The clothes in the shoot were secondary, and she and the stylist had chosen several simple black and white dresses by an American designer, two of which had gotten stuck in French customs and couldn’t be released, so they had to make do with what they had. And the stylist substituted a great-looking white shirt for one of the dresses, which worked. The whole focus of the shoot was the jewelry Lizzie was featuring, and that was their worst problem. All of the jewelers she had worked with to pull pieces had sent what she had chosen, but one of the more important jewelers had substituted several pieces she didn’t like. She called him immediately, and he apologized, but he had sold the pieces she had picked, and never told her. Worse yet, he was a designer in Rome so she couldn’t go back and find something else. She raced to two of the jewelers she was working with in Paris, during a break in the shoot, but she didn’t find anything there she liked, and she was short three or four pieces for the shoot. It was the kind of stress and aggravation she hated but that just couldn’t be avoided sometimes.
“Jesus, I should have read my horoscope for today,” Lizzie complained to the head stylist. She had no idea what to do. She reorganized the jewelry for several of the shots, but no matter how she rearranged it, she came up short, and this was a major story. The editor in chief in New York was not going to care that a model had been sick, two dresses were stuck in customs, and four major pieces of jewelry that they had planned to feature had been sold. Lizzie sat quietly in a chair at the edge of the set with her eyes closed, trying to figure it out. She was good at pulling rabbits out of hats, but this time she was coming up dry. One of the assistant stylists approached her after a few minutes, and Lizzie waved her away. She didn’t want to be bothered right now. Jean-Louis called her too during his own lunch break, and she told him she was up to her ass in alligators and she’d call him back. He said his shoot was going great, which only irritated her more. She had her own problems right now. As she turned off her cell phone, the young assistant approached her again.
“I’m sorry, Liz. I know you’re busy, but Alessandro di Giorgio is here.”
“Shit,” Lizzie said through clenched teeth. He was one of the important jewelers whose pieces they were using, and the last thing she needed now was a nosy jeweler who wanted to be sure that his work was the most important in the shoot. Some jewelers were like stage mothers, and she didn’t need one of them telling her what to do, or trying to sweet-talk her into giving him a better spot. “Can you tell him I’m off the set?” She had never met him personally and had dealt with him by e-mail, and all of his big pieces had been sent with armed guards from Rome.
“I think he knows you’re here,” the young stylist said apologetically. She was terrified and fresh out of school. This was her first big job. She knew Liz’s reputation as a perfectionist, and given everything that had gone wrong that morning, she was scared to death someone would take it out on her. Fashion was a high-tension business, and when things went wrong at a shoot, invariably shit rolled downhill. She was at the bottom of the hill. Liz looked at her in annoyance but was polite.
“I don’t have time to talk to him right now. I’m trying to figure out what the fuck to do about the three pieces I don’t have. Four, to be exact.”
“That’s what he wants to talk to you about. He said he had to come to Paris anyway, to see an important client, and he has several other pieces with him you haven’t seen. He stopped by the set, and I told him what happened, and he was wondering if you’d like to see what he’s got.” Lizzie stared at her in amazement and broke into a smile.
“There is a God. Where is he?” The young girl pointed to a tall blond man wearing a tie and a dark blue suit, carrying a large briefcase, and flanked by armed guards. He was looking straight at her with a cautious smile. As he approached her, he looked just like the photographs she had seen of him, and he was impeccably dressed.
“Miss Marshall?” he asked her quietly, as both guards stood slightly back but close enough to take action if he were attacked. “I understand you have a problem. I will be meeting with a client this afternoon, and I saw the shoot happening here. I thought I’d walk by. My client will be upset if I bring her fewer pieces, but she’ll never know what she never saw. And you can send them back to me later. I’ll tell her there was a delay in my atelier, if you select some of the pieces she was interested in.”
“There must be a patron saint for jewelry editors who are in a jam,” Liz said gratefully. She was a great admirer of his designs.
“I’d rather not show you the pieces here,” he explained. “I’m sure you understand. If you have a few minutes, I have a suite at the Ritz. We could go there.” The hotel was literally twenty yards away, as she looked at him with wide eyes. He spoke perfect English, with a slight Italian accent.
She felt like a bum walking into the Ritz next to him, in his perfectly cut suit. She was wearing leggings, running shoes, a sweatshirt, and a raincoat, and for once she didn’t even have high heels in her bag. And she hadn’t even bothered to brush her hair at five A.M. She’d just jammed it into a clip, drunk a cup of Jean-Louis’s coffee, and run out the door. And now she looked a total mess.
She was impressed to see that Alessandro di Giorgio had an enormous suite on the Vendome side of the Hotel Ritz. He was using it to see private clients, and without hesitating, he opened the lock on the briefcase and took out a dozen pieces of breathtaking jewelry in diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. The pieces were even bigger and more impressive than what she had planned to use from the other jeweler, and it meant that there would be more di Giorgio pieces in the spread, but at this point she had no choice, and it was the most beautiful work she had ever seen.
“Do I dare ask who your client is for pieces like this?” She was fascinated. They were huge.
“The wife of an emir,” he said discreetly, but didn’t say which one. “Will this help you out?”
“Oh my God, this is a miracle,” she said, looking at him with amazement.
“Take whatever you like, whatever you need. I’ll make my excuses to the emir’s wife.” And this was good publicity for him too. He was well known in the States but much more so in Europe. He was the third generation of jewelers under his name. His grandfather had started the business, and his father was still alive and involved. Alessandro was thirty-eight and had been designing for his father for fifteen years. Liz had researched them carefully for the story and liked the fact that many of their pieces were unique and one of a kind, and that their work was so respected in Europe. They had stores in Rome, London, and Milan but none in Paris. He saw clients there himself, and it was just sheer luck that he was there today.
Liz picked four of the biggest pieces, and Alessandro nodded as she chose. He could see the direction she was going, and the look she wanted, and he suggested a fifth piece that he thought could work too. She agreed with him and added it to the others. He packed her choices in boxes and assigned one of his guards to go back to the set with her, and ten minutes after they had walked into the hotel, they walked out again, with Liz carrying an innocuous Ritz shopping bag with everything she needed in it and even an extra piece. She stood looking up at him when they got back to the set and didn’t know what to say. He had saved her ass, but saying that to a man as well-bred and polished as he was would have been rude. He was extremely polite.
“You really saved my life.” She almost cried as she said it, and he smiled. “I’ll get everything back to you tonight, or tomorrow at the latest.”
“Take your time,” he said calmly. “I’m here for three days. We have a number of clients to see in Paris.”
“Do you ever come to New York?” she asked him. She really felt she owed him something for his generous help.
“Not very often. We do most of our business in Europe. But I come once in a while. I like New York very much.” He looked younger when he talked to her. He was so serious and well dressed that at first she had thought he was much older. But she remembered now that he was only ten years older than she was.
“Well, the next time you come to New York, I owe you lunch, or dinner, my first born, something.”
“I was happy to help you. I hope your shoot goes well, Miss Marshall,” he said formally.
“It will now, thanks to you.” She beamed at him, and he had no problem looking past the unbrushed hair and the work clothes to see that she was a beautiful girl.
And half an hour later they got back to work. Her spirits were buoyed, knowing she had what she needed, and the photographer was excited when he saw the pieces. They were much more beautiful than the ones they had been promised by the other jeweler.
At six o’clock they were still working when Jean-Louis dropped by. Liz was looking tense, still shaken by the calamities of the morning, but it was going well.
“Almost done?” he whispered as he came up behind her, and she turned with a start and then smiled.
