Oh. Oh. Oh.
We had that long-awaited kiss. Delirious. Delicious. Much better than I had anticipated. This was it! Who would have thought? The handsome eye-patch-wearing Westonian prince—mine! Lights—camera—comeback! I knew I would soon be joining that great committee meeting in the sky—I mean, at the Costume Institute.
* PART THREE *
kingdom come
21.
castles in the air
Stephan proposed on bended knee, and I immediately accepted, of course. We went back to MogulFest to pack our bags and to share the good news with India.
“Darling, that’s wonderful!” she cheered, enveloping me in a giant bear hug. “Congratulations!”
“I know!” I cheered back. “I’m going to be a princess!”
“Of Westonia!”
“Not even a last name—just a country!”
India dropped me a demure curtsey. It was just like in that scene in that television movie of the week where Catherine Oxenberg played you-know-who and her “flatmates” all bowed down to her. I was touched.
On the plane ride back to civilization I daydreamed about the perfect wedding: the whole grand striped-tent, American-roses, white-glove affair that entailed the services of the Peter Duchin Orchestra and a much-anticipated trip to Vera Wang’s cozy boutique. Or perhaps I could go the downtown route: wedding as “happening.” Like Vanessa Beecroft’s, it would be a memorable frisson and fusion of avant garde and Old Guard. Three words: White. Plastic. Versace. A minidress and thigh-high white patent-leather boots. We would exchange vows in a loft, overlooking the city skyline, as the Gay Men’s Chorus sang Bette Midier and Edith Piaf tunes. A disco ball and drag queen attendants—what better way to cross the threshold than with India by my side. Guests would include Happy Rockefeller next to Li’l Kim next to Norman Mailer. It would be glorious!
But of course there was only one dead celebrity whose wedding dress I could wear for the most important day of my life—yes, the dead celebrity of all dead celebrities! Princess Diana’s wedding dress. Thank God I had had the foresight to buy it on eBay years ago!
I looked down at Stephan, slumbering against my shoulder, and wondered if he owned a military dress uniform from Westonia.
And with Stephan’s riches, he would secure funding for Arbiteur; oh, it was too perfect.
Back in Manhattan, Stephan and I drove right from the airport to Harry Winston. While his proposal was as romantic as I could have hoped, there was still the matter of the ring.
“What about this one?” I asked, pointing to a fifteen-carat wonder that could obliterate the sun. “I know, I could ask them to put it aside and you can surprise me with it!” I said breathlessly.
“Mmm…”
Stephan suggested he move in with me immediately, and I didn’t see why not. “Don’t you need anything from your apartment?” I asked, seeing that he only had a backpack with him from the trip.
“No, I don’t really need much,” he said.
“Oh.”
When we arrived at the loft, he was taken aback at the sight of the exposed wooden beams, the electrical cords hanging from the ceilings, as well as the lack of furniture. “What’s all this?” he asked, looking around curiously at the Lechters coolers and the wooden planks.
“Home, darling! Nouveau minimalism.” I explained, confused at finding the floor littered with cigarette ashes, empty champagne bottles, and invitations to nightclubs hosted by Norwegian party promoters.
He surveyed the premises and put down his backpack next to the temperature-controlled closet. “When you said you were a minimalist, I didn’t quite expect it to be so … sparse.”
Motioning to the exposed shower, he asked doubtfully, “You live in the bathroom?”
Hmmm … I supposed I’d have to ask Brother Parish to do something about that now that we had a man in the house.
“Well, I know it’s not much,” I said, gazing out at the empty expanse. “But of course we don’t have to stay here all the time.” I thought dreamily of his Fifth Avenue apartment and international real estate acquisitions. Baden-Baden, Beverly Hills, Buenos Aires …
“Of course not,” Stephan agreed, his face lighting up.
I raced around, calling for Bannerjee—I couldn’t wait to show Boing to Stephan, I knew he would love her immediately. I found Bannerjee tending to Boing, who was sleeping peacefully on her duvet coat. Thank heavens they were both all right! Banny giggled when I introduced her to Stephan.
