Trading Up (3 page)

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The traffic came to yet another halt just before Exit 70, and feeling a renewed sense of her personal power, Janey took the opportunity to flip open the large lighted mirror in the car’s sun visor. Her reflection never failed to satisfy her, and leaning forward, she marveled at her own beauty.

Her hair, long, thick, and blond, was like cream; the shape of her face nearly perfect with its high forehead and small, neat chin. Her eyes were blue and turned up ever so slightly at the outer corners, promising a certain mysterious intelligence, while her full lips (recently made even fuller by injections from her dermatologist) implied a certain childlike innocence. Indeed, the only technical flaw was her nose, which had a slightly bulbous, turned-up tip, and yet, without this nose she would have been a cold, classical beauty. Because of it, her beauty became accessible, giving the common man the impression that he could have her if only he could manage to meet her.

She was, indeed, so engrossed in her appearance that she didn’t notice that the traffic had finally begun to move until a few sharp horn blasts from the car behind her broke her reverie. Annoyed and slightly embarrassed, she looked into the rearview mirror and saw that the offending driver was a stunningly handsome young man sitting behind the wheel of a hunter green Ferrari. Janey was immediately filled with envy—she’d always loved that Ferrari—but her resentment turned into pure jealousy when she saw who the passenger was: Pippi Maus.

Pippi and her younger sister, Nancy Maus, comprised the Maus acting sisters from Charleston, South Carolina. They had faces like little mice but possessed enviable figures of the type so rarely found in nature: They were skinny girls with naturally huge breasts. Notoriously talentless, in Janey’s mind they represented

“everything that was wrong with the world”; still, they had managed to carve out careers by playing quirky characters in independent films. Janey couldn’t imagine how, or why, Pippi was on her way out to the Hamptons—from Janey’s point of view Pippi wasn’t the sort of person who belonged there—but even more mysterious was what she was doing with such an amazingly gorgeous guy. Even stuffed into the little Ferrari seat she could tell that he was tall—maybe even 6'4"—with the lean body, full lips, and chiseled face of a male model. Perhaps he was gay—

Pippi, after all, was the kind of girl who probably only hung out with gay men—but Janey suspected from the macho way he had leaned on his horn that he was not.

And then, adding insult to injury, the Ferrari made a sudden sideways move and pulled onto the shoulder. In a second, it was passing her as if she were no more significant than a bug. Pippi squealed with delight as Janey glared at the driver. His eyes met hers, and for a second, Janey was completely taken aback. His shocked expression was that of a man who has suddenly seen an angel . . .

But then the green car disappeared around the bend in the exit, and Janey was 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:22 PM Page 14

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left feeling, once again, that somehow she’d been left behind. If she couldn’t take the seaplane to the Hamptons, then she ought to be in a car like that, with a guy like that . . . Nibbling absentmindedly at an imaginary hangnail, she consoled herself with the fact that she was sure the driver had instantly fallen in love with her—and that he might be exactly the sort of man she was looking for. And expertly sliding the clutch into third gear, she mused about how much fun it would be to take him away from Pippi Maus.

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t wo

mimi kilroy ’s memor ial Day weekend party was legendary and strictly A list; and as it was covered by every newspaper and magazine in town, it was impossible to pretend that it didn’t exist—which was the only option if you weren’t invited. Janey had never been asked before, and every summer it had been a thorn in her side to know that one hundred of the coolest, most talented, and most important people in New York had been invited, and that she was most specifically
not
among them. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how many times she said in a scoffing tone of voice, “It’s only a stupid party,
please,
” she could never get over the distinct feeling that Mimi had cruelly and deliberately passed her over.

And this feeling was not mediated by logic—after all, Mimi didn’t really
know
her. Nevertheless, in years past, Janey had done everything possible to finagle her way into the party, from giving a blow job to a man she hardly knew in the hope that he would take her as his guest, to reconnoitering the beach behind Mimi’s house to see if she could sneak in the back. But the real blow had come four years ago, when she was dating Peter Cannon and
he
had been invited to Mimi’s party.

