by Nancy Martin
“I can’t deny I thought about us,” he said. “But good God, a satellite can see you’re as big as a buffalo with his child, so you’ve made your choice.”
“I have.”
“So I won’t be chasing you around the desk,” he said. “It’s undignified. I don’t like looking ridiculous.”
“You’re not ridiculous,” I said, feeling kinder. “It’s actually very flattering. At my size, I don’t feel very desirable right now, so you—it’s nice to know somebody still finds me appealing.”
“He doesn’t?” Gus demanded.
“Could we slow down, please? I can’t catch my breath.”
I was hot and sweaty, too, not to mention feeling as if things were getting slightly out of my control.
Gus immediately checked his pace, but he didn’t apologize. In a different, more dangerous tone, he said, “I can’t see you and not imagine what you did with him to get into that condition.”
“Gus,” I said.
“And I hate the way the two of you look at each other,” he said, voice still quiet, but intense. “It sickens me. I resent him. No, I despise him. I’d knock his teeth through the back of his head, if I got the chance. But I’m not pining for you, so relax. We’ll work together, and I’m going to make you work very hard indeed. Your column is one of the few successful bits of this newspaper, and you do know everybody who’s important in this damn city, so we’re going to make the most of you. Is this your party?”
We had arrived at a crowded spot on the sidewalk outside a handsomely refurbished townhouse that probably dated from the days of the Continental Congress. The freshly painted door was open, held by a smiling young man in a tuxedo shirt and bow tie, dress slacks and a baseball cap. Well-dressed partygoers wished him luck for the rest of the baseball season as they streamed past him into the house.
“Gus,” I said again, holding him back by his arm.
He shook free of my touch. “That’s all I have to say on the matter.”
He put his hand on the small of my back to help me up the staircase until we reached the lavish condominium on the second floor. The walls were white, the ceilings very high, the floor plan an open concept with one gracious room opening into the next. Tall windows looked out into the leafy trees of the park. Blazing afternoon sunlight splashed on the sparkling surfaces of mirrored furniture, the silver chandelier, the polished granite countertop big enough to hold all the food and beverages to serve a hundred people. Rich, pale carpets lay on the mahogany floor. The upholstery was done in soft tones that had been selected by an expert in relaxed luxury.
Gus said, “Take some sexy pictures. Not pretty dresses, but tits and famous people with drinks in their fists, got it?”
With that advice, Gus let his hand fall away from my back as we entered the party.
Our host was the fortysomething father of a teenager who had famously made his family rich by designing popular cell phone apps. The son was nowhere to be seen—perhaps they kept him chained in his bedroom with his computer. The father greeted us at the door. Either he was a geek himself or he had embraced his son’s success by dressing in a slovenly T-shirt and cargo shorts with hiking sandals. His hair was long, and his black eyeglasses completed the picture of the wealthy techie. He shook Gus’s hand and was surprised when Gus asked an astute question about the new app. They went off for a confab in a corner beside some tall bookcases.
Our hostess was no lockjaw Old Philadelphian or even a New Money babe pumped full of Restylane. Instead, she was an average-looking mom slightly overdressed in a flowered Dolce and Gabbana frock, with maybe too many diamonds for daytime. Her haircut was smart, and she had brand-new blond highlights, but otherwise she appeared to be unspoiled by her newfound wealth. I had heard she was a former kindergarten teacher. A cocoon of longtime friends gathered festively around her and admired the large cocktail ring she showed them—a sure sign she was settling just fine into the lifestyle of the newly rich.
I introduced myself and told the hostess how lovely her home was. She laughingly admitted to having turned the project over to a designer, who had made the place picture-perfect. “I don’t have any talent for decorating. And I got sticker shock shopping for bathtubs.”
I liked her for that and asked how they became involved in the leukemia organization. Without a blink she told me about a brother-in-law who had died of the illness.
“We just want to do something useful now that we have the resources,” she said.
