, a stove and sink hidden away behind a folding screen. At the end of the room, the window, if one leaned out far enough to see past the brick wall of the building next door, offered a view of the neighborhood around the French government radio and television building. Beyond that, the slope of Paris’s Right Bank led down to the River Seine. The district was hardly a place one would want to live if one could afford anything better.

I can always go someplace else, she reminded the voice. What would you do if you couldn’t find me?

The voice in Washington said carefully, Is that a threat?

She bit her lip. How she wished she could threaten them. Take it any way you want to.

Before the voice could answer, she quickly rolled over on her stomach and slammed the receiver back in its cradle.

That takes care of that, she thought. Until next time.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, wincing at the icy floor under her bare feet. It was time to get up; her caller had actually done her a favor by ringing her at dawn.

Static electricity made the satin nightgown cling to her body as she bent to turn on the small gas heater. She saw herself reflected in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door: a sleepy young woman with a tumbled mane of startling red hair that contrasted with pale skin and violet eyes. The mirror-image in the clinging nightgown had a model’s professionally slender body—a little more well-rounded in Paris than in New York, where the standard was almost skeletal—enchantingly leggy, with small, thrusting breasts.

Catherine studied herself dispassionately. She was so changed, she hardly recognized herself. The music student with orange hair was so drastically altered, flesh seared away by a more than twenty-pound weight loss, as to be hardly recognizable. You wouldn’t think that was all that was needed to make a person professionally beautiful, but it was. That, and the four unbelievably expensive days she’d spent at Alexandre de Paris’s salon in the avenue Matignon. Her body was sleek, her hair changed to a shade so glorious it could never be found in nature. Even her skin had been bleached of its few freckles. She wondered if they knew that. That she no longer looked like the woman they wanted.

With the space heater left on high, she crawled back in bed and sat hunched, arms wrapped around the expensively skimpy satin gown, waiting for the room to warm. The earlymorning call that had dragged her from sleep was not going to be the end of it, she knew. It would get worse.

Still shaking, she stared at the telephone.

Do it, she told herself. Fight back—if only to say you won’t put up with being bullied. The multiple electronic clicks of French and American telephone systems resounded loudly in her ear as she dialed the numbers for New York City. The connection, more than a thousand miles away, began to ring.

It didn’t ring long. When it was picked up, she said, fiercely, I’ve just been called again. It woke me up. It’s only five-thirty in the morning here!

Oh, my God. Where are—

She interrupted, When I said I didn’t want this to happen anymore, my caller told me that this was the way it was going to be from now on.

Wait, the voice said hurriedly. Cath—

I told him if I had to, I’d take care of it. So I’m taking care of it now, do you understand? Her voice rose. I want it to stop, the telephone calls—everything! I want you to call off your goons!

Wait a minute, don’t hang up, he pleaded. "I want to talk to you. We all want to talk to you! Catherine, please—do you realize I haven’t heard your voice in months?"

Fix it, she told him shortly. Make them stop.

Catherine, darling, listen to reason. He didn’t conceal his urgency. Listen to me. There’s nothing we can’t talk out, nothing we can’t—

Fix it! She’d never talked to anyone this way. But this was the new Catherine.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. The recording machine had been activated the moment she called the unlisted number, and she knew the conversation was being taped. She had expected that. What she hadn’t expected was his response.

No.

N-no? For a moment she didn’t believe it. "You can’t mean that. I called you, that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? When there was no answer, only silence on the wire, she cried, You can’t do this to me! You’re trying to ruin my life!"

Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes, Catherine. Think about it for a moment, he said, almost pleasantly. The power is all on our side. And yet you have none.

She gripped the receiver, hearing their voices accusing her. You ‘re being unreasonable. You’d cut off your nose to spite your face.

Don’t hang up, the voice in New York told her. Are you listening? God, I feel we’re closer to getting this settled than we’ve ever been! Just the fact that you called me—

She was staring at her reflection in the mirror as though watching someone else. What your goons are doing to me, what you’re telling them to do, she said, isn’t going to make any difference.

