After dinner, the English art dealer—whose accent was getting phonier by the second (I suspected he was an American posing as a Brit)—asked me if he could drop me off at home in a taxi. During the ride, he inquired if I had any “interesting things to sell” in a tone that which left me somewhat unsure as to whether he was referring strictly to art. I would have been flattered if he hadn’t been so repulsive. When I told him no, he instructed the driver to drop him off at his hotel first. It was downtown, way out of the way. He didn’t offer to pay for the cab or say thank you when he got out.
The next morning, I sat down after breakfast and wrote my hostess a thank-you note that was none too effusive, but polite. I had every intention of delivering it myself that day, as was my custom. But I never got around to it that day or in the days that followed. After a couple of weeks, it was just too late. I tore it up and chucked it out.
I spent the summer working at Bergdorf’s. I had settled into a routine. Little by little, I was paying down my debts. Twice a week in the evening, I volunteered to work in a women’s shelter on First Avenue in the Fifties, hoping that in helping others less fortunate than myself I’d appreciate what I had rather than dwell on what I’d lost. It was not the cathartic experience I had hoped for. These women were complicated individuals whose lives had somehow spiraled out of control. A few were schizophrenic and violent. Many were intelligent and highly neurotic. Some talked about their plights with disarming frankness.
“Life just got away from me. Damned if I know how,” was how one woman described her situation to me.
In many of these poor souls, I glimpsed the embodiment of a future that was far too close for comfort. It may have been cowardly, but it depressed me so much to work there that I quit. I started going up to the Society Library on Seventy-ninth Street instead, where I retreated into the past, reading books about the French Revolution and Marie Antoinette.
In August, I was fired. To this day, I’m not quite sure why. A friendly saleswoman told me it might have been because I was too “intimidating” to the customers. It’s true, I did have definite ideas about what looked good on people, and I refused to lie. I told one woman the yellow feathered dress she wanted to buy made her look like Big Bird. It’s also possible that my reluctance to be a “team player,” as my supervisor said, had something to do with it. On more than one occasion I’d voiced my opinion that many of the clothes we sold were badly made and way overpriced. Still, my growing paranoia about Monique made me suspect that she was somehow behind my dismissal.
Being out of work panicked me. I had to think seriously about getting another job, but for the remaining weeks of summer, I decided to give myself a rest.
Monique was out in Southampton in my house, with my friends, swimming in my pool, playing tennis on my court. I was trapped in a steam bath with a weak air conditioner. Both Betty and June had asked me to come and stay with them. Ethan, who had rented a shack in Amagansett instead of going to Patmos, offered to sleep on the couch and give me his bedroom. I probably should have gone, but I just wasn’t ready. I begged off, telling everyone airily that I was “off to Paris” so they’d all stop calling me.
Autumn is my favorite time in New York, and by mid-September, I was feeling rather social again. I had lunch with Betty and June a couple of times and then, as is often the case, something very silly and inconsequential gave me an unexpected lift. I was going through my mail—mostly bills and circulars—when I came across an invitation to a charity benefit I’d been to many times: the Notable New Yorker dinner, a blue-chip occasion with a loot-heavy guest list held every November.
Among those who subscribe to it year after year, the NNY dinner at the Waldorf is known as a real Bullet-through-the-Head occasion—an interminable evening where, given the choice between shooting oneself or staying put another second, one would happily go for the gun. However, each year an impressive roster of honorees makes attendance mandatory. Everyone bitches but everyone goes. It was the sort of place that Trish Bromire always advised her single girlfriends to go to meet rich men.
“If you want to marry money, never go to a benefit costing less than a thousand dollars a ticket. Birds of a feather, you know,” was Trish’s sound advice.
And that was the price of the ticket: one thousand dollars. For me, it seemed like a fortune.
Dick Bromire was one of the honorees despite his endless legal troubles. Accompanying the invitation was a very sweet note from Trish.
Dear Jo,
Dick and I would love it if you’d come and be our guest for this very special evening for us. Please say you’ll join us! We miss you!
