Lipstick Jungle

  “Wen,” Victory had asked her once cautiously. “You don’t get upset about Shane spending all your money?”

  This was on New Year’s Eve a couple of years ago. Wendy and Shane had had a party, and it was late and most of the guests had left. Shane had gone to bed, and Wendy and Victory and Nico were sitting on Wendy’s ratty couch, still drinking champagne and talking about their deepest feelings. “You’ve never been married, so you don’t understand,” Wendy said. “When you’re married, it really is about sharing. You want the other person to be happy. I’m not a policeman. I don’t want to police Shane’s behavior, and I don’t want him to police mine. I love him.”

  Wendy had spoken with such passion, Victory had never forgotten the moment. It always reminded her that Wendy had this side that was so good and generous and kind. She was such a nurturing person, Victory thought, and wondered where that came from. She wished she could be more like Wendy, but she doubted she ever would be. She was too concerned about what was fair and even, and when it came to relationships with men, she kept score. The experts said you weren’t supposed to, but she could never help it. At the end of the day, she wanted to feel that the man had put an equal amount of effort into the relationship. They usually didn’t, and that was why all of her relationships ended . . .

  Her cell phone rang. She picked it up, looking at the number. Jesus. It was Ellen, again, for probably the fifth time that day. “Hi Ellen,” she said resignedly.

  “You’re not going to believe this, but Lyne wants you to come to the office after all.”

  Victory rolled her eyes. “Okay,” she said cautiously. “Are you sure?”

  “This time we are sure,” Ellen said reassuringly. There was the sound of a small scuffle, and then Lyne Bennett himself came on the line. “Hey kiddo, where are you?” he asked. “Get your ass over here to Seventy-second Street.”

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” Victory said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

  She hung up and looked at the driver. “That was Ellen,” she said. “We’re supposed to go to Seventy-second Street after all.”

  She sat back in the seat. Really! It was too much. Why couldn’t the man make a decision and stick to it? Apparently he owned two back-to-back town houses that ran the length of an entire block, from Seventy-second Street to Seventy-third Street, and he lived on the Seventy-third Street side and had his offices on Seventy-second Street. All afternoon, Ellen had been calling her, first to tell her that Lyne wanted to meet in his residence, then that he had changed his mind and wanted to meet at the office. Then he wanted to meet at the Whitney Museum instead. Now he had changed his mind again and wanted to meet at the office.

  It was a not-very-subtle way of saying that his time was more valuable than hers, she thought.

  The car came to a stop, and the driver got out to open her door. Victory was too quick for him, however, and she let herself out, standing on the sidewalk and looking up at Lyne’s building. It was somewhat of a monstrosity, built of white marble with a small turret jutting out the side. She swore she saw a woman’s face in the window, peering out anxiously.

  And then the face was gone.

  For a moment, she hesitated. This really was going to be a waste of time. She didn’t even know Lyne Bennett, but already she didn’t like him. “Call Ellen right now and tell her you changed your mind,” a voice in her head urged her. “What’s he going to do? Get pissed off and ruin your business?”

  But then a heavy, wrought-iron gate with spikes on the top opened, and a burly man wearing a suit and a headset in his ear came walking toward her with the menacing stride of the overly developed. Victory thought he walked like he had a poop in his pants.

  “Here to see Mr. Bennett?” he asked.

  “Yes . . .”

  “Come with me,” he said.

  “Do you greet all of his visitors this way?” she asked.

  “Yeah, we do,” he said as he ushered her inside.

  * * *

  “WHADDYA MEAN, IS SHE pretty? Of course she’s pretty. She’s gorgeous,” Lyne Bennett said, glancing at Victory as he yapped into the receiver. He was sitting on a brown suede swivel chair, smoking a cigar as he casually rested a heavy English lace-up shoe on top of his desk as if he had all day and she wasn’t sitting there waiting for him. The office was done up in some decorator’s idea of the ultimate gentleman’s library, with paneled walls, bookcases, an Oriental rug, and a large enameled cigar ashtray from Dunhill. Victory was perched uncomfortably on a small French armchair covered in a leopard-print fabric. She smiled gamely.

