Diamond Girl (23 page)

I know that marriage doesn’t always mean forever. I had actually
noticed that, but when it’s your first love, and when you are nineteen and twenty, and then starting to turn twenty-one, you still believe totally in marriage.

More stupidly, if you are a girl and your man is starting to pull back a little, you think that marriage will cement him right back to you, body and heart forevermore. Even now I still think that if I had pulled it together and made him just a little bit happier, Michael would have married me and I would be living the right life.

But I didn’t pull it together. I crumbled.

When he spent the night at his place, or said he did, I would call him every ten minutes. If he didn’t answer, I would text, texts where I tried to be funny or sexy but, let’s get real, fifty texts in twenty-four hours is going to make a girl look like a psycho stalker no matter what the actual words are.

I can see now that he must have really loved me after all because, if he hadn’t, he would have cut me loose right when I started acting that way. He didn’t. He still spent a couple of nights a week with me and, when at the beginning of my last New York summer, he finalized the deal on the club in the Hamptons, Endpoint, he took me with him for the grand opening weekend.

Chapter 25

Endpoint, Michael’s new club, gave new meaning to the phrase 'shabby chic'. The building was a former lobster cleaning plant and, smart boy that he was, he didn’t try to hide that. He installed fifteen funky red velvet booths, didn’t update the bathrooms, had a long bar and a raised platform for indie bands put in, and that was it.

Outside, though, he had a long Fifth Avenue awning attached and added an ironic red carpet.

I told him I thought that was a stupid idea, that it killed off the funky beach weekend feel of the place, but he said no awning and no doorman, and people might get the idea that just anyone could come and drink at Endpoint, and then no one would want to come.

He was right. Michael really is a smart boy and he knew that we needed the constant reinforcement of out self-proclaimed superiority. Not being one of us, as he had grown up well but not in the rarefied world of the über-rich, Michael was able to stand back and observe our herding practices dispassionately, observe and provide. In Endpoint’s case, that meant little chalkboards with bottle prices on them. The waiters were dressed in jeans but they were still the usual supermodel snobbish standard kind of help that we were all used to. The prices may have been on chalkboards but the fare on offer was Cristal Roederer-bottles only or, if you didn’t want to impress your table-mates - though why would you be there if you didn’t? - you could order a beer from some obscure place on the planet at fifteen dollars a bottle, or enjoy a rose petal martini for thirty.

He booked Pain of Salvation for the opening weekend, even though he didn’t rep them and, after that, it was mostly whoever was the hot D.J. of the hour. From the beginning,
jaded Manhattanites, who either had family places in the Hamptons or could afford to lease them, began showing up in droves and getting turned away just as fast. From the beginning, I hated Endpoint but I never missed a weekend out there.

Endpoint gave Michael a lot of cash and it gave him a lot of cachet. On his own he had been hot enough previously, but now he owned the club where everyone came to play and get seriously messed up.

After all, we weren’t in the city. The paparazzi were banned from coming inside Endpoint. Getting blown out there remained discreet. Only your own kind knew about it and we don’t judge each other - much.

Another clever innovation of Michael’s, that encouraged beautiful girls to get much crazier at their booths than they did at home, is that he made sure that at Endpoint there were always drugs on tap. Michael didn’t do drugs and he didn’t sell drugs, but each weekend he let in a couple of thugs who did, because when the coke was lined up on the tables,
who cared if the bar tab ran to five grand a night.

I might have been there as Michael’s girlfriend, but as any girl will tell you if she is honest, if a hot guy has a beautiful semi-famous girlfriend, then his rating for must-have hookup goes even higher and they all hit on him from the start.

Other rich girls like me, though not as rich - supermodels and wannabe supermodels, and actresses, and reality showgirls - all of them went after him and did it right in front of me. He didn’t do anything in my line of sight and he said he didn’t do anything when I couldn’t see him. He said he had to play along, it was just a front, just business, and maybe it’s true, and maybe a more secure girl would have lived through it and waited it out,  but that’s not me, so I either followed him around all night, annoying the crap out of him, or I flirted hard with other guys.