Love, Trish
I’d supported Dick in his hour of need. Now it was his turn to support me. So goes the dainty minuet of social life.
Trish’s warm words made me think once more of my obligations to my friends, and also of the fact that I might actually have a good time.
I called Trish up. She was delighted to hear from me.
“Oh, Jo!” she cried. “My God, where have you been? We’ve all missed you so much.”
Nobody really wants to hear the story of your life and I certainly didn’t want to go into it, so I just said that I’d been away, but that I was back, and I’d found her kind invitation to the Notable New Yorker dinner.
“Please come, Jo. We’d just love it if you could.”
“I’d love to Trish. Sounds like fun.”
“I should warn you, though. Monique will be there.”
My jaw inadvertently clenched. I said nothing.
“I’m sorry, Jo, but she bought five tables,” Trish went on. “Don’t worry. I promise you won’t be seated together. But I just thought I’d warn you.”
“Thanks, Trish. I appreciate that. And thank you for asking me.”
“Oh—one other thing. There’s this divine billionaire from Chicago who’s flying in for the evening. His name is Brad Thompson. He’s sixty-three, he’s been divorced for five years, and I’ve told him all about you. He’ll be your dinner partner. I can’t wait to tell Dick you’re coming. He’ll be so thrilled!”
I hung up the phone with a tingly feeling of excitement—not, oddly enough, at the prospect of meeting what sounded like an eminently eligible man, but at the prospect of seeing Monique. The thought of her presence lent a horrible thrill to the occasion. I dreaded seeing her and yet I longed to see her at the same time. It was a feeling akin to confronting an old lover whom I wished to impress.
In the days that followed, however, I had time to reflect on the idea of Mr. Brad Thompson. I came to the conclusion that the only way to deal with Monique was to marry someone richer than she was. Fight money with money. Perhaps this billionaire from Chicago would be my knight in a shining Gulf Stream. And even if he didn’t turn out to be the one, there might be some diamond-in-the-rough tycoon at that dinner who’d go for me. The NNY dinner was fertile hunting ground for wealthy game.
I couldn’t see it then, but my obsession with Monique had infected the way I thought about everything—including my heart. I, who had never cared about money, had developed a severe case of gold rush fever in order to get even with the Countess. I recalled one famous society gold digger who, before she married well, had once said: “I don’t care if the man’s a zero as long as there are plenty of zeros in his bank account.” Passion faded; money kept its color.
The first thing I had to do was get back into shape. Gone were the days of pampered spas and social boot camps where they march you to Bataan and back on a diet of lettuce leaves for a thousand dollars a day. I couldn’t afford it. I joined a local gym and started lifting weights. I jogged every day. I went on a strict diet. After a grueling first three weeks, I was suddenly energized. I dropped fifteen pounds and felt a pilot light of hope flickering inside me. Like a forgotten star making a comeback, I wasn’t through yet. The day of the party, I was back to my fighting weight, looking better than I had in years.
As I dressed for the evening, I wondered how pe
ople would react to seeing me after all this time. It had been well over a year since the Dent affair, almost three since Lucius’s death. By now practically everyone in New York—including the young Filipino manicurist at Hands Up on Lexington—knew my story. I wanted to put all that behind me tonight. I was determined to hold my head high. Also, I knew that rich fish don’t snap at droopy bait. If I have one more big catch in me, I thought, I better be perky.
I spent hours getting ready. I couldn’t afford to buy a new dress, but I had a closet full of old couture. Old couture was the chicest anyway. It showed I wasn’t some upstart who’d just discovered Paris. I managed to squeeze into the strapless burgundy velvet gown made for me years ago to match the rubies of my Marie Antoinette necklace.
The necklace—the one possession of real value I had left. I lifted it out of its red leather case as if it were a holy relic. I held it up to the light, admiring the wine rubies, the twinkling rose-cut diamonds, and the gunmetal black pearls all woven together in a perfect crosshatch design. Monique may have my money, I thought, as I draped it around my neck and fastened the clasp, but she’ll never have anything as beautiful as this.
