Gilt, p.7
Gilt, page 7
“Hey, Alvie. Do you know where those brass candlesticks went? I’m going through this inventory and it says they haven’t sold but . . .”
Alvie pulled out a metal folding chair tucked behind a pile of boxes and sat across from her. She was a pretty young woman, with an oval face defined by a cleft chin and long eyelashes. She’d bleached the ends of her dark curls blond and wore her hair in two low bunches. Her sunny demeanor added to her attractiveness, but today the look on her face was serious.
“Is everything okay?” Celeste said.
“I have to give notice.”
“Wait—you’re quitting?” It was the first week of June. This was their busiest time of year, and the three months that made their entire balance sheet work had just begun. Even if she was able to find someone else to hire—an impossible task since the stores and restaurants had already soaked up all the job-seekers like a sponge—they wouldn’t be Alvie. She’d spent so much time with Celeste and Jack, even living in one of their guest rooms for most of last summer, that she knew and loved the shop in a deep way that was irreplaceable.
“Maud needs me at the restaurant.”
Celeste sighed. She should have seen this day coming. Alvie and Maud met at Jack’s cousin’s Fourth of July party last summer. Alvie was instantly smitten with the much older woman and agonized for days after that Maud didn’t take her seriously.
“Don’t get involved,” Jack warned. But Celeste, after checking that Maud’s and Alvie’s charts were aligned, couldn’t resist talking Alvie up to Maud and nudging them together, even saying to Maud, “You know, there was an even bigger age gap between you and Sylvie.”
Maud moved to P’town in the late 1970s along with her girlfriend, Sylvia Shuttle of Sandwich, Massachusetts. They both started as dishwashers at the Flagship, a restaurant made famous by their former co-worker Anthony Bourdain’s bestseller Kitchen Confidential, where the restaurant was dubbed “the Dreadnaught.” In fact, it was Maud’s short-lived breakup with Sylvia—and Sylvia’s subsequent quitting of her job—that brought Anthony Bourdain in as a replacement and launched one of the most storied culinary careers in recent memory.
Celeste wouldn’t be so bold as to claim credit for Maud and Alvie’s romance (by Labor Day weekend, they were inseparable), but facts were facts. Making this current situation all the more irksome. Maud could have at least given her some warning.
“I really wish you’d given me more notice,” Celeste said.
Alvie nodded in remorse. “I wasn’t planning on this. But Maud asked me to move in with her—she wants us to really share our lives together. And that includes the restaurant and the work. I mean, you and Jack are a huge inspiration for me in that way. I promise I’ll stay until you find a replacement.”
Celeste smiled at her, feeling bad for only thinking of herself. “I’m glad you two are happy. It’s okay, we’ll figure it out.”
Alvie thanked her for understanding and scampered back out to the sales floor. Celeste sighed, reaching for her phone to send off a text to Jack when her computer pinged with an incoming email. Another customer inquiry could wait. But a quick glance told her this one wasn’t from a customer. It was from her niece, Gemma Maybrook.
Alvie and the store were immediately forgotten.
16
Elodie awoke to Pearl’s wet kiss, sun streaming through the flimsy curtains. Disoriented, she wondered if her dog walker was on the way and then realized with a start that she was still on Cape Cod, not Park Avenue. She was the dog walker.
She sat up quickly, checking the time. It was seven in the morning.
“Up we go,” she said, pulling a button-down shirt over her pajamas and slipping into a pair of Tory Burch ballerina flats. She pushed back her hair with a headband and picked up Pearl. The solidness of her little dog body never failed to make Elodie smile. So much spirit packed into that compact corporeal form.
She carried Pearl down the hall, down the stairs, and outside to the deck, where she knelt to fasten the leash. Behind her, the screen door opened and she turned to find the man who’d been working in the boat rental booth the day before.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
He broke into a wide grin. “I live here,” he said. “At least, for the summer I do. Tito Barros. Pleasure to meet you. I assume the room worked out?”
