New York for Beginners (11 page)

She shook her head to clear it. Manhattan. Roof terrace at night. McSlimy, who smelled like McNeighbor, and was acting as if he was a decent human being. Anna, Rachel, Calvin, Ralph, Marc, and of course Tom Chrysler, and all the VIPs of the day—and little Zoe Schuhmacher from Herpersdorf bei Ansbach, Germany, was swimming in the middle of all of it, desperately gasping for air. The only thing that could help her now was alcohol. Or maybe a therapy session with Woody Allen’s shrink.

“Cheers,” said McSlimy/McNeighbor. He raised his glass.

“Cheers,” Zoe said. “Why did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Get me an interview with Tom Chrysler?”

“First, because I can. And second, because Tom and I are friends, and have been business partners for a long time.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“But I wanted to do it.”

“Did you do it because you had a bad conscience, or because you already reserved a room here in the hotel on the off chance that you might be able to use it, and figured you might as well try to create the right atmosphere?

“What do you think of me, Zoe?” he said, laughing.

“I wish I knew,” she answered. “It fluctuates between total idiot and Prince Charming.”

“Are you Europeans always so honest?”

“It would be very welcome if you were a little more honest, yourself.”

They were finally talking—but they still weren’t talking about the main issue: the fact that he was her boss, and he had slept with her. But
that
elephant had been standing in the room for a while now. Or in their special case, on the roof terrace. Zoe liked that American expression; she could really picture the elephant standing there and everyone ignoring it.

“OK, good, I’m sorry,” Tom said, suddenly giving in.

“That’s not enough for me.”

“I’m sorry” didn’t cut it for Zoe.
I’m sorry I broke your favorite coffee cup.
No problem.
I’m sorry I made a dent in your car.
Accepted.
I’m sorry I ate the last of your Häagen-Dazs
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream.
Forgiven, but only if you drive to the 7-Eleven right away and buy more for me.
I’m sorry I lied to you and let you simmer on lukewarm . . .
No, he’d have to come up with something better.

“I behaved completely unacceptably and irresponsibly.”

That
was
better.

Before Tom could continue, the waiter reappeared with fresh drinks. There was a moment of silence that Zoe tried to ignore by folding her cocktail napkin into tiny triangles.

Then Tom said quietly, but clearly, “I never should have slept with you once I knew you were going to be working with me.”

He looked up hesitantly, as though he expected to be slapped. Zoe actually did consider getting up and leaving.

“But I just wanted you, and you wanted me, too, and the champagne didn’t exactly help me think clearly. I thought somehow we could make it work out anyway. I’m really sorry.”

Zoe was speechless. Was he just playing with her, or did he mean it? Did carriers of the XY chromosomes even have the ability to formulate a speech like that? Or had he just memorized the script? She looked at him thoughtfully.

Thomas Fiorino. Suddenly he didn’t strike her as particularly egotistical anymore. He seemed to have a conscience. Not only that, he’d just arranged an interview for her with Tom Chrysler. Was that totally selfless, as he purported, or was he showing off? In this case, Zoe gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided to accept his apology. The man was just too good-looking and likeable—without seeming affected or slick. There was something genuine about him. He could listen to her with an almost irritating attentiveness, and was as charming as Cary Grant in the old black-and-white movies. Actually, a man like that was almost too good to be real.

Zoe silently resolved to retire the name McSlimy and go back to McNeighbor. Or even McDreamy. And besides, maybe it wasn’t so naive after all to want to change herself, to become more daring and spontaneous.
You can do it, Zoe Schuhmacher
, she encouraged herself.
You don’t need Plans B and C. You don’t even need Plan A. You should just let your life take its course for once.
Because if she was being honest with herself, she liked Tom very much. And if she was
very
honest, she liked him so much that she was thinking of ditching bathroom-mirror resolutions 1 through 3, and at least going for “friends with benefits,” and waiting to see if anything else would come of it.
You’re planning too far ahead again, Zoe
, she scolded herself.
Just let it happen.

