Bergdorf Blondes

by Plum Sykes

  We left the hotel at four. Jazz had somehow managed to secure the only driver in the whole of Antibes with an open-top jeep. We whizzed down the driveway of the hotel and onto the coast road.

  “So what are you wearing to the ball tonight?” yelled Jazz, her hair swirling around her in the wind.

  “McQueen. Patrick gave it to me.”

  “Devastation factor! You’re here with Patrick Saxton and he got you a dress? Wow. Amazing.”

  “I’m not ‘with’ with Patrick. I’m just with him. I don’t even know him.”

  “Look here’s the info about the movie,” said Jazz.

  I scanned the sheet of paper she handed over. It read,

  The Diary

  A comedy

  Written and directed by Charlie Dunlain

  Charlie? Charlie didn’t make successful, funny movies. He made depressing low-budget intellectual films no one ever saw. It was bad enough being discovered dead by a hopeless movie director, let alone the darling of the Cannes film festival.

  “Jazz, I can’t come. I gotta turn in that story.” I tapped the driver on the shoulder and said, “Can you drop me here, please?”

  He pulled up. I hopped out of the car.

  “But you said you’d done the story!” said Jazz.

  “See you tonight,” I said, walking back toward the hotel.

  Just when I’d been feeling more cheerful about everything, the thought of Charlie’s stern, disapproving face in the Ritz bar came right back to me. He’d bring on a really negative Advil-type mood swing. Even worse, the story about Eduardo and me had done the gossip rounds, so he would be more unimpressed by me than ever. Anyway, I wanted to be on time with my story. It’s important to be super-duper reliable when you have a career, particularly when you’ve been somewhat unreliable for several weeks.

  Later, as I was putting the finishing touches to my story on the laptop in my room, the telephone rang.

  “Bonsoir,” I said. I was determined to improve my hopeless fluent French.

  “Hey! It’s Lara. Are you having the best time? Is George Clooney there?”

  “It’s so nice here. You should come sometime,” I told her.

  “Can you believe Charlie got that award?” said Lara. “We read about it in Cindy Adams.”

  “He did?” I said. “Oh.”

  Why do the best things always happen to the worst people, and the worst things, like premature balding, always happen to the nicest people? God, I hoped that didn’t mean Charlie would be at the amfAR party.

  “Are you okay?” said Lara.

  “I’m great,” I replied.

  “Are you freaked about Zach and that airhead model?”

  “A bit, I guess.”

  “Try not to think about it. Those two are so over they don’t know how over they are. Call when you’re back.”

  “I will.”

  “Au revoir,” said Lara and hung up.

  I e-mailed my story off at 6 PM. It was only midday in New York, so I was at least an hour ahead of my deadline. I ordered two peach Bellinis from room service to celebrate. Before a party, two Bellinis make you feel not at all nervous, you know, which is a brilliant pre-party ploy if you have a nonaddictive personality. In fact, after drinking both Bellinis I started feeling so wonderfully not-nervous that I began thinking that maybe I would love to bump into Charlie Dunlain at amfAR, in the gorgeous McQueen, as the date of a well-regarded movie producer. Then he’d see that I wasn’t a suicidal loser who attracted ghastly men.

  The only issue I have with those Bellinis, in retrospect, is that when I put on that lovely floaty chiffon dress that Patrick had gotten me, I guess I wasn’t totally being 100 percent careful what with all those bubbles floating around my system. I got the frock over my head. I tried to pull it down. Oops. It was stuck, forming a cage from the top of my head to my belly button. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t see. My arms wouldn’t go down or up. I must have forgotten to undo the zip. I slowly tried to wriggle the dress off. As I was released I heard a violent ripping sound.

  6:25 PM. I undid the zip and started to put the dress back on. That was when I saw it: a devastating—and I mean that in the original sense of the word—wound gaped from the back of the dress. It was beyond un-wearable. It wasn’t even fixable.

  Patrick would be here in thirty-five minutes. Desperate, I ran over to Jazz’s room and hammered at the door. FRGs always have exquisite backup dresses available.

  “I’m having a party dress 911,” I gasped when Jazz let me in.

  “Hey, no problemo, sweetie. You can wear my backup,” she said.

