Royal Pain (14 page)

Eleven years on, Bronte still battled with those unresolved feelings. Should she feel sympathy for him, for what was probably a legitimate chemical imbalance? Should she try to imagine the Rhodes Scholar full of promise that he had once been? The one her mother first fell in love with? Fuck that. Everyone thinks they’re fucking top drawer when they’re twenty. The trick is to get on with your life.

On her more spiteful days, Bronte wished that he had lived to see the anti-intellectual path she had chosen. Ever since she was a thirteen-year-old girl flipping greedily through highly-prized issues of
British
Vogue
,
Hello!
, and
Harpers
& Queen
, she couldn’t wait to get into advertising, an industry her father had always held up as the pinnacle of bourgeois mediocrity. He would have probably said, “It is the sine qua non of capitalist groupthink being imposed upon the masses.” Or some such pedantic rubbish.

She had told her father that she was going to make lots of money encouraging people to buy things they didn’t need. In fact, she wasn’t only going to encourage them, she was going to make them feel downright evangelical about products that had no lasting value whatsoever. But the real reason, when Bronte was perfectly honest with herself rather than motivated by spite, was that she truly believed that everyone deserved to have a little personal fantasy. And if a silky shampoo could make a woman feel like a princess, or a certain stylish shoe could make a man feel like a prince, then what was the harm? Wasn’t everyone entitled to that little, temporary fairy tale?

Sarah was one of the few people who understood Bronte’s ambivalent feelings about her dead father. Something about the way Sarah simultaneously loved and defied her own father had triggered a confession reflex in Bronte one night between her fourth and fifth margarita at Tortilla Flats. The irony of it all, of course, was that despite her father’s ceaseless bombardment of negativity and pessimism, Bronte was a card-carrying optimist.

When she had first arrived in California, she had been like a pig in shit. All that endless sunshine and good vibration crap was right up her alley. She may swear like a goddamned pirate, but even that was just because she liked the
energy
that went into it. It made her feel alive.

Once her father died, she was free to be the Pollyanna she secretly was. To go after her own personal fairy tale. She had decided she would prove to him posthumously that a person could be smart
and
happy.

Which was all well and good in the abstract.

But when sticky emotions got involved, or other people’s incomprehensible needs started to squeeze out the sides of the relationship sandwich… well, suffice it to say, Bronte didn’t like that part. She’d had a couple of casual boyfriends in California, but anytime it started to get even remotely serious (“Hey, let’s drive down to L.A. and you can meet my parents…”), Bronte quickly lost interest.

She had seen a therapist for a couple of years when she moved back to New York after college, but he was such a weasely Freudian that she had finally called it quits (he was turning into one more demanding relationship, after all).

And then she met Mr. Texas.

And then Max.

“I am as clueless about men and relationships as I was when I was thirteen,” Bronte croaked. “I apologize, Sarah; that makes you way older than I am in the emotional intelligence department. I would be happy to introduce you to Devon Heyworth if I ever get the chance. Thanks for the champagne, doll, but I am just not up for going out.”

With that string of non sequiturs, Bronte picked up her absurdly large bag, took Max’s card off the table, and headed home to her apartment to sleep on her satin pillow so she didn’t mess up her Fekkai’d hair for tomorrow’s final pitch to W. Mowbray & Sons and her big night at the CFDA awards with Sarah.

Satin pillowcase or not, Bronte did not get the sleep of the just that night. She went over her Mowbray presentation at least seventeen times, then tried everything in her insomniac’s bag of tricks: eyes open, eyes closed, palms flat on the bed, legs crossed, legs uncrossed, arms across her chest, lying on her side, lying on her other side, getting up for a glass of water, putting those idiotic fuzzy little socks on because her feet got cold when she got the glass of water, eyeshades, white-noise machine, silence, window open, window closed, trying on sexy Josie Natori satin pajamas, pretending that Max was caressing said satin pajamas, getting distracted by said fantasy of Max and the pajamas, dozing for a few minutes after said distraction.

At four thirty, she finally capitulated and decided to start her day.

Today would be a new beginning, she decided. She was going to nail the Mowbray pitch to the fucking wall, look like a goddamned supermodel at the CFDA ball, and meet some anonymous Prince Charming on the dance floor and invite him back to her place to screw. She knew there were women out there who were perfectly capable of such things… why couldn’t she be one of them?

She would
not
, on the other hand, allow herself to indulge in her mushy adoration of one particular duke who would only come to despise her after her hipster veneer cracked and exposed the affection-starved, possessive, compulsive lover she knew lurked dangerously close to the surface. If he pushed too hard, he would see her for the desperate, weak, craven woman she was where he was concerned—and what could be more repellent than that?

She stripped her bed with a bit more force than necessary and then made it up with an insanely expensive set of French sheets—retail therapy extended far beyond mere clothing, she’d discovered over the past year; high-quality home goods were beautifully rationalized away as a form of healthy, nurturing, self-esteem-building.

