The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken (18 page)

Niles Townsend calls me midway through the morning, right as Sybil drops an over-stuffed document mailer, bearing the stamp of a bicycle courier service, on my desk. I’ve been waiting to hear from him with a mix of anticipation and nausea. He’s returned from Cutler’s Los Angeles office. The firm left me a voicemail sometime overnight that they’re preparing an offer for him. If I can convince Niles to accept, the commission will stave off my looming down-market move for at least half a year. Of course, if I leave my place, I won’t have to dread facing Kevin daily. Which until recently was an unforeseeable wrinkle.

“So how did it go?” I try to sound as un-invested as possible, but I’m holding my breath.

“You know, I really think they’re a fit.”

I exhale. Not audibly, I hope.

“That’s great, Niles. I’m sure you know they’re very excited about you, too.”

“The thing is, Zoë, their number isn’t where it needs to be.”

I don’t respond for fear of saying the absolute wrong thing. In my day to day life I work with associates who are happy to toil for six-figure salaries that start with a one. In fact, given the headlines these days, the ninety-plus hours a week junior attorneys snivel way less about their gold handcuffs than they did a year ago. In contrast, Cutler & Boone has offered Niles Townsend, who’s barely past forty, an equity partnership starting January 1st, and annual compensation in the amount of $1.2 million. As Carol would say, he ought to be showing us a bit more gratitude. And I can’t say I disagree. There’s just something fundamentally wrong with a person who whines about seven figures when most people are grateful to be employed at all. Impeccably mannered, but hopelessly self-absorbed Niles surely doesn’t realize I’ve spent dozens of hours going over his revenues and experience with half the people he’s met, in what I view as a successful attempt to justify his salary expectations.

“Susie and I think they need to find me another $200,000.”

“That would put you out of line with what other partners with your level of business make. You know they can’t do that.”

“If they want me, they will.” He sounds like a spoiled kindergartener. “That’s what Susie says, and I agree.”

“Niles, Susie isn’t exactly an objective party here.”

“She’s my most trusted adviser.” I ignore the not-so-subtly implied dig at me. I can tell this conversation is going nowhere good, so I defuse the situation by promising to see what I can do.

Carol’s standing over me when I hang up. Her make-up looks okay today, and she’s not frowning or snorting air through her nostrils. All good signs. “I hate when the wives meddle,” she says. “Do you think you’ve got this?”

“Absolutely.”

“What’s your plan?” She folds her arms across her chest and drums her bejeweled fingers against her elbows.

“I’m going to call Cutler, tell them Niles is really close to saying yes, gush about the synergies for a few minutes, ask them to split the difference, and sell that to Niles.”

“You mean sell it to Susie.”

“Right.”

“I’ve taught you well. Let me know if you need help closing. I don’t want to lose him.” Evidently satisfied that I haven’t torpedoed a huge fee through my woeful incompetence, she turns her attention toward New Girl, who is unabashedly reading her Hotmail messages. Carol lurks over her victim’s desk for a full minute and a half, unnoticed. When New Girl signs off Hotmail and swivels in her chair, she actually squeaks and jumps. Carol, satisfied her mere presence has scared the daylights out of the next person she’ll fire, heads back to her office.

When I hear the door slam behind her, I decide it’s safe to open the package. It contains a pile of legal documents. At first I think there’s some mistake, but then I look more closely. The papers are copies of a contract for sale, a deed, condo documents, and a settlement statement for the purchase of my apartment. Oscar has bought my place from Brendan’s dad for almost a million dollars. He closed last week.

And he gifted it to me this morning before boarding a flight to Los Angeles, which lands in two hours.

After I’ve dragged Marvin across the street to Starbucks, plied him with coffee and sworn him to secrecy on his grandmother’s grave, his clandestine flask, and a stack of Bibles that mean nothing to him, he confirms my analysis of the contents of the envelope.

“Nothing says l-o-v-e
love
like Manhattan real estate,” he says.

“This is insane. Last week I was wondering if we’re an official item and now he’s buying my place?”

“Well, we’ve known from the get-go that your white knight’s a fan of the grand gesture. The move with the flowers was the stuff of Hollywood.”

“I can’t accept it.”

“You can and you will.”

