Romance Novels
Paris

"As you'd realize, Steve Ever is going to release his new couture in Paris soon," Daniel Bernhardt, the head of Divinus Models, Manhattan, heatedly disclosed. "Fashion Nstyle Foxtel has already secured the broadcast rights, Paris Insider is doing an exposé and US Vogue is doing a cinque-page next month."
He paused for effect.
All seven models around the luxe vie Louis XIV table were visibly roused.
"Every model has been booked for the prêt-à-porter and haute couture shows," Daniel continued enigmatically. "All of the gems are fixed in that couture diadem except one."
"Esther?" a svelte, young, auburn lady, Amanda, presumed.
"Nadja?" Shahrissa, the anorexic-blonde opposite her, impelled a guess.
"She’s up for all of these things," Pamela envied, another nubile woman with black hair and eyes with mesmerizing allure.
Daniel shook his middle-aged head adamantly. "No, they want someone on our books - exclusively..." He looked past all of them, coup d'oeil.
"How did we jag that?" Shahrissa asked, exchanging a look of craving with Amanda - another runway addict.
"It seems that Mr. Ever thinks that we have profile-hauteur," Daniel replied, with a sense of accomplishment.
"I was in Donna Karan's show last summer and Versace in fall," Amanda contended. "If they’re looking for latest experience..."
"And only one of us is going to be booked?" Michelle asked, the Texan differentiate accenting her voice.
"Only one." The agent pointed to the annihilatingly-beautiful, brunette figure in a red, Chanel tailored tweed jacket that'd remained copiously silent. "Julie is the model."
Julie Laing was an avatar of demur, not wanting to believe or fathom it.
In that twenty-third story office no one else wanted to believe it either.
"It seems," the agency head intensified their wonderment, "that someone in Paris has had his eye on Julie."
"And congratulations, Julie," Michelle conceded.
"Wow," Amanda deadpanned. "That’s…that's… really something... Immense…"
"Yes, intense…" Julie responded coolly.
Pamela's emerald eyes frowned at Daniel. "If Julie has been chosen then why did you call us in on a Saturday?"
"Because I am going to send some of your shots to selectors at all of the prestige Euro-houses this season. Julie hasn’t done a Parisian tableau in four years. You, Michelle, did Chanel last fall and you Shahrissa gave the perfect, heroin-cocaine chic look for Gucci. More of you could be going transAtlantic. Maybe Divinus is a blockbuster and not an outmoded agency for another season."
"OK!" Michelle applauded and all the other women expressed their ambitions that it was.
"When will we know?" Amanda questioned.
"I’ll call you," Daniel vowed. "Believe me, you'll know - You'll never forget it."
As they began to leave the office, Julie - everything but self-possessed - only had one thing on her mind: She would be seeing Steve Ever again.
Her first impulse was to refuse the offer.
She was overwhelmed that she was selected, but after her erotic misdemeanors with Steve Ever how could she oblige the proposition?
She’d done Paris four years ago, but hadn’t worked for two years since she did a Bill Blass show in New York. In the world of fashion, exclusion from two seasons translated: 'Model technically dead'. Why after a four-year absence from Paris would Steve Ever request her to return?
Preoccupied, Julie left without a word as Daniel consoled Pamela that she still cut the flawless designer look.
She went for a spring water coffee in the Arizona Lounge across the Avenue from the Lansdown building where the offices of Divinus Models were headquartered. She tried to think straight over a cappuccino as confusion shattered her senses. Without a sip she departed, heading back to Divinus Models. Options didn't enter into it; there was only an ultimatum to be exiled.
Maybe one day she’d return to Paris, but never again at the instigation of Steve Ever.
 

"What did you just say?" Daniel was 'stunned' epitomized, after Julie avowed the resistibility of Ever's Paris. He lurched forward in his Klismos, neo-Moderne chrome and quilted black leather chair behind a desk strewn with model three-quarter and frontal shots. "You want to decline the booking?"
"I do not want Paris," her insurgence was unflinching.
"You’ve got to go Julie. This is a chance at everything for you. A sixteen thousand-dollar-a-day booking. The luxury of the Hotel Frágonard on the Champs Élysées. You’ll be chauffeur driver around Paris, to and from the shows - whatever, implicit to whenever."
Julie held up her hands forcibly. "I don’t want to model anything for that man. Zero. Why can't you find someone else?"
Stark lines cut through Daniel’s features at her palette of industry taboo. "You know the couture industry, Julie," he admonished. "They want to put the definitive face to the couture. Not a second option. They asked for you." He held up a piece of paper with the gold Steve Ever Paris insignia at the top. "You see that: Julie Laing."
Julie eased down into a leather and chrome seat. "Caroline has similar looks to me. Or, his people can conspire someone else."
The agent fixed Julie with determined eyes. "What you don’t perceive Julie is that it is not ‘his people’ who have selected you. They want you: 5' 11', ivory, translucid-blue eyes and fire diamond-blonde. Apparently Ever asked for you explicitly. If you don’t come through for the agency then there is no way that they will consider anyone else next season." Daniel held his stance. "What is it really?  His 'exquisitely libidinal genesisi'?"
"Yes, and…"
"You have an attitude like he's présomptueaux et mégalomane. Where in heaven or hell is your issue?"
"I just don’t like Steve Ever."
"You don’t like his designs?" Daniel questioned, nonplussed.
"His clothes are stunning…" Julie drifted to the plate glass window and glanced down at the traffic on 3rd Avenue pensively. "He’s a ‘dynast of haute couture’."
"So, what’s not to like? He’s glitterati." He regarded Julie's majestic indifference. "Then don’t do it for him - do it for the Julie Laing profile. There’s gonna be coverage in the magazines: French, English, American Vogue, Femme, Elle, Flair, Donna - The New York Times. With reportage on whatever goes down - the media will be like an array of mercurial panthers intoxicated by the pageant of vanity: A paroxysm of digital ecstasy."
Julie returned to the seat, unwilling to submit to any accent of reason.
He slid the Concorde ticket in its patina-Paris at Night cover over the surface of the ebony desk. "You make your decision, Julie. Take it or don't, but I seriously suggest that you accept it." He voiced with intensity. "It's yours or it's someone else's face-blitzkrieg. Remember, Julie. You’re now twenty-five. You’ve got maybe one or two years left in this industry if you go no-profile, but if you become proto- or retro-iconic who knows what you could do afterwards. You've got to give it to the international fashion media. Ironically, you've got to publicity-harlot and media-minx yourself to get any respect and credibility now."
Julie looked past Daniel and through the vast window to see the Art Deco affluence of the Chrysler building and the cyber-world, black glass - polished steel exterior of the American Airways monolith. "I worked in Paris for a couple of weeks about four years ago," she murmured.
"When you did the Beaulieu pictorials for Parfum des Femmes?"
"Yes. Just after Steve Ever left another label."
"Givenchy wasn’t it?"
"No. We were… Transiently... Involved."
A lurid smile traversed Daniel’s lips. "Involved?"
Julie reticently exhaled. "I’ll think about it, OK?"
"Yeah. You do more than that."
Julie stood from her chair and walked to the door of the office, remaining fraught. She cast a glance back. "I’ll be in touch."
"Just make it soon Julie. By eleven tonight at the latest. Eleven."
Julie headed down the hall towards the elevator. She was between ice and hellfire with indignation.
Ever just had to do it! He knew that Julie would refuse.
After all these years, why was he taking this chance to sabotage the vestige of her career?
She caught the subway to the West 48th Street exit preoccupied by Steve Ever.
What a prodigy the designer had become. The critics called it ‘La succès de éclat overnight’ but his acquaintances knew the finer details. With no immediate prospects for a fashion career in London he had made his way across the Channel. When he got there he worked doing anything - selling cologne, as a stylist's assistant and a mélange of belle-industry platitudes. As he was preparing his first sketches he was charismatically impoverished. Eventually Steve's designs came to the avaricious notice of designer Jean de la Bergé who bought them for the Bergé Riva label. When they were shown it created a sensation. As the critics were hailing it as a renaissance for the house of Jean de la Bergé, the vogue cognoscenti of Paris and London acclaimed the young British designer freelancing them. He'd appeared on the couture horizon suddenly from the celestial blue of genii obscurity. 'The new St. Laurent,' and 'The English answer to Christian Dior, with the looks of a late-twenties Calvin Klein', were two of the superlatives that were being bandied by la presse française.
Enthralled by his genius and handsome face, one of the most notorious Parisian socialites, since enigmatic 60's gloire-stigma Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, Madame Charente contracted a wardrobe. Suddenly he was deluged with commissions. His first show under the gilded dome of the Hôtel des Invalides was a phenomenon. Silk, satin and diamanté never made a woman look so exquisite, and he was in sync with the pulse of nubile ephemera with more scandalous extremes. Three months later at an industry party held at the home of French designer Marc Le Bihan, Julie and Steve met.
The next day, Julie and the designing Zeitgeist, were in a restaurant on the Rue du Montaigne and he asked her to go to the Riviera to model garments in his next collection. Fashion photography the prophetic-alkaloid or revelatory-cocaine double of classist reality was never a debauch that enflamed Julie, but in Fontainebleau, on the way, they became lovers.
It chilled Julie to think that four years had passed since she'd last seen Ever. It also sent her spirit sub-zero to think of how their relationship had come apart when Ever’s infatuation with the model Sandrine Bréson began. Julie believed she recognized Sandrine as "The Face" of Clarins' Bohemian Dreams. Julie had been booked to appear in Ever’s Seventh Sensory-Dimensional Experience show at the Carousel du Louvre, but at his betrayal she abandoned Paris six hours before the show was scheduled. When it did, Julie had already boarded a flight to the US and never returned. The betrayal had penetrated was beyond the veil of her mortal skin. Steve Ever had attempted to contact her in Manhattan but she refused to take his calls. Julie changed her number and her agency and had never heard from him since. It was better to sever ties she decided. If Ever wanted to relieve his conscience then let time be his healer, like it would be for her disdain.
Now, it appeared that time had failed on all frontiers.
 