She took extra pleasure in the fact that she could luxuriate in a deep, steaming hot bath, on a Thursday no less. She headed out of her apartment at 6:00 a.m. with a laundry bag to drop off with the doorman for pickup later and reminded herself again how much she loved her life—
this
life—not the imaginary life of a duchess or, as her mother would say, some such nonsense.

This
was the fabulously organized, clean, independent life that she had been planning for since the very first time she had read Simone de Beauvoir.

This
was the life that served as an iron-clad refutation to depressed, insulting fathers everywhere.

As the debacle with Mr. Texas proved, straying into the murky waters of grasping devotion was just plain cloying.

She walked the twelve blocks to her favorite diner in the East Village. She armed herself with her morning essentials: crisp copies of the
Post
,
Times
, and
Journal
; an enormous, steaming cup of coffee; and an order of poached eggs and dry whole-wheat toast. She hardly ever made it out of her apartment or to the office before ten, so the world that populated lower Manhattan at six thirty in the morning was a novelty.

There seemed to be a hushed sobriety about the place, as opposed to the mid-morning fracas she normally encountered the other times she’d been there on Saturdays and Sundays. Instead of the usual forty or more chattering weekend customers she was used to, there were only four other people in the diner at that hour.

No background music.

The dull clank of industrial white restaurant plates being stacked somewhere in the back behind the grill. Bronte stared at the sweating water glass with crushed ice on the upper-right-hand corner of the white crepe paper placemat over the gray-and-black boomerang Formica tabletop.

She opened the silverware that was tightly wrapped in a white paper napkin and lined up the fork and knife on the left and right of the placemat. The series of movements forever reminded her of a guy she had dated for a while a few years back. He was one of those three-shrink-sessions-a-week New Yorkers who viewed every random act as a launching pad for profound navel-gazing. Because Bronte was a no-shrink-sessions-a-week New Yorker by that time, his profound interest in himself (thinly veiled as merited introspection) started to grate.

One night at a bustling restaurant on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea, when he saw her straighten her fork and knife methodically (as she always did), he had his ah-ha moment and declared, “
That
is why you need to see a shrink.” Needless to say, that was their last date.

Bronte welcomed the arrival of her poached eggs, doused them with a generous portion of hot sauce, and set about rereading her W. Mowbray & Sons presentation notes for what seemed like the hundredth time.

Mowbray was a classic British menswear manufacturer that had been in business since 1854. The brand had always sustained a firm following with the upper crust through its bespoke division, and in the late 1950s, it had cofounded the British Menswear Guild with several other quintessentially British brands, such as Church’s Shoes and Hilditch & Key. The consortium’s goal at the time had been to export the idea of Britishness—the keyword that was the linchpin of Bronte’s proposed advertising campaign.

She had already succeeded in selling the pitch to the company’s ad buyers, marketing department, and board of directors. That morning at eleven, she was making her final presentation to the CEO and two of his majority shareholders who were flying in from London to help him make the final decision.

Following on the success of Sarah James’s transformation from small-time Chicago storefront to international household name, Bronte had signed on four new major accounts in the fashion industry since opening the New York offices of BCA. When she heard that Mowbray was considering a similar rebranding in anticipation of its entry into the US market, Bronte picked up the phone and started harassing the CEO, James Mowbray. His great-great-grandfather had founded the business on a lark when he decided he wanted his own clothes made his own way.

No rags to riches story here, more of a riches to riches. The founder William Mowbray was a viscount and a close friend of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; spent weekends at Pembroke Lodge with Lord and Lady Russell; frequently corresponded with an elderly Wordsworth and an aspiring Dickens; and happened to take a very keen, hands-on interest in his sartorial decisions. He hired four tailors to roam the Continent in search of the best fabrics and the finest techniques, then proceeded to set them up in a lovely village in Somerset to see to his personal tastes and, eventually, the particular requests of a few well-chosen friends. Over time, the scope of his influence widened, then transformed into a full-blown industry.

Bronte’s proposed campaign managed to transform all of that lofty, unattainable “Britishness” into something perfectly attainable to anyone willing to spend $400 on a meticulously made collared shirt. Much as Ralph Lauren’s original ad campaign had offered ready access to the elevated world of polo players and Palm Beach playboys, so Bronte’s “Britishness” campaign would do for Mowbray: it would allow the common man to own a tangible piece of the elite.

The irony was not lost on Bronte that the entire campaign served as a microcosm for her relationship with Max. In fact, when she finally pierced the veil that was James Mowbray’s outer office and convinced him that it was in his best interest to hear her pitch, she was tempted to ask him if he knew one Maxwell Fitzwilliam-Heyworth. But then she thought she would have sounded like one of those idiotic people who, upon meeting someone from Arkansas, says, “Oh! I know someone from Arkansas!”

Ridiculous.

And what if he
did
know him? What was the punch line? “Oh, this one time, in Chicago, he and I used a hundred-pack of condoms in record time.”

Bronte thought not.

She put some cash on top of the receipt for her breakfast, placed the salt shaker on top (as if it would blow away?), and decided to linger a bit longer over the newspapers. It was only eight o’clock in the morning after all; normally she would just be getting into the shower.

