New York for Beginners

by Remke, Susann

  So Zoe and Eros found themselves in the office the next morning, shortly before five, armed with double espressos.

  “Good morning, my dear,” Eros said, his voice still scratchy. “Or could it still be night?”

  “Starting today, I hate Wednesdays,” Zoe said. “Can’t we just remove them from the week, like Pluto was removed from the solar system?”

  Eros pouted. “Unfortunately not.”

  Aaron Papst goose-stepped into the webcam’s field of view, and Zoe and Eros immediately ceased their complaining. The camera zoomed onto Papst’s salon-tanned face. The new editor-in-chief delivered a monologue in which he announced his new vision for Vision. It was his intention to turn the fashion bible into “the magazine for the modern woman.” He wanted to “awaken emotions,” “generate enthusiasm,” and “set journalistic high points.” Zoe could already imagine what that would mean. Depending on the daily emotional state of the boss, the editorial department would have to come up with articles about the cruelties of fate (“Fathers Can Be Horrible”), conduct investigative reporting (“The Truth About Weight Watchers’”), and score Big Interviews with VIPs.

  “And now to the verticals!” Papst commanded after his State of the Union address. “New York, you’re all sitting around so idly!”

  Zoe wanted to rattle off her slightly lame list of suggestions, but the Prince of Darkness cut her off before she had a chance to say anything. The weekly meeting was starting to feel like a Latin vocabulary pop quiz in front of the whole class. Everyone lowered their heads, trying to make themselves invisible, and hoping in vain that they wouldn’t also be chosen to be publicly shamed.

  “I want a Big Interview from you, New York. Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton. Maria Shriver will do in a pinch. But then you’ll have to ask her about the Kennedy Curse,” Papst dictated to the camera. “Or come to think of it, get all three of them, together. For a round table.”

  “Yeah, right,” Zoe muttered. She would have liked to sink her teeth into a round table right now, to work off some of the aggression that was building up inside her. The White House, the State Department, and the Kennedy family are just waiting to philosophize about the global meaning of black leather leggings, Zoe thought to herself. Then she cleared her throat and looked into the camera. “Of course I’ll try, Mr. Papst. But that won’t be easy. As a German fashion magazine, even with our digital platform, we are way down on the list.”

  “Don’t bore me with your opinions. Do something to earn your salary. I want Michelle, Hillary, and Maria. Preferably yesterday. Tell them you’re from the German edition of Vision. Then they’ll go for it. American Vogue gets the ladies, too, after all. And don’t come to the next meeting without a confirmation of the interview!”

  Zoe became uncomfortably hot and started to sweat. It might work in Germany to say that you were from the German edition of Vision. You might get some German VIPs. But at the White House, you would at best be met with a polite “Who (pause for the unspoken words ‘the fuck’) is Vision?” Or the usual “I’ll put you on the list.” If you were lucky, you’d get a form rejection letter, and if you were unlucky, you’d wait for an answer until you reached retirement age. Zoe’s heart began to race, and red stress splotches formed on her cheeks. Working for Aaron Papst was definitely bad for her health.

  WASPs, or: The Americans Are Nuts

  WASP is an acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. These people have a high position on the American social ladder.

  Natural habitat: New York’s Upper East Side, Connecticut, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, or Southampton/Long Island (summer), and Palm Beach, Florida (winter).

  Dress code: Preppy. Ralph Lauren, J. Crew, Brooks Brothers. Tip: Only wannabe preppies wear Abercrombie & Fitch!

  “Old money” names: Charles (Chuck, Chip) Theodore (Ted), Trip (as in “the third”); Barbara (Binky), Theodora (Tattie), Louise/Louisa (Weezie).

  “New money” names: Carter, Cole, Hunter, Justin, Leo, Milo; Ava, Chloe, Ella, Olivia, Violet.

  Schools: Dalton (New York; Rupert Murdoch’s children), Chapin (New York; Lilly Pulitzer, Ivana Trump), Sidwell Friends (Washington, DC; Chelsea Clinton, the Obama girls).