Flirting doesn’t come naturally to me but, with a line or two, I was as reckless and confident as the best of them. My first line of cocaine gave me the same power high I had once gotten from shopping. I loved everything about cocaine: the taste at the back of my throat, the way my eyes shone, the power I thought it gave my body and my head.

Of course, I have always wanted more, too much of anything that made me feel good, and coke was no exception.

At first I was fine using only the amounts people offered me and doing it on weekends when I went up to Endpoint but, you see, coke is actually a real live drug and it works on you. You start wanting that rush all the time, not just on weekends, but it will cost you and, no, I’m not talking about some bogus moral low road, I mean money. Cocaine is pricey. Coke created my first ever need for cash.

I had managed to live over two decades without ever once having needed actual folding money but you can’t charge coke, no matter which credit card you have. And while the average dealer and user thinks it’s cool to see a beautiful girl cut lines with a black Amex, you need to pony up the cash before the first cut can be made.

I had never thought about cash before. I had used it occasionally for cabs and to tip doormen and valet parkers, but I don’t think I ever had
more than twenty dollars on me at a time, and since I had been with Michael who always had cash, I hadn’t even kept that much around.

The way my financial situation worked in those days was pretty simple. My apartment was owned and maintained by one of Daddy’s trusts, and I had a daily cleaning woman whose salary was paid by the same source that paid for all my utilities and co-op costs. Food, clothing and entertainment, including travel, were covered by my credit cards and the bills went to Herbert’s office, and he paid them from some place that I never thought about.

I had a checking account at Manhattan Chemical Bank that Herbert put a couple of thousand dollars a month into for what Daddy called cash-related emergencies, and that was it. Until I started wanting to buy drugs, none of this was a problem.

First I used the cash advance feature on my Visa, but the very next day I got a call from Herbert’s office. “Carey, Visa called me this morning. An unusual charge was made on your account.”

“Really, what? Aren’t all my charges kind of unusual, Herbert?”

He didn’t laugh. “I won’t disagree with that statement, at least not with the amount of your charges, but until now at least I have always recognized the venues, even if I didn’t agree with them.”

“Okaaay, well then, why are you calling me now?”

“Did you use your Visa to authorize a fifteen thousand dollar cash advance?”

I still wasn’t nervous. Why should I have been? Herbert had been seeing charges a lot bigger than that for years.

“I did, why?” 

“That is actually my question, Carey, why?”

“Oh, I don’t
know, incidentals. Am I not allowed to have cash, Herbert?” 

“Incidentals.
I see, and what sort of incidentals cost fifteen thousand dollars?”

I started to get nervous but pretended outrage. “Gawd, Herbert, I didn’t know we were so poor that I couldn’t take out a little money without bringing the roof down. I’m sorry, and if you must know, it was for charity. There is a … a bag lady outside my building and I wanted her to have … uh, money for a hotel room for a couple weeks. I mean, what was I going to do, write her a check?”

“A hotel room, for a homeless woman?” 

“Yep, that’s right.” 

“I see, how … generous of you, Carolyn. Where do you suppose she is staying?” 

“I don’t know. Gawd, Herbert, I didn’t exactly give her lodging advice. What’s the problem?” 

“The problem is, Carolyn, that first of all I don’t believe your ridiculous story and, even if I did, the Kelleher Foundation is where all charitable donations are handled, and those do not include suites at the Four Seasons for the street people of New York. Furthermore, cash advances on credit cards have a ridiculous interest rate, and ...”

“Oh my God, Herbert, you can’t be serious.”

“I am, I assure you, I am quite serious. As a matter of fact, Carolyn, your father and I have begun discussing whether or not you should begin paying your own bills. You do have a trust and while I ...”

