Arm Candy (12 page)

—George Burns

 

 

 

F
or the next two months, Eden flew solo. It was the longest sexual drought in her life. The groundhog got freaked out by his shadow and wigged, adding more frozen windows and slushy streets. Once or twice a week she would take the train down to Otto’s and pose, but she didn’t get the same joy from it anymore. When she wasn’t downtown, Eden was getting into her new neighborhood groove and enjoyed her hours with
The New York Times
and Allison’s close-knit family.

“I can’t thank you enough, Alli,” she told her best friend over a glass of wine at Daniel. “I realize now what a mess I’ve been, and you saved me.”

“Bullshit,” Allison said with a wink. “You’re the strong one who got us to New York in the first place. You saved yourself.”

“I’m not there yet.” Eden sighed. “But it’s getting better every day. Instead of waking up and starting to cry, I just wake up
wanting
to cry!”

“E, it will get better. Trust me.”

“I’m sorry. I caught myself complaining. No one likes a sad sack. Thank you for listening to me bitch.”

“Hun, I love you happy or sad. There are some friends who are only there in the happy times and others who creepily get off being the shoulder to cry on so they can feel needed. I love both. That’s what real friends do. You don’t have to thank me.”

“Still. I’m grateful.”

“Hey, Sara and Callie want to plan a group dinner with some of our other mom friends from school. They LOVE you,” Allison said proudly. “I knew they’d have girl crushes on you, and they fully do.”

“They’re great,” Eden said, appreciative of Allison’s hooking them up. “I just think I’m not quite at their level of—”

“Hormones?”

“Yeah. They’re hard-core.”

“We don’t have to go on the town. We can just get lunch or manicures or something.”

“Done.”

 

 

Eden relished her time with Allison and even, increasingly, her time alone. Her long walks through the snow-filled park reminded her of a time when she often strolled the city, and little by little she began to feel more and more like her old self. On the first warm day after a particularly sleet-filled winter week, Eden woke up refreshed and, for once, didn’t think about her age, or a new wrinkle here, a deepening crevice there. She had slept soundly and realized that with a solid night’s sleep, her skin actually looked way better.
Shit, I guess that’s why it’s called beauty sleep
, she mused.

The Canadian on NY1 said it was an unseasonably warm March 1, and she put on black tights and a silk print dress from Jane Mayle from before the designer had shuttered her doors on Elizabeth Street. She walked outside and took a deep breath: It was the first day she felt happy in a long, long time. She walked the streets for hours, nursing a large coffee, savoring every flavorful sip. Flowering dogwood trees and blush pink cherry blossoms, their branches bedecked with buds heralding the end of the chill, sprang up all over the city. Soon enough, there would be four weeks of April showers, and afterward, she could taste it already, would bloom the darling buds of May, and everyone joyfully eschewing sweaters.

—Cora Harvey Armstrong

 

 

 

T
he soundtrack for the sunshine was the Good Humor truck’s childlike tune. Brooke DuPree Lydon rarely partook of desserts, and if she wanted a caloric splurge, it would only be gelato from Sant Ambroeus, where a small cup ran five clams. Even then she’d probably sample only half, then pass on the cup to her husband. But quirky Ruthie loved that crappy ice cream truck with the jingle that could either sound cute and innocent or like the creepy backdrop to a serial killer à la Buffalo Bill’s bloody spree. Once she’d gone with her Tobago-born nurse, Inus, to wait in line by Seventy-second Street and Fifth Avenue, behind schoolchildren in their various uniforms, headed to the playground to blow off steam. Brooke was carrying shopping bags from Ralph Lauren and was aghast when she spied her mother requesting a chemical swirl.

“Mother! You may as well ingest frozen Drano! Do you know what’s in that? How in God’s name can you ingest toxic garbage served from some vile vehicle?”

“Hey, ya gotta live a little.” Ruthie calmly explained that she simply couldn’t pass one of these trucks without ordering a chocolate cone with rainbow sprinkles, cream swirled high to a joyful point, which she’d bite off while awaiting her change from the window on the truck’s side.

“Plus,” Ruthie said with the ever-present twinkle in her eye, “it just makes me happy.”

“Great. I’m so glad you derive such pleasure from Styrofoam shaped into cone form,” Brooke sneered. “Inus, you should know better. Mother should not be eating this refuse.”