  How much longer was she going to have to endure this scene? She’d walked into Lyne’s office at least three minutes earlier and he was still talking. Maybe she should just leave.

  “She’s sitting right here,” Lyne said into the phone. “Her name’s Victory Ford. That’s right,” he nodded, giving Victory a wink. “The fashion designer. Uh huh. She is a beautiful woman.” Lyne put his hand over the phone. “Tanner Cole knows exactly who you are and he approves. Here,” he said, holding out the phone. “Say hi to him. Give him a thrill. He hasn’t been doing too well lately in the romance department.”

  Victory sighed and stood up, talking the phone from his hand. This was all so juvenile! She hated it when people did this, forcing you talk on the phone to someone you didn’t know. Even if they were movie stars. “Hello,” she said into the receiver.

  “Don’t let him give you a hard time,” Tanner Cole’s voice cooed in her ear.

  “I won’t,” she said, looking at Lyne. “And if he does, I’ll just have to date you instead.” Lyne grabbed the phone out of her hand with pretend outrage.

  “D’ya hear that?” he demanded, giving Victory a smile. His teeth, Victory noted, were large and blazingly white. “She said maybe she should date you instead. She obviously doesn’t know about the size of your pee-pee.”

  Victory sighed and sat back down in the chair. She looked pointedly at her watch, thinking about what a show-off Lyne was. It was kind of pathetic. But maybe he was insecure. It was hard to believe, but possible. Insecurity was probably the impetus that had driven him to make a billion dollars in the first place. She looked around the office and caught sight of three whimsical ink drawings—Alexander Calders, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lyne had probably engineered this whole scene to impress her, making sure that he was on the phone with his good buddy Tanner Cole when Ellen showed her in.

  She recrossed her legs. At least he felt the need to make an effort, she thought. And she suddenly felt a little bit sorry for him.

  “Okay, dude, I’ll see you tomorrow night. Fucking Yankees,” he shouted, getting off the phone. It was baseball season. Lyne, no doubt, had a private box at Yankee Stadium.

  She just hoped he wasn’t going to talk about sports all night.

  “How are you?” he asked, as if he’d finally realized she was in the room. He stood up and came out from behind his desk, taking her hands and squeezing them and leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. “You look great,” he murmured.

  “Thank you,” Victory said coldly.

  “No, I mean it,” he said, not letting go of her hand. “I’m so glad you agreed to do this.”

  “No problem,” Victory said stiffly. She wondered if he was as uncomfortable as she was.

  “Ellen!” he suddenly shouted. “Is the car downstairs?”

  “You know it is.” Ellen’s voice came from around the corner.

  “Yeah, but is it right in front of the entrance? I want to be able to walk out of the building and get right into the car. I don’t want to be standing on the sidewalk looking for Bumpy.”

  “I’ll tell him you’re coming down now,” Ellen said cheerfully.

  “Bumpy?” Victory asked, wondering what they’d find to talk about all evening.

  “My driver,” Lyne explained. “Mr. Potholes. If there’s a pothole within five hundred yards of the car, Bumpy will find it. Isn’t that right, Ellen?”
he said, walking out of the office.

  Victory looked at him, wondering if he was joking or serious.

  Ellen was standing by her desk, holding up a black cashmere coat. Lyne slid his arms into the sleeves. “Bubbles?” he asked.

  “Right here,” Ellen said, indicating a bottle of Cristal on her desk.

  “They always serve shit champagne at the Whitney,” Lyne said, turning to Victory to explain. “I’ve told them to upgrade to at least Veuve, but they’re cheap bastards. So now I bring my own.”

  Ellen followed them down to the SUV, carrying the bottle of champagne and two glasses. A woman would never dream of asking a secretary to perform that kind of service, Victory thought, giving Lyne a dirty look. He got into the backseat as Ellen handed him the bottle. “Have fun, kids,” she said.

  Victory stared at her, catching Ellen’s eye. She shrugged helplessly.

  Victory looked over at Lyne, who was expertly ripping the gold foil off the bottle of champagne. Her eyes narrowed. If nothing else came out of this evening, she was going to have to teach Lyne Bennett a little lesson.

