She’d started fighting with Lyne as soon as the car pulled away from the curb on the night of that nearly disastrous first date. “Do you think it’s really necessary to make your assistant (she deliberately avoided the word “secretary”) carry your champagne bottle down to the car?” she asked.
“Why should she mind?” he asked, popping the cork. “She’s the best-paid secretary in New York. She loves me.”
“Only because she has to. And why do you make her arrange your dates? Why don’t you call yourself?” Victory knew she was being rude, but she didn’t care. Lyne had made her sit there while he finished his phone call to Tanner Cole, and that was more rude.
“Well . . .” Lyne said, pouring champagne into a glass that was resting in a polished wooden cup holder in the middle of the backseat, “My time is worth about five thousand dollars a minute. I’m not saying you’re not worth it, but if I called you and you turned me down, it would cost me close to twenty thousand dollars.”
“Surely you can afford that,” she said disdainfully.
“It’s not what I can afford, it’s what I want to afford,” he said with a grin. She smiled back cynically. Lyne was attractive, but he had a smile like a shark.
“That’s the most pathetic excuse I’ve ever heard for avoiding rejection,” she said. She decided that she would show up at the Whitney with him, and then she would go home. He couldn’t force her to go to dinner.
“But I didn’t get rejected,” he said.
“You will.”
“Are you really angry because I had Ellen call you for a date?” he asked. At least he had the decency to look perplexed.
“No,” she said. “I’m really angry because you made me sit there while you finished your phone conversation with Tanner Cole.”
“So you expect me to jump off the phone every time you walk into a room?”
“That’s right,” she said. “Unless I happen to be on the phone myself. In which case, it’s okay.”
She looked at him, wondering how he was going to take this. Would he throw her out of the car? If he did, she wouldn’t mind. But he didn’t appear to be taking her the least bit seriously. His phone suddenly rang, and he held it up, squinting at the number. “So you’re not going to let me take this call from the president of Brazil?” he asked.
She smiled coldly. “When you’re with me, the president of Brazil can wait.”
“Whatever you say,” he said, hitting the clear button.
For a moment, they rode in stubborn silence. She didn’t even know him, so why were they arguing like they actually were in a relationship? She began to feel guilty. It wasn’t like her to be such a bitch. There were men like Lyne Bennett who could bring out the worst in a woman, but she mustn’t succumb. “Was that really the president of Brazil?” she asked.
“It was Ellen,” he said, and laughed. “I’m one up on you.”
She bit her lip, trying not to smile. “So far,” she said.
“Actually, you’re one up on me. Because that really was the president of Brazil.”
Oh God. He was crazy, she thought.
The SUV rounded the corner onto Madison Avenue. There was a crush of cars in front of the Whitney Museum, and Lyne suddenly became obsessed with making sure Bumpy pulled up right in front of the entrance. “Get in there, Bump!” he shouted encouragingly.
“I’m trying, Mr. Bennett. But there’s a limousine in front of us . . .”
“Fuck the limousine,” Lyne exclaimed. “It belongs to old man Shiner. The Shitter, I call him,” he said to Victory. “When I first started in business, he told me I’d never make a dime. I’ve never let him forget it either. If Shitter’s limo isn’t out of the way in five seconds, hit it, Bumpy.”
“Then the police will come. And that’ll take more time,” Bumpy grumbled.
“What’s the big deal? You know how to deal with the police . . .” Lyne said.
Victory had had enough. “Will you stop it?” she said, turning to Lyne. “You’re acting like a complete and utter lunatic. It’s embarrassing. If you can’t walk five feet to the curb, you have a serious problem.”
Lyne didn’t miss a beat. “D’ya hear that, Bump?” he asked, slapping the driver on the shoulder. “We’ve only been together for ten minutes, but already she knows me. Come on,” he said, taking Victory’s hand. “I knew you’d be fun.”
She grimaced. Lyne Bennett was clearly a man who couldn’t easily be insulted. She decided she was starting to like him just a teeny bit.
Which was good, because even if she had wanted to get away from him at that point, she couldn’t have. As soon as they got out of the car, they were surrounded by photographers. The Whitney Biennial was the biggest showcase for a hotly contested small group of artists selected by the Biennial committee. It was one of the most important and controversial art events in the country, but Victory always forgot that it was extremely social as well. Everyone would assume that she and Lyne were not only seeing each other, but probably had been for a while. Showing up at the Whitney Biennial together was the kind of thing a couple did when they wanted to make a public announcement that they were officially dating.
