“I hope you’ll find it satisfactory?” Jenny asked.
This kind of thing always made me uncomfortable. I glanced down at the bottom of the page and there was a “clothing allowance” in addition to my salary, which could be used toward clothing purchases in any of the Kevin Park boutiques and for shoes from a list of approved designers such as Christian Louboutin and Manolo Blahnik.
And, I must say: OMG.
It was a lot of money, especially considering the fact that, as far as I could tell, they didn’t even expect me to come into the office every day. In a nutshell, I was expected to attend all Kevin Park events and make myself available for press opportunities such as magazine profiles and television spots. There was also the possibility of my appearing in upcoming Kevin Park advertising campaigns.
“We have yet to launch a formal campaign,” Kevin explained, “but hopefully that’s next up on the agenda and if we do, of course I’d love for you to be the face of the line.”
“Wow,” I said. “This is amazing!”
Kevin looked at Jenny and smiled. I couldn’t believe this was actually a job. I almost felt like I should be paying Kevin, not the other way around!
“Feel free to take everything home and look it over in detail, by the way,” Jenny added. “And of course let me know if you have any questions. But maybe we can go over a few dates while we have you here?”
Lane handed me a calendar for the month of February with several dates highlighted. The first thing I noticed was the Kevin Park fashion show at Lincoln Center. I’d secretly hoped I was going to be invited. I’d only been to a fashion show once in my life. My cousin Virginia was working for Ralph Lauren at the time. My mother and I were due to be in New York for a few days before I went back to school and Virginia mentioned she could get me backstage. It was such a cool experience, being in the thick of everything, the makeup artists and hairstylists working in a frenzy to get the models finished in time.
I could barely see the models from where we sat, but it was such a treat nonetheless. Afterward, I turned to my right and I saw legendary Vogue editor André Leon Talley had been standing next to us the whole time. I was starstruck! And I couldn’t believe someone of his stature would deign to watch the show from the nosebleed seats. It was like the fashion equivalent of seeing a celebrity on the subway. Virginia explained that sometimes he preferred to watch the show from the bleachers because they were more “low-key.”
I couldn’t believe how much had changed since that day. I was actually getting invited to fashion shows, with my own seat and everything. “I’m so excited to go to the show,” I said.
“Oh, honey,” he said, “you won’t just be attending the show, you’ll be walking in it.”
“What?” I couldn’t help but nearly jump out of my seat, and not in a good way. “You’re kidding, right?”
Kevin laughed. “Not in the slightest. It will be your big debut. I’m thinking I’ll have you walk in the grand finale dress.”
“Kevin, you’re crazy!” I said.
My phone started vibrating. Mother. I ignored it.
“So, anyway,” Kevin said, standing up, “Jenny will schedule a few minutes for you to come in tomorrow to make sure everything is perfect with the dress. We have your measurements on file already so it should be all set, but there are always a few last-minute adjustments.”
“I’ll e-mail you first thing in the morning when I have a better idea of how the day is going to pan out,” Jenny said.
“Sounds good!”
As I was walking out of Kevin’s studio, I called my mother back. She was due to arrive in New York Tuesday evening, a few days before the engagement party, so we could iron out some wedding details and do a little dress shopping. Maybe she had another activity to add to our itinerary, I thought.
“Oh, Minty,” she said, “this is just awful.”
I frowned. What was she talking about? Did she see my photo in Bruce Williams’s column and hate it? Was it my hair?
“Mommy,” I began, “it was a theme party. I was dressed up like Marie Antoinette!”
There was silence.
“I’m telling you,” I said, “a lot of people at the Frick were dressed up in theme!” Okay, not a lot of people, but she didn’t have to know that. I stood on the corner of Washington and Jane and hailed a cab. I had less than twenty minutes to make it up to Columbus Circle to meet Emily for our spa day.
“The Frick?” She paused. “Oh, no, sweetheart. I am not talking about the Frick.”
“Columbus Circle, please,” I said. The cab took off. “What are you talking about then? You didn’t see the photo of Tripp and me in ‘Sunday Styles’? It’s amazing!”