  * * *

  THAT LYNE BENNETT IS such an asshole, Nico thought, glaring at the front page of the New York Post.

  The headline screamed “Red Sox Rule,” but in a banner across the top was a picture of Lyne Bennett next to a caption that read: “Billionaire Involved in Doggie Scuffle. See Page Three.”

  I hope some dog bit him, Nico thought, turning the page. The story, however, was slightly disappointing. It was only about how Lyne Bennett was trying to prevent the schoolyard next to his house from being turned into a dog run after six p.m. Lyne Bennett cited “unsanitary conditions” while the neighborhood dog owners were calling Lyne Bennett “a dog-hating bully.” Nico had to agree with them, along with the idea that there was nothing worse than a man who hated dogs. She had known Lyne Bennett for years, and every time she saw him, she sensed that he had been the kind of kid who would kick a dog when no one was looking. Thinking about men and dogs, however, reminded her of Kirby and his dog. And of what she’d done with Kirby two times last week. She’d promised herself that she would not think about Kirby when she was home and Seymour was around, because it wasn’t fair to Seymour. And so she closed the paper and tossed it onto the floor.

  It was ten o’clock on Sunday morning. Nico was in “the cave”—the exercise room in the basement of the town house that Seymour had had specially built. The room was located one floor below the ground floor where the kitchen, garden, and dog kennels were, and it had originally been a windowless maze of small storage rooms. Seymour had carpeted the floors with sisal matting, and had built a shower, sauna, and steam room to the tune of $150,000, not including the state-of-the-art exercise equipment. It was on one such piece of equipment that Nico was now working out, something called an all-around trainer. The contraption required that the exerciser be strapped in, and every time Nico used it she felt as if she were the subject of some bizarre scientific experiment. Which, she supposed, in some way or another, she probably was.

  She looked down at the digital readout. Ten more minutes to go. She stared at herself in the mirrored wall. She was huffing and puffing, and she frowned in concentration. You can do it, she urged herself on. Just . . . nine more minutes. And after that it would be eight, and so on, until she was done. She hated working out, but she had to. It wasn’t just for Seymour’s sake. It was literally part of her job. Victor Matrick had an edict that his executives should not only work hard, but play hard. Twice a year he scheduled an adventure getaway for his top twenty executives, a sampling of which consisted of class-four white-water rafting, jumping out of a plane (wimps could have an instructor strapped to their back), and mountain-biking in Utah. Spouses were welcome but not required, yet Seymour always accompanied her and always shone. “There’s no way anyone has time to train for these things specifically,” Seymour said. “So the trick is to always be prepared. As long as you’re always in shape, you’ll be able to compete.” Hence the exercise room.

  Nico’s cell phone suddenly rang. It was hanging on a little hook on the side of the machine, and for a second, she stared at it nervously. Under normal circumstances, she would have left her cell phone upstairs, especially since it was Sunday. But as she was now having something with Kirby (she didn’t dare admit to herself that it was an affair), she didn’t want to take any chances. She’d told Kirby that under no circumstances was he to call her in the evening or on the weekend, but Kirby was the type who might suddenly become overwhelmed by passion and forget. She checked the number. It was Wendy.

  “Hi,” she said, unstrapping herself from the machine.

  “Victory is dating Lyne Bennett,” Wendy said, with a mixture of horror and admiration. “It’s in all the papers.”

  “I know she had one date with him . . .”

  “She went to the baseball game with him on Saturday night,” Wendy said, outraged. “Oh God. I hope she doesn’t turn into Sarah-Catherine. Sarah-Catherine dated him too.”

  Nico wiped a trickle of sweat from the back of her neck. Why on earth was Wendy suddenly thinking about Sarah-Catherine? Especially since no one had heard from her (thank God) for at least three years. “I’m not crazy about Lyne Bennett, but Vic isn’t anything like Sarah-Catherine,” Nico said. “She has a real business. And real talent.” Wendy, she thought, was in that terrible space that women can fall into when their own life was falling apart and they assumed that everyone else’s was about to, as well. “Want to have lunch?” she asked, knowing that she shouldn’t, that she should put in some work time instead.

