by Plum Sykes
Not that this is anything, honestly, to do with moi, but if I were to want a lot of rendezvous requiring contraceptive devices in glamorous places like the Paris Ritz, this is exactly how I would go about it. Which suddenly made it occur to me that, as far as rendezvous were concerned, I hadn’t had one for over a week with Zach, not even one without a contraceptive device.
* * *
New York Nervous Breakdown
I have:
1. an acupuncturist @ $99 for 90 minutes
2. an Ashtanga yoga teacher @ $70 for 60 minutes
3. an osteopath @ $150 for 25 minutes
4. a chiropractor @ $100 for 15 minutes
5. a healer from Gujarat, India, who charges nothing
6. an ob-gyn @ $350 for the words “might not be ovulating but can’t be sure”
7. a hypnotherapist @ $150 for 60 minutes
8. a cognitive behavioral therapist @ $200 for 55 minutes
9. a psychotherapist @ $40 for 90 minutes (too cheap to work)
10. a psychic @ $250 for 60 minutes
11. a masseuse @ $125 for 40 minutes
I am not at Bliss Spa. I am having a New York nervous breakdown. It’s expensive.
* * *
5
Even in my most imaginative nightmares I never dreamed a day could start with an invitation to the Chanel sample sale and end with a New York nervous breakdown.
“Don’t tell her I said this or she’ll think I’m a twofaced liar,” whispered Julie conspiratorially one beautiful May morning over café au lait at Tartine, “but K. K.’s New York City Opera benefit, which is universally considered to be the benefit of benefits, is not even five percent as thrilling as the Chanel sample sale. Show me a Manhattan girl who’d rather watch Don Giovanni than shop Chanel at Target prices, and I’ll renew my membership at Equinox Gym on Sixty-third Street and actually start going on a semi-regular basis.”
According to Julie, the Chanel sample sale is the event of New York events: absolutely no one gets invited except “very few, very exclusive girls. But you’re in,” Julie said, handing me a white envelope. “I got you on the list.”
Inside was a stiff white card from Chanel. I was beyond excited, which was très alarming actually. I adore Julie but her shopping habits are not exactly healthy. I didn’t want to turn into a girl like her, whose hormone system is ruled by retail opportunities. But apparently everyone’s estrogen skyrockets the first time they get this particular invitation, so there’s no need to be freaked by it. It read,
* * *
Chanel Sample Sale
Tuesday, May 7, 7:15 a.m.
Park Lane Hotel
58th Street, btw. 6th and 7th
Bring photo ID
No admittance without this card.
This is your security pass.
* * *
Security at Chanel is tighter than at the Pentagon. The president should take tips from the PR girls there because the Chanel guards run a tighter ship than the Department of Homeland Security.
The annoying thing was, I couldn’t go to the sample sale because of work. Careers are very unreliable things and you have to be attentive to them or they just disappear. NY girls who go to too many parties and sample sales tend to have disappearing-type careers and I didn’t want to be one of them. I was booked to fly down to Palm Beach to do an interview with a society girl. She’d just inherited an Art Deco beach mansion. She lived there all alone like a millennial Doris Duke. It was sad, really, but very glamorous.
“Fool,” said Julie when I told her I wasn’t coming. “You cannot miss this.”
I knew I should do the interview, but I just couldn’t resist the idea of shopping Chanel like it was the Gap. Occasionally my value system inexplicably abandons me, and I find myself doing things I never usually would. Feeling unbelievably guilty, I called the office and said that the Palm Beach heiress had cancelled due to “fatigue.” My editor believed me: society girls are always backing out of things at the absolute last minute because they are “too tired after last night.” When I’d spoken to the heiress she’d sounded extremely tired anyway, poor rich thing, so it wasn’t really a lie at all, just a convenient delay for both of us.