They’re not goons, they’re lawyers. They just want to—

You’ve lost. She took a deep breath, trying to convince herself. That’s why you keep following me, tormenting me. You’ve lost, but you just don’t want to give up!

Catherine? Catherine? He sensed what was coming. Damn it—listen to me!

The voice was still shouting as she reached over the bed and put the receiver back, breaking the connection.

You lost, she said to the empty room. No matter what you do, you can’t touch me now.

But she shivered again. Now all she had to do was make herself believe it.

Le Métier à Tisser

The Loom

One

Assistant couturier Gilles Vasse stood partly hidden in the hanging slabs of dark-brown glass panels and rows of tiny light bulbs, chain-smoking Gauloise cigarettes and somberly viewing Mortessier’s afternoon customers in the first row of seats.

The salon’s showroom was a madhouse, just as it had been for the past two years at Christmas. December was traditionally the holiday lull in Paris fashion before the haute couture houses showed their spring collections, but this snowy winter afternoon the crowd for the regular 3 P.M. showing had overflowed the chrome and white-leather chairs provided for customers. There had been an embarrassing fifteen-minute delay in getting started while the vendeuse, her assistant the seconde, and the receptionist from the foyer had gone to round up more chairs from the fitting rooms.

Gilles had heard all the racket at his drawing table in the design room, and had come out to see what was going on. Now he stood in the hanging glass panels that masked the models’ entrance area with his silver ashtray in one hand, watching the saleswomen try to restore some sort of order. His handsome, young face with its high cheekbones and sensitive mouth was dramatically offset by his trademark black sweater and tight, black jeans. In the audience, two wives of Arab oil sheiks decked out in lavish diamond jewelry from Bulgari, the oil kingdom’s favorite jeweler, were rather grudgingly making room in the front rows for some Japanese businessmen. Behind them a clutch of uniformly ash blond women with the look of Houston and New York, the mainstay clientele of Paris high fashion, had settled into their seats.

It seemed a little bizarre to Gilles that Americans and Japanese—not to mention the wives of Middle Eastern oil sheiks—would come thousands of miles to Paris to shop when there were perfectly adequate, perhaps even more expensive high fashion salons in Tokyo, Kuwait, and Dallas. But the lure of a Paris label was an obsession among the world’s wealthy.

Not that he was complaining, he thought hastily. All he wanted to do was become fabulously wealthy himself.

The business offer Gilles had been mulling over for several days popped up in his mind again. He paused, cigarette suspended over silver ashtray, his expression suddenly abstract.

The announcement of a new haute couture house by, incredibly enough, a New York clothing manufacturer, had rocked Paris months ago. Now the gossip in the insular world of haute couture said that Jackson Storm, the emperor of American mass-market fashion, needed a French designer or else his multimillion-dollar, widely heralded couture fashion project would not get off the ground. He wanted a good Paris designer, an exceptional one—someone young and ambitious and eager to break out on his own. Someone, Gilles thought, sighing, like me.

Behind the alcove there was a faint rustle of fabric, of clothes being adjusted, followed by the seconde’s low hiss as she cued the first model. Mortessier’s show was beginning, this cold winter afternoon, with the somewhat passé best sellers of the fall and winter collection, even though some of the trendier Paris houses were already showing the first of their spring collections.

As the signal for the show to begin, the recorded music system segued from the pounding beat of a French rock group into a rendition of an old Beatles song, Yesterday. Rudi Mortessier, the premier couturier and owner, loved Paul McCartney; it was the cue for the opener, winter coats, to begin.

Gilles knew he should go back to work. But the wedding gown he was working on depressed him. He was an artist; he hated creating on demand, especially anything as predictable as a white satin outfit for a Danish countess who was marrying a Copenhagen furniture manufacturer. He was just killing time hiding in the glass panels and watching the show; he knew Mortessier’s fall collection, most of which he had designed himself, to the point of boredom.

