Arm Candy

by Jill Kargman

  She didn’t need to be someone else’s arm candy. Not anymore.

  After Otto’s party, Eden and Otto continued speaking one or two times a day on top of their painting sessions. Even though part of her was wounded about the roll in the hay with corn-fed farm girl Mary, she no longer held it against him because somewhere deep inside she was grateful. She knew she wanted more and would have probably coasted indefinitely. It had been so long in the making.

  Sometimes she had to act casual when she was steaming inside (like when Mary would yap in the background) and other times she felt a warm comfort in Otto’s voice like catching up with an uncle or old teacher. They spoke not just about Cole but about anything and everything. Some nights they’d chat till all hours, even once or twice suggesting that maybe they should just stay together for the companionship and convenience.

  “Nothing would be different.” Eden shrugged. “I really think you’re more into Miss Mary than you let on.”

  Otto was silent. A mute confirmation of Eden’s suspicions that deafened her on the line.

  “I just miss you sometimes,” he said sadly.

  “Well, maybe I want to be missed all the time,” she said. “There was an era when I couldn’t walk to Gourmet Garage without twenty questions about when I was coming back.”

  “So why did you blow off Rory? He seemed nice. Lots of ducats in the bank.”

  “I’m not looking, Otto. Actually tonight Allison’s friends Callie and Sara are taking me to Cipriani.”

  “Just don’t have too many Bellini,” he teased.

  “CHEERS!!” The third round of peach nectar-infused Prosecco clinked together.

  “Oh my god, we’re like The First Wives club but without the rings floating at the bottom!” said Sara.

  “Yeah, and I was never married,” said Eden.

  “Oooooh, eye candy three o’clock,” Sara whispered. A bunch of Wall Streeters in blue button-downs walked in after a long round of squash at the Racquet Club followed by Chinese “Special Massages” at a Third Avenue second-floor jerk joint, where, before the Happy Ending, they tell you to “frip” (as in “flip over”). All the guys were calm as cucumbers (thanks to Li and Ling having taken care of their cucumbers) and ready for some Italian food. These nights were a preppy tradition—Squeal and Veal—“frip” rubdowns and eats.

  “Check it out, bro, look at the cans on those broads,” one said between gobbles of veal parm.

  “Hells yeah! Holy flesh melons!”

  “Talk about happy fun bags,” added another.

  “Try happy meal.”

  Overhearing enough to Sherlock the guys’ convo, Callie beamed. “They’re checking out our racks,” she said proudly, sitting erect.

  Eden looked at the guys, then back at her friends. It was like two sets of Big Bad Wolves licking their chops, and she was innocent Red Riding Hood in the middle.

  One of the preppies raised a glass to the ladies’ table.

  “What is going on?” Eden asked.

  “It’s called flirting. Geez, you really do need to get out more. You’ve lost the moves, girlfriend!” Sara teased.

  “Mesdames,” the waiter said, approaching their table. “The gentlemen there would like to send you a bottle of wine.”

  “Oh, terrific!” cooed Callie, red manicured hand on her heart as she tilted her head in thanks to their table. The waiter poured the wine, and the two bolder of the three women sipped it seductively, lifting their glasses.

  “Bottoms up!” Callie said.

  “Hopefully mine!” Sara laughed.

  “You guys are like predators,” Eden said.

  “Why shouldn’t we be?” asked Callie a tad defensively. “Why should guys have all the fun?”

  “No, no, I didn’t mean it badly. I just . . . guess you’re right. I’ve lost the tools, I suppose.”

  “They’re not tools,” Sara explained, delicately touching her décolletage as the guys looked on. “They’re weapons.”

  “Would you ever want to get a little lift-a-roo?” Sara asked, surveying Eden’s perky but semi-low-riders.

  “I have better tits now than I did in my saggy thirties nursing two babies,” Callie confessed. “Now these babies defy gravity!” she said proudly. “Thank you, Dr. Baker.”

  “Mine are Hidalgos.” Sara shimmied.

  Eden had noticed the 9.81 meters per second pull taking its toll on her hooters, but she couldn’t imagine slicing them open and inserting some foreign body into them. She was such a baby that a paper cut yielded moans and Band-Aids.

