Fashionably Late (36 page)

The girls now stood preening, used to being the center of attention, and just before Karen turned away from them another tall, thin figure joined them. It was Tangela Pompey, and even from here, halfway across the long teak deck, Karen could see the glitter in the girl’s eye and the outrageous way she was dressed. She had a blindingly purple mini-skirt on and a black bolero jacket as a blouse. The jacket barely covered her breasts and was held together with a single big safety pin.

Tangela was all beautiful brown skin and desperation. Was it Karen’s imagination that the other women seemed to disperse when she arrived?

There was no doubt she was a beautiful girl, but she wasn’t as beautiful as her mother had been, and she probably wasn’t beautiful enough to make it much beyond where she was now. Karen knew Tangela could have a lucrative, long career as a fitting modelţher proportions were perfectţbut from what Defina said the girl wanted a whole lot more. Even now, when they worked together, Karen felt Tangela’s lack of enthusiasm. Without an audience, the girl was dead.

Karen was about to turn away when she noticed the rest of Tangela’s entourage. Aside from the Hispanic-looking guyţprobably the boyfriend that Defina objected toţthere was a minor rock musician, and another girl.

Karen did a double take. The girl was Stephanie.

The latest bonding fashion was models and rock stars. Patti Hanson married Keith Richards. Rachel Hunter married Rod Stewart (both couples were in attendance tonight). Stephanie seemed to be following the crowd.

Why else would she be hanging all over a scruffy-looking blonde who Karen recognized as the member of a rock band. Karen was just surprisedţno, shockedţ to see her niece. How had she gotten in? She was too young. Had Norris invited her? Had she crashed the party?

Had Tangela brought her? Karen watched as Stephanie mimed a pout, walked a few steps away from her blonde Adonis, then, turning, ran back across the deck and threw herself at him. Karen saw the guy’s hand squeeze Stephanie’s ass. Stephanie just threw back her head and laughed.

What to do? Play the aunt and use the classic line, “Does your mother know you’re here?” Act outraged and send the kid home? Ignore it and hope it’s just what teenagers do? She turned to Jeffrey. “Look who’s here,” she said. He followed her gaze with his eyes, and they widened when they saw his niece. “Time for some divine intervention,” Karen decided, and made her way through the crowd to Stephanie, who was being nuzzled by the unsavory rocker.

“Hi, Stephie,” Karen smiled. She tried to act natural. Stephanie spun around. There already was a hickey on her long, swan neck. Very attractive. Karen didn’t know people still did hickies. “Having fun?” she asked.

“Oh, hi. Yeah. Hi, Uncle Jeffrey.” Before her niece could say anything more, a photographer began to shoot pictures while his aide asked for Stephanie’s name. The rocker, Karen noticed, did his best to stay within the frame. Karen had to admit the guy was cute, if he’d wash his hair and lose the tattoos. “Isn’t this the greatest party?”

Stephanie asked as the camera flashed, her voice shrill.

“Just great,” Jeffrey agreed. “Hasn’t been one like this in close to three days.” The sarcasm was lost on the girl.

“How are you getting home, Stephie?” Karen asked.

Her niece blinked. “I was going to stay over with Tangela,” she said.

Karen thought of Defina’s stories about Tangela on the marble kitchen table. Forget about it!

“Gee, I don’t think it’s a good idea, honey. I really don’t. Why don’t you spend the night with us?”

Stephanie knew she’d been outmaneuvered. She threw a look of longing at the blonde guitar prince. Karen remembered when Stephie used to look at Malibu Barbies with that longing. She sighed. “Why don’t you take a little time and say goodbye to your friend?” Karen smiled.

“We’ll be leaving in about fifteen minutes.” The girl couldn’t shoot heroin in a quarter of an hour, could she?

“What the hell is Lisa thinking of?” Jeffrey asked out loud as they walked away. It didn’t help that Karen was thinking the same thought herself.

“Oh, you know how kids are. Stephie probably lied to Lisa. I lied to Belle. I’ll talk to Lisa tomorrow. We’ve been here almost half an hour.

Let’s make our goodbyes.”

Karen knew she eventually would have to make her way over to Norris and congratulate her. With any luck, she and Jeffrey would have their picture taken for “W” and then they could go home. Karen moved among the beautiful crowd, Jeffrey at her side. It would have been unbearable to attend one of these functions without him. The press of the crowd was unbelievable. Was it safe, she wondered. Could the boat sink? She turned to Jeffrey. The two of them had been pushed against the rail of the boat, and the breeze from off the East River riffled his hair.

