Lipstick Jungle

Victory smiled, ignoring the sexual innuendo behind this remark. Pierre was charming in that way only Frenchmen can be—he made every woman think he found her sexually attractive and would, if given half the chance, take her to bed—and yet he managed to convey this in a way that was flattering as opposed to sleazy. This, however, was not his main attraction, Victory thought. His biggest appeal was that he was just on the brink of making her rich.

“You’re not inviting her to your drafty old chalet in Megève, are you?” Muffie Williams whispered, coming up behind them. “It’s terrible. There’s no heating.”

“It’s healthier that way,” Pierre countered. Victory sensed a frisson of annoyance in his look at he bent over to kiss Muffie on both cheeks. “Is very cozy at night. If you . . . how you say . . . cuddle up?” Pierre said pointedly.

Muffie looked from Pierre to Victory and narrowed her eyes. “Let’s cuddle up to this meeting, shall we?”

They went into the conference room, which exuded a muted green glow from recessed lighting in the ceiling. In the center was a long rectangular table of thick green glass; spaced evenly along its surface were small green topiary bushes in black boxes. On a side table was a silver ice bucket containing a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne. This wasn’t unusual—Pierre began every meeting with “un verre du Champagne,” which made Victory wonder how he managed to stay sober all day.

But maybe he didn’t.

Two more people came into the conference room—the heads of advertising and of sales and distribution. They were followed by a young woman, dressed all in black, who poured the champagne and passed it around on a silver tray. A toast was made by Pierre, and then a screen that was somehow worked invisibly into the far wall flashed to life, revealing an image of a woman dressed in one of Victory’s outfits from the spring line. Victory gasped and put down her glass of champagne. Oh no, she thought wildly. It was wrong, all wrong. The woman was too thin and too haughty and too young and too French-looking. The headline read: “Victory Ford: Desire It,” and that seemed wrong too.

For a second, she was consumed with a kind of juvenile anger that made her want to get up and walk out of the room, the way she would have done in frustration when she was just starting out in business. But she’d come a long way since then, and this was big business. Big, big business with millions of dollars at stake.

She remained in her seat, staring at the image.

“Is very nice, yes?” Pierre said.

Goddammit, she thought. Why couldn’t anything just be right for a change? But that would be too easy. The image was only a mock-up anyway of what a possible ad might be. But it was a reminder that if they made an offer and she took it, she’d be working with all kinds of people who might see her image differently from how she envisioned it. And she was going to have to be open to those kinds of suggestions.

She took a sip of her champagne. The trick right now was to make Pierre think she was enthusiastic, while trying to gently steer him in the direction she wanted him to go. “It’s very interesting, yes,” she said. “I like it . . .”

She hated herself for lying. But then she happened to catch sight of the rings on Muffie’s fingers. Muffie Williams was staring at the image, her fingers delicately holding the stem of the champagne glass, and in that green, recessed lighting, the rings on her fingers sparkled like stars. You could have rings like that, a voice in her head reminded her. Rings like that, and much much more. You could be rich . . .

And she heard herself saying, more enthusiastically this time, “Yes, Pierre, I do like it. I like it very much.”

* * *

AN HOUR AND A half later, Victory was staring down into the glittering depths of a rare six-carat teardrop-shaped blue diamond. “Property of a Gentleman,” the card next to it read. “Estimate: $1,200,000-$1,500,000.”

Who was the gentleman, she wondered, and why was he selling his diamond? How had he come to have it in the first place? And she pictured some crotchety old bachelor who had never married and now needed money. Perhaps he kept the diamond for years and years, using it to lure women into bed. “Come to my apartment,” she imagined him saying. “I want to show you something.” And then he would take the diamond out of the safe, and the women would fall into bed with him, thinking that if they played their cards right, someday he’d give them the diamond.

Christ, she was cynical! she thought, rubbing her forehead with her hand. The story was probably much more romantic—the man had given the diamond to his wife and she had died suddenly, and he’d kept it for as long as he could in her memory. She tried to move on, but the diamond seemed to be exerting a mysterious pull on her, and she couldn’t turn away. It was pale bluish-green in color—blue ice, she thought—with a neon cast like the glowing green interior of the B et C conference room.

Who could afford such a diamond? The Lyne Bennetts of the world . . . and movie stars. But why shouldn’t she have that diamond? she thought suddenly. I want that diamond, she thought. I’m going to have it someday.

She really was losing her mind. Even if she could spend over a million dollars on a diamond, would she? No. It seemed disgustingly frivolous. But it was easy to criticize that kind of behavior if you never had the money or opportunity to indulge in it yourself. She might thi

nk differently if she got the deal and suddenly had millions of dollars. Would it change her? What kind of woman would she become?

It was warm on the seventh floor of the Sotheby’s viewing area, and she took her coat off. Nico was late, and it wasn’t like her. Nico was a time Nazi—she always stuck precisely to her schedule, claiming it was the only way she could get everything done. She wrenched herself away from the diamond and moved on to the next case, which contained several cocktail rings of the type worn by Muffie Williams.

“Are you looking for anything in particular, Ms. Ford?” a woman asked, coming forward. She was dressed in a gray shift over a brown-and-white-striped shirt. A small name tag announced her as “Ms. Smith.”

“Just looking for the moment, thanks,” Victory said.

“We have some wonderful pieces in this sale,” Ms. Smith said, causing Victory to think that “sale” probably wasn’t quite the right word for it. “If you’d like to try anything on, I’d be happy to help you.”

Victory nodded. It really was pretty cool to be recognized by the Sotheby’s staff, and especially to be treated as if it were perfectly natural that she was there and could afford to buy herself something. Even if she didn’t actually buy anything, Nico was right. There was something so gratifying about knowing that you were a successful woman and you could afford to buy your own jewelry. You had worked hard, and now you deserved to indulge yourself . . .

And she suddenly felt elated again.

What the hell was she so worried about? she thought, eyeing a 12-millimeter strand of perfectly matched natural pearls for $25,000. She should have been jumping up and down for joy. Even Muffie Williams had said that the meeting had gone great, and afterward, Pierre Berteuil had shaken her hand and kissed her on both cheeks and said, “Now we go to the lawyers, yes? We let them get into the dirty business while we keep our hands clean.” Which meant only one thing: Pierre’s lawyers and her lawyers would now try to hammer out a deal. And she would be crazy not to take it. Besides the millions of dollars they would have to pay her to buy her company and her name, they were offering her all kinds of things she couldn’t have afforded on her own, like a huge advertising budget of over a million dollars a year. “The industry takes you much more seriously if you advertise, yes?” Pierre had said. “Is sad but is life. We play zee game.”

“That’s one thing we know how to do really well here,” Muffie had whispered. “We know how to play the game and win.”

“You will be zee new darling of fashion, darling,” Pierre said, raising his glass of champagne. And she had allowed herself to float along on this bubble of amazing possibility. She would have to move to Paris, because most of their business contacts were there, and she’d be working closely with Pierre for the next two years. But she would keep her apartment in New York and spend about a week a month here, and who could have ever imagined that her life would turn out to be so glamorous?