Trading Up (37 page)

“Yes, Mrs. Paxton?” Gerda asked, sticking her head in the doorway of the dressing room.

“Are the boys settled for the night? I have to go out to meet Mr. Paxton.”

“They’re playing on the computer,” Gerda said.

“Good,” Mimi said. She picked up a multicolored snakeskin Fendi purse, checking to make sure it contained a tube of lipstick and a comb. “We probably won’t be back for a couple of hours, so make sure the boys get to bed.”

“Very good, Mrs. Paxton,” Gerda said, wondering at Mimi’s sharp tone.

Mimi strode down the hallway and through the living room to a foyer, which led to another hallway, at the end of which were the maids’ rooms and two small bedrooms for George’s children. She poked her head into one of the bedrooms: Georgie and Jack were huddled in front of a brand-new state-of-the-art computer, like two small (well, one small and one very large, she thought) animals crouched in front of a fire; they barely looked up when she entered. “Good night, boys,” she said.

“Your father and I will be home later, so don’t wait up.”

“G’night,” Jack mumbled. For a second, Mimi wondered if she should make the motherly effort to kiss them good night, but Georgie’s slightly hostile expression deterred her, and she closed the door with a small bang, suddenly reminded of how much the boys seemed to love Janey.

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Goddamned Janey, she thought, removing a sable coat from the front hall closet and slipping it over her shoulders. On the surface of things, it wasn’t her fault that her sister needed a place to stay, but Mimi suspected some kind of subterfuge.

It wasn’t
what
she had said but the
way
she had broached the topic—without warning and with a superior tone in her voice, as if she had wanted revenge for something Mimi had done. Mimi couldn’t imagine what she was getting at, which potentially placed her in a position of weakness, and so she had backed off.

But it was all so damn inconvenient, she thought angrily, entering the elevator. The elevator man smiled at her, but instead of chatting with him, as she usually did, she merely nodded. In two weeks, she and George were leaving for Aspen, and she supposed she could try to put Zizi up in a hotel, but that would increase the possibility of getting caught. The beauty of Janey’s apartment, even though it was absolutely rank (the first time she’d seen it, Mimi had been shocked that Janey had lived there and she imagined her as a phoenix who rose from the ashes of her dingy apartment every night), was that it was discreet: There were no doormen to take notice of her comings and goings, and the other residents of the building were too old or too poor to possibly know who she was. Well, she would figure something out, she thought fiercely, pulling on her gloves as she crossed the lobby.

And in the meantime, she would punish Janey a little, by pretending to be too busy to see her, so she understood she wasn’t ever to use that high-handed tone with her again . . .

The doorman held open the door, and she stepped outside. It was snowing quite hard now, but Fifth Avenue had a wonderfully hushed quality and the softened streetlights shining into the blackness of Central Park created the feeling of an enchanted forest. She started forward, meaning to get into her car, but she suddenly heard someone call out her name, and recognizing Zizi’s voice, nearly jumped out of her skin.

For a second, she stood stock still, and then, realizing that she was completely visible in the bright light coming from the lobby, quickly moved to the side of the building, into the darkened area by the bushes. Zizi was covered with a heavy dust-ing of snow, as if he’d been waiting outside for a long time, and she immediately knew that something was terribly wrong.

“What’s happened?” she asked in a stage whisper, longing to brush the snow off his head but knowing that any gesture she made might be observed and duly noted by the doormen.

“I have to talk to you,” he said. The expression on his face was angry, as if he’d suffered a great insult and was holding her responsible.

“We can’t talk here,” she said, glancing around nervously. “Can’t I see you tomorrow?” she pleaded. And then added, “I have to meet George . . .” 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:23 PM Page 198

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“That’s always the problem,” he said, disgustedly. And in that moment, she knew he was going to break up with her.

She took a few steps down the block, as if to lead him away from danger.

“Please, darling,” she said reasonably, knowing the only way to prevent the situation from exploding was to remain calm. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow. I’ll come to you after lunch. Around two perhaps . . .”