In a flurry of navy shopping bags embossed with Polo’s logo, she walked off in a huff.

“Sometimes I’d like to get a polo mallet for her,” Ruthie joked to a grinning Inus, who clearly concurred.

 

 

Chase missed his grandmother terribly. It was a pang in his side like when he ran too fast around the reservoir, splitting and rendering him off-kilter. In crowded Midtown, Chase took an abbreviated lunch break after working until two thirty and saw the season’s first ice cream truck and thought of his grandma. He smiled sadly and found his feet wandering toward it, despite his complete lack of sweet tooth. The woman in front of him ordered none other than a chocolate cone with rainbow sprinkles, and dug into her huge Hobo bag to retrieve her two smacks.

“Uh-oh,” she said, cone in one hand while the other furiously dug through her massive brown suede satchel. “My money! Hold on, I thought I had money. Wait, I have, like, a zillion quarters, one sec.” The woman dug madly through her bag and retrieved piles of change, which was rather difficult to sift through with her cone in her hand.

“It’s on me,” Chase said, handing the ice cream man a five. “I’ll have the exact same thing.”

“No, no, no, it’s okay, I have money. It’s just kind of scattered in here—”

“Honestly, it’s my pleasure,” Chase responded. He squinted, finding her face familiar but not able to place her.

“Seriously, I have money,” she said, frazzled. “I’m just so clumsy. If you hold my cone, I can—”

“Nope,” he interrupted. “It’s the first real day of spring, and it would make me very happy to get you that cone.”

“Hey, what about me?” an old lady behind Chase joked.

“Yeah, me, too, Romeo!” joked a burly construction worker and his friend.

Chase smiled as he watched the beautiful woman happily lick her ice cream. “Cones for everyone!” Chase erupted spontaneously and handed the Mister Softee guy a twenty to pay for ten cones for the line behind him.

Shocked by the rare gesture of goodwill, the crowd in line cheered. It was a great New York moment.

“I’m Eden,” she said, sticking out her cone-free left hand to shake his.

“I’m Chase.”

He smiled and walked next to Eden as they ate their twin cones.

“That was pretty nice, Chase,” she said, looking him over. “You don’t see that every day.”

“It’s not every day,” Chase replied, gesturing to the blooming trees and crystal blue sky. “Look at this.”

“So what do you do, Milton Petrie?” joked Eden, relishing her cone. “I mean when you’re not engaging in frozen treat philanthropy.”

“I . . . you know . . . work in finance.” He shrugged. Yawn, he knew he couldn’t sound more snoozeville.

“Gee, you sound reeeeally excited about that,” said Eden sarcastically.

“Well, I’m not, actually. I’d really love to switch gears but . . . who knows. Duty calls. I’m actually thinking of quitting and getting my PhD in history. But it’s a secret.”

“Ohhhhh.
I
see,” she replied.

“See what?” he asked innocently.

“Everyone knows what PhD stands for.” She winked.

“What does PhD stand for?” Chase inquired.

“Poppa Has Dough.”

Chase had to laugh; he’d never met such a straight-talking woman who was that captivatingly gorgeous.

“Okay, touché.”

They walked toward the corner of a block lined with cherry blossom trees. Just then a strong breeze blew. Eden’s long hair whipped in the wind and she shivered. As the trees were walloped by gushes of air, thousands of pale pink petals flurried to the ground, enveloping Eden, Chase, and the other pedestrians on that lucky sidewalk.

“Oh my gosh, this is so frigging stunning, it’s like a mirage,” Eden said, marveling at the gusty swirl of pink. The petals blanketed the street, and her head and Chase’s were covered in tiny petals. “Too bad the pollen count is going to make me overdose on Claritin.”

Chase laughed. “It’s worth it, though, right? This is almost too amazing to look at.”

Eden studied his young face.
He
was too amazing to look at. But young, very young. Scary young. We’re talking, like, Zac Efron territory. Okay, maybe not quite
that
young, but she was so used to being with Otto, sixteen years her senior, that Chase appeared positively fetal.

“It is quite something,” she said. “Especially after this long, gloomy winter.”

“I know, right? Where is global warming when you need it?” Chase joked nervously.

