Dating Big Bird (22 page)

“Chisel open that discretionary promotional budget of yours,” she said. “Or get Simon to chisel open his petty cash budget—Karen makes him spend about twenty-five thousand dollars a day on bottled water, so she’d probably never even miss it anyway.”

She told me we’d see the necklace in about two weeks, have a few days to make changes, and then the designer would need another week to finalize it.

“So unless she dies or something horrible happens to her between now and then, you’ll have your stupid necklace by April twenty-fifth.”

Which would, according to Simon’s hyperprecise calculations, leave only five days to wrap it.

An aerial view of the elaborate automative choreography necessary to transport two hundred Very Important Women out of New York City to the south fork of Long Island on a Sunday morning in May would make Operation Desert Storm look like a walk in the park.

On the day of Karen’s shower, black hired sedans, limousines, and chauffeured cars with tinted windows would begin making their scheduled pickups at ten
A.M
. at various exclusive and often highly guarded addresses around town—mostly on Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, Park Avenue, Central Park West, and Central Park South; a few in SoHo and one or two in TriBeCa—their minibars and backseats stocked with the prerequested necessities of bottled water, diet soda, fruit, and newspapers and magazines, not to mention special lower-lumbar back pillows and the occasional blanket. Fanning out in formation around the city toward the Triborough Bridge and beyond, their cranky and demanding celebrity cargo would be complaining constantly in the backseats about the lack of air or too much of
it, since any true New Yorker is loath ever to leave the city, unless it’s to go to the Hamptons, and then, well, they still hate to make the trip.

Even Karen, the guest of honor, who by now was eight and a half months pregnant and uncomfortably big, was dreading it. Not only could she have used that Sunday afternoon in the office (she was still making up for the days she’d taken off following Marissa’s illness), but she also hated surprises. She knew that there was a gift coming to her from the staff, but she still didn’t know what it was—and that was driving her crazy.

“Hi. It’s me. Did I wake you?”

Karen.

I looked at the clock:
seven-thirty
.

I’d actually been up since five-thirty, trying to figure out how to tie the Lipps-red organza ribbon around the
mammo
necklace box the way professional gift wrappers did, until I gave up and called Simon at six. He’d walked me through the cutting and threading and tying over the phone like an emergency quadruple bypass.

“Listen,” said Karen, without the pretense of waiting for my reply or apologizing for calling so early. She and I had known each other long enough to be beyond such formalities. “What’s the gift you’re all giving me? I know you’re in charge of it.”

“It’s a surprise.”

“I hate surprises, you know that. I tried to get it out of Simon all week, but I couldn’t crack him.”

An image of Simon held captive by Karen in one of her white upholstered office chairs for hours and hours and refusing to talk flashed into my mind.

“Well, you know how good he is at keeping secrets.” Especially when he doesn’t even know the secret.

“Bullshit. He’s the biggest gossip in the business. How do
you think the columns know where I’m eating and what I’m eating every minute of every day?”

So Simon was the leak!

“Anyway, what is it?” I could hear the impatience growing in her voice. “Ellen, listen. I just want to know what the gift is before I open it. You may not know this about me, but sometimes I have trouble hiding my feelings if I don’t like something.”

“I understand. Really, I do. But I just don’t feel right about telling. I mean, I haven’t told anyone—including Simon—what it is.” Only Renee had seen it, late on Friday afternoon when the finished necklace came back finally from the designer. “It would ruin everything for Simon—not to mention the rest of the staff—if I were to spoil the surprise.”

“But why is it such a secret?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Then give me a hint. Was Arthur in on it?”

“No.”

“Gail?”

“No.”

“Is it something for the nursery? Furniture or bedding or another one of those goddamned black-and-white visually contrasting mobiles to hang over the crib? Or is it something to wear?”

“Kind of.”

“Ellen, please.” She was getting exasperated, and I knew I didn’t have much room left to play around with. “What do you mean, ‘kind of’?”

“Okay. It’s something to wear.”

“Clothes?”

I stopped myself from saying
kind of
again and responded with a definitive lie:

“Yes. It’s clothes. Baby clothes.”

“Finally. Now listen, when are you leaving for the country?”

The country. Only in Manhattan were the Hamptons considered the country.

“Around nine. I’m picking Renee up first. We’re going out there early to help with whatever last-minute things need to be done.”

“Gail doesn’t need any help. She’s had most of Martha’s people up there since yesterday. I’ll call her and tell her you’re not coming early and that we’ll be there at noon. My car is coming to get me at nine-thirty. Tell Renee to be at your building at nine-forty-five, and I’ll pick the two of you up so we can all go together.”

I was still running around my apartment like a maniac when the doorman called to tell me that Renee had arrived. I went downstairs to the lobby, only to turn around once I’d gotten there when I realized I’d forgotten the gift.

Clearly annoyed that she had to be doing anything on a Sunday that involved work and annoyed that we were dressed almost identically in our spring-weight black KLNY capri pants and cardigan twin sets, Renee told me I should go up and change.

“I’m not changing,” I said.

“Why not? We look like we both work at Bendel’s.” Her voice was heavy with disdain. Renee hated Bendel’s because she thought their stores and their merchandise were too aggressively cute and because they didn’t sell men’s clothes. The fact that Karen had once designed for them had always been a sore spot for her.

“Because there’s no time. And besides, what would I change into? Everything I own is a variation of this.” I grabbed at my sweater and pulled on it with frustration. “It’s
not like I’m going to go up there, and something pink or green is suddenly going to materialize. The best I’ll do is find something that’s a different shade of black.”

She rummaged through her bag for a cigarette, then swore under her breath when she realized she was out. “Fine. We look like asswipes. I’m going over to the newsstand to get a pack of cigarettes.” She walked off in a huff and returned two minutes later in mid-smoke. When Karen’s driver pulled up in front of my building, Renee put her sunglasses on and pushed me away from the door to the front seat.