  What a saint! Jazz was ready to party in a red vintage 1970s Valentino column scattered with silk roses. She looked awesome. I felt less freaked. If Jazz’s backup dress was anything like this I doubted whether that mini-meltdown I’d anticipated would ever hit me. She glided to her closet and pulled out a silk gown.

  “It’s Oscar. New season. Very now. Here,” she said.

  I took the dress from her. It was steel gray taffeta. There was a lot of dress. I was secretly excited. I slipped it on. I ran to the mirror.

  I looked like an iceberg. No, seriously, I did. Why did the only bad dress that Oscar had ever designed in his entire career end up on me on what potentially could have been the most glamorous night of my life? Now I know what Halle Berry must have felt like the night she won the Oscar. I mean, imagine, up she went to get that cute little gold thing in front of the whole world and she’s dressed like an ice skater. No wonder she was having an anxiety attack. I couldn’t say anything, I mean, it was so sweet of Jazz to lend me the dress, but she knew I was disappointed. She said, “Soooo, it’s a little WASPy. But French people don’t realize how uncool it is to be WASPy. They’ll never know, I promise.”

  I didn’t have time to freak out. I raced back to my room and slipped on my black mules—which would have looked chic with the chiffon but looked like two anchors with the iceberg—and scooped up my black clutch. The phone went.

  “I’m in the car downstairs,” said Patrick.

  “Coming,” I said, as though there was nothing to be alarmed about at all.

  He wouldn’t even notice what I was wearing, I told myself. Men never do. I sidled down the stairs—the dress seemed to be wider than the staircase—and tried to glide into Patrick’s car. In fact, I barely managed to force myself and the block of dress through the door. Sometimes fashion makes you feel like a wedge of pâté.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” said Patrick. His face fell as he regarded my outfit. “I thought you were going to wear the Alexander McQueen dress. That’s Oscar de la Renta.”

  Weird. I am super-suspicious of men who know as much about fashion as me. I told Patrick what had happened.

  “I’m sorry, this is Jazz Conassey’s backup dress!” I giggled.

  Patrick didn’t exactly giggle back. In fact, Mr. G-V was not the slightest bit charmed by my tale. He barely spoke to me all night. That’s the problemo with gay men and straight guys who are too into fashion: they’re all over you when you’re in some really interesting avant-garde McQueen number, but show up in a WASPy iceberg and they turn into icebergs. Patrick was polite but cool all night. He was captivated by Jazz’s rose-strewn Valentino, but I drank so many peach Bellinis that my self-esteem barely noticed. The only thing I could congratulate myself on that night was not seeing Charlie Dunlain. There was no sign of him all evening.

  Another note arrived with breakfast the next morning.

  We leave at 1 PM. A car will take you to the airport and I’ll meet you there. Happy sunbathing!

  Patrick

  He didn’t sound too pissed. Maybe Patrick didn’t mind about the iceberg after all. Maybe he wasn’t as superficial as I’d thought last night. Sometimes I can be way too judgmental.

  The phone rang. Oooo-www!!! My head was hurting. My nails were agony. Even my hair was hurting, which is unique to a Bellini hangover. It was Jazz.

  “Hi, I’m flying back
to the city with you,” she said.

  “Great. I think we leave at one.”

  “I’ll see you at the airport,” she said.

  See. Patrick wasn’t terrible. How kind of him to offer Jazz a ride home.

  Still, if Jazz was travelling with us I needed to redeem myself with a top-class, private-jet outfit. Head aching, I gingerly pulled on a crisp white sundress. I put on flat gold sandals and gold hoop earrings and tied my hair in a ponytail with my favorite Pucci headscarf. Then I lay in bed with a bag of ice on my nails until the car arrived to pick me up at midday. Patrick really was a saint, sending cars and notes 24–7. Maybe he’d send a new dress to replace the one I’d ruined when I got back to New York, though of course I wasn’t 100 percent expecting it.

  On the way to the airport we drove through Juan-Les-Pins. It’s a cute little place with more shoe and bikini shops than you can imagine. I couldn’t resist a thirty-second shopping spree. The driver stopped the car, saying, “Five minutes, mademoiselle. It’s forty-five minutes to the airport from here.”

