Marrying Up (7 page)

She shrugs. “They’re in here an awful lot, so they’re either single, unhappily married or alcoholics.”

“Umm…yeah…well, thanks for clearing that up for us. Would you please just ask them if they’d like to join us?” She takes off for their table, shaking her head.

“Don’t say a word, G. This is just a trial run. And I think this place has just the right demographics, so let’s put our husband-catching hats on, just for fun, and—”

“Our
whats
? And did you just say
we?
So now it’s
we?
I don’t think—”

They slide in beside us before she has a chance to object any further.

“Hi guys! Thanks for the drinks,” I say to the better-looking one sitting next to George.

“Yeah, thanks,” she grumbles.

“You’re welcome,” he say. “I’m Trevor. And this is Ron.”

“Hi,” says Ron.

“I’m Holly, and this is George.”

George half smiles and looks down.

“George?” Trevor says. “Bit of a funny name for a pretty lady like you, isn’t it?”

“Maybe that’s, you know, like her work name or something,” Ron says to Trevor out of the side of his mouth.

“Her
work
name. I get it,” he nods.

George and I exchange glances. Who knows? Maybe they’re into names or something. “Well, even though I’m a Holly, I wasn’t born in December or named after Christmas or anything silly like that, though people often assume that I am. I guess my parents just thought it was a nice name, you know?”

But Ron and Trevor just stare at George as she proceeds to deskewer her sword of maraschino cherries with her teeth.

“Yeah, that’ll do it,” Ron says. “That’ll do it.”

Trevor apparently agrees. “Let’s get to it, then! I assume you ladies are working tonight?”

“Huh?” I am utterly confused.

For a change, George is not. “They think we’re hookers, Holly.”

The burgundy leather banquette squeaks as the offending parties shift uncomfortably.

“What?! Are you joking?” Three drinks have not dulled my capacity for righteous indignation.

“Wait! It’s okay if you’re not!” Ron suggests frantically.

“Yeah, that’s totally fine, too. We just thought—”

“You just thought what?!”

“Holly, let’s get out of here…”

“No, G! I want to know why they would think we’re hookers!”

“Maybe it’s her hair,” Ron points at George. “And her…her…wow. Those right there. And your lipstick! I don’t think bright red is the way to go at happy hour.”

Trevor shoots him a nervous look. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“My sister works for Avon,” he explains.

“Man, you’re so queer…”

“You can go now,” I tell them.

I whip my compact out of my purse while George slumps down as far as she can without completely disappearing under the table. True, I am a little more made-up than usual, but I figured the occasion called for a touch of sophistication. As for George’s hair, it is undeniably large.

Scanning the room, I suppose we’re a bit out of place. The only other women in Taylor’s are the waitresses and a few frumpy accountant types. I am definitely the only one with an attempt at an updo, while George’s cleavage apparently speaks a thousand words.

“Can we get out of here, Holly?
Please?
”

“Fine. But don’t look so glum. This is going to make a great ‘What Not to Do’ appendix for the book.”

George reluctantly agrees to give my tactics some more thought as we scarf down Chinese takeout in the cab on the way back to my place. If it were easy, I reason, then everyone would be doing it. Chapter One will just have to wait until we are a little further into the game.

The Mind of the Moneyed Man

“J
ust look into the camera and relax, sweetie.”

It sounds like a line from a bad afterschool special.

I take a deep breath and begin: “Hi everyone! Okay, so I may not be a blond bombshell like Marilyn Monroe, but there must be at least one fabulous, semidecent-looking rich guy out there who’s seriously into flat-chested brunettes.”

I can see George shaking her head in my peripheral vision.

Violet Chase, the ageless madam behind the Buffalo branch of the Moneyed Mates franchise, is similarly unimpressed. “That was appalling, Ms. Hastings,” she says as she comes over to flick a speck off my shoulder.

“Just needed to break the tension, I guess.”

“We’ll pretend it never happened. Let’s do a few more takes. Just try and relax. And remember the guidelines we talked about. And for heaven’s sake,
don’t
mention money!
It’s incredibly inelegant,” she says as she stalks off the “set” to take her place beside the cameraman.

“Okay,” I agree. “But it’s kinda hard to relax when this is, like, the
one
impression they’re going to have of me.”

“Would you like half a Valium?” she offers.

I look hopefully to George, whose wrinkled forehead and downturned eyebrows relay a stern “No.”

“No, thank you,” I tell Ms. Chase. “But it was nice of you to ask.”

After the whole hooker fiasco, George and I tried to be more discriminating in our choice of both evening wear and hunting grounds. We’d staked out a few hotel bars—most notably, the Mansion on Delaware Avenue, the only place in town where I could imagine a really wealthy person might stay—but we just ended up getting to know the bartender better than we wanted to and drinking away half a paycheck’s worth of Harvey’s Bristol Cream in about a month. Plus, George gained nearly five pounds from the nuts at the bar (I’m sure the alcohol had nothing to do with it). On Saturdays and Sundays, we walked Linus, her fat beagle, in circles around the Mercedes dealership on Main Street near her mothers’ house. Once, we even skipped work and snuck into a hedge-fund conference at the Hilton in Niagara Falls, where we learned that most professional financial planners work with other people’s money, not their own—a fact confirmed by their willingness to embrace the most revolting assortment of cold salads in lunch-buffet history.