There, it seemed, they found a moment to be alone in the crowd.

“You’re a good aunt,” Jeffrey said. “You’ll be a good mother, too.”

He smiled approvingly at her and then looked uptown, toward the white necklace of lights that was the Brooklyn Bridge. For some reason, at that moment, for the first time in a long time, Karen filled with love.

She loved Jeffrey again! It was such a relief! The water below them reflected splashes of light against Jeffrey’s jaw, and the darkness shrouded the two of them as softly as a crepe de chine shawl. Karen felt, suddenly, happier than she ever had. Despite being at this silly party, despite the little scene with Tangela and Stephanie, she felt incredibly lucky, as if her own ship, despite a difficult and dangerous crossing, had safely come in to port at last. For a moment, she felt completely satisfied. Across the water, Brooklyn glittered in the night, looking more romantic than it had ever been when Karen lived there. She could hardly blame Stephanie for wanting to escape Long Island. Karen had not just crossed a river to arrive. She had crossed worlds to get here. She looked back at her husband. “I’ve already looked into some of the adoption stuff,” she said to him. “I think I found the right guy. Soon we’ll be a daddy and a mommy,” Karen added, a little self-conscious.

He smiled down at her. “Yeah, and then we’ll be busting our own kid at parties.” Darkness had fallen and, though the fairy lights that had been wound around the masts and stanchions were twinkling, it was dim on board. Just then, Anna Wintour drifted by, wearing the darkest of sunglasses. Karen didn’t think she had ever seen Anna without them.

Even in her Vogue office, Anna kept them on. How was she making it across the dark deck? Perhaps she was blind, Karen thought. Somehow, it would be a fitting irony if the queen of fashion coverage was sightless.

They had to say goodbye to Norris and collect Stephanie, but the crowd had its own ebb and flow. Susan Reliance walked by, her husband at her side. They were big money, oil money. And Susan’s family was New York social since the days of the four hundred. Karen couldn’t understand why people like her attended these soirees. Karen came because it was business, but what was a socialite’s reason for coming? When she’d broken her leg Pat Buckley had schlepped around on crutches at parties for almost a year. Why? And why had Lauren Bacall come? Surely Norris didn’t have dirt on them that forced them to show up. Maybe they just liked to stand in crowds and spill champagne on their shoes.

The boat shifted and a high-pitched murmur rose. Lucie de la Falaise lurched by, along with a woman in a Claude Montana that she should have been told wasn’t for her. And then Norris appeared, wearing another of her creations, something in silk organza that would have made a good table drape. Because it was her party, and because Karen had good manners, she took a step forward and was about to greet Norris when she saw the man behind her. It was Bill Wolper.

As always at one of her events, photographers clustered around Norris, and Bill himself was being photographed from every possible direction.

Karen hoped he didn’t have a bad side, and that his mother wouldn’t call him the next morning and ask why he looked so wrinkled. Karen stood frozen until Jeffrey noticed the direction she was staring in.

“Well, well,” he said, “no wonder we haven’t gotten that offer yet.

Maybe Bill is still shopping around. After all, if you can’t get the original Karen Kahn, you could settle for a Norris Cleveland knock-off.”

Karen felt a stab of guilt. She, not Norris, was the reason they had not received NormCo’s offer. Somehow, after years of total honesty with her husband, Karen’s new relationship with Bill had already filled her marriage with lies and omissions. Somehow, with her help, Bill had made Jeffrey look like a bit of a schmuck. Karen didn’t like it. What if Jeffrey asked about all this? What if he looked dumb in front of Bill?

Somehow, she wanted to protect him. “Shall we go say hello?” she asked.

“But let’s not mix business with pleasure.”

“No fear. This is all business,” Jeffrey complained.

The two of them moved toward Norris. Karen wondered if Norris wasn’t having a flirtation of her own with Bill Wolper. He had even deeper pockets than Norris’s Wall Street hubby.

Why should you care, Karen asked herself fiercely. But she found she did care. Could she lose this deal to Norris? Bill’s hand on Norris’s elbow didn’t bother her as much as the thought of Bill praising Norris’s talent.

Could Bill tell the difference between a Norris Cleveland and a Karen Kahn? Was Norris his fallback position if she, Karen, turned him down?

