New York for Beginners

by Remke, Susann

  The ring: Just like Santa Claus, the legend of how much a man should pay for an engagement ring finds its roots in the free-market economy. In the 1930s, the De Beers catalog proclaimed that the perfect husband should invest at least a month’s salary in a proper engagement ring. Later, De Beers extended that piece of “advice” to two months’ salary. It has currently come to rest at three months’ salary, minimum.

  (For those wondering what Santa Claus has to do with all this: Coca-Cola did not invent him, but the company made him truly popular in the US with their commercials in the thirties.)

  (New York for Beginners, p. 77)

  30

  JULY

  “Here comes Bridezilla,” Mimi shouted loudly enough for all at the Standard Grill to hear. She waved to Zoe with a menu from the table where she and Eros were already sitting. This July, the thermometer hadn’t dropped below 80 degrees even once. Even at night. And during the day, it had reached above 95 a few times. On top of that, the air was muggy in an almost tropical way.

  The dog days of summer.

  Zoe’s Calypso dress stuck to her thighs as she struggled to get out of the cab, and her hair, which had been blow dried straight this morning, curled up on the short walk to the entrance of the air-conditioned restaurant. The only people sitting out on the deck were tourists.

  “Where are the bridal magazines?” Eros asked eagerly after they had given each other hugs.

  With American female precision, Mimi scrutinized Zoe’s ring. “A five-carat Ashoka diamond? Like Reese Witherspoon’s?”

  Zoe just nodded. She knew that Reese’s had only four carats, but she wasn’t about to tell Mimi that.

  “So where are the wedding-gown magazines already?” Eros whined. “We were going to choose a vision in white for you—and a bridesmaid dress for Mimi in some wonderful candy color with a big fat bow on the chest.”

  “I think I’m just a little too old for the romanticized girly fantasy of a vision in white,” Zoe said. She had come empty-handed.

  “Huh? Are you planning on doing a quickie at Little White Wedding Chapel in Vegas or something?” Mimi asked. “Like Britney?”

  “No, but a traditional wedding somehow seems too outdated. I’m not planning to promise Tom my obedience till death do us part. And I don’t need a whole armada of equally antique bridesmaids, either.”

  Mimi looked relieved, while Eros looked deeply disappointed.

  On the flight back from Columbus Island, Tom and Zoe had had a long—and maybe slightly German—conversation about weddings. An American bride would probably have taken the opportunity to plan every detail of the wedding with military precision. Would it be intimate (a hundred guests) or large (five hundred guests), in New York or far away (the Hamptons, Cape Cod, the Bahamas), a buffet or a sit-down dinner? Zoe, however, was more concerned about the idea of a wedding and its repercussions on the most basic level. She had some specific notions about how she wanted her life to be after the “I dos.”

  “I’d definitely like to keep my own bank account,” she explained to Tom. “And you can keep yours. And if practical reasons demand it, we can create a joint account at some point.”

  “Why?” Tom asked, frowning.

  “This is important to me! So I can hold on to my feeling of independence, at least a little bit.”

  “O-kaaay,” Tom said.

  And Zoe had a few other ideas about what a modern marriage was supposed to look like. Or, rather, what it shouldn’t look like.

  “I don’t want flowers on our anniversary, Valentine’s Day, or anything else that ends with ‘day.’ That feels so outdated.”

  “Go on.”

  “No board-game parties with other couples.”

  “Go on.”

  “I also don’t want to go shopping on Saturdays with the wives of other couples.”

  “I can deal with that.”

  “And promise me something else—cross your heart!”

  “What would that be?” Tom asked, amused.

  “That we’ll get a divorce immediately if we start calling each other Mommy and Daddy, or if we start brushing our teeth at the sink while the other one’s on the toilet.”

  Tom laughed. Zoe guessed he hadn’t had a conversation like this with darling Vicky.

  “No problem, sweetheart. We have separate bathrooms, anyway,” Tom said. “I guess that’s what I get for marrying an emancipated, perfectly organized German woman.”

