2 Death of a Supermodel Read online

  When Laura walked into the tiny back hallway that led to their showroom, she saw that Corky had put out a narrow Danish modern table with flowers and candy. A scented candle held onto its flame for dear life. André had usually just put out a box of donuts and a travel box of Starbucks, grudgingly at that.

  Corky was on the phone, which was his job, but his voice was loud, and she could hear him cackling down the hall.

  “Oh, honey, he was on fire. That man. And he had the whole inaccessible thing going on.”

  She knew he was talking about Jeremy. Corky made no secret of his crush. She could sympathize with the sentiment, but not the lack of secrecy. Between Corky’s declarations of the obvious, she heard the bubbling of the steamer. They could only afford to make one sample of each style, so the clothes the giraffes had worn, stepped on, and stretched out were also their showroom samples, and when she entered the showroom, he was steaming out the wool crepe that was giving Yoni such a heart attack.

  The rest of the room, which was no bigger than a Manhattan studio apartment, was set up with a big table in the middle, a wire grid to hang garments on one wall, cabinets on another, and two other walls built so quickly into Jeremy’s showroom, they were afraid to hang anything on them. Corky had hung prepped samples on the grid. Everything looked wrong. He had a big drapey shirt with the wide pleated pants—red with red, which was impossible to match in production. He’d co-opted the accessories from the show and incorporated them into his presentation, which promised more than the sisters of Sartorial Sandwich could deliver.

  Corky spotted Laura and flapped his hands around his face. “It’s an oven in here.” Then, into the phone, “I’ll see you later, honey. Text me your lunch order.” He hung up and turned back to Laura. “I have Barneys Co-op coming in fifteen minutes, and I swear if I put a piece of raw chicken on the table, it’ll be cooked by the time they get here.” He pulled off his corduroy jacket and slung it over a chair, fanning himself with his hands. “How’s the German bitch?”

  “I think she just overdosed.” She reordered the red with the brown and put the steeply priced leather jacket on its own rack.

  Corky made a pfft sound and flung his hand at her. He put the Westchester dress with the black Rockland cape. “She didn’t use when she was working. I saw her get out of the cab before the show. She was walking straight in seven-inch heels.”

  “Maybe she puked one too many times and her body just had enough.”

  Corky shrugged. “Where’s Ruby?” Ruby and he had rekindled their best buddy friendship, as happened with Ruby all the time.

  “She’ll get here when she’s done.”

  “Is she okay? She was sick this morning. Is she pregnant?”

  “She is not pregnant.”

  “Should we cancel our appointments?”

  Laura’s first assumption was that Corky wanted Ruby around for another gossip session, but then she realized he wanted her sister around to charm the buyers and be the face of the company. Because Ruby could say words like fabulous and gorgeous and Oh that is too cute! without irony, while Laura not only found that type of fakery sickening, she was unable to hide how sick it made her.

  “She just had to finish up with the cops.”

  A voice piped in from behind Laura. It was a squeal or a squeak or a broken car alarm, and her name was Debbie Hayworth. “Laura Carnegie! I can’t believe it!”

  Laura smiled and swallowed hard. Debbie had gone to Parsons with her and Ruby, and of course, Ruby had stolen Debbie’s boyfriend.

  “I knew you guys would make it!” Two girls with perfect hair and big black binders followed Debbie. The room was suddenly a thousand degrees hot. Debbie air-kissed Corky. “Oh, my God, and you, too! It’s just like old times.”

  “You look great.” Laura felt herself failing at the whole fabulous thing. “You’re here with Barneys, I guess?”

  “The Co-op. I do all the young designer buys, and I’m so happy I can support you and Ruby. It’s like my dream to help people I went to school with, the ones I liked. But tell me, where did you come up with that name? I mean, the girls had to look it up in the dictionary.” She slid into a chair, and the assistants followed suit, popping open their binders like law students on the first day of class.

  “A friend of mine came up with ‘sartorial.’ We figured if we paired it with ‘sandwich,’ it would sound like highbrow and lowbrow.”

