Rachel Marsh
"As you would know, Steve Ever is going to release his new couture in Paris soon," Daniel Bernhardt, the head of Divinus Models, Manhattan, heatedly informed them. "Fashion Nstyle TV has already secured the broadcast rights, Paris Insider is doing an exposé and US Vogue is doing a spread next month."
He paused for effect.
All seven models around the table were visibly roused.
"Every model has been booked for the prét-a-porter and haute couture shows," Daniel continued enigmatically. "All except one."
"Esther?" a svelte, young, auburn lady, Amanda, presumed.
"Nadja?" Cynthia, the anorexic blonde opposite her, took a guess.
"She’s up for all of these things," sighed Pamela, another nubile woman with black hair and mesmerizing green eyes.
The agency head shook his middle-aged head adamantly. "No, they want someone on our books - exclusively..." He looked past all of them.
"How did we jag that?" Cynthia asked, exchanging a look of craving with Amanda - another runway addict.
"It seems that Mr. Ever thinks that we have some talent," Daniel replied, with a sense of accomplishment.
"I was in Donna Karan's show last summer and Versace in fall," Amanda contended. "If they’re looking for latest experience..."
"And only one of us is going to be booked?" Michelle asked, with her distinctive Texan accent.
"Only one." The agent pointed to the attractive, brunette figure in a red Chanel-tailored tweed jacket that'd remained deathly silent. "Julie is the model."
Julie Laing was shocked, not wanting to believe it.
In that twenty-third story office no one else wanted to believe it either.
"It seems," the agency head answered their wonderment, "that someone in Paris has had his eye on Julie."
"Well congratulations, Julie," Michelle conceded wanly.
"Wow," Amanda deadpanned. "That’s…that's… really something... Superb…"
"Yes, superb…" Julie repeated coolly.
Pamela's emerald eyes frowned at Daniel. "If Julie has been chosen then why did you call us in on a Saturday?"
"Because I am going to send some of your shots to selectors at all of the prestige Euro-houses this season. Julie hasn’t done a major Parisian show in four years. You, Michelle, did Chanel last fall and you Cynthia gave the perfect, heroine-chic look for Gucci. More of you could be going transatlantic. Maybe Divinus is a blockbuster agency for another season."
"OK!" Michelle applauded and all the other women expressed their ambitions that it was.
"When will we know?" Amanda questioned.
"I’ll call you," Daniel vowed. "Believe me, you'll know - and you'll never forget it."
As they began to leave the office, Julie - everything but self-possessed - only had one thing on her mind: She would be seeing Steve Ever again.
Her first impulse was to refuse the offer.
She was overwhelmed that she was selected, but after her history with Steve Ever how could she accept?
She’d done Paris four years ago, but hadn’t worked for two years since she did a Bill Blass show in New York. In the world of fashion, exclusion from two seasons translated: 'Model technically dead'. Why after a four-year absence from Paris would Steve Ever request her to return?
Preoccupied, Julie left without a word as Daniel consoled Pamela that she still cut the flawless designer look.
She went for a coffee in the Excelsi Lounge across the street from the Lansdown building in which Divinus Models Inc. was located. She tried to think straight over a cappuccino as confusion shattered her senses. Without a sip she departed, heading back to Divinus Models. She felt that there was no option but to refuse.
Maybe one day she’d return to Paris, but never again at the instigation of Steve Ever.
Never.
"What did you just say?" Daniel was stunned incarnate, after Julie had disclosed her decision. He lurched forward in his chrome and steel chair behind a desk covered with model headshots. "You want to decline the booking?"
"I do not want the assignment," she repeated, unflinching.
"You’ve got to go Julie. This is a chance at everything for you. A sixteen thousand dollar-a-day booking. The luxury of the Hotel Frágonard on the Champs Élysées. You’ll be chauffeur driver around Paris, to and from the shows - whatever, whenever."
Julie held up her hands forcibly. "I don’t want to model anything for that guy. Absolutely zero. Why can't you find someone else."
Stark lines cut through on Daniel’s features. "You know the high fashion industry, Julie," he admonished. "They want to put the definitive face to the couture. Not a second option. They asked for you." He held up a piece of paper with the gold Steve Ever Paris insignia at the top. "You see that: Julie Laing."
Julie eased down into a leather and chrome seat. "Caroline has similar looks to me. Or, his people can find someone else."
The agent fixed Julie with determined eyes. "What you don’t realize Julie is that it is not ‘his people’ who have selected you. They want you: 5’ 11", white-blue eyes, ash-platinum, blonde hair and tanned. Apparently Ever asked for you explicitly. If you don’t come through for the agency then there is no way that they're gonna consider anyone else next season." Daniel paused. "What is it really? His tour de forces of hyper-sex?"
"Yes, and…"
"C’mon, what in heaven or hell is your issue?"
"I just don’t like Steve Ever."
"You don’t like his designs?" Daniel questioned, nonplussed.
"His clothes are brilliant…" Julie drifted to the plate glass window and glanced down at the traffic on 3rd Avenue pensively. "He’s the ‘dynast of haute couture’."
"So, what’s not to like? He’s glitterati." He regarded Julie's magnificent indifference. "Then don’t do it for him - do it for the Julie Laing profile. There’s gonna be coverage in all the magazines: French, English, American Vogue, La Femme Quarterly, Elle, La Donna - The New York Times. With media about what goes down - there’s gonna be press opportunities."
Julie returned to the seat, unwilling to submit to any line of reason.
He slid the Concorde ticket in its glossy, Paris at Night cover across the table. "You make your choice, Julie. Take it or leave it, but I seriously suggest that you accept it." He spoke with intensity. "It's yours or it's someone else's break. Remember, Julie. You’re now twenty-five. You’ve got maybe one or two years left in this industry if you go no-profile, but if you become newsworthy who knows what you could do afterwards. You've got to give it to the international fashion media. Ironically, you've got to whore yourself to get any respect and credibility now."
Julie looked past Daniel and through the vast window to see the art deco extravagance of the Chrysler building and the cyber-world black glass - polished steel exterior of the Trans Am. "I worked in Paris for a couple of weeks about four years ago," she murmured.
"When you did the Beaulier pictorials for Parfum des Femmes?"
"Yes. Just after Steve Ever left another label."
"Givenchy wasn’t it?"
"No. We were…kind of involved."
A lurid smile crossed Daniel’s lips. "Involved?"
Julie gave a deep reticent sigh. "I’ll think about it, OK?"
"Yeah. You do that."
Julie stood from her chair and walked to the door of the office, remaining fraught. She cast a glance back. "I’ll be in touch."
"Just make it soon Julie. By eleven tonight at the latest. Eleven."
Julie headed down the hall towards the elevator. She was between ice and hellfire with indignation.
Ever just had to do it! He knew that Julie would refuse.
After all these years, why was he taking this chance to sabotage her career?
She caught the subway to the West 48th Street exit preoccupied by Steve Ever.
What a phenomenon the designer had become. The critics called it ‘La succès de éclat overnight’ but his acquaintances knew the finer details. With no immediate prospects for a fashion career in London he had made his way across the Channel. When he got there he worked doing anything - selling cologne, as a stylist's assistant and a host of other menial things. As he was preparing his first sketches he was genuinely impoverished. Eventually Steve's designs came to the notice of designer Jean de la Bergé who bought them for the Bergé Riva label. When they were shown it created a sensation. As the critics were hailing it as a renaissance for the house of Jean de la Bergé, the elite of the fashion world acclaimed the young British designer behind them. 'The new St. Laurent,' and 'The English answer to Christian Dior, with the looks of a late-twenties Calvin Klein', were two of the superlatives that were being bandied by la presse française.
Enthralled by his genius and handsome face, the notorious Parisian socialite Madame Charente commissioned a wardrobe. Suddenly he was deluged with orders. His first show under the gilded dome of the Hôtel des Invalides was a smash. Silk, satin and diamanté never made a woman look so exquisite. Three months later at an industry party held at the home of French designer Jean-Michael Beaulier, Julie and Steve met.
The next day they were in a restaurant on the Rue du Montaigne and he asked her to go to the Riviera to model garments in his next collection.
In Fontainebleau on the way they became lovers.
It chilled Julie to think that four years had passed since she'd last seen Ever. It also chilled her to think of how their relationship had come apart when Ever’s infatuation with the model Simone Bréson began. Simone was 'The Face' for VLD’S Pour Mademoiselle fragrance. Julie had been booked to appear in Ever’s show at the Carousel du Louvre, but at his betrayal she abandoned Paris six hours before the show was scheduled to begin. When it did, Julie had already boarded a flight to the US and never returned. Steve Ever had attempted to contact her in Manhattan but she refused to take his calls. Julie changed her number and her agency and had never heard from him since. It was better to sever ties she decided. If Ever wanted to relieve his conscience then let time be his healer, like it would be for her disdain.
Now, it appeared that time could have failed on both fronts.
When Julie arrived home on the Lower West Side she glanced around with chagrin. She’d miss her modest apartment if she had to leave. After being out of work for almost two months, even covering the utilities was becoming impossible. It was paid for by her contract to adorn the print ads and TV commercial for a notable Elizabeth Arden fragrance three years before.
And now with desperation she had to confront the man she'd exiled to her past.
She tried to console herself that the booking was doubtlessly for the next season - Autumn/Winter. She would have a contract to appear on the catwalk, and being assured of receiving the money, she could do her best to avoid Steve Ever.
Exhaling with frustration she reached for the telephone. She dialed Daniel’s number with quivering fingers.
The phone rang only once. "Daniel?"
"Julie? Julie is that you?" Daniel replied, driving through the Fashion District on West 44th.
Julie glanced at the magazine cover on the wall. She’d done it seven years ago, but now it seemed like a millennium had escaped her. "You want the verdict?"
Daniel was somber. "I’m listening…"
"I’ll go."
"You’ll do the Paris shows?" Daniel asked with a cautious air. "There’s no problem with Steve Ever?"
"That’s right," she replied unconvincingly, then took a leaden breath.
"OK Julie I’m very glad to hear that. You know, if you refused this booking your career in the modeling industry in New York and the rest of this country would have been over."
"Until next season," Julie mouthed.
"I’ll fax the itinerary right away."
It suddenly occurred to Julie. "It’s only one show, right?"
There was a silence. "Two, Julie - ready-to-wear in the Place de Vallois and haute couture in La Nouveau Légion D’Honerer." A yellow cab slammed on the breaks ahead of Daniel. "For God damn Christ's sake!" Daniel bombasted, hitting the horn with maximum impact. "Where the hell is he turning?" Then remembering Julie, he attempted to cool down. "This is a real coup for your name, Julie."
She swallowed hard at the implications.
"Julie…?"
Julie tried to collect her thoughts, hurriedly. "Yes."
"Do you have the confidence to do this?"
"Everything’s fine, Daniel," she replied, sounding hardly believable. "This is an advance booking, yes, for the Autumn/Winter shows next year?"
There was another silence on the other end. Daniel sounded ominous. "Uhhh…This is the Spring/Summer."
A single heartbeat shocked through her. "Meaning…"
"Julie, you’re leaving on the Concorde for Paris - tomorrow."
The next afternoon Julie’s friend, Vanese - 5’ 6", Latino and rightfully tanned - drove her to JFK International Airport.
"You won’t to forget to feed Oscar," Julie fretted as they cruised from Delancey Street onto the Williamsburg Bridge.
Vanese applied the accelerator and slipped into the left lane. "Of course I will. I only have to go down two floors and I love your white Persian." She pouted her full lips, distantly. "Steve Ever… I can’t believe that you only told me last night that you were lovers."
Julie stared at the tennis courts below the bridge, then over to the teeming commercial and naval docks of Brooklyn. 'Lovers' was too sexual and too accurate. "It wasn’t any great thing. He’s only a fashion designer."
Vanese glared sidelong with amazement. "Only a fashion designer?" she sassed. She looked back at the road suddenly as a Jeep pulled into the lane ahead.
"There’s nothing to it - not now. It's only two shows, I walk down the runway, I turn and it's Steve Ever never again."
"Yes, Julie? You think that’s all he wants? After he calls you out of the blue after four years with no latest experience? I’ve modeled for ten years and that’s never happened to me."
"Maybe his designs wouldn’t suit you."
"Maybe. But would his romantic designs on Julie suit you?" Vanese mused with facetious gravity, on the verge of giggling. "God! All expenses paid to Paris again. I wish it was me."
Julie sighed with premonition. "Yeah, well…."
Vanese was aghast. "Please…Can it be that bad? You are unbelievable! You know… there is a chance that he doesn’t even remember you."
Stores and unlit neon signs surrounded them in Brooklyn. "Then why would he ask for me?"
"You know the way it is. He would have got the US Model Directory and his stylists would have picked the faces that complimented the verve of the show."
She wanted to tell Vanese what Daniel had said about Steve selecting her explicitly, but didn’t. Julie didn’t know whether she felt better for worse at this recollection. "Maybe…"
A mischievous glint sparked in Vanese’s plutonium eyes. "Or… Maybe - He might have more designs on Julie Lain than just his couture!"
Julie rolled her eyes. "Please…"
Steve Ever want a faded New York model? Julie glanced back, feeling insignificant at the sight of the skyline of Manhattan Island. Even though she seriously doubted it, for some reason she had the momentary sensation that she’d just crossed the Rubicon and not the East River.
As they walked towards the British Airways terminal, Julie frowned as she negotiated her way past two adolescent Antonio Banderas heaving suitcases with red and black Air Italia labels attached to them.
"What will you do if Steve Ever does have an ulterior motive for stealing you away to Paris?" Vanese cogitated as the doors swept open before them. "You know, you said that you signed that contract that Daniel sent to you last night. Legally you couldn’t simply walk away as you did when you experienced each other last."
They paused again as a crowd of new arrivals from Berlin bustled past.
Julie appeared thoughtful. She fixed her eyes on Vanese. "This is professional - nothing else. It never will be. Besides that contract protects my rights too."
"What do you mean?"
Julie walked on, decisively. "Maybe you were right. Maybe he doesn’t even know whom his stylists selected for the shows, and that he didn’t ‘explicitly asked for Julie Laing’. If he sees me and kills the contract then I'm not walking without a thirty-two thousand dollar pay-off."
Vanese was impressed. "Money for nothing," she purred dreamily.
"What we had was in the past and the past is gone."
Vanese smirked. "Yes, ‘til you relive it."
Julie irritably sought inside her handbag for the ticket, suddenly conscious of a painful sensation like a thorn in her side.
After Vanese's fervent admonitions for her to keep an open mind sexually, Julie boarded the plane right on time; clear skies were forecast over the Atlantic.
All the way to France she sat alone in a first class window seat, even though the Concorde was virtually full on that Sunday. Had someone failed to show for the trip or was there a double booking? Did someone know how she hated the cheap conversation that you got on an international flight? She hated it almost as much as the music. With over three hundred CDs to elect Julie couldn’t find one that she wanted to hear.
Or maybe she was in one of those moods that nothing could satisfy.
She looked out of the window at the stars high over the Atlantic Ocean as the plane maneuvered through turbulence. It was times like this that she wished she had someone there beside her. Someone to confide in. Someone to relate her fears to.
Someone - but not just anyone.
Julie pulled down the magazine rack beside her and selected a copy of a fashion magazine. She flicked through it until she came to a story on Steve Ever. Photographs of his creations occupied three pages. One of them featured Steve with his firm arm around one of his models as they stood on the Alexandre III Bridge. He was looking down at the organza, Spanish dress she was wearing. The model was glancing off towards the horizon with a deadpan expression. "Orange juice, Shiraz, liqueur, Côte d’Azure champagne?" the hostess smiled her immaculate, Californian smile.
Julie recalled Daniel’s words, ‘This is the greatest coup of your career,’ and decided that she had to stay disciplined. "Just a mineral water thanks," she requested pleasantly, closing the magazine.
She had to be ‘the runway star’ as the Divinus books described Julie Laing.
In fashion, the myths and illusions had to be obliged.
"Good evening ladies and gentlemen. We will be touching down at Charles De Gaulle Airport in15 minutes. We wish you every delight in the Republic of France. Thank you for flying Concorde. We look forward to your future patronage."
Julie looked out of the window to see the town of Versailles fleeting beneath the plane. The world’s most extravagant palace appeared as nothing more than variations of an atmospheric silhouette. In the distance the glittering expanse of Paris awaited. Beside herself she began to perspire as memory converged with reality. The fact that within twenty-four hours she’d see Steve Ever again struck her with a vengeance.
You’re only perspiring because of the altitude, she consoled herself as the plane began to descend. That’s all, everything is fine. Everything is under control. You’ve been here before…
She drew a hard breath.
She wondered what she would say the moment she saw Steve Ever.
She drew an absolute blank.
In the pristine blue and white terminal Julie headed for the inevitable interrogation at customs. After the officer checked her visa she returned it to her handbag, then produced the address of the Hotel Frágonard. She tried to remember how to say: ‘Please take me here,' in French, sounding as if you knew when they were going the long way.
"Bon jour, Mademoiselle Laing."
Julie turned to see a bevy of veiled, Moroccan women walking past, then the immaculate, slender figure that had spoken the words. She looked like a definitive fashion devotee in a tailored, powder-blue day suit. Her make-up was immaculate and her hair, pulled back dramatically, was more like fine art than coiffure. She was equally as slender as Julie, though not as tall. "I am the Senior Stylist at Ever Paris, Marie-Elise Villiers," she spoke in her heavily accented English. "La voyage satisfaisant?"
Julie smiled vaguely. "I’m sorry, I'm not fluent in French."
Marie-Elise' brow rose and she pursed her sharply defined lips. "I was told - I assumed - that you had been to France before."
"Yes, an American in an English crowd."
"Les masse Anglaise," Marie-Elise mused. "But I am here at Monsieur Ever’s behest and I will accompany you to the hotel."
"I didn’t know that anyone was collecting me."
Marie-Elise glanced away haughtily. "I understand that you were given very short notice of the impending shows."
"Under twenty-four hours."
"My driver is waiting. Shall we leave?"
"But my luggage?"
Marie-Elise threw back her hand with impatient disinterest. "They shall be sent on to the hotel." She stopped and turned on her heels with an imperious look. "In Paris Steve Ever models do not collect their luggage."
"But my make-up was in one of the cases," Julie said, stunned, without moving.
"I assure you, Mademoiselle, we have cosmetics in Paris," Marie-Elise chortled then touched Julie's forearm coaxingly. "Shall we?"
Julie followed her outside. As they appeared a white, European limousine navigated past a horde of Renault bleu taxis beside the mosaic pavement. Its sky-roof was open to reveal the cap of the chauffeur.
From the front passenger seat a man in a black suit with more menace than personality opened the door for Marie-Elise. "Mademoiselle," he gestured.
When he went to the other side of the car he found that Julie had already got in and closed the door.
"L’hotel ou l’atelier premier, Mademoiselle Villiers?"the chauffeur's electronic voice came over the back compartment's speaker.
"Aller L’Hotel Frágonard, merci, Claude."
The car pulled out from the kerb and they were soon headed, via the Rue de la Chapelle, towards the Seine River.
"You see, Mademoiselle Laing," Marie-Elise explained, neatly placing her quilted SE handbag on her lap. "As you would know from your ticket: You are required on Wednesday and Friday of this week. You will return in five days - Saturday."
"Yes, I realized that it would be a whirl-wind thing."
Marie-Elise studied her with no conception of what she meant.
Julie’s eyes simply observed the boulevard apartments with illuminated gardens. "I mean I didn’t expect to be here long."
"An Americanism? Very international."
As the car drew closer to the hotel Julie glanced towards the business district of Paris. She laughed as she regarded the skyscrapers. "Feels almost like I’m back in New York."
"Have you lived in Manhattan all of your life?"
"No, not all of it." Reminiscence flickered in Julie's eyes. "When I was younger I briefly lived in Italy with my father and mother."
"I hear that Manhattan is a very expensive city," Marie-Elise continued. "Does modeling cover all of your expenses?"
"Modeling is all everything and nothing at all, and now..." She sighed too obviously.
Marie-Elise glanced away. "It is a fashionable city."
"I never wanted to live anywhere else."
"That is how I feel for this city." Marie-Elise assented.
"And you came from Paris?"
"No," Marie-Elise replied with dismissive brevity.
"You came here to work for Steve Ever?"
A quasi-smile creased her lips. "Not specifically. As you have Hollywood in the United States, in Europe people still come to Paris to find themselves. Paris is the naked flame to which all those who seek the brilliant lights of high fashion."
The Hotel Frágonard, like the Paris Ritz, was as stately and luxurious as any review could have promised.
With a bellhop in their stead Marie-Elise unlocked the ornamental door to Julie’s suite on the fourth floor. Inside it was opulently decorated with gilded detailing, scrollwork, shell motifs and other elegant accompaniments.
Julie was impressed.
"During the Napoleonic wars," the bellhop remarked, "it was given as the residence of the honored General Frágonard."
Julie marveled that she should now be in a five-star hotel. The last time that she stayed in Paris, she had to put herself up in a three-star hotel called the Grande something that was hardly even civilized.
"You will find that there is all you require in the hotel," Marie-Elise said, watching Julie walk into the bedroom to check out the canopied bed. "There is a restaurant downstairs and you can charge your costs to the room account. Ever Paris will cover it."
"This is very… very Paris," Julie effused her astonishment. "I never expected anything like this."
"You are of professional interest to us. You are free to do whatever you like here in Paris. However, you will receive a message for when you will be required to meet with the show orchestrator at the Place de Vallois. I needn't tell you that timing is paramount in fashion."
"How many models are there in the show?"
Marie-Elise lightly placed the room keys on a small gilded table in the center of the room. "Sixteen women. Eleven gentlemen."
"Are they all staying here? I’d like to, maybe, talk to them."
Marie-Elise put her long, Ever-red fingernail to her lips thoughtfully, then appeared hesitant. "The other models are not here. They have other temporary residences on the Rive Gauche."
Julie turned around; looking at the abundance of beauty that surrounded her. "Are their hotel rooms similar to this?"
"Not quite, no, but…Do have a pleasant time here," Marie-Elise said cursorily. "No doubt I will be in contact with you before too long."
"Nice to meet you Marie-Elise."
"Au revoir, Mademoiselle Laing. Au revoir."Marie-Elise departed; pulling the door closed in one sheer, elegant motion.
For a moment Julie stood silently taking it all in: The brocade damask curtains, the handcrafted furniture, the rock crystal chandeliers, the gilded mirror over the sculpted fireplace…
She had no international fame, no status entourage and no prestige stalkers. But right at that moment she felt like a supermodel all over again.
She walked out to a balcony with ornate black and gilded ironwork. She looked up towards the Arc de Triomphe past the Egyptian obelisk on an island between the streaming traffic. An enormous red, white and blue French flag billowed under its arch. The sidewalk cafés along the vast Champs Élysées were teeming with people: businessman, tourists, sports fans and Parisians taking it all in their stride (Sometimes irritably so.). Paris remained the glittering city of her memories.
As Julie walked back inside to pour herself a drink and contemplate her first meeting with Steve, the telephone began to ring.
She held it tentatively to her ear. "Suite 32D."
"This is Julie?" The man’s Germanic voice sounded forty-something and hoarse. Its owner was obviously under pressure.
"That’s right."
"I am Karl the orchestrator for the shows during this week. I have called to tell you that you are required tomorrow at the Place de Vallois. You can be there by two of course?"
"Is this a rehearsal?"
"No," Karl denounced, astutely. "It is simply doing a model profile by seeing how you walk, your physical attributes et cetera - whatever."
Julie sank back into one of the large, plush designer cushions on the sofa. "Checking us out, right?"
"Something like that. You are experienced?"
"Yes… But, I haven’t worked the runway for a while."
"And ‘a while’ is how long?" Karl questioned forbiddingly.
Tension inundated Julie’s senses. "Two years."
"Really?" Karl’s tone descended. "I was under the impression that all of the models were recently engaged in Paris or Milan."
"Is that right?"
"It’s simply d’ordinaire my dear. But I assume that Steve Ever must have absolute confidence in you, if you were booked. If there is any difficulty then we will resolve it - or whatever is to be done."
"I learned my thing on the Beaulier runway," Julie replied, sounding unintentionally defensive. "Whatever stance and attitude you want I can do it."
"Of course, I don’t doubt it. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Goodbye Mademoiselle Laing."
"Yes," Julie faded as she hung up the phone. A sense of anxiety, coupled with inadequacy, swept over her. Did she still have it? It'd been so long since she’d proved it to herself. Anyone can walk, but not everyone can walk and project on the runway. It was an art being the visual equivalent of people’s aspirations. It wasn’t about personality but about an ideal. It was something very physical but also something extremely ethereal.
She walked out to the balcony in full flight and struck a pose. Two young men sitting in at La Ambroisie Café-Concert across the Champs Élysées looked up, raising their champagne glasses, with adulation blazing in their eyes.
She still had it. She tried to be certain, but knew that she would only find out the next day when Karl actually saw her.
Passing the mirror she glanced at herself and slowly swept her platinum hair back with both of her hands. Collecting a bottle of Aqua San Moritz from the bar, she departed the suite.
The hotel did not have columns but ornate male figures supporting the portico. Julie’s fingers slipped over one before she stepped down the white marble stairs onto the bustling avenue. She monitored her appearance as it was reflected on the gleaming windows of the luxury car showroom next to the hotel.
She headed down the Champs and through the majestic gardens of the Tuileries. After she passed the fountains and other sculptural wonders of the Place de la Concorde she followed the embankment of the Seine as it curved towards the Louvre Palace. She passed its sculpted, floodlit walls.
Noting the time, she headed back in the direction of the chief fashion district of Paris: the Rue du Faubourg-St-Honoré and onwards toward the Arc de Triomphe.
She wandered down the street past the cafés and illuminated arcades admiring the model agencies and exquisite marble and plate glass craftsmanship that typified the shop fronts of the world’s most exclusive stores. In the gold-lined window of the Lacroix store was featured a brightly colored bodysuit, under a ladies coat of shaved mink with a neckline of copious fox-fur. On another mannequin was a garishly toned jacket with elaborate gold buttons down a front hung with gold chain tassels. On the lapel was a trademark Lacroix cross.
She sighed, wishing that she were there to represent any other label but Steve Ever's,
Shafts of light came through the transepts high over the windows the following morning. Julie stirred for a moment with the impulse to call her agent. She suddenly remembered that she was in Paris and the man she was afraid of seeing. She felt Gothic in the midst of what was one of the highest citadels of Gothic.
She snapped on her watch and slid out of bed and bathed.
She found no nail files in the medicine cabinet and decided to find a store immediately after breakfast. She appraised her slender face in the mirror and applied another touch of lipstick. She was a model, she anxiously reasoned, and looking her best had nothing at all to do with appealing to Steve Ever. It was just the nature of her art.
She was alone in Paris, her French was sparse and knowing no one she had the intense sensation of being truly a foreigner in a foreign land.
She resisted the urge to go to the designer boutiques and headed away from the Champs Élysées in a Montmartre direction. She emerged from a small lane onto the thoroughfare of the Boulevard Haussman in the beautiful St-Lazare-Opéra district.
Images of European singers decorated the window of a CD store. It seemed perfectly placed between a tobacconist’s and a high-class Swiss confectioner. She recalled a song that she’d heard once during her first time in Paris. Inspired, she went inside the store and fingered through the racks of CDs. She’d find something familiar to unwind with back at the hotel.
"What kind of bar is the Stars and Stripes over there?" a Canadian man asked the cashier.
"Is…" the cashier struggled, resentfully, for the English words. "Eeez un American-style bar."
"Oh, right," the Canadian man replied, sounding attracted.
Julie looked out of the window for any glimpse of rare, Parisian Americana. There was nothing other than a flag above the roof parapet. There appeared to be no one there, but after all it was only eleven in the morning.
She selected a record by an English singer whose songs were always on the radio in New York, but never in Paris and paid for it.
As she was walking out of the store a man emerged from the American-style bar. He was stunning with piercing gray eyes, dark, slicked back hair and broad shoulders. He had to be a model, Julie just knew it.
For a moment their eyes met and although they were strangers on two different sides of the street, Julie wished she could compel him to say something like, ‘You’re the best looking thing I’ve seen this morning’. Or, ‘I’m alone too in Paris.’
She looked away then chanced another glance at him. Maybe he didn't have Steve Ever's presence but wasn't everything?
It was his turn to look away and then look back to observe Julie journey up the street past the boutiques and fast food outlets towards the Theatre Athenee.
Another meaningless glance across the street, Julie decided, then sternly reminded herself: Nail files! Nail files!
In the Marks and Spencer department store further down Haussman, Julie headed for the immaculate cosmetic counters and displays. Julie got a sudden rush of blood when she discerned a familiar voice through the crowd.
"Mr. Ever, your house has been releasing collections for nearly five years now. Why did you decide to launch this fragrance now during this season?"
Julie stood transfixed before the enormous six-foot screen and observed an interviewer and Steve in what she presumed was Steve’s apartment in Rome.
"Destiny," the interviewer continued, "is certainly a distinctive fragrance. What is the top note?"
"That’s an herb called talisdaam," Steve replied in his crisp British accent. "It has been used in Hindu practices for the last three thousand years."
"It smells like nothing else that I’ve ever encountered." She gave a vacuous laugh. "They didn’t use it as a narcotic did they?"
Steve's laugh was full and manly. "Simply as a provocateur to the senses."
"Did you think of the title - Destiny - yourself?"
"Yes. It was the second title that I came up with."
"What was the first?"
"Mesmerisé." Steve smiled.
"Un agréable nom de parfum." Another vacuous laugh.
"Yes. The English slogan was going to be: ‘However long it takes’ but we decided on ‘Desire: Like love in the end it is realized beyond time’."
"Beautiful… Your writers must be very talented."
Steve shrugged modestly. "They are, but I wrote that one myself."
A petite black woman with a bottle of Destiny accosted Julie. "Would you like to try Destiny by Steve Ever?" she solicited. "Perhaps for yourself?"
Julie smiled faintly. "I only wear Dior's Poison and St Laurent Opium."
The sales girl’s tone sweetened. "Then a gift for a friend?"
Julie shook her head. "No, I’m sorry. No."
The sales assistant handed her the sample card sweetly, but insistently.
"Thank you," Julie replied and walked away.
Out of sight of the sales girl, Julie began to fan the card before her nose to gauge the scent and a reflective look came into her eyes.
She paused and chanced another glance at Steve on the screen. There was only a bottle of the perfume turning in front of a background of dissolving European locations including the Eiffel Tower blurring into the visage of Bond Street in London, blurring into a waterway in Venice.
Steve’s life had gone from recognition to iconic status. Julie was only a glitch in his past and he had survived remarkably well without her. At first she thought that it was jealousy of Steve’s achievements that disturbed her, but Julie knew that it was something else. It was jealousy of his involvement with Simone; it was resentment for his fidelity to his career and that Julie Laing had nothing to do with his success.
Julie had lunch at La Mediterrane Café across from the department store. A diminutive replica of the Venus de Milo greeted her as she entered. She ate her meal and on the television above the door was a daytime French talk show. The kind that talks mostly to French political figures like Jacques Chirac and celebrities like Catherine Denaud. The presenter spoke in French and Julie only understood one or two remarks with the Minister of Defence. The presenter was suitably restrained as she turned to the camera and threw to an ad break. The first ad was for cola, but the second was for Destiny by Steve Ever. The advertisement had a voice-over with a brief glimpse of Steve that dissolved into a woman, wearing a gold-mesh evening-wrap and metallic gold bands rising up her arms to her shoulder. She emerged from sweeping golden satin and torrid waters and pulled off the top of the bottle. The liquid perfume, defying gravity, endlessly poured up and out across the expanding sky. The montage of the European cities dissolving into one another was repeated, with a young ladies voice: "Destiny la parfum d’amour, tonjours. La prix 60 euros - L'eau de parfum sans prix."
A priceless perfume for 60 euros? Julie wondered cynically.
Did Steve write that one himself too?
Walking back to the hotel Julie began to think about the man who came out of the American bar on Haussman after seeing a man of vaguely similar appearance.
Sebastian, her chauffeur, and a limousine awaited Julie when she returned to the hotel.
"Marie-Elise said that I was to collect you now," he stated.
"But Karl - the man I spoke to last night - said that it was at two?"
Sebastian shrugged and held out his hands emphatically. "A change of plans, now at one-thirty. You do not carry your telephone?"
Julie regretted that she hadn’t. "Can you give me ten minutes to get changed?"
"Very good, Mademoiselle."
The scheduled rendezvous with Karl was, as Marie-Elise had said, in the Place de Vallois. Julie slipped out of the American limousine into the richly decorated La Republique square. She walked past the two identical fountains glittering in the Parisian sun and through the portico of the classical building.