Her friends jumped in to tell me about how she had been just as sweet before she got rich.
I took notes, then snapped some photos. With my thumbs on the keyboard of my phone, I sent photos of baseball players to the Intelligencer’s online editor, who would post the pictures on the newspaper’s Web site within the hour.
The room was very hot, and I dabbed my forehead with a cocktail napkin. The party wasn’t a big fund-raiser, but rather a feeder event, a gathering of people who might, if properly encouraged, bring more moneyed guests to a bigger gala with an expensive ticket price. There were no high rollers out at this hour. The hedge-fund guys were still at their desks, and the top socialites didn’t stoop to midweek disease-related events anymore. Instead, I counted a handful of ornamental Junior Leaguers who were probably just breaking into the social scene or looking to meet men. Also, a scattering of good-hearted people from the medical community, plus some of the professionals who made it possible for the social set to put themselves on display: two important dermatologists, a well-known hair dresser, a pair of hungry Realtors, a spa owner and a formal-wear buyer from a big department store.
I avoided one busy, hard-faced young woman who was launching her career as a social publicist. People who wanted to be famous hired her, I’d heard, to get their names and faces in the media. By Twitter, she had already tried to push one of her clients on me—a suburban restaurant owner’s pretty wife who had no claim to fame, as far as I could see, except her good looks and ambition. Knowing who’s who in the philanthropic world was useful for me, but I hadn’t quite decided how I felt about social climbers hiring personal publicists. If there was a good philanthropic purpose to that, I hadn’t discovered it.
From studying the crowd, I deduced that the app family hadn’t been rich long enough to attract many wealthy friends, but it wouldn’t take long for the social back-scratching to begin. Within a year, I guessed, they would be seen at top fund-raisers several nights a month. They’d be generous with their money, but they’d probably also get their nips and tucks and German cars like everyone else in their social circle. I wondered if they would publicly compete against their new friends to see who could spend the most money at luxury raffles. I hoped the mother gained more self-assurance by then, or she’d be knocking back chardonnay by lunchtime every day. Maybe the father would upgrade his wardrobe and learn to play golf. Would they be happier, though?
After a few minutes, I met an old friend in an alcove. Chandler Ann Rudiak was flipping distractedly through a book of bird prints that had been displayed on a glass-topped table.
She glanced up and saw with obvious relief that I was someone she knew in the sea of guests. “Nora! You look . . .”
“Big,” I supplied. “Please don’t ask if I’m having twins. I’m not.”
She laughed. “Okay, I won’t. Sit down. Rest a minute while we get caught up.”
Gratefully, I sank into one of two clear Lucite chairs at the table. “You look wonderful, as always. That skirt—is it Chanel?”
“Yes, last year’s collection. The blouse is from Talbot’s—on sale.”
I laughed. “You have a knack for mixing.”
“You don’t look half-bad yourself. Still pulling clothes from your granny’s closet?”
When I had first started attending parties for a living and needed elegant clothes every night of the week, I climbed the attic stairs to look through my late
grandmama Blackbird’s collection of vintage couture—items as varied as Gucci miniskirts that Twiggy would have envied to beaded Dior ball gowns worn to Palm Beach galas with movie stars. I made good use of her carefully preserved clothes. Two of her friends soon gave me more fine garments, so I had a lot of valuable and classic pieces to choose from.
“Not at the moment,” I said. “I’m borrowing a lot of my sister’s maternity clothes. My taste isn’t quite the same as Libby’s, but I’m making do.”
“You always make it work.” She looked more carefully into my face. “Are you okay?”
Chandler Ann was a couple of years older than me, but I had dated her famously handsome brother Dylan for a while. I had bonded with the whole Rudiak family, and even after Dylan went on to date New York socialites far out of my league, I enjoyed the family’s traditional day-after-Thanksgiving brunch, to which they invited a hundred people every year. A while back Chandler Ann and I had practically camped out together to buy tickets for the touring show of dresses worn by the late Princess of Wales.
