Bergdorf Blondes (4 page)

“Only a really superficial person would break up over a fuckin’ fifty-five-dollar wax,” said Chad when I told him.

“Chad, its fuckin-
g
,” I said. Chad was totally not into Received Pronunciation, which is the one British habit this American girl never kicked. I thought the way he spoke was cute actually, but I couldn’t help correcting him.

“There’s fuck
in
’ noth
in
’ more fuck
in
’ annoy
in
’ than go
in
’ out with ya.”

“Well then you must be happy I’m leav
ing
you,” I said, trying not to get upset. “A girl’s more than the sum of her parts, Chad.”

Even though there were things I missed about Chad (the Brazilian was the start of many useful beauty tips), I was relieved it was over. I mean, he wasn’t exactly an honest person. Ricky Martin is actually from Puerto Rico, not France as Chad insisted he was, and if you look at the globe you’ll see Puerto Rico is much closer to Brazil than to France. Still, the one gift Chad gave me was the Brazilian. I couldn’t survive without it now. Apparently it’s the secret weapon of the most glamorous women in the world. And I would
never
tell Chad this, after everything that happened, but if I were a man I probably wouldn’t want to date a woman who hadn’t had a Brazilian either. So, although I didn’t know about Brazilians un
til after I had left the English countryside, had I known about them before I decided to leave, it would definitely have made me go. Therefore, retrospectively, I can add Brazilians to my list of reasons to move to Manhattan.

“T
he only sexually transmitted disease I wanna contract,” said Julie, “is fiancé fever.”

I could see why Julie wanted a Prospective Husband. American men are wonderful, buff creatures with unique talents. I mean, if you squint enough, they
all
look like JFK Jr., I swear it. For someone with attention deficit disorder, which has afflicted Julie and most of the other Park Avenue Princesses since childhood (although it doesn’t seem to afflict them when shopping), her new ability to focus was miraculous. She had this crazy idea that if she selected exactly the right party, one that was the equivalent of attending six gallery openings, four museum benefits, three dinners, and two major movie premieres all in one night, she would be guaranteed to leave at the end of the evening with a Prospective Husband on her arm for sure. Julie said this was a project she
didn’t want to waste too much time on when, as she puts it, “I could waste my time doing other things, like getting eyebrow waxes.”

Julie’s attitude toward her imminent engagement was a little disturbing. She honestly believed that when she got the perfect fiancé, if she hadn’t had time to get her eyebrows shaped—which is, in her opinion, the most important facial procedure performed by the doctors at the Bergdorf Goodman salon—she would be so gutted, there would be no point in the fiancé anyway.

When Julie puts her mind to something, she can be surprisingly efficient. She selected the New York Conservatory Ball, a charity benefit, as the most promising hunting ground. Having bought a table, she called the honorary chairwoman, Mrs. E. Henry Steinway Zigler III, to “discuss strategy.” Julie wanted to check the seating plan in advance. Mrs. Zigler invited us to tea at her marble mansion overlooking Central Park on Fifth Avenue and Eighty-second Street. She loves to play cupid.

“Call me Muffy, girls,” she said warmly when we arrived.

Muffy was wearing a fringed Oscar de la Renta poncho, lime green cigarette pants, and enough jewels to empty a diamond mine. She said she was channeling Elizabeth Taylor in
The Sandpiper
. Everyone in New York is always channeling someone else. Her poncho swinging dramatically from side to side as she
trotted ahead, she led us through the echoing atrium and into the drawing room. Grander than Versailles, it’s hung with huge gilt mirrors and Italian oil paintings, and dotted with elegant antique sofas and chairs that Muffy bulk buys whenever she’s close to a Sotheby’s. Muffy tells people her home is decorated, “to look exactly like Oscar’s. I went there, I saw his place, I couldn’t stand it. I had to have it. I cloned his apartment!”

Muffy always says that “being rich is a life sentence that is mainly enjoyable, and I should know.” Almost every Upper East Side wife I have met is called Muffy. Apparently it was once a very popular name in Connecticut, where most Muffys were born, roughly in the middle of the last century. This Muffy, like all her neighborhood Muffys, says, “Ralph Lauren is my drug of choice.” She’s addicted to Botox injections and tells everyone she’s “thirty-eight.” She’s an F.O.G.—Friend of George—and when Bill Clinton was in power, she was an F.O.B. She donates millions to the Republicans and millions more to the Democrats, because she still has a “special relationship” with Bill. All the other Muffys have special relationships with Bill too, but I don’t think she knows that.