“I can’t. I could never repay him.” I know I’m not an expert on how functional male-female relationships should work, but I’m pretty certain that Oscar’s latest move is well outside the usual realm of normalcy.

“Fear not, honey. He doesn’t expect remuneration in kind.” Marvin grins lasciviously.

“Don’t. This is serious.”

Marvin refuses to let it go. “I wonder how many blow jobs a Murray Hill flat is worth? Thank God you don’t live on the Upper East Side, girl.”

“You’re really not helping.” He’s actually starting to tick me off. I don’t need his lewd commentary. I need to figure out what to do when Oscar lands in an hour and switches on his phone. “Even if he wanted to get Brendan off my back by purchasing the apartment, he didn’t have to give it to me. Why did he do that?”

“That’s where the grand gesture comes in. He doesn’t want to be your landlord. He wants to be your hero.” Marvin takes a too-big swig of his coffee and winces as it burns his tongue. “I wish I could find a gay Oscar. That would solve so many of my problems.”

I love Oscar’s manliness, but I’m not sure I want to be cast as the damsel to his knight. I let the remark slide and go for the other opening Marvin provided. “Except you like younger men.”

“Ah. There’s that. I guess I should get back to it, if I’m going to have to sweep some unsuspecting boy-child off his feet with a flat in TriBeCa.”

“As if. But Marvin, thanks for keeping this between us.”

“Of course. You know I love a secret.” He picks a piece of lint off his monogrammed cuff and says he has to get back to the office for a noon meeting with a litigator who fears confrontation.

Oscar’s phone remains shut off, so his plane must be late. After the fourth or fifth attempt to reach him live, I leave a voicemail saying I’m floored, speechless, and generally blown away by his generosity. Then I add that we need to talk about this as soon as possible. For the rest of the afternoon, I jump a little whenever my phone rings, but he doesn’t call. Not unusual. If he landed late, his day will have gotten going without him and he’ll be racing to catch up.

Tonight Kevin’s tarnished, but still alive, candidate will speak at a fundraiser for the Feminist Majority. Angela’s going, and though I pleaded poverty when I got the invitation several weeks ago, now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t take a page out of my new boyfriend’s book. If I show up, personal check in hand, Kevin will have to accept my grand gesture of contrition. Right? Because he won’t know about Oscar’s ludicrous gift to me. Yet.

I send Angela an email saying I’m in.
Vogue
bought two tables and hopefully I can squeeze in at one of them. Otherwise I might be facing a less appetizing evening. I could end up choking down rubber chicken at a table by the kitchen, surrounded by militant mullet sporting biker-chicks. She shoots a message back saying no problem, and that they actually have one more place because half the office has been felled by some early season flu, so I should round up another warm body if possible.

“Marvin?” I yell over the grey cubicle dividers.

“What?”

“You want to spend two-hundred-fifty bucks on abortion rights tonight?”

“Why?” he yells back. The Town Crier shushes him.

“There will be at least a couple of hot male models at the table?” I mean to say it persuasively but it comes out sounding doubtful. Marvin must not pick up on the nuance because he hollers that he’s in. Maybe it will be okay, even if Angela doesn’t bring along any eye candy of the male variety. Marvin always says he doesn’t get enough wear out of his tux.

Oscar finally calls as I’m in the cab on the way to the fundraiser, sporting my trusty black dress yet again. I’ve stashed a personal check in my borrowed-from-
Vogue
Valentino clutch. It’s written out for the minimum donation. For a second I thought about going higher, but I elected not to cross that fine line which separates a grand gesture from a foolish and desperate act.

“Hi, beautiful,” he says when I answer. “Did you think about me today?”

“Of course I did. All day long while I listened to disgruntled associates re-hash their personal problems.” That’s what they do now; they frame their complaints by proxy. It’s out of vogue to whine overtly about their working conditions in the middle of the Great Recession. So they snivel about their private lives instead. “How could I not? But Oscar, it’s just too much. I can’t accept an entire apartment from you.”

“Why not?” I’m surprised that
he
sounds so genuinely surprised.

“Because it’s worth seven figures and I—I don’t even know where this is going. Or what we are. Or whatever.”

“So just because we haven’t bestowed a label on our relationship means I can’t buy you a present?”

“Come on. We both know this isn’t a normal present. And I’m not saying we need a label. I mean we should get to know each other better.”