“Sweetie, I’m sure it is and, God, I would have looked at it if I hadn’t been dealing with this ‘Page Six’ thing all morning.”
“‘Page Six’?” I looked down at my lap and realized I’d left both of my newspapers at Kevin’s office. Shit. What the hell was in the Post? I could tell from her tone that it was bad. Like, epically bad. I closed my eyes.
“Just tell me,” I said.
She sighed loudly.
“Check the Internet, honey,” she said, suddenly sounding rushed. “I’ve got the Hendersons and the Gregorys coming over for brunch. Up to my ears in errands. Oh, and your sister is calling on the other line. Gotta go. Bye.”
“What on earth?” The cab approached a newsstand on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street. “Sir,” I said, “do you mind stopping here quickly? I need to pick up a copy of the Post.”
He swerved over to the right, nearly sending me flying across the seat. “Make it quick,” he said. “There’s no standing on this corner.”
I rushed over to the newsstand, threw a dollar at the guy in the window, grabbed a copy, and ran back to the cab, which, thankfully, was still waiting on the corner. I barely had time to close the door before he sped off again and I was thrown backward into the seat. I didn’t care. I just wanted to know what the hell was going on!
I skimmed through the headlines: BLOOMBERG’S BLUNDER, NIX TIME FOR THE KNICKS?, GIRL SAVES RAT FROM SUBWAY AND KEEPS AS PET, and so on. Finally, there it was, the headline simple enough: PARTY OVER FOR SOUTHERN DEB?
The item started with the news of my departure from RVPR, saying that I’d been “replaced” by a “pretty young thing” named Alexis Barnaby who’d been recruited from the offices of a rival fashion PR firm, where she had been working as an intern while taking classes at FIT. There was a direct quote from Ruth, who said that I had grown “too big for my britches” but that she wished me the “best of luck.”
For a second I was almost relieved. I wondered why my mother thought this was so bad. Why did she sound so shocked? And then I reached the final paragraph. No stranger to the late nights and indulgent lifestyle of Manhattan’s elite, bachelor du Pont may know how to play the role of doting fiancé, but there’s evidence he’s spreading the love beyond the boundaries of his commitment to Miss Minty. As recently as only a few weeks ago, he was seen escorting a certain comely cougar back to his Upper East Side bachelor pad.
I closed the newspaper. I might have developed a tough skin over the last couple of months, but I wasn’t made of Teflon. There was something so official about seeing the words printed in black and white. It was almost like the Post was confirming a sneaking suspicion I’d had deep down for some time now. As the cab pulled up in front of Emily, who was waiting on the corner, my phone buzzed: Tripp, of course. I noticed he’d already texted me several times, CALL ME. Half of me wanted to call him and hear what he had to say. The other half needed some time to process the whole thing. I put my phone back in my Lady Dior bag.
“Em,” was all I could say as I rushed over to her.
We hugged.
“Let’s get inside,” she said.
Once we made it up to the thirty-fifth floor and checked in, Emily and I met in a little seating area overlooking the park and waited for our therapists. We had one of the
most amazing views I’d ever experienced in New York.
Emily broke the silence, clearly trying to keep the conversation lighthearted and fun. “First of all, the ‘Sunday Styles’ photo is beyond. You’ve arrived, Mints,” she said with a smirk.
I stuck out my tongue and let it hang there for a moment. Literally, that was all I could bring myself to do. I didn’t even have a raspberry noise left in me.
“Are you okay?”
“I just read the Post in the cab over here,” I said. “I just keep hearing the words ‘comely cougar’ over and over again in my head.”
“Oh God, you just read it?”
“Yes. I had my meeting with Kevin first thing this morning! I glanced at the Times and that’s it. No wonder Kevin asked me if I was doing all right when I walked into his office! I can’t believe this!”
“Well, look at it this way,” Emily said. “They say it’s better to be on ‘Page Six’ than to not be on ‘Page Six’!”