 

When Julie arrived home on the Lower West Side she glanced around with chagrin. She’d miss the terraced, en Van Der Rohe, millennial-classicism of her apartment if it was devolved from her possession. After being out of work for almost two months, even covering the utilities was becoming impossible. It was paid for by her contract to adorn the pictorials and TV commercial for a notable Elizabeth Arden fragrance three years formerly.
And now with desperation she had to confront the man she'd exiled to her past.
She tried to console herself that the booking was doubtlessly for the next season - Autumn/Winter. She would have a contract to appear on the catwalk, and being assured of receiving the money, she could model his latest seasonal diktats and avoid Steve Ever.
Exhaling with frustration she reached for the phone. She dialed Daniel’s number with indeterminate fingers.
The phone rang only once. "Daniel?"
"Julie?  Julie is that you?" Daniel replied, driving through the Fashion District on West 44th.
Julie glanced at the Mode magazine cover on the wall. She’d done it seven years ago, but now it seemed like she was indigenous to another millennium. "You want the verdict?"
Daniel was somber. "And non?"
"Yes."
"You’ll do the Paris shows?" Daniel asked with a cautious air. "The prospects are too enticing to refuse? There’s no problem with Steve Ever?"
"That’s right," she replied unconvincingly, then took a leaden breath.
"OK Julie I’m elated to hear that. You know, if you refused this booking your career in the modeling industry in New York and the rest of this country would have been a fait accompli."
'Until next season,' Julie mouthed.
"I’ll fax the itinerary right away."
It suddenly compelled Julie: "It’s only one show, right?"
There was a silence. "Two, Julie - ready-to-wear in the Place de Valois and haute couture in La Nouveau Légion d’Honerer." A yellow cab slammed on the breaks ahead of Daniel. "For God damn Christ's sake!" Daniel bombasted, hitting the horn with a bravura of impact. "Where the hell is he turning?" Then, remembering Julie, he attempted to inhale tranquility. "This is a real coup for your name, Julie."
She swallowed hard at the ulterior implications.
"Julie…?"
Julie tried to collect her thoughts, hurriedly. "Yes."
"Do you have the confidence to do this?"
"Everything’s fine, Daniel," she replied, sounding hardly believable. "This is an advance booking, oui, for the Autumn/Winter shows next year?"
There was another silence on the other end. Daniel sounded ominous. "This is Spring/Summer haute de rigueur."
A single heartbeat incarnated through her. "Meaning…"
"Julie, you’re leaving on the Concorde for Paris in... twenty hours."
 
 

The next afternoon Julie’s friend, Vanese - 5’ 6", Latino and rightfully tanned - drove her to JFK International Airport.
"You won’t forget to feed Oscar?" Julie fretted as they cruised from Delancey Street onto the Williamsburg Bridge.
Vanese applied the accelerator and slipped into the left lane. "Of course I will. I only have to go down two floors and I love your zerochrome-white Persian-chartreux cat."  She pouted her full lips, distantly. "Steve Ever…  I can’t believe that you only told me last night that you were lovers."
Julie stared at the tennis courts below the bridge, then over to the teeming commercial and naval docks of Brooklyn. 'Lovers' was too sexual and too complicit with her own self-recriminations. "It wasn’t any great thing," she eschewed. "He’s only a fashion designer."
Vanese glared sidelong with amazement. "Only an architect of haute couture?" she sassed. She looked back at the road suddenly as a Jeep pulled into the lane ahead.  "Fashion never goes out of fashion. It's dynamic - anti-tradition of the deceptive over the true, the transitional over the classic, ephemera in predilection to the durable."
"There’s nothing to it - not now. It's only two shows, I walk down the runway, I turn and it's Steve Ever au-delà de temps. He's no more than a revelation of the past."
"Yes, Julie? You think that’s all he wants? After he calls you out of the blue after four years with no latest experience? I’ve modeled for ten years and that’s never happened to me."
"Maybe his designs wouldn’t suit you."
"Maybe. But would his romantic designs on Julie suit you?" Vanese surmised with facetious gravity, on the verge of laughter. "God! All expenses paid to Paris again. I wish it was me."
Julie sighed with premonition. "Yeah, well…."
Vanese was aghast. "Please… Can it be that scandalous?  You are unbelievable! You know… there is a chance that he doesn’t even remember you."
Stores and unlit neon signs surrounded them in Brooklyn. "Then why would he ask for me?"
"You know the way it is. He would have got the US Model Directory and his stylists would have picked the faces that complimented the verve of the show."
She wanted to tell Vanese what Daniel had said about Steve selecting her explicitly, but didn’t. Julie didn’t know whether she felt better for worse at this recollection. "Maybe…"
A mischievous glint sparked in Vanese’s plutonium eyes. "Or… Maybe - He could have more designs on Julie Laing than his couturecraft!"
Julie rolled her eyes. "Please…"
Steve Ever want a faded New York model? Julie glanced back, feeling insignificant at the sight of the skyline of Manhattan Island. Even though she seriously doubted it, for some reason she had the momentary sensation that she’d just crossed the Rubicon and not the East River.
As they walked towards the British Airways terminal, Julie frowned as she negotiated her way past two adolescent Antonio Banderas heaving suitcases with red and black Air Italia labels attached to them.
"What will you do if Steve Ever does have an ulterior motive for stealing you away to Paris?" Vanese cogitated as the doors swept open before them. "You know, you said that you signed that contract that Daniel sent to you last night. Legally you couldn’t simply walk away as you did when you experienced each other last."
Their conversation was inhibited as a crowd of new arrivals from Berlin bustled past.
Julie appeared thoughtful. She fixed her eyes on Vanese. "This is professional - nothing beyond. It never will be. Besides that contract sanctions my independence too."
"What do you mean?"
Julie walked on, decisively. "Maybe you were right. Maybe he doesn’t even know who his stylists selected for the shows, and that he didn’t ‘explicitly asked for Julie Laing’. If he sees me and kills the contract then I'm not walking without a thirty-two thousand-dollar pay-off."
Vanese was impressed. "Money for nothing," she purred dreamily.
"What we had was in the past, and the past is never anything but a testament to its immateriality."
Vanese smirked. "Yes, ‘til you relive it."
Julie irritably sought inside her Furla handbag for the ticket, suddenly conscious of a painful sensation like a thorn in her side.
After Vanese's fervent admonitions for her to keep an open mind sexually, Julie boarded the plane right on time; clear skies were predicted over the Atlantic.
All the way to France she sat alone in a first class window seat, even though the Concorde was virtually full on that Sunday flying double the speed of sound. Had someone failed to show for the trip or was there a double booking? Did someone know how she hated the cheap conversation that you got on an international flight?  She hated it almost as much as the music. With over three hundred CDs to elect Julie couldn’t find one that she wanted to hear.
Or maybe she was in one of those moods that nothing could enhance.
She looked out of the window at the stars high over the Atlantic Ocean as the plane maneuvered through turbulence. It was times like this that she wished she had someone there beside her. Someone to confide in. Someone to relate her fears to.
Someone - but not just anyone.
Julie pulled down the magazine rack beside her and selected a copy of a fashion magazine. She flicked through it until she came to a story on Steve Ever. Photographs of his avant-stylings worn by models à trois occupied three pages. One of them featured Steve with his firm arm around one of his models as they stood on the Alexandre III Bridge. He was looking down at the organza, Spanish dress she was wearing. The model was glancing off towards the horizon with deadpan other-worldiness. Was his muse a Belgian dalliance?
"Orange juice, Alsace Beaujolais, Shiraz, Remy Martin brandy, liqueur, Côtes-du-Rhone champagne?" the hostess divulged her immaculate, Californian smile.
Julie recalled Daniel’s words, ‘This is the greatest coup of your career,’ with anxious obscurity and decided to honor the discipline her booking entailed. "Just a mineral water," she requested pleasantly, closing the magazine.
She had to be ‘the definitive runway icon’ as the Divinus books described Julie Laing.
In fashion, the myths and illusions had to be conceded.
 