  “Is the old hag insisting on a prenup?” Mimi asked bluntly after they ordered their lunches.

  “Sure, what did you think she’d do?” Zoe answered.

  “And what do you want?”

  “I definitely don’t want to create the impression that I’m only after Tom’s money.”

  “You’re so damn German, Zoe, I’m going to be sick.”

  “This is the second time I’ve heard that. What’s so German about it, Mimi?”

  “You Germans are always worrying about what others will think about you.”

  “True,” Eros chimed in. “My mother just bought a brand-new car instead of a used one. Her biggest worry was what the neighbors would say about it.”

  “Oh, let Kitty think what she wants,” Mimi told her. “She’ll do that anyway. So what does the prenup say?”

  Zoe rolled her eyes. She hadn’t known whether to be offended or not when a messenger brought a big envelope to her office immediately after their return from Columbus Island. She had to sign for it, like it was a UPS package. “It offers me a million dollars for every year spent in the marriage, plus the sole entitlement to an apartment or town house that still needs to be bought in case we decide to separate.”

  Eros, who had just taken a gulp of water, spat it out over the table. “Pardon me?” he exclaimed.

  But Mimi stayed cool and said: “That’s neither generous nor petty. And what did you say?”

  “I wrote to her that I have no interest in Tom’s money or his current and/or future real estate, and that Kitty can stick her prenup . . . yeah. I’m renouncing everything.”

  Eros nodded proudly. “Go for it! You showed that old witch.”

  Now it was Mimi’s turn to cry out in horror: “Are you mad, Zoe?”

  “Have you gone mad, Zoe?” Tom asked, visibly worried, while they were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge in a Town Car in the direction of Carroll Gardens.

  As a boss, Tom wasn’t the type to yell—he was one of those who got red patches on his neck when he was really angry and talked more and more quietly and clearly, until every word was as piercing as a freshly sharpened Japanese Kasumi kitchen knife.

  “I declined the prenup on principle, Tom,” Zoe tried to defend herself, but somehow her apology came out sounding sheepish.

  “You and your principles—it gets on my nerves. There’s only black-and-white with you,” he spluttered.

  “And you keep making compromises instead of manning up.”

  Zoe and Tom were on their way to a supper club in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn, an industrial area between Carroll Gardens and Park Slope. The officially illegal pirate restaurant was run by a chef who went by the alias Shiny Knife. Reservations were to be made online. Only those who were fast enough to snap up one of the thirty available places received an email with the location.

  Shiny Knife invites you to a five-course tasting menu on the rooftop garden of a New York warehouse. Dinner begins at 8 p.m. with cocktails by our very own mixologist, and dessert will be served at 10:30 p.m. Our sommelier will advise you on our choice of wines (not included in the price). Tickets: $120 per person.

  Supper clubs were the new “It” restaurants, Mimi had said—and had organized two tickets for the most exclusive one in the entire city for Zoe and Tom. The Town Car drove down Court Street, where it seemed that pedestrians were more likely to be run over by a designer stroller than
by a car. Zoe barely saw any mothers with strollers in Manhattan, but Brooklyn mothers paraded their strollers like they were on a catwalk.

  “Here’s 421 Carroll Street. This must be it, sir,” Victor the driver said. He seemed a bit suspicious.

  At this address was a four-story building, whose ground floor, according to a sign on the dark greenish-gray metal door, at least, belonged to a sanitary engineer whose specialties were clogged drains and toilets. Zoe and Tom looked around tentatively, until Zoe noticed a dark-brown Band-Aid stuck over the name of the only nameplate on the buzzer. On it were the words “Shiny Knife” in smudged, handwritten letters. In the stairwell, an enticing aroma of roasted lamb wafted through the air. When they arrived at the very top, they saw a door held open by a bar stool. They climbed over a high sill, up and out onto the warehouse’s roof. Under countless strings of tiny, sparkling lights, a big table was set for thirty people. The 360-degree view was completely unobstructed. Manhattan’s skyline towered to the west, and to the south you could see the tallest and ugliest subway station in all of New York, Smith–9th Streets, standing on stilts. To the east were the rolling hills of Park Slope, and to the north was downtown Brooklyn, which seemed, in comparison, like Manhattan’s poor younger brother.