Tom looked seriously into her eyes and bent closer to her.
Now he’s going to kiss me
, she thought. She closed her eyes expectantly.

“It won’t happen again, Zoe. I promise,” he said. “Let’s be friends.”

And she opened her eyes.

Retail Therapy, or: Why Shopping Actually Makes You Happy

According to Urban Dictionary, retail therapy is defined as “a vent for frustration” and “an antidote to stress.” It’s easy to shop away stress caused by career or relationships. You can trade it in for the one hundred thirtieth pair of shoes, for example. A study by the venerable Carnegie Mellon University affirms that improving your mood through random acts of shopping actually works.

(
New York for Beginners
, p. 117)

10

OCTOBER

Zoe, Eros, and Mimi turned onto 17th Street as they headed to the legendary Barneys Warehouse Sale. In front of the closed doors, they saw a pack of hungry fashion hunters already waiting impatiently. Zoe guessed that this was probably the highest concentration in the world of undernourished, overzealous, Prada-clad female beanpoles. She had always felt that sales had an inherently aggressive quality about them; they usually turned out to be civil-war zones, with fashion victims going at each other’s wrinkle-free throats.

It was just before three in the afternoon, and Barneys had already been closed by the fire department for allowing too many customers inside at once.

“What nonsense! Come on, let’s go get a drink somewhere,” Zoe said, exasperated.

“That’s absolutely out of the question,” Eros said. “It’s worth it. You have to suffer for beauty.” His eyes glowed with determination. “Everything is 50- to 70-percent off in there, Zoe darling. Dolce & Gabbana, Dirk Bikkembergs, and Versace. And all from the current collections.”

Suddenly the door opened again. Twenty customers loaded with bags were sent out, and twenty shoppers full of joyful expectation were let inside. The pack pushed past the red-velvet ropes and two doormen.

“To the shoes! Shoes first!” Mimi commanded before disappearing between the clothing racks.

The shoe department was basically ground zero of the Barneys Warehouse Sale. The shelves were already more or less bare. Instead, flats, pumps, kitten heels, Mary Janes, stilettos, and almost every imaginable kind of boot lay in huge heaps on the floor. Women sat between the piles, trying on Chanel, Lanvin, Miu Miu, Comme des Garçons, and every other high-end brand of footwear.

Zoe spied a sinfully expensive pair of strappy Prada sandals in lemon yellow that she’d tried on at Saks two weeks ago but had put back because they were too expensive. At full price, they had cost roughly the equivalent of a quarter of her monthly rent. Just as she was reaching for them, a Bergdorf blonde smashed her hand with the heel of a Louboutin.

“Ouch!” Zoe cried.

“Those are mine, bitch! Hands off!” Then, with a self-satisfied smile, she slid the straps of five pairs of sandals over her bony lower arm and stacked three pairs of bubblegum-colored flats, two pairs of black pumps, designer flip-flops, and forest-green Hunter boots on her left elbow. She balanced her chosen weapon—crocodile-leather Louboutins—on top. “Good luck, bitch,” she hissed, and left Zoe standing there with her mouth hanging open. Pure Social Darwinism was the rule here. Natural selection. Survival of the fittest.

Zoe was so shaken that she withdrew to the clothing section. She started on a rack of size-four clothes and found several nice pieces immediately: a chunky Theory sweater in ice gray, a denim Marc by Marc Jacobs maxiskirt, and a pair of skintight, chocolate-colored Ralph Lauren riding pants with black leather inserts on the inner thighs.

“Could you tell me where the fitting rooms are, please?”

The combatant to Zoe’s right looked at her aghast, as if Zoe had asked her to summarize the current state of the Arab Spring movement in three sentences or less. Then she pointed wordlessly to the other side of the women’s clothing department, where something that looked like a giant bed sheet was stretched across the room. Waiting in front of it were at least twenty women who were all balancing huge, seemingly random heaps of rumpled clothing in their arms. If you didn’t know any better, you might think they had robbed a Salvation Army. (Admittedly, one on the Upper East Side filled with designer clothes.)

