An assistant joins me instantly, greets me by name, and hands me a small clipboard and pencil. A decorator is asked to write down the item numbers he’s chosen and give them to the assistant, who goes to the dumbwaiter in the foyer and sends the list of selections down to the basement.
We call the kids in the basement who sort swatches “the elves” because, while the work may be drudgery, it definitely has its magic. Imagine handling fabric samples for ten hours a day when you love raw silk more than life itself! Such history in those little squares—some fabric designs as old as ancient Rome. When your stack of swatches appears in a crisp envelope on the shelf of the dumbwaiter, you can take it home and dream. I have several corkboards that become my template for a job. I arrange the swatches, paint chips, sample tiles, and photographs (for inspiration) that become the components of my design. When the board is filled, it’s a vibrant collage that becomes a work of art in its own right.
“B?” I hear the singsongy voice of Mary Kate Fitzsimmons, the young yet seasoned expert in Trims. “The bullion fringe arrived.” Mary Kate knows my weakness for the hand-braided silk fringe I use to trim my ottomans and draperies.
“What colors?” I try not to sound too excited.
“Get ready! There’s a dark blue, almost black, that shimmers like licorice. And a gold. I’ve never seen such a buttery gold in my life! But the best is a pumpkin color; it looks magnificent against ruby red. This batch is French.”
“No one does fine hand knotting like the French.” I sigh.
“Nope. They are the best.” She smiles at me while gently caressing a sheer voile with tone-on-tone embroidered accents. Mary Kate is a classic Irish lass with her oval face, small nose, delicate pale skin, the regulation smattering of adorable freckles, and a bow-shaped, sensual smile. Her teeth aren’t quite perfect, but the slight overbite is sexy. “The Italians are pretty good, though,” she says, flirting.
“It’s so hard to find the right fringe for an ottoman. I like my ottomans to be focal points, and if the fringe is stringy, it ruins the design completely.” I find myself falling into the deep blue, almost turquoise, of her eyes.
“I could listen to you talk about ottomans all day,” she purrs. “If you need anything, you know where to find me.” She turns to go up the stairs. For an Irish girl, she has a very Italian rear end. Funny the things you notice when you’re in the thrall of creativity.
By the time I work my way up to Trims, I am the last customer in the store. Even the assistants on the main floor have left, leaving me with my clipboard and pencil to make notes. This is when I love Scalamandré the most—it’s quiet and I can think. I compare colors and prints, choose gimps for chair details and fringes for draperies, and use my color wheel against the chroma of various wallpapers. Mary Kate looks up from her desk as I peruse some new silk tassels with hand-painted ceramic beads over the knots. Very Marrakesh.
“What are you working on these days?” she asks pleasantly.
“Several homes. You know how it is—when the spring comes, people see their rooms in bright sunlight, and suddenly everything looks shabby. I can’t work fast enough.”
“Not everyone is as busy as you are. Of course, you’re a superb decorator.”
“Thank you. I try.”
“You’re the real article. Not like the dilettantes who call themselves decorators because somebody told them they have a flair. That’s the first sign of a no-talent—they use the word ‘flair.’ ”
“Now, Mary Kate, I’m not going to compare myself to the competition.”
“Sorry. I have to deal with them all day, and they don’t know brocade from burlap. I get tired of it.”
Because I was hoping cousin Christina would come with me, I didn’t call any of my city friends in advance, and I’m hungry. “What are you doing for dinner?” I ask Mary Kate.
“Nothing.” She smiles.
“How about a plate of spaghetti?”
“Mmm. With a nice red wine and hot bread?” She opens her desk drawer and pulls out her purse.
We head to Le Chantilly, a cozy joint where designers lunch or sup between appointments. The chef is Italian, and though the place is better known for chops and chicken salad, he makes a hearty Bolognese sauce. Mary Kate has me order for both of us, and she proceeds to regale me with stories of the name designers who frequent Scali’s: Carleton Varney, Sister Parrish, Mario Buatta, Chessy Rayner, Mica Ertegun, Albert Hadley, David Hicks, and Mark Hampton—all the biggies.