  A young man in a fedora and a seersucker suit approached Tom and Zoe and greeted them. “Hi, I’m Josh, your host for tonight.”

  A mixologist handed out drinks that he described as “manly,” as opposed to girly drinks like Cosmos or Appletinis. His repertoire consisted of drinks with names like Rusty Nail, or the classic Sidecar.

  “Are we good again, stranger?” Zoe asked a little shyly.

  “Sure,” Tom answered and toasted to an enjoyable evening. “But we still need to talk about that contract. You should be covered. Just in case.”

  Zoe didn’t like all this talk about separation of property and possible divorce even before the wedding. “What, in case Vicky suddenly reappears and wins you back or something? How likely is that?”

  Tom sighed and looked at her in disappointment, like he would have looked at a dog after an hour of practicing “Sit!” “Let’s talk about it some other time, OK?”

  When all the guests had finally arrived, appetizers were passed: baked quail eggs, fried zucchini blossoms, and mini Maryland crab cakes. Zoe looked around. She was sure most of the guests did something artsy or charitable for a living. Maybe they designed lamps or worked in fundraising for women’s nonprofits in Afghanistan. In short, they were Brooklyn bohemians.

  They sat down at the long table. As a starter, they were served sweet corn puree with popcorn shrimp.

  “Hi, I’m Tyler,” the man to Zoe’s right introduced himself. He was wearing a 1950s-style gas-station attendant’s shirt, complete with a hand-embroidered name tag on the chest. “Are you here for the first time?”

  “I’m Zoe. And yeah, I’m a supper club novice. Do you come here often?”

  “My wife and I practically only eat at supper clubs these days. We’re just so tired of corporate restaurants. I like to know who cooks my food, where the ingredients are from, and what the idea behind the menu is. It’s much more personal. And the crowds are also a lot more interesting.”

  “People who defined themselves through music in their teens and early twenties . . .” Zoe began.

  “The Cure or Depeche Mode for example,” Tyler added.

  “. . . define themselves through food in their thirties and forties,” Zoe said.

  “Absolutely,” Tyler agreed. “Cold-pressed olive oil, traditional tomato breeds, humanely butchered organic meat.”

  Tyler seemed to be the prototype for users who would like Yearning.

  “What do you do?” he asked her.

  “I founded a start-up called Yearning that’s going live tomorrow,” Zoe answered. Then she briefly described her project.

  Tyler was excited. “This is going to be the next Etsy!”

  “We’ll see about that,” Zoe said, ordering her brain to stay calm.

  During the entrée, which was asparagus ice cream with bacon and Vichyssoise, they talked about real-estate prices in Manhattan compared to those in Cobble Hill (about the same), Bushwick as the new Williamsburg (not quite), and juice cleanses, which Gwyneth Paltrow had made fashionable with her blog Goop.

  Then Zoe turned to Tom. “I miss Brooklyn. Even though I only lived here for a few weeks,” she said. “Maybe we should move to Brooklyn someday.”

  “But only if we talk about this prenup first, my dear,” Tom responded.

  Zoe rolled her eyes. “All right. What do you want?”

  “For you to sign the contract.”

  “I won’t be bought.”

  “Nobody’s trying to buy you, Zoe. It’s only for your own security,” Tom explained patiently yet again.

  Then Zoe had a brilliant idea. “OK!” she said.

  Tom eyed her in surprise. “You’re signing?”

  “Yes,” Zoe answered triumphantly. “I’ll sign. And, if I ever end up having to take that money, I’ll donate all of it to the Bowery Mission for the homeless.”

  “You’re crazy,” was all that Tom could say.

  “And that’s exactly why you love me,” Zoe retorted and raised her glass for a toast.

  After dessert, the guests started walking over to the south edge of the roof. Strange splashing noises, squeaks, and whoops had been coming from that direction for a while now. They peeked over the railing and saw that down below, in the inner courtyard, college kids in underwear were jumping off a ramshackle diving board made from wooden crates into a water-filled industrial garbage container. They had created their own little private swimming pool.

