Fashionably Late (7 page)

“Look what she found!” Belle caroled, referring to herself and the bag.

Karen tapped the photos, safely tucked in her pocket. “Look what she found!” Belle repeated, and Karen nodded, wondering what she, herself had found.

The Lincoln Town Car pulled up to her West End Avenue apartment. Karen had called ahead from her mother’s to have the car meet her at the L.l.R.R. station. She jumped out before the driver could run around and open the door for her. It was funny: Jeffrey insisted on a limo and never would open the door himself but Karen was equally insistent on the service sending nothing more than a black sedan. And she never let the drivers help her out. Arnold’s influence? Maybe that was the difference between growing up with inherited wealth and growing up middle class: inherited wealth didn’t mind letting other people do the work for them.

Karen knew her biggest problem was what an expensive business consultant had called “her failure to delegate.” But she just couldn’t help it. She did the job better or faster or both if she did it herself, and at least that way she was certain it would get done. So why the hell should she be imprisoned in the goddamn Lincoln while Joey or Tim or Mohammad ran around to her door?

She stepped under the British racing green canopy of the co-op that she and Jeffrey lived in and, as always, got to the door before George the doorman opened it. Maybe, she reflected, it wasn’t her failure to delegate but it was other people’s incompetence that created her problems.

“Good evening, Mrs. Kahn!” George called out cheerfully, turning from the magazine she knew he had secreted in the credenza drawer, though he was strictly forbidden to read while on lobby duty.

The West Side had gentrified over the last decade, but plenty of homeless and the occasional junkie still wandered the streets. In New York City the doormen were required to be vigilant. She should report him for the clandestine magazine but she wouldn’t. “Hello, George,” Karen sighed and hit the elevator button just before he scuttled across the black and white marble tiled floor to it. She put her hand in her raincoat pocket and felt the crackle of the two old photos that were nestled there. They comforted her, a sort of psychological hand-warmer. The elevator door drew open and she stepped into the mahogany box while George pressed the seventh floor button for her with his white-gloved finger. “Thank you, George,” she sighed and, mercifully, the elevator door rolled shut.

Karen had lived in the building since she and Jeffrey were first married. It was a huge step up from the Amsterdam Avenue walk-up she’d rented before. The down payment on the co-op had been the wedding gift of Jeffrey’s parents, who had disapproved of Karen, the apartment, the neighborhood, andţmost of allţthe West Side address. “What’s so wrong with Fifth Avenue?” Jeffrey’s mother, Sylvia, had asked. “Or Park?

We saw a lovely little three-bedroom that was reasonable. And you’ll need the space once you start a family.” But Karen had insisted on this West End Avenue apartment and Jeffrey had supported her. But then, Jeffrey had always liked the role of iconoclast.

It was more of a loft or atelier than a regular apartment, and Karen had loved it for its inconveniences as much as for its spectacular space. Who needed an eat-in kitchen? She never cooked. She had hundreds, maybe thousands, of books in the apartment but not a single cookbook.

Instead, she had a loose-leaf binder with a take-out menu from every restaurant in New York City that delivered. They were arranged by countryţThai, Chinese, Mexican,
etc.
The apartment’s tiny kitchen was just fine. A phone was the only kitchen appliance she needed.

She adored the place the first moment she’d seen it and still did.

Sort of like her feelings for Jeffrey. Karen might be accused of making snap judgments, but no one could say she wasn’t loyal. Now that they could afford something much more expensive, she regularly fought with Jeffrey, insisting on staying here. It was her haven.

She stepped out of the elevator into the tiny private foyer they shared only with old Mrs. Katz in the north-facing apartment. Karen put her key in the lock of 7S and opened the door. Before her was a thirty-foot expanse of parquet floor and a row of seven windows, each one tall enough to be a door. In fact, two of them in the center were French doors that, when opened, let out to a tiny Juliet balcony that looked down onto the tops of the ginko trees seven floors below. The doors were shuttered on the outside. She’d had them painted Charleston greenţeight parts black and one part green, simultaneously chic and practical in dirty New York City. Window boxes of trailing white geraniums and ivy gave the place a park-like touch. On bright days sunlight poured through the windows and across the floor in a wonderful chiaroscuro.

