The Fourth Side of the Triangle

“I don’t. Billie, take that away. Bring the blue and white shantung.” After a while, skillfully, the designer had Sarah Vernier almost entirely in the charge of her staff, while she sat beside Dane and they chatted about books and New York in midsummer and a dozen other things. Occasionally she put in a word to resolve a doubt of Mrs. Vernier’s, or overrule a suggestion of her salespeople. It was all most adroitly done. She can handle people, Dane thought. I wonder just how she goes about handling Dad.

“I think we’ve crossed the Rubicon,” Sheila Grey said suddenly, rising. Dane jumped up. “Mrs. Vernier won’t have to wear rags after all. Now I really must get home.”

“I’ll drive you, as promised.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort, Mr. McKell, although it’s noble of you to make the offer. You have to take care of Mrs. Vernier. I’ll grab a taxi.”

“Supper?” he asked quickly.

She looked at him — almost, he thought, for the first time. Had he pulled a boner? Going too fast? She had remarkable directness in her cool gray eyes that warned him to be very cautious indeed.

“Why would you want to take me to supper, Mr. McKell?”

“I have ulterior motives. The fact is, I have to research a designer — and I can’t think of a pleasanter way to do it, by the way, now that I’ve met the woman Aunt Sarah’s raved about so long. Is it a date?”

“It is not. I’m going home and working right through the weekend.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve made a bloody pest of myself.”

“Not at all. It’s I who’s sounding ungracious. I could lunch with you on Monday.”

“Would you? That’s awfully kind. One-ish? One-thirty? Name the time and place, Miss Grey.”

Sheila hesitated. It seemed to Dane that she found herself in a dilemma. That means I’m not repulsive to her, he thought; and he felt a tingle suddenly.

“If you’re really interested in my work, in the whole area of fashion... Tell you what, Mr. McKell. Why don’t you plan to get here a bit earlier Monday? Say, at noon? Then we can go over some of the basic things.”

“Wonderful,” said Dane. “You can’t know what this means to me, Miss Grey. Monday at noon, then. Aunt Sarah?”

“Oh, you two do like each other,” cried Mrs. Vernier, glowing.

Dane had been normally aware that women wore clothes and that their creation was a matter of considerably more moment than, say, the designing of a nuclear flattop. He knew vaguely that there was rivalry between the Continental and American dress houses, and that it resulted in a secrecy that made the answer to Does Macy’s tell Gimbel’s? meekly affirmative. But he was hardly prepared to find Pinkerton guards standing watch over every nook and cranny of Sheila Grey’s establishment except the salon itself.

“It’s almost like the CIA!” he exclaimed.

The comparison was not inexact. In a hugely different degree, on an infinitely smaller scale, the behind-the-scenes scenes of high fashion did have a faint air of the Pentagon gone mad. Men with the dedicated look of the career idealist, women who gave the impression of having studied at the secretive feet of Mata Hari, zealous underlings of the three sexes, and assorted females who could have been camp followers, sat poring over plans, screwed up their tired eyes at sketches, moved from office to office in zombi-like withdrawal; they examined swatches as if the bits of material were secret weapons, and peered with tucked-in lips at lovely young models who, for all the excitement their beauty generated, might have been made of plastic. Here clothes were the only living things.

“And this is an annual event?” Dane asked.

“Yes. Let me show you.” Dane followed Sheila, attending her litany — Marc Bohan of Dior, Crahay of Nina Ricci, Castillo of Lanvin (like so many medieval saints, or feudatories, or even Isaac of York or Macdonald of the Isles), Cardin, Chanel, Jacques Heim, Balmain, Goma, Vernet, and the all but hallowed Yves St. Laurent. From Sheila’s tone, Dane gathered that St. Laurent could cure scrofula by a laying on of hands.

“And that’s just France,” Sheila was saying.

He was actually taking notes.

“It’s like wine,” Sheila explained. “Any reasonable Frenchman will admit that certain French wines are inferior to their American counterparts. But we’re such snobs! We’d rather tipple a mediocre vintage with a French label than a first-rate California. It’s the same with clothes. All right, St. Laurent is tops. But it’s not because he’s French, it’s because he’s St. Laurent. Another thing that blows me sky-high is the women who won’t wear a gown unless it’s designed by a man. It makes me want to spit!”

“It becomes you,” said Dane. It did, too; anger put color into her cheeks, and a sparkle in her eyes that made them flash.

She stopped herself with one of her fresh, quick laughs. “Let’s go to lunch.”

“I had forgotten lunch could be fun,” Sheila Grey said. “Thank you, Mr. McKell.”

“Could you make it Dane?”

“Dane. Are you sure you’re writing a book with a designer-character in it?”

“Why would you doubt it?”