That Monday I could barely concentrate on anything. Chanel’s invite was so mesmerzing with the future promise of quilted purses for $150 instead of $2,000 (no wonder your estrogen goes nuts), that I actually physically forgot that there had been zero rendezvous with Zach for a seriously long time. I’d become used to the lack of intimate Brazilian encounters but now it was like he wasn’t even prepared to see me for a cocktail. Whenever I’d called in the last few days, his assistant had just said, “He’ll return,” and hung up. This never used to happen: Zach always used to take my calls.
The hottest sample sales in New York are so fraught with danger they make the Gaza Strip look peaceful. Honestly, I once saw K. K. almost murder her own cousin at a TSE sample sale because they both wanted this great white cashmere peacoat and there was only one of them. It’s no wonder that Jolene Morgan organizes all her “shopping attacks” in advance on such occasions. She called a pre-Chanel “strategy meeting” with Lara Lowell, Julie, and myself over lunch at the Four Seasons restaurant on East Fifty-second Street. Sometimes I worry about Jolene’s mental state, I really do. The Four Seasons is the kind of place the mayor and media moguls lunch. It wasn’t exactly the most obvious place for a fashion summit. But I guess Jolene wanted to be in the company of other brilliant strategists.
When I arrived Lara and Jolene were already analyzing the menu for hidden carbs. They’d gotten one of the great tables right by the fountain, with leather banquette seating. Among the sea of power-lunchers, they looked like two colorful birds: Jolene was in a sexy pale blue dress, nipped in at the waist to show off her pretty curves. Lara, who has two of the longest legs in Manhattan, was in a tiny white miniskirt and a scarlet sweater. Her long blonde hair was scooped up in a ponytail. She has a tomboyish style and totally gets away with it, which bugs the hell out of Jolene, even though they’ve been best friends forever. Sometimes I think Lara is mainly Jolene’s best friend because she does absolutely everything Jolene tells her to.
I sat down and ordered a Pellegrino and a salad. Jolene was acting like a crazy person, which isn’t all that different from usual actually: she was obsessed with getting the new pink quilt purse with a gilt chain from the Chanel resort collection. I warned her that since Reese Witherspoon had carried the exact same purse to the Oscars, everyone was going to try and snag that one first. I didn’t want Jolene to be disappointed; I mean, the fallout would be horrible for all of us.
“It’s not an issue,” declared Jolene. “I got the floor plan and I know exactly where the pastel quilts are going to be located: at the far end of the ballroom behind the size thirty-eight cashmere twin sets.” All New York girls illegally buy floor plans from fashion publicists before sample sales. It’s the only way to get the best stuff.
Jolene and Lara were both exhausted. They had been at a super-cool dinner the previous night at one of the Pink Floyd kids’ lofts downtown. A waiter brought our drinks, but Lara and Jolene ignored theirs: they were way too stressed about last night.
“Everyone was, like, the child of a Rolling Stone or a Mama and Papa,” said Jolene. “Rock n’ roll kids make me feel so terrible about myself. I had a total Shame Attack.”
“Me too,” agreed Lara. “But then I have a Shame Attack after most parties.” Lara is so insecure sometimes it’s criminal. But I guess it’s one of the reasons she fits in so well on the Upper East Side.
A Shame Attack is a bit like the Fargos, only it’s intellectual, not beauty-related. Only girls in NYC and Paris get them. They are much feared because apparently they get inside your brain and keep you awake night after night. Jolene always takes a 10mg Ambien (the in sleeping tablet) when she gets an Attack, which is usually at 5AM, just when she is about to finally get off to sleep after taking her first Ambien at 1AM. Her latest SA was
brought on because she’d taken a vintage gold Rolex off the boy to her right at last night’s dinner and said she’d meet him for cocktails at the Mercer Hotel the next evening to return it. It was all very sexy and flirtatious. She’d totally forgotten she was engaged when she agreed to it all. Lara’s came on because she hadn’t read the New York Times since 9/11 and didn’t know the most dangerous terrorist cell in the Middle East had been captured last week. She was freaking out all night because she was terrified that people would now think she was a self-obsessed Park Avenue Princess with no interest in Israel or anything below Seventy-second Street. (Which is pretty close to the truth but I would never be cruel enough to actually tell Lara how narrow-minded most of us think she is because she has a heart of gold, she really does.)