The room was also graced with a soaring ceiling and served as both a living room and library. The north wall behind her was lined, floor to ceiling, with glass-fronted bookcases that were filled almost to overflowing. Two paintingsţan early one of Jeffrey’s and one by their friend Perry Silvermanţhung on the white walls. Karen adored the Silverman for its wonderful depth of color. Other than that, the furnishings were spare indeed. There was a Donghia sofa that Karen’s colleague Angelo had done for her back in the days when they were both young, struggling designers, before there were things like AIDS and infertility to worry about. The sofa was upholstered in a simple white linen but had a sinuous curve across its back that was almost female.

Along the right-hand wall there was a twelve-foot-long refectory table that she and Jeffrey had bought in France. Its top was made from three ancient, wide cherry boards that had been polished for two hundred years by French nuns who knew all that beeswax and elbow grease could accomplish. The lines of the table were simple yet elegant in the way that only the French achieved. The table was surrounded by a dozen white upholstered Parsons chairs. It was a bitch to keep the linen white on a New York dining room chair, but after every dinner party Karen did an inspection with club soda and Ivory Liquid in hand. And the trouble was worth it, because the crispness of the white cloth against the patina of the tabletop was magical.

The only other piece in the room was an incredibly ornate demilune console table situated against the left wall. Karen had fought for days with Jeffrey until he finally allowed her to buy it at the Christie’s East auction. He had called it “campy” and “nellie” and “overdone.”

Everything but what he actually meant, which was “too Jewish.” Jeffrey and his parents had what Karen thought of as Ralph Lauren Syndrome: the unbearable longing to be understated gentiles. In her opinion, it was a problem all too common among wealthy New York Jews.

It was the first time in their then-new marriage that they had had a big disagreement and it was the first time Jeffrey had fixed it by coming up with a Real Deal. From then on, whenever they made major compromises they always called them Real Deals. It was a serious kind of game they played throughout their marriage, a kind of formalized tit-for-tat. She could have this if he could have that. Jeffrey had given up his painting to manage her business but she had to give him free financial reign. She had agreed to build the Westport house if he allowed her to keep their apartment. The demilune table was the first one of their compromises and in return for buying it she had to let him hang his friend Perry’s painting, even though she didn’t like it.

She’d gone to the auction without him, but once she got the crazy gilded thing into the apartment and put an enormous vase filled with white cala lilies and blue delphinium spikes in place, he had admitted that it was just the outre touch needed. And Karen smiled every time she looked at the grinning carved dolphins that supported the base of the zany piece. After a while she also found herself smiling at Perry’s painting. She’d come to love it. In fact, though it made her feel guilty, she now liked it more than Jeffrey’s painting, which she had tired of in time.

Off the apartment’s living room there were two hallways: one led to the tiny windowless kitchen that had caused her mother-in-law such grief.

The other led to an enfilade of doors, where the three bedrooms and a tiny maid’s room were located. Karen used the maid’s room as her at-home studio and simply kept the door closed on the chaos of fabrics, sketches, and trims that always littered the place. But both their bedroom and one of the guest rooms, which they used as a sitting room, were always immaculate. Her husband was very neat. Sometimes she thought she had married her mother. But didn’t everybody?

“Jeffrey?” she called and he shouted out from down the hall. She took off her raincoat, her mushroom-colored cashmere jacket and shawl, and threw them on one of the dining room chairs. Then she threw herself onto the plump, downfilled cushions of the sofa, kicking off her suede wedgies before she put her feet up.

“You’re home early,” Jeffrey said from the doorway. “I just got in from work.” He paused and looked at her. “Dinner go poorly? Lisa already called and said she wanted to talk to you. Didn’t you talk over dinner?”

He crossed the room and picked up her coat. Wordlessly he walked to the closet hidden behind the bookshelves and hung the jacket up. She felt the reproach. Never marry a man more fastidious than you are, she would advise a daughter, if she ever had one. Karen sighed.

“I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said. “Belle drives me crazy.”

“Belle drives everybody crazy. It goes without saying.”