As we swap stories, I notice that Mary Kate slides closer and closer to me in the booth. By the time we’re eating dessert—vanilla ice cream with hot-fudge sauce—I’m wedged in the curve of the banquette with Mary Kate pressing so close I can smell her hair.
“What’s your dream?”
“What do you mean?” In thirty-nine years, I don’t believe anyone has ever asked me that question.
“The decorators who come into Scali’s always have a big dream. It’s that one property they want to get their mitts on because they believe they’re the only decorator in the world who could do it justice. I’ve heard them all. The duplex penthouse of the Beresford on Central Park West is a big one. The Pabst mansion in Milwaukee. The White House. What’s your dream?”
“It’s a church.”
“Saint Patrick’s Cathedral?”
“No, no, the one in my hometown.”
“That’s so sweet.” Mary Kate, genuinely touched, puts her hand on my arm and nuzzles my ear with her nose.
“We should be going,” I tell her. Mary Kate goes off to the ladies’ room while I pay the bill. She meets me at the coat check.
“Are you seeing anyone?” Mary Kate asks as I help her into her coat.
“I’m a free bird,” I tell her. As soon as I say it, I feel a rush of guilt. I am, after all, slightly engaged to be married, even though it is more of an arrangement than a betrothal. After all, I rationalize, our mothers schemed for us to marry. The plan seems intact only because we’re both still single. But I could never explain Capri, Aurelia, and The Match to Mary Kate. We’ve had a good wine, great food, and scintillating conversation; why drag the evening down with details?
“Good news for me.” Mary Kate takes my arm, then snuggles her hand into my pocket. “You always smell so good. Clean, like cedar.”
“I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
“Do you find me attractive?” Mary Kate asks nonchalantly as we cross Third Avenue.
“You remind me of a Capodimonte rose,” I answer. “Whimsical, yet perfectly lovely.”
When we reach the corner, Mary Kate stops and faces me without taking her hand out of my pocket. She puts her free hand behind my neck, pulls me close, and kisses me. I have to say, the girl can kiss. It’s very sweet, not like getting swabbed by Ondine Doyle.
“I never showed you the bullion fringe,” she says with a smile.
“Scali’s is closed.”
“I have a key.”
The thought of being alone in Scalamandre’s, just Mary Kate and me and all that fabric, is irresistible. “What are we waiting for?” Mary Kate giggles as we run back to the townhouse. I feel delightfully conspiratorial. As a young man, I never rebelled or did anything to upset my parents, so sneaking into a locked professional building feels downright thrilling. Once we reach the front doors of the townhouse, Mary Kate looks up and down the street. When she sees no one familiar, she opens the front door with her key, lets me in, then locks the door behind us. She flips on the recessed lights over the staircase. I take her hand as we go up the stairs two at a time until we are in her department.
“Wait till you see it!” She slides a wall festooned with trims to the side, revealing rows of bullion fringe. “They used this at the Met on the fire curtain,” she says proudly. “I helped them choose. Go ahead. Feel.”
Mary Kate takes my hand and runs it over the long fringe, three feet of twisted silk braids hand-stitched to a matching embroidered gimp. The top knots and twists
are as sensual as fingers; they slip through my hands like Christmas tinsel. I am mesmerized by the way the streetlight plays on the pulls of the fringe. Suddenly I’m William Powell, Mary Kate is Myrna Loy, and Manhattan twinkles in the backdrop like candlelight on crystal. Oh, the ambience!
I am lost in the moment as I caress the soft fringe and imagine it under low lighting, swinging from the draperies of the bay window of the Shumans’ living room in Spring Lake. What a perfect accent to the rococo fantasia I’m creating for them!
Mary Kate grabs me from behind, running her hands from my waist to my lapels. She pulls off my jacket. “Mary Kate, darling, what are you doing?” I ask.