Before she could think about it, she and Jeffrey were greeting Norris.

“It’s all so wonderful,” Karen said and smiled as sincerely as she could manage.

“Really distinctive. Just what I’d expect, Norris,” Jeffrey said.

Karen almost laughed out loud. Norris’s party was as unoriginal as her fashions, and the perfume was a Gio knock-off. But if Norris knew that, it didn’t seem to bother her. She flashed them her famous skeletal smile and turned to Bill.

“Do you know Karen Kahn?” she asked.

Bill looked at Karen directly for the first time. Karen was sure there was a message in his eyes, but she couldn’t read it. Was it a challenge?

Was it a warning? “If you don’t say yes, someone else will”? Before she could decide, Bill held out his hand to Jeffrey. “I’ve met both of the Kahns,” he said.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Norris asked. “We’ve already gotten a promise for a huge promotion at Bloomingdale’s in New York. And Bernheart’s in Chicago.” Karen wondered about her use of “we.” Were Bill and Norris already in bed togetherţat least in the business sense?

Karen shrugged. “That’s just great,” she said. “I’m thrilled for you.

I wish you all the success you deserve.”

As she and Jeffrey left them to collect Stephanie, Karen felt Bill’s eyes follow her.

If Karen hadn’t had a referral source for a private detective, she certainly didn’t have that trouble in finding an adoption lawyer. In all the time she had spent sitting in fertility clinic waiting rooms, and with all the advice she’d been offered from other people’s stories, one name kept coming up. Harvey Kramer was the guy to see. So on the morning after Norris’s party, Karen brought Stephanie in to work, then closed the door of her office and called Kramer. Karen was shocked when she found out that she couldn’t get an appointment for almost three months, but then she called Robertthe-lawyer and asked him to use some juice.

His office got them an appointment for Thursday. Even in adoptions, it seemed, it was not what you knew but who you knew.

Kramer’s office was busy and messy: after Robert’s Park Avenue joint, this Riverdale house-converted-to-a-law-office seemed tacky and unprofessional. “Riverdale?” Jeffrey had asked. “Who the hell is in Riverdale?”

The answer was Harvey Kramer. Harvey Kramer and at least a dozen other couples as eager as she was to find a baby. In the somewhat gray zone of private adoption law, Harvey Kramer was it. Despite the juice from Robertthe-lawyer’s office, they were still left waiting in the living-room-cum-reception area, parked on an old Danish Modern couch for almost half an hour, while Jeffrey alternately fumed and looked through two-year-old copies of US News and the ABA Journal. (As far as Karen could tell, no one read them even when they first came out.) At last Harvey, a fat man with dark hair and five o’clock shadow at nine-thirty in the morning, ushered them into his office.

“I saw you on The Elle Halle Show.” Very nice coverage,” he said approvingly. “So, what can I do you for?” As if he didn’t know.

Jeffrey kept silent. Karen, uncomfortable, mumbled something about wanting to adopt.

“You’ve had the home study’? You registered anyplace’?” Karen shook her head. “How many lawyers you been to?”

“None,” Karen admitted.

Kramer rolled his eyes. “Virgins!” he said. He took a deep, belly-expanding breath. “Okay, let me explain the situation. Ya got two choices: state or private. But the state’s only got little black crack babies or older kids who’ve been abused so bad they’ll be wetting their beds until they’re forty. Plus, there’s something like a ten-year waiting list for white babies and none are available anyway.

And no Jewish babies. None.

Forget about it. Because in New York, Jewish girls in trouble go to clinics.

“So, that leaves private adoption, which is a tricky business. Ya gotta find a woman out-of-state who is about to give birth and willing to put her kid up for adoption. We know which are the good states, the one’s with a lot of pregnant girls and no abortion clinics. The South and Midwest are best, but some states won’t let ya advertise.

Advertising is the way you hook em. Ya know what I mean?” It wasn’t a question.

“Of course, ya gotta be careful about the bait: it’s illegal to sell babies and in some states you can’t pay for anything but medical bills.

Ya gotta be wery careful about that. Other states are more lenient, if you get my drift. Clothes, school tuition, rent. Sally, my associate, can help you with it all. We know where to run the ads and how to word em. Meanwhile, ya gotta get yourselves a separate, unlisted telephone line and a cellular phone so that ya can take their calls night or day.

This isn’t the kinda thing where they keep office hours or they’ll call back later if they get a busy signal. Ya gotta be prepared for anything.