  “Yeah.” Debbie looked at the Binder Girl to her left and wrinkled her nose. “That’s so relatable. Isn’t that what you thought, Tammy?”

  “Not really?” Left Binder Girl answered.

  Laura smiled. “Well, I guess you came to see the line?”

  Corky planned to sell the handfeel, then the merchandizing, and the fit would be remembered from the show. He had done the presentation for Laura once and drawn her into the story of the fabrics and how they were combined. He was good, but only with a buyer who wanted to be told a story.

  “Oh, my God, what happened at the end of the show?” Debbie squeaked.

  Laura and Corky glanced at each other. They had no strategy for dealing with this. Stupid. They couldn’t lie because whatever the truth was, it would be in the papers tomorrow. They couldn’t change the subject. Too transparent. They couldn’t minimize it because the whole thing had been so dramatic in the moment.

  Laura had no idea what her sales guy wanted to do, but she decided the best strategy was to use it to her advantage. “Thomasina Wente was sprawled all over the bathroom floor.”

  “Oh. My. God. Did she overdose?”

  “It is so hot in here,” Corky said. “I’m shvitzing.” He tugged at the neck of his shirt.

  “We don’t know what happened,” Laura said, hewing to the truth, but implying that inconveniences were possible. “The worst was being stuck in the bathroom with Rowena, one-word-answer girl.”

  Corky draped the Westchester dress over the table. “Check out the handfeel on this.”

  Debbie manhandled the dress, checking the seams and finishings. “Where’s Ruby?”

  When Laura had seen Debbie enter, she’d been glad Ruby was out of the office. Six years ago, during the final runway show before graduation, Debbie had made a fatal mistake. She’d left her boyfriend alone with Ruby for a few minutes too long.

  The story was more complicated than that, but not by much. Their Parsons final thesis was a runway show they were expected to prepare over the course of the entire year. They each had a committee headed by a major designer, plus some faculty. Ruby had Marc Jacobs, and Laura had Barry Tilden. It seemed as though the committee built late changes into their curriculum to make sure every student could potentially be late. Their mentors had changed everything at the last minute, almost out of spite. In the class of thirty, no one, except for Ruby, had slept the night before the runway show. They had been up basting, trimming, and setting in zippers. Most had gotten by in school by drawing beautifully and sewing like ham-fisted butchers. But fourth year required they stitch every seam personally, and if the sewing machine left little marks in your satin taffeta, well, you’d better figure out a way to fix that because the judges weren’t just looking at what they could see on the runway; they were looking at your stitch counts, too.

  Laura had approached fourth year with relief because she drew like a monkey, but could sketch with scissors and a sewing machine. She’d already been temping for Jeremy for a year at that point, and as gay as she and everyone thought he was, she had that rush of endorphins every time he was around. That year, she felt like a star, even if she didn’t have time to look at a boy, go clubbing, or initiate a drinking habit like everyone else. Had she had time for that stuff, she might have been able to stop what happened with Debbie’s boyfriend, Darren.

  Ruby’s strategy, which was pure genius, was to avoid sewing and patternmaking entirely. First, she presented a normal jacket/pant-suiting thing for her final, drawn as if it belonged in an art gallery, until her committee was in mid-salivation with each draf
t. Laura wondered how her sister was going to produce the group and was about to tell Ruby that if she expected her sister to jump in at the last minute and save her, she had some hard realities to face. Because Laura had done it for her before, and to such an extent that no one had any idea that Ruby still hadn’t sewn a damn thing but her finger her entire college career.

  The suiting group had been a ruse. On the last day to present the finals, Ruby declared that she hated it, and presented a group of heavy-gauge sweaters with leggings that a six-year-old could sew from a Butterick pattern. She had enough yarn interest and trimmings to make it fly, and the entire group was approved unanimously by the committee on account of her general genius.