 

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen. We will be touching down at Charles De Gaulle Airport in 15 minutes. We wish you every delectation in the Republic of France. Thank you for flying Concorde. We look forward to your future patronage."
Julie looked out of the window to see the town of Versailles fleeting beneath the plane. The world’s most extravagant palace appeared as nothing more than variations of an atmospheric silhouette. In the distance the glittering expanse of Paris awaited. Beside herself she began to perspire as memory converged with reality. The fact that within twenty-four hours she’d see Steve Ever again struck her with a vengeance.
You’re only perspiring because of the altitude, she consoled herself as the plane descend for its Paris entrée. That’s all, everything is fine. Everything is under control. You’ve been here before…
She drew a hard breath.
She wondered what she would say the moment she saw Steve Ever.
She drew an absolute blank.
In the pristine blue and white terminal Julie headed for the inevitable interrogation at customs. After the officer checked her visa she returned it to her handbag, then produced the address of the Hotel Frágonard. She tried to remember how to enunciate: ‘Please take me here,' in French, sounding as if you knew when they were going the long way.
"Bon jour, Mademoiselle Laing."
Julie turned to the seguing caravanserai of Moroccan women, hijab-veiled by henna, zelliges-print silk, then percieved the immaculate, slender figure that had voiced the words. She looked like a definitive fashion devotee in a tailored, powder-blue day suit.  Her make-up was immaculate and her hair, pulled back dramatically to a chignon of woven rings, was more like fine art than coiffure. She was equally as slender as Julie, though not as tall. "I am the Senior Stylist at Ever Paris, Marie-Elise Villiers," she spoke in her heavily accented English. "La voyage satisfaisant?"
Julie smiled vaguely. "I’m sorry, I'm not fluent in French."
Marie-Elise' delineated brow rose and she pursed her sharply defined lips. "I was told - I assumed - that you had been to France before."
"Yes, an American in an English crowd."
"Les masse Anglaise," Marie-Elise mused. "But I am here at Monsieur Ever’s behest and I will accompany you to the hotel."
"I didn’t know that anyone was collecting me."
Marie-Elise glanced away with showcase poise. "I understand that you were given very short notice of the impending shows."
"Under twenty-four hours."
"My driver is waiting. Shall we leave?"
"But my luggage?"
Marie-Elise threw back her hand with impatient disinterest. "They will be sent on to the hotel."  She stopped and turned on her heels with an imperious, de haut en bas, solicitude. "In Paris Steve Ever models do not collect their luggage."
"But my make-up was in one of the cases," Julie said, stunned, without moving.
"I assure you, Mademoiselle, we have cosmetics in Paris," Marie-Elise voiced, then touched Julie's forearm coaxingly. "Will we?"
Julie followed her outside. As they appeared a red, Rolls Royce Seraph limousine navigated past a horde of Renault bleu taxis beside the mosaic pavement. Its sky-roof was open to reveal the cap of the chauffeur.
From the front passenger seat a man in a black suit with more menace than personality opened the door for Marie-Elise. "Mademoiselle," he gestured.
When he went to the other side of the car he found that Julie had already got in and closed the door.
"L’hotel ou l’atelier premier, Mademoiselle Villiers?" the chauffeur's electronic voice emanated via the back compartment's speaker.
"Aller L’Hotel Frágonard, merci, Claude."
The car pulled out from the kerb and they were soon headed, via the Rue de la Chapelle, towards the Seine River.
"You see, Mademoiselle Laing," Marie-Elise explained, neatly placing her cross-banded SE handbag on her lap. "As you would know from your ticket: You are required on Wednesday and Friday of this week. You will return in five days - Saturday."
"Yes, I realized that it would be a whirl-wind thing."
Marie-Elise studied her with no conception of what she meant.
Julie’s eyes simply observed the boulevard apartments with illuminated gardens. "I mean I didn’t expect to be here long."
"An Americanism? Très international."
As the car drew closer to the hotel Julie glanced towards the business district of Paris. She laughed as she regarded the skyscrapers. "Feels almost like I’m back in New York."
"Have you lived in Manhattan all of your life?"
"No, not all of it." Reminiscence flickered in Julie's eyes. "When I was younger I briefly lived in Italy with my father and mother."
"I hear that Manhattan is a very expensive city," Marie-Elise continued. "Does modeling cover all of your expenses?"
"Modeling is all everything and nothing at all, and now..." She sighed too obviously.
Marie-Elise glanced away. "It is a fashionable city."
"I never wanted to live anywhere else."
"After the September 11 it has an aura of lethal magnetism. It appears that faith moves mountains and capitalist icons too."
"I never wanted to live anywhere else," Julie replicated her own lexis.
"That is how I feel for this city." Marie-Elise assented.
"And you came from Paris?"
"No," Marie-Elise replied with dismissive brevity.
"You came here to work for Steve Ever?"
A quasi-smile creased her lips. "Not specifically. As you have Hollywood in the United States, in Europe people still come to Paris to find themselves. Paris is the naked, chic-empire flame to which all those who seek the apotheoses of haute fashion burn."
The Hotel Frágonard, in the vein of the Paris Ritz's cosmopolitan elitism, was as stately and luxurious as any review could have insinuated.
With a bellhop in their stead Marie-Elise unlocked the ornamental door to Julie’s suite on the fourth floor. Inside it was opulently decorated with ebullient, gilt-foliate and florid scrollwork, gold bullion embroidered Caffiéri time pieces set on the suface of mirrors, shell motifs and other elegant excesses. The aesthetics of cultured, absolutist monarchs. It had the a museum ambience, with all the strictures of hauteur formality. It was more than reminiscent of the salons from the Hôtel de Cabris and Varengeville at The Met in New York.
"During the Napoleonic wars," the bellhop publicized, "it was given as the residence of the honored General Frágonard."
Julie marveled that she should now be in a five-star icon. The last time that she stayed in Paris, she had to put herself up in a three-star hotel called the Grande something that was hardly even civilized. It was truly from a Parisian saloon to salon.
"You will find that there is all you require in the hotel," Marie-Elise said, watching Julie walk into the bedroom to see the bed with its suspended deluges of the blue satin-silk baldachin drapes, and Murano art glacé chandelier.
"There is the Avignon Mirise restaurant downstairs - or l'Obelisque at de Crillon - and you can charge your costs to the Steve Ever account. Ever Paris will cover it."
"That is very liberal of you," Julie commended.
"La générosité is not mine."
"This is very… very Paris," Julie effused a sense of exultation. "I never expected anything like this."
"You are of professional interest to us. You are free to do whatever you like here in Paris. However, you will receive a message for when you will be required to meet with the show orchestrator at the Place de Valois. I needn't tell you that timing is paramount in fashion."
"How many models are there in the show?"
Marie-Elise lightly placed the room keys on the small gilded table, with the Louis XV cabriole legs, at the center of the room. "Sixteen women. Eleven gentlemen."
"Are they all staying here?  I’d like to, maybe, talk to them."
Marie-Elise put her long, Ever-cherry fingernail to her lips thoughtfully, then appeared to hesitate. "The other models are not here. They have other temporary residences on the Rive Gauche, here in the chic First and in the Third Arrondissements."
Julie turned around; looking at the abundance of beauty that surrounded her. "Are their hotel rooms similar to this?"
"Not quite, no, but…Do have a pleasant time here," Marie-Elise said cursorily. "No doubt I will be in contact with you before too long."
"Nice to meet you Marie-Elise."
"Au revoir, Mademoiselle Laing. Au revoir." Marie-Elise departed; pulling the door closed in one sheer, elegant motion.
For a moment Julie stood silently comprehending it all: The satin-damask curtains; hand-finished, delicacy of amber to brandy shades of gilt amaranth and kingwood furniture with unalloyed gold or silver accents; the rock crystal chandeliers with lead crystal parfumers; lines of identical crimson and gold bound books; the gilded, Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier mirror surmounting the sculpted fireplace…
She had no international fame, no status entourage and no prestige stalkers. But right at that moment she felt like a revivified supermodel.
She walked out to a balcony with ornate black and gilded ironwork. She looked up towards the Arc de Triomphe past the granite Egyptian obelisk on an island between the intermittently stagnated traffic. An enormous red, white and blue French flag billowed uninhibitedly beneath its arch. The sidewalk cafés along the vast Champs Élysées were teeming with people: businessman, tourists, sports fans and Parisians taking it all in their stride - Sometimes très frustré. Paris remained the glittering city of her memorable fantasies: An Eden of hedonism and light.
As Julie walked back inside to pour herself a drink and contemplate her first meeting with Steve, the telephone began to ring.
She held it tentatively to her ear. "Suite 32D."
"This is Julie?" The man’s Germanic voice sounded forty-something and hoarse. Its owner was obviously quarry to fashion industry pressure.
"That’s right."
"I am Karl the orchestrator for the couture events during this week. I have called to tell you that you are required tomorrow at the Place de Valois. You can be there by two of course?"
"Is this a rehearsal?"
"No," Karl denounced, astutely. "It is simply doing a model profile by seeing how you walk, your physical attributes et cetera - whatever."
Julie sank back into one of the large, plush designer cushions on the sofa. "Checking us out, right?"
"Something like that. You are experienced?"
"Yes… But, I haven’t worked the runway for a while."
"And ‘a while’ is precisely how long?" Karl questioned forbiddingly.
Tension inundated Julie’s senses. "Two years."
"Really?" Karl’s tone descended. "I was under the impression that all of the models were recently engaged in Paris or Milan."
"Is that right?"
"It’s simply d’ordinaire my dear. But I assume that Steve Ever must have absolute confidence in you, if you were booked. If there is any difficulty then we will resolve it - or whatever is to be done."
"I learned my thing on the Steve Eve-... On the Gucci runway," Julie lied, sounding unintentionally defensive. "Whatever stance and attitude you want I can do it."
"Of course, I don’t doubt it. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Goodbye Mademoiselle Laing."
"Yes," Julie faded as she hung up the phone. A sense of anxiety, coupled with inadequacy, swept over her. Did she still have it?  It'd been so long since she’d proved it to herself. Anyone can walk, but not everyone can walk and project on the runway. It was an art being the visual equivalent of people’s self-fantasies. It wasn’t about personality but about an ideal. It was something very physical but also something extremely ethereal.
She walked out to the balcony in full flight and struck a pose. Two young men sitting in at La Ambroisie Café-Concert across the Champs Élysées looked up, raising their champagne glasses, with adulation smoldering in their eyes.
She still had it. She tried to be certain, but knew that she would only find out the next day when Karl actually saw her.
Passing the mirror she glanced at herself and slowly swept her platinum hair back with both of her hands. Collecting a bottle of Aqua Badoit from the bar, she departed the suite.
The hotel did not have columns but ornate, atlantes - carved male figures - supporting the portico. Julie’s fingers slipped over one before she stepped down the white marble stairs onto the bustling avenue. She monitored her appearance as it was reflected on the gleaming windows of the luxury car showroom next to the hotel.
She headed down the Champs and through the once majestic, formal gardens of the Tuileries. After she passed the fountains and other sculptural wonders of the Place de la Concorde she followed the embankment of the Seine as it curved towards the Louvre Palace. She passed its sculpted, floodlit, Renaissance walls.
Noting the time, she headed back in the direction of the premier théâtre de la mode quarter of Paris towards the Arc de Triomphe: la Haute Couture Triangle d'Or de Paris, comprising Avenue Montaigne, Avenue des Champs Élysées, Avenue George V and all implicit to their bounds.
She wandered down the Rue du Faubourg-St-Honoré past the cafés and illuminated arcades admiring the model agencies and exquisite marble, pristine awnings and plate glass Neo-classical and luxe-ultramodern craftsmanship that typified the shop fronts of the world’s most exclusive sources. In the gold-lined window of the Lacroix store was featured a vividly-acid colored bodysuit, under a ladies coat of shaved mink with a neckline of copious fox-fur. On another mannequin was a garishly hand-wrought Dufy-esque jacket. It's filigree lines had all the whimicality of enamored caricature. Elaborate gold buttons figured down a front hung with gold chain tassels. On the lapel was a trademark outré-gilt Lacroix cross.
She sighed, wishing that she were there to appear in any other couture label, fantasy parade but Steve Ever's.
 