Twenty-five minutes later, when she had finally managed to get behind the curtain, Zoe discovered at least forty women standing in front of a huge mirrored wall in various states of dress and undress. There were thin and very thin girls, including the ones whose collarbones jutted out so dangerously that they’d almost certainly come out of this experience covered in bruises.

Zoe didn’t like this communal fitting room at all. It wasn’t because she was self-conscious about her body (aside from the usual age- and laziness-related problem areas on her thighs and upper arms), but because she simply couldn’t stand to have someone else judge her until she was completely sure the piece she was wearing fit as though it had been made for her. She usually boycotted shops that didn’t have mirrors in the fitting rooms, on principle.

Zoe felt her discomfort begin to manifest itself in a wave of mini hot flashes, making her sweat, which was of course totally unacceptable in the US, where everyone was so hygiene oriented. What’s more, she’d been too lazy to shave her legs that morning. As soon as she took off her jeans she would surely be deported to Germany for her negligence. But what wouldn’t a woman do for a gorgeous maxiskirt from Marc Jacobs that had the additional advantage of perfectly covering the stubble on her shins?

She sped up to fast-forward, pulling the floor-length skirt on over her jeans, stripping those off underneath it, and then slipping the riding pants on under the skirt. She pulled the chunky sweater over her head and turned to the mirror.

“You look like a bag lady,” Mimi said, amused. “But an Upper East Side bag lady.” She calmly unbuttoned a Narciso Rodriguez dress, and then stood there in her smoke-colored Agent Provocateur underwear, which lived up to its name: it bore a provocative scrap of see-through lace with a seemingly innocent bow pattern, which on second glance turned out to look more like miniature handcuffs.

Dates, or: The Three-Date Rule

In the US, dates strictly take place in three stages. On the first date, the man and woman go out for something casual: coffee, lunch, a drink, or a cultural activity. For the man, it feels like a job interview. The man pays. A pause of at least three days follows. Calling or asking for another date the next day looks much too desperate, so keep your hands off the phone! He calls her, after exactly three days. On the second date, the man and woman go out for drinks. The man pays. On the third date they go out to dinner, and afterward go to bed together. The man pays (for dinner, not for sex!). Under no condition should the woman pay for a meal, or anything. Even sharing the bill (going Dutch) is completely unacceptable.

(
New York for Beginners
, p. 19)

After several hours that exhausted their patience and their credit cards, Mimi, Eros, and Zoe went to the Empire Hotel and ordered a round of champagne. They appraised their spoils with satisfaction. After her frightening experience in the shoe department, Zoe had let Mimi talk her into buying a pair of black Prada over-the-knee boots and steel-gray Sigerson Morrison kitten heels. Mimi herself had landed six pairs of shoes, three handbags, and a Burberry trench coat. And Eros had made out with a whole new wardrobe of colorful Dolce & Gabbana and Versace pieces. Now it was clear to Zoe why so many New York women (and gay New York men) turned their kitchens into second closets. Because they
had
to! After that, they only ate takeout.

“The Empire Hotel is so bourgeois,” Mimi complained as she glanced at a group of men who, in their too-short, too-wide American suits, looked like insurance salesmen who just stepped out of a convention. And they probably were. “We should have gone to the Boom Boom Room instead.”

“Why are we here, then?” Zoe wanted to know, and then noticed Eros wiggling nervously on his chair.

“Because
Gossip Girl
was filmed here,” Mimi said, bursting into laughter, obviously relishing the opportunity to air an embarrassing secret. “It’s Eros’s favorite TV show. High-society New York brats shop, smoke, drink, and do whatever else you can do with a black Amex card. He’s fervently hoping he’ll run into Chace Crawford here.”

Zoe laughed. “Art imitates life.”