“Uh, yes. It did. Thank you.”
Pearl barked and only then did Elodie notice a dog by the man’s feet. Another black pug.
“And who’s this?” Tito said, reaching out to rub Pearl’s head.
“This is Pearl. And yours?”
“Bart,” he said. “I’m taking him to the beach. You’re welcome to join us.”
“I’m just walking her,” Elodie said.
“All the dog parents around here go to the beach at the West End Parking Lot just down the way. Come along.”
Well, why not? It was a beautiful day out, and the beach would probably be a great place to find someone she could hire to do this work for her.
Elodie followed Tito down Commercial, cyclists whirring by in both directions. Couples strolled past holding takeout coffee and eating pastries out of paper bags.
They passed a gated Coast Guard station before the street curved even farther left toward the water. On this end of Commercial, the shops gave way to classic Cape Cod houses lining both sides of the street. The lawns were lush with green grass and colorful hydrangea bushes. A few front yards had a more untamed aesthetic with thickets of wildflowers.
“So what brings you to P’town?” Tito said.
“Business.” She’d been distracted up until that moment from thinking about the argument with Celeste.
“What business is that?”
“Jewelry.”
“Interesting,” Tito said, though his tone of voice suggested just the opposite.
Again she wondered: What could she do to coerce her sister into signing the paperwork? Elodie had long ago learned from her father that everyone had a price. And she was willing to do whatever it took to figure out Celeste’s. In the meantime, she wanted more luxurious accommodations.
“So you work at the boatyard?” she said. He nodded.
“It’s the family business,” he said. “Started by my grandfather. It’s changed a lot over the years. Used to be repairing and building fishing boats but eventually evolved to a mooring field. And we have the boat rentals—you can rent kayaks, pontoon boats, et cetera. Last year we started seal tours.”
“Interesting,” she said—about as enthusiastically as he’d responded to her work.
“It’s seasonal. And it’s flexible enough for me to continue to do volunteer animal rescue on the side.”
“Animal rescue?”
“You’d be surprised how much trouble dolphins can get themselves into.”
They passed a small café called Relish, and Pearl relieved herself.
“How far is this beach?” Elodie said.
“Almost there.”
On the corner to their right, Elodie noticed an extraordinary white clapboard, octagon-shaped house with a widow’s walk.
“That’s a fantastic house,” she said.
“It was built by a whaler in 1850,” Tito said. “It’s had as many lives as a cat: Inn. Restaurant. Retirement home. Today it’s a privately owned house.”
Now, that was the type of place she could settle in to for a few weeks.
“Do you know anyone else who has a place like that to rent out?”
“For next summer?” Tito said.
“No—for the next few weeks.”
He looked at her like she was from another planet. “This season is booked. I rented out my house back in February. That’s why I’m staying at my cousin’s. And the only reason Lidia had a room for you is because her daughter decided not to come home from school for the summer.”
They reached a parking lot, and beyond it, a sprawling view of the bay and a narrow stretch of beach.
“Lidia’s your cousin?”
“No. Lidia’s husband, Manny,” he said.
They cut through the parking lot to a bench at the edge of the beach. Cement stairs led down to the sand.
“I’ll have to wait here. I can’t ruin these shoes,” she said. She sat on the bench and Tito offered to bring Pearl down to the beach and let the dogs off their leashes.
“Is that allowed?” she asked.
“Sure. But no dogs on Race Point Beach. And I’d think twice about Herring Cove because of the coyotes.”
Coyotes?
Tito was already heading down the steps with both dogs. She sat back, watching Pearl hesitate before gingerly trotting around after Bart. She could tell she was both confused by the wide-open space and thrilled by it. The best she got in New York was a crowded pen at the Central Park dog run.
When she was satisfied that Pearl was okay, Elodie turned her attention to a pair of men launching a kayak into the water. A small bird landed on the bench beside her, tilting its brown head quizzically before taking flight once again.