  “That gives Dumpster diving a whole new meaning!” Tom said in amusement. He put his arm around Zoe’s shoulders. Now that the matter concerning the prenup had been cleared up—if only in Zoe’s very unique way—he was obviously more relaxed.

  Zoe laughed. “What does Cindy Adams always write in the New York Post? Only in New York, kids. Only in New York.”

  31

  AUGUST

  It was August 4. The day of days. Lately, Zoe had been walking every morning from Wooster Street all the way up to her office in the Flatiron District. She didn’t have to wear heels anymore like she’d had to at Vision. At General Assembly, it was flip-flops, Crocs, or Chucks. When she reached the corner of Broadway and Houston, her eyes were drawn to a huge billboard that had been put up about a hundred yards away on Lafayette Street, above the strange gas station that seemed to be frequented solely by taxi cabs. Usually there was a Calvin Klein ad up there with some iconic New York scene. But today there was a slogan in pale-orange letters with gray-and-white pebbles and an ocean scene in the background: “www.yearning.com. Make yourself happy.”

  For a few seconds, Zoe stopped, awestruck. She had never been this proud of herself before. Her project. On one of the most iconic billboards in the world. She skipped back up Broadway and murmured her new mantra: “Yearning. Make yourself happy.”

  It was perfect!

  When she got off the elevator on the fourth floor, Justus was already waiting by her office door with his arms crossed, like a teacher about to tell his student to go stand in the corner. “You’d better not read today’s paper,” he warned morosely. “It’ll put you in a bad mood.”

  Zoe’s heart skipped a beat, and a terrible queasiness spread in her stomach. “It’s that bad?”

  “Even worse,” Justus muttered.

  On her desk, Zoe found the all-morning media review, which was created by Schoenhoff’s PR team every morning for the heads of office. It was comprised of all the important news that concerned the company. It began with an article by the German Media Service about Yearning’s launch.

  A web portal that nobody needs, for people who already have everything.

  Schoenhoff Publishing, the p
owerful media conglomerate that likes to mask itself as a grassroots company, is known for many things. For example, the phone book–sized Schoenhoff catalog that blocks up German mailboxes every spring and fall, for which entire forests are killed every time.

  In short: It would be as credible for Schoenhoff to start a gigantic ad campaign for a goody-two-shoes website with the borderline-idiotic name Yearning as it would be for Rupert Murdoch to publish an ethics magazine.

  Zoe could hardly believe her eyes. She was on the verge of finding a Kleenex to mop up the malice that was dripping from the article onto her desk. To be fair, the German Media Service was known for its cynically harsh tone. That was the reason everyone in media read it every morning with the utmost pleasure. But would it be wrong to want a little more impartiality?

  The whimsical little team of Yearning, comprised of fashion minx Zoe Schuhmacher and the prodigal son, Justus von Schoenhoff, couldn’t be a better cast for a despicable and heavily masked consumption machine for people who already have everything, want even more, and can’t even admit it to themselves. Zoe Schuhmacher understands as much about sustainability as a vegetarian would understand about the subject of Kobe beef. And Justus von Schoenhoff, well, he’s back, and had to be presented with some no-brainer project by Mommie Dearest. Except he’s making a completely carbon dioxide–free and animal-testing-free mess of the few wee millions he has.

  Whimsical? Fashion minx? Few wee millions? Zoe picked up the review with two fingers and threw it into the garbage in disgust, as if it was a piece of a newspaper she’d just used to clean dog poop off her shoes. “That’s so mean! And unfair!”

  Justus only nodded. Then he said slowly: “If you don’t like the heat, get out of the kitchen. That’s how that saying goes, right?”

  “Stupid saying!” Zoe cried impatiently and reached for the media review with imaginary dog poop on it. “What do the others say?”

  A raw product made up of organic food, good tidings, and a bit of bohème for a target audience that probably doesn’t even exist. (Media Decoder, New York Times)