‘Well, obviously Jay-Z and crew. He requested that a whole contingent from his record label be invited, but most didn’t respond to invitations, so I don’t think many will show. Otherwise, we’ve got Chloe Sevigny, Betsey Johnson, Drew Barrymore, Carson Daly, Andy Roddick, Mary-Kate and Ashley, and Jon Stewart as definites. Also a handful of top-tier socialites. There might be more. When you’ve got an artist that big doing a private performance at a small venue … I’d be shocked if we didn’t get unannounced visits from Gwen or Nelly or anyone else who might be in town and around. The door has been informed.’
‘And who did the final vetting of the list?’
‘I went over it with both Philip and Elisa, with Mr Kroner at BlackBerry having final approval over everything. He seemed very, very happy with the projected attendees.’
Kelly finished off her bottle of Diet Coke and reached into the fridge underneath her desk to pull out another one. ‘What else? Give me the quick rundown on decorations, gift bags, interviews, chain of command.’
I could tell we were nearing the end, and I was thrilled, not just because I desperately needed another coffee and perhaps a second egg-and-cheese, but because I knew I was nailing this party and Kelly was impressed. I’d been working on it all day, every day since it’d been thrown in my lap, and even though I could recognize the ridiculousness of what we were doing, I liked it. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to work hard and do well, but it was damn nice.
‘Samantha Ronson is DJing and knows to keep things upbeat. Bungalow is taking care of the decorations, with instructions to keep it minimal, chic, and very, very simple. I’ll head over there this afternoon to check it out, but I’m really only expecting a few clusters of well-placed votives and, of course, the underlit palm trees. I think all the models we’ve got coming will be the primary attraction.’
At the word model, Kelly perked up even more. ‘How many and who are they?’ she asked with the efficiency of a drill sergeant.
‘Well, I invited all the supermodels as guests, as always, and then we went with that new company – what’s it called? Beautiful Bartenders. They hire out actors and models to tend bar and serve drinks. I saw a bunch of them working a Calvin Klein event two weeks ago and reserved a fleet of the guys, requesting that they all have long hair and wear head-to-toe white. They’re magnificent and really make a statement.’ Did I just say that? I thought.
‘As for everything else, the interns are putting together the gift bags now. They’ve got airplane bottles of Grey Goose, MAC lipstick and eye shadow, a copy of the current issue of US Weekly, a gift certificate for thirty percent off at Barney’s Co-op, and a pair of Kate Spade sunglasses.’
‘I wasn’t aware Kate Spade even made sunglasses,’ Kelly said, now nearly finished with the second liter of Diet Coke.
‘Neither was I. I guess that’s why she wants them in the gift bag.’ When she kept gulping, I figured I’d better wrap things up. ‘So that’s really it. I’ve touched base with Mr Kroner, and he understands exactly what he’s to highlight and avoid when talking to the press, and I’ll be there the entire night to oversee glitches. All in all, I expect everything should go very smoothly. Oh, and I’ve spoken with Philip and I think he understands that as host of this event, he shouldn’t be drinking entire bottles of vodka, ogling preteens, or doing drugs openly or with reckless abandon. I can’t guarantee he’ll actually play by the rules, but I assure you that he’s at least been informed as to what they are.’
‘Well, we’re all there to have a good time now, aren’t we? So I’m sure if Philip wants to have a little fun, too, we won’t be too uptight about that. Just keep it away from the press. Understood?’
‘Of course.’ I nodded solemnly, wondering how on earth I was supposed to keep the columnists and photographers away from the very person they’d been invited to see. I decided I’d deal with that later. ‘And Kelly? I can’t apologize enough about all that stuff in New York Scoop. I feel like I have a target on my back just because I’m supposedly dating Philip Weston. If I were paranoid, I’d think this Ellie girl was out to get me.’
She looked at me strangely, with an expression resembling pity, and I wondered if all the mentions were bothering her more than she’d let on. Kelly had brushed off every one of my apologies about the online column, swearing that any association with Philip Weston was a good one and that it had only succeeded in raising the profile of the company, but maybe she was tiring of the attacks. Which would make two of us.