“Or life imitates art,” Mimi responded.

“That’s enough!” Eros said. He obviously did not appreciate the two of them having a laugh at his expense. “Cheers, you cruel gossips. I never make fun of
your
crushes!”

That seemed to give Mimi another idea. “And?” she asked meaningfully, raising her glass in Zoe’s direction.

“And what?”

“Is anything going on between you and Fiorino?”

“Of course not! Why would you think that?” Zoe answered indignantly.

“I think you like him—otherwise you wouldn’t be so delightfully agitated right now.”

“I am
not
agitated!” Zoe said, louder than she meant to.

“Exactly,” Mimi said, grinning.

Zoe sighed. “I just don’t understand why men always have to be so complicated.”

“But, sweetheart,” Eros chimed in, “with men it’s very simple.”

“Oh, yes? Then explain it to me, you expert.”

“Men don’t think with their brains.”

“Then it should be forbidden for them to be presidents or secretaries of defense, or bosses of international banks. After all, they have to make life-or-death decisions all day. With their brains.”

“Yeah, yeah. Blah, blah,” Eros said. “If Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Brothers and Sisters, there wouldn’t have been a worldwide financial crisis.”

“Exactly! Women are just better men!”

“That’s what you think. But you got off to a bad start,” Eros continued. “Men are hunters. They want to bring down their prey. Here in the US you have to follow
The Rules
, my dear. There are specific rules when it comes to dating.”

“
The Rules
?”

“First date: coffee, lunch, or a casual drink. Second date: drinks after work. This is the latest possible exit point, if the woman isn’t into in the man. The third date is dinner, and the guy already has a toothbrush stuck into his jacket pocket, because after that they go to bed together, guaranteed.”

“So?”

“So you, my dear friend, led McSlimy to an all-you-can-eat buffet in the first thirty minutes. There’s no way this can go anywhere.”

“Thank you, my dear friend, for making me feel like a slut. With friends like you, who needs enemies?”

Eros and Zoe stared at each other stubbornly, and Mimi looked on with amusement. Zoe hated arguments that made her feel like the person she was arguing with might be right.

“Children, don’t squabble,” Mimi said, trying to smooth things over.

Eros looked away, offended.

“Be that as it may,” Zoe finally added, “we’ve decided just to be friends.”

“Friends, or friends with benefits?” Eros probed.

“Friends,” Zoe answered. She hadn’t given up hope that maybe something more would come of it, but she preferred not to tell them that.

“Friends?” Mimi almost choked on her drink. “Men and women can’t be friends!”

“Why not?”

“We’ve known that since
When
Harry Met Sally
. Because in the end, men only think about sex.”

“But Harry and Sally got together at the end!”

“From a biological point of view, friendship between men and women is simply not necessary, my dear Zoe,” Eros lectured.

“Fine, so you paid attention in biology class. Who cares.” Offense, Zoe thought, was still the best defense. Eros only grinned at her. “But sex is just the right spice for a platonic friendship,” Zoe tried to explain. “Sex is the undertone that always harmonizes. It just shouldn’t become too loud.”

“The louder, the better,” Mimi argued. “Why should women behave any differently than men?”

“And anyway,” Eros added, “Have you ever looked someone in the face and said, ‘Let’s be friends?’ What that really means is ‘You leave me so cold that I could swim naked with you on Bora Bora under a full moon with the sound of lapping waves in the background, and nothing would happen.’”

FWB, or: The Three Golden Rules for Friends with Benefits

Friends with benefits (FWB) is an arrangement that is gaining in popularity. There was even a (disappointingly very mediocre) movie made about it with Justin Timberlake. If you want to be sure your next FWB doesn’t end in such mediocrity, the following rules should be strictly adhered to:

1. Never fall in love with your FWB.
   
2. Never introduce your FWB to your friends or family.
   
3. Never stay overnight, and never have breakfast together.
   

(
New York for Beginners
, p. 37)