“Oh, Banny, I’m so glad you and the baby made it through the great computer virus blackout!”
“What blackout?” Bannerjee asked. Apparently, the Hong Kong flu had done little to change life at our bare-bones homestead.
“You know, the one that short-circuited all the world’s computers and caused an electric shortage.”
“Ah, that why satellite television stop working,” Banny mused. “I think you forget pay cable bill.”
I picked up the sleeping baby and handed her to Stephan.
“She’s beautiful,” Stephan marveled. Boing opened her eyes groggily and reached up and grabbed his finger with her entire hand.
I watched the two of them together, my heart melting.
With Stephan at my side, we were bound to become one of those Manhattan couples who instantly added a cachet to any event, whose bliss-filled lives were assiduously documented step-by-step in glossy, oversize pages of very important magazines.
My first phone call was from Cece Phipps-Langley herself.
“Darling, is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“That you and Stephan are engaged? I saw India at the hair salon, she told me.”
“Yes, it is very true.”
“Well, you do have my heartfelt congratulations,” she purred. “Tell me, would you and Stephan be available for a little gettogether I’m throwing next week? I’m hosting a dinner for Brooke Astor.”
“Of course, darling,” I cooed.
Once Cece spread the word, my phone was ringing off the hook with luncheon invitations, private dinner parties, and junior committee chairwomen beseeching me to join their planning committees. I had my pick of a litter of diseases and global catastrophes and philanthropic art projects.
Since it was well known that Stephan was related to all the royal houses in Europe, New York society was beside itself with the rumor that the queen herself would be in attendance at our nuptials. The clamoring for invitations to the wedding caused the fax machine to spit out numerous entreaties from one Manhattan hostess after another—it was worse than the frenzy for reservations at a newly crowned four-star restaurant.
And who was I to keep the news from a fawning public? I was sure the press would go absolutely wild once they were appraised of our engagement. Everyone loves a princess. I’d have Heidi schedule interviews with Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, and Howard Stern. I was certain to be inundated with requests for numerous puffy profiles. I had my heart set on every glossy magazine’s style section: “In Her Closet” for Harper’s Bazaar, “Celebrity Closet Case” for Vogue; maybe there would even be cover stories in Town & Country and Manhattan File; perhaps Stephan and I would be caricatured in the front fold of the “Observatory” section of the New York Observer. And to think, what if The New York Times sent a lifestyle reporter to spend an hour shopping with me! “At Barneys with Cat McAllister,” I imagined the headline reading.
“What do you think?” I asked Stephan when I told him about my plans for a burgeoning media tidal wave.
“It’s great,” he agreed weakly. “But don’t you think a more private wedding would be in order?”
Privacy? Pish-posh. Besides, I had already commissioned Sergio, the mastermind behind several of the most famous weddings in recent history. The one who had chosen Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy’s nightgown-style wedding dress, alerted the helicopters to Madonna and Sean Penn’s nuptials, and convinced Tommy and Pamela to renew their vows in the nude. Who knew what he would have in
mind for our wedding! A Blue Angel salute while Whitney Houston forgot the words to “I Will Always Love You”?
The next day I returned to Harry Winston only to find that Stephan had yet to purchase the fifteen-carat rock I’d picked out the day before. What was taking him so long? I drummed my fingers on the glass display case in annoyance.
“What’s the matter? No diamond big enough for you?” a voice asked.
I looked up to see Brick smirking at me.
“Oh, hi, darling.”
“Congratulations on your engagement, by the way,” Brick said.
“Why, thank you,” I said politely.
“I just wanted to say you’ve chosen the right man.”
“That’s good of you to say.”
“But you know, I just wanted to tell you that I finally remembered where I’ve met your Stephan before.”
Oh? Where?”
“At Barneys.”
“Well, that’s a funny coincidence.” I laughed. “That’s where I first met him too.”