She flipped open the
Post
to Page Six and tsk-tsked in dismay. There in all of his tailored glory was the Duke of Northrop and
Lady
Lydia Barnes leaving La Grenouille after a “fabulous lunch,” gushed the insipid Lydia. The picture must have been snapped mere moments before they came upon Bronte swearing endlessly into her bucket bag.

From the way Page Six swooned over these members of the British aristocracy, you would think the colonies had never left the benevolent protection of King George III. Who was probably Max’s great-great-great-great-great-great uncle, thought Bronte dismally. Goddamned star-fucking
New
York
Post
. At least the gossipmongers had the good sense to mention Lydia’s Sarah James shoes, Bronte reluctantly conceded.

Bronte slapped the paper closed in disgust, left it on the table, and collected the rest of her things. She headed out of the diner and hailed a cab to take her to her office in Midtown.

By mid-morning, the early summer weather was starting to heat up. She had gone over her presentation one final time in front of April and Carol. They rolled their eyes repeatedly, having already heard the absolutely, positively perfect pitch in every stage of the Mowbray pursuit.

Finally, Carol cut her off and said, “I have more important things to do than watch you preen!” She patted Bronte on the back much like a high-school basketball coach might before the big game. “Go get ’em, Bron. You’ve got it in the bag.”

Mowbray had set up a small corporate office on Fifty-First Street, so Bronte decided to cover the four blocks on foot. She had her laptop and three extra hard copies of the presentation packet to give to James and his colleagues, and she had slipped her wallet and cell phone into her leather case rather than lug what was now officially The Absurdly Large Bag (preferably said with a haughty British accent).

She made the walk at a leisurely pace so she wouldn’t show up with a glistening sheen of sweat on her brow, then turned into the revolving door that led into the center of the multistory atrium lobby of the building. She checked in with the security guard, put on her visitor pass, and headed for the elevator bank that led up to the Mowbray offices.

She rechecked her appearance in the golden reflection of the inside of the elevator doors and thought at least she didn’t have anything to complain about in that department. She had decided to stick with the sassy-schoolmarm aesthetic she had going yesterday, today wearing an even starchier white broadcloth shirt with an even stauncher collar, clunky gold necklace and bracelet, and snug black pants and maybe-a-tiny-bit-too-high-for-daytime black pumps that, nonetheless, made her legs go to epic lengths.

She took a deep breath as the high floor approached, exhaled with concentration, then, once the elevator doors had opened completely, stepped out into the lobby with a smile for the charming receptionist she had met during her two previous visits.

“Hello, nice to see you again. I am Bronte Talbott from BCA here to see James Mowbray, please.”

“Yes, of course, he is expecting you. He is just finishing up his ten o’clock meeting. If you’d like to take a seat, I will bring you to the conference room in a moment, Ms. Talbott.”

Bronte waited in the lobby of the modern, immaculate offices of W. Mowbray & Sons and began to abstractly contemplate the rest of the day. After she slam-dunked this pitch (no point in false modesty when you were talking to yourself, she reasoned) she might just ask James Mowbray if he had any interest in escorting her to the CFDA gala that night. What better way to do a full, one-hundred-gigabyte memory wipe of one British dream man than to substitute him with another equally charming British dream man?

As if summoning the substitute dream man into existence, the receptionist’s phone rang and she picked up the call with a smile and a glance toward Bronte. She replaced the receiver after a few seconds, then rose from behind the desk, coming around front and quietly gesturing for Bronte to follow.

“Right this way, Ms. Talbott. Mr. Mowbray is available to see you now.”

Bronte always entered a state of heightened awareness at times like these; she was reminded of football players, helmets in hand, walking ape-like down the darkened tunnel leading out to the overbright stadium, the swell of the crowd rising in anticipation—that moment of darkness and inner quiet, and a little fear, quickly shaken off and tossed (until the next time) into the rapid current of forward action.

In what Bronte had initially mistaken for a moment of complimentary weakness, her father had once likened her to a shark. (
Good
, she’d thought,
killer
instinct
.) Then he had gone on to elucidate: blind, constant, relentless forward motion, water over the gills… or death.

Bronte did live in a world of swirling, infinite motion. She frowned momentarily, then brought herself briskly back to the present. She took a few deep breaths as she stared down at the immaculate, soundless, gray carpet that passed beneath her feet on the way toward Mowbray’s conference room. She shook the mild annoyance she felt at the thought of her father’s noncompliment and entered the conference room with what could only be described as a swagger, reaching her free hand out to clasp James’s with genuine warmth.

“It’s such a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Mowbray.” She beamed.

“As it is to see you, Ms. Talbott. And, please, do call me James.” For fuck’s sake, did he have to sound exactly like Max? That British purr was deadly.

“Please, call me Bronte. Please.” She smiled, genuinely as it happened.

“All right then… Bronte. We are all looking forward to hearing your pitch and moving forward with our final decision on the campaign.”

“As am I,” she said through a soft laugh. “Oh, and before I forget, I do have—not that this is meant as any inducement, or anything”—soft laugh—“but my client Sarah James has an extra ticket to the CFDA gala tonight at Lincoln Center if you or one of your colleagues would like to go.”