“Why would she invite
you
?” she’d asked in disbelief, and he’d just looked at her and said snidely, “Why
wouldn’t
she invite me?”

“Because,” Janey said stubbornly. She longed to say, “Because you’re a nobody,” but she didn’t, because how would it make her look that she was dating a nobody?

And besides, she wanted him to take her to the party.

Peter wasn’t averse to taking her (every now and again, Janey noticed, he was capable of behaving like a human being), but Mimi prevented him. He RSVPed for two, then Mimi’s assistant had called and asked for the name of his guest.

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“Janey Wilcox,” he’d said.

She called back two hours later. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but
who
is your guest?”

“Janey Wilcox.”

“Yes, but who
is
she?”

“She’s a
girl,
” he’d said.

“But who is she? What does she
do
?”

“She’s a sort of . . .
model
?” Peter said.

“I’ll have to get back to you.”

Janey had yelled at him: “Why didn’t you tell her that I was an
actress
?”

“I dunno,” Peter said. “Because you really haven’t been one for five years?”

“That’s because I’m waiting for the right part,” Janey screamed.

Then the assistant had called back. “I’m
so
sorry,” she said, “but I talked to Mimi, and it turns out we’re overbooked this year. No one is allowed to bring a guest.”

This was a lie, and they all knew it.

At that moment, Janey’s feelings about Mimi crystallized into hate. She didn’t really know Mimi, but she hated her anyway—the way one might hate a movie star or a politician: She hated what she represented.

Unlike most people, Janey thought bitterly, Mimi had never wanted for anything. She’d never had to struggle; she’d never had to worry about how she was going to pay her rent. Technically, she’d had “careers” (as a model for Ralph Lauren, a VJ for VH1, a jewelry designer, and, most recently, an importer of pashminas, which she sold to her friends), but in Janey’s mind, Mimi had never really
done
anything, and was nothing more than a useless socialite who was always swaddled in designer clothes and whose photograph appeared in the party pages of various magazines each month.

But for Janey, the bitterest pill concerned Mimi’s appearance: She was tall and skinny, with that kind of thin, naturally blond hair that always looks stringy; nevertheless, everyone always insisted that she was “a beauty.” Janey couldn’t believe it. If Mimi weren’t rich, if she didn’t come from such a prominent family, there wouldn’t have been one guy in New York who would have given her the time of day. In short, Mimi was a blazing advertisement for the unfairness of life: If it weren’t for an accident of birth, she would be
nothing
.

Mimi’s mother was Tabitha Mason, a fifties movie star who came from a prominent Philadelphia family. Her father was Robert Kilroy of the California Kilroys; at the time of their marriage in 1955, he was the second youngest senator to be elected in history. When their first child, Sandy, a boy, was born in 1956, Tabitha gave up Hollywood to raise her family; two years later she gave birth to a baby girl, Camille, whom everyone called Mimi.

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As a child, Janey knew everything about Mimi—from her favorite color (pink), to the name of her pony (Blaze), on whose back Mimi had won a shelf full of trophies and blue ribbons. Janey knew all this, because all through the sixties and into the early seventies, women’s magazines like
Good Housekeeping
and
Ladies’ Home
Journal
featured stories about the glamorous Kilroy family; indeed, “The Kilroy Family Thanksgiving” was a yearly staple on which the less glamorous denizens of America could rely as solidly as cranberry sauce. And there was Mimi herself, year after year, in a pink dress with a lacy white pinafore and pink patent-leather Mary Janes, her hair done up in pigtails or fastened into a ponytail with a shiny ribbon; and later on, Mimi in her first long “hostess” gown, her stringy hair pulled back and topped with one of those large, fake buns that were so popular in the early seventies.

In these photographs, Mimi always appeared slightly gaunt, with large blue eyes that seemed to pop out of her head, but her expression was also slightly defiant, as if she knew how ridiculous it all was and frankly had better things to do with her time.