Just before leaving my apartment, I gargled with mouthwash, then sprayed my mouth with eau de cologne to sweeten my breath. (A little trick I learned from Clara, along with never eating shrimp or smoked salmon hors d’oeuvres because they made your breath reek.) I checked myself out in the mirror from all angles, not just the front. It was important to look equally good from the back and sides. My hair and makeup were neat enough, considering I’d done them both myself. It was a far cry from the old days when a hairdresser and makeup artist came to the house to get me ready for big events.
Still, I felt pretty, relaxed, and confident—ready to face the world. I was actually looking forward to running into Monique to show her that I was doing very well indeed.
Chapter 22
I stood on a windy corner of Lexington Avenue trying to hail a taxi going downtown. Gone were the days of the waiting limousine. Instead of remembering Caspar as the ill-tempered schnauzer who guarded Lucius, I thought of him wistfully as a jewel of a chauffeur who was on time, rain or shine, and who could hand-deliver forty invitations in an afternoon.
Finally a cab pulled up. I slid into the back, careful to avoid a handsized patch of grease on the scuffy black vinyl seat. The stench of some exotic cuisine was overpowering. I gave the driver the address. He didn’t know where the Waldorf-Astoria was. He hardly knew where Park Avenue was. It was his first day on the job. I said I’d direct him if he turned down his CB radio. As the meter clicked on, the recorded voice of an ersatz celebrity barked at me to “Buckle up!” The wind from the driver’s open window blew apart my hairdo.
With the glittery city whipping by on either side, I recalled the evening at this very dinner when Lucius had been one of the honorees. I remembered how he’d fussed over my outfit that night, wanting me to “look expensive,” as he told me, only half joking. Lucius liked showing off his importance in the world through me. Men in his position want wives, like possessions, to reflect their glory. I never dreamed on that long-ago night he would one day discard me like a broken ornament.
Sitting in the taxi I played a little game with myself. I added up how much my whole outfit cost. The couture dress was a cool twelve thousand (it would be much more today, but the Directrice de la Maison had given me a deal because I’d purchased so many things that year); the Marie Antoinette necklace was a quarter of a mil; the white gold and diamond minaudière, eight thou; the shoes, seven hundred and fifty dollars; and so on.
And there I was in all that finery, sitting in the back of a smelly, noisy, run-down cab with grease stains on the seat. I felt sorry for myself. I got my comeuppance when the cab stopped for a light and I focused in on a homeless man sleeping in front of a building on Fifty-sixth Street. Next to him was a shopping cart filled with soda cans and a heap of plastic bags, old clothes, newspapers, and other detritus of urban life. The crumpled, colorful cans glinted under the lamplight and I was overcome with sadness. The light changed and we sped off.
“I must remember how lucky I am,” I thought, reprimanding myself for any self-pity. “I’m very lucky.”
However, each click of the taxi meter reminded me how quickly life ticked away. The image of the homeless man haunted me like the faces of those women at the shelter: apocalyptic visions of my own impending doom. The drawings and the jewelry were all gone. I looked at the minaudière. That was next. I’d be lucky to get half what I paid for it.
In former days I might have given my couture clothes away to the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute and taken a whopping tax deduction. But now I had no income to deduct a deduction from. I wondered if perhaps a celebrity auction of those beautiful old clothes might tide me over for another few months. But who would buy the dresses of a socialite loser?
I knew that unless a miracle happened I would soon have to sell my most beloved treasure: the necklace. I clutched my throat to reassure myself it was still there.
Blocking the entrance to the Waldorf was a chain of black limousines and one triple-size white stretch with flashing lights and tinted windows that stood out like a stripper in a line of nuns. I directed the cabbie to drive to the next block, where I could disembark unnoticed. I gave him a nice tip considering his cab smelled like a diner griddle, got out, and walked back to the hotel.
I arrived at the door, chilled to the bone, purposely not having worn a coat. In the days when I had a car and driver, I was dropped off at the front door. If I bothered to take a coat, I always left it in the backseat so I wouldn’t have to check it. Standing in line at the cloakroom after a benefit was a degrading, tedious experience, especially for a single woman. It showed she didn’t have an escort or a private car. Better to freeze.
