7
It was seven-thirty in the evening on day four of my working at Kelly & Company as a party planner. The newsstand near my apartment had only a single copy of the New York Daily News with Will’s column by the time I headed home after work. I’d been reading ‘Will of the People’ nearly every week since the time I’d learned the alphabet, but for some reason I’d never managed to subscribe to any of the papers that ran it. Of course, I had never broached the subject of the column’s gradual shift to a soapbox for Will’s crotchety rants about every social ‘tragedy’ that had befallen his beloved city, but it was becoming increasingly more difficult to keep my mouth shut.
‘Bette! Great column today, if I do say so myself!’ my doorman, Seamus, howled boozily as he pulled open the door to my building and waved a copy of the paper. ‘That uncle of yours hits the nail on the head every time!’
‘Is it good? I haven’t read it yet,’ I said absently, walking and talking quickly, the way people do when they’re trying desperately to avoid a conversation.
‘Good? It’s fantastic! Now there’s a man who gets it! Anyone who can poke a little fun at Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine! I thought I was the only person in this whole city who voted for George W., but your uncle assures me I’m not.’
‘Mmm. I suppose that’s true.’ I headed toward the elevator, but he was still going.
‘Any chance he’ll be coming ’round to visit you anytime soon? Would just love to tell him in person how much—’
‘I’ll definitely let you know,’ I called as the elevator doors finally shut him out. I shook my head, remembering my uncle’s one visit to my building and the way Seamus had fallen all over himself when he recognized Will’s name. It was upsetting, to say the least, that Seamus personified my uncle’s target demographic.
Millington nearly collapsed in paroxysms of joy when I opened the door, even more excited than usual now that I’d returned to working all day. Poor Millington. No walk for you tonight, I thought as I gave her a perfunctory scratch on the head and settled down to read Will’s latest rants. She scampered off to use her Wee-Wee Pad, realizing immediately that she wasn’t leaving the apartment today, either, and then jumped onto my chest to read with me.
Just as I was settling in with my folder of takeout menus, my cell phone vibrated across my coffee table like a wind-up toy. I debated whether or not to answer it. The cell phone was company-issued and, much like my new colleagues, didn’t ever seem to rest. I’d been out the last three nights, attending events the company had put on, following Kelly as she did everything from consulting with clients to firing slow bartenders, hosting VIPs, and arranging for press passes. The hours were even more grueling than at the bank – a whole day of office work followed by a full night out – but the office buzzed with young, pretty people, and if one has to spend fifteen hours a day at work, I thought I might prefer DJs or champagne cocktails to diversified portfolios.
TXT MESSAGE! appeared on my color screen. Text message? I’d never before received a message or sent one. After a moment’s hesitation, I looked at the screen and hit Read.
din 2nite @ 9? cip dwntn on w.broad. c u there.
What was that? Some sort of cryptic dinner invitation, for sure, but where and with whom? The only clue to its origin was a 917 number I didn’t recognize. I dialed it and a breathless girl answered immediately.
‘Hey, Bette! What’s up? You in for tonight?’ the voice said, crushing my hope that the person had simply dialed the wrong number.
‘Uh, hi. Um, who is this?’
‘Bette! It’s Elisa. We’ve only worked together twenty-four/seven for the past week! We’re all going out tonight to celebrate being done with the Candace party. It’ll be the usual crew. See you at nine?’
I’d planned to meet Penelope at the Black Door since I’d barely seen her during my unemployment hibernation, but I didn’t see how I could turn down my first social invitation from my new colleagues.
‘Uh, yeah, sure, that sounds great. What was the name of that restaurant again?’
‘Cipriani Downtown?’ she asked, sounding a bit incredulous that I wasn’t able to deduce as much from her earlier shorthand. ‘You’ve been, right?’
‘Of course. I love it there. Do you mind if I bring a friend? I had plans already and—’
‘Fab! See you both in a couple hours!’ she screeched and hung up.
I snapped my phone shut and did what every New Yorker does instinctively upon hearing the name of a restaurant: I checked Zagat. Twenty-one for food, twenty for decor, and a still respectable eighteen for service. And it wasn’t a one-word name like Koi or Butter or Lotus, which might seem innocuous but almost always guaranteed an exceptionally horrid time. So far, everything looked promising.