  (New York for Beginners, p. 89)

  13

  When Zoe turned on her office computer the next morning, an instant message was already blinking on the screen.

  Just got my golden parachute and have decided to travel around the world in Julia Roberts’s footsteps.

  Could you express yourself a bit more cryptically, Al?

  I accepted a significant severance payment from Schoenhoff and have decided to travel around the world for nine months—to Italy, India, and Bali. Like in Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller, Eat, Pray, Love.

  Which was a movie with Julia Roberts?

  Exactly! Eating in Italy, meditating in India, making love in Bali.

  You’re happy about being fired, then?

  A job like mine comes with a built-in ejection seat, sweetie. Otherwise I would have to take a job at Women’s Health Journal immediately.

  You have it good, Al. Papst is totally insane.

  Insane people can be very creative.

  I wish I had your optimism. What if Voldemort throws me out because I can’t get him an interview with Michelle Obama by the weekend?

  Then you can come with me to Italy!

  Zoe was relieved that Allegra was OK. Actually, she seemed more than OK, maybe even happy. But Zoe was also a little jealous of how easily her friend dealt with major life changes. She always knew how to make the best of them.

  They’d known each other for more than ten years. Al possessed the grace of a long-stemmed rose. She had long, straight legs, a long, straight upper body, and an exquisite face to top it off. An Italian sculptor couldn’t have fashioned a more perfect woman. She wasn’t just pretty, she was truly beautiful. Like Cate Blanchett.

  But above all, Al was stubborn—just as a head carved of marble would be. Allegra was the only intern from their journalism-school class who’d actually negotiated her junior-editor’s salary, instead of gratefully taking whatever was offered. And she did it not only once, but three times, until she got what she wanted. Al raised her hand in every meeting and voiced her opinion to everyone, up to and including the editor-in-chief. And she never regretted her past mistakes. New day, new chances—that was her enviable mindset. No one really needed to worry about Allegra “Julia Roberts” Sollani.

  Zoe obediently contacted the White House to request an interview with Michelle Obama. She received the predicted response: “I’ll put you on the list.” She didn’t think she should even bother being annoyed. Did it make sense to waste her energy on something that had been totally expected? Allegra would say no. Definitely not.

  So Zoe decided to give up Papst’s pointless quest for the Holy Grail, even though she knew she’d be a nervous wreck before the next weekly meeting. She decided it was better to concentrate on the more important things in life: namely, the fact that she needed a bed. And a table. And a sofa. Aside from the patchy mirror on the wall and a mattress on the floor that her landlady had lent her, Zoe basically had no furniture.

  But she had a plan! She needed furniture—and a man to carry it and put it together. She hoped that her pretext wasn’t too obvious.

  Zoe left her office and went to the staircase to walk up a floor to where management sat, but the door to the staircase was locked.

  At that moment, Blonde Poison appeared. “Wrong door. Our office is over there.”

  “I know that. I want to get to the staircase.” Zoe managed to censor herself before she could add “I’m not stupid.”

  “What do you want the staircase for?”

  “How about for climbing stairs? One floor up, to the thirtieth. It’s supposed to be healthy. It’s good for your blood pressure.”

  “Don’t tell me y
ou’re worried about high blood pressure!”

  Zoe took a deep breath. “Madison, I just want to get to the thirtieth floor.”

  “Then why don’t you take the elevator?”

  Blonde Poison was really driving her crazy. “Because I want to walk.”

  There was suddenly a flash of light behind Madison’s eyes as a pair of synapses connected. “Oh!” she said. “Walking. You can’t do that. We only use the stairs if there’s a fire. Otherwise the fire staircases are locked. So they’ll be clear if there’s a fire. Get it?”

  Zoe got it. Americans used elevators. Even just for going up one floor.

  The door to Tom’s office was standing open, and his assistant was nowhere to be seen, so Zoe just walked in. His office was appropriately outfitted for his presidential rank: Mies van der Rohe Barcelona Chairs and a Rothko on the wall.