Eden could tell he was charmed by her looks, despite the fact that if they each built a tower with a brick for each year, hers would tower over, or probably topple over his.

“Well, thank you for the ’scream,” said Eden, stopping to descend the stairs to the subway. “That was very sweet of you. You put rainbow sprinkles on my whole day.”

“My pleasure,” he said, feeling a warmth in his chest. “Enjoy.”

“I will.”

“Happy spring,” Chase said, studying her.

“Happy spring,” Eden replied, practically skipping off, and licking her first cone of the new, sunny season.

—Anonymous

 

 

 

P
utting her recent uniform of black skinny jeans or casual dresses aside, it was time for Eden to get dolled up. She knew the drill: showtime. Red carpet, Waldorf-Astoria, hair and makeup. The evening’s fête was honoring Rock McGhee, whose name sounded like a porn star’s, but he was in fact a huge collector of Otto’s work. He had four massive canvases in his Fifth Avenue penthouse—all of Eden—and invited the pair and a few of their studio and gallery friends to his black-tie event to sit at his table with his wife, Muffy, and a few high-profile hedge funders.

During the massive cocktail hour, Eden and Otto were led to a small antechamber with paparazzi and a backdrop with the logo of McGhee’s charity, EndTesCan, which fought testicular cancer and was jokingly referred to by Otto as the Save Our Balls Ball. The paparazzi snapped shots of luminaries, from indie actresses to Lance Armstrong to a young “virgin” (yeah, right) pop starlet with hot pants and thunder thighs who would be performing one song. Eden and Otto held hands and smiled as the countless flash-bulbs flashed. “Eden! Eden! Otto! Eden!” yelled the shutterbugs, who were insectlike with their incessant clicks and the big eyes of their long lenses.

“Okay, thank you,” Otto said sternly when he’d had enough of the glare. He took Eden’s hand and guided her away from the firestorm. Despite their separation, he still felt protective of her.

“Thanks for doing this,” Otto said as Eden shot him a look. It was obvious she’d rather be hang gliding over a canyon of skyward-pointing machetes. Lyle Spence, Otto’s gallerist, said people were getting skittish about their allegedly rock-solid investments in Otto’s canvases and that it would behoove them both to put on a brave front and walk the walk. Eden agreed so long as Mary stayed home and played Parcheesi or washed her hair or painted her nails hot pink or whatever the hell she did. Eden was growing weary of these saccharine dog-and-pony shows, but Otto needed to please the longtime collectors who funneled millions his way, including Rock McGhee and his hedge fund partner Jack “Gefilte” Fishman, so nicknamed for his constant bobby-pinned yarmulke.

“It’s okay,” Eden said, looking for Allison. “I just need a serious drink. Or five.”

“I’m right there with you, honey.”

Otto put his arm around her and led her into the grand ballroom. It felt slightly strange and poseury for them to enter as their same old arm-in-arm unit, the art world Cover Story duo, but Eden felt almost proud that she could play the role Otto had cast her in so well.
Oh, look, they are such grown-ups, such an amicable breakup
. They walked the walk and greeted high-profile socialites and fauxcialites through the cocktail hour, then made their way to the ballroom. It was there, at the table next to theirs, that Eden noticed Chase and his two brothers. Their eyes locked briefly as they tried to remember how they knew each other, and soon their realizations synced as one mini epiphany of shared cones and a magical moment of light breezes and fluttering petals.

Staring at Chase during a long welcoming speech by the CEO of some investment bank, Eden put up her hand in a blank stationary wave, the gesture everyone learned as kids as the way Indians greeted one another, saying “How.” It was a pure child-of-the-eighties reference. By the time Chase was born, the term was Native Americans, and sitting cross-legged was only ever called “crisscross applesauce.” But he held up his hand back to her, How-style, and smiled.

As the speech about early gonad scans droned on, Eden shocked the polite Chase by picking up a knife from her table setting and miming it slashing across her neck while sticking her tongue out, as if to say, “Kill me now, please.” Chase was surprised and almost snorted laughing, as while he may have echoed the sentiment, sitting through long speeches was commonplace for him. As he stifled his laugh, a coiffed Liesel turned to him, wondering what the distraction was. She had been listening intently, hands crossed on her lap.