Susan Phillips - Glitter Baby

For two hours the audience sat spellbound as Kissy prowled and hissed and scratched her way across the stage. With dark, desperate eroticism and a voice like dime-store talcum powder, she radiated Maggie the Cat’s sexual frustration. It was one of the most riveting performances Fleur had ever seen, and it came straight from the soul of Kissy Sue Christie.

By the time the play was over, Fleur was drained. Now she understood Kissy’s problem in a way she couldn’t have before. If Fleur, Kissy’s best friend, hadn’t believed she could be a serious dramatic actress, how could Kissy hope to convince a director?

Fleur pushed her way through the crowd. “You were incredible!” she exclaimed, when she reached Kissy’s side. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“I know,” Kissy replied with a giggle. “Come tell me how wonderful I was while I change out of costume.”

Fleur followed her to the makeshift dressing room where Kissy introduced her to the other female cast members. She chatted with all of them, then perched on a chair next to Kissy’s dressing table and told her another dozen times how wonderful she’d been.

“Everybody decent?” a masculine voice inquired from the other side of the door. “I need to pick up the costumes.”

“I’m the only one left, Michael,” Kissy called out. “Come on in. I have somebody I want you to meet.”

The door opened. Fleur turned.

“Fleurinda, you’ve heard me talk about our brilliant costume designer and the future dressmaker to the Beautiful People. Fleur Savagar meet Michael Anton.”

Everything stopped like a damaged frame of film frozen in a movie projector. He wore an antique purple satin bowling shirt and a pair of loosely cut wool trousers held up by suspenders. At twenty-three, he wasn’t much taller than he’d been the last time she’d seen him, maybe five feet, seven inches. He had shiny blond hair that fell in long waves level with his chin, a set of narrow shoulders, a small chest, and delicately carved features.

Gradually Kissy realized that something was wrong. “Do you two know each other?”

Michael Anton nodded. Fleur reached deep inside her. “This is one of your better moments, Kissy,” she said, as lightly as she could manage. “Michael is my brother Michel.”

“Oh boy.” Kissy’s gaze flicked from one to the other. “Should I play some organ music or something?”

Michel shoved one hand into the pocket of his trousers and leaned against the door. “How about a few notes on the kazoo?”

He carried himself with the languid grace of old money and the assurance of someone born with an aristocratic bloodline. Just like Alexi. But as he gazed at her, she saw eyes as blue as spring hyacinths.

She curled stiff fingers around her purse. “Did you know I was in New York?”

“I knew.”

She couldn’t stand there with him any longer. “I have to go.” She gave Kissy a quick peck on the cheek and left the dressing room without so much as a nod in his direction.

Kissy caught up with her on the street. “Fleur! Wait! I had no idea.”

She faked a smile. “Don’t worry about it. It was just a shock, that’s all.”

“Michael is…He’s really a terrific guy.”

“That’s…great.” She spotted a cab and stepped out from the curb to hail it. “Go to your cast party, Magnolia, and make them all bow when you come in the room.”

“I think I’d better go home with you.”

“Not on your life. This is your big night, and you’re going to enjoy every minute.” She climbed into the cab, waved, and shut the door. As the taxi pulled away, she sagged back into the seat and let the old bitterness swamp her.

In the weeks that followed, Fleur tried to forget about Michel, but one evening she found herself walking along West Fifty-fifth Street studying the numbers painted above the shop doors, now closed for the night. She found the address she was looking for. The location was good, but the unimposing storefront had badly lit windows…and the most beautiful garments she’d ever seen.

Michel had bucked the tide of current fashion trends where women were dressing up in evening tuxedos and neckties so they could look like men. The small window held a quartet of outrageously feminine dresses that conjured up lavish Renaissance paintings. As she gazed at the silks, jerseys, and gracefully draped crepe de chine, she couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d spent money on decent clothes. These exquisite garments rebuked her.

Spring drifted into summer and then into fall. Kissy’s theater company folded, so she joined another group that performed almost exclusively in New Jersey. Fleur celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday by making Parker give her another raise. She bought cocoa beans with it.

She lost more often than she won, but when the wins came, they came big. She studied hard to learn from her mistakes, and her initial five thousand quadrupled, then quadrupled again. The more money she made, the harder it became for her to sink it back into risky speculations, but she forced herself to keep writing out the checks. Forty thousand dollars was as useless to her as five thousand had been.

Winter settled in. She developed an enchantment with copper and made almost thirty thousand dollars in six weeks, but the stress was giving her stomach pains. Beef went up, pork fell. She kept going-investing, reinvesting, and biting her fingernails to the quick.

By the first day of June, a year and a half after she’d jumped on her financial roller-coaster, she stared at her balance sheets, hardly able to believe what she saw. She’d done it. With nothing more than sheer nerve, she’d accumulated enough to start her business. The next day, she put everything into nice, safe, thirty-day certificates of deposit at Chase Manhattan.

A few evenings later as she was letting herself into the apartment, she heard the phone ring. She stepped over a pair of Kissy’s heels, crossed the room, and picked up the receiver.

“Hello, enfant.”

It had been more than five years since she’d heard that familiar endearment. She tightened her grip on the telephone and made herself take a slow, steadying breath. “What do you want, Alexi?”

“No social amenities?”

“You have exactly one minute, and then I’m hanging up.”

