Lipstick Jungle

  Victory thought about this for a moment, frowning. “Well, why don’t they decide to make me a member?”

  “Doesn’t happen like that,” Lyne said, smiling. “It’s a private club. No women and no minorities. You might not like it, but that’s the way it is.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?”

  “How?” Lyne asked nonchalantly, secure in his position. “It’s not an official organization. The government can’t regulate how you pick your friends.” He shrugged dismissively. “For these guys, women are people you fuck, not people you do business with.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Is it?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “That’s the way it is, though. When are women going to understand that you can’t change the way men think?” He stood up, rattling the ice cubes in his glass. “Speaking of which . . .” he said suggestively.

  She emitted a short laugh. If he thought he was going to get her into bed after that little speech, he was wrong. She got up and went to the phone, and asked the butler for another round of vodka tonics.

  “Seriously, Lyne,” she said. “What if I wanted to make a billion dollars? How would I do it?”

  “Why would you want to make a billion dollars?” Lyne asked, raising his eyebrows in amusement.

  “Why would anyone? Why would you?” Victory asked.

  “Because it’s there,” he said passionately. “If you’re a man, it’s the ultimate thing you can do in life. It’s like being a king or a president. Except you don’t need to be born into it and you don’t need to be elected. You don’t have to convince a bunch of losers to like you enough to elect you.”

  Victory laughed. “But you do, Lyne, you just said so yourself. You said the only way to become a billionaire was to get accepted into the club.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “But we’re talking about maybe ten people. If you can’t get ten people to support you, you really are a loser.” He paused. “Can we go to bed now?”

  “In a minute,” she said, studying his face. What would it be like to be Lyne Bennett? she wondered. To be so confident about your place in the world, to feel like you were entitled to take whatever you wanted . . . entitled to think as you pleased, to live in a world where no one ever imposed limits on what you might do and how much money you were allowed to make . . .

  “Darling,” she said, walking past him and deliberately sitting down on a maroon silk-covered ottoman, “what if I wanted to make . . . well, not a billion dollars—obviously I’d never get into your club. But several million, say . . .”

  “What have you got?” Lyne asked, beginning to take the discussion seriously. Lyne could always be diverted by talking about business, and sometimes Victory used this as a device to joggle him out of a sour mood. But this time, she really wanted the information.

  “I’m not saying it couldn’t happen,” he said. “But it’s like Monopoly, exactly like it, which is something women never seem to understand. It’s a game. You need properties the other guys want—and I’m not talking about Mediterranean Avenue either. You need Park Place or Boardwalk . . . That’s what I’ve got, you see? In the cosmetics business, I own Park Place.”

  “But you don’t actually own Belon Cosmetics, Lyne,” she pointed out. “Do you?”

  “That’s semantics,” he said. “For all intents and purposes, I do. Not the whole thing, but a decent amount. Thirty percent. That also happens to be a controlling interest.”

  “But you didn’t start the game owning Park Place,” Victory said, smiling. “You’ve said it yourself: You started with nothing. So you must have had Mediterranean Avenue once.”

  “Well, I did,” he said, nodding. “I started with a distribution business years ago, when I was just out of college in Boston. I distributed a small line of cosmetics that some old lady cooked up in her kitchen. Of course, that old lady was Nana Remmenberger and that face powder became Remchild Cosmetics . . .”

  Victory nodded eagerly. “But don’t you see, Lyne? I’ve already got my Mediterranean Avenue . . . my company, Victory Ford Couture . . .”

  “No offense, but that’s small potatoes, Vic,” he said. “Fashion businesses like yours, well, they operate on a shoestring and go out of business just as fast.”

  “But I’ve been in business for over twenty years.”

  “Have you?” he said. “What are your profits? One, maybe two hundred thousand a year?”

  “We made two million dollars last year.”