So I felt comfortable telling her the truth. “It’s been a complicated day.”
“What’s up? Everything hunky-dory with your baby?”
“The baby’s fine. Perfect, in fact.” I had been friends with Chandler Ann for a long time. “But something awful happened today. Jenny Tuttle passed away.”
Beneath her fringe of stylish blond bangs, Chandler Ann’s fine-boned face went through some almost comic gymnastics as she absorbed the news and tried not to show her first reaction. “That’s so sad! I know—knew—Jenny pretty well, in fact. She was a client of ours. I saw her every week for almost a year when she was coming to the clinic.”
Past generations of the Rudiak family had been respected Philadelphia physicians. But Chandler Ann’s father had an entrepreneurial streak as well as a medical degree, and he’d opened a weight-loss clinic so popular that he franchised it nationally. All his children now worked for the lucrative company. Chandler Ann was the black sheep who hadn’t gone to medical school, so she was the chief financial officer and kept the books for the multimillion-dollar business. I reflected that diets must be doing better than ever if she could afford Chanel.
Chandler Ann said, “I’m so sorry to hear Jenny died. I— Can I ask how it happened?”
“We think she had a heart attack.”
My friend turned pale at that news. “Thank heavens she stopped seeing Dad a while back. I wonder if she— Do you think she was still dieting?”
I didn’t want to gossip or admit that I had snooped among the bottles on Jenny Tuttle’s dressing table. And I was unwilling to spread rumors that could turn ugly, so I said, just as ambiguously as before, “She looked slimmer.”
Shaking her head, Chandler Ann said, “She was desperate to lose weight. But my dad’s natural methods weren’t fast enough for her. He rarely prescribed medication, for example, which is what she kept asking for. She really wanted to be thin for this summer, so she left our clinic. I presume she went somewhere else to get the medications she wanted.”
I said, “I saw a lot of energy drink cans around the house, too.”
“No!” Aghast, Chandler Ann clapped one set of fingertips to her mouth. “Those are so dangerous! Especially for someone in Jenny’s state of health.”
“Her mother mentioned she had a heart condition.”
“She should have avoided all caffeinated beverages.” Chandler Ann reached out to touch my arm. “You look really upset about this, Nora.”
“It was a shock seeing Jenny,” I admitted. “I find myself thinking how sad it was that she never really had a life of her own.”
Chandler Ann nodded. “Yes, after Toodles died, her mother was really Jenny’s focus. She didn’t have a job or a boyfriend, let alone children. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised to see her at the clinic. She was finally doing something for herself. Getting healthy. She hinted that she had something big coming up soon, too.”
“Something big?”
“I don’t know what. She only blushed and laughed me off when I asked. But I got the impression she wanted to look nice for whatever was on her horizon. She even asked me if I used a stylist to help me shop for clothes.”
“Maybe she meant the opening night of the new Toodles Tuttle musical.”
“There’s a new musical? My parents love those Toodles shows!”
“I understand they found an unproduced musical Toodles wrote before he died.”
“No wonder Jenny wanted to look good. Too bad her self-improvement efforts contributed to her death.”
Hearing my friend say it, I was shocked. “Do you think that’s true?”
She lifted her shoulders. “I can’t say for sure, of course. But caffeine drinks and diet pills? Plus some of the crazy supplements people buy on the Internet? That’s a lethal combination. How did her mother handle her death?”
“Her behavior seemed . . . inappropriate this afternoon.”
“She’s nuts,” Chandler Ann diagnosed. “At least, that’s the impression I got from Jenny.”
I thought about my relationship with my own mother. It was surprisingly distant, perhaps, by the standards of people from outside our socioeconomic group. She had always been a hands-off parent who sent us to boarding schools at a young age and left our day-to-day care to our grandparents’ housekeeper. I remembered her more as an exasperating sort of in-family party planner, but not a source of any real support. If I felt the need for actual guidance, I had always turned to my grandmother. By no means would I describe my mother as “nuts.” Eccentric, maybe, but not crazy.