She stopped to take in the interior: There was a catwalk down the center of the hall and nothing but huge bouquets of exotic blooms at each side where the stage met the catwalk. Tall, elegant windows divided the walls on each side. The ceiling was decorated in the style of a famous French artist in lavish hues of red, blue, yellow and black. The rock crystal chandeliers that were hung at regular intervals under them were not lit. Rather, the garish floodlights on either side of the catwalk illuminated the whole hall. A wretchedly thin man with sparse brown hair, in his mid-forties appeared on the catwalk.
Steve Ever was nowhere to be seen.
Julie remembered seeing the story in Vogue covering Steve Ever’s collection last season. It had been in a pavilion in the Champ du Mars. The first model had descended, in vast, billowing gold and silver lamé gown from a helicopter and Julie was pleased that this season would be a little more sedate.
There were seventeen models already there, including ten women and seven men. The five supermodels that were scheduled to appear would be arriving from England, Canada, Germany, Australia and the United States on the next day. Their star credentials meant no trial run required.
"People," the man on the catwalk - obviously Karl - gestured. "Please walk up these stairs and I want each of you to give me a demonstration of how you walk down the runway. I want to see what kind of form you have."
The men followed the ladies.
Karl flicked through the catalogue of garments that would appear in the shows, then placed it down.
"You," he pointed out the tallest blonde girl, who had the nubile face of a fourteen-year-old and the legs of a veteran anorexic. She did her run and twirl, followed by the next girl who was a brunette with a sleek gait.
"Auguste, take that," Karl instructed the photographer standing beside the runway.
He did and at the same moment Julie recognized the man standing a short distance from her. It was the stranger with the piercing gray eyes, she’d seen walking out of the Stars and Stripes on the Boulevard Haussman. Their eyes met and for a brief moment and a grin of secret amusement played on his lips. Apparently he recognized her too. He had to be an American.
Karl called the rest of the women to do their thing, but failed to call Julie, who stood nervously behind him.
"Now men, I want you to show me how you appoint the runway."
"What’s this all about," the blond, German guy there asked temperamentally. "I mean what is the look here?"
The orchestrator gave a 'it's not your place to interrogate Dietrich' look, but explained: "Remember monsieur - the buyers are women. Sex, sex, sex!" As the male model was about to ask another question, Karl pouted wearily. "Have you ever been on the catwalk before?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then you would know that I am defining the model-type and their relative sequence, to get the best equilibrium of forms. We have to enhance the show by allocating the right model-style to the right costume. None of you gentlemen will be accompanied by any of the women on the runway this season, so I am not trying to find symmetrical or conceptual couples."
The German model appeared deadpan - sorry he asked.
The orchestrator stood back. "Walk monsieur," he swept his hand out toward the runway for him.
The male model did and in brilliant form.
"And you are?" Karl then asked the man Julie recognized.
"David Dionisii," he responded in an obscure accent. In that light his clear skin and pristine features gave him a sublime boyish look.
"You are from?" Karl continued.
"Russia," he replied to Julie’s astonishment.
"Then David of Russia if you please…"
He was superb and at the end of the runway David turned around with his well-developed arms outstretched.
"Bravo monsieur," the orchestrator applauded rapturously. "I think that you will do very well."
Everyone applauded rapturously.
Marie-Elise appeared in the doorway beyond the end of the catwalk. With a characteristic demur she nodded at them.
"Marie-Elise, it is good to see you," Karl remarked implausibly. "Are you here to take the model’s measurements?"
"No, Karl, not at all. I am simply here to watch. We will take them later at the atelier."
Karl shrugged. "Then we will continue with this gentleman and-" He broke-off as he turned to see Julie behind him. "I didn’t realize that you were there, my dear. Perhaps you will demonstrate your form. And you are?"
"Julie Laing," Marie-Elise cut-in shrewdly.
Karl put his hand on Julie’s back. "If you please…"
Julie took a deep, inconspicuous breath. It’d been so long since she’d done this. She walked on trying to feel the gravity of her posture, but not walking too fast or swinging her arms with delirious vigor. She was never sure how she looked to other people when she was in full flight. When she was almost at the end of the runway she saw a shadowed figure in the doorway. She’d recognize that silhouette anywhere. It was Steve!
She faltered, stopping indecisively before she reached the end.
"Is there something wrong Mademoiselle Laing?" Karl asked warily.
Julie stepped backwards towards him as Steve emerged into the light and clapped his broad, masculine hands slowly. "A wonderful exhibition, but too bad about the denouement," his distinguished British voice resounded through the hall. He walked down past Julie as if concerned with other business. "Karl, will you have the model sequence done by two-thirty? I want them at my atelier so that we can do the fittings."
"Of course, Steve. I was just going to ask this young woman to do her run again. It appears that she was distracted by something."
Steve frowned. "A model distracted in an empty hall? I wonder if she’d be disoriented in one full of buyers and the media?"
Julie studied Steve’s face for any sign that he recognized her. The four years that had gone by had only refined all 6' 2" of Steve’s features. They remained as they were cut fine as a diamond. His dark hair and deep, Atlantic-blue eyes and chiseled jaw-line still burned through her. Something within Julie ached for release.
But there was nothing to suggest that he knew her. She felt a kind of relief laced with a sense of fatality.
Julie cast an apologetic look back at Karl. "I can do it again. I am just out of practice." She walked back towards him. "See, I’m fine - no problem."
"Yeeeeesssss," Karl purred tentatively, then turned to Steve. "What do you think?"
"She’s a model," Steve replied to Marie-Elise, with professional superficiality. "We’ll drape her in sequins and call it haute couture."
"I want to see you all one more time," Karl said, clapping his hands sharply. "I want each of you to walk in the order that you have just gone until I ask you to stop."
They did, with Karl encouraging them in French: "Trés bon! Grande! Merveilleux!"
Steve stood on the sidelines, with his fist resting under his chin. He watched as each did their routine. When Julie did hers, he was preoccupied speaking with Marie-Elise who consulted him on some matter. Only when she walked back did Steve throw her a perfunctory glance.
Karl said nothing.
Steve tapped his gold, Swiss watch.
Karl appeared to be satisfied that the models' visages were measured and serviceable. "People, if we can end there. I will see you here at the Place de Vallois before the show. I will give you the order in which you will appear and the stylist Dietrich - who must have been detained - will have an assignment of costumes for you to wear."
Marie-Elise pointedly raised her red, black and gold pen. "If you will all get into the cars out the front you will be driven to the atelier where we’ll be doing the final fittings."
The models all began to step off the stage. As Julie was about to make an inconspicuous exit, Karl put his hand out to delay her. "Not you Mademoiselle Julie Laing. I think that we need to work on your posture and gait on the runway."
"Can we have her remain here?" Marie-Elise asked Steve.
"But of course. Please send her along Karl, when you can..."
Julie watched Steve turn and pause to speak with Marie-Elise.
It was beyond bizarre. Was her relationship with Steve that transient four years ago that he didn’t even know her now? She tried to console herself that her headshot had secured her the work, but it was a dry consolation at best.
When the Russian model, David Dionisii, turned and cast a handsome farewell salute, Julie only managed a faint wave in return.
"When you do it this time-" Karl halted, dismayed that she was paying no attention. "Julie?"
She came to, breathlessly. "I’m sorry I was just thinking of… It doesn’t matter."
"Julie, please keep your eyes looking straight ahead," Karl gestured. "Don’t bother projecting too much. Just be natural and unaffected - they’ll obviously get the point."
Steve observed David walking out the door then followed suit without so much as a glance back.
"Did you hear what I said?" Karl became indignant.
"Yes, yes," Julie lied. "You said keep my sights on what’s obvious to me and that's the point."
Karl glared askance with sheer incredulity.
Julie headed for the atelier almost three hours later. Marie-Elise had neglected to tell her the address and her chauffeur, Sebastian, had no idea. The last assignment he had was for a designer working under John Galliano. When Julie asked for the ‘atelier’ she was promptly delivered to the studios of Christian Dior on the Rue du Rivoli. In exasperation Julie picked up the phone in the back of the car and dialed for the operator to connect her to the headquarters of Steve Ever. Sebastian, it appeared, had been contracted on as suddenlyas Julie had been, dispelling any notion that she’d been called to replace a high profile model at the last minute.
They drove past light beige and malt-white society apartments and on a rounded corner they saw a large girded building. Ornamental balustrades decorated the café au lait stone along each level above the entrance. The Steve Ever insignia on a discrete sign projecting out above a door was the only indication that they had arrived at their destination.
She explained to the doorman who she was and was promptly admitted.
"Marie-Elise, is it too late?" Julie asked quickly when she had made it down the immaculate foyer decorated with fashion illustrations.
"Steve, Dietrich and Adele are still in there, but I don’t know if you will have to return tomorrow."
Julie walked through to them.
She noted the mannequins arranged around the room with garments in various stages of completion at the hands of their tailors.
They all paused for a moment, expecting her to say something, perhaps an apology at the very least. "I… I mean... the driver didn’t know where the atelier was and…"
"But you are here now and we’ll do our business at once," Steve interjected shortly.
"I have to be at the jewelers and speak with the hair stylists," Dietrich, a dark-featured, tall, but slight man (and obviously gay) in his mid-thirties remarked. "If we are going to do a fitting with…" the name escaped him.
"Julie," she said.
"Yes, Julie. If you want to do a fitting, Mr. Ever, then we must reschedule it."
Steve was obviously irritated. "But when do you propose we do that?"
"Tomorrow?" Dietrich suggested.
"No, we can’t do that," Steve stated unequivocally. "I am overseeing the outfits on the mannequins tomorrow, ready for delivery to the ready-to-wear show."
"Then perhaps we will use Esther or Karen instead of Julie," recommended Dietrich.
Adele, Steve’s diminutive, atelier mistress was roused. "But Esther won’t have time to change from the gold-medallion, strapped piece in time and... Karen appears too late."
"But…" Dietrich was on the verge of suggesting something that he shouldn't for a moment. "We may have to do the outfits only on the basis of straight measurements."
Steve shook his head adamantly. "Definitely not. I can’t take the chance with that. I have the crêpan and organza evening-wrap at my home. If Julie doesn’t mind I will do the fitting there tonight."
"Tonight?" Julie repeated, disconcerted.
Steve noted the hesitation in her voice. "It won’t take more than an hour, Mademoiselle. It is merely a formality. You are a model. I’m sure that you understand."
Julie reconciled herself to the fact that she had to; she had wanted to attend a cabaret evening at the Palais Bourbon. Now, she was scheduled to see a man who didn’t know her, and couldn’t have any conception about how uncomfortable it would be for her.
It’s business, Julie fought her swelling emotions. It’s only a formality - nothing more.
Zero.
"I don’t expect that you know where my home is," Steve said apathetically. "Marie-Elise will give you the address to your driver. It isn’t difficult to find on the Avenue d’Iena."
"When do you want me to be there?" Julie asked Steve with forced coolness.
"Whenever as long as it is before nine. There are several things that I want to give a final touch to."
"If that’s all?"
"I expect that I’ll see you later. Julie - is it?"
"That’s right."
Steve cocked his brow before turning away distractedly. "Then, I guess that I will see you later then."
"Later…"
She threw an unrequited glance back at Steve then strutted out beset by impending danger.
When she arrived back at the Hotel Frágonard a single message awaited her:
"It’s David, the Russian model, Julie. I wondered if you wanted to go out or, you know, something. If you get back by nine give me a call. I am at the Hotel Grande Paon on La Rue Rocher. My number is 50958955… If I talk to you later - I’d like to talk to you later. Call me."
Something suddenly struck Julie. When she’d stayed in Paris four years before she had stayed at the very same hotel as David was in now. If her romance with Steve had failed then, then maybe this time it would succeed with another man like David. It wasn't beyond reason that the pendulum would swing her way again in such an ironic way.
As she was about to return his call Julie suddenly realized that she could not disregard her appointment with Steve Ever.
At least not at the moment.
Julie considered how she would affect professionalism with Steve.
She couldn’t mention the past.
She couldn't reveal the name of her former modeling agency.
She couldn’t mention any other fashion label that she’d worked for because that sounded like condescension towards Steve’s company - Or at least in theory.
She had to behave obligingly, but be in no way compromising.
Looking down at her black lace-trimmed, blue chamois jacket and white satin slacks she decided to change immediately. The last time that she had seen Steve she was wearing similar colors. She changed into velour hipsters, Gucci silk shirt and a straight, patent-leather black jacket with the gold Azzedine Alaïa buttons.
Just as she was about to leave she looked at her garnet ring and removed it irritably. It’d almost slipped his mind that Steve had given her one very similar to it.
This was another time and she’d have to be another woman.
Fifteen minutes later, she was in the back of the limousine as Sebastian turned the limousine down Avenue d’Iena. It was lined with 19th century mansions and on seeing Steve’s townhouse, Julie realized that his ascent in Parisian society was absolute.
She walked inside the gates and stared up at the grated windows. It was probably the town residence of a country aristocrat of the pre-Revolutionary age. She went up the stairway with the faint sound of clicking heels to the large black, paneled door with an ornate gold, lions-head handle.
She rapped and a familiar face received her. It was Louis, Steve's German manservant. He looked her over, guardedly. "Yah?"
Julie glimpsed past him. "Is…is Steve Ever here? He said that I'd have to come around and that he’d be here…"
He continued to scrutinize her sternly.
"I’m Julie."
Louis was suddenly animated. "Oh, Julie!" he exclaimed as if to someone in the distance behind him. "Come, come…" he said, then announced her: "Monseigneur Ever, the model, Laing."
Steve appeared at the top a marble stairway and walked down and inhaled on his cigarette. He consulted his watch. "Did the evening Paris traffic delay you?"
"It was like it was rush hour," Julie said vacuously.
"Like Manhattan - it always is in Paris. Thanks, Louis."
His manservant nodded with a conspiratorial air. "Yes, Monseigneur."
He gestured for Julie to take a seat on the antique azure settee. "Originally I planned to do only one fitting but I had some of the examples from the seamstress room collected. I will find the best for your figure and we’ll use that piece to take the other measurements from."
Carmena, Steve's Italian housekeeper, appeared with two glasses, glanced at Steve then offered one to Julie. "Brandy, Lourdes Aqua Minerale, Mademoiselle?"
"No thanks," Julie said, eager to get their business over and done with. "Are we doing a fitting or is this a social thing?" she asked, sounding impatient, but trying to remain professional.
"Why don’t you follow me," Steve said, heading down the vast hall.
Julie followed in silence, hoping that she hadn't sounded too discourteous.
"You have heard of the hall of mirrors at Versailles Palace," Steve said. "But this room is what I call my mirror room."
Julie was amazed. She stepped into a long hall covered with mirrors. There was nothing but mirrors on the walls, ceilings and on the floor under impenetrable glass. Julie turned, seeing herself in endless, simultaneous reflections.
"I'll get the outfits," Steve said, opening a mirror-paneled door to a walk-in wardrobe.
Julie sat in one of the oval-backed chairs of blood-red velvet and gold.
Steve emerged moments later with a mobile clothes rack and selected a tailored suit. "Try this on."
Julie disappeared behind the red-velvet curtain. She pulled the golden tassels on each end across to conceal herself.
The telephone rang: "Hi, Steve Ever…Marie Elise it’s all fine…Who? …Simone? OK…Definitely and we can have all of them done by her…Yes, she’s very professional."
Julie stood ice-still and listened intently.
"Yes, have her do some test-shots then call me," Steve continued. "I expect to see her very soon, anyway… I will see you tomorrow, Marie-Elise."
Julie hurriedly pulled the jacket on over the cream, flounced-lace shirt.
"Are you almost done in there, Julie?"
"I am ready," she said, stepping out in front of Steve as if she had heard nothing that would disturb her.
"Yes..." Steve pondered. "The color goes very nicely with your complexion but the sequins look cheap."
"Is that a fact?"
"That's a fact. Here." He picked up a black organza gown and handed it to her. "See if this one is more for your figure."
If my figure wasn’t suitable then why was I booked? Julie wanted to inquire, but remembering Daniel’s word’s: ‘If you refused this booking your career in the modeling industry in New York and the rest of the country would have been history,’ she resisted.
As she rustled behind the curtain into the outfit she could hear Steve light a cigarette and tap the lighter impatiently against the black enamel and gilding of his chair's armrest.
"Is this what you were looking for," Julie asked, sounding indifferent.
"Now that is a piece to incite the media. Luxury."
"Luxury?" The outfit may have looked stunning, but it had none of the comforts of luxury.
"Yes and it may be vanity, but the cut and the form on you is exquisite."
Steve stepped forward and did the molded-gold SE button on the bodice undone to reveal Julie’s cleavage. "Would you have any objections to having it open on the night?"
"I’d prefer not to do anything too revealing."
"It would be merely suggestive - nothing more. I did see-through last season along with virtually every other house in Paris and it is becoming passé."
"It takes no design to reduce people to unadorned flesh."
Steve appeared taken aback, crossing his arms over his broad, masculine chest. "And you speak from experience?"
Julie glared defensively. "I’ve never done anything but couture."
"Now remove the suit and we’ll have a drink."
"A drink?" Julie asked uncertainly.
"You do drink don’t you?"
"Of course," Julie said in a vacant tone, as she pulled the curtain across in the changing cubicle.
Steve went through the clothes that remained on the rack. "Have you been in Paris in recent years?"
Julie stooped, as she was about to slip on her own pants behind the velvet. A heartbeat jolted her nerves. "In Paris? I looked around last night on the Rue du Faubourg St Honoré."
"I was there last night."
There was a perfectly anxious pause. "Really?"
"About seven," Steve said, observing Julie as she emerged, doing up her belt on her hipsters. "I didn’t see you."
"I was only there for a short time," she explained.
"Come out this way."
In the white drawing room Steve looked up to see Carmena putting on her jacket and picking up a Boucher-print umbrella.
"Are you leaving already?" Steve frowned. "I assumed that you could make us something."
Carmena shook her head. "No - my daughter she’s in the hospital. I tell you last night, you remember?"
"Yes, so you did," Steve bit his bottom lip. "Go then and I’ll see you tomorrow."
"Au revoir, Monsieur Ever, Mademoiselle Laing."
"Louis!…" Steve called to no reply. "I guess he’s gone too. There is usually at least one of them here at night…But that's the way it is…"
They paused to hear the door close after Carmena.
Steve turned back to Julie who was now seated on an empire-style seat premeditating an escape .
"Maybe I should call the car?" she suggested.
"Have you eaten tonight?"
"No I haven’t," Julie replied, looking straight ahead.
He glanced back to where he’d last seen Carmena. "I expected that she would make us up something, but…"
Julie slung her handbag over her shoulder. "I’ll be fine."
"We could go to La Capula. Or there’s this great restaurant down Faubourg. You've never tried truffles until you’ve tasted theirs."
"I’ve never tried truffles at all."
"Then you will tonight." A fleeting grin traversed Steve's face.
Julie looked at him, perplexed. "Do you take all of your models out to dinner?"
"At every opportunity, at least if you believe the Paris rumors."
Julie remained mystified. "To that restaurant?"
"Sometimes. This isn’t a date if that’s what you're thinking."
Julie was all innocence. "Of course not Mr. Ever."
"Are you going to cling to that chair all night or will we go now?"
There was a moment of hesitation before Julie stood with a resigned air, not chancing a look at Steve in case he saw the conflicting emotions in her eyes.
"So what have you been doing since you were in Paris last?" Steve asked, in the back of the car, again driving down the Champs Élysées.
"You know, modeling…and… Simply modeling."
Steve fixed her with penetrating eyes. "Where?"
"I did a Bill Blass show in New York two years ago and an Elizabeth Arden campaign."
"I like what Blass did with evening wear last season," Steve remarked. "You haven't done other places on the fashion circuit? Milan? London? Tokyo?"
"I did some magazine exposé work."
"Exposés…" Steve repeated with disbelief. "Couldn’t you find any work on the runway? I would have thought that you’d never have to do exposé work."
"Why?"
Steve paused as if deciding on the most provocative reply. "Well… You don’t look that ordinary. The sub-haute couture outlets never usually contract the Parisian or New York models."
"Yes," Julie breathed, monitoring Steve’s change in expression. It was painfully obvious that he didn’t recognize her. It also occurred to her how square and proportionate his jaw-line was.
"I’ve been out of work a lot of the time," she admitted.
"By will?"
"By reality," Julie regretted. "But that's modeling."
"I guess that you might not have been the right face for the right image over the last few years. Have you continued with the same agent? You know, even agents fall in and out of grace with the fashion houses."
Julie was disarmed. "No, I’m still at Divinus. I thought about changing but where was I going to go?"
"Ford’s, Elite, The Face…"
"Yes you’re the professional conscience that I never had," Julie laughed lightly.
"Maybe you've been able to get away with having no conscience in the fashion world," remarked Steve poignantly.
Julie was thrown.
"I mean with such an unforgettable face," Steve elaborated, coolly. "And you’ve never been on the runway in Paris, or even scheduled to appear?"
She glanced out of the car window as they passed The Ritz in the Place Vendôme. "I’ve been thinking that maybe the modeling thing wasn’t where I wanted to be."
"You haven’t become a publicity addict after your past experience?"
Julie laughed self-consciously. "I'm no media whore."
"No," Steve grinned. "You are twenty-five and you remain a very attractive young woman."
"And if I wasn’t you wouldn't have given me the time of day?"
"Professionally?"
"Yes professionally?"
"If you haven’t been on the catwalk what else have you done?" He laughed. "Maybe you've fallen into true love?"
"That’s… I’ve been…" A slick retort eluded her. She looked diffidently into Steve’s face as if anticipating vicious criticism. "I’ve been… I’ve been doing some designs - of my own - and I think that I’m getting OK. I’m no Yves St. Laurent or Lolita Lempicka but I think that I have something. Vanese - a friend in my building - says that she’d wear them."
"She’d wear them?"
"Actually she has," Julie deliberated. "Out to stores and you know where people wear fashion."
"Yes," Steve exhaled. "I know exactly where people wear fashion. Believe me..."
The car pulled into a narrow bay outside the Restaurant Barbizon. Topiary and figurative urns lined the pavement, between the ornamental lampposts with bronze infants and deer at their base.
"Maybe some time you can show me your designs," Steve suggested, sidelong as he stepped out of the car.
They walked up the semi-circular steps. Outside on the terrace patrons ate at diminutive tables, absorbing the balmy night.
"Monsieur Ever," the maître’d enthused when he saw him. "I see that you have brought another friend. A table for two?"
How many ‘friends’ had Steve brought here, exactly? Julie wondered cynically.
"That would be excellent," Steve said. He turned back to Julie answer Julie's questioning look. "This is a wonderful place to entertain business contacts."
The maître’d led them to a table in an inconspicuous seat between potted palms. Above them a chandelier of fire-crystal colored the paintings on the walls with a golden froth.
"Thank you, Antony," Steve smiled as the maître’d turned up the glasses on the table.
"Champagne?" Antony solicited.
Steve noted the hesitation in Julie’s eyes. "Actually, Antony, I think that a cappuccino for me and-" He gestured to Julie.
"Just a glass of Perrier, thanks," Julie replied shortly.
Antony produced two menus and handed one to each of them.
"Thanks," Steve looked away from her.
Antony returned to the doors to receive two elderly, bejeweled women in with chinchilla coats draped over the chair behind them. Obviously not entrusting them to the coat-check girl,
Julie looked at the menu and gaped at the extortionate prices.
"What will you have?" Steve asked casually.
"Errr… Just the… Isn’t one hundred and thirty euros a little extortionate for Caneton Tour d’Argent? Whatever that is."
Steve shrugged, blasé. "Forget the money, I'll pay."
"I can’t let you do that."
"Of course you can," Steve decided.
Julie acquiesced.
"It looks like the models will do my designs well," Steve remarked.
"There were some very attractive models there today."
"Like who?" Steve asked intently.
"There was David."
Steve consulted the menu again. "Is he the Julie Laing type?"
"Excuse me?"
"You aren’t involved with anyone in New York are you?" Steve questioned, not looking up.
"I am..." Julie paused sleekly. "Like America I have the luxury of independence."
The garçon delivered their drinks and took their orders.
"I've gotten the impression during my time in Paris that models are always involved," Steve said unassumingly, as the waiter departed.
"And how did you arrive at that conclusion?"
Steve eluded her gaze as he waved to a Parisian acquaintance at another table. "He's something in the Paris media," Steve explained to her.
"The media?" Julie asked, still waiting for a reply to her question.
"The media," Steve repeated with a note of condemnation. "In the US and England they sayeverything about me. You put your name out there and they make it their obligation to define you. The media is like an evil lover."
"Why?" Julie inquired, suspecting that she shouldn't.
"Because when you genuinely think you know them, that's when you know you don't."
Julie looked at him without a word. Was he referring about her last departure from Paris?
"I would never even want to understand the media," Julie replied superficially.
During the remainder of dinner Julie deftly maneuvered their conversation to the two shows that would be occurring that week. She feared that if they spoke too deeply about her modeling history she'd say too much and Steve would remember their liaison all those years ago. That was the past and she was beyond it.
Steve insisted that Julie come into his townhouse for a coffee or mineral water before Sebastian was called to collect her.
Steve sat on a white, mink-like couch while Julie appraised the ink sketches in silver frames on the wall between two Empire-style cabinets. They were from Steve’s first collection; she recognized them because when Steve had taken her home to his attic apartment four years ago they were on his pen and ink desk.
"You like them?" Steve ventured.
"If you hadn’t become a designer you could have been an artist."
Steve leaned forward. "A fashion designer is an artist."
"It must be quite an impressive thing to have power in Paris."
"I don’t have all the power. If I had the power that I wanted things could be very different."
Julie recognized a double meaning to Steve's words. "But you’re a recognizable face."
Steve stood, walked to her and put his finger under her chin, sensitively. "And you’re a highly well known face and body," he returned the compliment.
"I did some shots in Paris for…" She visibly blanched; she'd forgotten not to mention it.
"For Beaulier?" Steve offered sedately.
"And you recognize me from that history?"
"No," Steve mused, turning away from her and sitting again. After a loaded moment he took her in with a piercing glance. "I remember you underneath me, when we got sexual four years ago."
Julie stared, speechless. All of her suspicions about why Steve asked her to Paris returned with a vengeance. Was her modeling career at the top of his hit list?
A sardonic edge came into Steve's voice. "And now here you are again."
"It was a mistake," slipped from Julie’s mouth. "I don’t mean a bad mistake - I mean it happened - it-"
Steve held up his hands. "Don’t explain. That’s all history now."
"Absolutely," Julie concurred.
"Now you’re a name on the accounts and that’s the way you should and will be treated."
"That's the way that I'd like it."
Steve approached her with an exacting air. "Would you really, Julie?"
"I don’t see that there is any reason to deal with the history of our sex lives," she said, catching her breath.
"Sex lives…"
Julie put both hands on her svelte hips forcefully. "You know as well as I do what happened."
"I never quite understood why you disappeared suddenly."
Julie cast a doubtful glare. "You don’t?"
"You left us quite a problem, replacing a model five hours before a show. It was only my second collection and it was vital to my career. But you realized that didn't you?"
Julie detected the wound in Steve’s voice; she had to be diplomatic to protect her booking. "Steve," she spoke sincerely. "This is the reason why we should forget the past."
Steve looked away broodingly. "Maybe you’re right."
Julie collected her handbag from off another of the Louis XIV chairs. "Perhaps, if I am not required to do another fitting I’ll return to the hotel."
Steve turned away and swept the shock of hair over his forehead back through his fingers. "Perhaps you should. I still have some things to attend to at the atelier tonight."
Julie noticed Steve’s demur and evaded his gaze and headed towards the hall. "Are you going to see me out the door?"
She dialed the signal for Sebastian to come and collect her.
"Alright…"
They walked on in silence, and Julie’s heart felt aflame in her chest.
"I’ll see you soon, then," Steve said evenly.
Julie turned and glanced up at him. "If there is anything else that you need me for - involving the shows - don’t hesitate to call me at the hotel."
"I’ll come to you in person."
She stepped down the stairs towards the avenue. "That won’t be necessary."
"I think that it will," Steve replied. "This collection is some of my finest work. It would be a disaster if one of the models simply vanished."
"I will be there," she stated. "You have my word, I swear."
"Like you swore heaven and hell, Manhattan and Paris four years ago?"
Julie suppressed the urge to disclose all she knew about Steve and Simone back then, but this was business and nothing more. She’d stay cool and composed. "You booked a model and, for two shows, and you will have a model."
The car pulled into the driveway with its brilliant headlights blazing at them.
"Wednesday then," Steve persisted.
"You have my word," Julie repeated.
Steve said nothing as he watched Julie slip into the Lincoln limousine.
Julie cast a last glance at Steve and an intense wave of guilt cascaded over her.
The car quickly disappeared in traffic and Julie lost sight of Steve's townhouse.
To counter her feelings Julie remembered that summer day when she’d found how deceitful Steve Ever could be.
They had only been back from the Riviera for a day and she was staying at the Hotel Grande Paon. She’d called Steve on a pay phone in the hotel lobby.
"I’d really like to see you some time today, Steve" she had gushed. "Can you do that today?"
"You could say that. Perhaps I’ll be finished soon. I have Helena St Beuve coming in for a fitting. She’s going to the Viennese Ball and she wants everything to be perfect."
Julie accepted it with serenity. "Then tonight, Steve?"
"I promise that it won’t take long," he gave Julie one last assurance.
With no one to call and no appointments to keep Julie boarded the metro to Havre Caumartin. She walked down to the Paris Opera. It was temporarily closed due to restoration work and after visiting the Casino de Paris up the Rue de Clichy she hailed a taxi and headed back to the Hotel Grande Paon. She considered doing her tone-up when she got back or maybe practice walking for Steve’s upcoming show. As they passed the Avenue Montaigne Julie, in an impulsive state of mind, requested that the taxi driver take her to Steve’s studio apartment. Maybe he’d have finished by then and they could spend the rest of the day together. If not she’d always wanted to see the workings of an emergent Parisian fashion label and this would be a fine opportunity to do it. If her relationship with Steve continued then naturally she should understand his industry in terms of both design and business, and not simply from the perspective of the catwalk.
When she entered the atelier Steve's black, waif assistant, Adelle, revealed that Steve Ever had already left.
With no idea where he was Julie went to the building in which he lived.
The taxi pulled up at the kerb just in time to see Steve take Simone by the hand and kiss her at the door before she departed with bedevilled eyes.
After he had collected Julie from the hotel that night they'd gone to one of Steve's favorite restaurants. She had pretended that she’d seen nothing. Afterwards, in Steve's studio Julie was shuffling through some of his images when she came to a series of nude images of Simone.
"Why are you looking at those?" Steve asked forbiddingly when he came up behind her.
"Simone naked? And what precisely are these for?" she had accused him.
Steve was incensed. "They were from her portfolio." He collected them up and put them in an envelope. "She must have left them here. She worked as an artist's model in Belgium and she was showing them to me. Some of the garments are diaphanous and I wanted some idea of how they would look on a woman of her form."
"And you didn’t think that there was anything … sexual about her doing that? You know when I saw you arrive with her at the party - anyone could see that she was more than a model. Those pictures absolutely confirm it."
"To tell you the honest truth," Steve asserted, "I haven’t even looked at them yet."
Julie glanced at the ceiling. "Of course you haven't…"
Steve was perturbed. "You don’t trust me do you?"
"When you said that you have to make compromises with the person you are involved with when we were in Marseilles, is this what you were talking about?"
"No. That was then and this is something different."
"You didn’t take these pictures?"
"Absolutely never." Steve replied adamantly.
Julie exhaled belligerently. "And you expect me to believe that?"
"Believe whatever you want."
Julie remained skeptical.
"Why don’t you believe me?"
She grinned cynically. "I’ve only known you for six days. I know you like transience."
She left his studio shortly after promising to see him at the fashion show the next day.
With only hours before the show began Julie had got out of her taxi on the Rue de Babylone just in time to observed Steve and Simone entering the theatre and speaking in a confidential whisper. Julie was burning with jealousy and instructed the driver to deliver her back to the Hotel Grande Paon.
She packed her cases and returned to New York.
These dark recollections depressed Julie and she tried to exile them from her mind.
Julie resolved to call the Russian model, David, as soon as she returned to her hotel suite.
If Steve Ever assumed that she would be in Paris only to serve his purpose then he was seriously mistaken.
When David arrived at Julie's hotel suite, he was wearing black leather jeans and a lined, white Versace shirt. He carried a blue-glass bottle in one hand and a pizza in the other.
