Zoya

He smiled again, his Irish charm evident in his eyes. “I'm looking forward to working with you.” She thanked him again and he left, as she sat at her desk and stared. The numbers he had quoted to her from the war contracts were staggering For the son of a tailor from the Lower East Side, he had done a hell of a job. He had built an empire. She smiled at the photograph of Simon again, and quietly left her office, looking like herself again for the first time since he'd died. The saleswomen noticed it too as they scurried past her to wait on their customers, and Zoya took the elevator that afternoon and stopped on each floor to look around at what they were doing. It was time they saw her again. Time for Countess Zoya to go on … with the memory of him close to her heart, as it always would be … like all the people she'd loved. But she couldn't think of them now. There was so much work left to do. For Simon.

CHAPTER

46

By the end of 1942, Zoya was spending one full day a week in Simon's offices on Seventh Avenue, and Paul Kelly was usually there with her. They had begun very formally, as Mr. Kelly and Mrs. Hirsch. She had worn simple black suits, and he had worn pinstripes or dark blue. But after several months, a touch of humor had crept in. He told her terrible jokes and she made him laugh with stories from Countess Zoya. She wore easier clothes to work in after that, and he took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He was deeply impressed by her business acumen, Simon had been right to respect her as he had. At first Paul had thought he was crazy to make her a director, but he was crazy like a fox, and she was even smarter than that. And at the same time, she managed to remain feminine, and she never raised her voice, but it was clear to everyone that she would tolerate no nonsense from anyone. And she kept a sharp eye on the books. Always.

“How did you ever come to all this?” he asked her one day over lunch at Simon's desk. They ordered in sandwiches and were taking a welcome break. Atherton, Kelly, and Schwartz had replaced one of Simon's two top managers the previous day, and there was a lot of cleaning up to do now.

“By mistake,” she laughed, she told him about her days in burlesque, and her job at Axelle's, and long before that dancing with the Ballet Russe. The success of her remarkable store was known to everyone by then. He himself had gone to Yale, and he had married a Boston debutante named Allison O'Keefe. They had had three children in four years, and he spoke of her with respect, but there was no spark in his eyes when he said her name, none of the laughter Zoya had so often shared with him. It came as no surprise to her when he admitted to her late one afternoon after a grueling day that he hated to go home.

“Allison and I have been strangers for years.” She didn't envy him that. She and Simon had been best friends, aside from the physical passion they had shared, which she still remembered with longing.

“Why do you stay married to her?” The whole world seemed to be getting divorced, and then she remembered before he even answered her, with a look of regret.

“We're both Catholic, Zoya. She'd never agree to it. I tried about ten years ago. She had a nervous breakdown, or so she claimed, and she's never been the same since. I can't leave her now. And, well …” He hesitated, and then decided to be honest with her. She was a woman he could trust, in the past year they had become fast friends. “To be honest with you, she drinks. I couldn't live with myself if I were responsible for something happening to her.”

“It doesn't sound like much fun for you,” an icy Boston debutante who drank and wouldn't give him a divorce. Zoya almost shuddered at the thought, but she saw a lot of women like that at the store, women who shopped because they were bored, and never wore what they took home because they didn't really care how they looked. “It must be lonely for you,” she looked at him with gentle eyes, and he reminded himself not to say too much. They had to work together every week, and he had learned that lesson long since. There had been other women in his life, but they never meant very much to him. They were just someone to talk to once in a while, or to make love to occasionally, but he had never met anyone like Zoya before, and he hadn't felt this way about a woman in years, or perhaps ever.

“I have my work to keep me going,” he smiled gently at her, “just like you.” He knew how hard she worked. It was all she lived for now, that and the children she loved so dearly.

By 1943, they were having dinner together every Monday night, when they left Simon's offices. It became an opportunity to discuss at greater length whatever they had done that day, and they usually ate at the little restaurants just off Seventh Avenue.

“How's Matt?” He smiled at her one night that spring.