New York for Beginners (8 page)

For example, at eighteen she fell in love with her biology teacher. The official story was that nothing had actually happened until after her final biology exam was graded. She got an A. Then came her French ski teacher. She’d lived in his apartment in Les Arcs during the winter season. His first and only visit to Hamburg had been a “nightmare,” but Al had still learned to ski like a goddess. Her next conquest was a married editor-in-chief whose wife was expecting a baby. Their affair cost him not only his family, but his career. He was permanently transferred to the office in Poland—but only after he’d promoted Allegra to department head. It didn’t bother her much that, from then on, she had the reputation of being the company hussy.

In short: A reality show with the highest ratings could have been made about Allegra and her men. It would be called
Vamps, Vices, and Vindication
—or something like that.

“Allegra,” Zoe said, “I’m not you. I don’t want people to think I’m successful at work because I slept with the boss. I want to make it on my own. Without a man pulling strings for me. That’s why I’m here. And now I’ve messed everything up, right from the beginning.”

“Zoe, sweetheart, all due respect for your moral values,” Allegra said, “but it’s only the result that counts. Remember that! Women have to beat men with their own weapons. Play with him a little. Make connections through him that you wouldn’t otherwise have had a chance to make. And then you can happily ditch him at the end.”

Zoe slumped a little and said, “Do you not understand me, or do you not
want
to understand me?”

“I only want to help you, dearest.”

Then Zoe’s transatlantic spiritual advisor began to bury her client in work. “Work will distract you,” Al said. “If you’re working, you won’t have time for any more foolishness.” Of course, Allegra and Zoe didn’t necessarily share the same definition of
foolishness
.

“So, here’s what I’m thinking. When I see the news about Tiger Woods, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the German TV presenter Joerg Kachelmann—and the twenty-seven or so mistresses they’ve collectively had—it makes me think of the partnership vertical. Why don’t you start it off with a bang? I’m thinking the first theme should be ‘The Other Woman.’”

“Hmm,” Zoe murmured halfheartedly.

“I want to know who the other woman really is. Behind the glittering facade of romantic encounters in luxury hotels, surprise packages of Agent Provocateur underwear, and diamond earrings from Tiffany for her birthday. How does it feel to sit alone at home on Christmas? What’s it like to have no long-term prospects for a real partnership or children? Or for growing old together?”

“OK, whatever,” Zoe said. “I’ll put together a gallery with pictures of famous mistresses. That will get us plenty of clicks.”

After she’d hung up, Zoe tried to brainstorm about “The Other Woman.” She thought about what the term conjured up. Loneliness? Thigh-high stockings? Crying in airports? Abruptly ended telephone calls? She made a few notes for herself.

What a bunch of nonsense!

Something was brewing deep inside her that she couldn’t exactly define. Of course it had to do with McSlimy. Idiot number two in her collection had slept with her even though he’d known exactly who she was. Even though he had known he would be her boss. After all, in her Sunday-morning champagne rush, she’d laid out half her life in front of him on the kitchen table. He knew that she had wanted to be a journalist since she was a teenager, and had finally gotten an internship at Schoenhoff publishing. He knew that she’d managed to get herself the reputation as a damn talented writer for
Vision
. That rat knew exactly who he was hopping into bed with—and he’d done it anyway.

Zoe suddenly felt empty. How could he? Who would do something like that? “Sex, Lies, Arrogance: What Makes Powerful Men Behave So Badly?” was once a headline on the cover of
Time
magazine. Back then, Zoe had been so fascinated by that headline that she’d hung a copy of the cover on the wall of her Berlin office.

“I slept with one of them,” Zoe murmured. “And I even slipped a note under the egomaniac’s door like a dizzy little girl.” She could have slapped herself.

It was time for a plan. A plan for revenge. Cress seeds on the carpet, an obituary in the newspaper—that was all beginner’s stuff. You have to hit an alpha man where it hurts the most. And where was a titan’s secret weak spot? His ego, of course! Zoe decided to torture McSlimy by ignoring him. Because what alpha men always wanted most was what they couldn’t get.

“Besides, your American pajamas look ridiculous, McSlimy,” she said poisonously to the potted plant. “Like something out of the loony bin at Bellevue Hospital!”

The plant kept its opinion to itself, but Zoe felt better immediately. She strode out of her office with her head held high. “Good evening, everyone.”

She got in the elevator. Before the doors closed completely, another person shoved them back and slipped inside.