"Pizza and champagne," Julie laughed wryly. "Class and cuisine."
"You said that you did the fitting and so I assumed that you hadn't eaten," David replied.
"Thanks," Julie said, taking them and placing them on the shining marqueterie bureau near the door. "Come out on the balcony," she said. "Please look." She indicated towards the brightly illuminated Eiffel tower visible through the open French doors. The phosphorescent, blue and green spotlights at its base were just visible over the roofs and spires of 18th century architecture on the Rive Gauche.
"I’ve can see it from my hotel too," David replied, more fascinated by the sights of Julie.
"Actually, you know, I think that I will have that glass of champagne," she made conversation.
"Alright."
Julie motioned for him to take a seat. "I’d like to see some of the stuff that you’ve done," Julie said smoothly.
"Yes, I’d like to see what you’ve done to."
Julie walked to the bar as David insinuated himself on the couch facing the balcony. Julie held up a bottle. "Are you thirsty?"
"Just a sip."
Julie poured. "You don’t ever drink do you?"
David exhaled and made himself comfortable. "Mostly water actually. The bottle of champagne was more a gesture."
"I think that Karl was impressed with you today," Julie commended him. "You know that?"
"He is a sweet man. What did he have you do when he had you alone?"
"Just the usual: 'walk to the end of the runway': 'Walk back from the end of the runway': 'Walk to the end of the runway': ‘You are a model and you are beautiful, burn like the symbol for the audience’. And all the rest."
"He was trying to get you into the spirit of the happening."
"Yes."
David closed his eyes with a reflective look on his face. "When I last modeled in Milano, there was a man very similar to him who worked us every day for a week before we went onto the runway."
"Was it Gucci?"
"No. It was the designer's debut show and her father; an Italian industrialist bankrolled. I have never heard of her since."
"Are you returning to Milan this season?"
"Last week I was there. And then it is back to Russia until I leave again for Paris or Milano… Or New York… Maybe another season, maybe never."
Julie paused. "Never?"
"I am almost twenty-seven," he lamented in a matter-of-fact way. "I was the oldest model on the runway today, but you were there and I hardly even considered it."
Julie was struck by something too amorous - too quickly in David’s eyes. "It’s all about youth isn’t it?"
"They say that you were never conscious of youth until you've lost it,’ David replied enigmatically.
"You don’t look anywhere near thirty."
"Yes, but what can I do? I am not a star. I am still an unknown name on an agent’s book with the age next to it. What can any of us do?"
"You’ve never modeled in New York?"
David pouted his broad lips dejectedly. "They are not inclined to import the Russian models for the shows. Not in America, not even the women."
Julie glanced at her watch. "Would you like to do something tomorrow night? We could go to a theatre or something," Julie suggested, resisting the urge to read any connotations into David’s last statement.
David looked towards the door despondently. "Well after I do the shoot tomorrow and…"
"You have to be up at dawn, right?"
"Predawn." David complained valiantly.
"But we can always meet at another time."
David stroked her hand. "Yes… I’d like that."
Julie drew it back, slowly. "Wednesday perhaps?"
"Not unless-" David broke off and glanced towards the bedroom. "I could…" He noted the hesitation in Julie’s eyes and he rose and walked towards the door. "Tomorrow after the shoot? We could go to a restaurant."
"A restaurant," Julie mused, reflecting on her shadowy evening with Steve Ever. "What about a café-bar?"
David gave a speculative, wry smile. "You do like bars don’t you?"
"Actually," Julie's head gently tilted to one side. "I don’t like going to them alone and you know what they say: two is company and a nightclub is absolutely none."
"Yes, whatever you want," David said, reaching for the door handle. "I will see you tomorrow at seven OK?"
"Definitely."
David edged towards Julie to kiss her, but Julie shied modestly. "Maybe... later."
As he departed he simply kissed the tips of his fingers and blew it to her as the headed down the brilliantly illuminated hall towards the elevators.
Julie stood poised in the doorway for a moment. Her vague expression slowly developed into one of despondency. She stepped back inside, wondering why she was filled with mixed feelings over David, a man that she had only known for seven hours.
Collecting a bottle of Perrier she stepped out to the balcony, poured herself a glass, and observed the traffic on the Champs. A limousine passed below and instinctually Julie leant over to see if she could see Claude driving it for Marie-Elise or Steve. The glaring lights of the traffic and the avenue made it impossible to see anything within the tinted windows.
It wouldn’t be Steve anyway, Julie assured herself. He’d be in the atelier still overseeing the last details of the show on Wednesday.
She remembered the first night when she had met Steve. Something about the scent on the air and the glittering lights of Paris evoked all its vivid sensations.
After they had met at the party they had returned to Steve’s home - a studio attic apartment in the Marais district.She vividly recalled the Thierry Mugler Angel for Men scent of the studio and the roof terrace garden of the building beside it.
"Have you known the host Jean Paul for long?" Steve had asked after he’d poured Julie a glass of cheap cognac.
"I only met him during the last week - since I arrived," she'd replied, wanting to sound available.
"I thought that I’d seen every first class model in the world until tonight."
"Please," Julie had retorted, though secretly wanting to believe it.
"Truly, but if I’d seen your photo on an agent’s books before I wouldn’t have thought that I could afford to book you."
Julie took a sip from her glass and smiled seductively. "You’d be surprised at how affordable I am."
Steve was impressed. "If I said that I wanted you to appear in this seasons collection at the Carrousel du Louvre would you be available?"
"Of course I would," she replied, thrilled. "Is that was all you had in mind?"
They both laughed. The wall of ice was broken.
Julie could hardly believe that such a handsome man had selected her and he was sure to be a high-profile fashion designer. It was absolutely inevitable.
"You know when I asked you back here," Steve chanced the issue, "I just wanted to see you in something that I had designed. I didn’t think…"
"That I would find you attractive?"
Steve placed his arm behind her shoulders to embrace her. "Would you like to see some of the work?"
"Of course."
He led Julie into his studio. It was fascinating and Julie couldn’t take her eyes off the sketches on the wall. Outside there was rustling, as doves settled outside under one of the attic windows. Though the apartment was modest by Parisian standards, there was an air of bohemian luxury in the presence of these couture masterpieces.
"Maybe you shouldn’t bring strangers here," she advised. "You know these ideas are remarkable - I know that I’m only a fashion model - but these really are remarkable. Someone could steal them."
"Like who?"
"How many haute couturiers are there in Paris?"
Steve regarded her doubtfully. "Are you this diplomatic with every man you meet?"
"When they possess such a gift."
"It’s only fashion." Steve spoke as if something else was on his mind.
"Maybe…"
Steve’s voice deepened with seriousness. "I assume that you have a Parisian agent?"
"Modelstyle - New York."
"You don’t live in Paris?" Steve had asked disappointedly. "I assumed…"
"You didn’t assume that I was French did you?"
"No, no I knew that you were American the second I spoke to you," Steve laughed. "There is just a flamboyance and beauty about you. Something very Parisian. I've never been to Manhattan - maybe it's Manhattan chic."
Steve looked into Julie’s eyes and there was magnetism.
Steve, suddenly looked away and affected a professional stance. "You know, that’s not a Steve Ever booking will involve. We are taking some of the promotional shots for the catalogue and… maybe for the international magazines. Definitely the American ones."
Steve didn’t have to ask twice. It was a proposition that Julie couldn’t refuse.
Now, looking out over the stream of traffic lights down on the Champs, Julie drew a labored breath and marveled at how alluring Steve had seemed then.
She was younger and unworldly.
Something had changed, beyond mere circumstances. Steve wasn’t the up-and-coming designer and Julie was no longer the ambitious model determined to court the fashion elite of Paris.
When she went back inside her hotel suite, she got into the spa again. She tried to call Vanese in New York, but there was no answer. It occurred to Julie that this deluxe suite was similar to one in which she and Steve Ever had stayed in all of those years ago at the Hotel Fontainebleau. It was on their way to the French Riviera where Julie was scheduled to appear in some promotional shots for his Spring/Summer collection.
"We could take a night walk through the forest," Steve had suggested at midnight.
"Is that what you like to do?" Julie had demurred.
"We could…" Steve said in a stimulating tone of voice.
Julie was aghast. "Does every model you take to the Riviera receive that proposition?"
"If they're privileged enough to."
"And if you’re lucky they agree?"
"Sometimes…Actually, truthfully, I’ve never taken a model to the Riviera. You’re the first. I’ve only been there once and that was as an assistant to Bergé. There was a fabulous atmosphere there. I decided when I was down there last, that I’d take someone special there."
She cast a glance out of the window into the night. "Then we should take that walk."
They had followed the ornamental light posts among the bouffant, softly lit foliage of the elms and cedars. They came to a sculpted fountain replete with deities and an overly adorned and portentous aristocrat who ruled the province in pre-Revolutionary France.
They paused to look into the still, deep pool of water. "I wish we had something like this in my apartment building," Julie sighed.
"The French have always had a great sense for the luxurious and the pleasurable."
"But it must have taken so much time to create this."
Steve shrugged his broad shoulders. "I guess that pleasure comes when you know that you have the most time to devote to the agony it can take."
Julie walked on airily and Steve followed around to the other side of the shimmering pond with its submerged lights. "How many stars do you think there are tonight?"
"As many as there are dreams," Steve replied.
"Then I think that I’ll take that one there."
Steve laughed. "That’s a very conspicuous dream. I think that's Saturn."
"I can't believe that people ever made sense out of all of the endless stars," Julie laughed too.
He contemplated her expression with premeditation. "Are the stars all that you are thinking about tonight?"
"No, I was just thinking that I believe that happiness was everywhere that I wasn’t."
"They say that happiness is something that you only remember," Steve remarked, sagely.
She felt her hand in his. "I think that they were wrong."
"What was your dream you saw in that star?" Steve asked, intrigued.
"I wanted to be a supermodel or at least to feel like one," she quickly adjoined. "Maybe it’s just unrealistic."
"Why? All you need is the right designer to believe in you like Lagerfeld did with Claudia or Versace did with Linda."
"Yes, but they were exceptional - beyond unique - in a way that I'd never be."
Steve shook his head with disbelief. "But you have a kind of classical beauty."
"Say that you don’t mean like Garbo, Liz Taylor or Jean Shrimpton."
"You are taller and more slender than all of them and you know that there is no resemblance. You have a more statuesque quality like Veruschka back in the 70s had or…"
"The Statue of Liberty?" Julie offered, as he pulled her close.
Steve had laughed with abandon. "No, but just wait and see what the fashion world makes of you. One day you may wake up and find yourself famous."
Now it was four years later and Julie remained anonymous.
She glanced up at the Parisian sky and observed the fleeting trajectory of a fallen star.
At seven the phone crashed through the roof of Julie's dreams.
"What the…" Julie came to miserably. She lurched over to the nightstand and blindly clutched the phone. If this was the check-in girl again she was walking.
"Yes?" Julie husked, and wiped the blear out of one of her eyes with the back of her wrist.
"Pardon, Julie, this is Marie Elise," she said curtly. "The model to do the shots for the couture brochures has taken ill. She paused for her last statements to register. "We have the wardrobe, the lights, the stylists, the photographer - but we have no model at hand. You must come immediately. It is a matter of urgency."
Holding the phone hard to her ear Julie swept her hair back from over her face. "Yes, yes," she managed with a feline yawn. "I’ll need some time."
"The car will be there to collect you in forty minutes."
"What’s wrong with the model?" Julie inquired.
"Simone, it appears was double-booked."
Julie glared into vacant space. "Simone?"
"In forty minutes Julie, merci."
The phone went dead in her hand.
Julie remained in the same position for a speculative moment, before falling back onto the bed, arms outstretched despairingly.
Welcome back to the glamor world of haute-modeling.
Precisely forty-one minutes later the Ever limousine pulled in front of the Hotel Frágonard as two bleu taxis departed. Still perfecting her hair Julie climbed into the car.
"You are right on time," Marie-Elise commended her.
"Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing that the other model cancelled," David said on the other side of the car.
Julie settled herself in the seat and wondered if Simone’s cancellation had anything to do with a prior engagement with Steve.
"There are only the two models?" Julie asked.
"Yes for now," Marie retorted. "The other photographs will be taken during the shows and at the boutique on the Rue du Faubourg St Honoré and perhaps at the one on the Avenue Montaigne.
Julie glanced ahead at the marble front of Hotel Rousseau Eleire, then down the Champs.
"Is the location far?" She looked at David rather than Marie-Elise.
"In Barbizon. It is about an hour from Paris," Marie-Elise stated. "If all goes to schedule then we will be back by two-thirty."
They journeyed to the location in three vehicles. The car following the limousine carried the photographer Alleister Van Ferrare, and the lighting technicians; the third was the trailer containing the clothes, make-up and the two stylists Edith and Jean.
The countryside was a vision of bucolic activity with vines and commercial flower harvesting in progress. Julie watched figures hunched over picking lavender and rose blooms. Old flagstone villages with sparse stonework and slate roofs surrounded them on the foothills and down in the valleys.
After emerging from a sanctuary of beech, the road was again bounded by dramatic terrain on every horizon. Tall gates signaled that they had arrived at their destination - the gardens of a renaissance chateau. The double-carriage opening was festooned with honeysuckle, ivy and fuchsia.
When the car pulled beside a summer pavilion, Julie looked around with admiration.
Marie-Elise was blasé as she removed her lace gloves and gestured with them. "If you please, Julie, have your make-up applied and change in the van."
Julie did.
When Julie emerged forty minutes later Alleister had already taken several pictures of David in various outfits. The photographer called for him to stand at the watery base of a man-made waterfall. The sun was high and it was unusually warm for the region.
Julie watched as he stepped into the chill water with undisguised trepidation.
"That’s fine," Alleister said. He looked askance at the make-up assistant, Edith. "Is it water resistant?"
The make-up artist nodded. "Of course, but not under the pressure of the falling water."
"Now David can you look to your right for a moment," Alleister returned his gaze to him. "At that fountain over there as if you are seeing someone mysterious and with force of temptation."
David looked to his right and then directly at Julie who stood behind Alleister containing high spirits.
"That’s it David. Now look directly at the camera and appear as if you were about to ask something provocative. You are an agent of forbidden desires... More serious…" Alleister looked up from the camera to see David smiling. He turned to see Julie making a face at him. "Professionalism people," Alleister reminded them sternly.
Julie looked away, stifling laughter.
"Are you ready David?" Alleister demanded.
David got it together and did a perfectly sublime look for the camera.
"Now that is delightful," Alleister intoned. He looked up from the camera again and motioned to Julie. "Why don’t you join him. Stand to David’s left. Quickly, quickly - we have a schedule."
Julie climbed down into the pool and raised her brows at David. "The compromises that we have to make in the modeling world," she smirked.
"Now Julie," Alleister instructed. "You glance towards the sky and you David you look away in Marie-Elise's direction away from Julie."
They struck their poses with some nervous laughter.
"No, no," Alleister looked up from the viewfinder of the Hasselblad. "Why don’t you look towards me Julie and David, you - you - look at the sky’s horizon."
They did.
"Actually," Alleister frowned, speculative. "Why don’t you look at one another, and Julie - you - take David's hand, with empathy and look at one another as if…as if you were in love."
Julie laughed anxiously again.
David didn’t.
"As if we were in love," David repeated, looking away to see Alleister gesturing with both hands.
"Move closer please… Closer. Now David, if you could, would you look into Julie’s eyes as if you are going to make a proposition. Something that Julie has been awaiting for a long time. Look as though there is a chance that Julie isn’t expecting it, as if it were out of the nowhere of impulse."
David moved into formation and smiled ebulliently at Julie, then turned to Alleister.
"Now, Julie you look at him… Actually Julie look downwards at something - perhaps David’s navel - Yes! Yes!" Alleister spoke rapturously, then stooped down to hit the digital wind-on button on the camera to take the shot. "Now Julie I want you to look away towards the camera and I want you David to be on the verge of union, as if you were about to kiss Julie and Julie you are about to receive his lips."
Julie looked away somberly as a memory occurred to her. The chateau reminded her of the Hotel Fontainebleau and when she and Steve had stayed all-
"No!" Alleister shouted impatiently. "I want a more far away look. Not as though you are seeing the car come to take you away, Julie."
She tried again and Alleister fêted the pose by taking the shot. "Now I want you both to stand under the water fall and I want you to laugh."
"To laugh?" Julie asked, feeling like an unwilling actor.
"Rapturously," Alleister stipulated.
They got under the cascade and Julie's body contracted bitterly.
"Now would you stand in the water Julie. Just let the water sparkle around you. Let the water ripple down your body."
"What Monsieur Hitler wants, Mein Hitler gets," David whispered.
They both laughed and, with a suspicious frown, Alleister got precisely the shot he wanted.
"That will do, we will find something else down by the river, perhaps. We have enough shots of you Monsieur Dionisii," Alleister said, before heading back to get more film and to plan further shots.
During the intermission Julie sat in the cosmetic trailer. Edith restored the damage done to Julie's make-up during the water scene.
"You are holding up very well, Julie. You seem to know the routine," the stylist said, as she pulled a glinting, silver salon comb back through her hair with adroit flicks of the wrists.
"Alleister has a precise idea about what he wants doesn’t he?"
"He knows Steve’s vision. There is almost-" Edith appeared to struggle for the English; holding the comb in the air poignantly. "Almost a mind connection between them."
"So Steve doesn’t have to deal with it here?"
Edith exhaled indulgently and her eyes sparkled with awe. "He never goes on location."
Julie stared with perplexity. "How does Steve keep that tan?"
"He goes to Spain or Morocco sometimes for the weekend, sometimes for weeks at a time. I went with him one time to Algiers. I was there to do his hair - he is fanatical about his hair. He has one of those faces that is defined by the coiffure."
"Who else does he go with?"
"I really do not know," Edith replied thoughtfully, taking a case of Atelier du Macquillage foundation in her right hand.
"There was a model… or was it an assistant? He used to go there with someone, but…" She put her fist to her forehead for a moment, recalling a face and name that defied her memory. "I don’t recall. His private life is precisely that: trés privé "
"Because he is English?"
"Yes, and because he is in France and he is a celebrity first."
"What do you mean?"
Edith held out her hand. "A designer is a designer and his name is his symbol and affluence."
"Yes, but the clothes are not about being a great lover or a, womanizer - they are about style." Julie maintained.
Edith smirked at Julie’s apparent naivete. "Yes, and if I have only learned one thing in twenty years, it that that fashion is about the right image at the right time. It is about what the public wants to believe. First about the designer, and second about the truth."
After Julie was made ready, Alleister decided, having viewed the initial digital images, that a second series of photographs was unnecessary.
"We will continue the photographs at the Steve Ever La Boutique in Paris," he declared and along with his two assistants climbed into their vehicle after it arrived. They had journeyed some way from the chateau all Julie could see of it was its hooded roof. At first they waited in silence for their own car to collect them.
As Marie-Elise fanned herself with one of her gloves, Julie struck up a conversation with David. "I have never traveled for such a brief photo-shoot before."
"I was very surprised to see you this morning," David disclosed. "I was told that I would be doing this with a woman named Simone. She is an attractive woman they said."
"Yes, I’ve met her," Julie replied stonily.
He regarded her with an elated vigor. "I prefer that it is you though."
Julie chortled dryly. "Thanks, maybe someone does."
"Agghhh…" David drew a blank.
Julie faked a smile, observing the car as it came to a smooth stop in front of them. "It’s nothing."
"Are you wanting to see me this evening?" David asked Julia as he opened the door for her.
"Of course. What else would I be do on Parisian spring night?"
David was reassured and he quickly got into the other side of the car after Marie-Elise.
"Those pictures beneath the waterfall will be wonderful to see," Julie remarked.
"Yes," Marie-Elise replied blankly
"I don’t look right in a lot of photographs," Julie said.
David nodded with empathy. "Everyone says that."
Julie grinned and as the car pulled out towards the paved road, silence descended over them.
Marie-Elise held her compact up and perfected her powder foundation. Julie craved to interrogate her about Steve and Simone, but she couldn’t think of the right way to initiate the issue.
"You know if you want to ask someone something," Marie-Elise commented, still powdering, "you should simply ask them and not stare. It can make people feel very uncomfortable."
"Then I apologize."
"Apology accepted." Marie-Elise clicked the compact closed. "If you were wondering if that was the end of the photography today then it was."
"No, I was just thinking… When I came to Paris last time you weren’t working for Steve Ever. I assume that you were working in the wings of another fashion house?"
"Libertés."
"Chief stylist?"
A peevish look discolored Marie-Elise’s face. "Customer service."
Julie appeared nonplussed.
"I worked in the store on the Avenue Montaigne. It was on the other side of the street to Steve Ever’s Haute couture Boutique. Steve came in there frequently during the last Spring/Summer collection to accessorize his concepts. I assisted him. He invited me to assist on a permanent basis at Steve Ever."
"That’s a promotion," Julie humored with awe.
Not even a shade of amusement crossed Marie-Elise’s face. "Were you always a successful model?"
"Not always. Another house gave me my first Parisian show four years past. Now Steve has given me my second."
"He's an irreversibly confirmed bachelor," Marie-Elise remarked in a cautionary mode.
"You say that as though you resented it."
"No, I say it to you in the spirit of womanly advice. He’s a careerist and that’s all the depth there is to Steve Ever. Steve Ever is the star and everything is for Steve Ever."
"I am aware of that."
Marie-Elise paused as if she should reveal something illicit. "It’s just… that when he selected you from the Manhattan model directory he implied that you were… inclined towards him."
"If you’re saying 'attracted to him' then you’re seriously mistaken."
Marie-Elise glanced away with sudden discretion. "It was only an impression."
Julie didn’t doubt that Steve believed himself to be irresistible to her, but it was simply blind vanity. If that was Steve’s fantasy that was perfectly fine. Julie could oblige any fantasy that Steve had on the runway.
But nowhere else.
"How far are we from Paris?" David deftly changed the subject.
"Not very far. We are now in Ivry-sur-Seine," Claude’s electronic voice came over the speaker.
David gazed out of the window irritably.
Marie-Elise’s cellular phone rang. "Yes Mr. Ever…How many extra outfits in the show tomorrow? If you please…We are thirty-minutes from the atelier…You can’t call in one of the other models…? Esther or Sandra?" She turned to Julie and pouted with scheming. "I’m sure that she will be able to do it." She lowered the phone and covered the mouthpiece. "Mr. Ever has made some last-minute additions to the prét-a-porter collection tomorrow. He requires you at his home. As you will be one of the last models you will be wearing them and he wants to see how they fit and the silhouette. You’ll go, naturally?"
Julie reluctantly nodded and observed the frustration tainting David's features.
"But what about our date tonight, Julie?" he asked intently.
Julie gave Marie-Elise a questioning look. "I assume that this won’t take all that long?"
Marie-Elise held out her hands with vacillation. "Perhaps…two or three hours."
"Then, I’ll meet you later at about seven then," Julie assured him.
"Call me when you are available."
Julie smiled past Marie-Elise auspiciously. "The very second that I'm free from Ever. ... If ever..."
Julie got out of the car alone, and waved to David and Marie-Elise. David returned her wave with the addition of a wink. Marie-Elise simply flared her small finger as she resumed correcting her make-up. The car rolled out of the gates. Gates flanked by white marble pilasters with statues of neo-classical figures on the top.
After she was received, Louis escorted her through to the saloon where Steve was speaking with fellow designer Fabiano Alsaze: "If you’re not going to pick up the material from the factory in Milan," Steve was saying, "then I will ask our buyers to have them sent here to Paris. Looking stunning, Julie." He gestured between them. "Fabiano this is another of my star models - Julie Laing. Julie, you’ve heard of Fabiano Alsaze. He is only showing in Milan this season."
Julie and Alsaze shook hands. Pure adoration sparked in Fabiano’s eyes (Or at least the kind of adoration that a renowned, gay designer bestows on a model.).
"I love your baroque print designs," Julie commended him.
Fabiano’s features creased with thought. He scratched his fashionably stubbled chin and pointed uneasily trying to recollect where he'd seen the face. "Bill Blass two seasons ago. Vero?"
"You remember that?" Julie replied, suitably flattered.
"I read all of the reviews," Fabiano semi-laughed.
Steve resumed their conversation, diverting Fabiano’s attention from Julie. "And you can accommodate that much material?"
"The bolts are in five meter lengths for each shantung print." Fabiano continued, stealing another speculative glance at Julie.
"That’s fine, we’ll ask them to crop the reel in seven meter lengths that’ll leave us enough slack to experiment before we do the Autumn/Winter show."
"Of course."
Steve glanced from Fabiano’s eyes to Julie’s distrustfully. "Then I expect that your people will be in contact with Marie-Elise by next week?"
"Yes... but I’d like to give your star model a card if it is not inconvenient." He produced one and slipped it into Julie’s pocket. It had a photograph of Esther Canadas on it. "Any model on the runway for Steve Ever is always welcome for Alsaze."
Julie said nothing. What was there to say? She simply glimmered with appreciation.
"Arrivaderci, Steve… Julie - I'll adorn you sometime."
They watched as Fabiano went to the door with his assistant behind him.
"I’ll be in touch," Julie said, as if it were an afterthought when Fabiano gave a final wave.
The door closed and Steve scrutinized Julie for an enigmatic moment. "I think you’ve made yourself a devotee."
"Alsaze is a definitely a career opportunity wouldn't you say?" Julie pouted vivaciously.
"Yes, but be aware," Steve warned sternly. "That a favor from Fabiano is frequently a debt to the transatlantic Mafiosi, if you know what I am saying…"
Julie frowned with sudden trepidation. "Is this industry that corrupt?"
"You know power is glamor and glamor is power. It looks like the pursuit of the art but it is all about money. I’ve been fortunate, I haven’t done my deals with the devil - not yet, anyway."
"You say it as if it were inevitable."
Steve’s tone altered evocatively. "No, but I don’t want to lose one of my models to a rival house, not right away. I see that you survived the promotional shoot today."
"I expected it to be far more difficult."
Steve went ahead and opened a set of crystal doors, then walked through the drawing room and into the hall. "I'm pleased to hear it. Come through."
Julie soon found herself in the exquisite hall of mirrors and again she felt intensely self-conscious.
"Here," Steve said, removing a shirt and faux-tiger fitted jacket from off a mobile rack. "Why don't you do this the honor of trying it on."
Julie took it into the changing cubicle.
When she emerged, Steve looked her over critically. The design of the jacket made it descend to just above the hip. "Please step up onto the mannequin dais, I want to see what I can do with it."
She did and Steve pulled the slack from the jacket so that it was tight on Julie’s arms. He stuck a golden clip there for the seamstresses to provide a cut and button to accommodate the fit.
"If you’re not doing anything tonight…" Steve ventured. "Maybe we could…" He hesitated, observing the unwillingness in Julie's expression. "You could model some of the jewelry for the show."
"Actually, I made plans to see David. We were going to do something. Maybe a gallery. Maybe a movie. Whatever there is to do in Paris - where you can do anything."
"David?"
"He’s one of the models in the show on Wednesday. He contacted me at the hotel. God knows how he got my number."
Steve narrowed his eyes with thought. "David…He’s the Russian - nondescript eyes, dark hair. The model you went with today, right?"
"Yes…"
Steve stepped back and he looked from one side to the other appraising the jacket’s symmetry.
"Did Alleister do the shot with you and David together?" he asked casually.
"Yes."
"Did he model the gold, white and black razor-cut shirt?"
"Yes," Julie replied in a monotone.
"The tuxedo-excelsi?"
"Yes."
Steve stopped and turned pointedly. "The tasseled, metallic muscle-shirt?"
"Yes."
"Are you intending to become sexually involved with David?
"Y-" Julie broke-off, glaring. "We are not going to discuss that."
"Steve didn’t glance up. "I simply asked if you intended to become sexually involved with him."
"I am not going to exalt your attitude by replying."
"Of course you won’t. I, however, have to be sure that my models are going to be in superlative form when they are on the runway. Involvement between them can make for tension if things don’t go right."
"David is only appearing in the show tomorrow night," Julie argued.
"But you are seeing him tonight aren’t you?" Steve's tone was accusatory.
"Do you mind if I leave to do that now?"
Steve paused with a sense of purpose. "Maybe you should cancel."
"You have bought my time, not my existence."
"As I said-"
"No conflict is going to happen because a sexual liaison is not on the agenda."
Steve half-sneered. "And what if he wants more?"
"We’ll see if he wants a commitment."
"Yes," Steve scrutinized her coolly. "But fulfilling commitments isn’t one of your strong suits is it Julie?"
Julie seethed with frustration. "Like fidelity isn’t one of yours."
"You never forget do you?"
"And I never forgive." Julie countered. "But we’ve agreed to forget the past and besides, David is a gentleman."
Steve laughed humorlessly. "You sound as though you saw him yesterday for the first time."
"I did," she replied.
There was a moment of silence.
Steve walked over removed another outfit from the rack and contemplated it. "I should call Alleister or Dietrich and find out what outfits will be used in the next photo-shoot."
"You don’t decide?" Julie wondered.
"I leave the selection, the sequence for the shows and the photo-shoots up to Dietrich or Marie-Elise. They do it so well."
Julie was taken aback. "I assumed that you’d do that."
He appraised her a singular male arrogance. "Finishing the designs is my fait accompli."
"If I don’t come tomorrow then you’ll do OK without me?" Julie dared to assert her rightful independence.
"Somehow, I get the impression that you knew David before you arrived in Paris?"
"No. As I said…" She faded out before she said something she'd regret, then glared at her watch. "I really should be going."
Steve gave a resigned grin, fixing her with assuming eyes. "If you have somewhere to be then, I can’t force you to stay. Not right now anyway."
When Julie found David he was loitering outside of the Au Pritemps Cafe on the Avenue Montaigne watching the female populace walk by.
"You have arrived," he gushed, perhaps suspecting that she wouldn’t.
"It’s good to see you again today David. I'm late because of Steve and-"
"Has it only been two hours?" David broke-in: averse to the subject of Steve Ever.
Julie glanced over at the marble front of the Hotel Rousseau Eleire and its sculpted angels on the pillars between the awning. "It must be wonderful to stay in there."
"Better than the Hotel Grande Paon," David admitted. "But you are at an even more beautiful hotel."
"On someone else's account and my own conscience," Julie lamented, trying to forget her conversation with Steve.
David whistled, impressed. "I had seen photographs of that museum over there, when I was a student of the university."
"It’s not bad. You would love the Garnier Opera - it's magnificent. Why don't we go into the café?"
They did and ordered drinks immediately.
"Other than work, what have you done since you came to Paris?" David asked.
"Survived," Julie said without making it sound like sarcasm. "Are you doing both shows?"
David shook his head dejectedly. "No. My agent in St Petersburg only booked me for the first - tonight. There was something to do with my visa. I hear that there are other models that will be doing it. Parisian models, or something. They can’t import models from all over the world and have them staying at the Hotel Frágonard on the Champs Élysées." David took his glass of brandy from the waitress and took a sip. "I believe that there might be such a thing as the American dream across the Atlantic."
"You want to go Stateside?"
"If you are in a relationship in America you get the Green Card, correct?"
The legalities of a Green Card had never occurred to her. "I assume that's right. Are you interested in scoring one?"
He finished his drink and appeared suddenly indifferent. "No, just the politics of America." He looked around distractedly. "Is it comfortable here for you?"
"I’d like something maybe more cultural…"
"Why don’t we go to a film?" David enthused. "There’s a film called Évasion that I read about in Le Monde Newspaper."
"Why not," Julie concurred. She needed something to transport her mind from Steve Ever.
They immediately left the café and ambled past the sidewalk theatres and bars. Julie could feel her spirits rising.
As they were just about to go across the street to the cinema, a car pulled beside them.
Julie turned and with chagrin recognized her own glassy, blue-black limousine.
Sebastian tipped his hat at Julie from the driver's seat. "Mademoiselle Laing. Is there somewhere that you would like me to take you?"
"Your car?" David gasped with awe.
"Yes," she replied, trying to think of the best way to escape it. "I'll get rid of him," she whispered, askance.
"Why?" David grinned.
"Is the cinema where the film is playing far away?"
"Near the Moliere Fountain on the Rue des Petits Champs. Not far."
Julie turned to Sebastian. "We don’t need the car. We are only going to the Petits Champs."
Sebastian looked concerned. "It is far. I will drive you Mademoiselle: When here is the car."
"That’s not necessary," Julie countered, but noting David's desire to accept the offer she capitulated and climbed in, motioning for David to do likewise.
David was impressed when Julie triggered the intercom. "To the Moliere Fountain. But then you can do as you please, Sebastian."
Her chauffeur's face turned sidelong and nodded. "Trés bonne, Mademoiselle. Trés bonne."