  “Hi, stranger. What a nice surprise!” Tom said, standing up and closing the door. “Long time no see. What brings you up to us bean counters?”

  “I wanted to ask you for a favor. An act of friendship, if you will.”

  Tom made a face. “Acts of friendship usually entail something like babysitting for an aggressive parrot for four weeks while a friend goes on vacation, or going all the way across town every day to water some stupid plants. Don’t you have any other friends?”

  Zoe laughed. “I need a real man. That’s why I can’t ask Mimi or Eros this time.”

  “Well, that sounds a bit more like it. Do you need some expert advice on your next lingerie purchase?”

  It’s amazing how men deliver the lamest jokes with complete self-assurance, Zoe thought.

  “I need someone to go to IKEA with me,” she said, pronouncing it the German way, “ee-KAY-uh.”

  “What’s that? Does it hurt?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know what IKEA is? The Swedish furniture store?”

  “Oh. Eye-KEE-uh.”

  “Whatever. Would you come with me? On Saturday?”

  “And what are we going to do there?”

  “Buy furniture for my apartment, obviously. Or have you never bought furniture in your life, Upper East Side boy?

  “Not really. The interior designer always takes care of it.”

  “Then it’s high time you made an excursion into the real world. Just for educational purposes, of course.”

  Tom and Zoe made plans to meet at the Red Hook IKEA on Saturday morning. Zoe had to admit that she was very happy about spending the whole day alone with Tom, even if they would be spending their time between BILLY shelves and FROSTA chairs. On Google Maps, Red Hook’s waterfront didn’t look to be very far from her apartment. She figured the walk would take about twenty minutes. Zoe started off down the charming Court Street with all its cute shops and cafés, until she was suddenly confronted with a massive city highway on stilts. The Gowanus Expressway. Who would build such a monstrous, ugly thing in the middle of a middle-class neighborhood where a townhouse (in need of total renovation) cost at least $2 million? Zoe walked under the stilts, where the overpass formed a tunnel. It smelled of piss. Rain-clumped garbage of dubious origin stuck to her shoes. Great place for a walk, she thought.

  Zoe was always amazed by how quickly a New York neighborhood could go from chic to shabby. Walk a block or two, and you could suddenly end up in a parallel universe. The parallel universe she found herself in now was called the Red Hook Houses, a housing project made up of cement skyscrapers. People standing in the buildings’ entryways observed Zoe with interest. They were obviously not used to seeing strange women walking alone through their neighborhood. She kept her eyes straight ahead and walked quickly. She passed an overflowing dumpster and a row of abandoned shops. Their windows and doors were roughly boarded over.

  Behind the development, a green oasis suddenly opened up. There was a huge park with soccer fields and baseball diamonds, where children were practicing in cute team uniforms. The field was surrounded by exclusively white parents carrying Starbucks cups, enthusiastically cheering on their kids. One block farther, directly on the edge of the harbor with an unobstructed view of the Statue of Liberty, was IKEA. When Zoe arrived, Tom was just getting out of his Town Car and waving away the driver.

  “I’m ready,” he called out, as though they were about to go hunt elephants in the African bush or something.

  They hugged quickly.

  “Do you know how IKEA works?” Zoe asked him.

  “What’s to know? It’s shopping.”

  Zoe laughed. The man obviously had no idea. “First you take a shopping list and a pencil.”

  “They give you a pencil? For free?” Tom asked, evidently skeptical of the business model already.

  “Then you write down which pieces of furniture you want to buy, and where they’re located in the warehouse.”

  “Why would I want to know that?”

  “Because you have to pick them up yourself, take them home, and put them together. But first, you eat meatballs.”

  “Hold on a minute. You lost me at the ‘pick them up yourself’ part. How do you plan to get the furniture to your apartment? Do you plan to carry it?”

  “We rent a small truck.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously!”

  “Who drives, then?”

  “You, of course. You’re the man. But we’ll fortify ourselves for this taxing adventure with Swedish meatballs for $1.99.”

