by Plum Sykes
She was a nervous wreck, and she hadn’t even realized she didn’t have anything to wear yet. Her friends only aggravated things.
“Wade Roper is so rich-person-passé,” claimed Jolene authoritatively of one society florist. “How about using Martine Wrightman? Oh, but we’ll never get her because we just never will.”
“Don’t get the invitations from Mrs. John L. Strong at Barneys, get them from Kate’s Paperie and write them by hand. You want this to seem casual,” said Mimi. “If you get them calligraphied it looks like you’ve got way too much time on your hands.”
Julie called me weepily a few days before the party. “I can’t cope,” she said. “I wish I’d never even thought of this stupid book club. It’s a big fat joke.”
Although I secretly totally agreed, it was too late for Julie to get out of it now.
“I’ll help you,” I said, even though I didn’t really have the extra time. I still had work to do on the Jazz story. “I’ve heard that there’s this new dinner party decorator everyone’s been using in TriBeCa. He’ll do something fun and crazy and no one will believe it. Shall I call him?”
“Okay. Can you get here in an hour?”
Before I managed to get a hold of Barclay Braithwaite, a young dinner décor designer just up from Alabama (all party organizers are always just up from Alabama, and they’re always not straight), Mom called.
“Darling. I haven’t heard from you at all. How are you?” she said.
“Oh, fine,” I said, thinking, I’m about as far from fine as the moon is from Earth.
“You don’t sound fine to me. You sound American. When are you coming home? We miss you.”
“I’m not, Mom. I like it here.”
“It’s not Mom, it’s Mummy. Now, I hope you are coming to your father’s fiftieth. You know he’s expecting you. Three weeks’ time. I think it might be rather grand,” whispered Mom. “Everyone in the county wants to be invited, so try not to spread it around too much. We don’t want to upset the locals. You know how they get! It’s too awful really, especially when you are after a new cleaning woman like I am. The Swyres may come if I can reach them. You don’t know where I can get hold of them, do you? I would so love you and Little Earl to meet up again.”
I couldn’t believe Mom was still obsessing over the same issues she had been when I was six. She just doesn’t realize that there are no knights in shining armor available, and I’m not after one anyway.
“I’d love to come to the party,” I said. “I can’t wait.”
I meant it. I was suddenly hit by a pang of homesickness. Maybe it would do me good to drive down those English country lanes and see the hedgerows full of cow parsley again. I could even stay a few days at The Old Rectory and get some rest—although that might be difficult with Mom around.
Julie was standing in the drawing room being fitted for a new pair of Rogan jeans by a tailor from Barneys when I arrived at her apartment. Barclay, dressed in his uniform of white jeans and pink Charvet shirt, was with me. I’d picked him up from his office in TriBeCa and we’d taken a taxi up to Julie’s together.
“I know it’s not about clothes, this whole reading thing, but I want to look casual, like I didn’t think about clothes at all, which is why I’m getting the jeans done now, so I don’t have to think about them,” she said.
Sometimes I think Julie is more confused about life than Lara or Jolene, which makes her a very confused girl indeed. She turned to Barclay, beaming that gorgeous smile she saves for when she desperately needs something, saying, “Thank you, Barclay, for doing a party 911. I just want this event to be different. I want what no one else has ever had. How about it?”
“Can I have some iced water with rosemary please?” said Barclay. “They serve it at L’Ermitage at breakfast. Helps me think.”
A few minutes later Barclay was perched on the edge of the sofa sipping his herb water as though it were the elixir of party planning. Decorating Julie Bergdorf’s dinner, it soon became apparent, was going to make or break his career. He wanted it to be amusing, chic, and beautiful all in one go.
“I’m thinking, no more ‘floral-floral.’ Floral-floral has been done to death. For you Julie, I’m thinking ocean chic. For the hors d’oeuvres, lobster rolls, but shrunk. Tiny ones! Minuscule! The smallest, most darling lobster rolls in New York City. Then oysters, served on a real mother-of-pearl dish,” said Barclay, scribbling on his notepad. “Now, if you just give me some time alone, I’ll have a plan ready for you in a few minutes.”