In the car Julie wasn’t inclined to conversation. She was preoccupied by the fact that the intercom had remained on and that Sebastian was listening.
"There’s a life cinema film festival at the United Theatre up the road. We could go there after," David said after they got out of the car in front of a row of boutiques in the Marais district.
Julie watched as the limousine departed to be sure that Sebastian wouldn't follow them. "Who needs the disasters of real life," she remarked.
"They make glamor films in Western Europe and America."
"Yes, but not enough theatres show them," she said in a dark, suspicious tone that was more to do with why Steve had hired her French driver.
"That is the same as Russia."
Julie grinned piteously. "Yes, and for all those years Americans and Russians thought that it was their patriotic duty to think of each other as so extremely different."
They headed over the avenue and paused on the island between two street lamps and a statue of Joan of Arc.
A familiar, Plutonian limousine passed them in the street and eased to a stop.
It reversed and a window lowered sleekly. "Julie!" Steve called out.
Julie pretended not to have heard.
"Julie Laing! Julie I need you to do something."
People on the sidewalk paused to appreciate the known face calling out from the vehicle.
Julie spoke to David with reluctance in her voice. "I don’t know what he wants, but I’ll be back in a minute."
She halted as a Peugeot sedan passed by, then walked sleekly over to the limousine as if she was strutting off the runway. "What is it Mr. Ever?" she asked tersely.
"I have something that I want you to do for me."
She sighed, controlling herself. "That is?"
"First, get in the car."
She cast back an exaggerated smile at David. "I was about to go to see some cinema verité."
"In exchange for the real thing?" Steve admonished. He motioned for her to draw closer to the car.
"Excuse me?"
Steve was indomitable. "Are you here working for Steve Ever or the Cannes International Film Festival?"
Julie gave in belligerently, and turned back to David with an apologetic grimace then looked tersely at Steve. "OK, but not for long, OK? Wait here."
The car cruised over into a space at the kerb beside a terrace florist.
"I have to do it," she explained when she jogged back to David. "We’ll meet later, alright?"
David hardly concealed his dejection. "I’ll be seeing a film at the Cinema Palais on the Rue de Noire."
"I’ll get back. I will."
David appeared impassive. "I’d like that."
"Believe me I’d like it too," Julie threw back, feeling her spirits descend seeing the look on David’s face. "I’ll call you as soon as I can."
"Later…" David replied, walking towards a collection of sidewalk cafés.
Steve thrust open the door on the opposite side of him for Julie to get in.
Steve’s bodyguard, Claude, sat in the seat facing them holding a menacing silence.
Julie turned and glared at Steve. "You knew that I had other plans today. I am only in Paris for six days, but you still decided to track me down?"
"It was a matter of business and you are on business in Paris aren’t you?"
"I was under the impression that it was two couture shows, not as your fashion-slave."
Steve looked around outside the car to see what the hold up was. "You were engaged by my company because of your modeling ability." He leaned forward to the bar and held up a bottle of cognac solicitously. "Have a drink and relax, Julie."
"No, not in the mid-afternoon." Julie shook her head. "How did you know where I was?" she accused more than asked.
"I called Sebastian and he explained where he had driven you here and that you were with who-ever…" He irreverently pointed out of the back window.
"David?"
"Yes, David. Sebastian said you were near the Place des Victoires, so I asked Charles to drive by." He held out his hands with an affected, debonair nonchalance. "I just reasoned that if we found you then we found you. If not…"
"And the fact is that you did," Julie replied sharply.
"That's right. Now, what I want you to do is to come with me to the Rue du Faubourg-St-Honoré."
Julie regarded him with a spirited poise. "But why, is there another fitting for Ever International?"
"When we get there you’ll see."
"It’s always ‘you’ll see’ and ‘in time’ isn’t it? You are the most mysterious people that I have ever encountered. All enigma and no substance."
Steve appraised her with a reciprocal I can't fathom you at all expression. "I was about to say the very same thing about you."
They parked outside of an apartment building with tall shuttered windows three stores away from the boutique. It’s filigree balconies were elaborate even by Parisian standards. They walked a short distance down the rue. Outside of La Boutique, the Steve Ever prét-a-porter store for women, Steve’s mood altered significantly. "Alleister," he nodded to the middle-aged man.
The photographer stepped out of his car with two cameras slung around his neck and a reflector device in his hand.
"We are all on time," Alleister observed Julie with professional fascination. "And I see that you are again my photographer’s model, Julie."
"I didn’t expect Alleister to be here," Julie stated flatly. She knew that Steve had collected her there with such an ulterior motive.
"You will do the photographs won’t you Julie?" Steve urged. "Now that you are here?"
Julie felt like refusing outright. How dare he assume that she’d do them without being consulted.
"Where do you want the model?" Steve asked Alleister who turned to the make-up stylist behind him. "You can do her face and then we'll begin."
Michelle was ready almost fifteen minutes later, wearing an ivory trouser suit and shirt with a wide, cascading tulle collar of black and overstated "admiral" cuffs.
"Just stand there," Alleister requested as he pointed towards the store window, under one of the gold awnings.
Julie fired a recriminating look at Steve who only smirked beneficently. "Now we will take a shot of you walking into the shop," Alleister directed.
"On the stairs?" Julie sighed.
"Walking into the shop," Steve repeated shortly - Alleister's time was expensive. "Walk about halfway up and then we will see you at the top of the stairs."
Julie feigned boredom and allowed Alleister's make-up assistant to apply a different foundation to her face and perfect her mascara.
"You are going into La Boutique Steve Ever," Alleister insisted. "You are style - you are incarnate…" He appeared uncertain. "Whatever the English is, but you are glamorous."
Julie strode up the stairs emanating contrived style and chic.
The camera shot it, then shot another and another as Alleister called directions.
Following several stances and two rolls of film Julie immediately slipped back into the car determinedly. "If you could drop me off at the hotel, I’d appreciate it," she stated, not even looking at Steve as he got in. "I have to call David."
"You’ll be able to call him as soon as we are finished."
Julie glared. "What?"
"You can’t spare another twenty minutes?"
"No, in fact I couldn't."
"If you had read the finer details of your contract Julie you would have seen that all necessary costume preparation was stipulated. Jewelry is a 'necessary costume preparation'."
Julie huffed with derision. He had her there. "Alright," she conceded resentfully. "But twenty minutes."
They drove on beset by tense silence.
The car eased to a stop outside of the green-black, veined Russian marble of Cartier in the Place Vendôme. The jewellers Van Cleef & Arpels, Maboussin and Patek Phillipe were close by. Julie climbed out of the car and looked over the roof at Steve. "This won't take any longer than..." She consulted her watch. "Eighteen minutes?" She rapped her manicured, fuchsia-pink fingernails on the roof.
"Fashion is art and you can't rush art," Steve said evenly.
Julie, in spite of her ache to escape him, followed.
"I’m still in the final stages of selecting the pieces to compliment the outfits," Steve explained, as he buzzed at the door embellished with rococo motifs. "Dietrich chose most of the pieces last week, but there are still some pieces that I am not satisfied with."
"You always get it here?"
"And wherever else. We have an arrangement, that at the cost of rental and insurance we borrow the jewelry that we want. If a buyer especially likes one of the pieces then they are directed to Cartier and they give us a cut."
Julie again appeared elegantly chagrined. "It is a very sophisticated industry here isn’t it - the fashion alliances."
"The couture industry has been going in Paris for about one hundred and fifty years. It’s just the industry of the city. There are artisans and assistants in Paris that have the finest skills imaginable. You could find them nowhere else in the world, except for Milan maybe, and the cost is relatively low."
"Please come in, Steve," a refined middle-aged man in a conservative pinstriped suit, Henri Serere, opened the door. "We have all of our pieces arranged for you on top of the cabinet to your right."
"Have any other labels been in contact with you about these pieces?" Steve questioned.
"Yes, but their stylists have not come yet. You’re show is one of the first of the season so it is at your discretion. What was it that you required? Were there any colors that you wanted to accent perhaps?"
"We want some ostentation - nothing so fine that the cameras won’t register and so unexceptional that the buyer’s won't be over-awed."
An even more obsequious tenure came into Henri's voice. "Then we have it. It only remains for you to make your selection."
He led them to one of the showcases furthest from the door and surrounded by French statuettes in glass and marble on gilded pedestals.
"These were based on designs produced by Luc Nevoir," Henri explained. "There is nothing less than a sixteen carat stone centerpiece."
"The diamond and sapphire one is very alluring." Steve pointed it out.
Henri pulled the necklace out with an air of precocity and draped it over Steve’s hand.
Steve momentarily held it up to Julie’s face. "It goes with your eyes. Perfect concord." He put it down and pointed at a diamond and sapphire bracelet with black enamel contours. "That one Henri. Can we have that."
"Here, sir."
"Will you try this on?" Steve delivered each end between Julie's fingertips.
"This is absolutely stunning," she breathed, putting it on. Julie appraised it on her wrist: Multicolored light flickered as only diamond light can.
"We’ll take the necklace, but not the bracelet right now," Steve instructed.
Henri collected it from Julie delicately. "Of course."
Julie’s eyes lingered on it as it was returned to its tray. "What kind of outfit is this going to accessorize?" she asked intently.
"Something, who knows…" Steve replied superficially. "Henri - is that topaz?" Steve pointed to an elaborate necklace made of large stones on a diamond-encrusted framework of gold.
"The stones are topaz, amethyst, aquamarine, tourmaline and white diamonds there."
"What do you think?" Steve asked Julie.
Julie was surprised. "You’re asking my opinion?"
"Didn't you say that you’d designed?"
"Merely as a dilettante… But I think that it wouldn’t go with your current collection. You use lace on many of your designs and the size of the gems would conflict with the subtlety of the fabric. Or at least that piece of jewelry would "
"Put that one away," Steve said.
Henri somberly replaced it in its tray and put it back in the cabinet and locked it soundly.
Steve held up a sparkling, multi-tiered diamond and ruby bracelet for Julie’s reverential perusal.
Henri spoke with consummate pride. "The stones inlaid in each gold carriage are 98 carats of diamond and 127 carats of ruby."
"You’re two red crêpan chiffon and organza pieces would be perfectly complimented by the rubies." Julie advised.
"This piece is antique," Henri explained. "It was cut for the Marquise de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV."
"Then I assume that it isn’t available?" Steve said.
"No, but wait for a moment." He went out the back. "Just a moment please. Mr. Ever."
"Do you think that would be suitable for the sequined shirt that Serena will wear?" Steve pointed to a bracelet made of substantial fire diamonds.
"Perhaps…"
"Here is something very similar," Henri said returning to them. He opened a large, luxurious velvet case to reveal a diamond and ruby necklace of similar intricacy as the antique, but with a more minimalist, avant-garde cut.
"It was made in the 1960s," Henri said hopefully. "It was one of Coco's favorites."
"I think it’s as appealing as that one," Julie remarked. "Your outfit is cutting edge and this is so classically beautiful. That contradiction would give it a kind of static. It is longer than the other one but that is a good thing because the model will wear it lower on the wrist so the costume will not conceal it."
Henri glanced up at Steve approvingly. "Marie-Elise is no longer with Ever?"
"Yes of course, why?"
Henri was remiss. "Your present assistant appears to understand your aesthetic perfectly. I assumed-"
"I am one of this season's models," Julie replied understatedly.
"A sublime choice, Mr. Ever," Henri smiled at his own faux pas. "Will that be all tonight or shall we arrange another viewing?"
"We’ll use that, that and that," Steve pointed quickly. "Marie-Elise will call and make arrangements. Dietrich - you know Dietrich my chief stylist? - will be here tomorrow to make any last choices for the show."
"Very good sir. Your collection will be another triumph. Succés du éclat!"
The next stop was Mauboussin, arguably Europes’s most exclusive jewelers.
"If we have time we will go to Jars, Boucheron or Bulgari afterwards," Steve said tentatively, as they were ushered inside past the potted, majestic palms beside the door.
"What do you mean ‘if we have time’?" Julie exacted.
Steve appraised her teasingly. "This collection includes seventy-four women's designs. Every one has to be perfectly accessorized." He laughed consolably at her impatient expression. "But actually nearly all of them have been."
Michelle, the dealer, spoke English fluently and she quickly assumed her position behind the L shaped showcase divided into elegant compartments. Her assistant, a young man straight from an Armani catalogue, removed whichever trays Steve's gaze happened to settle on.
"Try this one," Steve said, putting another diamond bracelet over Julie’s wrist insistently. "Yes, that's it."
It was a blue and white diamond clasp bracelet with a distinctive sleek-geometric design.
Michelle held up a glittering pair of earrings. "This is by one of our highly contemporary designers - Carl Ravelier. It is something a little more exotic. It's twenty-two karat white gold, ruby, white diamond and sapphire."
"Do you like it?" Steve asked Julie checkily.
"Does my opinion matter greatly?"
"Absolutely."
"And why is that?"
"Because I’ve always believed that you have exquisite taste."
"In jewelry?"
Steve gave an impertinent grin. "Maybe only in jewelry."
Julie suspected that he was referring to David. "I think that you should take the…" Julie narrowed her eyes and pointed to a choker with diamonds, round-cut emeralds and black opals.
"That is a very nice piece," Michelle commended her. "Very fine gold and platinum-work. The emeralds are cabochon - trés joli. Three hundred and twenty thousand pounds."
Steve drew a hesitant breath. The insurance would be phenomenal. "I assume that you have this in ersatz?"
"Of course we still have the model in zircon glass and alloyed silver that the designer created before he used the precious stones."
"I will take that."
Michelle’s assistant noted it on a piece of paper.
Julie’s eyes moved to a necklace of intertwined strands of black pearls cinched at the center with a large array of blue and white diamonds set in platinum.
"The black organza dress that you had at your home would go perfectly with that," Julie suggested.
Steve scratched the stubble along his jaw-line. "I think you’re right. I’d forgotten all about it."
Julie was incredulous. "And you designed it?"
"When I create, I do it completely and when the design is over I sometimes forget it entirely. It is the way that you continue to be progressive."
Julie selected a platinum ring entirely covered with brilliant cut citrines from the tray and put it on the second of her flared fingers.
"Your friend has admirable insight," Michelle remarked, regarding the diamond and sapphire Cartier necklace around Julie's neck. Michelle had failed to remove it.
"You like this ring?" Steve ventured.
Julie experienced a rush of flamboyance. "It's exquisite," she replied dreamily.
Michelle flashed an opportunistic grin. "And it would make a superb wedding or engagement ring."
Julie turned her hand over slowly, concealing the 16-carat diamond with a pensive air.
"You will not take this one?" Michelle asked Steve.
Steve looked in Julie's direction testily. "Maybe never this season…"
Back in the gold drawing room of Steve’s townhouse, Louis, his manservant, produced a glass for each of them. "Cherry Brandy, Mademoiselle?" he asked Julie.
"No thank you. A glass of mineral water I think." Julie glanced at Steve - her boss. "At the moment I'd like to find at least one thing lucid."
Louis deposited the glasses on the table between them.
"Will that be all Monseigneur Ever?" Louis asked.
"Yes. I will see you tomorrow, Louis, thank you. I will be in the studio in the Marais before you arrive tomorrow."
"Je vous en prie," Louis' replied. His humor escaped Julie. Why was it so difficult for continental Europeans to speak English?
There was an awkward, 'You know what comes next', and, 'Why am I, Julie Laing, still here?' silence.
Julie’s eyes moved along the wall at the blow-ups of fashion magazine covers: Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Mode and Belle Femme and a reproduction of a Raymond Mars artwork. "They are all your designs? You've become something sine qua non in the Parisian fashion scene."
"I am fashion," Steve boasted with a laugh. "You haven’t commented on my hair."
Julie studied it for a moment. "You’ve had it cut - it looks very… very defined."
"I cut it myself. When I am anxious about any of the new shows, I have to do something with my hands."
"You couldn’t simply design something else?"
Steve sighed, fatigued by the suggestion. "When I finish a collection, like now, it’s over. I can’t design anything until I can concentrate totally on the new direction."
"Yes," she said trying to avert her eyes from his body. Her eyes drifted up to the Delacroix painting, Algerian Opium Smokers.
"What are you thinking about right now?" Steve asked.
"Does it ever occur to you… that whatever you do will be forgotten next season?"
"Yes and no. People do always remember. It's not high art, but who remembers high art any more? At Cartier I wondered if I could pursue anything but ephemera."
"You don’t want any kind of mainstay?" Julie asked unassumingly.
"Do you think that I should?" Steve asked.
"There are some things, if you a prepared to commit to them," Julie replied with spontaneous candor. "If you are…" She faded out; she was sounding obsessive and with no cause. "I mean, maybe everyone needs something to hold to."
"Or someone."
Julie faintly perspired. "But maybe you can find someone. Maybe there’s more to life than simply being a slave to a career, or a captive to the past."
"What do you mean?" Steve said with anticipation.
Julie stood and walked over to the window so that Steve wouldn’t see the indecision in her eyes. "I mean, when there was something in your history where you found something beautiful and you’ve lived exiled from that moment ever since. It’s like the sanctuary that you’ve devoted your heart to..."
"Like a lucid dream that for second came true?"
"Yes." Julie felt suddenly too vulnerable, on the borders of too sensual. She headed for her handbag on the chair beside the door. "I should get back to the hotel."
"If you like, you could stay here tonight. There are fourteen rooms here."
Julie’s first reaction was to accept even though every instinct urged her to refuse. "No. I am meeting someone tomorrow morning."
"Who?"
"A… friend," she replied, Steve would assume that it was David.
"You won’t stay for another drink? One glass of Perrier isn’t your limit is it?"
The stain of jealousy in Steve's voice stalled Julie. "Two glasses and I am anybody’s, three glasses and I am everybody’s."
They both laughed, but it hardly relieved the tension.
"You’re nobody’s Julie. Do you know that? Who are you saving that beautiful body for? There's no one in the next world who'd appreciate it."
Julie was defiant; he had burned her once already. "I just want freedom."
"And freedom is keeping all of those desires inside with no release?"
"There could be someone in the future."
Steve edged towards her dangerously. "No one is forever, Julie. You’ve got to take it now. You don't know what will be happening next time."
Julie turned and there was magnetism between their eyes. "You mean in fashion?"
"I mean in everything."
They gravitated towards one another and Steve put a reassuring hand up Julie’s arm and stroked her neck.
Julie felt her inhibitions receding and the sweet allure of his embrace and the scent of his cologne. "Is this that moment?" Steve persuaded, sexily.
'What?"
"The moment that you’ve lived in for the last four years?"
For a moment Julie reacted tensely, then simply closed her eyes.
Their lips moved sensuously in the rhythm of abandon and desire. She felt his full male torso against her chest and couldn't deny that he made her feel more like a woman than she'd ever felt.
This embrace was perfectly transcendent but not timeless. She returned to a place in time when they had last made love. Julie recalled how exquisite it was between them and how she never wanted to end.
But it did.
Julie pulled away, jolted back to reality from a realm of dreams. "Steve… I don’t want to do this again. I want to be free from this."
"Then be free, Julie," Steve fervently breathed. "This is a freedom for both of us tonight."
You only mean sexual freedom, Julie wanted to accuse but she only shook her head. "No it’s not. I want-"
"To be uninhibited?" Steve offered sardonically. "You want to be in the comfort of and absolute, physical zero?"
"I don't want to be free. I want to be expensive - expensive as Nadja or Claudia was."
"You just want celebrity?"
"I ask for nothing but everything."
Steve glanced away with disinterest. " Everything... If you want everything then why do you waste your time modeling. Why not begin a career as a merchant banker on Wall Street?"
"Don’t analyze this for God’s sake."
"I only wanted us to have sex."
Julie glared: all of her suspicions confirmed. "That’s what all this is about isn’t it? You think that we’ll have sex and then I will simply mirror your state of mind."
"You make it sound so mercenary. I know you want to do this like I want to."
"And now you are deciding my perspective?"
Steve exhaled loudly, aghast. "Your thoughts are a mystery to anyone, possibly including yourself."
"Then fortunately I am only a model who parades your damn Euro-kitsch."
Steve shook his head with amazement. "Sometimes you’re as incoherent as German in reverse."
Julie snatched up her bag determinedly. "I am going back to the hotel."
As she swept past Steve took Julie’s arm in his steely grasp to delay her. "If you want to be the bitch then you do it, but not here when I have just brought you a half-million euro diamond and sapphire necklace."
For a moment Julie contemplated taking it off and thrusting it back into his arrogant possession, but seeing it again she felt such extreme avarice for it that there was no way that she could.
"Thank you," Julie replied sharply, reclaiming her arm from his relaxed grip. "I’d understand if you wanted it back, but stones aren't the exchanged rate for my body."
"No," Steve mused sternly. "According to your agent your body goes for sixteen thousand dollars US a day."
Julie indignantly snatched off the necklace and advanced it at him in her fist. "Then take it."
Steve made a forceful gesture with the back of his hands to rebuff it. "You do whatever you like with it. It’s yours - a momento of obsolete time."
"Am I to assume that I am released from this season’s collection?"
"You came to Paris to model and you will," Steve informed her flatly. "If you think that I will give you another opportunity to abandon my company then the next thing you'll wear is a contract infringement notification from the high court of Paris."
"Whatever." Julie dialed the phone for Sebastian. "Then I guess that you’ll see me on your catwalk tomorrow night."
Ever watched as she walked to the door with a shadowy, brooding expression. "Despite your attitude the shots you did today were OK."
Julie stepped out into the night alone, and now patronized.
As soon as she returned to her hotel suite she called David. Ice clinked as she held a glass in one hand and swirled it irascibly.
"I waited outside of the cinema for nearly and hour," David pined with a faint note of hurt. "He wouldn’t let you go?"
Julie gave a frustrated sigh. "I’m sorry, I really am, but I thought that we’d be finished by five-thirty, but then Steve Ever took me to two jewelers that opened for him after-hours and..." She drew breath to subdue her anger.
"Do you think that he’s maybe exploiting you Julie?"
"Maybe?" Julie replied, conveniently forgetting the necklace. "It’s as if he thinks he’s bought every second of my time in Paris."
"Then, you have to let him know that he can’t use you like a mindless model."
Julie unclasped the necklace and felt its opulent texture under her fingertips. "That’s just the way it is. If I refuse he’ll annihilate my reputation here and with the US names."
"Don’t you have anything else that you could do? Is being a model your whole universe?"
"No… I do some designs, you know, and people say that they are... actually designed."
"Like fashion designs?"
"Yes," she said, wishing that she hadn't provoked the subject. "Is modeling the only thing you do?"
"Before I was given the opportunity to go to Milano I was doing a law degree. I only have a year to complete it."
"That's ironic," Julie said musingly. "My mother always schemed that one of her daughters would nail a lawyer."
David laughed.
"I never expected that he would be fabulous looking."
"I am that description?"
Julie bit her lip and leaned back against the bureau. "When I was with Steve Ever, I was thinking of escaping and seeing you," Julie assured the Russian model.
"Then we should get together tomorrow morning. We could have breakfast together. I’ll come over to the Frágonard."
"No, David, I’ll come to your hotel. I have the car and Sebastian and it would be easier."
"If that’s what you want?"
"That’s what I want." She spoke slowly, as if to persuade herself that she knew what she wanted in everything.
After Julie rose the next morning she unconsciously reached over to the nightstand to feel for the diamond and sapphire necklace in its case.
She really had it and it wasn’t a night fantasy.
Pressing it against her pallid face she luxuriated in the fabuleaux vie sensation of it for a moment, then secured it around her neck.
She removed it and placed it on the nightstand again, divided. It did actually oblige her to Steve Ever in a way that she wasn’t comfortable with.
She was disarmed by the sound of the telephone's electronic ring.
If it’s Steve then I will refuse whatever he wants, Julie was adamant. "Yes?" she asked slowly.
"Julie its David. You are still coming over and they haven’t arranged for you to do more photographs? I am hoping not."
Julie exhaled with relief. Her tone became uplifted. "I expected to get Steve Ever asking me to select the fabrics for next season."
"Body, couture illustrator and stylist? You are the universal model," David said in a superlative tone. "All you need is a seamstress and you could launch your own house."
Julie reclined back and savored the prospect. "My own house... I can envision it: Julie Laing reinvents the little black dress."
"Why don’t you begin by wearing one this morning?"
Julie laughed buoyantly. He filled her with a sensation of innocence. "I will see you in an hour."
After hanging up she quickly cleansed, toned and moisturized. Afterwards she sprayed herself extravagantly with perfume and finely applied her make-up. Looking out of the window she noted the dark clouds from horizon to horizon and dressed in cream, fitted, chiffon slacks with overlaid lace flares, a lamé chemise, and a white, three-quarter, patent-leather jacket with blue-mink lapels. She slid her feet into her stilettos with the silver-pointed toes and heals.
As she cast her hair back over the collar of the jacket, there was a knock at the door.
Expecting the reception girl or a bellhop she swept it open.
"Were you going somewhere?" Steve asked.
"I was going to meet someone. I have plans this morning so whatever it is you will have to find someone else."
"At one of the restaurants down the avenue?" Steve interrogated.
"At the Hotel Grande Paon."
Steve’s face read sheer affront as he glared away. "I put you up in the Hotel Frágonard and you go there for breakfast?"
"France, I believe, is a free country."
Steve glared with derision. "It may be, but the Frágonard is not a free hotel."
Julie placed both hands on her hips determinedly. "Why are you here?"
"We have some…unfinished business from last night. Come with me to the Place de Vallois and forget that backward Russian."
She held her ground. "If you think that just because you put me up in a hotel that you can decide precisely what I do and who I can see, then I’ll find my own Parisian hotel."
Steve crossed his arms and leaned back against the door, as she was about to exit. "You will stay here - because everything has been paid for."
"The great Svengali speaks and all is done. Maybe in Paris," she huffed, signally for him to step aside. "Well, I am not from Paris or Europe Steve Ever. I am an American and in America a woman is free to define her own ambitions."
Steve remained where he was, indomitably. "All I asked was for you to come with me to Place de Vallois."
"This was not in my contract."
"You’ll be paid for your time. I know that you need the money."
Julie snatched up her handbag from beside a bronze statuette on the triple-lacquered bureau by the door. "As I said I have a date for breakfast. Call Angela or Brit. I’m sure that they'll oblige you - they're infamous career girls." She was determined to defy him. "Are you moving?"
A wordless dialogue transpired between their willful eyes.
As Julie went shove past Steve, he took her in his firm grasp and kissed her hard and relentlessly. Like he wanted to, and Michelle never believed she would.
With her senses fully succumbing she caught herself before she surrendered. She wouldn’t let Steve make her want him again. She wouldn’t. This contradicted everything that she promised not to do in Paris.
But she desired him. Her senses wanted to receive and consummate the power of his allure.
Her lips moved with Steve’s and she let him hold her-
But never!
She pulled away and Steve stared angrily.
Julie simply opened the door and stepped away down the hall lined with Baroque French paintings and bouquets of flowers on sculpted stands.
The limousine arrived at the Hotel Grande Paon only ten minutes later.
Julie was breathless after departing the car and found David waiting for her in a window seat in the belle époque interior of the Hotel Grande Paon. She fell down on the seat, shook out her hair and gasped with chagrin.
David was perplexed. "A bad trip?" he asked, observing the limousine pull away from the kerb into traffic outside.
"You don’t want to know - and I don’t want to remember. Why did that show have to be on today?"
"Actually, I am looking forward to it."
"Have you ever met Steve Ever?"
"No. Never. I only saw him two days ago."
"Then I can understand that," she barbed, and settled into the seat. Outside it was still overcast and the blue tone of the avenue darkened her spirits.
"I would not think that he was so unpleasant. He is a very sophisticated man - I’ve seen the commercials."
Julie was dismissive. "Sophisticated? That's just the gold and diamond dust that he throws in the eyes of people who don't know him."
David moved closer. "Not as sophisticated as you, ever."
Julie smiled, and glanced downward awkwardly. "You have all the right lines don’t you?"
"You have all the right features." David looked up at the waitress. "Un café et," he studied her face for an erotic moment. "Le menu petit déjeuner."
"A cappuccino," Julie glanced at her, then pointed at the menu. "And this, merci."
"Une botteille de Beaupré Aqua," the waitress spoke as she recorded it on her pad. "Et la cresson."
"And croissants," David added.
"Mademoiselle!" A woman in at the table next to them called; she was searching around her cock-feather headdress for her lost napkin.
David fixed Julie in his sights. "You aren’t having anything, but watercress?"
"Maybe later. Were you waiting long?"
"No. I went for a run through the Bois-de-Boulogne. I was missing the Priladozhskly Forest in Russia."
"The Bois is a little like Central Park," Julie remarked.
David laughed with a sudden inspiration. "I want to hear everything about your life in New York. Have you ever been to Madison Square Garden?"
"I saw Celine Dion there last fall with Vanese."
"Vanese, is your partner?"
"No!" Julie laughed. "She’s the woman who lives two floors beneath my apartment. Her father is an oil broker in San Antonio. They originally came from Brazil, but I don’t think that Vanese has even been there. Her father bought her apartment and she was meant to sublet it to help make the payments, and she does every time that she finds Mr. Universal. Every time that she meets another guy then its Heaven and Earth eternal and then I see her again and its all history. She explains it like, ‘he was too overpowering’ or ‘the navy called him up again’. She’s actually a professional photographer now and…" She stopped self-consciously. "Am I talking too much?"
"No. This is great. I want to know everything about your life. You’re very entertaining when you are speaking. You would be a success in whatever you do. I realized that when I saw your limousine yesterday."
"But that was not mine and you know what it’s like to be a model. If you are very fortunate you are on the catwalk in Paris but otherwise you are treated like nothing."
"Steve must be very wealthy," David said with a note of admiration.
"Yes."
"Are they wealthy in New York?"
"Who?"
"The men…the women?"
"Of course some are," Julie replied, regretting that she wasn’t one of them. There was something in David's tone that sounded as if wealthy New York men or women were not merely an interest but a great ambition.
After breakfast they walked to the river.Michelle wanted to here about Milan. David only wanted to converse about Manhattan.
Julie decided that it would be incitement to have Steve see her arrive with David Dionisii.
She returned to the hotel to try and allay her nerves before going to the ready-to-wear show that evening.
For some reason the image of Naomi Campbell falling over in twelve-inch heels at a Vivienne Westwood show kept recurring in her mind.
Julie arrived at the Place de Vallois right on time.
Backstage it was frenzied, with eleven stylists, six wardrobe assistants, seven make-up artists and various others trying to perfect the appearance of twenty-five models as Steve watched on critically.
After doing a double-take on Julie when she past, Steve ushered her behind a mobile rack loaded with stunning, unique garments and spoke in a confidential whisper: "About this morning Julie, I didn’t expect that to happen but it did and I wanted it to. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t believe that the feeling was reciprocal."
Julie glanced away. "When it wasn’t."
"I know that we can’t forget it but…" Steve’s eyes moved down Julie’s body, slowly and scrupulously every nuance of her svelte form. But was it simply professional interest?
"But?" Julie pressed.
"You want to continue dealing with each other on designer-model terms then-" Steve replied as if he regretted it. He turned as Dietrich manifested beside them. "Who is going to be on the runway and in what order?" Steve asked.
"The ladies will include, in sequence: Serena, Esther, Kate, Sarah, Amber, Karen, Angela, Yvonne, Denise, Cassey, Venus, Cynthia, Sandra, Jodi, Brit and-" He indicated Julie. "There is no variation in the order of appearances. The same model will commence and the same model will finish each sequence."
"And the males?"
Dietrich shot his finger at the gentlemen as he said their names. "Vaun will open, then Ansel, Marcus, Stefan, David, Tyrone, Paulo, Jacques, Stefan, Andrew and Jason. But David, Paulo and Jason will not be appearing at the haute couture on Friday. They will be replaced by three Paris models."
"And who did you say was the last model?" Julie inquired tentatively.
"We’ll have you go down the runway last of all the women - as Steve stipulated - to give the show a 'final spark'."
Steve was all innocence. "I requested that?" he intoned censoriously.
"Perhaps," Dietrich said, flustered. "Perhaps I am mistaken."
Steve glanced at Julie. "We all are sometimes."
Three of the girls walked in and Marie-Elise, noting the numbers printed elegantly on the hangers, handed each their first outfit.
Steve hailed Karl who swept past, and spoke emphatically: "Do you really think that the white tulle outfit will go best with Angela?"
"Yes," Karl replied politely. "I think that it gives it an element of the unusual on a black model."
"Yes, you are probably right," Steve replied, sanguine.
"Will I get into the outfit now?" Julie asked.