Before we could further explore the topic of mothers and daughters, a baseball player arrived at our table to offer fresh drinks. Chandler slanted a flirtatious glance up at him and asked what position he played best. He took the question seriously before figuring out she wasn’t asking about baseball.
“Nice try,” I said when he eased himself away.
She sighed. “He’s probably ten years younger than I am. I’ll be thirty-five soon, and I’m still single. You are probably right to start a family before you walk down an aisle with that—I mean— Sorry, Nora.” Unable to stop herself, she let her gaze slip to the diamond on my left hand—a ring too big to ignore. “Are you married to your scary guy or not?”
“He’s not scary,” I said. “He’s protective.”
She took my hand and tipped the ring toward the sunlight to see the facets sparkle. “He sure has lavish taste in jewelry. It might be nice to have somebody looking after me—especially if he likes diamonds. These days, most of the guys who invite me for drinks end up staring at their cell phones the whole time. I hate thinking I’m less interesting than Angry Birds or text messages from their bosses.”
“Michael spends a lot of time on his cell phone, too.”
“Oh.” She looked disappointed. “He ignores you, huh?”
“No,” I said truthfully. “He doesn’t ignore much of anything.”
“So—are you planning to tie the knot with him? Have a big wedding in Vegas, maybe? Or not?” Chandler Ann looked over my shoulder into the crowded party behind me. “Because that hunk you came in with is kinda yummy.”
“That’s my boss,” I said. “My editor.”
She perked up. “The Australian guy? I’ve heard about him. I saw those pictures of him bicycling in Paraguay. I bet he likes women more than his cell phone.” She continued to admire Gus from afar. “Is he single?”
“Very.”
She heard my tone and laughed. “I get it. He’s a tomcat?”
“What a nice, old-fashioned expression,” I said with a smile. “Go get him, tiger.”
We promised to touch base soon, and Chandler Ann told me to take care of myself. I sent my best wishes to the rest of her family. I went to say my good-byes to our host and hostess and met them in the kitchen just
as their computer-whiz son made his appearance. He was a tall, lanky boy with frizzy hair and a wrinkled T-shirt. Disinterested in the activity around him, he elbowed his way past one of the baseball players, yawning as if he’d just rolled out of bed. I caught a whiff of him. He hadn’t bathed in a while.
He snapped, “Mom, I need a smoothie.”
“Right this minute, Jakey?”
He sighed impatiently. “Well, yeah. I’m starving!”
His mother lost her smile and rushed to the refrigerator to gather ingredients while his father said jovially, “Where’s your new girlfriend, Jake?”
“If you must know, she’s putting her clothes back on.”
The father did a double take that I probably wasn’t supposed to see. A moment later, a very tall young lady arrived in a minidress so short it almost showed whether or not she was wearing panties. Barefoot, she dangled a pair of high-heeled sandals from one finger. I recognized her as an up-and-coming local model. She draped her skinny arm around the boy’s shoulders and nibbled his neck while he waited for his mother to make his smoothie. His expression didn’t change as the girl’s lips traced a path to his earlobe.
Sixteen, as rich as a prince, and already going to bed with models.
To make Gus happy, I should have snapped their photo, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the tabloid killer instinct. Time to go. Halfway out the door, though, I encountered Brenda Monroe, a local television newsreader.
“Nora, great to see you! You look great! We should have lunch.” Brenda spoke rapid-fire and was constantly in motion. She reached into her shoulder bag with one hand while gripping my wrist with the other. “Listen, if you happen to see Lexie Paine, how about giving her my card? I’d love, love, love to talk to her. We’re all wondering what her next move will be. I’m sure she has a plan to make scads of money. Maybe we could all have lunch together? Just us girls. Here. Tell Lexie to keep me in mind.”