  After a while, the crowd started to thin and the table adjacent to them became available. The three guys sauntered over.

  “Can we join you ladies?” one asked.

  “Of course,” Callie said, adjusting the seats to face them.

  “So,” said Sara. “What’re your names? Chip? Biff? Chad?”

  “I’m Court,” said the cutest one, smile wide.

  Eden laughed. Same thing.

  “Court, eh? Like this Court is in session?” Callie asked as he nodded. “Is your jury hung?”

  Eden spat up the wine she was sipping and knew this was her cue.

  “Uh, pardon me, so sorry, I should be going,” she said, abruptly getting up as she fumbled for her clutch.

  “No, don’t leave so soon,” one of Court’s cronies begged. Crap, three dudes, two poons left. It was like muff musical chairs. And the hottest was leaving.

  “Yeah, sorry, I’m not feeling so hot,” Eden apologized.

  “You look hot to me,” the other dude said.

  “Oh, uh, thanks. Sorry—Bye, girls—bye, have fun.”

  Eden’s legs couldn’t run home faster. Yuck. Sara and Callie were amusing with all their cock talk, but it was so not her. She had been with a grown man of fifty-five; she couldn’t very well prey on preppy boys with the maturity level of a Dora viewer. She wanted to be the cute young one; she wanted to feel new and coveted, not be the crusty, grateful one. Shit, this growing old thing sucked.

  18

  By the time you’re eighty years old you’ve learned everything. You only have to remember it.

  —George Burns

  For the next two months, Eden flew solo. It was the longest sexual drought in her life. The groundhog got freaked out by his shadow and wigged, adding more frozen windows and slushy streets. Once or twice a week she would take the train down to Otto’s and pose, but she didn’t get the same joy from it anymore. When she wasn’t downtown, Eden was getting into her new neighborhood groove and enjoyed her hours with The New York Times and Allison’s close-knit family.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Alli,” she told her best friend over a glass of wine at Daniel. “I realize now what a mess I’ve been, and you saved me.”

  “Bullshit,” Allison said with a wink. “You’re the strong one who got us to New York in the first place. You saved yourself.”

  “I’m not there yet.” Eden sighed. “But it’s getting better every day. Instead of waking up and starting to cry, I just wake up wanting to cry!”

  “E, it will get better. Trust me.”

  “I’m sorry. I caught myself complaining. No one likes a sad sack. Thank you for listening to me bitch.”

  “Hun, I love you happy or sad. There are some friends who are only there in the happy times and others who creepily get off being the shoulder to cry on so they can feel needed. I love both. That’s what real friends do. You don’t have to thank me.”

  “Still. I’m grateful.”

  “Hey, Sara and Callie want to plan a group dinner with some of our other mom friends from school. They LOVE you,” Allison said proudly. “I knew they’d have girl crushes on you, and they fully do.”

  “They’re great,” Eden said, appreciative of Allison’s hooking them up. “I just think I’m not quite at their level of—”

  “Hormones?”

  “Yeah. They’re hard-core.”

  “We don’t have to go on the town. We can just get lunch or mani
cures or something.”

  “Done.”

  Eden relished her time with Allison and even, increasingly, her time alone. Her long walks through the snow-filled park reminded her of a time when she often strolled the city, and little by little she began to feel more and more like her old self. On the first warm day after a particularly sleet-filled winter week, Eden woke up refreshed and, for once, didn’t think about her age, or a new wrinkle here, a deepening crevice there. She had slept soundly and realized that with a solid night’s sleep, her skin actually looked way better. Shit, I guess that’s why it’s called beauty sleep, she mused.

  The Canadian on NY1 said it was an unseasonably warm March 1, and she put on black tights and a silk print dress from Jane Mayle from before the designer had shuttered her doors on Elizabeth Street. She walked outside and took a deep breath: It was the first day she felt happy in a long, long time. She walked the streets for hours, nursing a large coffee, savoring every flavorful sip. Flowering dogwood trees and blush pink cherry blossoms, their branches bedecked with buds heralding the end of the chill, sprang up all over the city. Soon enough, there would be four weeks of April showers, and afterward, she could taste it already, would bloom the darling buds of May, and everyone joyfully eschewing sweaters.

  19

  Inside every older person is a younger person—wondering what the hell happened.