  About twenty-five bikinis, fourteen sarongs, and six pairs of wedge-heeled espadrilles later—you know how it is in the Hamptons in summer, it’s required procedure to change pool outfits between every meal—I hopped back in the car. The shopping easily made up for last night’s humiliation. I mean, the girls in New York were going to kill themselves when they saw the espadrilles I’d gotten them. I say, if you are lucky enough to go on gorgeous trips abroad, take your girlfriends something fashionable back. It was only the middle of May and I had a few weeks until Fourth of July weekend, but for a New York girl it’s never too early to start bulk-buying beachwear.

  The driver dropped me at Terminal One. I headed for Gate Zero, where all the private planes depart from. No sign of Patrick or Jazz. They probably hadn’t arrived yet. I approached a man dressed in uniform.

  “Excusez-moi, monsieur, je cherche Monsieur Patrick Saxton.”

  “Il est parti, mademoiselle,” replied the man.

  I looked at my watch. 1:30 PM. I was only half an hour behind schedule. Surely Patrick hadn’t gone without me?

  “What?” I said.

  “ ’E leave one hour ago with girl with tan.”

  How could he? How could she? Especially after I had written that really nice article about her. I suddenly felt weak and shaky: those du Cap Bellinis catch up with you at the most inconvenient moments.

  “How am I supposed to get to New York?” I said. No doubt this lovely pilot would shove me on someone else’s G-V later. I mean, I was totally dressed for it.

  “ ne sais pas,” the man exclaimed, tossing his hands in the air.

  He turned abruptly and walked off. My outfit had done nothing to influence him. As he was almost out of the lounge he pointed through the glass windows ahead. I followed his arm with my gaze. Across the street I could see the entrance to Terminal 2. My heart sank. Look, I don’t have anything against airports per se, but I could see more people crowded into that lobby than there were at the whole of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade last year. The trouble with going on a private plane is that afterward you never, ever want to fly commercial again. My advice to anyone who is about to fly private is to only do it if it is going to become the norm. Honestly, at that moment I wished I’d never seen the suede ceiling or eaten the delicious sandwiches in Patrick’s gorgeous little G-V.

  What was I thinking! If I wasn’t careful I was going to turn into Patricia Duff or someone really spoiled like that. I could fly commercial, like just about everyone else in the world. Summoning up all my self-esteem I dragged my much-increased baggage across the street. The heat was burning. By the time I got to the Air France desk I felt like a tuna melt.

  The stewardess behind the counter was gray-haired and impeccably groomed. She looked at me as she might regard a used Band-Aid.

  “Oui?” she said. “Can I ’elp you? Madame.”

  Why do French ladies always go out of their way to upset young girls like moi by calling them “Madame”? It’s cruel, especially when you’ve got a Bellini hammering at your brain.

  “Mademoiselle,” I said. “I’ve missed my flight to New York. When’s the next one?”

  “Three PM. Okay?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “That will be 4,376 euros.”

  “What?” I gulped.

  “We ’ave only business class available.”

  “What about taking a later flight?

  “We are completely full.”

  I was close to tears. I didn’t have 4,376 euros to blow on a one-way ticket to New York. Still, I bit my lip and handed over my Visa card. I would write off the whole trip as a very pricey disaster from which I had learned a costly moral lesson: never dress as a WASPy iceberg if you can dress as an ice princess in Alexander McQueen instead. But, god, it would have been so much cuter to have spent those euros on something fun like that pink striped wing chair I want from ABC Carpet & Home on Broadway.

  “Merci,” said the stewardess, swiping the card. “You will be boarding in ’alf an ’our.”

  “Which gate, please?” I asked.

  While she was checking, I gazed down the line of counters. A couple of desks down I spotted a familiar figure. I craned my neck to get a better look: it was Charlie Dunlain, checking in at the LA desk. Oh, god, I really didn’t want him to see me. I loathe chance encounters, particularly with people who recently saw you when you’d just overdosed on Advil. Even worse, I suddenly noticed that Charlie was way cuter than I remembered. He looked tan and amazingly at ease with himself. He’s like the only person I’ve ever heard of who actually looks better in airport lighting. That’s success for you, I guess. Seeing him at that moment made me positively diabetic, I swear it. The shock made my blood sugar drop like crazy. Suddenly I felt giddy: maybe I was going to faint with embarrassment. I snapped my head back and stared in the other direction.