“Don’t talk,” she says softly. I hear buttons pop and zippers rip and the low whisk of her breath, rhythmic at first, then turning to a pant as though she is running to catch a train. She rubs furiously against my back and then climbs onto me like I’m Pikes Peak. I grip the fringe like a trapeze artist waiting to swing over the crowd in the circus tent and let Mary Kate take the lead. I feel as though I am waiting my turn, or perhaps awaiting instruction.
Mary Kate sucks on my neck in the same way she slurped down the Clams Casino appetizer at Le Chantilly. Then she peels off my shirt from behind. “God, your back!” she moans. I am proud of my shoulders and neck, and it has been said, when I was being fitted for custom shirts, that a hostess could serve dinner for eight on my back—it is that broad and toned, leading to a tight thirty-inch waist, of which I am equally proud. I seem to have broken the mold of box-shaped di Crespi men. Of course, I work at my musculature with a combination of brisk walks, light weights, and small portions.
Mary Kate thrusts against me, and I grip the silk-weave gimp for traction, like a lifeline, as she has her way with me. The girl is everywhere! Like a hairy spider in a horror movie, she moves over and under me, around and behind. This little speck of a thing works me over like pie dough, hitting pulse points and tender spots with precision. This is a woman who worships at the altar of the male form! She compliments every muscle and ripple as she goes.
And yet, for me, with all its hoopla and mystery, the sex act boils down to an exercise in friction. I never feel very much emotionally when in the throes of it, and I often wonder why. I know for most of the world making love really means something, but to me it has never been the ultimate human experience. Yes, it can be relaxing and pleasant, but as the great minds point out, pleasure is simply pleasure, it is in no way joy. Creativity is bliss to me. I find the exchange of an idea, the collaboration over a common goal, and the art of conversation far more satisfying than the huff and puff of The Act. “I’m sorry, did you say something?” I ask Mary Kate.
“I said, you’re fantastic!” she whispers, then goes back to the job at hand.
I have been told that I’m a great lover, but I don’t do anything in particular, I simply hold on. I play captain of the ship, keeping the boat steady with a firm hand on the tiller when the motion gets intense. In any event, Mary Kate Fitzsimmons seems so completely satisfied when she’s had her fill that she collapses in a clump, the tassels forming a canopy over her sweet head.
“Oh, B,” she whispers.
“Well?” I vamp, never knowing what to say to a naked woman who is looking at me as though I could change the weather.
She laughs. “I don’t know what happened to me. The wine. The spaghetti. The fringe.”
“The hot-fudge sauce!” I snap my fingers as though I just found the answer.
“No, no. It’s you.” She smiles.
“Thank you.” What else can I say? She’s giving me too much credit.
Mary Kate loops her red hair into a bun on the nape of her neck. “I really like Italian men. It’s the way you look at a woman.”
I think of my father, who used to look at my mother’s face as though it was a beanbag. “What do you mean?”
“It’s awe,” she says earnestly as she puts on her blouse and buttons it up. “You look at women like we know something.” She stands without a shred of modesty or shame and looks for her skirt. Her pink skin, saturated in gold streetlight, looks like polished marble.
I don’t know what to say, so I simply smile and step back into my pants.
“But you know what I really, really like about you in particular, Bartolomeo?” She takes my hand. “You don’t ruin it with a lot of talk.”
We return the fringe to the display wall, she turns out the lights, and we walk arm in arm down the winding staircase, which gives me a slight case of vertigo. I hold on to her on one side and the rope railing on the other. “Wait. I have to give you something.” What an odd thing for a girl to say after sex. Mary Kate disappears into the back showroom, leaving me in the foyer. She returns quickly with a book.
“Here.” She gives me the book An Outline of European Architecture by Nikolaus Pevsner. “This will give you lots of ideas for your church.”
“Thank you.” I kiss her and tuck the book under my arm.
Once outside, I hail a cab, help Mary Kate into the backseat, and stuff some money into the driver’s hand, instructing him to wait until she is safely inside her building in Sunnyside, Queens. She rolls down the window and leans out. The wisps of her red hair flutter against the yellow taxi like feathers.