He shook his head stubbornly; she could see that his mind was made up. “We mustn’t see each other anymore,” he said, with devastating simplicity. She had known that this might happen eventually, but she took a step back, feeling like her insides were crumbling, aware that she mustn’t make a scene, and that she wouldn’t be able to sway his decision. Zizi was young and often confused about how to live his life, and when he made a choice he clung to it with fierce resolve, as if to beat his uncertainty into submission.

She wanted to scream,
“Why?”
like a wounded animal, but years of social training suddenly kicked in, and she managed to draw herself up and, with a completely neutral expression on her face, ask, “Where will you go then?” He looked relieved that she wasn’t going to make a fuss, and that hurt her more than anything, she thought sadly. “I’m going to Europe,” he said. “I saw Harold Vane this afternoon, and I leave tomorrow.”

She smiled at him as if he were a stranger at a cocktail party, feeling as if she were standing outside her body, watching two people in a play. She held out her hand. “This is good-bye, then,” she said.

He took it, searching her face for some deeper response, but she was incapable of giving it to him. And then, in a moment of passion, he leaned forward and grabbed her awkwardly by the shoulders, kissing her on the cheek.

“Someday I’ll be rich,” he said fervently. “And then I will come and find you.” She was too shocked to respond. He let her go and took a step back. If he didn’t turn away, if he approached her again or tried to speak further to her, she would collapse, she thought, she would fall to the sidewalk in a heap . . .

But he didn’t approach her. After one last, longing glance, he abruptly turned away, and began rapidly walking up the sidewalk, making a sharp turn up the side street as if he didn’t trust himself not to look back.

She stood looking after him for a few moments, and then took stock of herself.

She was strangely okay, she thought; the trick now was to put the incident out of her mind, until she was alone and could analyze it and mourn in private. Somehow, her legs moved, carrying her to the car; Muhammad got out and opened the door.

“I hope that man wasn’t bothering you,” he said. She slid onto the backseat; the door closed behind her with a firm, metallic click.

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“Not at all,” she said evenly, as Muhammad got into the front seat. “He’s an old friend of mine . . . He just told me that his mother died.”

“That’s terrible,” Muhammad said. “I hope he is okay.”

“I think . . . he’s pretty upset about it,” she said distractedly, wondering how she’d gotten into this absurd conversation.

The car went around the corner, and began a slow crawl up Madison Avenue.

They finally reached the Carlyle Hotel, and Mimi got out. George was at a table with some out-of-town business associates; going through the round of introductions was agony. Would she have a drink? No, she would prefer not to, and she thought the snow was beautiful, but inconvenient. She doubted that anyone would be snowed in in the morning, the snow was supposed to end around midnight.

George finally took his leave, and they exited through the revolving doors, with George following behind her. He never quite got the nuances of proper gentlemanly behavior, like the fact that a man was supposed to get into the backseat of a car first, so the woman didn’t have to slide, or that a man always led through a revolving door, so the woman didn’t have to push. Out on the sidewalk, he stopped, and looking up and down the street, asked, “Should we take Pike or Muhammad?” She paused, struck by the absurdity of the question, and by the reality of having
two
cars and
two
drivers. When she was a child, everyone she knew had cars and drivers, but to have two would have been considered excessive and déclassé, and instead of finding the situation amusing, as she normally would have, she now saw that it was merely depressing . . .

“Let’s take Muhammad,” she said. Her knees suddenly felt weak, and she was afraid that they wouldn’t support her if she tried to step up into the van.

“You’re the boss,” George said, holding the car door open for her.

As he settled onto the seat next to her, she saw that he was looking terribly pleased with himself—his expression was the same as if he’d just closed a huge deal.

Earlier in the day, he’d asked her to meet him at the Carlyle, promising some kind of “surprise,” and she’d been curious, but now she hardly felt up to it. “George,” she asked, placing her hand over his, “can the surprise wait until tomorrow? I’m feeling a little . . . ill.”