Elodie inhaled, realizing that, as frustrated as she was, there were far worse places to be stuck for a short while. She had no doubt she’d prevail with Celeste. It was just a matter of how long it would take.
Gemma, however, was another story. She’d been noncommittal—disinterested, even—on the phone. If she didn’t take the bait and run out to Provincetown, it would be time for a plan B. But Elodie didn’t think it would come to that.
People always took the bait.
17
Constance, 1993
The times were changing, and not for the better; Constance Pavlin would never step out of the house looking like the models in the pages of that month’s Vogue. More than being in poor taste, all that anti-glamour, minimalist, grungy heroin-chic was bad for business.
“This will pass,” she assured her husband. After thirty years of marriage, she’d ridden the highs and lows of Pavlin & Co long enough to know that trends—no matter how good or how onerous—were temporary. Her husband seemed to have lost sight of that.
Alan had been in a bad mood all day. Still, they’d gone to the party. She wore Azzedine Alaïa—the one designer who she felt hadn’t yet lost his mind, unlike the house of Perry Ellis, who’d hired that young Marc Jacobs kid. The Alaïa was a form-fitting red sleeve of a dress. She’d barely eaten all week in anticipation of wearing it, but even her success in pouring herself into the unforgiving frock hadn’t put a smile on Alan’s face.
At fifty-five, Alan Pavlin had aged into a distinguished head-turner of a man. The boyish, uncertain person she’d married all those years ago had finally come into his own. It wasn’t just that he was more confident; the good looks of his youth had been honed by the passing years into something sharp and deeply attractive. And she wasn’t the only woman who’d noticed; all night long, that opportunist Betsy Laurent-Leeds had been making eyes at him. Alan, to his credit, paid little attention. But he did drink too heavily, which was very much out of character. His father, Elliot, had been a big drinker. It wasn’t uncommon for Scotch to appear at the lunch table. And Alan made a point of doing everything differently than Elliot.
Alan’s father, second-generation president and CEO of Pavlin & Co, the family’s eponymous jewelry company founded in 1919, had always treated Alan more as a child than a business partner. Two years after his father’s death, Alan was still trying to prove himself. But Elliot cast a long shadow over Pavlin & Co. After all, how did one compete with the man who single-handedly created the entire market for diamond engagement rings?
Elliot, in his day, faced the same sort of downturn Alan was grappling with now. In the 1940s, diamond sales plummeted. Post–World War II, expensive jewelry suddenly seemed frivolous. Faced with a crisis, he conducted a marketing survey, and what he found surprised him: Middle-class women preferred that their husbands spend their money on something practical, like a washing machine. Diamonds, it appeared, were only for the very wealthy.
Elliot immediately recognized the challenge in front of him: how to make diamonds a necessity instead of a luxury. To do this, he knew he would have to appeal to customers’ emotions. And what was the strongest emotion? Love. What occasions marked true love? Marriage and engagement. A rite of passage millions and millions of women experienced each year. And yes, rings were involved. But at the time, it might be a family heirloom opal or a small moonstone.
Until Elliot reminded everyone, with a dramatic and visually captivating ad campaign, that the “great” love story between Archduke Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy in 1477 began with the first-ever faceted diamond engagement ring. And the classic “A Diamond Says Love” campaign was born, changing the industry—and the very concept of engagement—forever.
Elliot had endless strategies to get the rings in front of the public, including gifting diamond rings to actresses and society women on occasions like the Academy Awards or the Kentucky Derby, then hiring photographers to get clear photographs of the baubles on display. “People don’t know what they want until you tell them what to want,” he’d said.
Now, in the last decade of the century, it again seemed difficult to convince people that what they wanted was fine jewelry.
It was a relief to be back home after the party. Their sprawling Park Avenue apartment felt empty now that two of their three daughters were out of the nest, but at moments like this she was grateful for some privacy.