But as the first mannequin brushed past him, lifting her eyes in surprise to find Gilles standing there, he told himself that someone was needed to stand there and check out the mannequins, see that their turns were kept up to standard. The girls got amazingly careless, even had a tendency to move through their routines too fast unless someone kept an eye on them. And, Gilles had to admit, he enjoyed watching the American model, Alix. Even now, after so much time at Mortessier’s, she was phenomenal.

It was incredible that he almost hadn’t hired her that day nearly three months ago on the grounds that she was much too beautiful for a couture house mannequin. Now she was Mortessier’s, perhaps even Paris’s, top model. And still wildly beautiful.

Gilles fished out the crumpled pack of Gauloises from his jeans and scooped another cigarette from it into his mouth. There was so much about Alix (he wasn’t even sure that was her real name) that still remained a mystery. Had she really been a music student at the Sorbonne as she said? A student who had thrown up a promising career when she’d failed a vital exam. He did know that she’d had a make-over at a chic salon de beauté, the famed Alexandre of Paris; she’d admitted as much in her interview. That was unusual; few models looking for work had that sort of money to spend.

He watched the American girl glide out into the show area in a violently lavender felt coat, pause, and turn on her heel. She held the coat open to show a matching lavender wool dress underneath. There was a little murmur of pleasure from the first few rows of seats, then a ripple of protracted aaahs through the back rows of customers.

The lavender felt coat was not one of Gilles’s favorites. He’d almost dropped the number from the winter collection when the bulky layers of felt seemed too overwhelming for the wealthy, middle-aged women who were Mortessier’s usual customers. But once Alix had begun showing the number, it had become a best seller.

If there was an immutable truth in the world of fashion, Gilles knew, it was that a mannequin need not be beautiful nor even very pretty; in fact, a model who was too good-looking was a definite liability, as she detracted from the clothes. Instead, top-flight models had an almost mystical faculty for making clothes look good. It was a gift defying analysis, but all of them had it.

Of course, one could not do without the basics. It was necessary to have a slender body with level shoulders and hipbones—even though Mortessier’s did not demand the bizarre thirty-two-inch hip measurements the haute couturier Ungaro was said to require. The best mannequins had exceptionally long legs, reasonably sized feet, and a sexy, well-shaped bust, preferably a small one.

"C’est fou, the way l’Américaine sells," a voice murmured at Gilles’s elbow.

Rudi Mortessier, fourth-ranked couturier in Paris after Dior, St. Laurent, and Givenchy, looked like a small, plump gray rabbit with thinning hair. Rudi had just come from the atelier where the spring lines were in production. There were untidy scraps of multicolored threads all over his vest.

Of course, everything about this American girl is wrong. Rudi’s eyes twinkled amiably behind thick, rimless spectacles. "The hair, the purple eyes like a circus poster—tchah, everything about her is terrible! He flapped small white hands in mock despair. Except, of course, that when it is all put together, she is irresistible."

Gilles stepped a fraction of an inch back from his employer. You wanted her hair that color, he said, not me.

Rudi shot him an enigmatic glance. So I did, so I did. He turned his attention back to the model, who was revolving slowly on a lighted gold Plexiglas disk set in the floor. Of course, in the old days we would never have hired her, this technicolored siren of yours. Taste was more subdued then. Who would believe, the little couturier mused, violet eyes with that incredible color of hair? It is like this terrible rock music—it hurts the mind!

Impulsively, Rudi put his hand out to touch Gilles’s arm.

"Ah, but look at the Japanese there in the front rows. They are enchanted! They are going to buy this lilac coat because of her. Merde, this coat is a monstrosity, Gilles, he observed suddenly. Lavender and thick, horrible felt. Have you no shame?"