All this work and nary a nibble at the line, yet alone a dinner invitation. It seems Buffalo just doesn’t have rich men growing on trees, if you can believe that. We needed a way to kick things up a notch. And that was where Moneyed Mates came in.

George had stumbled across a scathing indictment of their
operations in an article Mrs. Perlman had suggested she read in
The Advocate
regarding the appalling state of contemporary American heterosexual mating habits. I was surprised George had even mentioned it, frankly, since she’d made it clear on numerous occasions that she was just chaperoning me on my little husband-hunting excursions. But it didn’t take long for the truth to come out.

Professor Bales had dumped her. Or she had dumped him. (Whatever.)

“You were
so
right,” she’d sobbed into the phone a week before we found ourselves at Moneyed Mates for our preliminary interview. George doesn’t break down often, but when she does, there’s no mistaking it.

“I was? About what?”

“I wanted to prove you wrong about Stuart, so I asked him outright, ‘How many other women are you seeing?’ and he was like, ‘I don’t know’ and I was like, ‘Don’t you have any feelings for me after all this time?’ and he was like, ‘Of course I do,’ and I was like, ‘Feelings that originate above the waist?’ and he was like, get this, ‘Don’t worry—
I respect you as a person.
’”

“Whoa, slow down…”

“That’s what he said—‘I respect you as person!’ And I thought, what the hell’s that supposed to mean?
I respect you as a person?
”

It sounded like she’d already had a few drinks. Otherwise, I would have suggested going out for one. “Jeez… So what do you think he meant?”

“Well, that’s what I wondered,” she continued. “So I said, ‘I’ve been taking it for granted that you respect me as a person, Stuart, so thanks for nothing. But if you’re bothering to mention it, are you trying to imply that you don’t respect me as a woman?’ and then he was all quiet for like the longest time and then he said, ‘Well, since you never asked me be
fore, I assumed you didn’t want to know the answer, but now that you’re asking I guess you want to know so I’m not going to lie to you,’ and I was like oh God, do I want to hear this? But he just kept talking and he said, ‘I guess you should know that I’m never going to want any more from our
situation
here because if I’m going to share my life with only one person, then I need that person to be on
par
with me.”

“What kind of prick would say something like that?” I wondered aloud, silently amazed that she had never actually asked him where they stood before this.

“Exactly what I was thinking! Like, he doesn’t even consider what we had a relationship. He called it a
situation.
Can you believe that?”

“No, I meant about you not being on par with him.”

“I’m getting to that, Holly. So I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘You’ll never be a great writer, George. There’s skill, and there’s talent, and you don’t have enough of either, although if I had to choose, I’d say you have more skill than talent. In any case, that’s something I would definitely need from a life partner, and I’m sure you can respect that.’”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah, so of course I was like completely stunned. But you know what I said? I said, ‘Not only do I have more talent than skill, but I have enough of both!’ and I hung up and I haven’t called him back and I never will again and I hate him and he’s an asshole and I just feel like I wasted so much bloody time on him! I’m such an idiot, Holly. God, I’m so embarrassed. I want to crawl under the covers and die. What was I thinking? How come I didn’t see it? No—you know what? I’m not embarrassed. I’m
angry.
Yeah, angry! I deserve better than that…don’t I? Oh God! Would you listen to me? Of course I deserve better. But I’m still such an idiot…”

And so on and so forth.

I comforted her the best I could, considering she’d skipped work and had been crying in bed alone all day, drunk on Manishevitz, the only booze her mothers ever kept around the house.

“First of all, you’re not an idiot,” I told her. “You’re human and I love you. And even though I admit I may have teased you about him a little—”

“A little?”

“Okay, a lot… But I also hope you know that I know you wouldn’t have been with him unless you were getting something positive out of the relationship, too. And there’s nothing wrong with that provided you move on as soon as you see things aren’t going in the direction you want them to. Which is exactly what’s happening right now. So, that’s all this is, okay? You’re making the right decision at the right time for you. You have absolutely nothing to feel bad about.”

I couldn’t help but wonder at what it finally took for George to dump this guy. Not the fact that he was a lecherous old coot. It didn’t bug her that he treated her like crap, that he’d stepped out on her countless times, that they’d done nothing but order in pizza and screw in his shitty old “loft,” which was really just a one-bedroom near the water with the walls knocked out. No, it took him dissing her as a writer. Never mind that he’d been dissing her as a woman every time he failed to show her the respect she deserved.

“I know you’re right, Holly. Thanks. I just wish I’d figured that out sooner, you know?” she sniffed once she’d regained her composure. “I feel like I need to make up for lost time.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. You’re starting fresh now and that’s what’s important.”

“I mean I really feel like I need to do something.”

“You do?”

“Yup. What was it we swore in Creative Writing 101?”

