One Fifth Avenue (38 page)

Candace Bushnell

thing—dance—and having become a professional dancer at eighteen, she’d never finished high school. Connie wasn’t dumb, but she knew everything by rote. When it came to analysis, she was lost, like a child who has mem-orized the names of the states but can’t picture where they are in relation to one another.

Having the stronger personality, Annalisa had quickly come to dominate Connie, who seemed to accept Annalisa’s alpha status as a given. She made sure Annalisa was invited to lunches and the nightly cocktail parties in boutiques; she gave her the names of the people who would come to her house to cut and style her hair and perform waxing, manicures, and pedicures—“so you don’t have to be seen in public with that tissue between your toes,” Connie said—and even highlighting. Connie was obsessed with her own image and assumed Annalisa was as well, printing out photographs of Annalisa from the society websites she checked every morning. “There was a great picture of you in
Women’s Wear Daily
today,” Connie would crow with childish excitement. Or “I saw the best pictures of us from the perfume launch last night.” Then she would dutifully ask if Annalisa wanted her to messenger the prints to her apartment. “It’s okay, Connie, I can look them up myself,” Annalisa would say. Nevertheless, two hours later, the doorman would buzz and an envelope would be delivered upstairs. Annalisa would look at the photos and put them in a drawer. “Do you really care about these things?” she’d asked Connie one day.

“Of course,” Connie had said. “Don’t you?”

“Not really,” Annalisa said. Connie looked hurt, and Annalisa felt bad, having inadvertently dismissed one of Connie’s great pleasures in life. And Connie took such pride in the fact that Annalisa was
her
friend, boasting to the other women about how Annalisa had written a scholarly book in college and appeared on
Charlie Rose
, how Annalisa had met the president, and how she had
worked
in
Washington
. In turn, Annalisa had become protective of Connie’s feelings. Connie was such a tiny thing, reminding Annalisa of a fairy with her small bones and graceful hands. She loved everything sparkly and pretty and pink and was always nipping into Harry Winston or Lalaounis. Displaying her recent jewelry acquisitions, she would insist that Annalisa try on a yellow diamond ring or a necklace of colored sapphires, pressing Annalisa to borrow the piece.

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“No,” Annalisa always said firmly, handing the jewelry back. “I’m not going to walk around wearing a ring worth half a million dollars. What if something happened?”

“But it’s
insured
,” Connie would say, as if insurance mitigated one from all responsibility.

Now, sitting in her dining room in her grand penthouse apartment, stuffing envelopes with Connie and the other women on the committee, Annalisa glanced around and realized they were like children working on a craft project. She placed another stamp on another envelope as the women chitchatted about the things women always talked about—

their children and their husbands, their homes, clothes, hair, a piece of gossip from the night before—the only difference being the scale of their lives. One woman was debating sending her daughter to boarding school in Switzerland; another was building a house on a private island in the Caribbean and was urging the other women to do the same “so they could all be together.” Then one of the women brought up the story in the latest
W
that had dominated the conversation of this clique for the past three weeks. The story had been a roundup of possible socialites who might take the place of the legendary Mrs. Houghton, and Annalisa had been named third in the running. The story was complimentary, describing Annalisa as the “flame-haired beauty from Washington who had taken New York by storm,” but Annalisa found it embarrassing.

Every time she went out, someone mentioned it, and the story had increased her visibility so that when she appeared at an event, the photographers shouted her name, insisting that she stop and pose and turn.

It was harmless, but it freaked Paul out.

“Why are they taking your picture?” he’d demanded, angrily taking her hand at the end of a short red carpet behind which sat posters with the logos of a fashion magazine and an electronics company.

“I don’t know, Paul,” she’d said. Was it possible Paul was this naive about the world of which he’d insisted they become a part? Billy Litchfield often said these parties were for the women—the dressing up, the showing off of jewelry—so perhaps Paul, being a man, simply didn’t understand. He had always been terrible at anything social, having nearly no ability to read people or make small talk. He became stiff and angry when he was in a situation he didn’t understand, and would thrust his 264

Candace Bushnell

tongue into his cheek, as if to forcibly prevent himself from speaking.