She nodded. “How was work?” she asked him. Jeffrey had spent the morning taping his portion of Elle Halle’s television programţthey were both doing the interviewţand the rest of the day away from his office, meeting with the NormCo people. The NormCo situation was one she’d rather not think about.

“Fine. Progress on all fronts.”

“Did you say nice things about me to the television guys?”

“Well, I told them you were lousy in bed but a great cook.”

“Two lies!” she cried and tried to take a swipe at him. She wondered what he had said to the TV cameras but knew she wouldn’t get it out of him. He was a tease.

“How did the work on the Elliot fitting go?”

“That was lousy too.” But not as lousy as going to the doctor, she thought. She didn’t mention Goldman now. “Elise wasn’t happy.

Nothing is coming together for the collection. And Tangela was impossible.”

“I don’t know why you don’t fire her.”

“Well, for one thing, she’s Defina’s daughter. For another, when she’s good, she’s great. And she’s no worse than any other fitting model.

Anyway, we’d been at it for six hours.”

“No, you d been at it for six hours. She was just standing there.”

Karen sighed again. She supposed it was better to have a husband who hated the admittedly difficult and temperamental models than one who fucked them. But it was always tiresome to listen to his complaints, and she was already bone weary. Plus, they had the rest of the evening ahead of them and this was the only real opportunity she would get to talk to him until next week, what with the presentation to NormCo, the final preparations for the Elliot wedding, and the three charity events they were scheduled to attend in the evenings. The two of them had become a very social couple lately.

“What did Ernest leave you for dinner?”

“What does she always leave? Chicken. Steamed vegetables. Salad.

Diet fucking Jell-O with razor-thin sliced strawberries in it. Total calorie count of sixty-three and a half.”

“You want to order out?”

“Nh. Too much trouble. I’ll just eat it and bitch,” he smiled at her.

“You want to eat again? I know how those meals of Belle’s can be.” He really had the most devastating smile. No matter what bratty behavior he was up to, he could almost always charm her out of her rancor with that adorable grin.

Marrying your idol is a great coup for a woman, but it leaves you always at a disadvantage. Karen had adored Jeffrey from the first moment she saw him. He was everything she was not. He came from money. He had real class. He was very attractive. He was well-educated: a graduate of the Yale fine arts program, no less. They had met when he was slumming in Brooklyn, studying and teaching design at Pratt. He had glanced at the little garmento wannabe that she was and looked right through her.

But Karen had been riveted and she still was, by his astonishing good looks and his wit and his style. She’d always feel that he was the catch and that she’d done the catching.

“So, I’ve put together the numbers for NormCo,” Jeffrey told her.

“With a little jiggling and a little juggling, we look pretty good. Of course, I overvalued the inventory by about two hundred percent, but I’ll let their accountants try and work that out. They can’t actually accuse us of dishonesty. All they can do is feel we’re unrealistically optimistic.” He got up and moved out toward the kitchen.

“So, what kind of money will you ask for?”

“The trick is not to ask. The trick is getting them to make the first offer. I just hope they’re talking Serious Money. I’d like us to be comfortable.”

Karen smiled. She thought of the joke about the old Jewish man who gets knocked down in a car accident. People rush to help him, cover him with a blanket. and call for an ambulance. “Are you comfortable?”

a man asks.

“Well, I make a living,” the victim says. Wealthy Jews, she had learned, had a code about their net worth: to Karen, she and Jeffrey were already rich. To Jeffrey, it would take another few million at least before they were “comfortable.”

Now, working together, they quickly set the table. Even when they ate alone, Jeffrey insisted on real china and damask napkins. They always used the real silver, despite Ernest’s mild grumbling over the polishing she had to constantly do. Alone, Karen would eat out of the pan standing over the sink or lying in bed. But Jeffrey was a grown-up who ate at the dining table. Karen took a deep breath. She hated to bring this up over a meal, but now was the only chance Karen would get to talk with him.

“I saw Dr. Goldman today,” she said, biting her lip.

Jeffrey’s smile disappeared. “What’s it going to be now?” he asked, and the bitterness in his voice made her wince. “Hot wine enemas?