  “I shouldn’t,” Wendy said.

  “Neither should I,” Nico said. “Da Silvano at one? I’ll call Victory.”

  She hung up the phone and picked up the Post, flipping quickly through the pages. There it was, on Page Six—a quarter-page color photo of Victory and Lyne Bennett, wearing Yankees baseball caps. Victory was standing up, cheering, while Lyne, who had a longish face that resembled, in Nico’s mind, a cough lozenge, had one fist raised in the air in triumph.

  Well, Nico thought. Apparently they had no idea the Yanks were about to lose.

  She carried the paper to the weight bench and sat down on the end, holding it away from her in order to read the caption. Her eyesight was going—an inevitable reality of passing your fortieth birthday—and she could just make out the words: “Love Match,” and below, “The Yankees may have lost, but that doesn’t seem to bother billionaire Lyne Bennett and fashion designer Victory Ford. The two have been spotted all over Manhattan together . . .”

  How had this happened? The last time she’d talked to Victory was Friday morning, and she said she’d had a great time with Lyne Bennett, but not in the way you would think. In fact, she said she doubted that she’d be hearing from Lyne Bennett again. Nico studied the picture more carefully. Victory certainly looked like she was having a good time. Nico shook her head, thinking about how her friends constantly managed to amaze and astound her.

  * * *

  WHAT HAPPENED WAS THAT Lyne Bennett kind of fell in love with Victory, and Victory with him.

  Okay, “in love” was far too strong a word for it, Victory thought. But it could have been the beginning of “in love.” The warm, fuzzy, affectionate feeling you had for a man when you suddenly discovered that you liked him, that he was okay or even better than okay, that he was possibly extraordinary. It was a Christmassy feeling. Cozy on the inside, and all pretty and glittery on the outside.

  “I’ll just be downstairs. So if you need anything, come down. Or call Robert,” Lyne said. Robert was the butler, one of five live-in staff members, which included two bodyguards, a maid, and a cook. He leaned over to give her a kiss. She turned her face up and slipped her hand around the back of his neck, feeling the closely shaven skin against her palm. “I need to make some phone calls,” she murmured. “So don’t worry about me.”

  “That’s something I know I don’t need to do,” he said, kissing her
more insistently so that she fell back against the bed. After a minute she pushed him away. “You don’t want to be late. For George,” she said.

  “Hell. That little bastard can wait. It’s my court.” In the next second, he got up, however. He was an obligation freak, just like her, she thought; he hated not doing what he said he’d do. “See you in an hour.”

  “Have a good time,” she said. Lyne, she noted, looked particularly cute this morning, dressed in a white warm-up suit and tennis shoes. He was going to play squash with another billionaire, George Paxton, on the squash court that was apparently located somewhere in the back of the house. She waved, feeling like a wife waving her husband off to work.

  She snuggled back down under the covers and looked around. She would get up in a minute. But God, Lyne Bennett’s bed was comfortable. The sheets were so soft, and behind her back were three king-sized pillows that were like falling into a cloud. The sheets and duvet were all white, of course, the carpeting was white, the heavy silk draperies were white, and the furniture was Biedermeier—real Biedermeier, the kind you could only find in Europe or at a Sotheby’s auction—as opposed to the imitation Biedermeier you found in the antiques district in the Village. The Biedermeier alone was probably worth half a million dollars. But those sheets!

  Why was it that only really rich people had sheets like these? She had gone to what she thought was the most expensive linens store on Madison Avenue—Pratesi—and paid a thousand dollars for a set of sheets (actually, five hundred, they were on half-price sale), and they still weren’t as soft as these. Lyne’s sheets were the difference between being a millionaire and a billionaire, she thought, and a reminder that no matter how successful you thought you were, there was always someone who had more.

  Oh, but who cared? she thought. Lyne might technically have more money, but she was a woman of the world, who had made a name for herself and had her own business and her own interesting life. She didn’t need Lyne, or his money or his sheets, for that matter. But that was what made being with Lyne fun. He was an asshole, but an entertaining one. And letting her head sink back into the pillows (which rose up on either side of her head, nearly suffocating her in down), she went over the events of the past few days.