 

Shafts of light came through the transepts high over the windows the following morning. Julie stirred for a moment with the impulse to call her agent. She suddenly remembered that she was in Paris and the man she was afraid of seeing. She felt Gothic in the midst of what was one of the highest citadels of Gothic.
She snapped on her watch and slid out of satin and bathed.
She found no nail files in the medicine cabinet and decided to find a store immediately after breakfast. She appraised her slender face in the mirror and applied another touch of lipstick. She was a model, she anxiously reasoned, and looking her best had nothing at all to do with appealing to Steve Ever. It was just the nature of her art.
She was alone in Paris, her French was sparse and knowing no one she had the intense sensation of being truly a foreigner in a foreign land.
She resisted the urge to go to the designer boutiques and headed away from the Champs Élysées in a Montmartre direction taking boulevard de this, then rue de that. She emerged from a small lane onto the thoroughfare of the Boulevard Haussman in front of a restaurant decorated with Rococo-Baroque, freeform rocaille et coquile exuberance in the St-Lazare-Opéra district.
Images of European singers decorated the window of a CD store from which the the 70's Italian singer, Raffaelo Carra, could be heard. It seemed perfectly placed between a tobacconist’s and a high-class Swiss confectioner. She recalled a song that she’d heard once during her first time in Paris. Inspired, she went inside the store and fingered through the racks of CDs. She’d find something familiar to unwind with back at the hotel.
"What kind of bar is the Stars and Stripes over there?" a Canadian man asked the cashier.
"Is…" the cashier struggled, resentfully, for the English words. "Eeez un American-style bar."
"Oh, right," the Canadian man replied, sounding allured.
Julie looked out of the window for any glimpse of rare, Parisian cultus-Americana. Its American raison d'être was betrayed by two flags overhanging the roof parapet and several southern US bourbon and whiskey labels affixed to the walls of the Astor Theatre, Metropolis-like pilastered,  facade. There appeared to be no one there, but after all it was only eleven in the morning.
She selected a record by an English singer whose songs were always on the radio in New York, but never in Paris and dished the cash.
As she was walking out of the store a man emerged from the American-style bar. He was stunning with piercing gray-iridescent eyes, dark, precariously coaxed back hair and unfettered shoulders. He had to be a model. His face transmuted the senses like opium.
For a moment their eyes met and although they were strangers on two different sides of the street, Julie wished she could induce him to say something like, ‘You’re the best looking thing I’ve seen this morning’. Or, ‘I’m an emigré transient in Paris too’.
She looked away then chanced another glance at him. Maybe he didn't have Steve Ever's presence but wasn't everything?
It was his turn to look away and then look back to observe Julie journey up the street past the boutiques and fast food outlets towards the Theatre Athenee.
Another meaningless glance across the street, Julie decided, then sternly reminded herself: Nail files! Nail files! Not chaussures.
In the Marks and Spencer department store further down Haussman, Julie headed for the immaculate cosmetic counters and displays. Julie got a sudden rush of blood when she discerned a familiar voice through the crowd.
"Mr. Ever, your house has been releasing collections for nearly five years now. Why did you decide to launch this fragrance during this season in concert with your runway shows?"
Julie stood transfixed before the enormous six-foot screen and observed an interviewer and Steve in what she presumed was Steve’s apartment in Rome.
"Mesmerisé," the interviewer continued, "represents the distillation of the Steve Ever vision into a parfum of the 21st century. What is the top, leading note?"
"That’s an herb called talisdaam," Steve replied in his crisp British accent. "It has been used in Hindu practices for the last three thousand years."
"It smells like nothing else that I’ve ever encountered." She gave a vacuous laugh. "They didn’t use it as a narcotic did they?"
Steve's laugh was flashy but manly. "Simply as a provocateur to the senses."
"Did you think of the title - Mesmerisé - yourself?"
"Yes. It was the second title that I came up with."
"What was the first?"
"Narcissysteria." Steve smiled.
"Un agréable nom de parfum." Another vacuous laugh.
"Yes. The English slogan was going to be: ‘However long it takes’ but we decided on ‘Desire: Like love in the end it is realized beyond time’."
"Beautiful… Your writers must be very talented."
Steve shrugged modestly. "They are, but I wrote that one myself."
A petite, Italianate woman with a bottle of Mesmerisé accosted Julie like a seraphim of scent. "Would you like to try Mesmerisé by Steve Ever?" she solicited, offering the bottle as if it was a precious aphrodisiac commodity. "Perhaps for yourself?"
Julie smiled faintly. "I only wear Dior's Poison, St Laurent Champagne and Westwood's Boudoir."
The sales girl’s voice sweetened, modus vivendi. "Then a gift for a friend?"
Julie shook her head. "No, I’m sorry. No."
The sales assistant handed her the sample card sweetly, but insistently.
"Thank you," Julie replied and walked away.
Out of sight of the sales girl, Julie began to fan the card before her nose to gauge the scent and a reflective, pensive look infused her eyes. The scent vaunted the flirtatious eroticism of jasmine, cassis, valerian and patchouli.
She paused and chanced another glance at Steve on the screen. There was only a bottle of the perfume turning in front of a background of dissolving European locations including the Eiffel Tower blurring into the visage of Bond Street in London, dissolving into a waterway in Venice.
Steve’s life had gone from recognition to iconic status. Julie was only a glitch in his past and he had survived remarkably well without her. He been in the fashion firmament for four years in haute-space, cyberspace and virtual reality. At first she thought that it was jealousy of Steve’s achievements that disturbed her, but Julie knew that it was something else. It was jealousy of his involvement with Sandrine; it was resentment for his fidelity to his career and that Julie Laing had nothing to do with his success.
Julie had a mochaccino at La Foucques Café on the other side of the boulevard to the department store. Diminutive replicas of Houdon's skin-ecstasy in marble, Psyche - a reclining nude, and Marochetti's Mary Magdalene Exalted By The Angels confronted her, ironically, as she entered. On the delft-flanked television above the door was a French talk show. The kind that talks mostly to French political figures like Jacques Chirac and celebrities including Sandrine Caron, Marie Gillain, Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve. The presenter spoke in French and Julie only understood one or two remarks with the Minister of Defence in regards to an Iraqi and Iranian border conflagration and the Middle Eastern reckoning - or Iraq-oning, rather. The presenter was suitably restrained as she turned to the camera and threw to an ad intermission. The first ad was for Coke, but the second was for Mesmerisé by Steve Ever. The advertisement had a voice-over with a brief glimpse of Steve that dissolved into a woman, wearing a gold-mesh-viscose evening-wrap of prodigious length and metallic gold bands rising up her arms to her shoulder. She emerged from sweeping golden satin and torrid waters and pulled off the top of the bottle. The liquid perfume, defying eternal gravity, eternally poured up and out across the expanding sky. The montage of the European cities dissolving into one another bloomed and faded out, with a delicate female voice: "Mesmerisé la parfum d’amour, tonjours. La prix 60 euros - L'eau de parfum sans prix."
A priceless perfume for 60 euros? Julie wondered cynically.
Did the designer sans fidélité write that one himself too?
 