  He looked at her with renewed interest. “That’s enough to get investors to bite. To get someone like me to put some cash behind you so you could increase production and sell more clothes.” He finished his drink and put his glass down on the side table as if he now really was going to go to bed. “Of course, the first thing I’d try to do, what any good businessman would do, is to make the best deal for himself and the worst possible deal for you. In other words, I’d try to hobble you,” he said, slipping his arm around her shoulders to lead her out of the room. “Basically, I’d want to take your name and take away all of your power. And it wouldn’t be because you were a woman. I’d do exactly the same thing to any man who came to me with that kind of proposition.”

  Victory looked up at him and sighed. And that, she thought, was exactly why she’d never do business with him.

  She squiggled out of his grasp and stopped in front of the small elevator that was across the landing from the staircase that led down to Lyne’s master bedroom suite. “But surely not everyone’s as cutthroat as you, Lyne,” she said teasingly. “There must be some way to get investors without giving up all my control.”

  “ ’Course there is,” he said. “If you can make people think that the company is about to take off—make them think it’s an opportunity to make money without a lot of risk—then you call the shots.”

  “Thank you, darling,” she said, pressing the button for the elevator.

  “You’re not sleeping over?” he asked.

  Victory smiled and shook her head, thinking that that was his one concession to delicacy—he called spending the night “sleeping over,” like they were little kids. “Shouldn’t,” she said apologetically. “I’ve got an early flight to Dallas in the morning.”

  “Take my plane,” he said, pressing her. “No one’s using it tomorrow. You’ll get there faster. You’ll save at least two hours . . .”

  The offer was tempting, but she didn’t want to get in the habit of using Lyne for his private plane—or for anything else, for that matter.

  “Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I prefer to get there under my own steam.”

  Lyne looked insulted—he was probably more offended that she wasn’t going to take his plane than by the fact that she wasn’t going to sleep with him—and then he said coldly, “Suit yourself.”

  He turned on his heel as if she were an employee he had just dismissed, and walked toward the stairs without a word of good-bye, leaving her to show herself out.

  And the next morning, when the plane to Dallas was delayed on the runway for two hours due to air traffic control, she momentarily wished she had taken Lyne up on his offer of sex and his private jet. It would have made her life so much easier. Why should she have to sit on a runway for two hours with nothing to eat or drink, her fate in the hands of other people’s bad organization, if she didn’t have to? But Lyne’s offer would only have made her life smoother in the short run, she reminded herself sternly. She knew how easy it was to get used to Lyne’s style of living, and to get sucked into thinking that you were special and couldn’t live any other way. And from there, it was a slippery slope. Not just because that lifestyle could be snatched away in a second, but because of what you found yourself willing to do in order to keep it—like making the man your priority instead of your work.

  Of course, that was probably what Lyne liked about her—the fact that she refused to put him before her work. She’d been convinced, once again, after that evening in which she’d turned down the offe
r of his plane, that she wouldn’t hear from him again, but Lyne was like a burr, she just couldn’t shake him. He seemed to have no recollection of those unpleasant moments between them—either that, or they simply didn’t affect him. In any case, he’d called two days later as if everything was fine, and had invited her to his house in the Bahamas for the weekend. She was exhausted, and figuring it would be nice to get away for a couple of days, she’d decided to take him up on his offer of a relaxing weekend . . .

  Ha! “Relaxing weekend” was the biggest overstatement of the year, she recalled now, motioning to Ms. Smith to show her the diamond clip earrings. Lyne’s house on exclusive Harbour Island was beautiful, of course, with, as Lyne put it crudely, “hot and cold running servants.” Susan Arrow and her husband, Walter, had come as well, and on Friday afternoon, at five p.m., the four of them had piled into Lyne’s SUV for the ride to Teterboro Airport, where they took Lyne’s Learjet to the Bahamas. Victory had been shocked when she’d gotten in the car and found that Lyne’s assistant, Ellen, was coming too. This should have been a tip-off. The fact that Lyne refused to give Ellen two days off because he didn’t want to have to make his own arrangements over the weekend was not a good sign.