We sat in a little group on Muffy’s matching Victorian Knole sofas. (Knole sofas are very, very in on the Upper East Side right now, especially if you can get one upholstered in seventeenth-century verdure
tapestry, which of course is almost impossible.) A uniformed maid brought tea on a silver tray. With her party imminent, Muffy was as hyperactive as a Japanese tourist in a Louis Vuitton outlet store. She couldn’t stop tugging at the tassels on the sofa cushions.

“Oh Lord! The party’s tomorrow! I’ve secured
super-duper
princes, millionaires, movie producers, heirs, architects, politicians! Bill might be coming!” she exclaimed. “Everyone in New York will be here tomorrow night.”

“Which charity is this party in aid of, Muffy?” I asked.

“Oh, Save Something or Other. Save Venice, Save the Met, Save the Ballet! Who knows? I’m on so many committees—Mr. Zigler just adores those tax breaks—that I just call them all the same thing, ‘Save Whatever.’ Isn’t that
brilliant
! If only someone would save
me
from the ladies on the committees. If you don’t donate a mil it’s death by stiletto. I think this one is saving flowers of some kind. Charity is a
glorious
American institution because ultimately someone or other who needs it gets pots of money, and we all get to dress up in
super-duper
Michael Kors frocks. Now, business,” she said, more seriously. “A little birdie tells me you want a fiancé, Julie. How marvelous! Do tell! What sort of man do you want?”

“Someone smart, and fun, who’s going to make me
laugh. And who I can moan and whine at for hours and they’ll still adore me. Just don’t hook me up with a creative type. I got those out of my system in high school. No actors, artists, or musicians for me, thank you,” said Julie.

I hadn’t realized Julie was so mature. Mind you, when you’ve had fifty-four boyfriends you should know what you want.

“There’s no fear of that on the Upper East Side, dear,” said Muffy. “There are no creative types up here, oh no! The mayor doesn’t let them past Union Square.”

“Oh, and I know this is going to sound totally spoiled and superficial, but I do like it if my boyfriends believe in drivers. I blame Dad. He ruined me for life by having me chauffeured to school every day in a Jaguar. That’s just the way I am. I can’t change myself, can I?” said Julie, blushing a little.

“No, dear,” cooed Muffy soothingly. “If you don’t like walking, you don’t like walking and that’s it. Look at me, I have
three
drivers! We have one at the house in Palm Beach, one in Aspen, and one here. There’s nothing wrong with expressing your needs, Julie.”

There’s extravagant and there’s extravagant. Even among her own set Muffy takes the word to new heights.

“I just want to fall in love, Muffy, like all the other girls, and have radiant skin without having to get
Vitamin C injections,” said Julie, her eyes looking watery. “I get really lonesome sometimes.”

Muffy is an exceptionally mathematical socialite whose
placement
equations are as complex as chess. She has a system she uses whenever her “merging” services are required. She always makes sure she has one table of thirteen, with one too many men. Every guest has a number in the seating plan. Julie was number four and her seat would be second from the end of the rectangular table, which had the advantage of being accessible for conversation by four men. To Julie’s left and right would be an Italian prince and a record producer, opposite would be a real estate mogul, and at the head of the table would be the thirteenth, the “extra” man, who would be told by the hostess she was terribly sorry she had to sit him next to two other men, “but there’s just too many of you boys tonight!”

I don’t know anyone else in New York who could avail a girl of four eligible dinner partners at one sitting. The only time Muffy’s math fails her is when it comes to budgeting for the florist(s).

The next night Julie’s smile was bigger than Africa. So were her diamond earrings. Sometimes, even someone as happy for her friend’s good fortune as me goes a bit
off-yellow with envy when I see Julie’s Cartier “loot” as she calls it. Still, the nice thing about Julie is she shares everything and had loaned me her diamond hoops for the night. She’d also enlisted the Bergdorf beauty team to do our hair and makeup at her apartment.

When I arrived Julie was sitting on the chaise longue in her drawing room. It’s a very elegant
salon
, painted duck-egg blue, with tall windows, thick cornicing, and an outrageous Guy Bourdin nude hanging over the fireplace just to mix things up. All Julie’s furniture is that wonderful thirties Hollywood stuff she adores, reupholstered in pale velvet to match the walls. Still, I couldn’t see much of anything wonderful because every surface was covered in some kind of cosmetic instrument. Davide, the makeup artist, had literally turned the room into his personal makeup studio. He was dabbing blush on Julie’s cheeks, Raquel was ironing Julie’s hair, and Irinia, the Polish pedicurist, was buffing Julie’s toenails. This is nothing. I’ve heard that some girls in New York don’t leave their apartment before a party without their dermatologist checking their epidermis for blemishes first.

“Do I look happy? Does my smile look, like, real?” asked Julie as I walked in.

Davide said her smile was as real as her Cartier loot, which I thought was a very appropriate metaphor.

