Lipstick Jungle

“There is no being reasonable when your children are involved,” Wendy said. She motioned to the waiter.

“I know it’s hard,” Tessa said, picking up her bag. “Take some time to think about it. Believe me, there are worse situations.”

“Are there? Remind me of them sometime,” Wendy said, walking Tessa to the revolving door. She paused. “Tell me something,” she said. “Have you ever been in love?”

“Don’t believe in it,” Tessa said.

“Really?” Wendy said. “You’re lucky.”

“You can’t believe in true love in my business,” Tessa said. “You see too much evidence that it doesn’t exist. But I plan to have a child soon. Sperm bank. It’s the only way.”

“Lucky you,” Wendy said again. This wasn’t like her at all, she thought. It was horrible to be so bitter about life.

* * *

THE BLACK MERCEDES MOVED slowly along the strip of roadway known as the Croisette in the seaside town of Cannes. To the left was a flat and not terribly interesting strip of sea, with a narrow band of sand, from which palm trees sprung at even intervals. On the other side was a cheesily majestic series of large hotels. The traffic came to a standstill, and Victory squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. New Yorkers always complained about the traffic in the Hamptons, but the traffic in the South of France was worse. There was literally only one road, and everyone was on it, and it was ten o’clock at night. It was the first day of the Cannes film festival, and the parties would go all night.

“We are almost there, Madame,” the driver said, turning around. “We have three lights, and then we come to the harbor.”

“Thank you,” Victory said, thinking there was that word again—“Madame.” Or, ma’am, in New York. It was like she woke up one day and all of a sudden, shopclerks and taxi drivers were calling her “ma’am” instead of “miss,” as if she were suddenly middle-aged. It had thrown her off-balance for a while, especially as she wasn’t married. Still being single in your forties was a state of being the world couldn’t really comprehend, especially in Europe and England, where women as young as thirty panicked over their biological clocks. But if you were wildly successful, you could make your own rules for how you wanted to live your life.

And what joy it was! she thought, looking out the window at a set of Klieg lights that shot beams of hard white light into the black night sky. To be on her own in the world, free. Why did the world never tell women about this kind of happiness? The feeling might not last, but it didn’t matter. What was important was to experience everything in life, the struggles and the sadness, and the dizzying triumphs. And if you worked really hard, and believed in yourself, and were willing to experience pain and fear (clichés, of course, but they were true), you might get really lucky and have a night like tonight. Anything could happen in life, she thought; anything could happen to anyone, and sometimes it was good. You just had to believe that it could happen to you.

The car inched forward a few feet and stopped again, as a throng of people crossed the street. The traffic didn’t matter either—the party was for her, and she could be late. She inhaled deeply, appreciating the smell of the brand-new leather in the Mercedes. There was nothing like the smell of a new car, and when you were lucky enough to experience it, you had to enjoy it. How nice it was of Pierre Berteuil to send a brand-new Mercedes (a model not yet available in the United States) to drive her around for the weekend. “This is Mr. Hulot, your driver,” Pierre had said that morning, when Mr. Hulot, wearing a chauffeur’s cap and a gray uniform, had appeared on the terrace of the Hotel du Cap, where they were having a breakfast meeting and where Victory had eaten two croissants slathered with that creamy salty butter that you could only get in France. “Mr. Hulot is a bodyguard as well, so you are very safe.”

“It isn’t safe here?” she’d asked.

“The festival attracts some strange people,” Pierre said. “It is not dangerous, but you must be careful. We don’t want to lose you,” he added, with a slightly lascivious smile.

So now, on top of the junior suite at the Hotel du Cap (it was one of the best rooms, in the main building looking out over the gardens, pool, and the sea, with shutters that opened onto a small balcony), she had her own car and bodyguard.

She crossed her legs, smoothing the folds of the blue silk gown. The dress was one of her favorites, and she planned to send it down the runway in the upcoming fall show. But would the show be held in New York or Paris? She had to remember to talk to Pierre about it. He wanted her to spend two weeks out of the month in Paris, but the company wanted to develop her as an American couture designer, with, of course, a lesser-priced off-the-rack line. But it was the opportunity to do a couture line that had finally swayed her to take the offer; it was simply too tempting to turn down.