‘To see or be seen is never the question’ at this SoHo Northern Italian where watching Eurobabes ‘air kissing’ and ‘pretending to eat their salads’ is more to the point than the surprisingly good ‘creative’ fare; natives may ‘feel like foreigners in their own country,’ but the high ratings speak for themselves.
Ah, so it was going to be another Eurobabe night. Whatever that meant. And more to the point, what was I supposed to wear? Elisa and crew seemed to rotate between black pants, black skirts, and black dresses at work, so it was probably safe to stick with the formula. I dialed Penelope at the bank.
‘Hey, it’s me. What’s up?’
‘Ugh. You are so unbelievably lucky that you left this wretched sweatshop. Is Kelly looking to hire anyone else?’
‘Yeah, I wish. But listen – what do you think about meeting everyone tonight?’
‘Everyone?’
‘Well, not everyone, just my immediate work group. I know we had plans, but since we always go to the Black Door, I thought it might be fun to go to dinner with them. Are you up for it?’
‘Sure,’ she said, sounding too tired to move. ‘Avery’s going out with a bunch of friends from high school tonight and I was just so not interested. Dinner sounds fun. Where is it?’
‘Cipriani Downtown. Have you been?’
‘No, but my mother talks about it obsessively. She’s been dying for me to become a regular.’
‘Should I be upset that your mother and my uncle seem to know every cool place in the city, and we’re completely clueless?’
‘Welcome to my life.’ She sighed. ‘Avery’s the same way – he knows everyone and everything. I just can’t be bothered. The effort required for mere maintenance is too exhausting. But tonight will be fun. I’d like to meet people who plan parties for a living. And the food’s supposed to be great.’
‘Well, I’m not sure that’s a huge selling point with this crowd. I’ve spent forty hours with Elisa this week and haven’t seen her eat a thing. She seems to subsist solely on cigarettes and Diet Coke.’
‘Hot-girl diet, huh? Good for her. You’ve got to admire that level of commitment.’ Penelope sighed again. ‘I’m headed home in a few. Want to share a cab downtown?’
‘Perfect. I’ll pick you up at the corner of Fourteenth and Fifth a little before nine. I’ll call when I get in the cab,’ I said.
‘Sounds good. I’ll wait outside. Bye.’
I headed for my closet. After some discards and retries, I settled on a pair of tight black pants and a plain black tank top. I extracted some decently high heels, bought during a shopping trip in SoHo, and took the time to blow out the exceedingly thick black hair I inherited from my mother – the kind that everyone thinks they want until they realize it barely fits in a ponytail and instantly adds thirty minutes to any preparation time. I even attempted some makeup, which got put to use so infrequently that the mascara wand was all clumpy and a few of the lipsticks were stuck inside their tubes. No matter! I thought, singing along to Mike & the Mechanics’ ‘The Living Years’ as I worked on my face … this was even kind of fun. I had to admit, the end results were worth the extra effort: my love handles no longer bulged over the waistline of my pants, my boobs had retained
their chubby-girl fullness even though the rest of me had shrunk, and the mascara I’d haphazardly brushed across my lashes had accidentally smeared to perfection, giving my somewhat bland gray eyes a sexy, smoldering look.
Penelope was waiting outside at exactly ten to nine, and we were deposited at our requested address right on time. There were a ton of restaurants on West Broadway, and everyone seemed to be clustered at outdoor tables looking exceedingly well-scrubbed and unnervingly happy. We had a little trouble finding the place because the restaurant management had neglected to post a sign. Perhaps it’s an issue of practicality; since the shelf life of most New York hot spots is under six months, it actually leaves one less thing to remove when they close. Luckily, I remembered the street number from Zagat and we scoped it out from the far corner. Groups of scantily but expensively clad women congregated around the bar as older men kept their drinks filled, but I didn’t see Elisa or anyone else from the office.
‘Bette! Over here!’ Elisa called, a champagne glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She was planted in the middle of Cipriani’s outdoor tables, leaning seductively against one of the Italians’ chairs, her branch-like limbs looking as though they might snap at any moment. ‘Everyone else is inside. So glad you could come!’