  “If you work for me, it’s a twenty-four-seven job. Isn’t that right, Ellen?” Lyne said in the car on the way to the airport.

  “That’s right, Lyne, we’re always working,” Ellen said pleasantly.

  Lyne smiled, looking like a proud parent. “What do I always say about you, Ellen?”

  Ellen caught Victory’s eye. “That I’m like a wife, but better.”

  “That’s right,” he exclaimed. “And do you want to know why?” he asked Victory.

  “Sure,” Victory said, beginning to wonder if this weekend was going to be a mistake.

  “Because she can’t ever ask me for alimony.”

  Ellen gave Victory a look.

  “I always tell Ellen that I’ve got to treat her right or her hubby’s going to beat me up,” Lyne said, jiggling Victory’s hand to make sure she was paying attention. “He’s a cop.”

  “He would just have you arrested,” Ellen said, correcting him. “And his name is Bill. Lyne never remembers his name,” she said to Victory. Victory nodded knowingly. In the few months she’d been dating Lyne, she and Ellen had become quite friendly. Lyne, Ellen explained, was a huge pain in the butt, but she put up with him because he had a good heart—and the enormous salary he paid her allowed her to send her two little boys to private school. The idea being that maybe someday they’d be rich themselves. Just like Lyne.

  “That’s why I pay you $250,000 a year,” Lyne said. “So I don’t have to remember names.”

  “He remembers the names of anyone who’s important, though,” Ellen pointed out.

  “Aren’t men wonderful?” Susan Arrow sighed a little later when they were in the Learjet. “That’s what we women can’t forget. Can you imagine how boring the world would be without men? Frankly, I don’t know what I would do without my darling Walter.”

  At that moment, “darling Walter,” who was at least sixty years old, was in a heated discussion with Lyne about the pros and cons of the latest hernia operation.

  “What are you women talking about?” Lyne demanded, turning around in his seat and patting the top of Victory’s head.

  “Only about how wonderful you men are,” Victory said.

  “I know I’m wonderful, but I’m not sure about Lyne,” Walter said, making a joke.

  “You know what they say: All men are assholes and all women are crazy,” Lyne cracked.

  “Lyne, that absolutely isn’t true,” Victory objected. “Most women are not crazy, until some man makes them insane. On the other hand, with the exception of Walter, I’d have to agree with you on the asshole part.”

  Lyne smiled and elbowed Walter in the ribs. “That’s what I love about her. She’s always got a smart comeback.”

  “And I always will,” Victory said.

  “I like a woman who’s herself,” Walter said. “Like Susan. She’s always herself.”

  “Even if people do say she’s a bitch,” Lyne said teasingly.

  “Lyne Bennett, I’m not half as bad as you are,” Susan retorted. “So what does that make you?”

  “Yeah, but I get away with it because I’m a man,” Lyne said dismissively. He opened his paper. What the hell am I doing here? Victory thought.

  * * *

  THE MINUTE THEY ARRIVED at the house, Ellen distributed “The Schedule.” It ran as follows:

  Friday

  7:30 p.m. dinner

  9:00 p.m. Movie screening

  11:00 p.m. Lights out!

  Saturday

  7:30-8:30 breakfast in sunroom

  8:45 tennis

  10:00 a.m. tour of island

  12:45 p.m. lunch—pool gazebo

  1:30 p.m. boating event

  And so forth, with activities planned right up until their departure for the airport at five p.m. on Sunday. “I’m glad to see that you’re operating in fifteen-minute increments now,” Walter remarked dryly.

  “I’d like to know just one thing,” Victory said. “When are we scheduled to go to the bathroom? And is there any bathroom we’re supposed to use in particular?”

  Susan and Walter found this extremely funny. Lyne did not.