She knew she was taking a risk, she thought, frowning as she stared at the traffic in front of them. But life was about risks. She’d been worried that B et C had a secret plan to buy her name and take away her involvement. It happened all the time in the fashion industry, and there were legions of cautionary tales about designers who had lost their companies when they’d sold their names to a fashion conglomerate. It was a potentially Faustian bargain: You ended up with a lump of cash, but you could also lose the rights to your own name, even to your ability to make money. One of the stipulations of the contract was that once B et C own

ed you, you couldn’t go off and start another company. On the other hand, just the thought of doing a couture line made her insides light up like a Christmas tree. A couture line was something every designer dreamed of doing, and few were given the chance to even try. A couture line was the pinnacle, the place where fashion crossed over into art as opposed to commerce. After weeks of meetings and analyzing the situation with Wendy and Nico, she’d decided it was probably worth taking the chance. Her reasoning was that if B et C wanted her to do a couture line, they needed her.

She hadn’t signed the contracts yet, but she would, she thought, at the end of the week when she was back in Paris. On Wednesday morning she was flying to Florence to visit three family-owned fabric companies that were so exclusive, a designer couldn’t even get in the door without the right connections, and on Friday morning she’d be back in Paris. In the meantime, Pierre had insisted that they fly to Cannes for the opening weekend of the film festival. He was throwing a party in her honor on his three-hundred-foot yacht, to which venue she was now headed, and where, she hoped, she would eventually arrive—if they could ever get through this damn traffic.

The Croisette was lined with fifty-foot billboards trumpeting various movies that were being featured at the festival, and above her she spotted the billboard for Wendy’s summer blockbuster, a futuristic thriller called Die Slowly. She immediately felt a swelling of pride for her friend. Wendy was doing so great—in her career, anyway. The Spotted Pig had just won two Oscars, and Wendy said that it would have been great if she hadn’t gotten her period when she was walking down the red carpet and had to spend the rest of the evening stuffing her underpants with toilet paper. Nico and Victory thought it was funny, and Wendy would have too, if she weren’t so upset about Shane. What he had done to her was incomprehensible, but Wendy was handling it admirably well. She had the whole brood packed into her suite at the Mercer Hotel, and having seen the situation, Victory thought that Wendy must be going crazy. But she never complained about it. She didn’t even yell when Tyler spilled his juice on the carpet on purpose because he wanted cranberry juice instead of orange juice. “Hey, what’s the problem, buddy?” Wendy had asked Tyler, hugging him. “Are you scared?” Tyler had nodded, and Wendy told him that everyone was scared some of the time, and it was okay. Then she mopped up the mess herself, and called room service for a glass of cranberry juice. “I’m sorry, Wendy,” Victory had said admiringly. “But I would have screamed.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Wendy said. “It’s different if they’re your own kids.”

Everybody always said that, and Victory supposed it was true, she thought, looking up at Wendy’s billboard again. But it still didn’t make her want to have the experience herself.

In any case, Wendy was arriving in Cannes on Tuesday morning for the premiere of her movie that evening. She was also staying at the Hotel du Cap, and had arranged to get the suite right next to Victory’s. They were going to open the connecting door and have a two-day sleepover. A very expensive and glamorous sleepover, which was, Wendy said, the only thing she’d had to look forward to for weeks.

They were going to have so much fun, Victory agreed. She took out her cell phone and texted Wendy a message: “on way to par-tee. am passing ur billbrd in cannes. fab, fab, fab. congrats. cn’t wait 2 c u.”

She hit the send button, and was startled by the sound of tapping on the window of the Mercedes. A bedraggled child—a little girl with blond hair that hung down like strings on either side of her face—was hitting the window with a bunch of red roses. Victory looked at her sadly. These pitiful children were everywhere—on the streets and in the restaurants and shops, trying to sell roses to tourists. Some of them couldn’t have been more than five or six years old; it was terrible. All weekend, Victory had been wondering what kind of country allowed children to sell things on the streets, especially a country where the inhabitants claimed to love children. It was typical French hypocrisy, she thought, lowering the window. From outside came the sound of music and a raucous party that was taking place somewhere across the street. “Voulez-vous acheter une rose?” the little girl asked. She stared wonderingly into the car, taking in Victory’s gown and necklace, a fifteen-carat teardrop-shaped diamond pendant that Pierre had arranged to have lent to her for the evening.

“Absolument. Merci,” Victory said. She opened her tiny handbag, which contained five hundred Euros, her black American Express card, a tube of lipstick, and a compact, and handed the girl a hundred-Euro note. “Ah, Madame,” the little girl exclaimed. “Vous êtes très gentile. Et très belle. Vous êtes une movie star?”

“Non, une fashion designer,” Victory said with a smile. The car inched forward, and the little girl clung to the window, trotting by the side of the car. “Attendez. Le traffic,” Victory called out in alarm. The little girl laughed—she was missing most of her front teeth—and in the next second had disappeared into the line of cars behind them.

“Madame,” Mr. Hulot said, shaking his head. “You should not do that. It encourages them. Now they will surround the car, like the pigeon . . .”

“They’re only children,” Victory said.