‘Jesus Christ, she’s skinny,’ Penelope muttered under her breath as we walked toward the tables.
‘Hi,’ I said and leaned in to kiss Elisa hello. I turned to introduce her to Penelope but noticed that Elisa was still waiting there, her face thrust forward and filled, eyes closed. She had expected the traditional Euro double kiss, and I’d given up halfway through. I’d recently read a convincing piece in Cosmo decrying the double kiss as a stupid affectation and decided to make a stand: there would be no more double kisses for me. I left her hanging but said, ‘Thanks for inviting me. I absolutely love it here!’
She recovered quickly. ‘Ohmigod, me, too. They have the best salads of anywhere. Hi, I’m Elisa,’ she said, offering a hand to Penelope.
‘I’m so sorry, that was so rude of me.’ I flushed, realizing I must have sounded ridiculous to Penelope. ‘Penelope, this is Elisa. She’s been showing me around all week long. And, Elisa, this is Penelope, my best friend.’
‘Wow, fab ring,’ Elisa said, grabbing Penelope’s left hand instead of her right and softly fingering the massive stone. ‘That carat-glare is, like, blinding!’ Penelope was, in fact, sporting her ‘wearable’ three-carat rock, and I wondered what Elisa would think of her second ring.
‘Thanks,’ Penelope said, clearly pleased. ‘I just got engaged last—’ But before she could finish, Davide grabbed Elisa from behind and wrapped his arms around her tiny waist, careful not to hug too hard and break her. He leaned in and whispered something in her ear and she threw her head back with laughter.
‘Davide, honey, behave! You know Bette. Davide, this is Bette’s friend, Penelope.’
We all air-kissed on both cheeks (my no double-kiss rule hadn’t lasted twenty seconds), but Davide didn’t manage to remove his eyes from Elisa for a single second. ‘Our table. It is ready,’ he announced gruffly in Italian-accented English, patting Elisa’s bony ass and leaning his pretty face toward her neck again. ‘Come in when you are finito.’ Something about Davide’s accent still didn’t sound quite right. It seemed to meander from French to Italian and back to French again.
‘I’m finished,’ she sang merrily, tossing her cigarette underneath a table. ‘Let’s go in, okay?’
We had a table for six tucked in the back corner. Elisa immediately informed me that marginally cool people obsess about getting a table in the front of the restaurant, but the truly cool request tables in the back. Skye, Davide, and Leo comprised the rest of the group that had worked on the Candace Bushnell book party the night before, and I was relieved to see that Elisa and Davide were the only couple. They were all sipping drinks and arguing about something, looking relaxed in the way that only the truly confident ever can. And naturally, no one was wearing black. Skye and Elisa were wearing almost identical short dresses, one in a bright coral color with gorgeous silver heels and the other in a perfect aquamarine with matching metallic sandals that tied halfway up her calves. No matter that it was mid-October and relatively cold at night. Even the guys looked like they’d been prepped at Armani before dinner. Davide was still wearing his charcoal gray suit from work. Although it was significantly snugger than most American men would wear, it looked fabulous on his tall, built frame. Leo was the perfect combination of hip and casual in a pair of distressed Paper Denim jeans, a tight vintage T-shirt that said VIETNAM: WE WERE WINNING WHEN I LEFT, and the new orange Pumas for guys. I went to claim the last remaining seat next to Leo, but he hoisted himself effortlessly to his feet without so much as a break in his sentence, kissed both my cheeks, and pulled the chair out for me, and then one for Penelope, who was obviously trying as hard as I was to act like this was a usual night out for us. When we’d settled in, Leo handed us menus and motioned for the waiter to take our drink orders, although he still hadn’t so much as paused in the conversation.
I racked my brain trying to think of some remotely cool drink, but after years of only drinking with my uncle, it was impossible. Absolut was popular these days, wasn’t it?
‘Um, I’ll have an Absolut and grapefruit juice, please,’ I mumbled when the waiter looked to me first.
‘Really?’ Elisa asked, looking at me, wide-eyed. ‘I don’t even think they serve Absolut here. Why don’t we get a few bottles of wine for the table to start?’
‘Oh, sure. That would be great.’ Strike one.