“I mean, at Barneys. He’s a tailor at Barneys.”
“What?”
“He works for Barneys. And not at the executive offices either, believe me. He fitted me for a bespoke suit not too long ago,” he explained with a wide grin.
“Brick, I don’t know what kind of sick joke you’re playing here…”
Brick chuckled. “Prince of Westonia, my ass. He’s my tailor at Barneys. Ask him yourself.”
“I will!” I threatened, stomping off the elevator in a rage. I decided Brick really needed to take some medication. Demerol deficiency was certainly not a laughing matter.
22.
alien abduction
Stephan a tailor at Barneys? How could it be true? Why, it was Cece Phipps-Langley herself who told me Stephan was rich and single and titled, and Cece’s word was as good as … well …
On second thought I remembered how often Cece was taken in by silver-tongued social climbers boasting ersatz elite backgrounds. There was the beautiful boy who claimed to be Steven Spielberg’s nephew and a friend of her son’s at prep school. He looked nothing like Steven Spielberg, and, indeed, turned out to be a Pakistani teenager whose real name was Anoushivran Fakhran. And what about her other pet project, Alberto de van Mije, the international playboy who passed himself off as a Cuban count—even though Cuba doesn’t and has never had an aristocracy?
How many times have I heard stories about this person or that person claiming to be from Geneva or East Egg or Locust Valley who turned out to be nothing more than ambitious art history students from New Jersey who had read Diane von Furstenberg’s autobiography as a shortcut to dropping hints of childhoods in Cologne and finishing schools in Switzerland? New York was the kind of place where you could reinvent yourself all the way up to noshing with the de Ocampos and the de la Rentas at Le Cirque. All you needed was a funny accent, a good haircut, and a great wardrobe. Gulp. Stephan certainly had all three. But it was such an awful thought, I couldn’t finish it.
Billy had called an emergency meeting and I arrived at Arbiteur to find him galvanized and the office tidied up just the tiniest bit—the new beauty product samples had all been put away into his medicine cabinet.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
India, who was sitting in her usual place, on the armrest, shrugged.
“Well, girls, it looks like MogulFest worked out after all,” Billy said grimly.
“How so?”
“We have a buyer.”
“We do?”
“Somebody is willing to buy Arbiteur?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“They wouldn’t say. But their lawyers contacted me on the day you both were leaving from MogulFest. Apparently they took a meeting with you at the conference.”
“They did?” I asked, racking my brains to remember if we had actually met anyone who had expressed an interest in buying Arbiteur. India looked just as confused as I did. As far as I remembered, we didn’t really do a lot of networking in Sun Valley.
“And they’ve assured me they have a way to take care of the Catwalk.com lawsuit,” he said slowly.
“So that’s great!” India cheered.
“Isn’t it?” I asked Billy.
“But there’s a catch.”
“Of course there is. What is it?”
“They want editorial control.”
“Why?”
“They’re an apparel company, and they want to use our editorials to influence our audience of extreme fashion addicts.”
“Sounds shady,” India noted.
“And they’re only offering one million dollars to buy the entire company.”
“One million dollars! That’s an insult!” India cried. “We’re worth a thousand times more than that! We’re an Internet company!”
“I know.” Billy sighed. “But they know about the imaginary staff, and the truth about the number of impressions we serve a day.”
“How horrible!”
“They’re willing to keep Cat and me on as editors, on a good salary … but—” he said, turning to India.
“But?”
“But there’s one catch—India.”
“Me?” India gulped.
“They don’t want you to be part of the new Arbiteur.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
“They think ‘Depeche Merde’ is a liability. They don’t like how India makes fun of celebrities.”
“Well, I never!” India was so insulted for once she had nothing to say for the moment. Then she looked at the two of us and told us in a quavering voice, “That’s fine, darlings. I have lived through worse. Don’t worry about me.”