She knew exactly what it was we’d sworn. “That we’d both be famous writers by the time we’re thirty.”

“And how old are we?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“I’ve been unwilling to rock the boat,” she said with a hiccup. “I can see that now.”

“Are you sure you’re ready for this, G? Can you handle it?”

Was that the theme from
Rocky
drifting in through the open living-room window?

“I’m ready.”

“It is possible the rumors are true, you know—that money may
not
buy happiness. We need to be prepared for that contingency…”

She exhaled slowly, deliberately. “I know. But maybe we owe it to ourselves to find out for sure.”

“Well, you know
I
think we do.”

I didn’t want to pressure her before she was ready, but the thought of having a partner in crime made my heart leap with anticipation and joy.

“As the
girlfriends
of millionaires,” she slurred, “…not wives, but girlfriends, okay?—it sounds less evil to me—so as the girlfriends of millionaires maybe we could finally evolve beyond the mundane fiscal responsibilities that have been drying up our dreams…”

“Now you’re getting it!” This was the drunk, reckless George I knew and loved.

“And if it doesn’t work out, so what!? We’ll just chalk it up to experience, which we like so totally need anyway in order to be good writers!”

“You go girl!”

“Because any life worth living is packed with one ginormous mistake after another!”

“Well, let’s not get carried away…”

Jill, who’d been sitting next to me on the couch, watch
ing
Nova
and eating barbecue soybeans, raised an eyebrow at this point. “What on earth are you talking about?”

I put my hand over the mouthpiece. “George’s professor dumped her.”

“I can hear you,” she wailed. “Tell her
I
dumped
him!
”

Jill grabbed the receiver. “The best way to win him back is to ignore him. Don’t call him, no matter what. He’ll be
burning
for you within two weeks. Then all you have to do is—”

“Give me that!” I wrestled the phone from her hand. “Ignore her, George. She’s completely insane when it comes to men. She’d rather date a complete jackass than spend a single Saturday night alone.”

Jill stuck her tongue out at me and got up to leave. “Is that any worse than stalking delivery boys and bicycle messengers?”

“I’ll deal with you later,” I told her. “Now, George, listen to me. You know you’re better off without him and all that crap. I’m not going to waste my breath going over every single reason why, because I’ve been doing that for years and you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said—”

“Don’t worry, Holly. You don’t have to convince me. I’m bruised and I’m hurt and I’m mad at myself, but I’m also so totally over him. I just need to take a day or two to cry the whole thing out of my system, you know? But I’m fine with it. Really, I am. In fact, I even have an idea that might help speed along my recovery.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s this weird dating service I read about…”

We arrived precisely on time for our preliminary interview with Ms. Chase. Of course, I’d done a little online research into Moneyed Mates beforehand, just to make sure it was a legitimate dating service and not some sort of escort service or prostitution ring. Happily, it appeared to be a successful international franchise—there was a Moneyed Mates
branch in virtually every major city in the United States, Canada and Europe. Granted, it did seem a little odd that rich guys were apparently having as hard a time finding us as we were finding them, but I was willing to take the chance.

Before George could commit to the process, however, she needed to make sure that the most politically incorrect business operation either of us had ever come across was undiscriminating in its treatment of women.

“Ms. Chase, why is your corporate slogan
‘Wealthy Men for Willing Ladies’?
Don’t you have any Wealthy Ladies for Willing Men? And what exactly do you mean by ‘willing’?”

But it would take more than George Perlman-MacNeill’s vacillating brand of feminism to throw a professional like Violet Chase for a loop. “In all my years in this business, I can honestly say that I’ve never had a single wealthy woman come to me looking for a less well-to-do mate. You can infer from that what you will. Oh, and by ‘willing,’ we mean ‘willing’ to settle only for the very best.”

George shifted in her chair, unsure what to make of this new information. “Why don’t rich people just date each other? Why would they want to date normal people?”

I turned to Ms. Chase. It was a valid question.

She looked out past us into the hallway, uncrossed her perfect legs and leaned forward across her big glass desk. In a low whisper, she said, “The truth is, many wealthy men find wealthy women intimidating, in exactly the same way that many men of modest means find a lady who earns more than them an almost
unattractive
quality.”

“That’s awful,” George groaned. “And completely outdated, sexist and totally offensive.”

“Don’t be naive,” I told her. “Not all guys are as enlightened as we wish they were. It’s actually kind of sad that so many of them still don’t feel like real men unless they’re the ones bringing home the bacon.”

Ms. Chase nodded in agreement. “We’re here to provide a service for those men who enjoy deriving power from their paychecks and are self-aware enough to know it. The beauty is, nobody’s taking advantage of anybody when it’s all out in the open like it is here at Moneyed Mates. There’s no game-playing, no deception, just an arrangement beneficial to both parties. And for those who prefer a partner of similar means, there’s Mutually Moneyed Mates in the suite next door. You might have seen it as you came in. So, have we answered all your questions?

“I have one. Why come here if they can probably have their pick of gorgeous babes?”

“She’s very self-conscious about her chest,” George explained. “It’s bordering on insane obsession, actually…”