Walking back to the hotel Julie began to think about the man who came out of the American bar on Haussman after seeing a man of vaguely similar appearance.
Sebastian, her chauffeur, and a limousine awaited Julie between two taxis outside L’Hotel Frágonard.
"Marie-Elise said that I was to collect you now," he stated.
"But Karl - the man I spoke to last night - said that it was at two?"
Sebastian shrugged and held out his hands emphatically. "A change of plans, now at one-thirty. You do not carry your telephone?"
Julie regretted that she hadn’t. "Can you give me ten minutes to get changed?"
"Excelsi, Mademoiselle."
 
 

The scheduled rendezvous with Karl was, as Marie-Elise had said, in the Place de Valois. Julie slipped out of the British limousine into the richly decorated La Republique square. She walked past the two identical fountains - théâtres d'eau - with water spouting in arc and lily formations, glittering in the Parisian sun, and through the portico of the Classical building.
She stopped to take in the interior: There was a catwalk down the center of the former temple of royal and modern art, with  uninhibited bouquets of exotic blooms at each side where the stage met the runway. The furniture was either contemporary or 19th century Empire, archaeological  revival, Classic. The walls were interspersed by tall, elegantly nascent-Baroque Louis XIII windows. The ceiling was decorated with panels by artist Marc Chagall in lavish hues of red, blue, yellow and black. The rock crystal chandeliers that were hung at regular intervals under them were not lit. Rather, the garish floodlights on either side of the catwalk illuminated the whole hall. A wretchedly thin man with sparse brown hair, in his mid-forties appeared on the catwalk.
Steve Ever was nowhere to be seen.
Julie remembered seeing the story in Vogue - or was it Moda? - covering Steve Ever’s collection last season. It had been in a pavilion in the Champ du Mars. The first model had descended, in vast, billowing gold and silver lamé gown from a helicopter and Julie was pleased that this season would be a little more sedate. This venue was definitely not like the Epcot on the Seine he'd deployed two seasons antedecent. No doubt the proportions of these would be re-interpreted in his latest continental foray.
There were seventeen models already there, including ten women and seven men. The five supermodels that were scheduled to appear would be arriving from England, Canada, Germany, Australia and the United States on the next day. Their star credentials meant no trial run .
"People," the man on the catwalk - explicitly Karl - gestured. "Please walk up these stairs and I want each of you to give me a demonstration of how you walk down the runway. I want to see your catwalk exhibitionism."
The men followed the ladies.
Karl flicked through the catalogue of garments that would appear in the shows, then placed it down.
"You," he pointed out the tallest blonde girl, who had the nubile face of a fourteen-year-old and the fashion establishment legs of a veteran anorexic. She did her run and twirl, followed by the next girl who was a brunette with a sleek gait.
"Auguste, take that," Karl instructed the photographer standing beside the runway.
He did and at the same moment Julie recognized the man standing an intimate distance from her. It was the stranger with the piercing gray-iridescent eyes, she’d seen walking out of the Stars and Stripes on the Boulevard Haussman. Their eyes met for a brief moment and a grin of secret amusement animated his lips. Apparently he recognized her too. He had to be an American in Europe...
Karl called the rest of the women to do their thing, but failed to call Julie, who stood nervously behind him.
"Now men, I want you to show me how you appoint the runway."
"What’s this all about," the blond, German guy there asked temperamentally. "I mean what is the attitude and the angle here?"
The orchestrator gave a 'it's not your place to interrogate Karl Brentzman' look, but explained: "Remember monsieur - the buyers are women. Sex, sexuality, sex!" As the male model was about to ask another question, Karl pouted wearily. "Have you ever been on the catwalk before?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then you would know that I am defining the model-type and their relative sequence, to get the best equilibrium of forms. We have to enhance the show by allocating the right model to the right couture. It's symmetry of forms."
The German model appeared deadpan - sorry he asked.
The orchestrator stood back. "Walk monsieur," he swept his hand out toward the runway for him to ensue.
The male model did and with brilliant vanity-machismo.
"And you are?" Karl then asked the man Julie recognized.
"David Dionisii," he responded in an obscure accent. In that light his clear skin and pristine features gave him a look of paradisiacal adolescence.
"You are from?" Karl continued.
"Russia," he replied to Julie’s formidable incredulity.
"Then David of Russia if you please…"
He was superb and at the end of the runway David turned around with his well-developed arms outstretched.
"Bravo bravuro monsieur," the orchestrator applauded rapturously. "I think that you will do very very bon."
Everyone applauded rapturously.
Marie-Elise appeared in the doorway beyond the end of the catwalk. With a characteristic demur Ever's Machiavellian Chief Stylist simply nodded at them.
"Marie-Elise, it is good to see you," Karl remarked implausibly. "Are you here to take the model’s measurements?"
"No, Karl, not at all. I am simply here to watch. We will take them later at the atelier."
Karl shrugged. "Then we will continue with this gentleman and-" He broke-off as he turned to see Julie behind him. "I didn’t realize that you were there, my dear. Perhaps you will demonstrate your action. And you are?"
"Julie Laing," Marie-Elise cut-in shrewdly.
Karl put his hand on Julie’s back. "If you please…"
Julie took a deep, inconspicuous breath. It’d been so long since she’d done this. She walked on trying to maintain the sheer line of her posture, but not walking too fast or swinging her arms with delirious vigor. She was never sure how she looked to other people when she was in full flight. When she was almost at the end of the runway she saw a shadowed figure in the doorway. She’d recognize that masculine contour anywhere. It was Steve!
She faltered, stopping indecisively before she reached the end.
"Is there something wrong Mademoiselle Laing?" Karl asked warily.
Julie stepped backwards towards him as Steve emerged into the light and clapped his broad, masculine hands slowly. "A wonderful exhibition, but too bad about the denouement," his distinguished British voice resounded through the hall. He walked down past Julie as if concerned with other business. "Karl, will you have the model sequence done by two-thirty?  I want the women at my atelier so that we can do the 35C-22-20 fittings."
"Of course, Steve. I was just going to ask this young woman to do her run again. It appears that she was distracted by something."
Steve frowned. "A model distracted in an empty hall?  I wonder if she’d be disoriented in one full of buyers and the media?"
Julie studied Steve’s face for any sign that he recognized her. The four years that had gone by had only refined all 6' 2" of Steve’s features. They remained as they were cut as fine and preternaturally as a Mauboussin cufflink. His dark hair and deep, Atlantic-blue eyes and chiseled jaw-line still burned through her. Something within Julie ached for release.
But there was nothing to suggest that he knew her. She felt a kind of relief laced with a sense of fatality.
Julie cast an apologetic look back at Karl. "I can do it again. I am just out of practice." She walked back towards him. "See, I’m fine - no problem."
"Yeeeeesssss," Karl purred tentatively, then turned to Steve. "What do you think?"
"She’s a model," Steve replied to Marie-Elise, with professional superficiality. "We’ll drape her in shantung, gold bead-woven gauze-mesh and breitschwanz fur and call it haute couture."
"I want to see you all one more time," Karl said, clapping his hands sharply. "I want each of you to walk in the order that you have just gone until I ask you to stop."
They did, with Karl encouraging them in French: "Très exquis! Grande! Merveilleux!"
Steve stood on the sidelines, with his fist resting under his chin. He watched as each did their routine. When Julie did hers, he was preoccupied speaking with Marie-Elise who consulted him on some matter. Only when she walked back did Steve throw her a perfunctory glance.
Karl said nothing.
Steve tapped his gold, Vacheron Constantin watch.
Karl appeared to be satisfied that the models' visages were measured and serviceable. "People, if we can end there. I will see you here at the Place de Valois before the show. I will give you the order in which you will appear and the stylist Dietrich - who must have been detained - will have an assignment of costumes for you to wear."
Marie-Elise pointedly raised her red, black and gold pen. "Messieurs! Mesdames! If you will all get into the cars out the front you will be driven to the atelier where we’ll be doing the final fittings."
The models all began to step off the stage. As Julie was about to make an inconspicuous exit, Karl put his hand out to delay her. "Not you Mademoiselle Julie Laing. I think that we need to work on your posture and sashay-gait on the runway."
"Can we have her remain here?" Marie-Elise asked Steve.
"But of course. Please send her along Karl, when you can..."
Julie watched Steve turn and pause to speak with Marie-Elise.
It was beyond bizarre. Was her relationship with Steve that transient four years ago that he didn’t even know her now?  She tried to console herself that her headshot had secured her the work, but it was a depthless consolation at best.
When the Russian model, David Dionisii, turned and cast a handsome farewell salute, Julie only managed a faint wave in return.
"When you do it this time-" Karl halted, dismayed that she was paying no attention. "Julie?"
She came to, breathlessly. "I’m sorry I was just thinking of… It doesn’t matter."
"Julie, please keep your eyes looking straight ahead," Karl gestured. "Don’t bother projecting too much. Just be natural and unaffected - they’ll obviously get the point."
Steve observed David walking out the door then followed suit without so much as a transient reflex glance.
"Did you hear what I said?" Karl became indignant.
"Yes, yes," Julie lied. "You said keep my sights on what’s obvious to me and that's the point."
Karl glared askance with sheer perplexity.
 