Poor India. It wasn’t the first time she had found herself in dire straits. I remembered how a few years earlier, when we had met up again in New York after losing touch after Japan, she had shown up at my doorstep, a chubby, puffy wreck with brittle hair and a disgraceful manicure, wearing a shabby, yellow-stained Pucci sheath that hugged in all the wrong places, giving the impression of psychedelic sausage casing.
Apparently after coasting the New Wave tsunami for a while, India’s short-lived foray into Jap-and-roll ended abruptly in 1985, when the New Kids on the Block burst on the international music scene. Suddenly, the Japanese who used to be mad for sloe-eyed, ambiguously sexual, ersatz British rock stars went crazy over apple cheeked Boston pseudotoughs. India’s band could barely land a gig, and she was not about to part with the lip liner and asymmetric haircut for a Chess King wardrobe. So the band fired India, who then drifted from one louche assignment to another, answering phones at an upper-class whorehouse one day, cleaning toilets in a gay bathhouse the next.
India didn’t know what to do, but certainly wasn’t content with just wearing sissy-boy clothes anymore. India wanted the real thing—to reveal her true nature and unleash it upon an innocent world. India was ready to be India. But the process turned out to be more expensive than she anticipated, too much even for a boy of her quasi-aristocratic blood—not that her family’s crumbling estate in Normandy was worth anything. But somehow, she lied, cheated, and wormed her way into a bit of money and repaired posthaste to Denmark for the life-changing procedure.
Unfortunately after several weeks, India was still sporting a concave chest, facial hair, and a voice as deep as a ravine. India needed more work: more surgery, more hormone therapy, not to mention a much more fabulous wardrobe. Why become a woman if the closest she could get was Billy Jean King’s ugly older sister? India was in danger of living life as a failed transsexual, if there was ever such a thing.
I took her in, of course; hanging around her tiny studio apartment decorated with Patrick Nagel posters, lip-synching to whatever Culture Club or Flock of Seagulls cover she was going to perform that night, were some of the happiest, most carefree times of my life. So, as per the suggestion of an imperious transvestite we met at a Tupperware party at the Gay and Lesbian Center on Christopher Street, I took India to Pue
rto Rico to get it done correctly. In the homeland of Menudo, India became a woman at last. The full-body liposuction was a birthday gift.
I was there for her then, and there was no way I would let her down now.
“It’s not Arbiteur without India.”
“Of course not,” Billy said.
“Billy, we can’t sell out. Let me talk to Stephan, my fiancé,” I pleaded. “He’s rich. I’m sure he can help us.”
“No, Cat, no,” Billy argued. “It’s not fair to you. This is business, not personal. And what if he thinks you’re a gold digger?”
“Billy’s right. You don’t want to jeopardize your relationship,” India agreed. “You don’t know how Stephan will react. And you finally got what you wanted, Cat. I wouldn’t want you to lose it.
“Don’t be so glum, Billy, we can always go back to what we did before,” she added.
“What was that?” I asked, intrigued.
“Run an escort agency from his apartment.”
“Oh!” I said, remembering my first visit.
Billy didn’t laugh. If this mysterious investor bought out Arbiteur, it was certain he would insist we move our offices—and that was a situation he faced with horror. After all, it would mean he would have to leave his apartment.
When I arrived home, I decided to tell Stephan about Arbiteur right away. Even if India and Billy had entreated me not to sour my chances of being the future Princess of Westonia, I knew that Stephan would do anything to help. As for the preposterous accusation Brick Winthrop had leveled—what rubbish. He was probably just jealous Stephan had a title and he didn’t.
“Stephan darling,” I said, when I entered the loft, “I need to—”
“There’s someone here,” Stephan said.
“Oh. But, I wanted to ask—”
“I think you need to speak to him right now,” Stephan said ominously.
“All right, but …”
I walked into the room to find a dark-suited man with mirrored sunglasses inspecting the exposed beams on the ceiling and the wires hanging down to the floor. He looked vaguely familiar—then it hit me. My stalker! Of course. But why was he inside the apart’ ment? Why had Stephan let him in?