Gilles didn’t answer. He designed his avant-garde clothes as an attack on the senses, like the rock music blaring from the showroom speakers. Gilles Vasse creations were meant to be experienced, as well as seen. Actually, Gilles had often declared, the wearer was fairly irrelevant—as long as she was skinny. Gilles’s creations were designed to stand alone. Of course, in the old days haute couture had been quite different. Afternoon showings were dignified, reverent affairs, not the noisy, with-it spectaculars of the present-day avenue Montaigne. Some showings were still that way in the older establishments across the city, in the district around the rue de la Paix where the last of the old guard, Gres, Patou, and Chanel, still held forth. There the collections were virtually silent, decorous affairs where the vendeuse, the main saleswoman, knelt discreetly beside the chairs of important customers, answering their questions in whispers. And where the mannequins did nothing more than gracefully glide into the salon’s cathedral-like stillness, holding a piece of cardboard with the number of the design, to aid in ordering.

I don’t know how she does it, Rudi Mortessier cocked his head thoughtfully as he watched the redheaded model go into another turn to show the coat. He gave his assistant couturier a small nudge with his elbow. Eh, Gilles, there are even times when Alix reminds me of Lisianne. Do you see it? She has the same air of secrets. It’s very intriguing.

Gilles stiffened. He told himself that it meant nothing, the passing reference to his wife, Lisianne; Rudi was always reminiscing about former great models, old couture houses, past fashions. But Rudi’s hand on his arm was another matter.

Gilles moved a fraction of an inch away from his employer. Not if you could see Lisianne now. His wife was seven-months pregnant.

My friend, Lisianne is still gloriously beautiful. Rudi pursed his lips and kissed his fingertips in homage. I saw her last week in the Tuileries. She was magnificent!

She doesn’t think so. Gilles looked away, frowning. "She is very sensitive about—about this pregnancy. Naturally, I am happy about the baby, he added quickly. But I will be even happier when it is over with."

The stereo tape switched to a rendition of an old Dire Straits hit, Walk of Life, and the American girl in the lavender coat exited through the smoked-glass panels to the left of the men. A beautiful Ethiopian, six feet tall and slender as a rail, squeezed past Gilles and Rudi Mortessier and entered the salon wearing another felt coat, this one in orange with the winged collar drawn up almost to the brim of a bizarre yellow sombrero.

The affectionate hand crept back to Gilles’s arm. That hat, I thought you had dropped it from the show, Rudi whispered. How many orders have we had on this one?

Gilles didn’t move. It was no secret in Paris that Rudi Mortessier was in love with him. At one time, barely two years ago, when Gilles had just begun to work for Rudi, the situation had made his life hell. They had been one of Paris’s most gossiped-about triangles: Lisianne, the beautiful Ungaro model, the famous couturier Rudi Mortessier, and his protégé, twenty-two-year-old Gilles Vasse. The gossip had stopped abruptly when Gilles, goaded beyond endurance, had attempted his own life with a gun Rudi had given him.

I wish you had dropped the hat. They hate it. Rudi sighed. At least the American would have shown it with spirit.

I needed Alix for the lavender coat, Gilles said stiffly.She can hardly model everything in the collection.

The pressure of the hand on Gilles’s arm increased as the little couturier craned to look past the partitions, checking the reactions of the sheiks’ wives in the front row to the orange coat being shown.

Ordinarily the Arab oil ladies loved orange almost as much as they loved fire engine red or anything dripping with sequins. But they were not marking their order cards. The atelier gossips that you have made your Alix wear contact lenses, Rudi murmured. That there is no such color as this girl’s purple eyes.

Gilles looked startled. "Contact lenses? Haven’t those poules back there in the sewing room got enough to keep them busy? What merde!"

Gilles was aware that he ought to move out of Rudi’s grasp. The argument with his fretful, unhappy wife that morning, the unfinished wedding gown design, and the fact that Rudi seemed always to find a way to put his hands on him were, at the moment, particularly galling. Thank God Rudi didn’t know he was considering a job at the American’s couture house! That was one secret, miraculously enough in the gossip-ridden world of Paris fashion, that had remained confidential.

Gilles shook off his employer’s light touch, God, Rudi, if you don’t like Alix, fire her!

