Everyone Worth Knowing (9 page)

quite given up yet."

Will found this understatement particularly hysterical. "Silly little

thing? Bette, darling, you belong to a book club whose sole

mission is to examine and more deeply appreciate your selected

genre?" he howled.

This much was true. Until the book group, no one in my life

had understood. Not my parents, my uncle, my friends in high

school or college. Penelope merely shook her head every time she

spotted one in my apartment (which, by the way, wasn't hard, considering

I had over four hundred of them stashed in boxes, closets,

under-bed bins, and occasionally—when the cover wasn't too embarrassing—

on shelves). I knew the facts said that whole armies of

women read them, but it was only two years ago that I'd met

Courtney at a midtown Barnes & Noble. I'd just left work and was

reaching for a romance from the circular wire rack when I heard a

girl's voice behind me.

"You're not alone, you know," it said.

I'd turned around to see a pretty girl about my age with a

heart-shaped face and naturally pink lips. She looked like a china

doll with ringlets reminiscent of Nelly's from
Little House on the

Prairie,
and her other features were so delicate they looked like

they might crack at any moment.

"Excuse me? Are you talking to me?" I asked, quickly covering

my copy of
Every Woman's Fantasy
with an oversized English-

Greek dictionary that resided nearby.

She nodded and moved in closer to whisper, "I'm just saying,

you don't have to be embarrassed any longer. There are others."

"Who said I'm embarrassed?" I asked.

She peered down at my now-shielded book and raised an eyebrow.

"Look, my name's Courtney and I'm hooked on them, too.

I've got a college degree and a real job and I'm not afraid to admit

that I love these goddamn books. There's a whole group of us, you

know. We meet once or twice a month to talk about them, have a

few drinks, convince each other that it's okay to do what we do.

It's part book club and part therapy session." She rooted through

her Tod's shoulder bag and found a crumpled receipt. She uncapped

a Montblanc pen with her teeth and scrawled an address in

SoHo and an email address.

"Our next meeting is this Monday night. Come. I've included

my email address if you have any questions, but there's not much

to know. We're reading this"—she discreetly flashed a copy of

Who Wants to Marry a Heartthrob?
—"and we'd love to have you."

Perhaps it's a sign of true addiction that I actually showed up at

a stranger's apartment a week later. I soon learned that Courtney

had been right. Each of the other girls was smart and cool and interesting

in her own way, and each loved romances. Except for

one set of twin sisters, none of the women were friends or colleagues

from the outside; all had stumbled upon the group in

much the same way I had. I was surprised and somewhat delighted

to see that I was the only one who was out about my habit:

not one of the other girls had yet revealed to husbands or girlfriends

or parents the real content of their book club. In the two

years since I'd joined, only one had admitted her reading preferences

to her boyfriend. The ridicule she endured from him was

life-changing; she eventually broke up with him after realizing that

no man who truly loved her (like a hero in a romance novel, it

was implied) could ever mock her so mercilessly for something she

enjoyed. We'd seen each other through new jobs and weddings

and even one lawsuit, yet if we'd run into one another on the

street or at a party, there'd be nothing more than a curt hello and a

knowing look. After missing last week's meeting, I'd been looking

forward to tonight's session all week, and I was not about to let

Will ruin it for me.

Simon, Will, and I piled immediately into a car, but when we

pulled up to the restaurant at Eighty-eighth and Second, we were

clearly not the first to arrive.

"Brace yourselves!" Simon managed to hiss just before Elaine

waddled over.

"You're late!" she barked, pointing to the back room, where a

few people had gathered. "Go deal with your people, I'll bring you

back your drinks."

I followed them to the back room of the casual but legendary

restaurant and looked around. Books covered every square patch

of wall space and competed only with framed and autographed

photographs of what seemed like every author who'd published in

the twentieth century. The woody and familiar ambience might just

feel like a regular neighborhood joint had I not been able to recognize

the handful of people who'd already clustered around the

table set for twenty: Alan Dershowitz, Tina Brown, Tucker Carlson,

Dominick Dunne, and Barbara Walters. A waitress handed me a

premixed dirty martini and I began slurping at it immediately,

downing the last drop just as the table filled completely with an

eclectic group culled primarily from the media and politics.

Will was offering a toast for Charlie Rose, whose new book we

were all gathered to celebrate, when the only other woman under

forty leaned over and said, "How'd you get roped into this one?"

"Niece of Will, given no choice."

She laughed softly and placed her hand on my lap, which

made me very nervous until I realized she was trying to discreetly

shake my hand. "I'm Kelly. I put together this little dinner party for

your uncle, so I guess I'm sort of obligated to be here, too."