“Are you feeling better?” McSlimy asked. He leaned casually against the back wall of the elevator and looked at her expectantly, like a man looking at a giant cake at a bachelor party, hoping an attractive, naked girl will jump out.

I should really give him a piece of my mind,
Zoe thought. She should ask him what exactly he had been thinking during their encounter. But what if he actually hadn’t been thinking about anything? Zoe felt a little like a wife who suspected her husband of having an affair, but would rather not check his phone or emails in case it turned out to be true.

The elevator started moving. There wasn’t a lot of space for the two of them. Zoe didn’t know what to do with her hands or where she should look. McSlimy smelled exactly like McNeighbor, which didn’t help her situation. She briefly considered the benefits of pushing the emergency button. But in American movies, when people pushed the emergency button the elevator always got stuck between two floors, and until help finally came, the stranded couple always had sex with each other—which really wasn’t an option in this case.

“And how was your day, Mr. Fiorino?” Zoe asked, pulling herself together. She tried her best to look bored—and above all, to avoid his gaze. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a smile cross his face.

“Fine, thanks,” McSlimy answered. “I was neither in danger of choking on a blueberry muffin nor of missing the CEO’s visit.”

Zoe stared intensely at the illuminated display, watching the torturously slow countdown of the floors. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to speed up the elevator by sheer force of will. Then it shuddered, and they were suddenly on the ground floor. The elevator opened into the lobby, and Zoe stormed out.

“Don’t play with fire, Zoe!” Tom called out after her. Without turning, she knew from his voice that he was highly amused. She finally made it out to Lexington Avenue. A honking yellow school bus followed by a shrieking fire engine thundered past. And angry tears flowed down her cheeks.

7

The next morning, Zoe really didn’t want to return to the scene of her humiliation and face the people who had been witness to it. She seriously considered staying buried under her blanket and not getting out of bed.

Maybe the whole concept of turning her life upside down, of “being foolish,” was nothing but terribly naive. Audacity and spontaneity weren’t exactly personal strengths of hers.

She was more of a serial offender. A serial monogamist. Ever since she became interested in the opposite sex, she’d always been in a serious relationship. One after another. She had actually never been single for very long. A few weeks, maybe, in between men. She had always thrown herself into every relationship wholeheartedly, and, if she was being honest, had defined herself in terms of the man she was with.

With the outdoor freak, she had mountain-biked and gone on two camping trips in Canada, even though the first time her back had hurt from sleeping on the thin foam mat. She’d encountered about two million mosquitoes, but hadn’t seen even one black bear. Then there was the clubber, who took her to raves in Ibiza, where they drank through the nights together. Zoe would rather not think about what they’d smoked. Basically, she wasn’t interested in drugs, but their consumption just seemed to be required to fit in with certain social circles.

And Benni? She could just talk to him so easily. He read real books, was always ready with a fitting quote from Hegel or Kant, and dreamed of opening a literary salon, like in the Gründerzeit of nineteenth-century Berlin. Benni was also surprisingly civilized and well educated.

For the first time in her adult life, Zoe was actually solo, and maybe a little lonely. And she was afraid of her own courage.

Her gaze fell on the tattered little book on the floor next to her bed. Maybe Eros’s holy scripture would shine a light on Zoe’s life, since her future prospects were so nebulous at the moment anyway. The pages were dog-eared and a little dirty. How many American immigrants had the book already helped adapt to their new environment? As Zoe started to flip through it, one particularly wrinkled page caught her attention.

First Commandment, or: Never Kiss the Boss

In fact, never sleep with anyone at all in your department—and especially not after the office Christmas party or the company picnic. The next day, and the day after, and the day after that, until you quit and move to New Zealand, you’ll see the guy in the office again and again. This applies worldwide, not just to New York.

But here’s a special rule for the US: Every office romance carries the risk of sexual-harassment charges if it goes wrong. See the movie
Disclosure
with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore, 1994.

That’s just peachy,
Zoe thought. She rolled onto her back to stare at the ceiling.

A little later, Zoe walked into the main office on the twenty-ninth floor with her iPhone to her ear, seemingly absorbed in an important conversation. Actually, she hadn’t even dialed a number. She was only faking it to get to her own office as fast as possible without having to talk to anyone. Once she got to her desk, she forced herself to go through her notes for the article about mistresses. Work would distract her—that was Allegra’s theory. If she worked, she wouldn’t have time to worry.