I ducked into the ladies’ room, ran hot water over my hands to warm up, recombed my hair, freshened my lipstick, and walked out, head high, prepared for battle.
Just outside the entrance to the Jade Room, on a long cloth-covered table, was a depleted battalion of miniature, hand-calligraphied white envelopes. I perused the group, pretending to search for my own name but really looking to see who else was coming. I spotted the envelope with “Countess de Passy” written on it. I was about to pick it up and peek inside to see which table she was seated at when a scrubbed and shiny young woman in a skimpy black dress handed me an envelope with “Mrs. Lucius Slater” written on the front.
“Good evening, Mrs. Slater. So nice to see you.”
Though I hadn’t the vaguest idea who she was, I was touched she recognized me. I opened my envelope. The small white card inside read “Table 47.” I paused to consider a moment. A two-digit table wasn’t necessarily a bad sign. Not necessarily. Benefit organizers had learned not to make Table 1 the top table so people wouldn’t take one look at their seating assignments and leave if they weren’t in the single digits. Still, forty-seven didn’t sound promising. I slid the little envelope into my purse, banishing bad thoughts that might mar my confidence, and proceeded into the Jade Room where cocktails were being served.
I’d arrived late because I loathe cocktail hours, even though they are considered opportune times to flit over the pond, sniffing new blood before one gets bogged down at dinner between, as Betty once said, “some crusty old alligator and an Adonis who’s more interested in wooing the waiter.” Since I already knew who my dinner partner was, I didn’t need to go on a scouting mission.
I made my entrance into the room hoping to attract as little attention as possible. I was never one of those socialites who kept packs of hungry lensmen at bay with a smile. One photographer did recognize me and, more for politeness than profit, I think, stepped forward to take my picture. I mustered an obligatory grin, anxious not to betray any sign of desperation. In social life, desperation is as feared as the flu, and as catching.
He took the shot, thanked me, and even asked me for another. As I posed, a youngish, too-casua
lly dressed couple entered the room. A little lightning storm of popping flashes ensued. Splashed with attention, the couple moved on.
“Who’s that?” I asked my photographer, who had gallantly stuck with me despite his colleagues’ feeding frenzy.
“Mark Whatshisname, that guy who lost four billion dollars in a day. He’s one of the honorees.”
“Really? He looks so young,” I said.
The cocktail hour was in full swing. I strolled through the room looking for Trish and Dick. Some people looked at me as if they’d seen a ghost. Others stopped me and said hello. Everyone I said hi to was very friendly and polite. Yet there was a distance in their manner.
I couldn’t help thinking of the legions who used to practically break their necks flinging themselves into my orbit. Where were they now? I had to face it. I was pushing fifty, alone, living in a small apartment with a brick wall view. By society’s standards I was all washed up. My case, solved by misfortune, was closed. And still, I felt hopeful. The billionaire from Chicago . . . my chance to get back at Monique.
Scanning the huge, glossy crowd, I spotted Miranda Somers holding court at the far end of the room. Miranda was easy to spot by the flock of people hovering near her, waiting anxiously to bid her hello. Everyone craving a mention in the “Daisy” column paid homage to Miranda. On this particular night, dressed in a cloud of pink tulle, Miranda reminded me of a cotton-candy cardinal with supplicants lining up to kiss her ring. I marveled at the way this canny woman who glorified social life held court year after year after year, growing ever more exalted as society reputedly hobbled off into the twilight of inconsequence.
Who are they kidding, I thought? Society is a form of celebrity, and celebrity is more consequential than ever.
And then I saw it—that marvelous dress—a silver satin sheath, with an elegant sweep of train at the back. I always notice beautiful clothes and I fastened immediately on the flawless cut and the material of this extraordinary gown that shimmered like moonlight. You couldn’t get a dress like that off the rack. That dress was haute couture.
Social Crimes Page 20