"Yes," Steve said. He led her over to a rack. "Dietrich! Are all the women doing a double run?" Steve asked.
"Yes. The women will do the open daywear collection. Then the men and then the women will conclude with the eveningwear. The same as the haute couture collection on Friday evening, as of the schedule."
"Of course. Then, Julie, wear this for now." Steve handed her a flounced black slip of diaphanous chiffon. "You’ll be wearing this garment under your first dress tonight."
Julie quickly changed into it and when she emerged she halted Marie-Elise. "Marie-Elise, where is Steve?"
"He is overseeing the garments as they arrive out back from the atelier. You are not in the dress yet?"
"Where is it?"
Marie-Elise selected a dress from the rack. "Here, quickly - everyone must be arranged."
Julie took the dress into the changing room with an expression of chagrin. Was the urgency to get her into costume because Steve expected her to vanish right at the last minute again?
In a crêpan and organza evening wrap Julie was like a vision of off-the-rack splendor. She stood at the door of the make-up anteroom and watched Kate Russell as she had her make-up applied.
Julie had seen her many times before in the media. She had to stop herself from staring like an inveterate fan. She looked around for Simone, but there was no one who even looked vaguely like her. Perhaps, this season Simone was working for another house or had simply left modeling at Steve’s behest.
"Trés belle," Steve crooned, viewing Julie with prescience "You’d better get your make-up applied. It is usually done before you dress. One of the professionalisms you forgot?"
Julie cast a poisoned glare at Marie-Elise, who simply turned away to attend to Kate as she was negotiated into a gold glomesh outfit.
"This thing 'ere’s bloody amazin’!" Kate shrieked in her cockney burr. When she moved it was like a gilded deluge of luster.
"These are the clothes that will be stocked in department stores all over the world," Marie-Elise commended Steve.
"Or knock-offs in B-department stores all over the world," Dietrich added with foreboding.
"Surely, the haute couture is more important?" Julie asked.
Steve nearly guffawed. "No, it is only more important in terms of the promotion. The buyers will pay for the one-off garments, but it is the commercial ready-to-wear, the perfumes, the make-up - all the mass consumables - that are most important. The glamor is in haute couture and the money is in the off-the-shelf products."
"Is everyone prepared to the opening sequence?" Karl said, fingering through the rack of clothes newly arrived.
"Serena hasn’t arrived yet," Marie-Elise fretted, "but everyone else knows what they are wearing."
At that moment, Canadian model Serena Kris suddenly appeared at the door and Dietrich gave a sigh of relief. "Antoinette, Jean Michelle she is here. She is here! Attend to her!"
Julie followed Serena and had her own make-up done.
With less than thirty minutes until the show commenced, Julie stepped directly in front of the enormous gold Steve Ever insignia on the pristine wall at the head of the catwalk. She glanced down it to observe the media as they began to assemble their cameras. Marie-Elise hovered over them at the end, allocating every available place. The two Hearst Media and Condé Nast photographers were given the best vantage-points at the end of the runway. Other photo agencies were given positions on either side. The remaining photographers were requested to take their positions behind them or along the runway left, behind the first row where the North American and Australasian buyers would be seated.
"Julie," Marie-Elise gestured for her.
Julie walked to her side with reluctance. What did Ever's Chief Stylist have in store for her now?
"This is one of Steve Ever’s new stars - Julie Laing," Marie-Elise declared. "She is now wearing a red organza open-front dress, bias cut and lined with tulle with lacework seems and a chiffon slip underneath, available at all Steve Ever La Boutiques internationally."
She paused to for the reporters take the details down. "You can do your test shots now with Julie."
Julie was blitzed with white light as the photographers adjusted their settings and gauged the light readings of the runway.
When the flashes subsided Julie remained where he was and watched for a moment as a young gentleman assistant walked around with a large atomizer and sprayed Destiny by Steve Ever. The scent hung heavily in the air.
"Julie, please," Steve called.
Julie followed him backstage and into the anteroom that served as Steve’s temporary office. He closed the door after her.
He studied Julie’s face intently. "I simply wanted to see what Antoinette and Jean Michelle did your make-up."
Julie turned her face from left to right according to where Steve looked.
"I guess that will be fine. Your complexion is very smooth and I don’t know if you might need less dramatic rouge. You are wearing the silk open-front dress of red. I don’t think that there should be such a contrast between your face and chest. Your skin is too luminescent to be concealed."
"They say that luminescent skin is the new status symbol."
Steve winked. "Then you would be the Princess Royal."
Julie turned into profile self-consciously. "Shall I ask Antoinette to tone it down?"
Steve took a silk handkerchief from off his desk and handed it to her. He crossed his arms. "Just brush some off."
She did.
"Now that’s it. When you get off the runway after the second routine Antoinette will apply a different tone of eye-shadow to accent the embroidery along there." He pointed towards her cleavage.
"I’d forgotten how strictly controlled this process is."
"By the end of tonight you'll be an expert," Steve promised. "When you come back off the catwalk, Dietrich or Marie-Elise will give you your next ensemble and you change immediately. Then, you sit under the illumine mirrors in the make-up quarter. When they have finished, you stand at the runway access. I will alter the fit of the dress and hair before you go out. I want to see that everything is perfect - everything has to be perfect."
Julie swallowed. "Absolutely."
"I don’t doubt it for a second. You will be brilliant tonight." He consulted his Rolex. "I’d better see that all of the men’s outfits have arrived. If you like you can wait here. If you drink anything then please see Antoinette afterwards in case your make-up is effected."
"Absolutely."
Steve paused in the doorway for a moment to take in the image of Julie one more time. "Everything is going to be perfect." He spoke as if to reassure himself. "Absolutely perfect…"
She watched him leave the room.
"Anything for Steve Ever Paris," Julie exhaled almost inaudibly.
Julie contemplated how much money she was making that evening for simply wearing exquisite couture and being the object of adoration.
She felt brilliant and she could nearly believe that the money was not her absolute motivation for being there.
"Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the experience of prét-a-porter by Steve Ever, Paris," the announcer declared. She spoke English with a clipped French accent.
The audience, the world's fashion elite arranged in a semi-circular formation, applauded.
Backstage, Dietrich applauded for a moment with an anxious laugh. "And pray we get through it again this time ladies and gentleman."
"We welcome you here tonight to see the new Steve Ever vision for Spring/Summer for women and men," the announcer continued. "With an emphasis on the chic, and revealing cut, Steve Ever anticipates the heat of the virgin summer."
The lights faded.
The throb of a Madonna song commenced.
The catwalk was deluged with white, piercing light.
"Serena wears a sequined dress shirt with the royal crest of the French Bourbon kings. A menswear-inspired, tasseled jacket perfectly compliments the lace-up- pants. Trés moderne. Trés vogue."
With sophisticated poise Serena did her turn at the end of the runway, then after sweeping her hair out, she headed backstage.
"Esther wears an African inspired shantung silk blouse with turned back cuffs. As she puts on the coat you will see that it is red velour, trimmed with faux-chinchilla."
Esther awed the viewers, right on cue.
"When Kate Russell wears a gold glomesh skirt and oblique-cut top all that glitters is truly gold. For the woman aspiring to be a star in any crowd. ‘Wrap gold-diamond shoes’ by Emil de Gare, Paris...
Sarah wears a strapless, ruffle-trim gown of floral silk chiffon with a tulle overshirt."
Julie watched Esther and Kate return backstage maintaining their styles. She envied their cool, experienced poise.
"You’ll do great," David said, coming up behind Julie. "Even if you look as though you are about to flee." He took a sip from his bottle of mineral water.
She glanced up at him timidly. "This could be like an hour that slips into a decade."
"Amber wears a silk-satin dress with a bias cut at the waist. Silk swathes the neckline and open back. Diamond encrusted velvet detailing and tulle overlay complete the look."
"Where are you going?" Steve asked as Julie headed for the back exit.
"To relax for a moment. It's not what you're thinking."
"I don’t know what to think," Steve replied shortly. "You are on in about two minutes. Be ready - be stunning."
"Karen is an icon of fashion in mirror-red tulle. Lace-encrusted sleeves are accented with ribbon detailing."
Julie decided against having a cigarette and simply took a deep breath, reassuring herself that everything was under control. Meanwhile the three security guards in the cavernous alley pretended not to notice.
When Julie returned, only four models remained at the runway access. She would be on in less than a minute. She stood perfectly still as one of the stylists adjusted the fit of her organza and crêpan dress with embroidery and ribbonwork embellishments. Antoinette applied the last dashes of hair spray to secure her hair.
David stood watching with an appreciative look on his face.
"You should have your hair done David," Steve suggested. "If you wouldn’t mind."
Sandra went out on the runway, then Jodi and then Brit, leaving only Julie.
Antoinette continued to be vexed by Julie's hair, arranging it over her left shoulder and at the last minute placing the modern diamond and ruby necklace and bracelets, that Michelle had seen at Cartier, on her.
"Brit wears a gold embroidered bustier with lace sleeves with frou-frou cuffs. The hipsters are chiffon with interior slits at the tapered ankles. Her open-toed ‘glass slipper’ stilettos are exclusive to Steve Ever's La Boutique, Paris."
"Be the Julie Laing that you were for Bill Blass," Steve said as Julie was ushered to the access door.
Four years worth of retorts occurred to Julie at once. "If you could be the-"
"Quickly Julie," Dietrich broke in. "Now!"
"Julie Laing exudes the opulence of spring in a Steve Ever evening gown of organza and crêpan. A froth of bustles on the shoulders contributes an element of the outré. Open-toed stilettos are by Martin Margiela."
She walked with absolute poise, emblematic of sleek and sexy. At the end of the runway her gaze traversed the editors of French Vogue and Elle as camera flashes blazed around her. She made a superficial turn with both hands held out.
On returning backstage, Antoinette immediately removed her jewelry, then Dietrich handed her the sparkling pallet-encrusted bodice of her last outfit.
Steve was overseeing the men who had already changed and were standing ready at the runway access.
Twenty minutes later the menswear portion of the collection commenced.
"Menswear this season has been defined with an accent on the natural male form," the announcer said as a blue light went over the audience. "He is handsome. He is desired. He is wearing Steve Ever Pour Homme."
Julie observed Dietrich psyching Vaun before he went out onto the runway.
"Vaun is attired in an aerial jacket with velour cuffs and epaulettes. Sheer silk pants define a slim but masculine silhouette...
Marcus wears a summer suit of navy chenille. The jacket provides a V proportioning with broad shoulders and tapered hips. Fitted sailor-trousers add comfort and style."
Julie accosted David shortly before he was due to take he runway to Dietrich’s chagrin.
"Stefan wears a gold, finely quilted overcoat with strip lapels and tie. He takes it off to reveal the double-breasted suit of black cotton-silk."
"And the Russian fashion stud gets ready to do his thing," Julie humored as David took a step towards the runway access. "All the way from St Petersburg for one appearance and you doubted your static?"
David touched her lightly on the hand. "Paris and Western Europe has that effect on me."
Steve looked between them impatiently. "Perhaps you should be getting ready for your last appearance, Julie," he admonished, then unbuttoned David’s jacket. "Place one hand into one of your pockets, Monsieur."
"David!" Dietrich called. "When the next song comes on you go out."
"I’m ready."
The U2 song kicked in.
"David is in a leather vest and chemise with subtly padded and strapped shoulders. The patent leather pants are secured with a gold Steve Ever belt. He wears ‘tattoo’ glasses from the new Steve Ever range available at select department stores internationally."
Ansel stepped backstage.
"He’s taken a profound interest in you hasn’t he?" Steve remarked behind Julie as she was trying to catch a glimpse of the Russian male model on the runway.
She was still not sure what her feelings were for David Dionisii. "He's a beautiful man."
"And you’re concentrating on what you have to do tonight aren’t you?"
Julie turned penetratingly. "Of course, I was just getting ready."
"Can you assist her?" Steve gestured for Dietrich to come over.
"Tyrone wears low-waisted trousers and a silk shirt with a vertical collar. The three-quarter, double breasted jacket in the cut-away style makes an ideal addition."
"How did it feel?" Julie asked the moment that David stepped backstage.
"I felt like a twenty-second celebrity." David noted Steve's impatient look at him as Dietrich hastily undid the buttons on Julie's jacket. "Perhaps I should let you change," David submitted. "I will to go out behind the audience to watch you."
"We conclude Steve Ever prét-a-porter with a view to the woman of sophistication," the announcer said when the lights went down over the audience again. "The evening wear that outfits a woman as a diva of ambition. The Steve Ever woman is not afraid of the glamor of femininity and the will to power. Whether in the boutiques of Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Milan, Rio or Tokyo, the style is universal. The style is what it has always been, sheer brilliance - sheer elegance. Steve Ever, Paris.
There was a majestic silence as golden light bloomed.
Serena appeared at the start of the catwalk akimbo; her hair sculpted high with topaz, ruby and fire-diamond clasps ornamenting it.
"A famous figure resplendent in that famous Steve Ever cut. Serena wears an evening wrap draped in red tulle with flounces and taffeta blossoms along the cleavage. A gold belt, with facet-cut citrines, amethysts, topazes and garnets complete the ensemble."
"Esther wears a mademoiselle smoking jacket with Sicilian embroidery over a corset of ruffled gold and platinum ribbon. The quilted skirt with bustles give the figure a striking accent."
As Julie stood last in the line, behind the other fourteen models, she had the sensation of being on a glamor production line.
"In a white taffeta cocktail dress Kate is an idol of chic. The quilted bodice and gloves add a dash of the twenty-first century to a classic garment."
When only ten models remained, Julie was rushed back into make-up to correct a faint defect in the symmetry of her mascara at the corners of her eyes.
With only Cynthia, Sandra, Jodi and Brit ahead of her again, Julie stood ready to step up to the runway access as two assistants wound abundant pearls around her wrists and secured them with platinum-gilt clasps. The last piece of jewelry came from an embossed-velour Cartier box. It was a single diamond and sapphire bracelet. All of the sizeable stones were precisely cut by the brilliant and emerald techniques.
"You are confident to end the collection?" Steve asked as he attended to Julie.
Julie resisted the urge to admit how uncertain she actually felt. "I’ll do OK. I only have to make one appearance."
Steve adjusted the shoulders of Julie’s jacket to fit more evenly. "It is the very last of the collection, and you’re going to do my name extremely well tonight."
"That’s what I am being paid for isn’t it?"
"That and whatever else," Steve responded mysteriously.
"Brit wears a floor-length gown in gold lamé and black lace with a waist-high pleated slit. Shoulder straps composed of links with 130 carat diamonds mounted in 16 karat gold and matching fire diamond bracelet make this a truly bejeweled silhouette."
"Get ready," Steve demanded. "You’re on as soon as Brit gets to the end of the runway."
"Brit," Julie mused breathlessly. "I didn’t think that I would ever see her, let alone follow her here in Paris."
"You sound like an admirer."
Envy tainted Julie’s expression. "She’s famous."
"And what do you think the difference between you and her is?"
"She’s famous," Julie repeated laconically.
"In two or three seasons in Paris and Milan you could have a similar profile."
Julie appeared skeptical. "Maybe, but at…" She faded out not wanting to admit the disadvantage of her age.
"You simply have to get your name around to the other fashion houses - You have a very Versace look," Steve insisted. "Or maybe Gucci, YSL - Tom Ford is always looking for new faces."
"Yeah, but-"
Dietrich rushed between them. "Quick Julie - take the catwalk!"
Julie stepped out at first unnerved, but at the sight of the audience she was ready to take the fashion capital in her stride.
"A Manhattan woman in Paris, Julie Laing wears a Steve Ever ‘la femme tuxedo-deluxe’. It is embroidered with black pallettes, with faux tiger-lined collar and lapels, pique tassels and pullback cuffs. A look tailored for the sensual flames and mystique of a summer night. A sapphire and diamond Cartier bracelet adds brilliance to elegance."
Even if Steve had only boosted her confidence to enhance his garments, it was good to be the iconic model again. At the end of the catwalk she caught a fleeting glimpse of David's enraptured face.
She did a sleek and precise turn at the end of the runway and headed backstage.
As soon as she returned she held out her arms for the stylists to removed the pearls from her wrists. Dietrich appeared behind her to remove the diamond choker. She pulled the black and white diamond earclips off quickly.
"As they say in Britain - it’s a smash," Marie-Elise remarked, glancing from Julie to Steve. "The buyers out there were entranced. The Tokyo orders alone will be phenomenal."
"Then we’ve made it again," Steve looked to Julie and a note of sobriety came into his voice. "At lease until the autumn/winter collection."
"You sound exhausted," Dietrich observed.
Steve flashed a smile. "Not really."
As the guests began to leave all of the models, still in costume, convened backstage at Marie-Elise’s request.
"Thank you all for what you’ve done tonight," Steve said, stepping amid them. "All of you who will be at the haute couture show at the Nouveau Legion d’Honorer on Friday, keep yourselves attractive and stylish."
Steve lightly kissed Esther, Sarah, Amber, Angela, Kate and then Sandra in succession.
"Vaun," Steve said, grasping the male model's shoulder lightly. He shook Marcus’ hand and glanced at his only Russian model. "Maybe I will see you next season, David." Steve said it as if he sincerely doubted it.
Julie was about to speak with the designer, but when he turned from her she simply watched as he exited through the back entrance.
"Is he leaving?" Julie whispered to Marie-Elise, who was supervising two assistants: they each held one end of a gold lamé dress and were laying it in a long flat Steve Ever box.
"He is," Marie-Elise replied, without turning. "But he will be at the after-show party in the Dauphin’s Hall at the Hotel Frágonard."
Julie went back into the changing room with a meditative expression.
After Julie had taken off her outfit she noticed the diamond and sapphire bracelet that had been concealed under the turned back lace cuffs of the design. The announcer had spoken about it, but it wouldn't have even been visible to the audience. She pulled it off, fretfully and held it tightly in her fist. She had to return it.
"Here’s the outfit," Julie draped its two parts over both of Dietrich's forearms. As she was about to give him the bracelet too he was called to assist Serena.
"Marie-Elise," Julie said, holding out the precious piece of jewelry.
"I have to collect the buyers sheets," Marie cast back shortly. "Give it to Antoinette."
"Antoinette." Julie accosted the stylist, holding it out insistently. "I have the Cartier bracelet still and-"
"Sorry, Julie, I don't deal with the jewelry." Antoinette swept past, then Dietrich swept past in the opposite direction. "All of the outfits must be put on the mannequins for the showrooms or boxed for cataloguing," he instructed briskly.
"Your car is outside Julie!" David called. "We can taken it together back to your hotel and the party?"
"Of course, but-"
"Quickly Julie!" he gestured emphatically. "One of the delivery vans is waiting to back in and your limousine is in the way."
"But," Everything was a blur. Julie looked around for someone to give the bracelet to, but to no avail.
She pursued David outside in a heated rush.
No doubt it was a fake and she would give it back later.
Definitely later.
Julie and David arrived side-by-side at the after-show party in the Dauphin's Hall at the Hotel Frágonard. It was dripping with crystal chandeliers; adorned with ceiling paintings, coffering, sculpted stucco and parquet flooring.
Julie's hair was slightly disheveled and she quickly corrected in the ladies room. She wore a Geisha print Steve Ever long dress shirt and shiny leather jeans.
When she came out everyone was there, set for an evening of Parisian haute couture society.
Julie cast a glance at Steve who was being interrogated by a reporter from the Marie Claire at the door.
"Where did the more severe hem lines come from for this season?" the reporter asked in her heavily accented English, holding her digital recorder invasively close to his lips.
"I don’t know," Steve replied irritably as he studied Julie and David.
A reporter from French Vogue hustled her way to the front of the pack. "Do you think that there will be a return to brilliant citrus colors next season?"
"Perhaps."
"The silhouettes of your women’s garments are more form-fitting and accentuated at the collars," the Vogue journalist persisted. "Are you attempting a more 70's approach to the female figure?"
"I approached them with a twenty-first century perspective on the new woman," Steve replied superficially. "The woman who isn’t necessarily a style or predictable. Have you ever seen a suit cut exactly like that before?"
"When you were with the House of Bergé Riva you did a similar cut with your female tuxedos," the other reporter recalled.
"Yes," Steve shrugged. "I had a very interesting time there four years ago."
"You are redefining the form?"
Steve was cursory. "If you think so."
Julie followed David to the bar and plucked a cherry from one of the diamond-ice platters.
"This is beautiful isn’t it?" David marveled, buoyant as a peacock. "When I was young and my father was a miner I thought that this was only a dream, but here we are."
Julie was equally overwhelmed. "Yes. And Steve Ever’s the axis on which it all turns."
"He has a charisma for you doesn't he?"
"Iranian caviar on water cracker?" a server asked as he swept a silver salver past them. "Tuscan truffles with Brie?"
Julie selected a canapé and chanced another glance back in the direction of Steve and the reporters.
"I did not see you last season," Vaun remarked as he stepped up to them.
"No," David said, shaking his hand. "I was doing an overdue military service in Saint Petersburg."
"At the pavilion in the Parc du Mars was magnificent," Vaun enthused. "I’d even say that it was as outrageous as show in the Grande Arche de la Défense."
Julie was roused into the exchange. "You’ve been on the runway for Steve Ever for two seasons?"
"Four," Vaun said with pride.
Julie drew a blank. "Four?"
"Yes. This is Esther’s third season, Nadja’s first, Kate’s third, Marcus’s…second I think..."
Julie reflected on how her career had faltered over the last four years. If only she hadn't walked out on Steve’s show and lost contact.
"Did I hear me name mentioned?" Kate Russell’s cockney voice pierced through the conversation. Her arm was strapped around her Hollywood boyfriend, Matt Russell.
"Simply remarking that you’re still in great form," Vaun said.
Kate took the compliment with excess. "You’re just sayin' it 'cause it’s bloody true. Come over 'ere with us."
Vaun was quixotic. "And why would I do that?"
"I want me face between yours and Matt’s in the London tabloids, hey? Over 'ere - zieg heil!"
They watched as Vaun trailed them to where Serena and the media were circulating.
Julie looked to find Steve, but he was nowhere in sight.
"Where is Vaun from?" David asked in a confidential whisper.
"Germany, I think," she guessed.
"What are you doing tonight?" Steve said, stepping up behind them. "I expect that you’ll be in high spirits for the couture show."
"Or on spirits," Julie sassed.
David laughed. Steve glared at Julie, wondering if she was serious. "You wouldn’t sabotage my collection like that; I know you and you wouldn’t... Well, maybe you would."
"I will be the model model," Julie promised unconvincingly.
"You didn’t answer my question about what you two were doing tonight?"
"I have no plans," Julie replied guardedly.
"And you David?"
"I'm going to a nightclub on the Rive Gauche."
"That sounds fabulous," Julie concurred.
Steve focused on Julie. "And you wouldn’t come over to my home for a Shiraz or Beaujolais?"
"I’d prefer to go to the nightclub."
"Yes, but David’s run is finished for this season, but you…" Steve spoke forcefully. "You will be appearing again on Friday and there are still some of the outfits that I want to fit and redefine."
She moved closer to David. "Can’t it wait until tomorrow?"
Steve studied his watch. "It’s only nine-thirty, you know. Most of the nightclubs in Paris don’t get started until after midnight. You could meet David later."
"As I said-"
"I'll call my car, Julie," Steve cut-in as he signaled for Marie-Elise to contact his driver.
Julie looked at David apologetically. "Maybe, I will see you by midnight?"
"OK," David replied, intimidated by Steve's presence. "I’ll hear from you?"
As Steve turned Julie cast a scowl behind his back. "ASAP."
On the way to Steve’s home the car made a sudden diversion towards the Seine River.
"You have a residence on the Rive Gauche now?" Julie inquired tautly.
Steve took her in with a mysterious glance. He opened the compartment beneath the armrest and withdrew a diamond-encrusted cigarette case. "Would you like a smoke?"
Julie shook her head. "I gave up last year. You didn’t answer my question."
"You’ll see…" he replied in a reassuring tone that was not at all comforting. They crossed the sparsely lit De La Concorde Bridge and the car continued on.
They passed the illuminated, 59 floor Montparnasse Tower, past medieval streets.
Julie had a sudden sensation of déjà vu as the car pulled into the kerb beside a shadowy, though opulent garden in the Classic French style with sculpted hedges, and sumptuous landscaping featuring parrot tulips, bearded irises and lilies.
Steve got out of the limousine and waited for Julie to do likewise.
Julie was noticeably averse to following him. "What are we doing here, Steve?"
"This is our destination," Steve replied. "Everything here is beautiful isn’t it? Timeless..."
"Yes…" Julie’s frowned as she followed him hesitantly. She tried to remember when or if she’d been there before. "I’ve seen that building some time, but I can’t remember..."
Steve smiled evocatively. "I think you can."
It came to Julie with a rush of nostalgic euphoria that she contained. She scrutinized one of the water fountains. "This is where we went right after the party, the first night that we met. At the… the… the Jardin de Batagne-Voule."
Steve's motive was affirmed. "That’s right."
"I’d forgotten where it was, and what it looked like, but I remember that line of cypresses there and the scent of the tulips."
"Is that all?" Steve urged crisply.
The memory of the first time that they kissed illuminated Julie’s mind. For a moment she felt the full power of sentimentality but she stifled it. She’d kissed other men before and that had only been another transient intimacy.
"Is there something that I should remember?" she asked Steve, not chancing a look at him.
Steve was silent until Julie looked at him again. "We came here before we went to my studio in the Marais."
"Can't Europeans ever forget the past?"
The intensity of Steve's gaze didn't diminish. "Is there anything that you would like to do in retro?"
The insinuation registered, but Julie pretended that it didn’t. "Everything that happened here is now as antiquated as that statue of Mary Magdalene."
Steve looked around. "I think it was a royal estate, made into a park to commemorate the revolution."
"We all have our private revolutions don’t we?"
Steve cast her a questioning glance. "You had a thrilling time at the show tonight didn't you?"
"It was endurable," she exhaled.
"You were nervous?"
She let slip a laugh; her reserve was broken. "Of course. Incredibly nervous."
Two young overwhelmed teenagers appeared from nowhere. "Steve Ever?" one of them ventured. "You’re a designer, right?" She turned to her friend in low-cut blouse, carrying a latex handbag. "I can’t believe this and we’ve only been in Paris three hours! I'm Sharon and this is Audrey."
"Thanks. I’m just trying to speak to someone," Steve tried to dissuade them. "If you want an autograph then I can quickly sign it."
"I’m a model," the slender girl with dark Spanish features, Sharon, managed. "I’ve come to do the catwalk from London. How do I apply? Do you think that I would be selected?"
"I’m sure you would," Steve said solicitously, but hurriedly. "If you send some images from your portfolio to our offices my selectors will see if there is somewhere they can use you - and get yourself an agent."
"You don’t select the models?" Audrey, the girl with the dyed-burgundy hair, questioned with disappointed innocence. "I heard that they do at Chanel."
"I am not Karl Lagerfeld. But sometimes I do, and sometimes I am very busy."
"Where is your office?" she asked.
"Just a second," he replied, suppressing irritation. He produced an ebony card with embossed gold print and handed it to her.
"Thank you, we'll be in contact," one of the girls said.
"Great, you do that." He smiled after them sympathetically, then met Julie’s eyes. Having taken in the spectacle of Steve’s allure, she stepped back towards him. "You’ve lit up their Parisian night," she remarked, glancing after them with a reminiscent glint in her eyes.
"There’s a seat there," Steve gestured to an ornate chair in front of a mass of water lilies luminous above the underwater lights.
"And even in this light they recognized you," Julie said as they sat under the shadows of the foliage, gently moving with the breeze. "Is there anywhere that you go that you are besieged by wannabes?"
"They're not all ‘wannabes’ you know," Steve said. "Even you had to start somewhere. You’d take whatever chance to get it wouldn't you?" His brows converged keenly.
"That describes everything I've ever wanted," Julie breathed with a placid glance at metro as it past in the distance.
Steve edged closer. "And what right now do you really want, Julie?"
"I want a million dollars. I want a Mercedes convertible. I want a new Gucci belt, but..."
Steve waited for a moment. "But what?"
"But, I don't know what I want..." she laughed evasively.
Steve's tone was seductive. "I think you know what you want because I want it too. Everybody wants it."
Julie slung her handbag over her shoulder and stood, visibly uneased. "I should go back to the hotel."
"You won’t be working again until Friday so I don't think an hour or two will make any difference." Steve insisted.
A spark flared in Julie's heart, like a spark from the surface of the sun, as she recognized the male craving in his eyes. "No… I guess not. But I have a feeling that it would be best for me to go back to the Hotel Frágonard. I have to remove my make-up. I have to-"
"I'll call my driver."
On the way to the hotel, Steve insisted that they drop into his Avenue d’Iena home for 'that Shiraz'. The prospect of spending the end of a triumphant, exquisite day alone defied the spirit of Paris. Steve recalled that there were still couture numbers to be fitted and so technically it wasn’t simply 'that Shiraz'.
Steve led the way into the drawing room. "You looked wonderful tonight," he remarked, not looking at Julie, as if his gaze might burn through her.
Julie immediately eased down into a satin-lined Empire settee and crossed her legs demurely. Her eyes moved over the fine detailing of the walls, not looking directly into any of the gilded mirrors.
"But they were your clothes," she responded with ersatz modestly.
"Yes." He appeared suddenly reticent, contemplating each elegant nuance of her face, then her shoulders. For a fleeting moment he surveyed the remainder of her body before glancing away. "The way you looked tonight… It was just like I thought you would four years ago."
Julie gave a let's talk about something else pout. "You flatter me."
"No, being there today you flattered my sales figures more than you could have realized."
Julie chanced only a momentary glance into his eyes. "Maybe…"
"Marie-Elise collected the buyers cards and they were interested in the organza and crêpan dress that you wore," Steve continued.
"More than any other outfit?" she asked in what she hoped was a casual tone.
Steve rested his arm on the veined, black marble of the mantelpiece. "Maybe a touch."
Julie leaned forward and appeared to writhe with discomfort.
"What is it?" Steve sounded perturbed and approached her to see if he could be of assistance.
"It’s nothing." She reached behind her neck to loosen it. "This neck line and the Steve Ever label is just a little sharp."
"Here." Steve stood in front of her. "Let me get that."
He placed his hands behind Julie’s neck and expertly undid the neck-cuff and removed it. "Did I say that you looked wonderful tonight?" Steve humored.
"You’d be the best endorsement for your own products. You are…"
"'Endurable’?" Steve japed.
Julie laughed lightly. "I was going to say that you have captivating allure, but that’s not the kind of thing that you say to a man like Steve Ever is it?"
"No, that’s something that you would say to a man you'd get sexually involved with."
Julie looked around facetiously. "I don't need a lover."
Steve fixed her with an insinuating glare. "I don’t believe that you came to Paris just to appear in the show." He put his hand behind Julie’s back and pulled her audaciously close with his firm, manly-veined arms. "You wanted this?"
"Just because you want it?"
Words were useless. Eric kissed her with willful provocation.
Julie, stunned and motionless, felt the stubble on Steve’s cheek brush over her temple. Their kiss that morning at the Hotel Frágonard had been playing on her mind all day. Despite her desire to resist, all of his allure compelled her.
Steve’s hand moved down to Julie’s back as he began to heatedly bitingly kiss her neck, past her jaw and to her lips. Julie believed that she should rebel against the force of instinct.
But why spend it alone in the company of the past and regrets?
She tasted the combination of Steve’s masculine skin and the scent of his cologne in a single heady gasp. Even if it was Steve Ever, at that moment he was a stunning man and she was a woman alone and sensuality availed in Paris. In his embrace it was inevitable that she'd succumb to the forces of instinct as she had all of those years ago. How could it be wrong to take some comfort in the arms of a man like Steve when he wanted her so intensely? Although her ambitions cried out for him, she assured herself that it was simply her body that he was enrapturing.
Absolutely nothing but the eternal flesh.
They kissed intensely for several moments before Steve’s lips moved over her ear sensitively. "Why don’t we go to the bedroom?" he persuaded with a jagged breath.
They went up the stairs and into the bedroom, holding hands and kissing intermittently. When they entered the room they reclined on the covering of the bed. Gradually they undressed and were naked with maximum intensity.
They held one another as if the only star in the sky was Venus. As he moved within her she could only wonder how she had ever abandoned him for her solitude. Their lips moved in a heated unison and there was no question that this act had been inevitable from the moment that she arrived in Paris. She could only wonder that she had ever lived without this act.
After their desire came to its natural end, Julie lay staring at through the gilt and crystal-domed ceiling between two worlds. Steve, breathing deeply, lay at her side preoccupied with his own post-climax sensations.