Apparently, practically everyone in a serious relationship cheated at some point, Zoe had read during her research. The usual scenario is that at first, the mistress feels superior to the wife. The wife doesn’t know or notice. The guy probably hadn’t been getting very much action in bed for a while aside from some vanilla sex that happens out of a sense of duty. The mistress is free, independent—and thus attractive to the husband, who wants just one thing: no stress (and, of course, plenty of sex). Until he slowly and probably subconsciously forces the mistress into dependence. Then she becomes a new wife, whom he eventually betrays with a new mistress.

Depressing subject,
Zoe thought as she began to write her article. She’d already informed the web designer about the new vertical, which was called “Sex & Love.” Hopefully he was coding diligently and would have it ready for her soon. Zoe wrote the first sentence of her story, then deleted it. It was all rubbish. Writing was sometimes pure torture. She had absolutely no idea what she wanted to write. Actually, she didn’t want to be writing at all. She would rather be sulking and indulging in a little self-pity. It wasn’t fair that such a major disaster had to happen to her, of all people. She had just barely managed to step out of her comfort zone, and everything was already going wrong.

Thank God (or the Universe, or whatever) Eros Mittermayer stuck his head in her door at exactly that moment. “Would you like to go to lunch with me and my friend Mimi? I have a table for us at Pastis. French food.”

Stars, or: How to Ignore Celebrities

It doesn’t matter if Robert De Niro is sitting at the next table, or if Jay-Z and Beyoncé are at the playground with their daughter Blue Ivy. In New York, stars are basically ignored. Do not say, “Oh, look, there’s . . .” No pointing, and absolutely no taking pictures or asking for autographs. Shrieking and fainting are left strictly to the tourists. Real New Yorkers simply take the presence of stars for granted, like the existence of the Empire State Building. After all, one can’t stop and stare with one’s mouth open every time a VIP walks past.

(
New York for Beginners
, p. 69)

“The New York Meatpacking District used to be exactly what its name says it is,” Eros explained, as they shared a taxi down to 14th Street. “Sides of pork, pigs’ feet, mountains of ground beef—and plenty of live human meat all around it.”

“That sounds pretty gross,” Zoe said.

“Not at all! A few years ago the yuppies moved in and opened their boutiques and restaurants. Stella McCartney, Diane von Furstenberg, and Theory. SoHo House New York is right around the corner, with a swimming pool on the roof.”

Zoe and Eros stood outside Pastis in the warm September sun and waited for a waiter to show them to their table. Uma Thurman was sitting at the table next to them, with huge black sunglasses balanced on her nose, a fact both of them mercilessly ignored. Who was Uma Thurman, anyway? Who cared that she’d acted and danced in one of the best movies of all time? On the streets of New York, film and fashion shoots were happening all the time. Only amateurs stopped and bothered the stars and took photos with their phones that they immediately posted on Facebook.

“How did you get such a spectacular first name?” Zoe asked Eros, who was wearing fashionable aviator sunglasses to set off his artistically stenciled three-day beard.

“I grew up in Lower Bavaria in the town of Straubing. Eros Ramazotti gave a concert there in the late eighties . . .”

Zoe was already starting to laugh. Eros Ramazotti was
the
romantic Italian singer-songwriter. Now she knew how Eros’s parents had fallen in love, without hearing the rest of the story.

“. . . and he sang my mother’s favorite tearjerker, ‘Musica è.’” Eros Mittermayer made a face like he’d gotten Diet Pepsi instead of the Coke Zero he’d ordered. “And that’s why she named me, her firstborn, after Eros Ramazotti. I’ve never forgiven her.”

“Very cosmopolitan,” Zoe managed to say. She was laughing so hard she almost spit across the table.

“Zoe isn’t much better, for a country bumpkin like you.”

“My father is the village doctor, and my mother is an elementary school teacher. They were missionaries in Africa before I was born. It’s not so bad. I’m named after the prize-winning South African author and poet Zoë Wicomb—and not after some Italian crooner.”

“Ouch, that was below the belt,” Eros said, lifting his carefully manicured hands in protest. “You got me directly in the heart.”

“Where is your heart, then?” she joked.

For a moment no longer than a heartbeat it suddenly fell quiet, as though some unknown power had attracted the attention of everyone in the area. A long-legged creature with an almost alien beauty sashayed toward Pastis. The denim shorts on her narrow hips were barely longer than the broad leather belt she wore over them at a fashionable angle. She was also wearing black biker boots and a tight white tank top. Around her neck was a leather rope with a diamond-encrusted shark tooth hanging from it, bouncing between her breasts with every step she took. Her blonde mane stirred gently in the breeze, almost in slow motion, like something out of a hairspray commercial.