 

Julie headed for the atelier almost three hours later. Marie-Elise had neglected to tell her the address and her chauffeur, Sebastian, had no idea. The last assignment he had was for a designer working under John Galliano. When Julie asked for the ‘atelier’ she was promptly delivered to the studios of Christian Dior on the Rue du Rivoli. In exasperation Julie picked up the phone in the back of the car and dialed for the operator to connect her to the headquarters of Steve Ever. Sebastian, it appeared, had been contracted on as suddenly as Julie had been, dispelling any notion that she’d been called to replace a high profile model at the last minute.
They drove past light beige and malt-white society apartments and on a rounded corner they saw a large girded building. Ornamental balusters decorated the café au lait bonded stone along each level above the triple-height entrance. The Steve Ever insignia on a discrete sign projecting out above a door was the only indication that they had arrived at their destination.
She explained to the doorman who she was and attained prompt admittance.
"Marie-Elise, is it too late?" Julie asked quickly when she had made it down the immaculate foyer decorated with fashion illustrations.
"Steve, Dietrich and Adele are still in there, but I don’t know if you will have to return tomorrow."
Julie walked through to them.
She noted the mannequins arranged around the room with garments in various stages of one and three-dimensional treatments at the hands of their tailors. Her eyes glimpsed a deconstructed one with a lace front.
They all paused for a moment, expecting her to say something, perhaps a modicum of apology at least. "I… I mean... the driver didn’t know where the atelier was and…"
"But you are here now and we’ll do our business at once," Steve interjected shortly.
"I have to be at the jewelers and speak with the hair stylists," Dietrich, a dark-featured, tall, but slight, lisping man (and obviously gay) in his mid-thirties remarked. "If we are going to do a fitting with…" the name escaped him.
"Julie," she supplied.
"Yes, Julie. If you want to do a fitting, Mr. Ever, then we must reschedule it."
Steve was obviously irritated. "But when do you propose we do that?"
"Tomorrow?" Dietrich suggested.
"No, we can’t do that," Steve stated unequivocally. "I am overseeing the outfits on the mannequins tomorrow, ready for delivery to the ready-to-wear show."
"Then perhaps we will use Esther or Karen instead of Julie," recommended Dietrich.
Adele, Steve’s diminutive, atelier mistress-deuxième main qualifée wearing unadorned, severe - feminist canon in the dialect of couture - black, was incited. "But Esther won’t have time to change from the gold-medallion, strapped piece in time and... Karen appears too late."
"But…" Dietrich was on the verge of suggesting something that he shouldn't for a moment. "We may have to do the outfits only on the basis of straight measurements."
Steve shook his head adamantly. "Definitely not. I can’t take the chance with that. I have the crêpan and organza evening bolero-wrap at my townhouse. If Julie doesn’t mind I will do the fitting there tonight."
"Tonight?" Julie repeated, disconcerted.
Steve noted the hesitation in her voice. "It won’t take more than an hour, Mademoiselle. It is merely a formality. You are a model. I’m sure that you understand."
Julie reconciled herself to the fact that she had to; she had wanted to attend a cabaret evening at the Palais Bourbon, the Folies Parisiennes, or a techno-ethnic on the Rive Gauche. Now, she was scheduled to see a man who didn’t know her, and couldn’t have any conception about how sans-sartorial this couture-tryst would be for her.
It’s business, Julie reviled her tempestuous anxieties. It’s only a sartorial formality - nothing more.
Zero.
"I don’t expect that you know where my home is," Steve said apathetically. "Marie-Elise will give you the address to your driver. It isn’t difficult to find on the Avenue d’Iena."
"When do you want me to be there?" Julie asked Steve with forced coolness.
"Whenever as long as it is before nine. There are several things that I want to give an ultimate touch to."
"If that’s all?"
"I expect that I’ll see you later. Julie - is it?"
"That’s right."
Steve cocked his brow before turning away distractedly. "Then, I guess that I will see you later then."
"Later…"
She threw an unrequited glance back at Steve then strutted out beset by an impending conflagration in Paris.
 

When she arrived back at the Hotel Frágonard a single message awaited her:
"It’s David, the Russian model, Julie. I wondered if you wanted to go out or, you know, something. If you get back by nine give me a call. I am at the Hôtel Grande Paon on La Rue Rocher. My number is 50958955… If I talk to you later - I’d like to talk to you later. Call me."
Something suddenly struck Julie. When she’d stayed in Paris four years before she had stayed at the very same hotel as David was in now. If her romance with Steve had failed then, then maybe this time it would succeed with another man like David. It wasn't beyond reason that the pendulum of destiny would swing her way so paradoxically.
As she was about to return his call Julie suddenly realized that she could not disregard her appointment with Steve Ever.
At least not at that moment.
Julie considered how she would affect professionalism with Steve. There's was now desire put on ice. His totemic power as a designer resided in his adaptability in fashion - and sensuality, and she should have realized that.
She couldn’t mention the past.
She couldn't reveal the name of her former modeling agency.
She couldn’t mention any other fashion label that she’d worked for because that sounded like condescension towards Steve’s company - Or at least in theory.
She had to behave obligingly, but be in no way compromising.
Looking down at her black lace-trimmed, blue Cavalli chamois jacket and white satin slacks she decided to change immediately. The last time that she had seen Steve she was wearing similar colors. She changed into velour hipsters, Gucci, 24-carat damask-red silk shirt and a columnar, patent leather black jacket with the gold Azzedine Alaïa buttons.
Just as she was about to leave she looked at her red diamond ring and removed it irascibly. It’d almost slipped his mind that Steve had given her one very similar garnet one.
This was another time and she’d have to be another woman.
As she was about to close the door she suddenly discarded her Baccelatti watch with some inexplicable motive.
 