  —Cora Harvey Armstrong

  The soundtrack for the sunshine was the Good Humor truck’s childlike tune. Brooke DuPree Lydon rarely partook of desserts, and if she wanted a caloric splurge, it would only be gelato from Sant Ambroeus, where a small cup ran five clams. Even then she’d probably sample only half, then pass on the cup to her husband. But quirky Ruthie loved that crappy ice cream truck with the jingle that could either sound cute and innocent or like the creepy backdrop to a serial killer à la Buffalo Bill’s bloody spree. Once she’d gone with her Tobago-born nurse, Inus, to wait in line by Seventy-second Street and Fifth Avenue, behind schoolchildren in their various uniforms, headed to the playground to blow off steam. Brooke was carrying shopping bags from Ralph Lauren and was aghast when she spied her mother requesting a chemical swirl.

  “Mother! You may as well ingest frozen Drano! Do you know what’s in that? How in God’s name can you ingest toxic garbage served from some vile vehicle?”

  “Hey, ya gotta live a little.” Ruthie calmly explained that she simply couldn’t pass one of these trucks without ordering a chocolate cone with rainbow sprinkles, cream swirled high to a joyful point, which she’d bite off while awaiting her change from the window on the truck’s side.

  “Plus,” Ruthie said with the ever-present twinkle in her eye, “it just makes me happy.”

  “Great. I’m so glad you derive such pleasure from Styrofoam shaped into cone form,” Brooke sneered. “Inus, you should know better. Mother should not be eating this refuse.”

  In a flurry of navy shopping bags embossed with Polo’s logo, she walked off in a huff.

  “Sometimes I’d like to get a polo mallet for her,” Ruthie joked to a grinning Inus, who clearly concurred.

  Chase missed his grandmother terribly. It was a pang in his side like when he ran too fast around the reservoir, splitting and rendering him off-kilter. In crowded Midtown, Chase took an abbreviated lunch break after working until two thirty and saw the season’s first ice cream truck and thought of his grandma. He smiled sadly and found his feet wandering toward it, despite his complete lack of sweet tooth. The woman in front of him ordered none other than a chocolate cone with rainbow sprinkles, and dug into her huge Hobo bag to retrieve her two smacks.

  “Uh-oh,” she said, cone in one hand while the other furiously dug through her massive brown suede satchel. “My money! Hold on, I thought I had money. Wait, I have, like, a zillion quarters, one sec.” The woman dug madly through her bag and retrieved piles of change, which was rather difficult to sift through with her cone in her hand.

  “It’s on me,” Chase said, handing the ice cream man a five. “I’ll have the exact same thing.”

  “No, no, no, it’s okay, I have money. It’s just kind of scattered in here—”

  “Honestly, it’s my pleasure,” Chase responded. He squinted, finding her face familiar but not able to place her.

  “Seriously, I have money,” she said, frazzled. “I’m just so clumsy. If you hold my cone, I can—”

  “Nope,” he interrupted. “It’s the first real day of spring, and it would make me very happy to get you that cone.”

  “Hey, what about me?” an old lady behind Chase joked.

  “Yeah, me, too, Romeo!” joked a burly construction worker and his friend.

  Chase smiled as he watched the beautiful woman happily lick her ice cream. “Cones for everyone!” Chase erupted spontaneously and handed the Mister Softee guy a twenty to pay for ten cones for the line behind him.

  Shocked by the rare gesture of goodwill, the crowd in line cheered. It was a great New York moment.

  “I’m Eden,” she said, sticking out her cone-free left hand to shake his.

  “I’m Chase.”

  He smiled and walked next to Eden as they ate their twin cones.

  “That was pretty nice, Chase,” she said, looking him over. “You don’t see that every day.”

  “It’s not every day,” Chase replied, gesturing to the blooming trees and crystal blue sky. “Look at this.”

  “So what do you do, Milton Petrie?” joked Eden, relishing her cone. “I mean when you’re not engaging in frozen treat philanthropy.”

  “I . . . you know . . . work in finance.” He shrugged. Yawn, he knew he couldn’t sound more snoozeville.

  “Gee, you sound reeeeally excited about that,” said Eden sarcastically.