  “Zoe, I don’t have anything against meatballs that cost less than dog food, but can’t you just order things from Pottery Barn and have them delivered, like normal people do?”

  “Normal people who don’t want to spend too much money, like me, for example, because I don’t know how long I’ll be living in this city, go to IKEA. Upper East Side boys who inherit family antiques from five generations back might have trouble understanding that.”

  Tom gave in, and it turned out to be a fun Saturday morning among SPONTAN magazine racks, KLIPPAN sofas, and mountains of meatballs.

  “I still can’t believe we were actually able to get all this stuff into your apartment and managed to put it together,” McDreamy said that evening, as he made himself comfortable on Zoe’s $199 bed. Lying next to him were a heap of screws and a few wooden plugs that were left over, despite Zoe’s insistence that everything had been properly counted out and was definitely necessary for construction. Tom thought reading instructions was totally overrated. “Let’s go get something to eat. Something good, for a change. No dog food.”

  Zoe punched him in the side. “What a terrible snob you are.”

  “Come on, Miss IKEA, we’ll go to Frankies. It’s right around the corner.”

  “Since when do you know your way around Brooklyn?”

  “To be honest, that’s the only place I know in the whole area.”

  “Why is that?”

  “The owners, Frank and Frank, ran the Moomba in Manhattan in the nineties. But they grew up with Frankies Spuntino 457, at least from a culinary point of view. Anyone who isn’t in the mood for the Manhattan scene comes out here. Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Hudson, Michelle Williams.”

  “And Tom Fiorino.”

  Tom grinned. “And Tom Fiorino—with Zoe Schuhmacher by his side.”

  They deposited the rest of the screws in a kitchen drawer—because you never know—and left the apartment. As they turned onto President Street, Tom suddenly started running. “Last one there pays for dinner!”

  “No fair!” Zoe shouted. “I’m wearing heels!” But Tom was already almost a block ahead of her. “Besides, it’s un-American! That’s against the damn rules!” Zoe pulled off her new Reed Krakoffs as fast as she could and sprinted after him barefoot.

  Behind the narrow, dark mahogany bar at Frankies stood a bartender who, with his neatly trimmed beard and horn-rimmed glasses, looked like he could have stepped ou
t of a handbook for hipsters. On the menu were simple pasta dishes, crostini, and an impressive selection of European cheeses. Zoe, who was still holding her shoes by the heel straps, sat down with Tom at the very back of the garden under grape trellises and a few strings of glittery lights. They ordered a carafe of Sancerre. Their hands touched lightly as they both reached for the water bottle at the same time, which didn’t bother Zoe in the slightest.

  “Before September 11th, before all the young hipsters moved in with their babies, Carroll Gardens was an exclusively Italian area. There are still statues of the Madonna in the front yards of the Mazzones, Caputos, and Gambinos,” Tom said, referring to the neighborhood’s Cosa Nostra past. “Over in the Gowanus Canal, which separates Carroll Gardens from the industrial area, the Mafia used to drown their enemies. Now they’re planning to build luxury apartments on the waterfront. They want to make it into a kind of Little Venice. I’m curious how many skeletons the construction workers will find when they drain and clean the canal.”

  “Thank you, dear travel guide, for your informative contribution. Now I know everything I need to know about Carroll Gardens—but nothing about you.”

  “You know I like my morning coffee with milk and one sugar cube. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No. Tell me something about yourself. Who are you? Do you prefer chocolate or vanilla ice cream? Do you read The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal? In bed or at the kitchen table? Do you prefer the beach or the pool? Football or soccer? In school, did you use a Geha fountain pen or a Pelikan fountain pen? Oops, forget the last question; you’re American.”

  “I had a Pelikan fountain pen, of course,” Tom said. He was clearly happy to see the look of surprise on Zoe’s face. “At least, I did until my father gave me a Waterman for my birthday. When I was fourteen, I switched from Dalton to a Swiss boarding school. Geha pens were only for losers, weren’t they?”