“The bullion you liked,” she says.
“Yes?”
“It’s number 1217.” She smiles sweetly.
The taxi drives away, its red brake lights disappearing as it moves toward the East River Drive. I button my coat against the chill of the night air. I miss Mary Kate for a moment. I miss her creamy skin that smells like vanilla saltwater taffy. But the pang of sadness quickly fades as I walk up Third Avenue. Let’s face it, the best part of sex is when it’s over. I like to make love, say good-bye, and then be alone to reflect. Of course I always say a prayer that I won’t rot in hell for having done the deed in the first place. Guilt after sex is the espresso after dessert.
I don’t know what kind of Catholic Mary Kate is, but somehow she avoided the modesty and shame pill the rest of us took. Good for her. Perhaps Mary Kate has the right idea—making love is absolutely ordinary and as delicious as a bowl of ice cream. Why can’t I let it be that? Why can’t I learn from a bright girl with legs so strong she could crack walnuts between her knees? Something more to think about on the drive home, but first I need a nightcap.
I walk over to Gino’s, a decorator hangout near Bloomingdale’s, for one of their Manhattans, heavy on the sweet vermouth, just the way I like them. I feel a twinge in my left calf, similar to the tug one feels after riding a horse. I slip onto a bar stool and place my order, propping my foot on the brass rail to relax my leg. I open Pevsner’s book, falling into the glorious illustrations of baroque architecture.
“Somebody has a charley horse,” a voice says from behind me.
“Too much walking,” I lie.
“If you say so.”
I turn to this nosy yet perceptive stranger. How exotic she is, and how familiar she looks! Her jet-black hair reaches to her waist like the lushest silk fringe. She wears a midnight-blue sari wrapped close to her trim waist, bound by intersecting streamers (!) of gold lamé. Her shoes are flat gold sandals, the same color as her enormous hoop earrings and bangle bracelets, which take up most of her forearms. While she is formidably bold in her fashion choices, she has a charm to her that is completely accessible.
“Do I know you?” she asks.
“I’m Bartolomeo di Crespi.”
“Don’t know the name. Are you ASID?”
“Yep. How could you tell?”
“Eydie Von Gunne.” The beautiful woman extends her hand. I take it, admiring her firm grip. Then she does a delightful thing. She shakes her wrist so the many gold bangles fall over her hand like gold lassos. Her arms are long and thin and remind me of one of those fertility goddesses with many arms you see in Tibetan art. “Your suit is a dead giveaway. Charcoal-gray with magenta pinstripe. Only a decorator would go for such a daring choice. What are y
ou working on?”
“A church.” Why am I telling her this? I don’t even have the job yet; why am I trying to impress her?
Eydie smiles. “Europe or America?”
“New Jersey.”
“Gothic, Romanesque, or modern?”
“Gothic.”
“My specialty is churches. I know them like the back of my hand.”
“You don’t look like a cloistered nun.”
“Nope, I never took the veil. Unless it was in a harem, of course.” She snaps open her evening bag, a velvet clutch covered in peacock feathers, and hands me her card:
EYDIE VON GUNNE—ARCHITECT & HISTORIAN
17 Park Avenue
555-1127
“If you ever want to talk church, give me a call.”
“I’ll do it,” I promise her.
“Any guy who reads Pevsner at a bar is my kind of guy.” She smiles.
“You know what I love the most about New York City?”
“Let me guess. The lake at Central Park, the grand staircase at the Met, or the Milbank Mansion on West Tenth Street?”
I stop her. “No, although that’s a fantastic list.”
“What, then?” She seems truly interested in my answer.
“I love that I’m sitting here alone reading a book and you said hello.”
She shrugs. “I like that suit.”
A tall, chiseled Cary Grant type with white hair comes up to the bar and puts his arm around her. “Ready, hon?” he says in her ear.
“Uh-huh.” She tilts her head and nuzzles his cheek. The maître d’ pulls Mr. Chiseled away for a moment, so I am not formally introduced.