There was some truth to what she was saying, but it wasn’t what I needed to hear at that moment. I needed to hear the real truth, and I had a nagging feeling that Emily was hiding something.
“Just spill it, Em,” I said.
She looked down at the floor.
“Listen,” she sighed. “It’s not that I know anything. It’s just that yes, I’ve heard things. And I’m not saying Tripp is a bad guy or that he doesn’t love you. But, like I’ve said in the past, he’s not always honest about everything.”
“Emily, just tell me! I’m ready!”
“I saw him that night,” she blurted. “I’m pretty sure it’s the same night they’re talking about in ‘Page Six.’ About a week before Christmas, May Abernathy had a little get-together at her apartment on Gramercy Park.” She paused for a quick breath. “I can’t remember why you weren’t there. I think you were working late or something? Tabitha showed up and I was going to tell you, I just didn’t know if it was worth it. I mean honestly, Minty, I’m not even one hundred percent sure anything happened!”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Slow down. So Tabitha was just at this party or you saw them leave together or what?”
Emily was silent.
“Em.”
“It was pretty late,” she said. “And I was a little tipsy myself. Tripp said good-bye and walked to the door by himself. But Tabitha followed him.”
“She what?”
“She followed him to the door,” Emily said. “And yes, I saw them leave together.”
If Tabitha really wanted to sneak around with my fiancé, she could just as easily have texted him and set up a time and place to meet in private. Was she hoping it would get back to me somehow? Probably. I pictured her curling up with her Sunday New York Post and smiling to herself, satisfied. Before I had a chance to respond, our therapists came out and handed us each an “organic purification tea” which was supposed to jump-start the detoxification process. I felt like I already had toxins oozing out of my pores between Tripp, Tabitha, and “Page Six.”
I sipped my tea, which tasted like licorice and dirt.
“Just take a deep breath, first of all. It’s a stupid newspaper.”
“But what about the tiny little fact that my fiancé might be running around behind my back?”
“You don’t know if it’s a fact yet. You have to talk to him first.” She paused. “Have you talked to him yet?”
I thought about my phone, far away in the ladies’ locker room where I didn’t have to think about it for at least another three hours—more if I finished up my treatment in the sauna and vitality pool. In fact, if I played my cards right, I could probably extend my spa visit into an entire spa day.
“No,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m ready to talk to him, especially after what you just told me.”
“That’s fair,” Emily said.
“What bothers me the most,” I said, “is I don’t even know this woman. I’ve seen her a few times from afar and that’s about it. Tripp swears she’s obsessed with him, that she practically stalks him. Maybe that’s true but at the same time I feel like she’s out to get me as well. It just all feels so . . . deliberate. It’s like she’s trying to get caught or get Tripp in trouble.”
“The thing that you need to remember about Tabitha,” Emily said, taking a sip of her tea, “is that she’ll do what it takes to stay on top. No matter what.”
Gossip Is an Unladylike Endeavor
As I hailed a cab outside of the Mandarin Oriental, I summoned up the courage to check my phone. No less than fifteen missed calls from Tripp. The last text message had come in a few minutes ago, around two thirty P.M.
It read: Headed to the racquet club. This is bullshit. I love you.
The racquet club, is that right? I thought. Here I am barely able to hail a cab because I am so humiliated and Tripp is burning calories.
Yes, I could have gone home. I could have retreated back to my perfectly appointed apartment and fielded calls from my mother, who was probably still dealing with her own backlash in Charleston, where for whatever reason many people we knew seemed to read the Post these days.
“Take me to Fifty-third and Park.”
I’d never been to the Racquet and Tennis Club on Park Avenue before. Tripp often went there after work to play racquetball and go swimming, but it was an old-school club. Meaning, women were technically not allowed.
Nonetheless, I walked right up the steps and into a main room that looked like it had been decorated by an old white man. There was a lot of white marble, leather furniture, maroon paint, and brass fixtures. Granted, I still had my sunglasses on and was sporting a less-than-fresh hairdo, but pretty much everyone in the room turned to look at me as I walked up to the reception desk.