“I’ve never had a Shame Attack,” I said. I’d come close, sure, but I don’t think I’d ever had a full-fledged shame crisis.
“Never?” said Lara, turning whiter than her minuscule skirt.
“Look at her,” said Jolene. “Of course she’s never had one. She even looks like she’s never had one.”
“I’m going to get something really beautiful for Zach’s mom at the sale,” I said, changing the subject.
The Chanel sample sale drives most New York girls to frantically gobble up as many gilt quilts as they can for themselves and totally forget everyone else. (Then they go down with an attack of GQG: gilt quilt guilt.) I decided I would do the opposite and use the opportunity to perform an uncalled-for act of kindess: I would buy the best purse for my mother-in-law-to-be.
“Oh, what a cute idea,” said Lara.
“What a terrible waste,” said Jolene. “She won’t understand it. She comes from Ohio.”
I ignored Jolene’s protestations and called Zach’s office from the table: I wanted to check what color his mom might like.
“Hey. The office,” came the reply.
It was Zach’s assistant, Mary Alice. She talks in the monosyllabic bark favored by a clique of cool bicoastal assistants. (Even though she has had her picture in Paper magazine more than three times, Mary Alice is transparently miserable. She always dresses in shapeless, avant-garde Belgian clothes, which would make anyone unhappy. When I tried to help and explained that being a champagne-bubble-about-town was preferable to being a depressive-about-town she said, “Yeah. Right,” and didn’t do anything about herself.)
Resolutely chirpy, I replied, “Hi! It’s me—”
“I’m taking messages only. He’ll return,” M. A. interrupted.
All the Manhattan assistants were doing the “message-return” thing after they found out it’s standard at Spielberg’s H.Q. on the West Coast.
“I need to ask Zach a very urgent shopping question—”
“Who’s speaking?”
M. A.’s started pretending she has no idea who I am recently. Apparently that’s protocol at Calvin Klein’s New York office.
“Its me!”
“‘Me’?”
“His fiancée.”
“He’ll return.”
The line went dead. What was going on with Zach? This was getting weird. I looked up to see Jolene and Lara staring at me as though something really sad had happened, like I’d let my roots grow in or something desperately depressing like that.
“Are you okay?” said Jolene, cautiously examining her steak, which had just arrived.
“Fine!” I said.
I smiled my most radiant, in-love smile as if to say, I’m happier than you can imagine. If Nicole Kidman could look that glamorous while she was divorcing Tom Cruise, I could smile my way through a few unreturned phone calls. But it’s really hard, you know. I realized that day that actresses like Nicole really deserve all those free clothes because looking blissfully happy when your blood is turning to tears in your veins is extremely skilled work. I say, Nicole didn’t deserve an Oscar, she deserves the Nobel Prize.
“Why won’t he talk to you?” added Lara.
I felt sick. Was M. A. blocking my calls or was Zach cooling off? I tried to put my doubts to one side. What was I thinking! Zach adored me. Why had he just given me that wonderful necklace otherwise? The simple explanation must be that M. A. wasn’t passing on my messages.
“It’s not him,” I said, maximizing my smile. “It’s his assistant. She’s very protective. Professional, you know.”
Before I could go on I was interrupted by Julie yelling, “Hey girls! Did you miss me?” from the other side of the restaurant. She waved at each table as she walked toward us. Julie knows everyone in New York, absolutely everyone.
Julie’s look that day could be described as walking-safety-deposit-box. She was unashamedly swinging several Van Cleef & Arpels bags. On her index finger was a gold cocktail ring shaped like a rose and studded with garnets; she had new gold hoops in her ears; on her arm was a platinum and emerald bracelet.
“Presents!” she said, collapsing on the banquette and dropping her loot. She handed the three of us a tiny bag each. Inside was a pavé diamond heart identical to the one around Julie’s neck.