That evening, seeing his cheek bulge, Annalisa had wondered how to explain the rules of this particular society. “It’s like a birthday party, Paul.

Where people take photographs. So they can remember the moment.”

“I don’t like it,” Paul said. “I don’t want pictures of me floating around on the Internet. I don’t want people to know what I look like or where I am.”

Annalisa laughed. “That’s so paranoid, Paul. Everyone has their picture taken. Even Sandy’s photograph is everywhere.”

“I’m not Sandy.”

“Then you shouldn’t go out,” she said.

“I’m not sure you should, either.”

His remark had infuriated her. “Maybe we should move back to Washington, then,” she’d said sharply.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She shook her head, frustrated but knowing it was useless to fight with him, which she’d discovered early on in their marriage. When they disagreed, Paul picked apart the exact words she’d used, managing to divert attention away from the topic so it could never be resolved and they could never agree. Paul wouldn’t give in on principle. “Nothing,” she said.

She did stay home three nights in a row, but Paul wouldn’t make any adjustments to his schedule, so she was alone in the big apartment, wandering from room to room until Paul came home at ten o’clock, ate a peanut-butter sandwich that the housekeeper, Maria, prepared, and went upstairs to work. Billy Litchfield was still at his mother’s house, and Annalisa felt the sharp emptiness of being alone in a big city where everyone else seemed to have something important to do. On the fourth night, she gave up and went out with Connie, and the photographers took more pictures, and Annalisa put the prints in her drawer and didn’t tell Paul.

Now one of the women, obsessed with the story in
W,
turned to Annalisa and casually said, “How did you get on that list? And only having been in New York for six months.”

“I don’t know,” Annalisa said.

“Because she
is
going to be the next Mrs. Houghton,” Connie said proudly. “Billy Litchfield says so. Annalisa would make a much better Mrs. Houghton than I would.”

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“I certainly would not,” Annalisa said.

“Did Billy put you up for it?” asked one of the women.

“I love Billy, but he can be pushy,” said another.

“I don’t know why anyone cares,” Annalisa said, pressing another stamp onto another envelope. She still had a pile of at least a hundred in front of her. “Mrs. Houghton is dead. Let her rest in peace.”

The other women twittered at the outrageousness of this remark. “No, really,” Annalisa said, getting up to ask Maria to bring in lunch. “I don’t understand why it’s a goal.”

“It’s only because you don’t want it,” one of the women replied. “It’s always the people who don’t want things who get them.”

“That’s right,” Connie agreed. “I wouldn’t give Sandy the time of day when I met him, and we ended up getting married.”

“Maria,” Annalisa said, pushing through the swing door into the kitchen. “Could you serve the Waldorf chicken salad and the cheese biscuits, please?” She returned to the table and began to attack the pile of envelopes again.

“Did you get the parking space yet?” Connie asked idly.

“No,” Annalisa said.

“You have to be adamant with the people in your co-op,” said one of the women. “You can’t let them walk all over you. Did you make it clear you’d pay extra money?”

“It’s not that kind of building.” Annalisa felt the beginnings of a headache. The parking space, like the air conditioners, had been yet another disaster. Paul had gone to the resident who had won the lottery for the parking space, a quiet man who was a heart surgeon at Columbia, and asked if he could buy it from him. The doctor had complained to Mindy, and Mindy had sent Paul a note asking him not to bribe the other residents.

When Paul saw the note, he turned white. “Where did she get this?” he demanded, indicating the paper on which the note was written. It was a sheet from a notepad from the Four Seasons hotel in Bangkok. “She was in our apartment,” Paul said, his voice rising. “That’s where she got the paper. From my desk.”

“Paul, don’t be crazy.”

“Then where did she get this?” Paul demanded.