Fifteen minutes later, she was in the back of the limousine as Sebastian turned down Avenue d’Iena. It was lined with 19th century mansions and on seeing Steve’s abode, Julie realized that his ascent in the insider society of Parisian society was absolute.
She walked inside the gates, they were on hand-forged, damascene-inset iron with gilt finials. She stared up at the grated windows. It was not a vast, US bourgeois-celebrity apartment.  It was, no doubt, the town residence of a country aristocrat of a pre-Revolutionary epoch, who could invoke a Versailles courtly-presence and hereditary in defense of all excess. She ascended the stairway with the faint sound of clicking heels to the large Edwardian black, paneled door with an ornate gold, Venetian lion's mask handle.
She rapped and a familiar face received her. It was Louis, Steve's German manservant. He looked her over, guardedly. "Ja?"
Julie glimpsed past him. "Is…is Steve Ever here? He said that I'd have to come around and that he’d be here…"
He continued to scrutinize her, distanced and stern.
"I’m Julie."
Louis was suddenly animated. "Oh, Julie!" he exclaimed as if to someone in the distance behind him. "Come, come…" he said, then announced her: "Monseigneur Ever, the model, Laing."
Julie and Louis walked through the coved gallery-hall, endowed with roi soleil and chinoise fantastique furniture, seven and ten-fold European lacquered screens and objets d'Islamique, to find Steve standing at midpoint on an Orvieto marble stairway. He inhaled on his gold-tipped, black cigarette, then extinguished it in a Lalique vase containing abyssinicum, imperial crimson, African flame, davidii and Japanese gold-rayed lilies. With reservation, he descended. He viewed his watch. "Did you get delayed by the dusk, Paris traffic?"
"It was like it was rush hour," Julie said as if the words were vapor. The interior dramatics of Steve's abode would surpass even Hubert de Givenchy's Hôtel de Bauffremont in white, gilt and ebony designer luxury.
Steve became reactively over-assertive: "It always is in Paris - Like Manhattan. Thanks, Louis."
Steve's manservant nodded with a conspiratorial air. "Yes, Monseigneur."
He gestured for Julie to take a seat on the 23-karat-gilt, acanthus-crested, azure settee. "Originally I planned to do only one fitting but I had some of the examples from the seamstress room collected. I will find the best for your figure and we’ll use that piece to take the other measurements from."
Carmena, Steve's Italian housekeeper, appeared with two glasses, glanced at Steve then proffered one in Julie's direction. "Lafite-Rothschild champagne, Lourdes Aqua Minerale, Mademoiselle?"
"No thanks," Julie said, eager to get their business over and ended. "Are we doing a fitting or is this a social happening?" she asked, sounding ruthlessly impatient, but trying to remain professional.
"Why don’t you follow me," Steve said, heading down the vast hall.
Julie followed in silence, hoping that she hadn't sounded too discourteous.
 "You have heard of the hall of mirrors at Versailles Palace," Steve said. "But this room is what I call my mirror room."
Julie was amazed. She stepped into a spatial destruction of perceptual continuity. There was nothing but mirrors on the walls, ceilings and on the floor under impenetrable glass. Mirror positioning of infinite, lucid reflections. Julie turned, seeing herself in endless, simultaneous refraction.
"I'll get the outfits," Steve said, opening a mirror-paneled door to a walk-in wardrobe.
Julie sat in one of the oval-backed chairs of blood-red Aubusson-woven velvet and gold.
Steve emerged moments later with a mobile clothes rack and selected a mythology in satin and tweed tailored suit. "Try this on."
Julie disappeared behind the aubergine velvet curtain. She pulled the golden, luxuriant chenille tassels on each end across to conceal herself.
The telephone rang:  "Hi, Steve Ever…Marie-Elise it’s all fine…Who? …Sandrine?  OK…Definitely and we can have all of them done by her…Yes, she’s very professional."
Julie stood ice-still and listened intently.
"Yes, have her do some test-shots then call me," Steve continued. "I expect to see her very soon, anyway… I will see you tomorrow, Marie-Elise."
Julie hurriedly pulled the jacket on over the gold-plated, flounced-lace shirt.
"Are you almost done in there, Julie?"
"I am ready," she said, stepping out in front of Steve as if she had heard nothing that would disturb her.
"Yes..." Steve pondered. "The color goes very nicely with your complexion but the sequins look cheap."
"Is that a fact?"
"That's the fact. Here." He picked up a black organza with Latino-chictress resonances of 80's Oscar de la Renta Manhattan ultra-monde gowns and handed it to her. Elementally, however, it was still conceived in the affirmative of Diane Vreeland's famed ultimatum: 'I want to see something I've never seen before'. "See if this one is more for your proto-figure."
If my figure wasn’t suitable then why was I booked? Julie wanted to inquire, but remembering Daniel’s word’s: ‘If you refused this booking your career in the modeling industry in New York and the rest of the country would have been a fait accompli,’ she resisted.
As she rustled behind the curtain into the outfit she could hear Steve light a cigarette and tap the lighter impatiently against the black enamel and gilding of his chair's armrest.
"Is this what you were looking for," Julie asked, sounding indifferent.
"Now that is a piece to incite the media. Luxury."
"Luxury?" The outfit may have looked stunning, but it had none of the comforts of luxuria.
"Yes and it may be vanity, but that 'evolutionary haute cut' is exquisite on you."
Steve stepped forward and did the molded-gold SE button on the bodice undone to reveal Julie’s vague cleavage. "Would you have any objections to having it open on the night?"
"I’d prefer not to do anything too revealing."
"It would be merely suggestive - nothing more. I did see-through last season along with virtually every other house in Paris and it is becoming passé."
"It takes no design to reduce people to unadorned flesh-inelegance."
Steve appeared taken aback, crossing his arms over his broad, masculine chest. "And you speak from experience?"
Julie glared defensively. "I’ve never done anything but couture."
"Now remove the suit and we’ll have a drink."
"A drink?" Julie asked uncertainly.
"You do drink don’t you?"
"Of course," Julie said in a vacant tone, as she pulled the curtain across in the changing alcove.
Steve went through the clothes that remained on the rack. "Have you been in Paris in recent years?"
Julie stooped, as she was about to slip on her own pants behind the velvet. A heartbeat jolted her nerves. "In Paris? I looked around last night on the Rue du Faubourg-St-Honoré ."
"I was there last night."
There was a perfectly anxious pause. "Really?"
"About seven," Steve said, observing Julie as she emerged, doing up her modular-gold and black Bulgari belt on her hipsters. "I didn’t see you."
"I was only there for a short time," she explained.
"Come out this way."
In the white drawing room Steve looked up to see Carmena putting on her jacket and picking up a Boucher-print umbrella.
"Are you leaving already?" Steve frowned. "I assumed that you could make us something."
Carmena shook her head. "No - my daughter she’s in the hospital. I tell you last night, you remember?"
"Yes, so you did," Steve bit his bottom lip. "Go then and I’ll see you tomorrow."
"Au revoir, Monsieur Ever, Mademoiselle Laing."
"Louis!…" Steve called to no reply. "I guess he’s gone too. There is usually at least one of them here at night…But that's the way it is…"
They paused to hear the door close after Carmena.
Steve turned back to Julie who was now seated on a Doirat, 18th century, palais-style seat premeditating an escape. She behind her into the blaze of gilding and frescoed, mythologically-transcendent Rococo in the grand salon.
"Maybe I should call the car?" she suggested.
"Have you eaten tonight?"
"No I haven’t," Julie replied, looking straight ahead.
He glanced back to where he’d last seen Carmena. "I expected that she would make us up something, but…"
Julie slung the strap of her Bottega Veneta woven leather handbag over her shoulder. "I’ll be fine."
"We could go to the Régence Plaza or Robuchon's Jamin. There’s a great restaurant down Friedland. You've never tried truffles until you’ve tasted theirs."
"I’ve never tried truffles at all."
"And you've never lived." A fleeting grin traversed Steve's face.
Julie looked at him, perplexed. "Do you take all of your models out to dinner?"
"If you believe Paris rumors."
Julie remained mystified. "To that restaurant?"
"Sometimes. This isn’t a date if that’s what you're thinking."
Julie was all innocence. "Of course not Mr. Ever."
"Are you going to cling to that chair all night or will we go now?"
There was a moment of hesitation before Julie stood with a resigned air, not chancing a look at Steve in case he saw the want in her eyes to get beyond the pale of psyche contortions and self-recrimination.
 
 