“You looked very dashing in your tux tonight,” she said, asking him for help unzipping the back of her dress. The touch of his fingertips against her bare back gave her a shiver. She pulled the clips out of her hair, still long and lustrous and just now showing the first few threads of silver. She shook it loose and turned to him, wanting to remind him that Betsy Laurent-Leeds wasn’t the only woman who noticed him. But he had already retreated to the other side of the room, shedding his shirt and jacket while sitting on the edge of the bed and staring out the window.
“Alan,” she said. “It’s Friday night. You can’t carry the stress of work through the entire weekend. One bad year isn’t the end of the world.”
He looked at her with irritation. “I wish it were just one bad year.”
She sighed. Their middle daughter, Elodie, was involved in the business as well and had recently expressed her own concern.
Alan pulled back the covers. Since sex was clearly out of the question, Constance slipped into a fluffy robe and sat on her side of the bed, reaching for the hand cream on her nightstand.
“I know you’ll think of something,” she said. “You always do.” The latter comment was a small wifely lie. The truth was, while Alan was a hard worker, even a non-business-minded person like herself could see that Pavlin & Co hadn’t innovated since the “A Diamond Says Love” campaign half a century ago.
Alan climbed out of bed and left the room. When he returned he was holding a Pavlin & Co ring box. He handed it to her. “Open it,” he said, his eyes shining.
Confused, she gave him a small smile. While a gift was always appreciated, it seemed like an odd moment for one.
She lifted the lid and gasped. It was a pink diamond, the pink diamond.
Alan, in a quest for a precious stone to compete with some of the flashy gems that rival jewelers were marketing, had commissioned a dig in a remote Western Australia mine. After several years, they’d unearthed a Fancy Vivid pink diamond that was 59.6 carats in the rough. The discovery made the international news: Only one percent of all pink diamonds were larger than 10 carats, and only four percent classified as Fancy Vivid.
Alan’s gemologist studied the stone for a full year before cutting it, and then took another ten months to transform it into a 30-carat, cushion-cut gem of extraordinary beauty.
This was the first time Constance had seen it in person. Hands shaking, she shed her wedding band and slipped the ring onto her finger. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. After three decades with Alan, she was spoiled. Jaded, even. She had jewels to rival the royals, and yet this ring took her breath away. She didn’t know if it was the size, the clarity, or the delicate pink color, but the gift left her almost speechless.
“I never want to take it off,” she breathed.
“Well, you’re going to have to,” he said. “I’m giving it to one of the girls.”
She looked up at him. “Which one?”
“The first to get engaged. I’m planning a big launch event introducing the diamond. We need to remind the world that luxury makes people happy, and that romance is alive and well in the nineties.”
Constance raised her eyebrows. “Okay. But none of the girls are even close to getting engaged.”
“Well, with this incentive, that should be changing soon,” he said.
“Alan, don’t be ridiculous.” She couldn’t imagine a worse idea. Their daughters were already so competitive with one another. “They squabble over everything. This will just make that more of a problem. There must be some other publicity idea . . .”
“I’ve already summoned them back. It’s done.”
“They’re coming home?” Paulina had been in Europe for months, and Celeste rarely visited from grad school in Pennsylvania. Even Elodie, working long hours at the corporate office, might as well be in another country considering how rarely Constance saw her.
She didn’t like this idea. Not one bit. But it was Alan’s time, and he wanted to seize it. She thought of the way Betsy Laurent-Leeds had gone after him earlier that night, and the way he hadn’t noticed. He was a devoted husband. And she, in turn, had to be a supportive wife.
No matter how big a mistake he was making.
18
Finding contact information for her aunt Celeste—or her store, rather—had been easy. The hard part had been deciding what to say in her email. Gemma decided the less, the better. And so she wrote that she was visiting Provincetown and would like to see her if possible. Her aunt’s reply had been immediate and welcoming, if brief: What a lovely surprise. Of course. Looking forward to seeing you.