He sighed, as if she’d wounded him. “Very well, chérie. I called to congratulate you on your recent financial gains. Rather foolhardy, but then one doesn’t argue with success. I understand you started looking for office space today.”

She felt a chill. “How do you know that?”

“I’ve told you, chérie. I make it my business to know everything that affects those I care about.”

“You don’t care about me,” she said, her throat tight. “Stop playing games.”

“On the contrary, I care very much about you. I’ve waited a long time for this, chérie. I hope you don’t disappoint me.”

“A long time for what? What are you talking about?”

“Guard your dream, chérie. Guard it better than I guarded mine.”

Fleur rested her elbows on the deck rail and watched the tawny dune grass bend against the breeze in the last of the evening light. The Long Island beach house, an angular structure of glass and weathered clapboard, blended with the sand and water. She was glad she’d been invited here for the Fourth of July weekend. She needed to get away from the city for a while, and she also needed a distraction from that mental tape recorder that wouldn’t stop replaying Alexi’s words. Guard your dream. Alexi hadn’t forgotten what she’d done to the Royale-not that she’d expected him to-and he still wanted his revenge. But other than keeping her eyes open, she didn’t know what she could do about it.

She pushed aside her worries and thought about the four-story Upper East Side townhouse she’d leased for her new offices. The renovations were under way, and she hoped to be able to move in by mid-August, but before then she had to hire a staff. If a few breaks came her way and she had no big emergencies, she had enough money to keep the agency afloat until spring. Unfortunately a business like hers needed at least a year to get established, so she was at risk from the start, but that just meant she’d have to work harder, something she’d discovered she was good at.

She’d hoped to keep her salary from Parker coming in a little longer, but when he found out what she was up to, he’d fired her. They’d had an acrimonious parting. Lynx had broken up, and Parker had delegated too much of his business to Fleur. Now he was blaming her for the desperate game of catch-up he had to play with resentful clients.

Fleur had made the decision to expand the clients of her “caviar agency” beyond musicians and actors to include a select group of writers, maybe even artists-whoever she thought had the potential to rise to the top. She’d already signed Rough Harbor, the rock group Simon Kale was founding, and she’d stolen Olivia Creighton out from under Bud Sharpe’s greedy fingers. Then there was Kissy. All three offered the earnings potential she was looking for, but three clients weren’t enough to keep her aloft after her start-up money ran out.

She slipped her sunglasses on top of her head and thought about Kissy. Other than a hypnotically restrained performance as Irena in a workshop production of The Cherry Orchard and a one-liner Fleur had gotten her on a CBS soap opera, nothing much had happened for her since Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Kissy had stopped going to auditions again. Recently too many men had been passing through her bedroom door, each one a little more muscle-bound and a little stupider than the last. Kissy needed a showcase, and Fleur hadn’t figured out how to find one for her, which wasn’t the best omen for someone who only had until spring to prove herself.

Through the glass doors, she spotted Charlie Kincannon, their host for the weekend. Charlie had backed Kissy’s workshop production of The Cherry Orchard, which was how Fleur had met him. It was painfully obvious that he’d fallen for Kissy, but since he was smart, sensitive, and successful, Kissy was ignoring him. She preferred beefcake losers.

The patio doors slid open behind her, and Kissy stepped out onto the deck. She’d dressed for the party in a one-piece pink and blue candy-striped romper, big silver heart-shaped earrings, and flat-soled pink sandals with beaded straps across her toes. She looked like a seven-year-old with breasts. “It’s getting late, Fleurinda, and what’s-his-name’s guests are starting to show up. Aren’t you going to change your clothes?” She took a sip of her piña colada from a lipstick-tipped straw.

“In a minute.” The white shorts Fleur had pulled over her black tank suit had a mustard stain on the front, and her hair was stiff from salt water. Since Charlie Kincannon had backed several off-Broadway plays, she hoped to make some contacts at tonight’s party, and she needed to look decent. First, though, she reached for Kissy’s piña colada and took a sip. “I wish you’d stop calling him what’s-his-name. Charlie Kincannon is a very nice man, not to mention rich.”

Kissy wrinkled her nose. “Then you date him.”

“I just might. I like him, Kissy. I really do. He’s the first man you’ve hung around with who doesn’t eat bananas and gaze longingly at the Empire State Building.”

“Cute. I give him to you with my blessings.” Kissy reclaimed her piña colada. “He reminds me of a Baptist minister I used to know. He wanted to save me, but he was afraid I wouldn’t put out if he did.”

“You’re not ‘putting out’ for Charlie Kincannon. If you have such an overpowering need to play the sexpot, do it onstage, where you can make us both some money.”

“Spoken like a true bloodsucker. You’re going to make a great agent. By the way, did you notice those guys on the beach this afternoon tripping over themselves trying to catch your attention?”

“The one with the sippy cup or the kid with the Star Wars light saber?” If she listened to Kissy, she’d believe every man in the world wanted her. She brushed the sand from her legs and headed inside. “I’d better get in the shower.”

“Put something decent on. Never mind. I’m wasting my breath.”

“I’m a business tycoon now. I have to look serious.”

“That stupid black dress you brought makes you look dead, not serious.”

Fleur ignored her and headed inside. The house had angular ceilings, slate floors, and minimalist Japanese furniture. She spotted the owner sitting on a sand-colored couch, staring mournfully into what looked like a double shot of bourbon. “Could I talk to you for a minute, Fleur?” he asked.