"Nice to meet you," I whispered back. "I'm Bette. I was just sitting

at their apartment earlier and somehow ended up here. It

seems like a very nice dinner, though."

"Honestly? Not really my scene, either, but I think it works for

your uncle's purpose. Good group of people, everyone who

RSVP'd actually showed—which never happens—and Elaine held

up everything on her end, as usual. All in all, I'm pretty happy with

the outcome. Now if we can just keep them all from getting too

drunk, I'll say the evening was perfection."

The group quickly polished off the first round of cocktails and

was now tucking in to the salads that had appeared before them.

"When you say you 'put this on,' what does that mean, exactly?" I

asked more out of an effort to just say something rather than any

genuine interest, but Kelly didn't seem to notice.

"I own a PR company," she said, sipping a glass of white wine.

"We represent all sorts of clients—restaurants, hotels, boutiques,

record labels, movie studios, individual celebrities—and we do

what we can to increase their profile through media placements,

product launches, stuff like that."

"And tonight? Who do you represent here? Will? I didn't know

he had a PR person."

"No, tonight I was hired by Charlie's publisher to put together a

dinner of media elites, those journalists who are recognizable in

their own right. The publisher has internal PR people, of course,

but they don't always have the connections to put on something

this specialized. That's where I come in."

"Got it. So how do you know all these people?"

She just laughed. "I have an office full of people whose job it is

to know
everyone
worth knowing. Thirty-five thousand names, actually,

and we can get in touch with any one of them at any time.

It's what we do. Speaking of which, what do you do?"

Thankfully, before I could piece together some appropriate

white lie, Elaine discreetly beckoned for Kelly from the doorway,

and she scooted out of her chair and strolled to the front room. I

turned my attention to Simon, who was seated on my left, before

noticing that a photographer was subtly snapping photos without a

flash from a crouching position in the corner.

I remembered the first media dinner Will had dragged me to,

when I was fourteen and visiting from Poughkeepsie. We'd been

at Elaine's that night, too, also for a book party, and I'd asked

Simon, "Is it weird that there's someone taking pictures of us eating

dinner?"

He'd chuckled. "Of course not, dear, that's precisely why we're

all here. If there's no photo in the party pages, did the party really

happen? You can't
pay
to get the kind of press he and his book

will receive from tonight. That photographer is from
New York

magazine, if I remember correctly, and as soon as he leaves, another

one will slip right in. At least, everyone hopes so."

Will had begun teaching me that night how to talk to people.

The key was to remember that no one cares what you do or think,

so sit down and immediately begin asking questions to the person

on your right. Ask anything, feign some sort of interest, and follow

up any awkward silences with more questions about them. After

years of instruction and practice I could manage a conversation

with just about anyone, but I didn't enjoy it that night any more

than I had as a teenager, so I said my good-byes and ducked out

after the salad course.

The book club meeting was at Alex's apartment in the East Village.

I jumped on the 6 train and scrolled through my iPod playlist

until settling on "In My Dreams" by REO Speedwagon. When I got

off the train at Astor Place a very petite woman who resembled a

school librarian literally body-checked me. I apologized for my role

in the incident (being there) with a sincere "Excuse me," at which

point she whipped around with the most contorted, demon-like

face and screamed, "EXCUSE ME? MAYBE THAT WOULDN'T HAVE

HAPPENED IF YOU WALKED ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE SIDEWALK!"

and then walked away muttering profanities. Obviously

she could use a few hours with
The Very Bad Boy,
I thought.

When I had walked the long six avenues east, I rang the bell at

Alex's building on Avenue C and began the dreadful climb. She

claimed her studio was a sixth-floor walk-up, but considering a

Chinese laundry occupied the ground floor and the numbers didn't

begin for one full flight up, it was technically seven floors off the

ground. She was your stereotypical East Village artiste, with headto-

toe black clothes, ever-changing hair color, and a small facial

piercing that appeared to rotate regularly from lip to nose to brow.

An East Village artiste with a passionate dedication to romantic

fiction for women. She obviously had the most to lose if any of

her peers found out—a sort of artistic street cred, if you will—

and so we all agreed to tell her neighbors, if asked, that we were

there for a Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting. "You're more comfortable

telling them you're a sex addict than a romance reader?" I'd

asked when she'd given us the instructions. "Clearly!" she'd answered

without a moment's hesitation. "Addiction is cool. All creative

people are addicted to something." And so we did as she

wished.

She looked more punk than usual in a pair of rocker-chic