  Laura had just been relieved she wouldn’t have to do her sister’s project as well as her own. The cunning of the final had become apparent as the weeks passed. Ruby rented a used flatbed hand machine and stuck it in the middle of their room. She knitted her heart out, and when fitting time came, her committee made a few suggestions. They didn’t know how to correct a sweater fit any more, because sweaters had been made in China and Italy for the past thirty years. There was a black hole in their expertise, and they didn’t want to admit it. So she got a pass on mistakes that would never have been overlooked on a jacket.

  She ended up outside the Jacob Javits Convention Center on show night, while everyone else was in the back room fixing pockets and buttons. Her sweaters were folded neatly into bags and ready to go, and she could step outside for a smoke. And who was out there too? Debbie’s little hipster boyfriend, Darren, fully annoyed with his girlfriend for spending sixteen hours a day hunched over a sewing machine.

  The sweaters were a hit. Laura’s origami dresses were ridiculous, and the model unfolded one wrong when she did her turn, exposing her bare bottom all over the runway. No one remembered a damn thing about Debbie’s pieces, not because of the scene that followed, but because she was never much of a designer. Her boyfriend made the show, but had lipstick all over his white T-shirt. The shade matched Ruby’s, so there was no hiding it, even to avoid a drunken, spitting-mad blowout at Club Winnebago, and promises of death, destruction, and decimation at some undefined point in the future.

  After graduation, Debbie worked as an assistant designer at Express for fifteen minutes before they shipped her out to Columbus, Ohio, to join the merchandising team, and then everyone lost track of her, which for Ruby was a big mistake. Laura could see from a mile away that Debbie Hayworth wanted satisfaction, and the sooner she got it, the better for everyone.

  “She’s cleaning up,” Laura said. “There were some loose ends back at the tents.”

  Debbie gave a smile that bared her teeth and wrinkled her nose.

  Laura felt as though she were treading water. “Everything will be made in New York. We have some of the best sewers in town on our floor. We’re putting a tag in. We think it will be a selling point to the customer.”

  “Did you make this sample?” Debbie asked.

  “That one’s mine, yeah.”

  “That’s why it looks perfect. Which it better because it’s going to retail for… what now?” She glared at Left Binder Girl, who had the SartSand look book open in front of her.

  Right Binder Girl banged on a calculator. “Twelve hundred eighty.”

  “Did Ruby make any of the samples?”

  “No,” Laura said, revealing a sore point.

  Debbie leaned forward as if telling a secret. “I remember her in third year tailoring.”

  “Mrs. Dunnegan’s class. She was tough.”

  “Not for you, but for the rest of us. And Ruby—”

  “Total personality clash. I had the same thing with Eberto Saffina.”

  Corky cleared his throat. “Let’s not be magpies now, ladies. Did you see this leather bomber? You have to feel this. The fur collar is faux, but you can’t even tell.”

  Debbie ignored him. “Remember the time she made Ruby wear her own pants for the whole class? And she couldn’t sit still for five minutes because the crotch was sewn so bad? And she said, at the end…”

  Laura chimed in, and they said together, “You don’t want your pants to be the thing chafing you on a Saturday night.”

  They both laughed. Binder Girls chuckled as much as they needed to, and Corky put a smile on his face, but Laura caught him shooting her a look and tapping his watch. Usually, having someone stay late so that they crossed with another buying team was a good idea. It made the line seem popular, and any exchange of stories and gossip in the showroom made it appear to be an industry hub. But the space was so small that one more person would highlight the poverty of the brand.

  Debbie, however, seemed in no mood to rush. “Her tailoring final looked good, though,” she said, all raised eyebrows and newsy grins. “The jacket? I had no idea she could pull it off.”

  Laura knew she was being baited, and worse, baited into trash-talking Ruby. If she lied, this woman who understood their past would know it. And if she told the truth using the wrong tone of voice, she would be as good as tossing Ruby under a bus and ruining her sister’s reputation. She was not good at that kind of nuance. “I admit I set in the sleeves,” Laura said.

  Debbie pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes into slits.

