There was no way she could go along with this.
“I love your clothes,” Miss Matsuda said, slipping into the space between the floor and the table next to her. “It will be an honor to work with you.”
We haven’t established that we will be working together, Victory wanted to say, but the back of her throat had gone dry and she couldn’t speak. She took a sip of her tea, trying to regain her composure.
“Miss Matsuda very good designer,” Mr. Ikito said, looking from one woman to the other. “She draw new designs just like old Victory Ford designs. You approve them, of course. We continue business and everybody happy.”
Victory coughed into her hand. “I’m sure Miss Matsuda is a very good designer,” she said cautiously, not wanting to reject this proposal out of hand. “But I’d have to see her drawings first. Before we decide anything,” she added.
“You see all drawings you want,” Mr. Ikito said, expansively throwing up his hands. “She good, you see. She copy everybody. She do Ralph Lauren better than Ralph Lauren himself.”
Victory’s only thought was that she had to get out of there. She was angry and insulted, but this was probably only ego, and when it came to business, sometimes you found you c
ould live with ideas that sounded despicable at first—if you could give yourself enough time to think about them and get over the initial insult. The important thing to do right now was not to react and cause a breach that couldn’t be mended.
She stood up.
“Thank you, Mr. Ikito, for your kind solution,” she said. “I have another meeting. I’ll call you after lunch.”
This in itself was risky, as Mr. Ikito expected her to stay for as long as he deemed necessary. He frowned. “You not like solution?”
“Oh no, it’s a very good solution,” she said, edging toward the door while bowing repeatedly like a marionette. If she kept bowing, maybe Mr. Ikito wouldn’t notice her hasty departure. Or at least not take it as a complete insult.
“You got to decide,” he said. “It very good offer.”
“Yes, Mr. Ikito. Very good,” she said. She reached the door and slid it back, and still bowing, stepped backward through the opening.
“Bye-bye,” Miss Matsuda said, giving her a small wave.
Bye-bye indeed, Victory thought, smiling.
Unfortunately, this seemed to sum up the whole situation.
She couldn’t allow her name on designs that weren’t hers—or could she, she thought, stepping out onto the crowded sidewalk. She began walking back to her hotel, thinking that the exercise might rid her of this feeling of claustrophobia. But the noise and the people and the traffic and the slivers of buildings rising precariously into an invisible sky only made her feel worse, and finally she hailed a cab. The door popped open and she collapsed onto the backseat. “Hyatt Tokyo Hotel,” she said weakly.
In her room, it was worse. Hotel rooms in Tokyo were notoriously small, and normally she booked a small suite at the Four Seasons, not minding the extra expense. But this time, as a penance, she’d checked into a tiny room at the Hyatt with a hard double bed (the Japanese had very different ideas about comfort) that barely fit into the slot of a room. She went into the bathroom (another tiny space about the size of a New York City closet), and wet a washcloth with cold water and placed it over her face. The washcloth was coarse and not really meant to absorb water. She took it off and looked at it and started crying.
This was how it always was, she reminded herself. From the beginning of her career, it seemed, she was always crying and then going back to work. Work, cry, work, cry, work, cry, she thought.
Still sobbing, she went into the other room and sat down on the hard bed. She imagined that most people would have been shocked at the amount of time she spent in tears, because her public persona was that she was cool and fun and fiercely optimistic, always believing that everything was going to turn out fine and that a new, exciting opportunity was just around the corner. She never cried in front of anyone (although assistants had caught her puffy-faced, she always pretended nothing was wrong), yet she didn’t censor herself either. It was important to release emotions—otherwise, you ended up becoming some kind of addict . . .
Then she lay on her back on the bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling, which was barely seven feet high. She would have liked to have called someone—Nico or Wendy, or some boyfriend or lover, which she didn’t have at the moment—anyone to listen to her woes and tell her she was wonderful and make her feel better—but there wasn’t anyone to call. And so she thought about how she would have to deal with this by herself, and how she had always dealt with everything by herself and gotten through it.
She didn’t call Mr. Ikito that afternoon. She waited until the next morning, and then she got on a flight to Los Angeles. She told him that she needed to think about his solution for a few days, and then she kept putting the decision off, concentrating on what was happening in the stores that carried her line in Los Angeles and Dallas and Miami and Chicago. And everywhere she got the same reaction: The spring line was “interesting.” But she had designed some other pieces, regular styles for the stores, hadn’t she? No, she hadn’t. How was the reaction in New York, then? Was Bergdorf’s taking the line?
They were, she assured everyone, and so was Barney’s, but what she didn’t mention was that they were only taking a few pieces. The most conservative ones. They were, in the words of the buyers, being “hopefully optimistic.” But it didn’t help anyone if they took pieces they would eventually have to sell at an eighty percent markdown.
Goddammit, she thought now, glaring at the phone where she’d placed it on the mantelpiece. What was wrong with everyone? Why were they so afraid? She didn’t care what anyone said. She knew the spring line was the best she’d ever designed. It was a complete departure, but it was exactly what she’d envisioned it should be, ever since she’d started thinking about it a year ago. And the truth was, she had expected glowing reviews. She had expected to be feted and talked about. She never would have admitted it to anyone, but there were moments when she had fantasized that this collection was going to launch her to a new level and possibly secure her place in fashion history. When she died, she wanted people to say of her: “She was one of the greatest American fashion designers.”
Okay, she was willing to live without it, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t try. But that was the problem with success: Once you got a taste of it, you wanted more and more. And there was nothing like success in New York City. You were admired and loved and slightly feared. There was safety and security in success. Whereas with failure . . .
She shook her head. She wouldn’t think about it. No one came to New York City to fail. They came to succeed. She had been here before, many times, on the brink of failure, and each time that fear had driven her to try harder. But in the past, it hadn’t mattered as much; she hadn’t had as much to lose. It was critical now to keep ahold of herself. She couldn’t freak out. She had to remain calm and continue on as if nothing were wrong and she wasn’t hurt and everything was going to be fine . . .
She had to call Mr. Ikito. But what was she going to say?
She wasn’t going to have her work taken away from her and redone by someone else like she was some Hollywood screenwriter. She wouldn’t be messed with like that, and if word ever got out that she hadn’t designed the Japanese line herself, it would destroy the credibility she’d worked so hard to achieve. This was the line, and she wouldn’t cross it. It was a point of honor, and in a world where there was very little honor left in any profession, you had to defend the few things that were still real and true.
The loss of her overseas revenues would seriously challenge the company, but she was just going to have to eat it. Something else would come along. Mr. Ikito was going to have to take her designs or forget it, and that was what she should have told him from the beginning.