‘Bette, I have something to tell you,’ Kelly said slowly. She pulled a new plastic liter bottle of Diet Coke from her under-desk fridge.
I could tell by the tone of her voice that this wasn’t good. Here it comes, I thought to myself. Here’s where I get fired for something that’s completely beyond my control. She looks so pained to have to do this – after all, she’s got such loyalty to Will, but I’ve obviously left her no choice. In an industry that revolves around the press, I’ve failed miserably. It’s actually her duty, her obligation, to fire me – she built this firm, and I walk in here and degrade it. How will I tell Will? Or my parents? I had already begun calculating how long it would take me to rework my résumé and begin applying for other jobs when Kelly took a swig and cleared her throat.
‘Bette, promise me that what I’m about to tell you will never leave this room.’
I audibly exhaled in relief. That didn’t sound like the beginning of a firing speech.
‘Of course,’ I said, the words tumbling out in rushed eagerness. ‘If you tell me never to mention it, then of course I won’t.’
‘I had lunch the other day with a woman from Ralph Lauren. I’m hoping very much to sign them – they’d be our biggest and most impressive account yet.’
I nodded as she continued.
‘Which is why it’s so crucial that you keep this under wraps. If the information gets out – if you tell anyone – she’ll know it’s me, and we’ll never get this account.’
‘I understand,’ I said solemnly.
‘It concerns New York Scoop …’
‘You mean Ellie Insider?’
Kelly looked at me. ‘Yes. As you know, that’s merely a pen name. She’s gone to great lengths to keep her identity secret so she can move around freely and talk to people without their knowing. I’m not sure if this name means anything to you, but the column is actually being written by a girl named Abigail Abrams.’
I’m not sure how, but I knew a split second before she uttered the name that it was going to be Abby’s. I’d never considered that the columnist was someone I’d known before – or even someone I’d met – but somehow, in that momentary flash, I was certain she’d utter Abby’s name. The realization hadn’t done anything to prepare me, however, and I couldn’t do anything but stare at Kelly, my hands tucked under my legs and that same breathless, suffocating feeling I’d had in fifth-grade gym class when the red rubber kickball struck my stomach and knocked the wind right out of me. How could I have been so clueless? How could I not have known? I struggled to breathe and make sense of what Kelly was saying. All the awful things that had been written – all the exaggerations and embellishments and inferences and outright lies – had come from none other than Abby, the self-proclaimed vortex of the media world. Why on earth does she hate me so much? I kept thinking with irrational repetition. Why? Why? Why? Of course we’d never liked each other; that much was obvious. But what could inspire her to try to ruin my life? What had I done?
Apparently, Kelly had interpreted my shock as cluelessness because she said, ‘Yeah, I didn’t recognize the name, either. Some nobody, I guess, which is actually very smart on their part – no one can be suspicious of someone they don’t know. The woman from Ralph Lauren is married to Abigail’s brother, and she swore me to secrecy. I got the feeling she just wanted to tell someone. Or maybe she’s testing my discretion. It doesn’t really matter. Don’t breathe a word of it to anyone, but just in case you run across that girl, you can make sur
e she gets the right pictures or information.’
I initially thought Kelly was telling me the columnist’s identity so I could avoid her at all costs, but this was clearly not her intention.
She continued. ‘Now you can feed her all sorts of stuff – be cool and casual and make it sound like scoop – and we’ll have an even better shot at getting the clients covered.’
‘Sounds good,’ I croaked. I couldn’t wait to get out of that office and reread every word Abby had written. How did she have any access at all? I thought bitterly about how she must have felt when she’d stumbled into a gold mine that first night at Bungalow 8, the night I’d met Philip. It was all starting to fall into place: she had been everywhere lately, always appearing out of the woodwork like a Pop-a-Weasel, ready with a nasty comment or a sneering look.
‘Okay, enough of that. Don’t worry about it too much right now. Just focus on making sure everything works for tonight. It’s going to be great, don’t you think?’