Barclay darted from the room. When he was out of earshot Julie whispered, “Have you heard the terrible news?”
“What’s happened?” I said.
“It’s Daphne. She called me from the Bel-Air yesterday. She’s had to leave the house. Bradley’s been having an affair with the decorator, and even though Daphne loves what the decorator did with the place in Beverly Hills, she feels ill whenever she stands on the Aubusson rug in the living room. Can you imagine, not being able to be around your own house? I feel so icky for her. I asked her if she wanted me to go out there and be with her, but she just said her yoga teacher was with her and that was enough. I’m worried about her; do you think I should go anyway?”
How grisly. Daphne had been such a perfect wife to Bradley, throwing him the best parties in Hollywood whenever he wanted and everything. When a girlfriend in crisis says she’s okay, you must ignore her wishes and go straight to her side, regardless of how many yoga gurus she has at her disposal.
“Maybe we should both go,” I said. “We could leave the morning after your book club.”
Before Julie could answer, Barclay bounced back in. He said, “If you wanna get really wild, you keep the library serious, reading by the light of a sea lantern, and then you break out for dinner with this fantasy table,” he said. “You walk into the dining room and splash! Coral! Driftwood! The table’s covered with a cloth of natural canvas! I’ve never done anything but linen and lilies on the Upper East Side before. This could really shake things up. What about a centerpiece of Japanese fighting fish?”
“Great,” said Julie. “But don’t be too creative, Barclay, or everyone will guess it wasn’t my idea.”
“No one will ever know,” he said, disappearing again.
Julie turned back to me. She said, “Anyway, Bradley says he wants Daphne back, but she’s saying she wants to activate the pre-nup.”
“No way,” I said.
“I still think she should try and work it out. Bradley really adores her, he’s just messed up, the bastard.”
By the time Barclay got to the menu, he was so agitated he looked like a fighting fish himself. “For the diet crowd, when they get together, they don’t want diet food—unless it’s lunch,” he said authoritatively.
Alarmed, Julie raised one beautifully waxed eyebrow. Diet food is the only food she understands.
“People want to feel safe and warm right now, protected. Have you seen what’s going on in the world? It’s ugly out there. I say, give those girls a good solid fish pie,” said Barclay.
Julie gasped. Few of her girlfriends have ever been in physical contact with anything as substantial as a fish pie. She only agreed to it because she thought it would really shock everyone.
After I’d dropped Barclay back at his office, I went home and called Daphne. She was going to be totally freaked out if Bradley really had done what Julie said.
“Get out!” said Daphne when she heard my voice. “It’s so good to hear from you. How are you?”
“I’m good,” I said. “But how are you?”
“I’m great!” said Daphne.
For a woman on the verge of marital collapse, Daphne sounded worryingly carefree. Maybe being at the Bel-Air was giving her a false sense of reality. It always does when I’m there, what with all those beautiful ponds and lily pads and swans rushing around everywhere.
“I heard what happened, with Bradley,” I said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
�
��I freaked when I discovered he’d been doing the decorator—in the inlaid bed I commissioned her to create, can you believe—but since I’ve moved out, and come here, Bradley’s all over me. He’s been sending flowers, jewelry, fur coats—which is kinda sad actually because he should know that right now I’m a non-fur-wearing vegan—but you know, I think it shows a certain wish in him to repair the relationship. I want to be back with him. But I’m not gonna let him know that right away, naturally. Let him perspire a little first. I say, what’s meant to be will be, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
What had gotten into Daphne? Forget husbands, she virtually has a nervous breakdown if the pool boy leaves.
“Would you like us to come out there? We’re really worried about you,” I said.
“I’m fine. Wouldn’t you be if you had the honeymoon suite at the Hotel Bel-Air?” she said. “You really don’t need to come.”
“Is anyone taking care of you? Looking after you?” I asked.
“Get out! Of course. Twenty-four-seven. I never knew I had so many friends. You know who’s been the best though, like beyond sweet and kind when they really didn’t need to?”
“Annie?” I said.
Annie is Daphne’s best friend in Hollywood, even though Daphne says no one’s really your friend in Hollywood.