This creature came to their table, pulled out her iPod earbuds, and said, “Hi, I’m Mimi.” She simply sat down in one of the free chairs. Either she didn’t have the slightest clue how people reacted to the show she’d just put on, or she was so used to it that it wasn’t anything special anymore.

“Mimi, darling, this is my new colleague, Zoe,” Eros said as he leaned over the table, air-kissing both of her cheeks. She must have been at least six feet tall. Zoe felt a little intimidated.

“Zoe, this is Morgan Buckley Mellon, also known as Mimi. She owns the Mimi Mellon Gallery for Contemporary Art on 26th Street,” Eros said, and then added reverentially, “She’s a socialite. And a model.”

“Eros, you suck-up!” Mimi said, grinning. “It’s not my fault my grandparents had money. And the modeling was a lifetime ago. My sell-by date is long past. By modeling standards, I’ve already grown mold.” She pointed out the crow’s feet that appeared at the corners of her eyes when she smiled. “The only thing that could help now is surgical intervention. But I don’t want to end up like Meg Ryan.”

Zoe was starting to like this woman.

They drank iced tea. Mimi wanted to know everything about Zoe: where she came from, what she did, and above all what she was doing in New York. And in the process, Zoe discovered that Mimi and Eros had come to know and love each other (purely platonically, of course) at a photo shoot in Mimi’s gallery, and that Mimi, at forty (who would have guessed?) just couldn’t find a guy.

“Unmarried men in my age group are damaged goods, gay—or they prefer jailbait,” she said. “What’s your current situation?”

Zoe turned red. Fire-engine-tomato-paprika-red with a few raspberry-colored blotches, to be exact.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Eros said, clearly offended. He immediately realized it would be worthwhile to probe a little. “And I’m your best restroom friend!”

“Who’s the guy?” Mimi wanted to know.

Zoe hesitated. She certainly couldn’t tell the truth. “My neighbor.”

“Is he good-looking?”

“He looks a little like McDreamy.” It came out before she realized it. She wanted to bite off her tongue.

Eros’s sensitive antennae had of course picked up on the clue. “McDreamy, huh?” he asked innocently, while his brain was obviously busy putting together the puzzle pieces from their restroom conversation.

Zoe avoided his gaze and tried to look indifferently at the street.

“You don’t mean McSlimy, do you?” Eros asked, his eyes narrowing.

Zoe felt an even deeper shade of red starting to clash with her already complicated coloring, and she couldn’t do a thing about it. She chose to maintain a petulant silence, which of course didn’t help matters the tiniest bit.

Mimi was confused. “McDreamy? McSlimy? Which one is it?”

“McDreamy is McSlimy,” Eros explained. “And McGirly here obviously has something going on with him. What’s more, he’s our new boss. Thomas Prescott Fiorino.”

It took a few seconds for Mimi to mentally sort out the various Mcs. “But Tom has only been back in town for four weeks. When did you manage that?” she asked, amazed.

“On Sunday, four weeks ago.”

Mimi laughed. “Good catch!”

“Why? Do you know each other?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know who he is.”

“Not really. And it was just the one time—”

“Thomas Prescott Fiorino. Hmm,” Mimi interrupted Zoe with a nostalgic look in her eyes. “We went to the same private school. I messed around with him when I was fifteen or so, until his stuffy, straitlaced mother discovered us, raised a stink, and told not only my parents, but the principal of Dalton. Upper East Side. Forty thousand dollars a year, even more expensive than Harvard. Tom comes from one of the most powerful—and richest—families on the East Coast. His mother is a Whitney.”

Zoe only stared at Mimi with eyes as big as saucers that said “I’m just a small-town German girl.”

“Hellooo! Earth to Zoe! Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney was one of the most famous investors in the US. He was a founder of Pan Am, and financed Hollywood classics like
Gone with the Wind
. His mother, Tom’s great-grandmother, had the Whitney Museum built.”

Zoe felt dizzy.

“Tom is the record holder for broken hearts. There isn’t a New York female in my generation of a certain social status that hasn’t had a thing with him. A few years ago he disappeared to England.” Mimi paused to reflect, as though she’d had a flash of amnesia. Then she continued. “Somehow he dropped off the radar. But before that, I would often see him at parties. He always had new arm candy. You know what arm candy is, don’t you, my European friend?”