‘Don’t feel too bad – I was going to order a beer,’ Penelope leaned over and whispered. I laughed like it was the most amusing thing I’d ever heard.
Davide spoke to the waiter in fourth-grade Italian, supplementing with hand gestures and at one point kissing his fingertips as though the mere thought of his order was too delicious to resist. Elisa and Skye just gazed at him in adoration. He switched to his faux-accented English for the rest of us monolingual idiots. ‘I have ordered three bottles of this Chianti to start, if this is acceptable. In the meantime, everyone prefer sparkling or flat?’
Elisa turned to me and announced, ‘Davide is from Sicily.’
‘Oh, really? How interesting,’ I said. ‘Are his parents still there?’
‘No, no, he’s been here since he was four, but he still has such affection for his birthplace.’
Votes were tallied for the bottled water preference – I wisely resisted saying that I’d be fine with plain old tap water – and Davide ordered three of each. By my calculations, we’d already spent just under $300 and hadn’t so much as ordered an appetizer yet.
‘Great call on the wine, Davide,’ Skye announced while punching her manicured nails into her cell phone’s keypad. Texting, I guessed. ‘I can vouch for it personally. We’ve summered in Tuscany for years and it’s the only one I’ll touch.’ She turned her full attention to her phone, which was ringing, and tucked it back into her bag after looking with distaste at the caller ID display.
I busied myself examining the menu, wondering if every employee of Kelly & Company was in possession of an enormous trust fund. I couldn’t very well contribute much about the subtleties of Chianti. My parents’ idea of ‘summering’ was driving from Poughkeepsie to Cayuga Lake in Ithaca, where they’d hold a vegan barbecue on the porch with locals and drink their licorice tea. Nothing like blowing your first week’s pay on a single meal you didn’t want to have in the first place.
‘So how tough was last night?’ Davide asked. ‘I mean, what are the chances that not a single A-list celebrity showed up?’
‘Some of the Sex and the City cast were there,’ Leo pointed out thoughtfully.
‘Um, excuse me, I don’t think Chris Noth and John Corbett count as A-list!’ Skye said. ‘Did you see Sarah Jessica Parker? No! Besides, SATC’ – she used the abbreviation here – ‘is so over. The whole thing was a nightmare.’
The group had been commissioned by Warner Books to throw the book party for Candace Bushnell’s newest novel, and apparently it had been a zoo. Since I hadn’t worked on it from the beginning, I’d attended another event that night, a dinner welcoming the CEO of one of Kelly & Company’s new accounts.
Leo sighed. ‘I know, you’re right, of course. It was just so, so … B and T!’
‘Yes, it was, wasn’t it? I mean, who were all those girls on the outside patio? They were positively attacking the champagne – you’d think they’d never seen it before. And those two guys with the Staten Island accents who actually got in a fight? Hideous,’ Skye added.
‘Yeah, Penelope, you didn’t miss anything,’ Elisa reassured her, even though Penelope clearly had no idea what anyone was discussing. ‘That’s the beauty of book parties, though. The publishers are usually so out of the loop, they have no clue whether it actually drew a good crowd or not.’
Davide delicately sipped his wine and nodded. ‘At least we won’t have to endure another “Why the List Makes the Party” speech from Kelly. I honestly don’t think I could listen to it again.’
I’d been hearing about ‘The List’ since Monday, but Kelly hadn’t yet taken any time to introduce me to the ‘most comprehensive database of everyone worth knowing.’ She’d set aside the next day, a Friday, to demonstrate for me the glory that is The List. I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, not quite able to accept that Kelly really was the insanely upbeat woman she appeared to be, but so far she’d maintained her relentless optimism on full throttle. And even though I don’t think Will had given her much of a choice in hiring me, she seemed genuinely happy to have me there. I’d invested four full days in studying her intently, desperate to discover some hideous flaw or irritation, and I still hadn’t managed to uncover a single negative aspect of her personality. Could it be possible that she really was all-around adorable, sweet, and successful? The most serious offense I’d found so far was her tendency toward chipper emails with numerous emoticons. But she hadn’t once used the word powwow or placed any sweaty hands anywhere inside my workspace, so I was more than content to let it slide.