She felt satisfaction tinged with sharp fear. She wanted to speak with Steve but couldn’t think of the right words. She’d surrendered to him as she promised herself that she never would. He’d exploited her body on the catwalk and now in his bed. She wanted him to hold her and reassure her that this meant something more than a transient sexual release.
For a moment she closed her eyes to contemplate how she would broach the subject of their future - if in fact they had one.
Steve’s cellular phone rang and Steve reached down to the floor to pick it up.
"Bonsoir!" he exhaled. He slowly pulled himself up and reclined on the padded bedhead. "Is that you Simone?" he asked, sounding unnerved. "Right…We can make other arrangements…I expected you…I see…Then we’ll do that, if you want..." He held out the phone and looked at it for a moment as if the person at the other end was suddenly cut off.
Julie glared askance, then back up at the beautifully distorted sky.
What had she just witnessed?
A sudden realization chilled her. She was keeping Steve together during Simone’s absence. Perhaps Simone was out of Paris and preparing for the annual fashion week in Milan and Steve only wanted someone to satisfy his more immediate impulses.
He was paying her a sixteen thousand dollar appearance charge for each show.
What else had he expected for the money?
Julie swept out of bed and began to dress quickly and ungraciously.
Steve watched her with vague disbelief. "You’re leaving?"
"I think that I’ve got things to get together back at the hotel," she replied curtly.
"What are you doing?"
Julie finished slipping back into her Versace leather jeans and Geisha print silk shirt.
Steve swathed himself with the satin sheet and appeared as if he were about to give pursue and stop her. "Just wait."
"What for?" she threw back, then paused at the door with an accusatory glare.
Steve eased to Julie’s side and began kissing her sensuously above the ear. "I think I’m getting a second wave."
Julie glared shards of ice. "Yeah, whatever. I'll see you before the next show, I guess." She stepped out of the bedroom door. "I expect that I will see you on Friday."
"Wait for hellsake!"
She stopped and risked a glance back at her deceiver. "I’ve waited too long. Reality has arrived."
She walked down the stairs determinedly.
"Now there’s the Julie that I remember: walking out right when things started to happen," Steve charged her. When Carmena appeared downstairs, Steve jolted back behind the door.
"And exactly the Steve that I remember," Julie said, more to herself that Steve.
Snatching up a long silk dressing gown Steve followed her. "And that means what precisely?"
"Forget it," she spat, stepping into the hall determinedly.
Steve seemed too exasperated to think straight. "Believe me - I already have."
There was perfectly timed sneer on Julie’s lips. "Yes." Her mood changed momentarily when she offered a fleeting, cynical smile to Carmena as she collected her black Prada handbag. "Au revoir, Carmena."
Carmena tried to appear as though she noticed nothing: arranging magazines neatly on the coffee table then dusting the bookcase.
"One last thing Julie…" Steve drawled ominously, before she made it to the front door. "If you’ve got any plans of taking flight from Paris - I have an indissoluble contract with your signature on it. Yours: Julie Laing!"
Julie stalled as she opened the door onto the forecourt and the bustling avenue beyond. She glared back and retorted: "You booked a model and that's what you've got. And now all expectations attained, Mr. Ever. I do the show and I get my money: The End."
Julie slammed the door. Steve slammed the bedroom door.
"Ma Dio." Carmena crossed herself.
With only the sharp sound of her heels clicking on the Orvieto marble Julie stepped across the portico and down to the driveway, overcome with searing emotions. Why on earth had she become intimate with the man who’d betrayed her all of those years ago? What kind of madness was it that compelled her?
On the avenue she pulled her Chanel female smoking jacket out of her handbag and held it close.
"And where are you going to go?" Steve called above her.
Julie glance up to see Steve in silk pants and a loose shirt, but caught herself before she said anything that would seriously jeopardize her forthcoming appearance at the haute couture show.
"I don’t think that I’ll ever understand you Americans," Steve cursed. "You are like a wave that crashes dry."
Julie failed to respond and walked on, too angry to call Sebastian and the car. She walked on towards the Champs Élysées and into the blear of the Parisian streets.
When Sebastian did collect Julie she was at the corner of the Rue de Bassano and the Champs Élysées between the Cinema Rheims and a video and television showroom.
"Do you want me to drive you to the Frágonard?" Sebastian asked evenly; after she climbed in.
"No," she responded somberly. "I want to see everything Paris."
"You want to see Paris... All things?" he asked doubtfully. "Not L'Hotel Frágonard?"
"That's right," her voice faltered.
Sebastian looked forward and seized the wheel, confused. "Where is it that I begin?"
"Please just drive through Paris … Sebastian simply drive…"
What else could the chauffeur do?
He pulled away from the kerb and headed north.
The car cruised on and on through the Marais, through Belleville, Clichy, Batignolles into the hours of the early morning. They drove on and on, as if looking for a destination of the soul that could never be arrived at in this world.
When Julie got out of the limousine at the Frágonard she nodded at the doorman and vigorously stepped up the stairs into the lobby. As she awaited the elevator she checked for the key in her pant's pocket. As he produced it, the diamond and sapphire bracelet fell out of her pocket and slid over the ornate crest made of eleven shades of marble on the lobby floor.
She anxiously retrieved it.
She would have to contact Steve.
But how could she after the debacle at his townhouse earlier?
She studied the fine cut of the diamonds superlatively arranged in platinum. This was not simply an ersatz piece. No doubt it was worth thousands of pounds. It would be a very serious matter not to return it.
As soon as she entered her room she called Steve, hoping that Carmena would take the call, but it rang out. Not even his answering service collected it.
Her relief however only outweighed her distress.
She picked up the jewelry case containing the diamond and sapphire necklace and noted how exquisitely the bracelet complimented it. She began to speculate on where Steve could be: Possibly attending to the minutiae of the haute couture show at the atelier.
Possibly with Simone.
It crossed Julie’s mind that Steve had fixed it so that she kept the bracelet as a curse: A bejeweled manacle and aide-mémoire.
She tried calling one more time but with no success.
I'll give the bracelet back to Marie-Elise or Dietrich tomorrow, she decided.
Definitely tomorrow.
Definitely to Dietrich.
David waited for Julie down in the Frágonard lobby at 11am the following morning. He was appraising a marble statue entitled Venus Awakening To Immortality with great interest.
"You like art?" Julie took him off guard.
"I like the female art," he admitted taking in the sight of Julie in her pantsuit. "I don’t like modern art, not any of it but Matisse."
Jacques, the doorman, grinned and tapped his cap as they stepped down to the pavement.
"Do you want to take my car?" Julie asked, observing Sebastian waiting further down the Champs.
David considered it doubtfully. "Why don’t we walk, it will be more private. I suspect that Sebastian is the eyes - the fashion-espionage - of Steve Ever."
Julie considered it in the affirmative for a moment.
They walked down the tree-lined Champs towards the river where stall-vendors selling books, religious icons, art and bouquets lined the embankment.
"You’re right about Sebastian," Julie decided. "I wondered what Steve’s motives for putting an unknown model in a chauffeured limousine were."
David gaped humorously. "I have been involved in the modeling industry for eleven years and I have never had a driver provided exclusive to me."
"Maybe one day," Julie said in a sympathetic tone.
"Maybe."
They crossed the avenue and passed the fast food and pizzeria stores. People streamed out of the Rond Point exit of the Metro and they sidestepped their way through them.
They went on silence for a moment. "When will you be returning to New York?" David questioned with odd discretion.
"I am due to leave on Saturday."
Pallid, David stopped and scrutinized her face. "This Saturday?"
The shade of a lost dream traversed Julie’s face. "This Saturday..."
"And I leave for Russia on Sunday," David spoke slowly, contemplative.
"You sound as if leaving Paris is a kind of exile for you."
David fixed her with desperate eyes. "Do you know what it is like to feel happiness for a moment, then lose it? It is worse than if you never experienced it at all."
Julie caught sight of the turgid waters of the river. "Yes, believe me I know," she said, desperately trying to forget last night.
"I want something, but…"
Julie paused. "Where is it that you want to be, really?" she inquired with empathy.
David’s maudlin expression changed to one of higher spirits. "But why are we talking about this now, when we have this city all around us? Russia is beautiful and Paris is beautiful," he said with a transparent laugh. He made eye contact with Julie briefly, but urgently. "Please, let’s go to the gallery, it is only down the end of that boulevard."
Julie had expected to see paintings but it was a photographic exhibition. It featured images from all over the world: Californian beaches, British models in Belgravia, Australian landscapes, Italian palazzos, African tribes and even shots from downtown New York.
David stood before a life-size image of a woman in a Beverly Hills villa. She was attractive and poised in her designer outfit.
In the next photograph a Texan woman sat on a solid, Georgian table with her back turned to the camera. She was topless but the image was not at all explicit.
"Do all of the women in America look like that?" David asked.
Julie pouted thoughtfully. "Some do, I guess."
Inspiration flickered in David’s eyes. "America is a place that I want to be."
Julie wondered why she hadn’t even thought of New York since she’d arrived in Paris. A fashion photograph of Steve Ever and one of his models, standing at a recent show, attracted her gaze.
"Do you recognize her?" Steve looked at Julie’s profile. "Or is that the type of woman that you think is enviable?"
Unnerved, Julie tried to appear detached. "It is dangerous to your self-esteem to find too many other women enviable. I prefer to admire people's actions." She looked at him. "Or their reactions."
"But not a man like me?" he asked with mannish innocence.
"Never say that. You're extremely attractive. You know that."
"But you don’t want to-" he broke-off as a couple of Spanish tourists entered the room.
"We have another three days here," Julie said idealistically.
David appeared depressed again at the suggestion. "Another three days and then you return to New York. Another five days and I return alone to Russia."
"You make it sound fatal."
"You don’t know how fatal it is to a male model."
"Then why don’t you try to stay here in Paris?" Julie tried to console him.
"I am only fluent in English. I do not speak French well enough and I do not have time to appeal for an extended visa."
Julie applied a light touch to his arm. "You’ll be OK."
His spirits were vaguely lifted again. "It is almost as difficult to get a work extension here as in the USA, do you think?"
Julie failed to reply. She was transfixed by an image on the wall.
It was of Simone Bréson.
It was exactly the same image that Julie had seen all those years ago in Steve’s studio. But how could she be sure? She looked at the price: 1500 euros, then at the photographer’s name: Adam Ericson, Belgium, 1999.
It seemed to affirm that Steve had never taken the picture, but Julie was hesitant to jump to any absolute conclusions. After the evening before, all witnesses to the defense of Steve Ever were out.
"Are you alright?" David asked, sounding concerned.
"Fine," Julie stammered. "Would you call this image pornographic?"
"No. She is simply topless - it is very Scandinavian. Not pornographic. Why?"
"Nothing." Julie backed away. "I think I’ve seen enough photographs. Why don't we go somewhere else?"
David shrugged compliantly. "If you want."
They traversed Parisian streets and the prospect that Steve had never taken any questionable images of Simone all of those years ago consumed Julie's thoughts.
"We have walked here for ten minutes and still there’s been no sign of Steve Ever," David said incredulously, as they passed the intricate façade of an antique dealership. "I was getting the impression that he had surveillance on your every move."
Julie remained preoccupied. "He’s got his own motives in everything."
"I think that his motive is simply Julie Laing."
Julie shook her head slowly. "He’s an artist and they are all confusing. You can never know what they want."
"That’s an insightful remark."
She walked on past another pawnbroker's store. "I read it in a magazine somewhere, but what about you? You don’t have anyone back in Russia who motivates David?"
Reminiscence clouded David’s eyes and he smiled pensively. "There was one girl. I had to do national military service and she was the... what you would call admiral's daughter. We spent much time together in Duorovska. Her name was Nirena and she was beautiful. She was womanly but she had strength of purpose about her that I’ve never forgotten. Once we met after the curfew and went to swim in the hot springs of Kirovsk. Afterwards, when the rain began, we took shelter in a barn and we-" He suddenly stopped as if hopelessly wrenched back to reality. He gave Julie another pensive smile. "That is now only history and of the past."
"‘Til you relive it'," Julie muttered.
"What?"
"Nothing," Julie said. "I was just thinking of something that a friend said to me before I arrived in Paris."
"And what was that?"
"It doesn’t matter," Julie insisted with a rush of anxiety: in her pocket she felt the diamond and sapphire bracelet. She swallowed hard. "David, there's something that I have to do. Can I meet you here later at the bar or something?"
"Why what is it?"
"The bracelet. You know when I was wearing with the organza outfit last night?"
"I don’t really remember."
Julie pulled it out of her pocket and stared at it uneasily. "It doesn’t matter. I have to return it to Dietrich or Marie-Elise."
David’s head fell back with astonishment. "Just when I thought that we had escaped Steve Ever for a minute."
"It was an accident."
"Yes, yes. I understand," David replied dejectedly. "You must return it."
"I will see you-"
"Later?" David offered cynically.
"Then come with me."
David and Julie found their way to the Rue François the 1st and Steve Ever's menswear store. There was no sign of Steve. There was only a tall female attendant - no doubt a model from a previous collection. She had cheekbones that were almost as angular as her fingernails.
"Bon jour, vous dêsiree?" she asked what they wanted, with the aloof conceit that comes so easily to assistants in expensive couture stores.
"I’m looking for Dietrich or Steve Ever."
The sales consultant simply offered them a patronizing look. "You’d be surprised how many designers and models he gets looking for work."
"I’m not looking for work." Julie frowned impatiently. "After the show last night there was a piece of jewelry that I didn’t return to the stylists."
It suddenly came to the woman. "Right, right! You’re Julie Laing aren’t you? I’m Carice. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you."
"That’s OK."
Carice rested her elegant, manicured hand on the gleaming showcase. "I don’t know where Steve is. The haute couture show is tomorrow and maybe he is at the press agency."
"Where’s th-"
"Or perhaps at the bead-workers magasin in St Germaine-des-Prés." The sales assistant paused with thoughtful chagrin. "Or perhaps the seamstress atelier in the Marais."
Julie was left in a haze of possibilities.
Outside the store Julie decided on going to the atelier, but the impatience in David's manner dissuaded her.
"And there was no Steve Ever so…" David remarked opportunistically.
"I really have to find him."
"There’ll be enough time for that. Come on, why don’t we forget work in Paris and remember how to relax."
Julie shrugged, though secretly grudging that David didn't see how imperative it was to return the bracelet.
They found one of Paris’s café-bars on the Rue de Daniel Casanova. It’s exterior was remarkably modern with glass brick walls set between blue-gray granite. À la mode Folies-Bergère Chanel advertising images were set on large weather-proofed boards.
As Julie and David entered, silence overcame the crowd who glanced up from their cognacs, whiskeys and sherries to regard these two stunning forms of humanity.
"Je voudrais - trés beaucoup," a balding, old desperado whispered.
Julie and David ordered drinks and went outside to a table with blue and silver chairs under a boulevard Pernod umbrella.
Julie luxuriated in the sights for a moment. "This is the perfect fantasy of Paris."
"When I think of Paris I think of the night lights," David replied intently. "The lights from the Hotel Montmartre."
"It’s so beaut-" Julie broke-off as a sudden gust of wind sent the water collected on top of the umbrella cascading down over one side of her face.
David stifled a bout of laughter and stood rapidly. "If I’d seen that there I’d…"
Julie’s dismay slowly subsided. She began to laugh hopelessly and pulled a Kleenex from her handbag and stroked her cheek with it. "It took me almost forty minutes to apply my make-up this morning - damn c’est la vie!"
David appeared speechless for a moment. "Do you want to return to the Hotel Frágonard?"
"No. I’ll just go into the ladies room and correct it quickly," Julie said, standing as elegantly as she could under the circumstances. "Why don’t you stay here?"
"I will wait for you inside," David said, following her.
She quickly entered the ladies room and with a fist full of Kleenexes cleaned her face, then reapplied only her foundation and mascara.
When Julie caught sight of David through the crowd he was speaking with a faux-blonde woman at the bar. She assumed that she was one of the multitudes of Parisian prostitutes who haunted the city venues. When Julie approached them she overheard a conversation featuring a distinctly American accent. "I’m from Chicago - you know Chicago, USA?"
"Are there many stunning women there?" David asked with a tender undertone in his voice.
"None who’d deserve you," she replied rousingly. Her feline-green eyes studied him, as her hand swept back through her hair. Julie guessed that she was in her mid-thirties.
"You come to the fashion week only to meet male models?" David inquired.
"That’s right. You’re here with your girlfriend?"
"A friend," David euphemized.
The woman produced a pen, selected one the bar’s cards and wrote something on it. "Here." She handed it to him like Sharon Stone with Jack Daniel's breathe.
Julie observed David taking it out, reading it and slipping it into the back pocket of his jeans.
For a moment Julie contemplated leaving, but she comforted herself that he was simply being the iconic male model: Every woman's runway fantasy. Maybe the faux-blonde recognized him. His, like Julie’s photograph, had appeared in the fashion pages of both the Paris-Match and Le Parisien newspaper only that morning.
He was simply in the throws of transient celebrity.
"I have to go back to the Hotel Frágonard," Julie interjected, trying not to sound too inconvenienced. "If you want to stay we can call one another later... Maybe."
"I will see you back to your hotel," David replied, more to the Chicago woman than Julie. "Seana this is Julie."
"Hi," Julie faked congeniality. "Another American invading Paris during fashion week?"
"That’s the way you do it," Seana shrilled. "I come from the windy city. You’ve been there I guess?"
"No. I never have. When I’ve left New York it has only ever been to Paris."
David stepped behind Julie. "But, now I will see you back to your hotel," he coaxed.
The Illinois woman fired a loaded smile at David. Julie turned to check David’s expression: It was suddenly blank.
"Nice to meet you," Julie offered the woman from Chicago.
"Yeah, you too," Seana honeyed to David.
In the limousine on the way back to the hotel, the strength of David's desire to leave Russia occurred to Julie. He even remarked: "I have thought of never seeing Russia again, but if I found the right woman I could never remember it." She was flattered that a man like David could have wanted her so intensely, but after his liaison with Seana, it didn't seem so exquisite.
The moment that they entered the Frágonard lobby, Julie’s cellular phone rang.
Julie withdrew it from her handbag along with her keys. "Here. Go up to the room." She thrust them into David's hand.
"I can wait, it’s OK."
Julie shook her head ardently. "No I insist. You go up and fix yourself a drink. Please David."
David shrugged, then disappeared into the lift beside the adolescent check-in girl fanning herself with a guest's message.
"Vanese? Is there anything wrong?"
"No. I was just wondering what you were doing?" Vanese asked keenly.
Julie stepped to one side as a pair of suited German VIPs stepped out of one of the elevators past her. "I’ve met a guy," Julie revealed. "He’s a model."
"You sound way over Steve Ever," Vanese commended her.
Julie feigned indifference. "Absolutely beyond him."
"Then I can only assume that Steve didn't recognize you?"
"He knew me, believe me."
"Did I detect something like a double meaning in what you just said?" Vanese burst into laughter. "You didn’t?"
"Once, but then I left and it won't ever happen again. I had never wanted it to happen."
"He forced you?" Vanese gasped. "There are laws against that - even in France."
"He didn’t force me."
"Then…who seduced who?"
"Steve wanted it and I… had nothing better to do, but that’s all it was."
"Right." Vanese replied with pure sarcasm.
"Please, Vanese don’t give me that tone of voice."
"What tone?"
"That Julie’s obsessed tone."
Vanese was dilettante. "Why? Are you?"
"No. I am in total control of the Parisian arrangement."
"And I assume that arrangement is all for your career?" Vanese solicited doubtfully.
"Absolutely."
There was a premeditative silence at the other end of the line. "Is Steve a great lover?"
"I thought that his outfits were so sexual because his sexuality was so sublimated, but now I see that his designs are only a reflection of his…"
"Libido?"
Julie feared that her front of designer indifference was starting to waver under her friend’s scrutiny. "Vanese, I’ve got to run. There’s that Russian model, David, waiting for me up in my hotel suite."
Vanese was charmingly shocked. "You’re kidding right? How many men do you have in Paris?"
"I haven’t got any men. David’s cute but I don’t know if we're compatible."
"Well… you must remember that Paris has the highest incidence of AIDS of any European city." Vanese advised. "Most of them are women, Julie."
Julie rolled her eyes. "He’s fine - and that's not an issue."
"In that case, do you think that he would be interested in a Manhattan photographer?"
"Do you have American citizenship?"
Vanese was remiss. "Why?"
"Forget it." A mystified look came to Julie as she stood, poised to hit the call button for the elevator. "It’s just a suspicion."
"You sound disenchanted."
"No. I just like Paris. I don’t speak French except a few phrases. I don’t like the French people; I don't like the tourists; I don't like the weather incredibly - but I like Paris."
"You wouldn’t like to come with me to Rio de Janeiro?" Vanese proposed.
It was Julie's turn to be shocked. "You’re actually going?"
"I just have to buy the ticket. The cash for the shoot I did for Anderson came through and there is still time today to buy a ticket."
"If I go back to New York we could make plans."
"If? You are getting to know Steve Ever aren’t you?"
Julie elegantly scowled at the lobby ceiling, wordless for a moment. "He’s too secretive - and dangerous - to know?"
"There's someone for everyone they say."
"It’s chance," Julie sighed. "Right place, perfect face."
There was a flawlessly understood pause.
"Does life have nothing but uncertainties?" Julie sighed again. "I don’t understand…"
"That’s the human condition, Julie."
"Listen Vanese, I’ll call you."
Julie quickly closed the phone and stepped into the elevator.
"It was Steve Ever wasn’t it?" David questioned, the moment that Julie walked in. He lay on the chaise longue with one leg arched and bent at the knee beside the balcony door.
"No, Vanese. When I am in New York she doesn’t know where I am, but here she has to know the minutia."
He leaned down on his side mischievously. "Perhaps she is adrift without you."
"I think she’s missing my car as a free cab service."
"Why don’t you come over and sit here," David gestured sweetly.
"Alright, but I want to..." Julie sought a convenient diversion.
He straightened up. "What?"
"It’s nothing. Did you want to see any of my portfolio?" she said, trying to maneuver the conversation to more platonic territory. "You implied that you’d like to in the car the other day, remember?"
He motioned for her to come over to him. "Later…"
"Do you want a drink? Coffee, brandy, Smirnoff and Coke?"
"I’d like to sit beside me. For a while."
Julie gave in and sat with a benevolent distance between them. She looked away self-consciously, still looking for something to sidetrack her attention from David’s handsome face, but it eluded her.
"I am making you feel uncomfortable. Is that right?" David said, tilting his head, studying the vacant expression on Julie’s face.
"No, not at all, it’s just…"
"That you want me only for my conversation?" David suggested. "Or that you don’t know me that well?"
"I’ve only known you for two days but it feels like I’ve known you for years."
David's head fell back with laughter and he dragged his hand back through his hair. "Am I that tedious and boring?"
"No. Being with you is anything but tedious. You're too exciting. I… I don’t like to be out of control."
She turned to face David and a fleeting smile traversed her lips; the curtains blew back and the dusk colored David's face with a shade of violet. The sound of a distant church bells shattered through the monotone of traffic outside.
David, his eyes half-lidded, gravitated towards her.
Julie drew a sharp breath and shied away. She restrained her hand, as she was about to obstruct David’s lips. "I’m not that big on kissing. I - errr - I am more excited by conversation."
David drew an abject blank. "Right, I see," he said, not seeing at all. "What’s on your mind, Julie?"
"There’s something…"
"Are you going to say it?" David urged, regarding her with dry anticipation.
"I don’t know, but I want something from you, but I don’t know what it is and I like to be with you, but maybe this is rushing things. I’ve got a lot of things on my mind and…"
"Come on," David nodded towards the bedroom. "I know exactly how to take your mind off it."
"Alright," Julie exhaled tenuously. "You know I haven’t done this since..." She stopped herself before revealing: 'last night'.
David laughed slyly. "I won't drive it too hard."
She followed David into the bedroom knowing where the hell this could all lead.
David turned and began to kiss her. It felt as foreign to her as David actually was. His hand moved straight up her thigh with erotic precision.
Michelle hesitated at the intensity of it all, remembering that she still had the diamond and sapphire bracelet on her.
What if it had already been noted as missing? Julie shuddered at the thought of being arrested for theft and David viewed her with questioning eyes. It would not only end her career in Paris; a city where she had no lawyer. It would give Steve great satisfaction to think that she was so seriously flawed.
"David, I have to go and do something quickly."
David was visibly frustrated. "What?"
"I have to return the bracelet."
"Then do it tomorrow." He tried to kiss her, but she avoided his lips.
"I can’t - this is something serious and it has got to be done tonight."
"Call him and ask his driver to come and collect the bracelet. I am sure that he wouldn’t expect an American model to go all the way over there - even if you have the car."
Julie appeared unsure...
Then determined. "I have to, David, but…"
"You will be back?" David grudged faithlessly.
Michelle evaded his eyes, looking out over towards the Left Bank, past the top of the opulent foliage of the trees down the Champs. "If I don’t return the jewelry then they might think that I wanted to deceive them. I will never score work here again."
"I am getting the impression that no one scores in Paris, Julie," David deadpanned meaningfully.
"Later, OK? It's my career that I have to save."
"Career?" David’s lips pursed dejectedly. "And everything you do in Paris is defined by Steve Ever?"
"Yes - but you see I think it was Dietrich who caused the problem. I have to do this, but I’ll try to get back."
"When?"
"When I can, alright. I will take the car to Steve Ever’s ho-"
"Steve Ever, Steve Ever, Steve Ever. You are obsessed, Julie. That is all you ever talk about. He is only your employer but people could easily mistake him as your God."
"God no! I need money and I need a career. No woman ever needed a man."
David studied her with brooding cynicism.
"Can’t you at least try to empathize?" she asked.
"Julie I do understand and that is the problem."
"What do you mean?"
David shrugged despondently. "Go and see him Julie and resolve whatever there is between you, but I will also go out to…"
"Is my leaving for an hour that lethal?"
"Go and see him. Why should you owe me any explanations?"
Julie collected her jacket and waited for David to exit the room. His manner was reserved and the tension was agonizing.
"I’ll see you, David, when I see you, OK?" She checked for the keys in her handbag, then closed the door. "When I return."
They made their way down to the Champs with a vast gulf of silence between them.
"Find yourself Julie and what you really want," was the last thing that David advised, as she climbed into the back of the limousine and the door was closed.
Julie wished the same thing for him.
On the way to Steve’s home in the limousine the digital trilling of the car phone interrupted Julie’s reverie.
It was Daniel: "Julie, tomorrow is your last night. Is everything OK?"
"Yes, don't worry Daniel, I’ll make it." Julie replied shortly.
"Thank Christ for that."
Julie was not in the mood. "If that’s all then-"
"I’ve tried to call you five times today, where have you been?"
"Why didn’t you leave a message at the hotel?"
"I don’t talk to machines," Daniel replied flatly. "If you can’t get someone on the line then I always think they are trying to avoid me. Are you trying to avoid me Julie?"
Julie huffed with impatience. "I will be back in Manhattan on Saturday and I will explain everything then."
Daniel's suspicion was roused. "But, you are doing the company line?"
The car journeyed around the base of the Arc de Triomphe.
"There are no problems." Julie felt for the bracelet in her pocket. "Not right now, anyway."
Tension strained Daniel’s words. "What do you mean 'not right now', Julie, huh?"
"Believe me Daniel, the client has received satisfaction," she said dismissively. "You could even say the full service."
There was silence at the other end of the line, before Daniel guffawed lewdly. "Can I assume that there’s an old flame re-ignited?"
"Just doing the company line…"
When she finally disengaged Daniel, the car pulled up in front of the handsome gates of Steve’s townhouse.
Julie got out and instructed Sebastian to go and have a drink - she’d call him soon. She observed the car departing and remained standing alone beside the ornate street lamp as it lit-up.
The sky was crossing the border to night.
Louis opened the door with the stony face that Julie had anticipated. Steve appeared behind him after Julie explained why she was there. He was not disarmed at all.
"I thought that I would see you one more time before you returned to New York," Steve commented, taking Louis' coat from off a gilded rack near the door. He handed it to his servant meaningfully: Louis was the soul of discretion.
Julie held out the bracelet with an apologetic demeanor as he left. "I accidentally took this home after the ready-to-wear collection last night."
"You came over here just for that?"
Julie was nonplussed. "Of course."
"If I said that they were only ersatz would it make you feel better?" Steve leaned against the doorway sexily.
"Yes it would."
"Well, they’re not. You can have them anyway - they go with the necklace perfectly."
Julie glanced down at the bracelet with indecision. Did Steve expect anything in exchange?
"It’s the real thing, I assure you," Steve asserted tranquilly. "Come inside, maybe it’ll rain."
Julie viewed the firmament that was becoming a dome of stars with not a cloud in sight. She followed Steve through the hall into the spacious drawing room.
"Why didn’t Marie-Elise say that they weren't fake?" Julie asked.
"Sometimes we allow the models to think that they’re wearing fakes. It makes them feel less precious about them. How can you walk with poise and confidence when you are afraid of losing a million euro necklace?"
"Very slick."
"Not exceptionally."
Julie eased towards the hall again. "I just thought that I would give it back to you. I’ll see you tomorrow again before…"
Steve walked over to an escritoire and picked out a bottle. "You can’t stay for a drink? Louis brought this bottle of Herault Cognac from the cellar just before you came."
"I’ve got things to do and-"
Steve popped the top off the bottle. "See, it’s open. In France it would be a sacrilege if you didn’t stay now. You’ve heard of the guillotine haven't you?"
Julie couldn’t help laughing quietly. "Are you asking as my boss?"
"I’m saying it as a man. A man craving some company with supermodel credentials."
"Then half a glass," she demurred.
Steve poured both glasses and handed Julie hers. For a moment their fingers touched and Julie looked away awkwardly. She went and sat on one of the velour-lined sofas in the white drawing room. It's interior was distinctly Italianate and Julie suspected that Carmena had more than a little to do with the fact.
Steve hit the TV remote control and a French movie appeared.
"Michelle Vánoir," Julie smiled. "I loved her in Rays of the Night Sun in the late nineties."
Steve took a sip of cognac. "I never saw that. I hear that it was good. If you’ve seen this one - how about this?"
It was a war documentary in German with French subtitles. Steve noted the disinterest on Julie’s face and flicked through the next ten channels in vain.
"I actually watch most television when I am alone," Julie disclosed, reaching for one of the Parisian fashion magazines on the Murano glass table.
"You’d like to talk?" Steve suggested.
"Would you like that?"
"Come outside," Steve urged. "I don't think that it's going to rain after all."
He led the way out to the secluded courtyard garden. The sound of running water was everywhere.
"Only one more day and it is over for another season," Steve exhaled with relief as they sat on an ornamental garden chair. North African miniature palms surrounded the Granada, Islamic-style fountain.
"I would have thought that you would be used to this by now," Julie murmured with empathy.
"You know, I wanted to be something serious like a lawyer and here I am."
"Steve Ever," Julie said with reverential awe. "International Parisian couturier."
He studied her face for an intriguing moment. "You make it sound like everything brilliant. I won’t remain in Paris forever you know. I’ve been considering going home to London. You know, they say that there are thousands, maybe millions of people who’d like to achieve what I've achieved," Steve exhaled. "But when I was a struggling designer in London or when I was an impoverished designer in Paris, that isn’t like the past to me. It’s all been the same day. I am alive and life is all one day and you live it waiting for that moment when the sun is at noon over your whole existence…I’m still waiting for that." His words hang in the air for a moment. "And here we are together alone again after all of these years."
"I wouldn’t say alone," Julie said, casting a glance back inside the townhouse.
"There's no one here."
Vulnerability assailed Julie.
Steve sighed. "If you need to do something, you should go and do it. You're a free agent wherever you are."
Julie's hands stretch back behind her and she reclined languorously. "But it is beautiful here."
"You don’t have anyone in New York do you?" Steve presumed.
Julie sighed too perceptibly. "I have a few close friends. My cat, Oscar, but..."
"Have you felt that way since you came back to Paris?"
"No. Ever since I arrived getting of the plane I've felt that I've been here all of my life."
Steve grinned knowingly. "They say that."
She considered her reply for a moment. If she kept to casual conversation she'd stay close to him, but remote to his erotic advances. "Yes, if I could stay here on my terms I‘d stay."
"Really?" Steve was mildly incited.
"I’ve survived Manhattan for years. Paris is closer to the city that I wished to live in when I was..."
"More established?" Steve offered.
Julie appeared downcast having expected him to say 'older'. "I imagined that I would live here with someone and…" Feminine intuition told her not to continue but she did. "Here I am again, and maybe this time I wanted to stay."
"You say it as if you actually believed it," Steve said.