George instinctively moved his hand away from hers, and as he did so, she realized that she did, indeed, feel sick. She was overcome by a wave of nausea, but in a second, it passed, and she leaned back against the seat.

“It won’t take more than a few minutes,” George promised, dispassionately, and then he began a conversation with Muhammad about the stock market.

Mimi tuned him out, the way she often did these days, and tried to think about her bed, where, if she was lucky, she might be in half an hour or so. But it was of lit-18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:23 PM Page 200

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tle comfort—George would be in the bed, too, and looking over at his bland, round face, she suddenly wished she could get away from him. She thought about shouting to Muhammad to stop, and running out of the car; she would go to a local bar and drown her sorrows in whiskey. But she couldn’t do that . . . the car was pulling up in front of a building on Park and Sixty-ninth Street . . .

Mimi looked out the window, staring at the heavy wooden door in confusion.

She recognized it immediately; she knew the apartment it led to intimately—one of her girlfriends had lived there as a child, and later, despite the fact that the apartment had changed hands several times, she’d attended dozens of parties there. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Are we going to a party? The Finchbergs haven’t lived here for over a year . . .”

George took her arm and hustled her out of the car. “We’re not
going
to a party,” he said, raising his eyebrows in glee, “but I certainly hope we’ll be
giving
a few of our own . . .”

She stopped and caught her breath, immediately comprehending his meaning.

“Oh George,” she gasped, noting that for some reason she seemed to be having a hard time breathing. “You didn’t . . .”

“I did indeed,” he said, ringing the bell. “I snapped it up before it even came on the market.”

They walked through the lobby and got into the tiny elevator. Mimi suddenly had the distinctly unpleasant feeling that her bowels were going to loosen uncontrollably, and she felt the blood drain from her face. But George didn’t appear to notice—he never noticed anything with her, not really, she thought hopelessly, and half the time he tried to treat her like an employee . . .

The elevator door opened and they stepped out into the magnificent foyer.

Mimi tried to look around, but there was a buzzing in her head, and a shadow seemed to be creeping in from the periphery of her vision. The renovation and redecoration of the apartment would take months and months, she thought, putting her hand to her head to stop the growing blackness, and then George would expect her to entertain lavishly and extensively—that was the reason he had married her. But who was she fooling, she thought desperately, as the buzzing in her head seemed to grow louder. This was her life, she had chosen it, and now, with this apartment, there would never, ever, be any getting away from it . . .

And in one final, frantic gesture, she grabbed at George’s coat sleeve, feeling the soft cashmere fabric slip out of her fingers just before she crumpled to the eighteenth-century inlaid marble floor.

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e l ev e n

it was the middle of the month, and, so far, aside from the incident with Zizi, Janey was having a marvelous December.

While the rest of the country was fixated on the presidential election scandal, consumed with dimpled and dangling chads, a certain segment of New York society had more important things on their minds: Specifically, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. For the first time in history, the show was to be televised; in the week leading up to the show, every newspaper in town had carried photographs and stories about the models, and the
New York Times
had even done a feature piece about the advisability of showing nearly naked women on network TV. The result was that Janey was recognized nearly everywhere she went, and while her “fame” wasn’t of the type that drove people to ask her for her autograph, it was glamorous enough to secure her the very best booth at Dingo’s, the hot new restaurant that had opened at the end of November.

For reasons that could only be explained along the same lines as why bees suddenly decide to swarm and leave the nest, Dingo’s had become
the
place for lunch, with a pecking order as regimented as a chicken coop. For two hours a day, between twelve-thirty and two-thirty, Dingo’s was its own small fiefdom, full of intrigues and veiled threats and mini power plays, which were as thrilling to its denizens as they were horrifying to the few poor souls who occasionally wandered into Dingo’s unawares, only to be told that a table was not available, or that the wait would be at least two hours.