He hadn’t meant to shout. Almost instantly, the seconde responded with a hiss for them to be quiet.

Rudi was staring at him. Gilles, what is the matter with you? You are very touchy these days. When the younger man said nothing, he sighed. "Alors, I do not wish to annoy you. I will go. I, too, have work to do."

Gilles knew he had hurt Rudi’s feelings and, despite his annoyance, he owed everything he had to Rudi. Wait, he muttered ungraciously, don’t go. Alix is coming back with number twenty-four. The ‘fantaisie’ you like.

Rudi’s face immediately showed delight. Inwardly, Gilles cringed. You see, he told himself, it’s impossible to work under these conditions. At that moment he would have accepted the American dress manufacturer’s offer. Eagerly.

Gilles, what is bothering you? Rudi was watching him, baffled by his volatile mood. I feel that you are—

His voice trailed off as the American mannequin, Alix, came up behind them. A head taller than both men, she was wearing a magnificent glittering sheath, the space-age fantaisie Gilles had mentioned. Seed pearls and silver sequins clung to her body, shooting sparks of pale fire. Her burnished red-gold hair had been sprayed into antennalike projections from which fell a pearl-beaded fringe that trembled on either side of her delicately tinted cheeks. Her extraordinary eyes were indeed the color of wild violets. With her ivory skin, red hair, and startling eyes, she was unearthly, beautiful.

Predictably, another round of aaahs greeted her entrance into the salon.

Gilles heard it with a sinking feeling. Perhaps Rudi was right. Perhaps something about Alix did sell his designs. It was an unsettling thought. In that moment Gilles realized how badly he wanted to get away from Mortessier’s. Rudi was driving him mad.

The little man was still watching Alix. "Have you noticed this girl is very tense? Look at the way she walks. Alors, Gilles, she never says who she is."

Gilles shook out another cigarette and lifted it to his mouth. Go ahead and tell him, he was thinking. Get it over with. Tell Rudi that you have been offered a job elsewhere. She is an American, that is all I know. Brown, I think is the name on her papers. For work she uses only ‘Alix.’

Rudi shook his head. Her French is good. Maybe she is not American.

She studied music here, at the Sorbonne. Of course she speaks good French. Tomorrow, he promised himself. He would tell Rudi then. Believe me, there is no mystery.

The couturier looked skeptical. She is beautiful. She should be too ambitious for this, only to be a mannequin.

Gilles scowled. She doesn’t need to be ambitious.

"But one can be beautiful and ambitious, my friend. Rudi’s smooth expression did not change. It is not necessarily a contradiction."

Gilles stopped, a new cigarette halfway to his mouth. Had the conversation suddenly become about something more than a model? Was he just nervous, or could it be that Rudi suspected something? God, if he were only older, Gilles thought, more established, his reputation a certainty! If he had more money in the bank. If his wife were not expecting a child. If Rudi Mortessier were not in love with him, damn him.

Too many secrets, I think. Rudi had his back to him. It does not inspire trust.

Gilles could only stare at the crown of Rudi’s slightly balding head. My God, had the moment come? Had Rudi read his mind? Was the decision to leave Mortessier’s or stay going to be forced on him in this moment, after all?

On the other hand, Gilles thought wildly, Rudi would probably tell him to accept the American’s offer. Generous, good-hearted Rudi would probably even wish him, Gilles the traitor, great success!

What secrets? Gilles knew his voice was hoarse. I don’t understand.

Rudi looked bland. The girl, Alix—what else are we talking about? Ah, look, he said quickly, now she has the attention of someone who is very interested!

Gilles turned his head. At the back of the room, among a small sprinkling of tourists and less affluent Parisiennes stood the elegantly dressed figure of a dark, hard-faced young man. Someone important, Gilles knew at once. He hadn’t had time to remove his black Chesterfield coat, which had the undeniably expensive look of London’s Saville Row. The tall man held a homburg in his hand, black eyes narrowed as he followed the models turning gracefully on the lighted