"I do, even if only for tonight."
"And tonight we have each other," Steve said, appraising her face for any sign of mutual craving.
"After last night I wondered if you would be angry."
He glanced around the garden. "Do you want to make love?" he asked nonchalantly.
Julie was shocked, then caught her breath. "Maybe…" she admitted, forgetting her resolve not to.
Something timeless in his eyes intoxicated her senses and she could only fathom all of the possibilities and none of the dangers.
But did she genuinely want him or was she simply intoxicated with conceit that she was the ambition of a celebrity designer like Steve Ever?
He kissed Julie on the side of her cheekbone. "Come on Julie. I gave Louis the evening off when you came - I knew that you wanted that," he whispered, and she felt exhilarated by the all-embracing intensity of his desire.
Julie, succumbing to Steve's touch, perceived that she might regret what they were about to do, but she gave it no credence.
When he took her hand, Julie gave in. It was as if the man's sex drive was hers too... and perhaps it was.
Even if it that sex drive was only for one last night.
Steve lay in deep, otherworldly sleep when Julie slipped out of the black satin sheets. She dressed in a shaft of morning light under the tinted blue, glass ceiling. She was determined that what happened during last night would mean nothing. It was only to purge the residual ache that she had for Steve before she departed Paris. She reassured herself that now sated she’d move on and find something and someone new in Manhattan. Something beyond the fantasy of what might have been if Julie Laing and Steve Ever were other people with no history and no regrets.
A faint mist still hung in the air when she stepped outside and drew a breath of bleak freedom. Louis was opening the gates and Julie stepped past with a perfunctory smile. He stopped and watched after her with a knowing, but speculative expression.
As soon as Julie entered her suite she called David. Though everything was decided she needed to talk to someone.
There was no answer and she could only assume where he could be. Slowly Julie hung up. You’re facing this one alone, she realized with sobriety. The next twenty-four hours could be the hardest that you ever lived.
In twenty-four hours she’d be back in New York and everything predictable. Everything without Steve Ever.
Why did independence have to be so cold?
Julie had just walked out of her suite when she saw a familiar tanned woman with overly mascaraed eyes coming out of the lift.
"Vanese?" Julie gasped at her Manhattan confidant.
"I decided to make that career move and check out the fashion scene in Paris," Vanese spoke with panache, looking around the hall and liking what she saw.
"You're not going to Rio de Janeiro?" Julie managed.
"Maybe some other check. Is Vanese coming here that much of a shocker?"
"I’m glad you're here." Julie motioned her in.
"How is everything with Steve Ever?"
"Please don’t ask."
Vanese followed Julie and continued to be impressed by the deco of her Frágonard suite. "I assume that things have improved since we last talked."
Julie's expression said that they hadn't.
"Simone is still in the picture?" Vanese guessed.
Julie considered the question of Simone with reservation. "That’s what I don’t understand. I’ve heard her name mentioned, but I haven’t seen her."
"Or maybe he is keeping her in another apartment. French men have always kept mistresses."
"Yes, maybe," Julie bit her bottom lip. "But what about the cost?"
"Steve Ever is a multimillionaire; what would an extra expense like that be to him?"
Julie looked at the sculpted stucco of the ceiling. "Yes, but you forget that he is not French but British."
"I am trying to believe that I am actually here," Vanese turned around with amazement - like a dilettante Audrey Hepburn. "This Paris vibe is so trés-belle-chic. Do you have the whole day off?"
"No, but I’m not due to arrive at the show until six tonight."
Inspiration flickered in Vanese's eyes and Julie knew exactly what she was about to suggest.
Sebastian delivered them to the very midst of the Boulevard Haussman shopping district.
"The stores here are beautiful," Vanese said as they the walked through the Gallerie Lafayette. Vanese glanced up at the intricate crystal dome high above them and tried not to think of Steve as he lay sleeping that morning.
They were toned in alternating blue, white and pink light as they moved along the gleaming cosmetic display cases on the ground floor.
"I haven’t really had any chance to go shopping while I’ve been here," Julie replied, picking up a bottle of an Ungaro fragrance and applying it to her wrist.
"Everything to do, no time to do it - right, and you and Steve didn’t…"
"We’ve done exactly what I said we never should," Julie confessed regretfully.
Vanese’s eyes expanded at the confession. "Is he as attractive naked as he looks clothed."
"Not nearly as stunning," Julie revealed.
"Are you two getting serious?"
Julie wanted to answer in the affirmative but she couldn't, not after that morning. "Maybe I was doing it for my career."
Vanese paused, then caught up. "You're not burning up with fevered ambition are you? Seeing every men as a sheer career move?"
Julie was matter-of-fact. "If you’d ever seriously pursued modeling you would have made it."
"What does it matter?" Vanese sighed vapidly. "I am in Paris now. And what does everyone else do on their first day in Paris?"
One suggestion occurred Julie. "Have you ever heard of the Eiffel Tower?"
They got out of the limousine at the Parc du Mars on the Rive Gauche.
After they’d paid to get into the top level they swiftly ascended the world’s most famous tower.
"If this had clear glass walls this would be an amazing thing to see," Vanese remarked giddily.
When Julie stepped out, vertigo momentarily snatched at her senses. This time up there seemed so different to the last. She reasoned that the last time she went up there is was with an emerging fashion designer and she hadn’t taken only vague notice of the cityscape.
Vanese tried unsuccessfully to stop her splendent dark hair blowing about wildly in the wind. "Where does Steve live?"
Julie pointed towards the Arc de Triomphe. "You see that tiny street leading away from it in our direction?"
"Yes."
"He lives about half-way along. The blue-tiled roof is his townhouse. His atelier is over there past the Champs, towards the Place Vendôme."
"And he lives there all alone like I live in Manhattan." There was a sensual quality to Vanese's words that threatened Julie for some reason.
"What about Enrique?" Julie asked unassumingly. "Aren’t you seeing him now?"
"That was never going anywhere. He’s an actor and actors are always running from something." Vanese grudged. She was suddenly enlivened. "But what about the Russian model David - where is he?"
"He’s…" A sense of hopelessness possessed Julie. "God knows. I don’t know, I’ve been trying to call him all morning."
"Maybe a model who is like an actor?" Vanese consoled her.
Julie took hold of the cold, ornate railing, looking down at the tiny figures moving along the embankment. "Maybe we are always losing the people we desire the most."
"Yes, but just keep flashing that Steve Ever smile and things will all happen for Julie Laing. You're lucky. You know that."
Julie wanted to believe it. "I don't know right now."
Laughing, Vanese took a snapshot with her camera to kill the downcast mood.
Back in the limousine they cruised down the Rue de l’Echelle towards The Normandy - Vanese’s Hotel.
"When you get back to Manhattan call Andy at Prestige Models on Fifth Avenue." Vanese suggested.
"Why?"
"They don’t do bookings for the label shows but they could get work in catalogues. There's a fortune in international catalogue work."
And no dignity, Julie thought cynically. She glanced ahead at the sunburst off the DeutschPinnacles tour bus slowing ahead of them. "I want to do the European thing."
Vanese was aghast. "You mean that you are actually thinking of moving here?"
"I am considering it." A tense accent came into Julie’s voice. "If there's anything worth staying for."
"Not even the glamor and the fashion?"
"You get over that," Julie replied seriously.
"You have less than a day to make up your mind, but if you don’t return to New York who am I gonna talk to?" Vanese asked laconically. "You know that I can't afford a psychiatrist."
"You’ll manage."
The car turned into an elegant forecourt. "This is The Normandy entrance," Sebastian's electronic voice resounded in the back.
Vanese opened the door and stepped out. "So if you can get me into the show Julie - you will get in touch?"
"I’ll ask Marie-Elise - Steve’s assistant - to call," Julie promised. "She'd have a press pass for you at the door. I’ll definitely call you tonight after the show."
She turned to wave frenetically out of the back window as the car pulled out into late afternoon Clichy traffic.
Julie arrived twenty-minutes late to the haute couture show. Its title: STEVE EVER’S THEATRE OF THE VANITIES, was displayed on an elegant banner out the front.
She’d model his clothes. She’d do it for her career; and it would be a sheer act of conscience. Steve Ever could never claim that she’d acted unprofessionally even in the midst of the most unprofessional involvement.
As the car passed the high, sculpted entrance of the Légion, Julie observed the French guards that stood on either side of the tall glass doors. They were scrupulously inspecting every invitation. Only the international fashion elite with the electronically coded cards were admitted.
The car halted when one of the couture Mercedes vans reversed into the street. Julie caught sight of Marie-Elise carrying a chiffon and lace garment over her forearm. Steve followed her speaking with one of the hip, young stylists on some matter.
Julie quickly got out of the car and made her way to the backstage entrance past the bevy of security guards.
"Is everything OK, Steve?" Julie asked to ease the tension between them.
"Yes," he replied expressionlessly. "If you had arrived on time then I might not feel so anxious now."
"I was delayed."
"Traffic delayed or Russian-delayed?"
Julie frowned. "Unavoidably delayed."
Steve handed an outfit to Serena. "Julie, you’d better go and get made-up for the lights out there."
Detecting the jealousy redolent in his voice, Julie couldn't help inquiring, "Is Vaun here already?"
Steve became cautiously still. "Why? He only arrived two minutes before you did." He looked away as two of the girls fluttered by in bouffant white tulle and gauze. "Did you two arrived together with Sebastian? Is that what the hurry to leave this morning was about?"
"No after I…" She faded out as Steve regarded her with overpowering eyes. "He’s what we call in USA a lone wolf and I just assumed that he would have got here now."
"You make a lot of assumptions Julie. Assumptions that can be dangerous to your career."
Julie glanced at the richly appointed ceiling irascibly. "Is that a fashion insight?"
"That’s a fact of experience," Steve threw back.
Julie followed him. "Your suspicious mind must be a real burden."
"I think that I have the right to be suspicious."
"This is the last night that I am going to be in Paris," Julie’s tone became conciliatory. "Can’t we at least be civilized?"
"Civilized?" Steve turned on her with one hand clenched on his waist. "You’d know something about that would you?"
"I know only what I've experienced," she retorted.
"Dietrich," Steve called him. "Can you finish the dresses here?"
"Of course," Dietrich was stunned.
"I will be back in ten minutes."
Dietrich held out his hands poignantly, a pair of black glomesh ladies pants in one hand and a platinum bodice in the other. "But, the show is only an hour away from opening," he fretted.
"I know, I know. Everything but Julie is on schedule." He turned to Julie tentatively. "I think that we should have a talk."
Julie felt a chill as if she were about to be fired.
She followed Steve out past the media and across the road to a small, terrace café. Steve spoke to the short, mustachioed proprietor who wore a long apron of perfect white. A door was opened and they entered a small elevator with a 1940's retractable-grate door. They ascended in silence. On the roof terrace they had a panoramic view of Paris in all directions.
"We can sit down over there," Steve gestured.
They sat at a small table and Julie turned to look at the fading embers of dusk behind the hills in the east. Continuing to avoid Steve’s eyes, she looked down over the roofs that descended towards the Seine and the faintly hazed Parc du Mars.
The proprietor appeared with a silver pot of coffee. "Coffee, cream, biscuits," he said, placing them on the table gently.
"Thank you very much Georgés," Steve said in a polite but dismissive manner.
Georgés poured coffee into each of the cups, then returned to the elevator.
"Sugar, cream?" he gestured to Julie.
"Straight, thank you."
This seemed so unreal. This was one of the most eminent days of Steve’s career and he was having coffee high above everything, detached and self-willed. He slid the cup across to Julie who was resisting a crème-liqueur biscuit.
Steve took a sip. "When you weren’t there this morning I was afraid that you had left Paris."
"With that contract?" Julie said with an empty laugh.
Steve stared wearily. "You know that I wouldn’t take you to court. You know that."
"All I know is that there’s always a kind discord between us."
"Don't you mean a sexual tension?" Steve clarified. "I thought that we dispelled that last night."
Julie turned away desolately. "Why did we have to do that?"
"I’ve been more intimate with you than anyone," Steve admitted, "and I still don’t know anything about you Julie."
"With anyone?" Julie repeated distrustfully. "And I know all about your public life but nothing about your private life except the fleeting hours that I have been a part of it. I know your body but no sincerity."
Steve gave a reproving look, then glanced off into the distance at a black Air America plane ascending into the sky. "You say that like you actually believe it to be true."
She replaced her cup on the saucer with a neat click. "I’d prefer it if we changed the subject right now."
"Some things you can change, but not everything," Steve asserted incisively.
Julie looked down towards the Nouveau Legion d’Honorer. "You should be down there."
Steve spoke in a critical tone. "Why did you leave after last night?"
"I had to get ready for today."
"No. I mean what was the real reason Julie?"
"I don’t know. I wanted to see David."
Steve seethed. "David - You’re still seeing that model?"
"Why not?" Julie countered. "He’s a man and he’s handsome. Even your selectors knew that."
Steve shook his head. "You know what makes you so sexually attractive? It’s your irresistible naivete."
Julie was taken aback. "I don’t know where you get that."
"No?"
"No."
"And what do you think your friend David’s motives are for pursuing you? Your diamond-blue eyes? Your sparkling personality? Or the fact that you live in New York and he’s looking for a flesh-ticket to the United States? You are too young and sexy to have a man like him exploit you."
"David has a charisma that you don't even realize," Julie answered, secretly knowing that David could never be more than a friend.
"For a New Yorker you have no handle on human nature. David is only the freak-card that a designer plays during a show. He’s not really that attractive - Marie-Elise said that when she saw his agency shots - like the other selectors did. It's his fringe peculiarity that doesn’t threaten the men who see the magazines, but interests the women."
Julie gasped, astounded. "You’re jealous aren’t you? Last night you implied that it was only sexual and now it’s all this possessiveness and jealousy."
Steve appeared nonchalant. "Last night was a wonderful experience. We don’t have to make that a rare occasion. I’d like your body with mine more often."
"You expect me to be devoted to you exclusively, when you said to me four years ago that you might never be satisfied with one woman?"
The arrogance in Steve’s face was faintly diminished. "Well, maybe I did. I don’t remember. That’s just the worthless conversation that you make when you are trying not to pressure someone."
Julie swept her hair back. "They need you down there."
Steve remained motionless. "Because you don’t?"
"You say that you want me now, but what about in a year? In five years? This is a great coup for my career now and with Fabiano Alsaze interested in booking me..." She leaned forward. "Steve, if I don’t dedicate myself to my career now, I'll regret it for the rest of my life. The money that I make will see me through later, when others have moved on to someone else."
"You don’t trust anyone do you?"
"That's the fact of experience," she said with rising belligerence. "My agent made it extremely clear that if I didn’t come here it would be the end of my career. Some of us don’t have the adulation of the masses. We have to make it however we can."
Steve finished his coffee and placed the cup down. "I see," he replied coldly. "My stylists requested that you come and you had to."
"That’s right."
"And when we made love that was a career move?"
"That was incidental."
Steve's brow rose. "In that case I expect that you’ve had a lot of lovers?"
Julie resisted the urge to disclose how very few there had actually been. "I've had a lot of life to deal with," she said convincingly.
"And now the Legion d’Honorer awaits."
Steve stood and Julie collected herself and followed.
In the elevator again, Steve watched the numbers panel.
"Has Marie-Elise or Dietrich shown you the clothes that you will be wearing?" Steve asked.
"No," Julie replied tautly.
"You're as nervous as on Wednesday night aren't you?"
"I guess I’ve worried about this all week and now that it's going to happen I'll be OK. I did this for Jean-Michael Beaulier four years ago…" Julie faded out. The quiver in her voice was undermining her front of serene professionalism.
"You aren’t confident to go on the catwalk?"
"Absolute cool and relaxed," Julie lied, as they walked out of the café and across the media-plagued sidewalk.
"I’d like to comfort you by saying that they are only looking at the designs, but they’ll be looking at you," Steve said. "They’ll wonder for a second if they’d ever look like you."
Julie suddenly realized the ache in her heart. "I think that Esther, Kate and Serena will be the focus of buyer and the press."
They traversed the avenue to the Nouveau Legion d’Honorer.
"Your modesty is rare in this industry," Steve remarked.
"What do I have that anyone else doesn’t?"
Steve glanced back. "You know what that is," he stated rhetorically. "Don’t you?"
A divided look on Julie’s face revealed that she did.
They entered the backstage entrance.
Steve followed Dietrich as he walked over to one of the mobile clothes racks. All of the models stood in standard white, opaque underwear as the stylists began to hustle them into their respective outfits.
"How many names on the guest list have arrived?" Steve questioned Marie-Elise.
"Rochelle Vanderbilt arrived a moment ago. Catherine Adelle, Chief Editor of English Vogue, Princess Ehrine of Saudi Arabia, Michelle Delray - the Delray heiress. Athena. Wall-to-wall, celebrity-to-billionaire notables."
"All of the photographers are arranged?"
"In the relevant order," Marie-Elise replied efficiently. "A photographer from Elite arrived without a press pass but I gave him a position near the head of the catwalk."
Steve watched Serena being primped for her first appearance next to the runway access door. "And the program of garments has been given to the media?"
Marie-Elise nodded. "Of course, Monsieur Ever."
"Then now all we need is for all of the rest of the models to get into sequence and we will have a show."
"I will speak to the Karl and the models right away."
"Yes do that." Steve cast a glance at Julie who'd waited by the entrance door. "See that Julie and Jean Paul know exactly where the pieces of Julie's costumes are. She appears in the black organza down on her first appearance and the diamond-gown on her last."
Marie-Elise appraised Julie steadily. "Everything will be perfect, or as they say in America, 'without a hitch'... Or is that 'without getting hitched'?"
"Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the Spring/Summer collection of the House of Steve Ever," the same Mistress of Ceremonies as on Wednesday evening spoke in her accented English. "The tone of the season is audacity and its power is unbridled desire."
The lights faded and the pulse of a Sade song was the only sound in the darkness.
Suddenly the lights swept over the audience and down the full length of the runway. A sequence of white, red and blue lights flared at the ceiling then lowered to flood the catwalk.
Backstage, Serena stood at the runway access as two assistants ruffled out the bottom of her petticoat. "The last night," Serena spoke unevenly, then drew a deep breath and turned towards the catwalk.
The volume of the music gradually diminished.
"You are going to be perfect; you were absolutely beautiful on Wednesday night. You'll be fine," Steve boosted Serena and she smiled anxiously.
"Now!" Dietrich demanded.
"Serena wears a high-waisted Bordeaux piqué dress," the announcer declared as the pristine lights came on. "It opens over a flounced black lace petticoat. Elegance, class with a twist of post-twentieth century decadence."
Esther took Serena's place and the assistants checked that the attachments on the outfit were all correctly placed.
"Now," Dietrich insisted again, and she stepped out only moments before Serena reappeared backstage.
"Esther is superlative in an evening gown with gold-medallion cross straps. Gold-embroidered lamé features appliqué along the sleeves and verticals seems."
As Kate went onstage, Julie was finally in her costume.
"Kate wears a bolero with puffed sleeves and diamanté pants. The lace cravat embroidered with pearls, topaz and amethyst gives an undisputed air of luxury and elegance. Exclusively available at Steve Ever Haute Couture, Avenue Montaigne, Paris."
As Julie had the last touches applied to her make-up the music segued into a sleek dance song.
"Sarah is the embodiment of elegance in a classic sheath dress of blood-red crêpan. It is satin lined with a vermillion lace hem and cuffs. The look is completed with moiré stockings."
As the stylists fussed and rearranged her sleeves, Julie observed Steve personally alter the fit of the jacket on Venus, who was about to strike her own pose on the runway.
Steve then attended to Cynthia, then Sandra, Jodi, Brit then finally Julie.
Steve said nothing for a moment and under the circumstances, Julie didn’t expect him to. He corrected the fit of her cleavage and it filled her with sensations that crossed all the erotic boundaries they'd transgressed the night before.
Julie was about to ask if there were any photographers or clients that she should especially focus on, when Dietrich called, "Walk Julie! Walk!"
"Julie Laing projects the essence of femininity," the announcer stated as Julie appeared. "A bouffant, black organza gown reminiscent of those worn by Marie Antoinette. The sweeping diamanté scarf draped over the shoulders completes the ensemble. Available at all Steve Ever boutiques internationally. ‘Black diamond’ shoes by Emil de Gare, Paris."
She walked to the end of the runway. She looked like a queen, but felt like a pauper in borrowed clothes. Inside she experienced nothing but conflicting feelings over Steve. She flashed a trembling smile and did her turn with choreographed elan. She caught the briefest glimpse of Vanese towards the back of the audience.
As soon as she appeared backstage, Marie-Elise instructed her to get changed. The jewelry assistant collected her gold earclips, necklace and black pearl bracelets, then handed her another jewelry case. She opened it and saw a set of earclips hung with scintillating diamonds inside.
She quickly undressed and then, at Marie-Elise’s instigation, Jean Paul, Raoul and Sylvia besieged her as she stood standard white undergarments. They set about clothing her in the undergarments of the last and most exquisite piece of the collection.
Meanwhile, Antoinette and her assistant began to gather her hair high and intertwined its tresses with pearl, diamond and gold bands for a dramatically layered coiffure.
Julie simply watched Steve’s reflection as he attended to the first male model, Vaun.
"Vaun is handsome in single-breasted ‘marquis coat’," the announcer introduced him several minutes later. "Fall-cut pants and a plunging v-line of the shirt make the outfit cool through a smoldering spell."
Julie watched each of the models prepare backstage to go on the catwalk. Where was David at that very moment? she wondered.
She was ushered to backstage-center and three stylists commenced removing a glittering gown from a mannequin and outfitting Julie.
Vaun walked back slowly and meticulously past the arrangements of brilliant flowers along the runway: tiger lilies, parrot tulips, roses and tropical blooms.
Ansel did his turn to the same excitation of flashes.
After the other eleven men had appeared the lights dimmed over the runway and the assistants responsible for display took their things and fled out to rearrange the flowers and props.
The time between the end of the men's collection and final sequence went all too quickly.
"We conclude tonight’s exhibition with a journey into the exotic essence of glamor," the announcer said as the lights went down over the audience. "The following sixteen dresses were designed by Steve Ever in the classic style of the movie goddess. The look for this season is the golden age of European cinema and Hollywood."
Backstage the assistants, along with Steve, were swathing pink gauze over Cynthia's sheath dress. Dyed red and gold ostrich feathers embellished the neckline and shoulders. She stood perfectly still as if she were an elegant creature of glass.
When Esther, Kate, Sarah, Amber, Karen, Angela, Yvonne, Denise and Casey were getting the final touches to their costumes and going out onto the catwalk, Julie was still being put into her own glittering dress.
When they were done, she was a spectacle of diamonds. After the assistants fixed French model, Sandra Reinholdt’s hair, the stylists swarmed Julie to do one last primping and review.
When they were finished, Julie joined the diminishing line at the runway access and listened with trepidation as the models ahead of her were summoned to the catwalk.
"Venus wears a Spanish lace-up-bodice dress. Her long overshirt is flounced at the shoulders and black mink lines the cuffs. Her 'Steve Ever Angel Of The night' glasses are available at Steve Ever La Boutiques internationally."
Steve walked over and began to adjust Julie’s costume's fit around her lithe waist. He then evened up the overblown cuffs.
"Are you ready to be the last model tonight?" he asked.
Maybe for the last time in my career, Julie thought desperately. "As I’ll ever be…" Julie’s she said, her voice dissolving into the Vivaldi concerto that began to play.
Steve studied her eyes for a charged moment.
"If there is anything that we have to say to each other then we should say it now," Julie spoke quickly.
"Cynthia wears a waxed-satin ‘Mon Ritz’ gown. The plunging front and sleeves are decorated with ostrich feathers and gold Milanese appliqué."
"I don’t know if I will see you next season," Steve disclosed.
Julie glanced at the floor. "I understand you have to change the Ever ethos."
"Not unless… you stayed."
Julie's heart faltered. "I can’t stay."
"Why?"
"Sandra wears a tailored Steve Ever suit in gold, read and black brocade trimmed with velvet. She wears shoes by Emil de Gare. Handbag by Hermês."
Julie didn’t dare a look at Steve as Dietrich negotiated a sumptuous faux-mink coat over her arms and Raoul and Sylvia pulled it out behind her. "You know why, Steve. It's because when we’re around one another it’s only conflict or just physical. When I am away from you I feel the same. I want to be free."
Steve spoke in a deep, accusatory tone. "But there is no conflict with you and David?"
"No," Julie replied pensively. She’d realized that there was no electricity between she and David the moment that they had met. "Maybe there is someone for me back home - Anywhere else but Paris."
"You make it sound so predetermined."
"Jodi wears a Steve Ever La petit dress of black crêpan, lined with lace and complimented by muslin flounces. The fox-fur-trimmed jacket of gauze-lined satin adds to the flamboyant silhouette."
"It is simple," Julie replied. "I know you Steve so well. I respect you enough to know that even if you didn’t have someone else you could find someone other than me. You could find someone more Steve Ever."
"Someone more Steve Ever?"
"Brit wears a backless evening gown of embroidered tulle, appointed with beads and palettes. Her ‘Fin de siècle’ three-quarter length gloves are exclusively available at Steve Ever’s Haute Couture, Paris."
"You can do better than a failing model," Julie said. "You deserve... You can have far more." She looked away.
"Why do you say that?" Steve stared with bewilderment. "Is it to relieve your own conscience for fleeing Paris back then?"
"If I ever fled you, then look at what you gained. Fame and fortune and I was never the woman behind you."
Dietrich appeared gesturing towards the runway access urgently. "You are on as soon as Michelle walks back in here."
Julie tried to steel her emotions.
Steve was deadpan. "I've gained, but what have I lost?"
"Julie!" Dietrich demanded.
"And the crown of the Steve Ever Spring/Summer collection is worn by Julie Laing. An exquisite sheath dress covered with half-carat diamonds. Its bouffant ‘iris’ sleeves are a froth of diamanté. For those warm European evenings, Julie now removes the cultured-Russian mink coat with a sweeping collar, gathered sleeves with a regal length of mink in its stead. An original to any time, an exclusive to Steve Ever Haute Couture, Paris."
Julie offered a wan smile to the audience. Although she tried to project all of the qualities that complimented Steve’s design, she knew that her inner turmoil was apparent.
"This is patent Steve Ever: a glittering fantasy of diamonds. Thank you Julie Laing. Merci, Steve Ever."
As Julie disappeared the white house lights illuminated the audience.
"Thank you for witnessing the latest epoch of beauty," the announcer concluded. "We trust that you enjoyed tonight’s event and we wish you style and elegance in the coming spring and summer."
"Thank you Julie," Steve commended her backstage. "The way you looked tonight was..." His awed expression said it all.
She gave a vague smile. "All part of the service." Julie spoke softly. When she turned away a look of despondency colored her face. She glanced back at Steve evasively then headed to where the strung-out assistants waited to remove the models’ costumes.
Steve congratulated the other twenty models assembled there. They, in turn, thanked him for the opportunity to model his creations as is the after show routine.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the Mistress of Ceremonies announced in French. "The genius behind all that you have seen this evening, Monsieur Steve Ever."
Steve cast a lingering gaze at Julie, who only glanced down as if to release him to go out to receive his due adulation.
When Steve appeared he paused at the beginning of the catwalk in front of the gold Steve Ever insignia. The audience stood and applauded him euphorically.
He pointed with geniality at Catherine Zeta-Jones, waved at Elton John and when Liz Hurley walked to the side of the stage he gave her a gentlemanly kiss on the cheek and congratulated her on her latest movie. When the editor of French Vogue approached him, he clasped both of her hands. She appeared to say: "You've made another great impression."
All of the models surrounded him and he put his hands behind the backs of Esther, Venus and Ansel. They began to applaud too.
Dietrich presented all of the female models with a single mauve rose.
Steve reached down to the front row and clasped the hand of heiress Helena St Beuve.
Julie applauded too. After all, he’d booked her for a show and they’d made the best of it, but nothing is so precious that it lasts forever. Slowly Julie slowly stopped clapping and went backstage. She knew what she had to do.
She considered having Antoinette remove her make-up, but decided that she would do her own routine back at the Hotel Frágonard. The assistant stylists removed the dress from her and returned it to a mannequin (to be returned to the showroom) and Julie slipped into her own pair of chiffon slacks and topaz-blue, silk shirt.
All of the models were backstage again when Julie emerged, but she couldn’t see Steve. No doubt he was still out being the great celebrity designer.
She removed the bracelets and the earclips and deposited them in the hand of another assistant. As she passed the make-up anteroom Julie regarded the make-up girls as they expertly removed the make-up from Brit, Serena and Kate.
"A marvelous run," Marie-Elise congratulated Julie, on her way to collect the buyers’ forms.
"I am going to leave now, can you call the driver?" Julie asked.
Marie-Elise appeared blasé. "Yes of course. You are leaving to return to the US tomorrow, aren’t you? I will see you at the after-show party at the Hotel des Lazare."
"No, I won’t be there," Julie stated unequivocally. "I really have to get ready to leave."
"Mister Ever is aware of that?" Marie-Elise asked cagily.
Julie wanted to be expedient. "Maybe next time, huh? I don’t have my phone, so I’d appreciate it if you could call Sebastian for me."
"As you wish, but…" Marie-Elise smiled momentarily then dialed. "Sebastian, can you please bring the car. Julie is returning to the Hotel Frágonard…Oui the US… Right away."
Julie grasped her white cashmere jacket off the chair as she walked past. She glanced back out on the catwalk and saw Steve looking among the five models who remained with him searchingly. For a moment his eyes met with Julie's but she turned away.
As she emerge from the back exit her limousine cruise around the corner.
The back door automatically unlocked as she reached for it and she got into the car as a series of luxury cars arrived to collect the high-profile models.
Julie cast a hesitant look back at the 19th century Legion d’Honorer.
Au revoir Steve Ever.
Everything was history.
Julie called Vanese on the limousine phone but there was no answer. No doubt Vanese was still at the show or exploring nighttime Paris.
As the car headed back for the Hotel Frágonard past Haussman Julie noticed the American-style bar The Stars and Stripes out of the window.
She hit the car-intercom. "Sebastian!"
"Oui, Mademoiselle?"
She pointed frenetically. "La Rue du Rocher. The Grande Paon Hotel, Sebastian, merci."
"Naturally, Mademoiselle."
The car turned and moved up the street lined with diminutive, trimmed beech trees.
The car eased to a momentary stop. Julie alighted and swept past the valets.
On the walls were photographs of every notable person who had ever stayed there during its fashionable periods. The images included John Lennon, Oscar Wilde, Auguste Renoir and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Julie knocked on David’s door with conflicting emotions. David could be some comfort right then: She needed to talk to someone.
"Yes? Can I help you honey?" The faux-blonde who regarded Julie was an American, in Moschino couture. It was the Chicago woman that David had been speaking to at the bar only two days before. She slouched against the doorway and looked Julie over.
"We meet again," Julie said with pointless humor.
"Yeah…" the Illinois woman replied, deadpan.
Julie glanced past her awkwardly. "Is… is David here?"
The women gave a cursory glance back into the room. "Hey, David there’s someone to see you. The girl that you were taking ‘round Paris. Maybe she requires your services again." She laughed raucously.
David appeared behind Seana and his expression changed to one of pallid indiscretion.
"You get ready," he urged Seana, then ushered Julie out into the hall to get some privacy. "I will be back in a moment, Seana." His apologetic tone changed when he spoke to Julie. "I am thinking of moving to the United States. I want to be in the Western World."
Julie was neither impressed nor surprised. "But what about your Russia?"
"If I spoke badly of my country, I would have spoken badly of myself."
"And you want to do this? You want to get involved with her?"
"Why not?"
"You’re going to use this lady?" Julie inquired, aghast.
"Who’s being used?" David spoke in a confidential whisper. "She is an attractive woman. She says that I am attractive too."
"But does she mean anything to you?"
"She is everything that I want now."
Julie held out her hands, speechless. Steve's suspicions about him - like Julie's - were totally affirmed.
David put his hand against the wall and leaned over her with confidentiality. "Julie, being with someone isn’t about being the exactly right for one another. This is no perfect world with no perfect desires."
"I just wonder if she is the kind of woman that is going to be right for David Dionisii."
"She’s there now and I need her." He glanced back at the doorway with caution. "If someone isn’t there when you really needed them, then how will you ever be sure that they will be? How will you ever reveal trust?"
"And I guess I wasn’t there for you?" Julie remarked. "I could never be there like that."
David shook his head contritely. "You were not someone that I wanted something from. I never did."
Julie met his eyes with affected understanding. "Yeah..."
"Not when I realized what was really happening I knew that it could never happen."