“You’re sitting in back with her,” she ordered.

Two and a half hours and about a thousand dollars’ worth of cell phone calls each later, we reached our destination—East Hampton—and Gail’s expansive white Victorian house, which looked as if it had been transformed over the last twenty-four hours into something out of, well, out of a Martha Stewart book.

We pulled into the long gravel driveway, and as the tires crunched along slowly, the three of us sat in silence behind our tinted windows and our sunglasses and took in the scene. Industry people we knew from other design houses and from magazines and retailers were there, as were celebrities and their car-and-driver-entourages. Waiters were already trickling out of the house and onto the lawn with small round trays of sweating champagne flutes.

“I have
got
to pee,” Karen said, squirming beside me. But she kept her eyes on the Who’s Who of Women milling around on the lawn, as did I: Barbara Walters, Nora Ephron, Lynda Obst, Cindy Crawford, Carly Simon, Katie Couric, Anna Wintour, Donna Karan, Vera Wang, Esther Dyson, Tina Brown, Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder, Gwyneth Paltrow, Liz
Smith, Brooke Astor, Jane Pauley, Anna Deavere Smith, Maria Shriver, Binky Urban, Esther Newburg, Kathy Robbins, Lynn Nesbit, Helen Gurley Brown, Gail Sheehy, Katharine Graham, Joni Evans, Erica Jong, Donna Shalala, Rosie O’Donnell, and Susan Sarandon—to name only thirty-one.

And the car hadn’t even come to a complete stop yet.

And I wasn’t even counting Arlene Schiffler.

Karen’s driver pulled around the semicircular driveway in front of the house and stopped just short of the stone steps that led up to the wraparound porch. The three of us stepped out into the bright sunshine, and as Karen took the lead, Renee and I flanked her on either side, the way Secret Service agents flank the President in the protective V formation. A look of gratitude appeared in Karen’s eyes the instant before she turned and headed into the eye of the storm.

In less time than it takes for atoms to collide and release their energy, an epic and gruesome display of air-kissing and ass-kissing erupted as Karen made her way to the house. Even after almost eight years in the business, I still hadn’t gotten used to such blatant hypocrisy: everybody there hated at least one other person there (if not ten other people). More than a few of Karen’s enemies had even been invited, and not only had they shown up, but they’d come bearing hugs and kisses and extravagantly wrapped gifts.

Renee and I immediately extricated ourselves from the crush of bodies and flesh and clashing fragrances and headed up to the porch as quickly as we could, Renee in search of the stiffest drink she could find (“Champagne?
Please
. I need a vodka”), and me, of course, in search of Simon.

There were flowers everywhere, lining the path to the house, dripping down over the doors in garlands and exploding out of window boxes. The front door was open, and through it I could see more flowers—a big huge
arrangement in the center of the foyer, for starters. Gail was in the doorway, a one-woman receiving line, busily greeting guests—or actually, introducing herself to guests, since she didn’t know most of them. When I kissed her hello, she somehow had the presence of mind, despite the chaos and excitement going on around her, to point to Karen’s ass and then whisper in my ear that it was, of course, hidden up against one of the pillars on the veranda.

“Why should today be any different from every other day?” she said, before introducing herself to Cindy Adams.

When I finally found Simon, he was sitting on the stuffed arm of a thickly padded club chair in the living room and chatting away with Arlene Schiffler. Most of the guests were still out on the lawn, and a few suburban friends of Gail’s, who clearly looked as if they felt out of place, made quiet small talk along the edges of the room. As I approached, he smiled beatifically.

“Here she is,” he announced as he stood and bowed. “The gift goddess.” He took my hand and brought it to his mouth, but I retracted it quickly. “The gift she’s selected is apparently
so
fabulous, she wouldn’t even tell
me
what it is—even though everybody
knows
I guard the Queen’s secrets as if they were my own.”

I smiled to myself when I saw Simon’s eyes zeroing in on Karen like a heat-seeking missile. I followed his line of vision to find her standing by the staircase, waving away a tray of hors d’oeuvres being passed in front of her. Instinctively, his hand moved to caress the faint outline of a cell phone tucked away in his breast pocket, only a speed-dial away from calling in his observations to whichever columnist he’d predetermined would be waiting on the other end.

“I feel as if this shower were somehow meant for me, too,” Arlene said, “as I’m due in twelve weeks.” I hadn’t seen her in the flesh for at least two years—and certainly not
since her column began—something I was grateful for—and I tried to hide my displeasure at having to see her at all. Even six months pregnant she looked stunning—tall, fit, implausibly unbloated, not a butterscotch-colored hair out of place. I wanted to hit her. But instead I pointed at her protruding stomach beneath her blazer and decided to torture her.

“God, you’re
huge
!”

“No, I’m not!”

“Yes! You are!” I turned to Simon, who was still focused on Karen. “Isn’t she just
huge
?”

“I’ll say,” he said.

“I’ve only gained seventeen pounds.”

“Seventeen pounds! Wow! Isn’t it weird how you can gain so much weight when the fetus is still only, like, two pounds?”

“My doctor says seventeen pounds is unbelievably low.”

“Well, of course he’d say that. He’s not the one carrying them around. Besides, he probably didn’t want you to worry.”

“Worry about what?”

“About never taking the weight off.”

“I’m not worried,” she said.

Liar
.

“Good.”

“I mean, I know this sounds incredibly narcissistic, but the minute I deliver, I’m going off to a spa. I think it’s crucial for women to reclaim their bodies as quickly after giving birth as possible.”

I nodded, having read all about it in her column, “Month Four.”