“Herbert, listen, I have to go, and I don’t really care about the trust, I’m fine the way I am. Daddy isn’t going to care about this and, anyway, now that I can see you’re going to get all hysterical every time I try to help someone out, I promise I won’t do it again, okay?” 

“No, it’s not okay, we need to ...”

“Okay, great talking to you, Herbert, it’s been real.”

I hung up the phone and I decided to never use my credit cards again. Unfortunately, I didn’t decide to stop buying coke. I told myself it was just for a little while, until Michael and I were good again, until I got skinny enough, until I could find something else that made me feel okay. Like I said, it’s a real drug, one almost as dangerous as believing in your own lies can be.

After that, to get the cash, I just bought and returned clothes. Store policy about credit card refunds was hardly going to be applied to me if I demanded cash instead.

Two weeks later, wired on coke, I accidentally cut Michael’s face with a broken champagne glass. Someone tipped off the gossip rags and Daddy read all about it over his morning coffee and I was hauled into a meeting with him and Herbert for a ‘Come to Jesus’ talk. It ended with Daddy giving me sole temporary control over my trust to teach me responsibility. I think almost anyone but Daddy or me could have predicted the results.

Chapter 26

“Twenty five million dollars may sound like a great deal of money,” Herbert began his recitation. I looked over at Daddy to share an eye-roll but he didn’t meet my eyes. Instead he kept his gaze fixed on the portrait of his grandfather, Kells III.

Herbert, in a never-ending effort to suck up to Daddy, kept a life-size oil portrait of my great-grandfather in his private office. People might think that he would have preferred to display a portrait of one of his own ancestors in his inner sanctum but they would be wrong. Herbert, like his father before him, was a smart lawyer who knew which side his bread was buttered on and, in addition to pleasing Daddy and the previous Kells IV, the portrait of his grandfather served as a visible reminder to newer clients with newer money, and less of it, that they were seated in the presence of a man whose firm handled the Kellehers’ money and it prodded them to realize that they were lucky to be there.

I sneaked a glance at Great-Gramp's portrait while Herbert droned on about my new responsibilities, to see if Kells IV looked like he might have sympathized with a small, semi-wild great-granddaughter being forced to listen to what amounted to a lecture on how, if I didn’t start to toe the family line, I might find myself in difficulties. But his painted eyes, though Kelleher blue like mine and Daddy's, seemed to hold no warmth for me.

Herbert sensed that I wasn’t hanging on his every word and he must have given Daddy some kind of secret squirrel men-in-power-over-a-girl look, because daddy said in the sharp tone he had started to adopt with me, “Carey, are you listening to Herbert?”

I shook myself back to the moment. It wasn’t easy. My head hurt.

I hadn’t gotten to bed until six that morning, and when my alarm had gone off at nine, I had come awake dazed and shaky. My diabetes pump had run dry in the night, and so, in addition to having to apply massive amounts of make-up and chug down a gallon-sized bottle of coke for severe hangover dehydration, I had also spent fifteen sweaty, shaky minutes hunting for an insulin syringe and performed the hated self-injection with hands that trembled so badly I had to hold one wrist to make a clean shot.

I had wanted to cancel this trust meeting but had been too afraid of Daddy’s reaction to do it. I justified the swallowing of two Vicodins as a medical necessity because of my headache so, if I seemed bored to Herbert and Daddy, they were wrong. I was just fighting the effects of no sleep, pain medication and a scare with my insulin levels, but I wasn’t so far gone that I thought sharing those little gems with them would go over well. So I straightened up in my chair, fighting vertigo and wishing I had not forgotten to brush my teeth.

I dimpled at Daddy. “I’m sorry, Daddy, Herbert. I’m not bored at all. I guess I’m ...” I shrugged in what I hoped was a show of appealing helplessness and waited for one of them to rescue me, to say that of course this meeting was a little overwhelming, but neither of them smiled or said a word.