“Noooo! No, Annie—the angel!—is taking care of Bradley, because Annie’s husband Dominic is an agent at ICM and all Dominic wants is to be an agent at CAA and Annie knows Bradley can fix anything for anyone here if he wants to badly enough,” she huffed.
I heard a sniffle and the rustle of Kleenex.
“So who’s the saint then?” I said.
“There I was two days ago, sitting here with those swans driving me nuts with all their swimming around and Charlie comes by. He takes me to the Coffee Bean on Sunset for a nonfat soy Ice Blended Vanilla, which is like my favorite thing here—you have to try it—and tells me Bradley’s a fool, that I’m a very special woman, and that Bradley never would have gotten where he has without me and then says what’s meant to be will be. I don’t think I know anyone in the movie business that goes around spontaneously comforting studio head’s wives when they’ve got more to lose by supporting the wife than the studio head. He is so nice, it just made me feel so positive. I just feel, I can’t explain it, really…happy,” said Daphne, slightly giggly.
Daphne’s never happy. She’d been brainwashed. She needed to leave town.
“Why don’t you come to New York?” I said.
“Don’t you think that’s amazing for someone to be that kind?” said Daphne. “I mean, it was just so sweet.”
“Julie’s throwing a book club in a couple of days, she’d love you to come.”
“Book club my ass!” cried Daphne with a laugh. “Those things are more like Fight Club. I’m staying here to figure things out with Bradley. I promise I’ll call if anything happens. But isn’t Charlie sweet?”
“I guess,” I said reluctantly.
“Are you okay?” said Daphne.
“I’m great,” I said.
“So I hear you’ve been in Cannes, with La Saxton. Is he as good in bed as everyone says?”
“Daphne! I haven’t even kissed him. It was just a date.”
“Get out! You know what they call him in LA?”
“What?”
“Patrick Sexton. Isn’t that genius!”
“I don’t think he’s my type.”
“Get out! He’s totally your type on a flirty, nonse-rious basis. Just watch out for the wife. She’s a total psycho, especially if she thinks he likes someone for real. Listen, I’ll be in touch, see ya!” said Daphne, and hung up.
Still to come for the Essex crew were the agonies of a mouth that has ceased to generate saliva. The tongue hardens into what McGee describes as “a senseless weight, swinging on the still-soft root and striking foreignly against the teeth.” Speech becomes impossible, although sufferers are known to moan and bellow. Next is the “blood sweats” phase, involving “a progressive mummification of the initially living body.” The tongue swells to such proportions that it squeezes past the jaws. The eyelids crack and the eyeballs begin to weep tears of blood. The throat is so swollen that breathing becomes difficult, creating an incongruous yet terrifying sensation of drowning. Finally as the sun inexorably draws the remaining moisture from the body, there is “living death.”
In the Heart of the Sea wasn’t exactly the Kate Winslet–Leonardo DiCaprio scenario I had been expecting. I didn’t pick it up until late the night before Julie’s book club. I read about half of it, and could barely sleep afterward. It’s grisly as hell, all about the sinking of a Nantucket whaleship and how its crew survived by doing things like sucking the marrow from their dead shipmates’ bones. It freaked me out even more than that Ethan Hawke movie with the plane crash where everyone cooks one another for breakfast. Gwendolyn Baines and Cynthia Kirk wouldn’t get it at all. At six that evening Julie called, hysterical.
“Oh my god! I’ve just finished the book. How are we going to discuss what it’s like for six men to survive on the blood of one tortoise while we’re all sipping Sea Breezes?” cried Julie. “And the placement’s driving me nuts. There’s nowhere to put Jazz Conassey. She’s slept with everyone’s boyfriend or husband. Mimi can’t talk to anyone unless they’re pregnant, and Madeleine Kroft can’t be around thin people or she flips out. Cynthia Kirk and Gwendolyn Baines aren’t speaking to each other because they’re jointly chairing the American Ballet Theatre gala and they can’t agree whose name should come first on the invitation. No one can sit next to anyone. And I’m so sleep-deprived I woke up this morning looking like Christina Ricci!!! Ee-oo-www…”
I couldn’t totally focus on what Julie was saying. The real thing on my mind was Patrick Saxton. The conversation with Daphne had put things in perspective. Patrick was even more insidious than Eduardo or Zach: he was a professional playboy, a hopeless prospect for a girl like me. For a brief second I had an image of myself surrounded by ravenous, unreliable men on a sinking ship, but I shook myself out of it. Julie was the one who needed to be calmed down. I told her I was just leaving the house and would be with her in thirty minutes.