"What was 'really happening'?" she questioned, sounding defensive.
David folded his arms and half-turned jadedly. "Didn’t you think that I could see?"
Julie sighed. "You know I thought that maybe there was going to be something between us at first."
David laughed, overwhelmed. "Between us? There was something between us and it was Steve Ever."
"No way."
David glared with rebuke. "Steve Ever in every way. I thought that you were attractive but we’d never be compatible. You talked about Steve as if he meant nothing to you, and then when I tried to touch you it was like you were unattainable and the possession of another man."
"But Steve gave me this work and-"
"You owe him something more?" David cut her off.
"I owe that Brit nothing."
David’s gazed at the ceiling with disappointment. "I knew that there was magnetism between you two the first time that we met at the rehearsal on Monday. I knew it just by the way that you staggered when Steve Ever entered the Place de Vallois."
"I was just taken off guard after four years," she remonstrated more with her own scruples than David.
"No, Julie you were mesmerized. I knew that there was something there, but I decided to chance it and I called you. When you asked me over to the Frágonard, every time you started talking about Steve Ever."
"It was runway anxiety."
"You don’t have to explain because look at things now. I’ve met Seana and we’re really excited about each other and maybe everything is going to be what we both wanted."
"Yeah, at least you have Seana." With a maudlin gait she slowly walked away from him. "Maybe I should go back to the hotel and pack for tomorrow."
"This time tomorrow you’ll be in New York?"
"Yes."
David shook his head despairingly. "Then forget your packing and go and do it," he said candidly.
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe he’s still at the show, but call him and ask him over to the Frágonard."
Julie wanted to feign that she didn't know whom David was referring to but it was insane to pretend. "He’d be on the way to celebrate at the Hotel des Lezare by now," she replied desolately. "I’ve made the right decision."
"Call him there," David persisted. "Ask him because you two need time alone now for the sake of forever. He will have a hundred more collection celebrations, but I suspect that he's only got one chance to see you on your last night in Paris."
"Hey David," Seana stepped out of the hotel room, and motioned for him to return, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her lips. "Are you ready to go now? Your friend can come with us - if she can’t find her hotel."
David stared at Julie with cool insistence as she stepped away.
"I think that I’ll find my own way, thanks," Julie said thoughtfully. "It was great to meet you, David."
"And you Julie."
Julie paused for one last look back. "Whenever you are in New York…"
David simply put the tips of his fingers to his lips and blew a kiss to her to Seana's pallid unease. "I’ve a feeling that we will meet here again, sometime. Maybe next season - maybe in ten years. I’ll be knowing you."
"Then for now…" Julie offered as she stepped into the elevator.
When the doors closed, Julie observed David speaking with his new lover.
Maybe it wasn’t the last time that they would meet, but they lived in a vast world and maybe it was.
As she packed in her room later that night, she produced the Concorde ticket from the top drawer in the nightstand. Raising it up towards the light she reclined despondently on the bed. She would be departing at eleven am, Saturday.
Would she be back next season?
Or even in the next four years?
Conceivably she would.
But maybe never.
The telephone cut through her reverie.
She snatched it up. "Hello?"
"Mademoiselle Laing?" It was the aged voice of Jacques the doorman. "Would you care to come down?"
She stared into vacant space with a dark premonition. "Why, what's wrong?"
"It is…" Jacques questioned someone in a running car: "You are sir?"
Julie heard an indistinct voice in the background.
Jacques spoke in a respectful tone. "Steve is down here, Mademoiselle." She heard him conversing with Steve again. "Will I send him up? He says that he will not wait."
Julie’s first impulse was to get it over with ASAP. Why wasn’t Ever at the Hotel des Lazare reveling in the acclaim of his sycophants and hangers-on?
"No, Jacques." She drew a rasping breath. "I will be down."
Julie emerged from the lobby into the brilliant lights in front of the hotel and the marquees of the cinema next to it.
Steve’s chauffeur, Claude, already had the passenger door open.
"Get in, Julie," Steve insisted, on the other side of the Rolls Royce limousine.
Julie took a step back. "Is this some last minute fitting?" Julie asked tersely.
Steve grinned. "The most important kind. Please, get in the car, Julie."
Obstinately, Julie crossed her arms and looked down the avenue evasively. "Why aren’t you celebrating at the Hotel des Lezare. This is your hour of brilliance. Don’t waste it here, Steve."
"I don’t want to be there. Are you going to remain in Paris?"
Julie appeared undecided for a moment. She frowned as if about to refuse and watched a couple on the other side of the street as they emerged from the café-concert.
"Please, get into the car Julie…" Steve implored with the assurance that, despite everything else, he was still her Parisian boss.
"I don’t think that I should stay in Paris. I don’t think that I can."
"But you are here now, so get in and let tomorrow take care of itself."
Julie gave in without a fight: it was only nine-thirty. She slipped into the car beside him and looked straight ahead at the driver with seeming indifference. "If you’ve got something to say Steve then say it."
The chauffeur closed the door and quick-stepped around to take the driver's seat.
Steve edged away to put a respectful distance between them. "You were great tonight - you know that. You weren’t beautiful. You were… perfect."
"I’m a model. I work in the industry of…" Julie faded out, trying to think of the precise words.
"False desire?" Steve suggested provocatively.
The car eased away from the kerb and they headed towards the Seine.
"I was going to say illusions," Julie replied with consummate apathy.
"That was no illusion. That was real - no one can fake that under three thousand watts of tungsten lights. The photographers went wild when you appeared on the runway; that’s great acclaim for a model."
Julie remained unmoved.
"Why are you like that? Didn’t you say that it was about your career all of this?"
"They were your designs that they were photographing."
Steve ignited a cigarette with his gold lighter. "Your modesty is something that is very easily believed."
Julie scrutinized his words for sarcasm and found none. "I won't be seeing David again."
Steve was gratified. "You've come to your senses..."
"I'm not as naïve as you'd like to think I am."
"What is this really about, Julie?" Steve regarded her with penetrating eyes. "It isn’t about the show because you did very well."
"We have a history Steve and we should have never tried to relive it."
"You know, Julie," Steve said tonelessly. "When I first saw you the other day I had hoped that what had happened before would have been forgotten. What was, or what you think it was, is gone. You accused me of having a fling with Simone and you've never got over that have you?"
"It hardly even crossed my mind." Julie lied persuasively.
Steve cocked his brow. "Just like your affair with Jean-Luc never crossed mine?"
Julie stared with disconcertion.
There was a speechless moment.
"Yes, I knew," Steve said solemnly.
"I didn’t think…"
Steve laughed humorlessly. "That I would mind? That just because we were not an official couple that having you for my own didn’t mean anything to me?"
The car turned onto the Avenue Winston Churchill.
A remorseful white befell Julie's face. "I hardly even remember what he looked like now."
"But you sacrificed us for him?" Steve stated, matter-of-fact.
"Like you did with Simone?" Julie countered.
"If I said that we were sexually involved then I would be lying. Simone never saw me as anything more than an advance in her career and I knew it all along. She could hardly even speak English and I only let you think that because I wanted to get even with you."
"You lied?" Julie was confounded.
"Guilty by omission. I know that I was wrong to let you believe that we were something more. Now there is no one to blame if we make the same mistake again."
Julie looked out of the window as they crossed the opulently lit Alexandre III Bridge. "I was never sexually involved with him," she revealed. "I needed someone and-"
"Yes," Steve interjected. "And I thought that it was me. For a while, I really did."
Julie resisted the urge to admit that she was wrong. She never should have felt bitterness towards him for so long. "I met him before you, Steve. Jean-Luc was a model and he was like me an unknown. I met you - we made great photos - and I expected so many things, but you were a new, famous designer. I couldn’t believe that it would happen. Not in the way that I wanted you."
"You say it Julie, like I was born into celebrity like Prince bloody William," Steve frowned. "You knew that I had to struggle for everything that I've got. I had to make it on my own and I did. Like you did and here we are: two people who can’t live with each other and could never endure without each other."
Julie's tone lowered to a pensive murmur. "Did my thing with Jean-Luc really affect you that badly?"
"I tried to retaliate by pretending to take-up with Simone. We should have talked about it four years ago. All of that would just be a memory now."
"Four years is a long time," Julie said evocatively, as the car veered onto the Rue St Dominique heading for the Eiffel Tower.
Steve placed his hands around Julie’s. "It’s felt like it. It really has."
Julie pulled it away. There would be no new romantic upheavals in her life. She was free and nothing was going to compromise her freedom. Julie glanced at the elaborate, multi-tiered fountains held aloft by bronzed cherubim and angelic figures, reclaiming her composure.
"Do you ever think about what went wrong, Julie, like I do?"
"It wasn’t the physical side," Julie admitted.
Steve beamed reminiscently. "You were only my second partner."
"You were my first - but you didn’t know that."
Steve appeared enigmatic. "Yes, I did. That’s what made it so fabulous. That’s what made it so unique. A virgin gives it totally like no one else."
The car crossed another bridge, heading back towards the Champs Élysées. Julie watched Steve’s face as it was intermittently lit as they car passed under the elegant streetlights.
"When we made love on Wednesday, it was as if no time had passed between then and now," Steve reflected. "It felt so right to touch each other as if it could substitute for all of the years when you were estranged."
"That was an exquisite mistake," Julie muttered.
"Even when you said that you wanted to stay here in Paris?"
Julie glanced out the window so that Steve wouldn’t see the faint tears at the corners of her eyes. "But what have I got to depend on?"
"Stay now and you can trust me."
"Trust you?" Julie retorted doubtfully. "I don’t trust any man."
"We can start again like we should have four years ago."
"And what would I do here?" she lamented. "Wait until my face suits the new Steve Ever look?"
"I have many contacts in Paris, Julie. You could get all kinds of bookings, shows, promotions, collections, PR."
Julie looked at him with only a glimmer of optimism.
Steve exhaled a languorous stream of smoke at the roof. "Or you could make your own way in the industry. If you’ve survived in Manhattan then you’d find your way in Paris."
"But how could we be sure that what happened before wouldn’t happen again? I mean, we are always having these misunderstandings. How can we make something out of all of the contradictions?"
"Look, Julie," Steve said in his steadfast British way. "If you want something real and in stone, then we can fly to Rome or Marrakesh tomorrow. I’d even marry you - maybe."
"Marriage? I would be a great media event wouldn’t it?" Julie doubted his sincerity.
"I mean it."
Julie squared him up, gauging whether he was seriousness or not. "I was a dreamer four years ago. Besides I leave for New York tomorrow and I have an apartment to keep... and a cat."
Steve edged closer. "I’ll book you for the Autumn/Winter shows - you know that don’t you, Julie?"
Somehow she resigned herself to the fact that no matter what happened, her life it would always involve Steve. "The fashion business is my career," she replied coolly, not looking at him. "But maybe you should consider a younger model. The Versace and Nina Ricci models this season looked prepubescent. Honestly, I think that it would be best for the next Steve Ever campaign."
Steve put his hand on Julie’s shoulder, lightly and drew himself closer.
She made no attempt to retreat.
"No, I am the best thing for Julie Laing and you are the best thing for Steve Ever. That’s why I concealed that diamond bracelet under your cuffs the other night. I wanted to see you again because I knew that you weren’t a thief of anything but..."
"If you wanted it…" Julie wanted to keep the bracelet so incredibly that she couldn't bring herself to return it. The car turned from the Avenue Bosquet onto the Rue de Babylone towards the dim apartments of the Latin Quarter.
Steve glanced to see that the privacy screen was up, then seized Julie to pull her close. Their lips met and engaged in a heated union. Julie suddenly needed him far more than she had ever simply wanted him.
They continued to kiss and Julie felt her back insinuated in the back seat. Steve was moving over her and she could feel his presence everywhere through her body.
For a moment Julie was prey to her instincts.
This was her last night in Paris and this would only make it worse when she returned to Manhattan willfully alone.
Julie pulled herself away with a singular determination. She began to straighten her jacket and compose herself, shaking back her hair.
It was not going to happen again. Never again!
Steve appeared stunned, then he glared out of the car window at the floodlit line of apartments on the Boulevard. If Steve thought that this altered anything then he was seriously mistaken. Julie Laing was moving on.
This changed nothing at all. After the fact sex never did.
She spoke resolutely as she quickly buttoned up her shirt with exasperation. "I think that I should return to the hotel. I have an early morning tomorrow. I have to be ready."
"But-"
"Please, Steve," Julie glared with an undeniable force of intent. "I want to return to the hotel."
"We could-"
"I want to return to the Hotel Frágonard. Please, Steve."
Steve slumped back to the other side of the seat with a loud, chagrined exhalation.
"Back to the Hotel Frágonard," he instructed Claude via the intercom. He edged even further away from Julie. "It appears that there’s nothing more that we can do tonight."
They drove down the Rue Bonaparte and back up the Champs Élysées with a silent impasse. Julie could feel the intensity of Steve's gaze burning through her.
The doorman opened Julie's door immediately when the car pulled in front of the Hotel Frágonard.
"Whatever has happened Steve," Julie said, after she climbed out, "you look after yourself, OK?"
Julie cast a hesitant glance back at him and saw only Steve's smoldering indignation.
The doorman tipped his hat at him as Julie stepped past the taxis and up the stairs into the urbane interior of the lobby. If Steve’s car had departed she would have gone out to the avenue to see it vanish, but she heard the engine continue to run behind her. She desperately craved to turn and see what Steve was doing but didn't.
"Julie." A dangerous accent came into Steve’s voice. "If you want business then you've got it. I now know that I was wrong. If you want freedom from me then you’re free. Au revoir Julie. Au revoir."
She stood still for a moment as she comprehended the power of his words.
In the elevator Julie reassured herself that it was freedom that she truly desired at any cost.
She wasn’t back in her suite for five minutes before a bellhop knocked on the door.
"Mademoiselle Laing?" the young man, with a red and black cap, asked.
"That’s right."
"The doorman gave me this to give to you, Mademoiselle."
He produced a powder-blue envelope with the Ever insignia on it.
"Thank you." She distractedly pulled a roll of twenty euro notes from her purse and gave one to the bellhop whose eyes widened appreciatively.
Closing the door, she opened the envelope to find nothing but a check. She searched the envelope as if expecting something more.
The check was for thirty-two thousand: for her two appearances and another sixteen for additional services, which was the amount that her agent Daniel had apparently stipulated.
Her first impulse was to tear it in half.
She eased down on the sofa and studied it for a tense moment. A single drop fell onto it, making it semitransparent before she flicked it onto the nightstand, kicked off her stilettos and reclined sullenly. She gazed out past the balcony to the third floor of the Ambroise Concert-Cafe and the illuminated top of the Eiffel Tower.
For the first time in Julie’s life it occurred to her that she couldn’t deal with intimacy. She was afraid of the very thing that she had always accused men. She was always adamant that love was only a fantasy. Men couldn’t find love in anything more than transient encounters.
Steve Ever was offering her something magnificent. The aching in her heart that she had felt for the last four years seemed to intensify at the mere suggestion that she would leave Paris again.
It was sheer guilt for how she had abandoned Steve right when he had needed her all those years ago. He was the one man who had treated her with absolute respect and integrity and she had abandoned him right when he needed her.
How could Steve have ever forgiven her?
Were all of her thoughts of Simone only to avoid her own sense of blame?
She’d be insane if she refused, but what could she do? She was leaving in less than fourteen hours.
The next morning at 11:05 am the Concorde flew over Paris on a direct course to New York City. Its sonic boom was not all it left behind. Julie witnessed it from the Rue de Daniel Casanova shortly before she entered the Gallerie Les Chats.
There was something that she needed to be certain about. She headed straight for the photograph of Simone Bréson that she had noted only three days before with David Dionisii.
Standing in front of it, she contemplated Simone in sophisticated black and white. How could she have accused Steve of taking the picture all of those years ago? On the title plaque next to the image she again read: Simone Bréson, 1998. Adam Ericson.
There was no way that Steve could have taken the photograph all of those years ago. He was resourceful but she could never imagine him putting these images in a gallery simply to deceive her.
However, some doubt still lingered in her. Had Steve's motive for having the photographs merely been a professional one? And why had she heard of Simone so frequently since she had arrived in Paris and never actually seen her?
When she returned to the Hotel Frágonard, she and Vanese had a late breakfast on the balcony. Sitting at an ornate table she took a sip of her cappuccino and decided that if Steve genuinely wanted her, then she’d give it one more chance. An enigmatic smile came to her lips.
"I just realized something," Vanese said, observing a series of limousines pass beneath them down on the Champs. "Who’s going to feed Oscar?"
"I called Brooke this morning," Julie responded slowly. "The janitor is going to give her the key."
Vanese was obviously relieved. "I think that I will go to the Louvre this morning."
"I’d come with you but there’s something that I have to do."
"Yes I know," Paolo assured her.
"The Louvre is a great place to see alone. When I went there with Steve the last time I was here, we were talking loudly and the guards kept glaring at us. It was extremely uncomfortable."
"Sounds like the Met."
Julie stood up and took a determined breath. "I should make a call."
She went back into the suite and studied the phone for a few moments. She fantasized about Steve’s reaction when she called him:
"I can’t believe that you stayed," Steve would gasp.
"What did I have to go back to New York for?" she'd reveal as he drew closer. "Everything I need is here."
"You are going to stay here? How long?"
"Forever if you want," Julie would promise.
"That's what I wanted to hear."
The next scene would be the perfect ending in each other’s arms.
Julie picked up the phone and slouched back on the silken, Louis XIV chair. She put in Steve's number and an expression of hopeful anticipation came to her.
"Pronto?"
"Hi, Carmena?" Julie ventured.
"Si," Carmena replied cautiously.
Julie exchanged an excited look with Vanese. "Is Monsieur Ever available?"
There was one of Carmena’s habitual pauses. "Who’s it who’s calling him?"
"Julie Laing."
"Si, Julie, si," she gushed solicitously. "La model de Monsieur Ever," she mused, with a good-natured laugh. "Pardon, but no here Julie. No here."
Julie’s hopes were vaguely reduced. "But where is he?"
"One of his models was here. Simone… something, beautiful girl. She left with Monsieur Ever forty-minute ago. She - Simone - she was here when was dark."
Julie glared into vacant space. "Simone? You just said Simone, Carmena?"
"Si Mademoiselle, Simone."
"Where have they gone?" Julie asked, trying not to reveal her sense of alarm.
"I not know, eh - sorry."
"Merci, Carmena," Julie replied in a plummeting tone and hung up, four years of heartache cascading over her.
Simone had obviously remained in Paris and was still a part of Steve’s life.
"What is it?" Vanese asked when Julie stepped out onto the balcony, ashen-faced. "Did something happen to Steve?"
Julie bit her bottom lip. "No. I think that he’s in his perfect element."
"What do you mean?" Paolo asked, appearing concerned.
Julie stared off up the Champs Élysées for a moment. "It’s just that…I think that I’ve stayed here under some serious false assumptions. I said that I was leaving and maybe Steve has already found solace."
Paolo tried to be reassuring. "Maybe you’re mistaken. What did they say on the phone?"
Julie looked at her with sincere regret. "If you've cancelled a Concorde ticket can you get another one the same day?"
Julie didn't wait for a reply and Vanese had nothing to offer. She stood and watched Julie depart on a mission.
Julie first called into Steve’s atelier on the Avenue Montaigne and spoke to Marie-Elise.
"I haven’t seen him since last evening," Marie-Elise stated.
Julie wondered if she was telling the truth. "And he didn’t give you any idea where he could be?"
Marie-Elise cogitated for a moment. "Perhaps he is taking some time away to relax," she replied shrewdly. "He has been working night and day to put the collection together. He was speaking of going to his villa in Morocco. He needs some way to relax."
To relax with Simone no doubt, Julie fumed. "Yes maybe you mean someone," Julie said offhandedly.
How could she have been so naïve? Once bitten and now twice deceived!
With no Sebastian and no limousine the doorman hailed a Renault bleu taxi for her outside of the Hotel Frágonard.
"To Steve Ever - 111 Rue du Faubourg-St-Honoré, merci beaucoup," she instructed the driver.
In the car all of the possibilities began to occur to Julie: Maybe Simone had only just reappeared after an absence. Maybe Steve had sought comfort in her arms, having assumed that Julie would never return? For a moment she blamed herself for not telling Steve the night before that she would remain.
Why had she been so headstrong?
She left the cab running outside of the Steve Ever La Boutique.
Madeleine, the sales assistant, was attending to a Saudi Arabian client when Julie came in. She showed the Saudi princess the back and the front of the heavily beaded garment in one clean motion. The woman glanced at one of her Arab minder who simply nodded agreeably.
"Have you seen Steve?" Julie interjected.
She knew nothing. "He was going to do a fitting for Nicole Kidman this morning for the Academy Awards, but he hasn’t arrived. Fortunately Nicole is delayed to."
"It seems that no one knows where he is."
Madeleine smirked. "He's a fashion designer - the essence of unpredictability."
That was precisely what Julie was afraid of.
She went back to La Nouveau Légion D’Honorer where less than sixteen hours before she had modeled, but no one who was disassembling the catwalk for 'Steve Ever’s Theatre of the Vanities' knew a thing. She watched as they rolled up the red carpet that led from the door to the end of the catwalk. All of the seats and flowers were gone and those that remained appeared wilted and lackluster. Without Steve’s presence it seemed like an entirely different place.
When she arrived at the Haute Couture Boutique on the Avenue Montaigne she saw that a fitting was in progress there too. One of Steve’s tailors, a statuesque woman with black hair swept to one side, was taking the woman’s measurements. A tall blonde model of about eighteen was modeling a suit of gray serge.
And there was Steve: he stood with his back to the door overseeing the whole affair.
"We have only just returned from the Capricornia Islands," the lady client explained in an elegant manner. "We lived on the Island of Paradiso for twenty years and I want a new wardrobe."
The tailor gestured to the model. "This cut has become very fashionable in recent years Madame. What do you think?"
The lady client pursed her lips with bemusement.
"There is someone here Monsieur Ever," another female assistant stated as she walked out from the back.
Steve failed to turn. "We’ll attend to her in a moment," he replied in a perfunctory manner.
"I’ll wait over there," Julie said faintly, disarmed at the tone of his voice.
Steve glared around with elated incredulity. "Julie?"
Julie threw out her hands, deadpan, as Steve approached. "In the flesh."
"Can I assume that this is your decision?" Steve wondered at the reserved look on Julie’s face. "You are really here. So Paris has no regrets for you after all?"
Julie looked around him searchingly. She regretted it already.
"Are you looking for something?" Steve was remiss.
"Someone."
Steve frowned. "Who?"
Julie crossed her arms belligerently, and fixed her stern eyes on him. "I know about Simone."
Disappointment glared from Steve's face like neon. He gestured to the young blonde model. "Simone? Simone this is Julie. Julie - Simone."
Julie blanched; her senses reeled within her as she studied the young woman’s features. She didn't have even the slightest similarity to the Simone of four years ago. Suspicion had shot her down before Steve's eyes again.
She gave a sudden affected laugh, then drew a transparent breath of adulation. She shook Simone’s hand frenetically. "Hi it’s, it’s - wonderful. I’ve heard so much about you. It’s great to meet you in person. It…it really is."
Steve shook his head and failed to laugh. "You stayed in Paris to meet Simone? Simone you must be honored."
Julie gave him a look of humility. "Yes and… Simone was working for you last night, and…?"
"Since this morning," Simone replied in her flawless English accent. "I got one of Mademoiselle Marie-Elise’s notorious pre-dawn calls to show for a fitting."
Julie laughed penitently. Steve said nothing.
She still didn’t trust him and she had just absolutely confirmed it.
It appeared to be back to business as usual as Steve turned and selected a red chiffon gown from one of the exhibition cases to present to the client.
"If you don’t have time to talk…" Julie said behind him.
A hesitant smile developed on Steve’s lips. "Marlene and Sherry can you please assist Madame du Burbonn."
"When will you be back?" Marlene fretted - it was only her second day at Steve Ever.
"I don’t know…"
Julie climbed into Steve's car with a sense that some decisive moment was pending.
"I knew that you wouldn’t return to New York," Steve revealed comfortingly, as they drove back to L'Hotel Frágonard. "I knew that you’d remain."
"The moment that I got off the Concorde, I knew that I would to," Julie admitted to Steve - and finally to herself.
Back inside the Frágonard Hotel Julie looked around her suite one last time before the bellhops collected her things. "This is the most wonderful place that I've ever stayed in."
"You’ll find other places," Steve assured her. "The Frágonard Paris can be everywhere for us."
"If I sold my apartment in New York I could buy a suite here and…"
Steve appeared disarmed. "But I assumed that you would move into my townhouse."
"I-"
"Accept? Just say that. I’ve spoken to Louis and Carmena. It wouldn't be as if you weren't expected or wanted."
For a few seconds she was intoxicated by a strange exultation.
"If you want me to."
"Of course I do."
Julie pulled the case off the bed and Steve carried it for her. "Thank you," she smiled. "You do really think that this will be alright Steve?"
Steve regarded her coolly. "It’ll work out in time. You’ll see."
Julie followed him out into the hall, starting to believe already.
As soon as they arrived at Steve’s home Julie looked around the luxurious townhouse that she had become so familiar with and felt sure that things would work out alright there.
After inspecting the upper quarters, Julie slowly walked down the stairway to Steve who had remained down in the gold drawing room.
"Do you think that you’ll be suited to here?" Steve asked.
"I feel… - what is the French for ecstatic?"
"Volupté?"
"Yes," Julie effused with abandon. "Absolute volupté"
They embraced each other neither knowing why, but reassured that they could.
As they loosened their hold, Steve smiled, his eyes gleaming. "So where is to be Julie? Rome? Monte Carlo? Cairo?"
"Huh?" Julie wondered what he could be referring to.
"We should get out of Paris together," Steve insisted devotedly. "We can get a new perspective. We can start all over."
Julie’s leant her head against his shoulder. "We don’t have to do that."
"Can’t we just try it?" Steve kissed the top of her hair. "I’ve done four years of endless designing. I want to leave Paris to live free from it all for a while. I need to unwind and I want some time for us away from all of this." He motioned around himself meaning Paris collectively. "I’d like some time with you."
Julie was certainly in the mood to compromise. "You know, I’ve always wanted to see Northern Africa."
"I know a great villa in Morocco."
"But," Julie stipulated. "I’d like something else even more. When we went away together and stayed in Fontainebleau four years ago it was the most wonderful time of my life... I've never been to your home city."
"You want to go to London?" he asked agreeably. "You know, I've never actually been to New York."
"Marseilles or Nice," Julie suggested. "Why don’t we make it a round trip: Nice: New York: London."
Steve kissed her on the cheekbone sweetly. "Whatever you want. "He picked up his telephone and dialed. "Hi, Marie-Elise... Yes it’s me. I need you to make a booking for two to Nice in three days from De Gaulle… I have decided to go away with Julie…To be married." He smiled meaningfully at Julie. "…Yes first-class."
Steve looked at the phone as if Marie-Elise had been suddenly disconnected.
Disconnected or as if Marie-Elise had just fainted.
He closed the cell phone with perplexity, grinned, then kissed Julie again. "I can’t wait to see the city that could produced a woman like you."
"You've got all the right lines don't you?"
They kissed.
That night Julie remained with Steve at his house. Julie perused his enormous design journals full of images and samples of lace, fabrics and European styles, past and present. Photographs and illustrations of decorative arts were attached to the corners of pages containing ink sketches. She noted the beautiful reproductions of images by French and Italian illustrators. On the last page Julie paused. She saw a photograph of herself preparing to appear at Steve’s second show over four years before. It seemed extraordinary that he had kept it all these years. He even kept a copy of it in the journal of the current year’s collection. She had learned how to make a life out of being alone, but now it seemed too difficult to contemplate.
"I see that you tried on the smoking jacket," Steve observed from behind her.
Julie glanced down modestly. "It’s very comfortable."
"Then, if you like it you can keep it."
"I can’t take it," Julie replied.
"Then I’ll design one for you. A Steve Ever original exclusively for Julie Laing. But here, look at this."
Julie took the open magazine and saw a photograph of Simone in possibly the world's most revealing bridal gown.
"It was a Gaultier," Steve answered Julie's stunned expression.
"It's outrageous - divine."
"This was when she was married in Venice almost two years ago to Irving Arredona the photographer."
"She's still there now?" Julie asked with vulnerability.
"That's right. Unlike Julie Laing she never returned."
Three days later, after a brief stay on the Riviera, they arrived in New York to the delight of the Manhattan media. They made an appearance as special guests at the latest Donna Karan fashion preview.
"What do you think of American fashion?" a journalist heatedly questioned them as they departed the art deco hotel. "Do you think that the style of America is equal to that of Europe?
Steve glanced at Julie with adoration. "I think that American style is the finest in the world."
"Mr. Ever," another, in her early twenties and a Steve Ever suit, shrieked more than asked. "Are you intending to move operations to America?"
He stepped over to the other side of the car. "No. I’m intending to take America back to Paris."
"What do you mean?"
The car pulled away from the kerb and Steve only looked back with an enigmatic smile sparking on his lips.
Even when Steve didn’t take her hand as they left the show afterwards that was OK. After all, Steve was British. His passion was private and in private he certainly made up for his public reserve. The intensity with which it burned for Julie could never be expressed in terms that the public would really understand.
When they went back to Julie’s apartment Vanese was feeding Oscar in the airy living room.
"I met a Brazilian guy at a bar on Amsterdam and 7th Avenue the night after I returned from France," Vanese enthused as she placed the Persian down on the white, marblesque floor. "He was thinking of moving into this building, but there were nothing available."
Julie looked around the apartment reflectively, then laughed with a wry glint in her eyes. "And I don’t know what I will do with this apartment." She observed the disinterest in Vanese’s expression and made her point more explicitly. "Maybe someone might want to rent it… Maybe…"
At first Vanese appeared despondent then thoughtful.
Perhaps something occurred to her.
In London they visited Steve’s parents who were aflame with pride when confronted with their son. Maybe that time his mother had explained how to cut a suit jacket wasn’t entirely a waste of time. Despite all of Steve’s petitions to put them up in Holland Park, Belgravia or Mayfair they remained in Fulham where they knew people and people knew them. They received Julie with acceptance and regard.
If she was Steve's great love how could she be anything but fascinating?
On their first night back in Paris, Steve and Julie dined at Chez L’Arpége. Reflections of the classical mansions lining the Island of Saint Louis rippled over the waters of the Seine before them.
In a quiet moment Julie wondered how they had made a love out all the insecurities that had affected them. It was so unknown and forbidding then, but now it seemed so perfectly natural.
Steve took a sip of his champagne. "What are you thinking about right now?" he petitioned sexily.
Julie’s eyes sparkled. "How I always wanted somehow to be here on a night exactly like this."
"Really?" Steve gave that eminent grin. He looked up into the sky. "How many stars do you there are up there?"
"As many as there are dreams."
"Yes... I guess there are." Steve was suddenly animated. "Did you see that falling star."
"Yes, I did!"
Steve looked into Julie’s eyes. "Maybe one of them just come true."
Julie Ever glanced over the river. "'Like love in the end it is realized beyond time'," Julie recalled the slogan for Steve’s first perfume Destiny. "Two weeks ago I never would have thought that I'd be here. Not here with you and all of this - never."
"But I expect that we were thinking about each other across the Atlantic?"
"And now we’re here together and we can take all the time that time has left for us in the world," Julie breathed.
"That’s my design."
Julie raised her lined-brow solicitously. "Until next season - When autumn and winter comes?"
"Until death do us part," Steve assured her. "When I wrote that Destiny slogan I was thinking of you and that's when I decided to definitely book you this season - and as many as it took get you here."
Julie raised her glass ebulliently. "Then whenever forever comes."
"For Ever," Steve promised.
They both laughed with sheer abandon and for the first time they both knew why.
That night and after, Steve and Julie made a new life, beyond the intrigues and tribulations of the past. Julie successfully rented out her New York apartment on the West Side and remained at Steve’s Parisian townhouse.
The following spring The House of Steve Ever released two perfumes, Forever and Eau de Vouloir, and its first cologne, Presence.
In the years to come, Julie would give up her modeling to pursue a career designing women’s eveningwear. The Julie Laing label was an international success, despite widespread speculation that her designs capitalized on her association with Steve rather than genuine flair.
They would, in five years time, experience a period of separation, due to mutual infidelities by Steve and Julie. They would, if they had ever married, seriously consider divorce, but they persisted with each other. Even fashion luminaries like Steve Ever and Julie Laing made mistakes in a garden of temptation.
Julie and Steve knew life and they knew that its only constant was variation.
After all this was the city of Paris, fashion capital of the world, where desire and style are the fervor.