“Julie, you can’t!” I gasped.
I honestly meant it, but at the same time prayed that Julie would ignore my protestation. I just adore diamonds, they make a girl feel really good about herself, especially when she’s feeling a bit low.
“Oh, don’t worry, honey. They were almost free,” said Julie. “I wanted to celebrate love, which is why I got us all a heart.” She had a triumphant look on her face that signified one thing—a recent shopping success of the illegal kind.
“Julie, you’ve been stealing stuff again, haven’t you?” said Lara.
“Almost!” She gulped. She glanced furtively about her and whispered, “I’ve just been to the Van Cleef über-über-private-favorite-clients-only studio sale that, like, virtually no one gets invited to. I got so much cheap stuff you won’t believe it. They virtually gave me those hearts.”
Lara looked like a block of salt. She had gone into mega-sulk mode. This tends to happen to Lara on a daily basis. She spoke in a low, very intense voice.
“But I’m their favorite private client! That’s it, I’m leaving,” she said, throwing down her napkin, grabbing her phone, and stomping angrily from the restaurant.
She must have been très traumatized because she left her monogrammed Kelly bag behind, a bag she’d waited over four and a half years for on the Hermès list. Poor Lara. Some girls just can’t deal with the brutal hierarchy of sample sales. I mean, the whole thing is so political, sometimes I wish Condoleezza Rice would come in and sort it all out.
“Drat. That is a Shame Attack waiting to happen. I’m going after her,” said Jolene gathering up her things. As she was leaving the table she said to me, “My driver will pick you up at 6:45 AM tomorrow. Don’t be late, and remember to find out which bag Zach’s mother wants.”
“Well. Some of us get to go to Chanel sales and some of us get to go to diamond sales. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles, sales-wise!” Julie sighed. She was beyond thrilled with herself. “Poor Lara. She needs to reevaluate her value system. I mean, someone kind really needs to tell her that if she’s not careful she’s going to become one of the most superficial twenty-four-year-olds on Park Avenue. Heartbreaking really.”
Julie’s honesty about her good friends is refreshing, but it’s lucky I am not the gossipy type or most of her good friends wouldn’t be her good friends for long. Suddenly Julie looked uncharacteristically solemn. She said she had something difficult to tell me.
“Charlie’s gone back to LA. I’m gutted of course, but I insisted he send me flowers once a week and he agreed immediately—”
“How cute,” I said. Julie obviously had Charlie wrapped around her little finger, even though they’d known each other only a few weeks. There was a pregnant pause, and Julie shot me a severe look. “What’s the problem?” I asked.
“There isn’t one, because that is how a man should behave.” She started to whisper. “And yours is not behaving right
. He’s making you miserable.” How Julie could not see that I was officially Deliriously Happy I know not. “Look at you, you’re totally ana,” she went on. “Which would normally be the best compliment I could pay another girl, but right now you’re just too ana.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It is the general consensus in Manhattan that a girl can never be too rich or too ana. But there was something I hadn’t told Julie which accounted for my extra weight loss. The last time I’d seen Zach, at the engagement party, he’d mentioned he was leaving town the next day to photograph a project in Philadelphia. Then Jolene saw him out the next night at Bungalow 8 on Twenty-seventh Street. When I heard that I swear I dropped seven pounds. Why had he said he was away when he wasn’t? Then, another major factor in my ana-ness is that it’s tradition that a girl as madly in love as I am can’t eat a thing anyway. Still, Julie continued relentlessly, “You can’t marry him. Just imagine what it would be like—you’d practically disappear with worry. You should be happy and relaxed during an engagement.”
Actually, Julie’s wrong about that. Apparently everyone’s completely stressed out during an engagement. It’s supposed to be incredibly stressful. I said, “Julie, he’s just freaked out and exhausted right now. He just shot that Luca Luca campaign and he’s really upset about that new photographer the agency took on who’s been getting all that press—”
“Exactly! You want to marry someone who cares about how much press someone else is getting? What about someone who cares about you and puts you first?”