“Yes?” A man in a white coat and bow tie glared down at me like I was the pizza delivery guy.
“Hello, sir,” I began, my southern manners kicking in. I took off my sunglasses. “I was wondering if you could help me. You see my boyfriend—my fiancé, excuse me—is a member here and I’m desperate to speak to him. It really is quite the emergency situation or I wouldn’t be bothering you, you see.” I almost curtsied at the end, I was so wrapped up in the role of damsel in distress.
“Your fiancé?” he repeated. “Last name, please?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “du Pont.”
The man stared back at me. Then he looked down at a board in front of him, which listed all of the members’ names. Then he looked back up at me again.
“Of course,” he said. “Mr. du Pont the Third, I imagine? Both the elder and the younger are currently in the club.”
“Yes, the third,” I said.
“I see.”
He picked up the receiver of his phone.
“If you don’t mind waiting, miss, I can put in a call to Mr. du Pont and let him know you are here.”
You see, that wouldn’t do. The whole point of my coming to the racquet club in the first place was that I wanted Tripp to be taken off guard. I wanted him to feel uncomfortable. And since I’d felt the depths of humiliation as a result of his actions, whether they were criminal or not, I wanted him to have a taste, as well. I wanted him to know what it felt like when someone you loved and cared about truly let you down. In a very public way, no less.
“Hmmm,” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to know if he’s playing racquetball, would you?”
The man, distracted by an incoming call, barely looked at me.
“I believe he’s taking a swim,” he said, picking up the receiver and greeting the person on the other end of the line with a grim hello.
A swim, I repeated in my head. Perfect.
My behavior in the following moments is not advisable. For one, I had the perfect opportunity. The stuffy guard was tied up on an important call. I’d lingered long enough in the foyer for the original gawkers to lose interest, so no one was so much as glancing in my direction. Not to mention, I am not the most imposing person in the world. I stand five foot four on a goo
d day. I knew it was going to be a challenge to make my way up to the top floor (Tripp had mentioned once that the pool facilities took up most of the top floor of the building) but it wasn’t impossible.
I slunk toward an empty elevator, which I boarded just as the doors were closing. As far as I could tell, no one took notice. I pushed the button for the fourth floor. At that point, I didn’t have a plan. All I could think about was finding Tripp.
The doors opened and two men stopped short and gaped at me. Suddenly I felt very self-conscious.
“Minty! What are you doing here?”
Tripp was standing just inside the entrance to the pool. He had a towel wrapped around his waist and was drying his hair with another towel. I walked over to him with my hands on my hips.
“There are no women allowed on this floor, Minty,” he said in a hushed voice. “We really need to take this somewhere more . . . private. I’m going to get in trouble for this.”
He put his hand on my shoulder but I swiped it away.
There was a minute where I felt slightly guilty and thought maybe I should leave. But then I remembered I had been humiliated in one of the most widely read newspapers in the country. Tripp could stand being humiliated in front of a few old guys in a pool.
“You know what, Tripp? I don’t care!” I said. “I spent the whole day basically wanting to die because of you.”
Some of the men stopped swimming to listen. Tripp placed his hand back on my shoulder and started guiding me toward the exit.
“It’s bad enough that you might be cheating on me with that . . . slut. But I have to read about it in the newspaper on top of it? You can’t even be honest with me?”
There was complete silence. Not even the trickling of water or the slightest splash. That is when I noticed there was something off about this pool. It wasn’t just the fact that it was small or a little steamier than most. It wasn’t that it was populated by all men, most of them in their twilight years, no less, and that I was the only female in their midst. No, there was something else. I glanced around me. The men who had been hanging around the deck of the pool when I walked in were each holding something—a kickboard here, a flipper there—in front of their nether regions. They were definitely looking at me strangely, as if I’d interrupted something private, something sacred. And—oh—there it was. How could I not have noticed? Behind the kickboards and the flippers there was nothing.
Southern Charm Page 14