"So what have you been doing since you were in Paris last?" Steve asked, in the back of the car, again driving down the Champs Élysées.
"You know, modeling…and… Simply modeling."
Steve fixed her with penetrating eyes. "Where?"
"I did a Bill Blass show in New York two years ago and an Elizabeth Arden campaign."
"I like what Blass did with evening wear last season," Steve remarked. "You haven't done other places on the fashion circuit? Milan? London? Tokyo?"
"I did some magazine exposé work."
"Exposés…" Steve repeated with disbelief. "Couldn’t you find any work on the runway?  I would have thought that you’d never have to do exposé work. The shots Patrick Demarchelier did of you were definitely not exposé."
"Why?"
Steve paused as if deciding on the most provocative reply. "Well… You don’t look that ordinary. The sub-haute couture outlets never usually contract the Parisian or New York models."
"Yes," Julie breathed, monitoring Steve’s elusive changes in expression. It occurred to her how square and proportionate his jaw-line was.
"I've been in couturier purgatory," she admitted.
"By will?"
"By reality," Julie regretted. "But that's modeling."
"I guess that you might not have been the right face for the right image over the last few years. Have you continued with the same agent?  You know, even agents fall in and out of grace with the fashion houses."
Julie was disarmed. "No, I’m still at Divinus. I thought about changing but where was I going to go?"
"You could have chanced redivivus: Ford’s, Elite, Women, Storm, Metropolitan in Paris or New York…"
"Yes you’re the professional conscience that I never had."
"Maybe you've been able to get away with having no conscience when you've been at the adytum of the fashion world," Steve remarked poignantly.
Julie was thrown.
"I mean with such an unforgettable face," Steve elaborated, coolly. "And you’ve never been on the runway in Paris, or even scheduled to appear?"
She glanced out of the car window as they passed The Ritz in the Place Vendôme. "I’ve been in paris, but I wondered if modeling was where I wanted to be."
"You haven’t become a publicity addict after your past experience - I mean, in New York?"
Julie acquiesced self-consciously. "I don't have the desperation for media that other women do."
"No," Steve grinned. "You are twenty-five and you remain a very unique femme."
"And if I wasn’t you wouldn't have given me the time of day?"
"Professionally?"
"What is there other than 'professionally' between a model and a haute designer?"
"If you haven’t been on the catwalk what else have you done?" He laughed.
"That’s… I’ve been…" A slick retort eluded her. She looked diffidently into Steve’s face as if anticipating vicious criticism. "I’ve been… I’ve been doing some designs - of my own - and I think that I’m getting OK. I’m no couturière like Coco Chanel or Lolita Lempicka but I think that I have something. Vanese - a friend in my building - says that she’d wear them."
"She’d wear them?"
"Actually she has," Julie deliberated. "Out to stores and you know where people wear fashion."
"Yes," Steve exhaled. "I know exactly where and what they wear fashion. Believe me... What they wear, like their actions, are a mirror of the soul."
The car pulled into a narrow bay outside the Restaurant Le Merideus. Topiary and figurative urns lined the pavement, between the ornamental lampposts with bronze, ancien régime stylings of cherubim and fawns at their base.
"Maybe some time you can show me your designs," Steve suggested sidelong, as he veered out of the car.
They walked up the semi-circular steps. Outside on the terrace patrons ate at diminutive tables, absorbing the balmy night.
"Monsieur Ever," the maître’d enthused when he saw him. "I see that you have brought another friend. A table for two?"
How many ‘friends’ had Steve brought here, exactly? Julie wondered jadedly.
"That would be excellent," Steve said. He turned back to Julie answer Julie's questioning look. "This is a wonderful place to entertain business contacts."
The maître’d led them to a table in an inconspicuous position between potted palms. The glitter of the Baccarat fire crystal chandeliers enlightened the walls with a golden froth.
"Thank you, Antony," Steve smiled as the maître’d turned up the crystal stemware on the table.
"Champagne?" Antony solicited.
Steve noted the hesitation in Julie’s eyes. "Actually, Antony, I think that a cappuccino for me and-" He gestured to Julie.
"Just a glass of Perrier, thanks," Julie replied shortly.
Antony produced two menus and handed one to each of them.
"Thanks," Steve looked away from her.
Antony returned to the open monumental double-glazed and etched doors to receive two elderly, bejeweled women. When they garnered a table each draped their pine  marten and silver lynx-miniver, three-quarter and three-way coats - with satin collars, over the backs of the two vacant, aside chairs. Obviously these divas of fashion - 'rishi fashidivas' or 'modadivas' as Steve reputed them - wouldn't abide entrusting them to the coat-check girl.
Julie looked at the menu and quarter-gaped at the extortionate prices.
"What will you have?" Steve asked casually.
"Errr… Just the… Isn’t one hundred and thirty euros excessively extortionate for tajin de poissons de roche aux épices? Whatever the Hades that is."
Steve shrugged, entente blasé. "Forget the money, I've got it."
"I can’t let you do that."
"Of course you can," Steve decided.
Julie acquiesced.
"It looks like the models will do my designs well," Steve remarked.
"There were some very attractive models there today."
"Like who?" Steve asked intently.
"There was David."
Steve consulted the menu again. "Is he the Julie Laing type?"
"Excuse me?"
"You aren’t involved with anyone in New York are you?" Steve questioned, not looking up.
"I am..." Julie paused sleekly. "Like America I have the luxury of independence."
The garçon delivered their drinks and took their orders.
"I've gotten the impression during my time in Paris that models are always involved," Steve said unassumingly, as the waiter departed.
"And how did you arrive at that conclusion?"
Steve eluded her gaze as he waved to a Parisian acquaintance at another table. "He's something in the Paris media," Steve explained to her.
"The media?" Julie asked, still waiting for a reply to her question.
"The media," Steve repeated with a note of condemnation. "In the US and England they're verbiage about me is no more than rhapsody or diabolique. You put your name out there and they make it their obligation to define or defile you. The media is like an lover and seducer."
"Why?" Julie inquired, realizing the danger.
"Because when you genuinely think you know them, that's when you know you don't."
Julie looked at him without a word. Was he referring about her last premature departure from Paris?
"I would never even want to understand the media," Julie replied superficially.
During the remainder of dinner Julie deftly maneuvered their conversation to the two shows that would be occurring that week. She feared that if they spoke too deeply about her modeling history she'd say too much and Steve would remember their liaison all those years ago. That was the past and she was beyond it.
Steve insisted that Julie come into his townhouse for a coffee or mineral water before Sebastian was called to collect her.
Steve sat on a white, mink-like couch while Julie appraised the ink sketches in silver frames amidst the white and gold wall boiseries between two Lemarchand Empire-style armoires, one with lions' feet pedestals and the other with eagle-seraphim. The sketches were from Steve’s first collection; she recognized them because when Steve had taken her home to his garret four years ago they were on his pen and ink desk.
"You like them?" Steve ventured.
"If you hadn’t become a designer you could have been an artist."
Steve leaned forward. "A fashion designer is an artist."
"It must be quite an impressive thing to have power in Paris."
"If I had the power that I wanted things could be very different."
Julie recognized the double entendre inherent to Steve's words. "But you’ve got the power of a recognized face."
Steve stood, walked to her and put his finger under her chin, sensitively. "And you’re a highly well known face and body," he returned the compliment.
"I did some shots in Paris for…" She visibly blanched; she'd forgotten not to mention it.
"For Jësu Beaulieu?" Steve offered sedately.
"And you recognize me from that history?"
"No," Steve mused, turning away from her and sitting again. After a loaded moment he took her in with a piercing glance. "I remember you underneath me, when we were sexually involved four years ago. Your physique holds no secrets - that's why I booked you."
Julie stared, speechless. All of her suspicions about why Steve asked her to Paris returned with a vengeance. Was her modeling career at the top of his hit list?
A sardonic edge came into Steve's voice. "And now here you are again."
"It was a mistake," slipped from Julie’s mouth. "I don’t mean a bad mistake - I mean it happened - it-"
Steve held up his hands. "Don’t explain. That’s all history now."
"Absolutely," Julie concurred.
"Now you’re a name on the accounts and that’s the way you should and will be treated."
"That's the way that I'd like it."
Steve approached her with an exacting air. "Would you really, Julie?"
"I don’t see that there is any reason to deal with the history of our sex lives," she said, suppressing her breath.
"Sex lives…"
Julie put both hands on her svelte hips forcefully. "You know the details as well as I do."
"I never quite understood why you disappeared suddenly."
Julie cast a doubtful glare. "You don’t?"
"You left us quite a problem, replacing a model five hours before a show. It was only my second collection and it was vital to my career. But you knew that didn't you?"
Julie detected the wound in Steve’s voice; she had to be diplomatic to protect her booking. "Steve," she forced sincerely. "This is the reason why we should forget the past."
Steve looked away broodingly. "Maybe you’re right."
Julie collected her handbag from off another of the Louis XIV chairs. "Perhaps, if I am not required to do another fitting I’ll return to the hotel."
Steve turned away and swept the shock of hair over his forehead back through his fingers. "Perhaps you should. I still have some things to attend to at the atelier tonight."
Julie noticed Steve’s demur and eschewed his gaze and headed towards the hall. "Are you going to watch me walk out of here?"
She dialed for Sebastian to collect her.
"Alright…"
They walked on in silence, and Julie’s heart felt aflame in her chest like a French vestal Mary.
"I’ll see you soon, then," Steve said evenly.
Julie turned and glanced up at him. "If there is anything else that you need me for - involving the shows - don’t hesitate to call me at the hotel."
"I’ll come to you in person."
She stepped down the stairs towards the avenue. "That won’t be necessary."
"I think that it will," Steve replied. "This collection is some of my finest work. It would be a disaster if one of the models simply vanished."
"I will be there," she stated. "You have my word, I swear."
"Like you swore heaven and hell, Manhattan and Paris four years ago?"
Julie suppressed the urge to disclose all she knew about Steve and Sandrine back then, but this was business and nothing more. She’d stay cool and composed. "You booked a model and, for two shows, and you will have a model."
The car pulled into the driveway with its brilliant headlights blazing at them.
"Wednesday then," Steve persisted.
"You have my word," Julie repeated.
Steve said nothing as he watched Julie slip into the Jaguar XJ 6-door limousine.
Julie cast a last glance at Steve and an intense power of guilt cascaded over her.
The car quickly disappeared in traffic and Julie lost sight of Steve's townhouse.
To counter her feelings Julie remembered that summer day when she’d found how deceitful Steve Ever could be.
They had only been back from the Riviera for a day and she was staying at the Hôtel Grande Paon. She’d called Steve on a pay phone in the hotel lobby.
"I’d really like to see you some time today, Steve" she had gushed. "Can you do that today?"
"You could say that. Perhaps I’ll be finished soon. I have Helena St Beuve coming in for a fitting. She’s going to the Viennese Ball and she wants everything to be perfect."
Julie accepted it with serenity. "Then tonight, Steve?"
"I promise that it won’t take eternity," he gave Julie one last assurance.
With no one to call and no appointments to keep Julie boarded the metro to Havre Caumartin. She walked down to the Paris Opera. It was temporarily closed due to restoration work and after visiting the Casino de Paris up the Rue de Clichy she hailed a taxi and headed back to the Hôtel Grande Paon. She considered doing her tone-up when she got back or maybe practice walking for Steve’s upcoming show. As they passed the Avenue Montaigne Julie, in an impulsive state of mind, requested that the taxi driver take her to Steve’s studio apartment. Maybe he’d have finished by then and they could spend the rest of the day together. If not she’d always wanted to see the workings of an emergent Parisian fashion label and this would be a fine opportunity to do it. If her relationship with Steve continued then naturally she should understand his industry in terms of both design and business, and not simply from the perspective of the catwalk.
When she entered the atelier Steve's black, waif assistant, Adelaise, revealed that Steve Ever had already left.
With no idea where he was Julie went to the building in which he lived.
The taxi pulled up at the kerb just in time to see Steve take Sandrine by the hand and kiss her at the door before she departed with éblouissante eyes. She was significantly more than an appendage to his retinue of Eurotrash.
After he had collected Julie from the hotel that night they'd gone to one of Steve's favorite restaurants. She had pretended that she’d seen nothing. Afterwards, in Steve's studio Julie was shuffling through some of his images when she came to a series of nude, very Helmut Newton, images of Sandrine. Her streamlined bones and silhouette were vaguely blurred to give her flesh a consumer, labeled-article finish.
"Why are you looking at those?" Steve asked forbiddingly when he came up behind her.
"Sandrine naked? And what exactly are these for?" she had accused him.
Steve was incensed. "They were from her portfolio." He collected them up and put them in an envelope. "She must have left them here. She worked as an artist's model in Belgium and she was showing them to me. Some of the tailored garments like the double-belt-strapped satin and gauze chemises are diaphanous and I wanted some idea of how they would look on a woman of her dimensions."
"And you didn’t think that there was anything … explicit about her doing that?"
"To tell you the honest truth," Steve asserted, "I haven’t even looked at them yet."
Julie glanced at the ceiling. "Of course you haven't…"
Steve was perturbed. "You don’t trust me do you?"
"When you said that you have to make compromises with the person you are involved with when we were in Marseilles, is this what you were talking about?"
"No. That was then and this is something different. This is unambiguously sexual, gilt-edged glam, not come-erotica."
"You didn’t take these pictures?"
"Absolutely never," Steve replied adamantly.
Julie exhaled belligerently. "And you expect me to believe that?"
"Believe whatever you want."
Julie remained skeptical.
"Why don’t you believe me?"
She grinned, though cynicism encrusted her words: "I’ve only known you for six days. I know you like transience."
She left his studio shortly after promising to see him at the fashion show the next day where time and the decorative would transfuse.
With only hours before the show began Julie had got out of her taxi on the Rue de Babylone just in time to observed Steve and Sandrine entering the theatre and speaking in the confidential whisper that was Julie's peremptory  exodus from Paradiso. Julie was burning with jealousy and instructed the driver to deliver her back to the Hôtel Grande Paon.
She packed her cases and returned to New York.
These dark recollections depressed Julie and she tried to divert her focus from this cortège de histoire of mind.
...Julie resolved to call the Russian model, David, as soon as she returned to her hotel suite.
If Steve Ever assumed that she would be in Paris only to serve his purpose then he was a victim of grand delusions.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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