  “Well, I’m not, actually. I’d really love to switch gears but . . . who knows. Duty calls. I’m actually thinking of quitting and getting my PhD in history. But it’s a secret.”

  “Ohhhhh. I see,” she replied.

  “See what?” he asked innocently.

  “Everyone knows what PhD stands for.” She winked.

  “What does PhD stand for?” Chase inquired.

  “Poppa Has Dough.”

  Chase had to laugh; he’d never met such a straight-talking woman who was that captivatingly gorgeous.

  “Okay, touché.”

  They walked toward the corner of a block lined with cherry blossom trees. Just then a strong breeze blew. Eden’s long hair whipped in the wind and she shivered. As the trees were walloped by gushes of air, thousands of pale pink petals flurried to the ground, enveloping Eden, Chase, and the other pedestrians on that lucky sidewalk.

  “Oh my gosh, this is so frigging stunning, it’s like a mirage,” Eden said, marveling at the gusty swirl of pink. The petals blanketed the street, and her head and Chase’s were covered in tiny petals. “Too bad the pollen count is going to make me overdose on Claritin.”

  Chase laughed. “It’s worth it, though, right? This is almost too amazing to look at.”

  Eden studied his young face. He was too amazing to look at. But young, very young. Scary young. We’re talking, like, Zac Efron territory. Okay, maybe not quite that young, but she was so used to being with Otto, sixteen years her senior, that Chase appeared positively fetal.

  “It is quite something,” she said. “Especially after this long, gloomy winter.”

  “I know, right? Where is global warming when you need it?” Chase joked nervously.

  Eden could tell he was charmed by her looks, despite the fact that if they each built a tower with a brick for each year, hers would tower over, or probably topple over his.

  “Well, thank you for the ’scream,” said Eden, stopping to descend the stairs to the subway. “That was very sweet of you. You put rainbow sprinkles on my whole day.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, feeling a warmth in his chest. “Enjoy.”

  “I will.”

  “Happy spring,” Chase said, studying her.

&nb
sp; “Happy spring,” Eden replied, practically skipping off, and licking her first cone of the new, sunny season.

  20

  Forty isn’t old . . . if you’re a tree.

  —Anonymous

  Putting her recent uniform of black skinny jeans or casual dresses aside, it was time for Eden to get dolled up. She knew the drill: showtime. Red carpet, Waldorf-Astoria, hair and makeup. The evening’s fête was honoring Rock McGhee, whose name sounded like a porn star’s, but he was in fact a huge collector of Otto’s work. He had four massive canvases in his Fifth Avenue penthouse—all of Eden—and invited the pair and a few of their studio and gallery friends to his black-tie event to sit at his table with his wife, Muffy, and a few high-profile hedge funders.

  During the massive cocktail hour, Eden and Otto were led to a small antechamber with paparazzi and a backdrop with the logo of McGhee’s charity, EndTesCan, which fought testicular cancer and was jokingly referred to by Otto as the Save Our Balls Ball. The paparazzi snapped shots of luminaries, from indie actresses to Lance Armstrong to a young “virgin” (yeah, right) pop starlet with hot pants and thunder thighs who would be performing one song. Eden and Otto held hands and smiled as the countless flash-bulbs flashed. “Eden! Eden! Otto! Eden!” yelled the shutterbugs, who were insectlike with their incessant clicks and the big eyes of their long lenses.

  “Okay, thank you,” Otto said sternly when he’d had enough of the glare. He took Eden’s hand and guided her away from the firestorm. Despite their separation, he still felt protective of her.

  “Thanks for doing this,” Otto said as Eden shot him a look. It was obvious she’d rather be hang gliding over a canyon of skyward-pointing machetes. Lyle Spence, Otto’s gallerist, said people were getting skittish about their allegedly rock-solid investments in Otto’s canvases and that it would behoove them both to put on a brave front and walk the walk. Eden agreed so long as Mary stayed home and played Parcheesi or washed her hair or painted her nails hot pink or whatever the hell she did. Eden was growing weary of these saccharine dog-and-pony shows, but Otto needed to please the longtime collectors who funneled millions his way, including Rock McGhee and his hedge fund partner Jack “Gefilte” Fishman, so nicknamed for his constant bobby-pinned yarmulke.