And little six-year-old Janey Wilcox, with her pudgy face and thick, mousy brown hair, would study those photographs and wonder why she hadn’t been born Mimi Kilroy! Somehow, this Mimi Kilroy person had ended up with what should have been Janey’s life.

But time passed and things happened, and Janey forgot all about Mimi Kilroy—until she arrived in New York in the late eighties.

Janey was barely twenty years old and had just returned after modeling in Europe for the summer. She was immediately taken up by an investment banker named Petie—he was probably in his early thirties but to Janey he seemed ancient.

He wore his dark hair slicked back from his forehead, his eyes were too close together, and he had the soft, delicate hands of a little girl, but he was easy to manipulate. One night he took her to an exclusive, private party at the Grolier Club; he hadn’t been invited himself but as he was one of the big investors in the club, they had to let him in.

The party was for the bad-boy Southern writer Redmon Richardly, and the crowd, raucous and drunk, had a self-satisfied air, as if there were no better people in New York and no better place to be. Right away, Janey could see that Petie, who was wearing a heavy English-style pinstriped suit, didn’t really belong there; he had an oily smoothness that Janey had interpreted as being urbane, but taken out of his element and placed in this crowd, she suddenly saw that he was nothing more than a sleazy money guy.

“Let’s go,” she whispered.

He looked at her like she was insane. “Huh?” he said, and taking her hand, pulled her upstairs to the bar.

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There was a girl at the bar surrounded by several men; as Petie ordered drinks, her eyes flickered and she jumped up from her barstool. Janey hadn’t seen a photograph of Mimi Kilroy for years, but she instinctually knew it
was
Mimi Kilroy, and she took a step back in awe.

She would always remember exactly how Mimi looked, for her elegant, deceptively expensive style was one Janey had been trying to copy ever since. She was wearing a crisp white shirt with large cuffs pushed halfway up her forearms and fastened with a pair of men’s heavy gold cuff links; the shirt was loosely tucked into a pair of fawn-colored fine suede pants. A man’s gold Rolex watch jangled on her wrist like a bracelet; on her right hand was a large oval sapphire ring. She wafted money like expensive perfume.

Mimi came up behind Petie and put her hands over his eyes. Petie jumped and turned around, grabbing her hands. She looked at him soulfully and said, “Hello, darling.”

She was one of those women who are much better looking in person than in photographs, as if what made her special was far too rare and elusive to be captured on film. Indeed, in years to come, Janey would muse that this might have explained why Mimi, for all her quality, never really made it beyond the borders of her small, circumscribed world—what she had couldn’t be transported and delivered to the masses. Still holding Petie’s hand, she leaned in and said, “There’s something I need to discuss with you in the bathroom,” and suddenly an expression of annoyed resignation crossed Petie’s face, as if he understood that he was once again about to be used.

“In a minute,” he said, and turning away from her, he took Janey’s arm and pulled her closer. “Do you know Janey Wilcox?” he asked.

Mimi held out a slim hand, and without interest said, “Nice to see you.” As her gaze slid back to Petie’s face, Janey was struck by the sound of her voice—she hadn’t known what to expect, but she’d never heard a voice like that, so rich and refined, and seeming to contain a range of subtle meanings. “Janey’s new in town,” Petie said. “She’s a model.”

Mimi looked at Janey coldly and, with a little laugh, said, “Who isn’t?” Then Janey, out of an innocent desire to make an impact on her idol, found herself saying, “I used to see your picture in magazines . . . when I was a kid . . .” And in the uncomfortable silence that followed, all Janey could think about was how her voice had come out in an annoying squeak.

Mimi looked at her as if summing her up, and then, deciding that what she saw was of no importance, said, “Really? I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about . . .” And giving Petie a meaningful look, turned away.

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thoroughly and rudely dismissed, but she couldn’t understand why. Petie, seeing her expression, said, “Don’t worry about it. Everyone knows Mimi hates other women, especially if they’re younger and prettier than she is . . . You’ll get used to it,” he said with a laugh as he handed Janey her drink.