TWO HOURS LATER, HOLDING a photo of Jackie in a manila envelope, I stood in front of Bergdorf s. I pushed through the revolving door and found myself in the cathedral-shaped room of the cosmetics section. The circular glass counters, displaying creams, oils, and pretty packages of makeup, shimmered with all the promise of an engagement ring. Too many perfumes, which had no business mingling, reminded me of when my four aunts came to visit. The air in our living room would thicken with unspoken anger and the battle of their fragrances.
Women, some still clutching their winter coats around their shoulders, stared into the display cases, an obsessive look in their eyes. It was the same look lost dogs have as they run compulsively toward their elusive destination. I put my hand on one of the counters. The lights within made it feel warm and comforting.
“May I help you?” The young saleswoman wore a pink smock and looked as if she had carefully painted her face on by the numbers.
“What floor is couture on?” I asked.
Her eyes drifted over my pink and black tweed jacket. She was unimpressed. “Second floor.”
“Thanks.”
“Perhaps a little lipstick?” she offered, whipping out a silver tube from under the counter. “Wet Red?”
“No thanks. Which way are the escalators?”
“To your right.”
I found the escalator and ascended into the aloof and detached world of fashion. Each designer had his own fiefdom. Clothes with names didn’t mix. There was no lavishness or abundance of display. There was only a feeling of anal smugness in the few tiny-sized outfits that hung from hangers like colorful dead birds. There was also no sign of human life.
The mannequins, their bald heads not quite hidden underneath their synthetic wigs, watched me with dead, sexless eyes as I moved passed Chanel, Valentino, Ungaro. I checked a price tag on a pink wooly number. I blinked. Yes, they weren’t kidding, it really cost three thousand and change. Clothes like this made me nervous. I mean, who wore them? It had to be women who never spilled, dribbled, or drooled. Women who never ate! That’s it. Now I understood anorexia. But what about the bulimics? Maybe they shopped on another floor.
Hearing a female voice, I headed for a section where a thin blond woman sat at a desk talking on the phone. A customer, her hair dyed the color of a panther’s fur, waved a bunch of what looked like receipts under the nose of a saleslady with more pearls draped around her neck than Marley’s ghost had chains. Two men were dismantling a mannequin.
“First I was told to go to the accounting department. Then I was told to come back down here.” The Panther Woman was frazzled.
“Excuse me,” I said to the saleslady.
“If you’ll just wait till Miss Platt gets off the phone,” the saleslady replied to the Panther Woman.
Ignoring me, they both turned toward the blond Miss Platt.
“I’m sure you have the black Valentino skirt, Mrs. Rosenthal. Just look in your closet,” Miss Platt spoke solicitously into the phone.
“Excuse me,” I tried again.
“Why can’t you help me?” It was Panther Woman. “For God’s sake, I’ve spent thousands. And my husband. My husband …” Her voice quivered with anger. Or was it fear?
“You have to talk to Miss Platt or Mr. Golden,” the saleslady snapped.
“You bought the Valentino when you were in here for your last fitting, remember, Mrs. Rosenthal? It goes with the white gabardine jacket with the black lace collar.”
“I want to see the head of the department,” Panther Woman demanded.
“I told you, Mr. Golden is at lunch.”
“Excuse me.” It was Maggie the Undaunted. “I was wondering …”
“I have better things to do than stand around and wait for her to talk on the phone,” Panther Woman announced. “And for him to eat his lunch and for you to treat me like shit!”
“Shit?!” The saleslady went white. Her hands went for her pearls. “I will not be talked to that way!”
“What way?”
“Look in your closet, Mrs. Rosenthal.”
The saleslady turned on me. “You heard her call me a shit.”
“Well actually she didn’t call you a shit.”
“I would never use such language.” Panther Woman turned on me. “Did I call her a shit?”
“Not exactly.”
“It’s black silk, Mrs. Rosenthal. It’s too late for black velvet.”
“This is Kafkaesque,” I said, pushing up the sleeves of my jacket.
“You think I care who designed your clothes?” Panther Woman growled.
This did not bode well for getting information. I walked over to the two men in the corner who now had the mannequin in more pieces than a Thanksgiving turkey.
“Excuse me,” I said, displaying my manila envelope. “Mr. Golden wanted me to give this to him immediately. Do you know where he’s having lunch?”
“In the café on five.”
“Thank you.”
I rode the escalator to the fifth and found the cafe by walking through a shoe department and something called Contemporary Sportswear.
The small restaurant was jammed into the back corner of the floor. Tables were shoved closely together. I honestly believe New Yorkers cannot digest their food if they are more than two feet apart from one another.
Frenzied female voices competed with the clatter of dishes and silverware. I asked the cashier to point out Golden to me. With a toss of long dark hair and the sway of a silver hoop earring, she cocked her head toward a man sitting alone. I made my way toward him.
Golden looked to be in his late thirties. He leaned forward sipping his soup, his tie thrown over his left shoulder so he wouldn’t dribble on it. I don’t think I could eat with a man who had to throw his tie over his shoulder every time he bit into a cracker.
“Excuse me, Mr. Golden. I’m Maggie Hill, assistant to Claire Conrad.”
He stopped sipping and peered up at me, soup spoon in midair.
“Claire Conrad, the private detective,” I explained.
That got him. He put the soup spoon down. “Detective?”
“She was wondering if you could identify a dress for her?”
“Identify?”
“If you could tell us who designed a dress? May I sit down?”
“How did you get my name?” he asked.
“Claire Conrad has handled certain cases, very discreetly, for some of your clients. In fact, I don’t think it would be giving anything away if I said it was Mrs. Rosenthal who recommended that we talk to you.”
“She’s one of our best customers.”
“She thinks highly of you.”
I sat down and slipped the photograph of Jackie out of the envelope. He studied it with the concentration of a mathematician looking at an equation.
“Phillip St. Rome. From last year’s fall collection. Who is this poor thing? She doesn’t do the dress justice, does she?”
“Is St. Rome a European designer?”
“If a queen from Brooklyn is European, darling, he’s a European.”
“If I wanted to get hold of him, how would I do that?”
He reached into his coat pocket for a small, thin, black leather book. His long, manicured fingers flipped through blue pages edged with gold.
“St. Rome’s sales representative is Blanchard Smith. Telephone number 555-5670.”
I wrote it down in my stained and bulky Filofax.
“Thanks. Oh, by the way, Mrs. Rosenthal can’t find her black Valentino skirt.”
“Which one?”
“It goes with the white-and-black-lace jacket.”
“We just sold it to her. She really should venture deeper into her closet,” he said, breaking off a piece of bread. “It’s not like it’s Africa, you know?”
I almost made it through the cosmetics section but caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and stopped. Pinched and angry, I was suddenly one of those women I had vowed at the age of eighteen never to become. My mother. The saleslady, the one with her face painted by the numbers, appeared in front of me like a miracle. She took hold of my hand and turned it so the white underside of my wrist was exposed. Her hand was extraordinarily soft, as if it had been filleted.
“Wet Red,” she said soothingly, drawing a red line with a tube of lipstick across my wrist right where a sad lonely woman might slash her vein.
It wasn’t a bad shade. Oh, hell, lipstick was good for the soul.