  It all came to a head on Sunday morning, when Victory found herself, once again, sitting on a wicker chair in the tennis gazebo, watching Lyne play a vicious set of tennis against the local pro, having decided the day before that neither she, Walter, nor Susan was good enough to play with him. Somehow, Susan and Walter had managed to avoid this activity, and had snuck off for a walk on the beach (or maybe for just a much needed lie-down in their room), but Lyne had insisted that Victory watch him. Just like an actual girlfriend. She thought she was going to scream with boredom. She knew there were women who would have been perfectly content, thrilled even, to be watching their billionaire boyfriend murder a tennis ball, but she wasn’t one of them.

  What the hell was she doing there? she wondered, for the millionth time.

  She got up and went to the phone, punching the button for the “concierge.” Only Lyne Bennett would have a concierge in his private home in the Bahamas, she thought with annoyance.

  “Yes, ma’am?” a polite male voice asked.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you, but do you have a pen?” Victory asked.

  “Of course, ma’am. Right away.”

  Victory sat back down. Lyne really wasn’t a very good tennis player, but like most men, you couldn’t tell him that. He tried to hit the ball so hard that nearly every other one went over the fence. This wasn’t a problem, though, as Lyne had two ball boys to retrieve them.

  “Here you go, ma’am,” a smiling-faced man said, holding out a silver pen to her. “Will this do?”

  “That’s lovely, thanks,” Victory said, thinking a Bic pen would have done just fine. But Bic pens weren’t good enough for Lyne Bennett . . .

  She took out “The Schedule,” which she and Susan and Walter had taken to carrying with them everywhere, and referring to as often as possible, in order to annoy Lyne. She turned it over, and on the back, wrote:

  “Top ten things I would do differently if I were a billionaire instead of Lyne . . .”

  She paused for a moment. Where to begin?

  “Number one,” she wrote. “Do not make the help wear white cotton gloves. It’s creepy, and disrespectful to the help.

  “Number two: Do not make a schedule and force guests to adhere to it.

  “Number three: And what about that refrigerator stocked with Slim-Fast? What kind of weirdo assumes guests want Slim-Fast for breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack? Plus, what is the point of being a billionaire if you can’t eat real food?

  “Number four: Do not make guests take a shower before they enter the pool. If you’re so worried about guests’ cleanliness, why did you invite them?

  “Number five: Do not spend
mealtimes on the phone doing business, especially when you have forced guests to have lunch with local real estate agent.

  “Number six: Do not attempt to kill guests.”

  She paused, and then underlined the word “kill,” remembering yesterday’s “boating event.” Boating debacle was more like it. Lyne had insisted not only on showing off his new cigarette boat, but in driving it himself. And then attempting to race a small local fishing boat. Afterward, Susan swore she would never return to the island.

  Victory looked up at Lyne, who was standing in the middle of the court, squeezing a tennis ball in his hand. His face was red—he looked as if he was about to have a heart attack. “This ball is dead!” he screamed.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the ball boy said. “I just opened a new can—”

  “Well, open another one!” He threw the ball onto the ground, where it bounced up and over the net.

  “Number seven,” Victory wrote. “Make an attempt to behave like a normal human being. Even if you’re not.”

  And just at that moment, her cell phone rang. She looked at it, praying that it was Nico or Wendy.

  “Victory?” Muffie Williams demanded in her spidery voice. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the Bahamas . . . with Lyne,” Victory said. There was something in Muffie’s tone that suddenly made her feel guilty about being away and taking time off.

  “Can you get to Paris tomorrow morning for a meeting? It’s with B et C,” Muffie said.

  Victory glanced over at Lyne. He was no longer on the court—one of his errant tennis balls having dislodged a bees’ nest, he was now waving his racket furiously and screaming as he ran across the lawn, followed by the tennis pro and the two ball boys.

  “No problem, Muffie,” she said into the phone. “I’m just leaving.”

  Lyne was furious.

  “I’m not cutting my weekend short,” he fumed.

  “No one’s asking you to,” she said, throwing her things into her overnight bag.

  “If they’re that desperate to have a meeting with you, they can wait until Tuesday.” He was probably right, but he didn’t understand how desperate she was to get out of there.