How many diamonds does it take to read a book? I asked myself as I scanned Julie’s guests that night. Between the twelve girls at the book club, there must have been at least sixty carats of diamonds gathered in the library in Cartier stud earrings alone, maybe more. I mean, Shelley was wearing an ocean liner of a ring, a blue diamond that must have been ten carats at least. The only person who didn’t look like she was off to a cocktail party was Julie. She was dressed as though for a weekend in Cape Cod in the Rogan jeans and a vintage sailor’s smock. Her feet were bare and her toes were manicured a delicate shade of seaweed.
“I’m really worried about my girlfriends’ minds. I don’t think any of them have gotten past page one,” she whispered as I walked in. “I haven’t improved them at all. I love my girls but their jewels are so…tiresome. Okay, let’s sit.”
The only thing that Julie usually found tiresome about jewels was not having enough new ones. Hopefully this was just a temporary lapse of her usual state of insanity.
Barclay had transformed the library into a glamorous take on a ship’s cabin. Sea lanterns flickered as though there really were an ocean breeze blowing through the room. The table was spread with faded maps and antique logbooks. A waiter was handing out Blue Martinis and Mai Tais, plus cocktail napkins with corners so sharp a sailor could slit his throat with one. The girls were sitting in an oval. Henry was in a large armchair at one end. He was anxiously balancing a pile of books and notepads on his knee, nervously sipping his drink. Honestly, I think he would have been more comfortable in an electric chair.
Julie and I flopped onto the sofa. It would be good to forget everything and discuss the whalers’ tragedy, sad though it was. A hush descended and Henry began.
“Well…here we are! W-w-welcome. This is a marvelous�
�um…book and I—excuse me—hope you all had time to read some of it…,” he said shyly.
Although I was of course concentrating fully on Henry’s lecture, you could say 99.9 percent of the girls in the room were paying more attention to Henry’s undeniable cuteness than his subject. Julie was literally mesmerized by him. Whispered snippets of conversation came into earshot.
“Do you think he’s a Hartnett Hartnett?” hissed Jolene.
“Oh, go-o-d. As in the steel dynasty?” murmured Lara.
“Ye-e-e-s! They’re like the Kennedys of the steel world. You should marry him. One of us has to marry him,” said Jolene in hushed tones.
Jolene hadn’t remembered she was engaged for a really, really long time now. Henry was coming to the end of his talk. He turned to Jolene.
“So, um…Jolene? You seem to have a comment? Would you like to dive in, so to speak?” said Henry.
“Sure!” said Jolene enthusiastically. “Are you from the steel family?”
Henry shuffled his papers. He cleared his throat. He seemed embarrassed.
“It is the same branch of the family, yes. But we’re not here to discuss that tonight. What would you like to talk about in the book?” he said.
“Well, in terms of character analysis,” said Jolene très seriously, “and all that intellectual stuff, I’d just like to know whether, you know, when they make the movie of the book, do you think George Clooney or Brad Pitt should play Captain Pollard?”
“I’m not really, uh-hum, s-s-sure,” said Henry. “Anyone else?”
Jazz Conassey waved from her seat.
“Hi. I’m Jazz-eee,” she said flirtatiously. “I have a proper book question. You know that book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius? Do you know if Dave Eggers, the author, is, like, single still?”
“Anyone else?” said Henry, perturbed.
“Could I ask a question about theme?” said Madeleine Kroft gravely. “Do you think you can lose weight by writing? Because it’s like all those girl writers like Joan Didion and Zadie Smith and Donna Tartt are, like, skinnier than cigarettes.”