“But I know you well enough to see that this is what you need, so it’s what I want to give you.”

The cab pulls up to the W Hotel and the driver sticks his hand out for payment. A few yards ahead, Angela’s disembarking from her own taxi, smoothing a hot pink silk number that gives her cleavage a major boost and cascades in an avalanche of ruffles from her hips to her knees. “We are so not done discussing this,” I tell Oscar reluctantly. “But I have to run. I’m late.”

“You know, you could take the easy road and say thank you. That’s really all I need.”

“Well, thank you then. But I’m still not accepting it. I’ll call you later.” I hang up and silence the ringer before he can object again.

Marvin comes out of nowhere, resplendent in his Armani tuxedo. He plants air kisses on both my cheeks and Angela’s. “Where are all the beautiful boys?” he twitters.

“Upstairs, waiting for you, of course.” Angela doesn’t miss a beat. Nor does she find it odd that twenty-one-year-old hotties regularly respond to middle-aged Marvin’s advances. He has just enough money, pedigree and gravitas to bed them. By the time they realize Marvin’s not in it for the long haul, they’ve also discovered that maybe he doesn’t possess enough of those three enchanting qualities anyway. Consequently Marvin hardly ever suffers an unpleasant break up.

The three of us make our way through the modern lobby and up one flight to the ballroom. It looks like a solid turnout. Maybe the fact that it’s early in the week helps because people don’t have as many competing obligations. We join the steady stream of donors inching towards a reception table, where a large punch bowl is already half full of checks, some tastefully veiled in plain envelopes, and others, like mine, unapologetically flaunted.

Kevin is at the table, looking over the shoulder of the pretty girl greeting guests and taking cash. He looks nervous. Angela says he told her that the campaign is pretty much wagering O’Malley’s political future on tonight’s speech. When he sees us next in line he comes around from behind the table and doles out air kisses. Maybe it’s my imagination, but his token of affection seems icy and distant, like he’s greeting some garden club acquaintance of his grandmother’s. “Thanks for showing up. You ladies look lovely.”

“Thanks. I guess my little black dress has risen to the occasion yet again,” I say, as Angela surveys the crowd. A smattering of panache—probably the
Vogue
folks and other media people. A fair number of women in black dresses that are nice but not quite right, possibly because they feel inexplicably entitled to wear them straight off the rack. And a healthy representation of women who look like they might prefer to be men. By which I mean they’ve applied the invitation’s black tie directive to themselves.

Angela glances pointedly at this last group, bats her false eyelashes and swings her hips so the ballerina skirt of her dress sways playfully.

“Someone has to put the feminine in feminist.”

“You’re terrible,” Kevin says.

Angela shakes her head and her earrings, a cascade of crystals and fresh water pearls by Dior, sparkle. “There’s nothing wrong with being a lesbian. But isn’t the beauty of
liking
women that you’d appreciate the beauty
of
women?”

“There’s no accounting for taste.” I cringe as this crosses my lips. It comes out sounding like a dig. What I meant to say is that maybe we should be enlightened enough to practice a little live and let live.

Kevin waits until the reception girl’s attention is focused on checking in a group of five couples, then hisses at both of us, “Could you two please try to mumble though the next few hours without pissing off any group of the Councilman’s key constituents?”

“Relax, Kev,” Angela coos, but then can’t resist adding, “The stress is getting to you isn’t it?”

“I’m fine.”

“If by fine you mean you’ve morphed into a judgmental, self-important prick, then yes, you are.” Wait. I just said that out loud. Damn it.

Before I can utter anything to redeem myself, the Councilman appears, looking surprisingly pulled together. Kevin introduces Angela and me but then whisks the candidate off somewhere to go over his remarks one last time.

“Let’s go find the bar,” Angela says. “I think we’re in for a long night.”

“We could sneak out now. They have our money,” I suggest hopefully, as we edge towards the alcohol.

“I can’t leave the magazine’s table looking abandoned. That would not be good for my career.” She checks over both shoulders to make sure nobody’s listening to us. “And, between you and me, it sounds like my boss’s job might be opening up. She thinks she’s all discreet, but
everyone
, even people in other departments on other floors, knows that she’s seriously considering taking her maternity leave in the new year, and then resigning.”