  “Look, what am I?” Laura asked. “Heartless? You should have seen what she was doing. I mean, she had somehow made a two-inch pleat at the hem. Two inches! Most people forget to put it in, but not Ruby! Ruby triples the depth because she remembered to put it there at all. Then she wants to say it was a design detail, and I’m like, there’s no way you can sell that.”

  Debbie slapped her hand on the table, unable to contain her amusement, but the comment wasn’t meant to be amusing. It was meant to show her sister being diligent and clever.

  Laura continued with utmost seriousness, thinking to wipe the smirk off the woman’s face. “So seriously, it’s let her fail or help her. Come on now. It was just a pleat. How could I have her in crit telling Marc Jacobs she added a two-inch pleat to the bottom of the lining as a design detail? You would have done the same.”

  “Oh, honey. Everyone knew you did it. And not just the sleeve sets and lining, okay? Including Marc. Trust me.”

  Laura had to stop before she told Debbie what really happened, which was that she had given Ruby her jacket and remade another from scratch, handing it in two hours late. Laura had taken a beating on her grade, but slept well that night. “Let’s talk about the line. Show them the leather bomber, Corks. You’re not here just to make the room prettier.”

  “Let me see that,” Debbie said, reaching for the sleeve. “This fur is gorgeous. I can’t believe it’s fake. You know we can’t even sell real fur anymore.” She turned to Laura. “You need a hangtag that says something like, ‘premium man-made fur,’ or something like that, or no one’s going to believe it. I love it. Do it. Jess, write that down.”

  Binder Girl wrote furiously. In Laura’s estimation, that was good. Very good. Until her phone beeped.

  Ruby texted: They’re bringing me to the precinct. Come get me!

  Laura tilted her screen so no one could see it, but when she looked up, Debbie smiled like a cat over a wounded bird. Laura smiled back like the worst faker in the tri-state area.

  It took another half an hour to get rid of Debbie, and another ten minutes to convince Corky to start the next meeting without her because she was off to pick up the magical Ruby, who was suddenly too traumatized to get to 38th Street by herself.

  In the hall, she ran into their agent, Pierre Sevion. He seemed to be on his way to Jeremy’s, which was weird because Jeremy was the only designer in New York whose profits were safe from Pierre.

  “What a show this morning,” he said, starting with the positive, which always sounded more French-accented than his more blunt talk. “Out of the park. Yes, you’ll be the superstars of Seventh by the end of the week.”

  “If we get reviewed.”

  “It’s been arranged.” He waved to Renee
as they approached Jeremy’s offices. “She was there. She knows St. James supports you, and I spoke to her.”

  “Did she see Dymphna Bastille? She looked like she belonged in the Toys R Us catalog. I don’t know what I was thinking letting Mermaid send her.”

  “She said it wasn’t a problem.”

  Laura froze. “What did she say? Tell me exactly. Every word.”

  “My dear, do you not trust me? When have I let you down?”

  She didn’t know how to answer. She was at a loss to describe what he had done at all besides spread goodwill and cheer regarding SartSand, which maybe could have been done with a postcard or a letter from Santa or something. Their backing, which was turning out to be completely inadequate, had been secured by Ruby after Pierre told them he had a matching backer lined up, but he/they had to find the initial money. Ruby had hunted down some guy she’d dated briefly in high school who, it was rumored, had made a killing in hedge funds, then “accidentally” ran into him at some swanky party downtown, after which Pierre swooped in and started negotiating contracts and following up with the tenacity of a starving pit bull. He then gleefully took eight percent when he was contracted to take ten, as though it was a favor, as if the money was going to get them five minutes past their first show.

  “I saw Ivanah Schmiller. What did she think?”

  “That could be a problem for us,” he said, using the royal pronoun as if he was any more than a jester in that court.

  “If it’s about money, there’s nothing you can tell me that Yoni hasn’t.”

  “Your backer is not happy with you. Or to state it more plainly, his wife called your clothes boring.”

  “To whom? The circus?”

  “I don’t want you to underestimate her pull in this business. She is the wife of a billionaire and quite the designer herself. People listen to her, so no matter who she said it to, it wasn’t nobody.”