  Still, this wasn’t as bad as it could have been last night, I reminded myself. I mean, here I was, not in the WASPy iceberg dress, in a top-class outfit possibly slightly reminiscent of Lee Radziwill in Capri in the seventies, acting completely unsuicidal, totally normal, just taking a plane to New York like any normal, unsuicidal girl. Maybe I should say hello. Then I could leave and never speak to him again.

  “Hi!” I called out, suddenly embarrassed. There. Done. So what if he hated me, I didn’t care in the slightest. Charlie turned and looked at me. God, I felt faint again. Those Bellinis are so sneaky sometimes.

  “Oh, hi, er…” he said awkwardly, and added, “I think someone wants you,” gesturing toward the counter.

  I turned back to find the stewardess glaring at me.

  “Madame,” she huffed, handing me back my credit card. “Alors, I regret you cannot travel. Your card has been denied.”

  “Can you try it again?” I asked anxiously.

  “Non. Could you move aside please?”

  Suddenly I felt really, really sorry for used-up supermodels. This must be exactly what it’s like for them: one minute it’s PJs everywhere, the next minute you can’t even get arrested in coach. As I started to gather up my things, Charlie called out, “Hey, let me walk you to your gate. It’s right next to the departure lounge for LA.”

  Eew, god. It’s one thing being abandoned by a private jet. I would actually even say it’s a positive learning experience. I mean, no one has to know, right? It’s quite another being discovered smack-dab in the middle of the G-V abandonment process by someone you know. There was no way I could let Charlie find out I was ticketless and cashless. He’d be so disapproving. He sauntered over and picked up my bags.

  “Wow, are they letting you take all this as hand baggage?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said, as if I always take a suitcase and four shopping bags as carry-ons.

  “Are you…okay?” said Charlie, looking concerned.

  “Fine!” I replied. Surely Charlie’s rave reviews in Cannes had obliterated all memory of the Advil inci
dent.

  “Really? I’ve been worried about you, after…Paris,” he said awkwardly.

  “I’m fine. Everything’s great.”

  I don’t tell lies, but when I do I am très convincing. We headed toward Departures. Inside, I was freaking. I mean, how a ticket was going to transpire between here and the boarding gate I knew not. I didn’t want to be humiliated again in front of this man. If only Charlie wasn’t such a gentleman, carrying my bags like someone out of The Palm Beach Story, I wouldn’t have been in any risk of being found out. In the meantime, I tried to chitchat with him as if everything were as great as I was pretending it was.

  “I’m glad you and Julie, you know, cleared up everything,” I said.

  “Yeah, we figured it out. What a girl. The incredible Julie!” he said with a fond smile.

  She’d really done a number on him. He was totally into her. He didn’t have a clue what she was really up to. None of her boyfriends ever did. You know what? With my sudden bout of hypoglycemia, combined with my Bellini headache, I felt a little sad for Charlie all of a sudden. I mean, he was probably an okay person, whether I disliked him or not. It’s like that Thierry Mugler perfume, Angel; I loathe it, but it doesn’t mean it’s a bad perfume. I mean, millions of people think it smells totally awesome. I guess Charlie was my Angel, if there’s such a thing as an analogy between men you hate and scents you hate.

  We arrived at security. I couldn’t get through without a boarding pass.

  “Actually I’ll say good-bye here,” I said breezily. “I need to use the restroom.”

  “Have a safe flight,” he replied, handing me my bags.

  “Will do. Thank you.”

  Charlie turned toward the long security line. I’d done brilliantly. He had absolutely no idea about anything. I waited until he had walked away and then picked up my things and headed toward a café. There’s nothing like a five-dollar orange pressé to really lift your spirits when you’ve been abandoned by a movie mogul and almost rescued by a patronizing and annoyingly cute movie director. I sat at the counter, dipped my head into my International Herald Tribune, sipped my juice, and wondered what on earth I was going to do. I think a little tear crept down my cheek. Now that I was alone, outfit or no outfit, I was miserable. I felt like a fool.