I murmured ‘great’ a few times and shuffled out of her office. I had already begun fantasizing about confronting Abby. There were a million possibilities, and each sounded delicious. It wasn’t until I was back at the circular table, staring at my laptop, that I realized I couldn’t do one damn thing about it. I couldn’t tell anyone I knew, least of all Abby.
I tried to focus. After cutting out the Page Six clipping and taping it to the center of the office’s shared circular desk, I logged on to see if the plane that would be bringing Jay-Z from LA to New York had actually left New York on time, which would highly increase the odds of its arriving in LA – and then coming back again – on schedule. So far, so good. I assigned two interns to take cars to Newark and stake out his arrival. This was not particularly necessary, since the Hotel Gansevoort was sending two stretch limos for them, but I wanted someone there to visually confirm that he’d arrived and gotten in his car without getting distracted by anything along the way. A quick call to Sammy – be still, my heart – confirmed that the setup was going smoothly. My to-do list complete, I tried to block out the thoughts of Abby’s viciousness. It was late afternoon, and the only thing left to do was, well, absolutely nothing.
18
Not only was Jay-Z’s plane on time, it was a few minutes early. He was polite and attentive. Nearly every single person who’d RSVP’d to the event showed up, and miraculously, the people who materialized at the door with no invite were all actually people we would’ve wanted to come. Mr Kroner spent the evening tucked away at a table with his associates, and we made sure the little RESERVED sign was displayed prominently for them and that a steady stream of pretty girls stopped by to say hello.
Most surprising was Philip. I’d been terrified he’d do something in a drunken state to embarrass me or the firm, but he’d kept his nose clean in every respect and even managed not to bury it in anyone’s cleavage – at least not in front of any photographers, which is all that really mattered. I’d tried to warn him in a hundred different ways that, as host, he would need to be friendly to everyone, but my fear had been totally unfounded. From the moment he’d stepped inside the front door, he’d performed brilliantly. He’d rotated among all the groups assembled, shaking hands and nodding sagely with the corporate types, ordering rounds of shots for the bankers and mini-champagnes for the models, and back-slapping the celebrities with Clintonian charm. He strolled and smiled and carried conversations effortlessly, and I watched as men and women alike fell in love with him. It was instantly clear why gossip columns tracked him and why women everywhere swooned when he turned his attention to them. His ability to chat and joke and listen came so naturally that when he was near, people were left feeling like the volume had been turned down on everyone and everything except Philip Weston. They warmed to his touch, to his presence, and I found myself buzzing right along with everyone else. I couldn’t deny that I was bizarrely drawn to him.
The only almost-disaster came when Samantha Ronson’s flight from London was canceled and we were left with no DJ. At the exact same time, I’d received a call from Jake Gyllenhaal’s publicist, asking if he could be placed on the VIP list for the evening. Having just read an article on do-it-yourself DJing, I asked Jake and the other confirmed celebs to bring their personal iPods and DJ for an hour each after Jay-Z did his twenty-minute set. It had been a huge success; each of the famous names had arrived with an iPod full of personal favorites, and soon everyone in attendance knew Jerry Seinfeld’s all-time favorite dance song. Everything else had gone perfectly. There’d been no catfights over the gift bags, no brawls at the door, pretty much no uninvited drama to distract from the conveyance of the message: everyone young, hip, urban, and remotely cool is partying to celebrate BlackBerry, which must mean that BlackBerry itself is young, hip, urban, and cool. Therefore, you – whoever you are and wherever you’re reading about this fabulous event – must own one so that you, too, may be young, hip, urban, and cool.
All in all, the event was a complete success. Kelly was happy, the client was thrilled (if slightly scandalized and extremely hung over – apparently Mr Kroner was unaccustomed to the sort of enthusiastic and committed drinking that had encompassed the entire evening), and the photogs had snapped, snapped, snapped just about every celebrity that our rotating staff of interns and coordinators physically threw in front of them. And then there was the effect the evening had on my love life.
Taking a break, I slinked outside under my usual pretense of wanting a cigarette. I found Sammy reading from another tattered paperback, Richard Russo’s Empire Falls.