“I don’t know,” Annalisa said, remembering how she’d given Sam the 266

Candace Bushnell

keys over Christmas. So Sam, who had returned the keys, had given them to his mother after all. But she couldn’t tell Paul that, so she insisted the paper had to be a coincidence. It was another thing she’d had to lie to Paul about, and it made her feel horribly guilty, as if she’d committed a crime. Paul had the locks changed, but it only increased his hatred of Mindy Gooch and made him vow to get “that woman” out of the building one way or another.

Maria brought in the lunch and set it out on the table with silver cut-lery from Asprey and the Tiffany china, which Billy said was still the best.

“Cheese biscuits,” one of the women exclaimed, looking doubtfully at the golden biscuits piled up on the crystal platter. “Annalisa, you shouldn’t have,” she scolded. “I swear to God, you’re trying to make us all fat.”

14

A s if he weren’t neurotic enough to begin with, in the weeks leading up to the publication of his book, James became more so. He hated himself for it, having always disdained writers who checked their Amazon and Barnes & Noble ratings every half hour and scoured the Internet for reviews and mentions. His obsession left him harrowed, as if he were an insane person who believed he was being pursued by imaginary wraiths. And then there was Lola. In his occasional moments of sanity, James concluded that she was some kind of master lure, a shiny bright irresistible thing lined with hooks on both sides. On the surface of things, their relationship was still well within the concept of perfectly innocent, for nothing had happened other than the exchange of text messages and a few impromptu visits to his apartment. About twice a week, she would show up at his place unexpectedly, languishing on the folding chair in his office like a sleek black panther. She would have easily caught him under any circumstances, but in this case, the snare was made doubly secure by the fact that she had immediately read his book and wanted to discuss it while at the same time seeking his advice about Philip.

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Should she marry Philip? Of course she loved him, but she didn’t want him to marry her under the wrong circumstances—those being that he felt obligated. On this question, James was as torn as Solomon.

He wanted Lola for himself, but he wanted her in the building more, no matter what the circumstances. As he couldn’t kick out his own wife and install Lola, having her upstairs was better than nothing. And so he lied, finding himself in the unexpected position of giving relationship advice to a twenty-two-year-old girl.

“I believe it’s generally understood that one is supposed to give these things a try,” James said, floundering like a fish. “They say you can always get divorced.”

“I could never do that,” she said. “It’s against my religion.”

Which religion was that? James wondered. “But since you say you love Philip . . .”

“I say I
think
I do,” she corrected him. “But I’m only twenty-two. How am I supposed to know? For sure?”

“You can never know for sure,” James said, thinking of Mindy. “A marriage is something that goes on and on unless one person really puts an end to it.”

“You’re so lucky.” She sighed. “You’ve made your decision. And you’re a genius. When your book comes out, you’ll make millions of dollars.”

The secret visits continued for several weeks, and then the Wednesday came when James’s publisher was to receive his early review from
The New York Times Book Review
. Lola came by the apartment bearing a gift—a stuffed teddy bear “for good luck,” she said—but James was too nervous to acknowledge the gift and absentmindedly shoved it in the back of the overcrowded coat closet.

Everything was riding on his review in the
Times
. As an author whose previous book had sold seventy-five hundred copies, he would need exorbitant praise to smash through the glass ceiling of previous book sales.

He pictured this smashing as akin to smashing through the roof of Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory in the great glass elevator, and he wondered what was happening to his brain.

“You must be so excited,” Lola said, following him to his office. “You’re going to get a great review. I just know it.”

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James didn’t just know it, but poor Lola was too young to understand that usually, things did not work out as one hoped. His mouth was dry with nerves. All morning, his mood had veered between elation and despair. He was now on the downward cycle of this emotional roller coaster. “Everyone always wants to think he’s a winner,” he said thickly. “Everyone thinks if they only behave the way people do in the movies, or on
Oprah
, or in those so-called inspiring memoirs, and never give up, that they’ll triumph in the end. But it isn’t true.”

“Why shouldn’t it be true?” Lola said with irritating confidence.

“The only guarantee of success is hard work,” James said. “Statistically speaking, that is. But even then, it’s not a sure bet. The truth is, there are no sure bets.”