“It’s
totally
fake. Isn’t it
beyond
?” said Julie.

“Ohmygoditsbey-ooond!” said Davide.

“I went to my dermatologist this afternoon, and you know those little muscles around your mouth, the platysma? You probably don’t because most people don’t think about them. Well, after like twenty-three, they start drooping, but there’s this genius way of fixing them and giving you back your smile. Your derm injects a tiny bit of Botox to paralyze them, and the corners of your mouth turn instantly upward. Once you’ve got the Botox Smile, you can be smiling all night without actually smiling, which makes the smiling much less tiring,” said Julie, as if she were making total sense.

The dress code for Muffy’s party was black tie. As soon as Julie’s hair and makeup were done she threw on a thigh-skimming, black silk minidress. (Chanel. Couture. FedExed from Paris.) While she disappeared into her dressing room to examine herself I sat down and took advantage of Davide and Raquel. There are certain parties in New York where you literally can’t walk in the door without hair and makeup. Muffy’s was one of them. The hair-makeup thing takes you up a notch. After a while you become convinced that you couldn’t cope if you just swiped Maybelline mascara on yourself, which would probably clog. Manhattan makeup artists actually comb your eyelashes after they’ve applied eye makeup. Mascara clots are a federal crime here.

Just as Davide was patting gloss on my lips a loud cry came from the direction of Julie’s bedroom. A fashion tantrum was brewing. I wasn’t surprised. New York girls have one every time someone mentions clothes. I wandered into the bedroom and looked over Julie’s shoulder at her in the mirror.

“It’s totally and utterly wrong. I look…
conservative
!” she wailed dramatically, pulling at the hem of the little dress. “Look at me! I look like someone from that Broadway show with fat people.
Hairspray
. My future Prospective Husband is going to think I am a
troll
!”

The dress was gorgeous, 100 percent killer chic.

“Julie you look incredible. That dress is so short it’s almost invisible. It’s the inverse of conservative,” I said, trying to reassure her.

“I’m freakin’ out and you’re saying things like
inverse
to me. Can everyone just go away,” she cried, miserable.

Julie locked herself in the dressing room. She changed and changed and changed. She said through the door that she didn’t want to go the party now because it would just be too much sartorial, intellectual, and sexual strain. Although I honestly didn’t mind whether or not I went to some fabulous ball at Muffy’s marble mansion, I had a gorgeous white chiffon dress on that I’d borrowed from the fashion closet at the office—a dress I am fully intending to return one day soon—and it would have been a terrible waste for it not to see the world.

“Julie, I don’t care
in the slightest
whether we go,” I said. I mean, I could wear the dress another time. “But it’s going to be such a fun party.”

“Parties in New York aren’t fun. They’re war,” said Julie, unlocking the door and appearing in the killer Chanel again. “Davide, give me a Xanax. I always take a tranquilizer on a first date.”

Davide dashed over to his makeup bag, which is filled with a variety of prescription drugs for just such occasions, and fished out a little package. Julie tore it open and popped this really cute baby blue pill in her mouth, which I thought was a very modern way to handle a war, and called her driver to take us to Muffy’s.

I can safely say that I am almost definitely completely sure that I have no idea at all how I ended up with a Prospective Husband and Julie didn’t. I mean, to be more precise, at the end of the night, the PH ended up with his head not at all close to the Brazilian region of Julie but in severely close proximity to that geographical zone on myself.

You see, this champagne bubble had sipped a few champagne bubbles herself, which makes it quite hard to remember exactly how things happened that night. But in the interest of correcting some rather
nasty vicious Park Avenue Princess—type gossip, which is that I stole the PH from directly beneath my best friend’s beautiful nose—which of course Julie doesn’t believe, on principle—I feel bound to recount the events of the evening as far as I can almost definitely remember them.

We were an hour late for the party by the time we finally arrived at Muffy’s. It was almost impossible to find our table because Muffy had bunches of white lilies and candles so densely packed in the room you could barely see a yard in front of you. (Flower-wise, the Lily Jungle is absolutely it right now in Manhattan despite the inherent navigational difficulties.)

There must have been 250 guests, with as many waiters, who were uniformed in white tuxes and gloves. The crowd was dazzling: Muffy always attracts the cream of Manhattan society to her soirees. Dress-wise, there was a major floral theme going on, which always happens at benefits for gardens. A lot of the girls were in Emanuel Ungaro because he does the best flowery dresses in the world, no argument. Jewel-wise, the younger girls had brought out their Asprey diamond daisies and the older women were weighed down with estate gems from the safe. Everyone was kissing everyone else hello and saying how thrilled they were to see one another, even if they weren’t.