‘Having fun?’ he asked, lighting my cigarette. I’d cupped my hands around his lighter to protect the flame from the wind and felt a flutter in my chest when our skin touched. Was it lust, love, or just early-onset lung cancer? At that moment, it didn’t seem to matter.
‘Shockingly, yes.’ I laughed, suddenly feeling that all was right and good. ‘If you’d told me a few months ago that I’d be planning a party at Bungalow 8 with Jay-Z as the entertainment, I would’ve thought you were crazy. I hated banking. I’d sort of forgotten what it was like to want to do something well.’
He smiled. ‘You obviously do this well. Everyone’s talking about you.’
‘Talking about me? I’m not sure I like the sound of that.’
He turned to check a few girls’ names against the list and let them enter. ‘No, no, all good stuff. Just that you’ve got this whole thing figured out and that you know how to put it all together. I can’t remember the last time we had a party here that went this smoothly.’
‘Really?’ Part of me knew that this whole conversation was utterly ridiculous – we were, after all, talking about event-planning – but it was still really nice to hear.
‘Sure. The question is, do you like it?’
‘Well, like is a strong word for just about anything, don’t you think?’ He laughed and I had to physically bury my hands in my coat pockets to keep from grabbing his face. ‘It’s a far cry from the Peace Corps, for sure, but it’s okay for now.’
His face clouded over almost immediately. ‘Yeah’ was about all he could manage.
‘So, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?’ I blurted out, not realizing that it might sound like I was asking him out when all I really wanted to do was change the subject. ‘Going anywhere with your girlfriend?’ I added casually to show him I knew the situation.
He gave me another uncomfortable look, followed by some obvious squirming, sending the message loud and clear: I had overstepped my bounds.
‘I, uh, I didn’t mean anything by—’
‘No, no worries,’ he cut in, leaning backward against the door as though he felt dizzy. ‘It’s just that, well, it’s kind of complicated. Long story. Anyway, I’m actually going home this weekend. My old man’s not doing so well, and it’s been a couple months since I made it up there.’
‘Where’s home?’
He looked at me curiously, as though he were trying to read my face, and then said quiet
ly, ‘Poughkeepsie.’
Had he said that he was born and raised in Laos, he could not have shocked me more. Was he toying with me? Kidding? Had he found out that I was from Poughkeepsie and going home this weekend and thought this was funny somehow? A quick check of his face – smiling sweetly as he watched me process this – indicated no.
‘Poughkeepsie, New York?’ was about all I could manage.
‘The one and only.’
‘That’s crazy. I’m from there—’
‘Yeah, I know. I just didn’t ever know if you knew. I remember you,’ he said softly, looking out across Twenty-seventh Street at, as far as I could tell, absolutely nothing.
And, of course, it all came back then. Not that there were so many clues, but there had always been the sense that he was familiar. The time we’d stood right here and he’d joked that one of the girls who’d just gone inside needed a lesson in hippie chic since her flowing caftan was all wrong, and that she should head upstate to be schooled by the pros. That day in Starbucks when he’d brushed his hand up the back of his head and I’d sworn I’d seen that before. The very first night at Penelope’s engagement party, when he wouldn’t let me in and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was staring at me, almost waiting for me to say something. It was all so obvious now. Samuel Stevens, the guy in high school who was too gorgeous for his own good. The guy everyone assumed was gay because he was big and beautiful and didn’t play a sport, but who instead kept mostly to himself while working at a few well-known local restaurants. The guy who came across as conceited and arrogant when we were teenagers and too young to realize that he was intensely shy, a loner, someone who didn’t feel quite right with any one group of kids. The guy who’d sat at the table diagonally across from me in shop class, always focused on the wooden serving trays or gumball machines we were learning to make, never flirting or spacing or sleeping or whispering with his tablemates. The guy every girl should have loved but actually hated because he was somehow beyond her, already looking ahead, past the idiocy of high school and social hierarchies and seemingly unaware that anyone else existed. I did a quick calculation and realized that I hadn’t seen him in nearly twelve years. I was a freshman and he a senior when we had that one shop class together before he graduated and vanished altogether.