And there was Lyne, holding her hand in front of the photographers like they were lovers. She didn’t mind being seen with him, but she didn’t want people to think they were actually having sex. She tried gently pulling her hand away, but he gripped tighter.
“Did you ever consider the possibility that you may be suffering from adult attention deficit disorder?” she asked, thinking about his behavior in the car.
“Whatever you think,” he said, glancing down at her dismissively. “C’mon, kiddo,” he said, tugging on her hand. “If you’ve had enough of the paparazzi, let’s go inside.” Just like she was a little girl!
Even in her heels, he was at least six inches taller than she was, so she couldn’t exactly protest physically. That added another point to his side on the one-upmanship column. Then she got him back at the Vaginas. But the coup de grâce, she thought smugly, was that moment in Cipriani . . .
* * *
“GIANT VAGINAS? IN THE Whitney?” Wendy asked. She wasn’t really shocked—nothing, she thought, could shock her now, but she was having a hard time concentrating on the conversation. That morning Shane had called and asked to take the kids to visit his parents, who lived on the Upper West Side. The thought of Shane hanging out with the kids and their grandparents without her made her feel queasy.
She was sitting in the coveted corner front table at Da Silvano with Nico and Victory. The restaurant was packed and the door kept opening with people coming in, only to be told there were no tables, causing a cold breeze to blow on the back of her neck. She kept adjusting her pashmina, but the damn thing wouldn’t stay up. Pashminas were apparently out of fashion, but this was the best she could do to look decent on a Sunday.
She hunched forward, trying to appear interested. Had Shane told his parents? Were they talking about her? Shane’s mother had never really liked her. She was probably telling Shane that she was a bad mother . . .
“They try to do something shocking every year,” Nico was saying. “A few years ago it was a videotape of a guy in blue body paint, playing with his penis.”
“They’re equal opportunity shockers,” Victory said, dipping a breadstick into a small plate of olive oil. “This year they’re giant vaginas with plastic dolls stuck in the opening.”
“Not very well executed,” Nico said.
“Have you seen them?” Wendy asked.
“Had to,” Nico said. “We’re putting them in the December issue.” Wendy nodded, feeling left out. All she did was make movies and take care of her family. She had no culture, no life outside of her small raft of existence, which took every ounce of her energy to keep afloat. She looked over at Victory, who was glowing like a twenty-five-year-old. They were the same age, but Victory still went everywhere and did everything—she still had dates. It suddenly struck Wendy that she hadn’t had a date
for over fifteen years. The thought caused the queasy feeling to return with a vengeance. What if she had to start dating again? She would have no idea what to do . . .
Victory said, “The artist, a young woman from Brooklyn, apparently just had a baby and she was horrified by the experience. She said that no one ever tells you what it’s really like.”
“Please,” Wendy said dismissively. “Why is it that everyone who’s had a baby acts like they’re the only one who ever has?”
“I think she was just reacting to the fact that women are the ones who have to have the babies in the first place,” Nico said.
“Anyway, Lyne completely freaked out,” Victory continued. “He said he thought he was going to be sick.”
“And this is a man you’re dating?” Wendy asked.
“Wen, they were pretty awful,” Victory said. “Not the subject matter, but the way they were done. Anyway, I decided to do this whole number on him, to get even with him for being such an asshole. I convinced him that the vagina sculptures would someday be just as important as the Venus of Willendorf—the prehistoric fertility statuette—and he actually believed me. He bought a vagina sculpture for twenty thousand dollars.” She sat back in her chair, recounting the moment at the Whitney when she had pulled Lyne, who was grumbling like a schoolboy about the “state of art in America today,” aside. “You know those pieces are going to end up in a museum,” she said. “No one took Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans seriously at first either.”
“You’re crazy,” he said.
“I might be crazy, but I doubt that Brandon Winters is.” Brandon Winters was the curator of the Whitney Museum, whom Victory knew a little and whom she’d made a great show of talking to in front of Lyne. “Didn’t you hear what Brandon said?” she asked. “There’s huge interest from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, as well as two museums in Germany. Brandon said that they’ve compared the vagina sculptures to the Venus of Willendorf . . .”
Brandon had said no such thing, but it was, she decided, the kind of silly nonsense he might say.
“The Venus of what?” Lyne demanded.
She looked at him as if she was confused. “The Venus of Willendorf. God, Lyne, with your interest in art . . . I would think you would have heard of it. Of course, it is only about twenty-five thousand years old, so maybe you missed it . . .”
And then Lyne had gotten a funny look on his face and had marched back into the crowd of onlookers who were gathered around the vagina installation. He had spoken a few words to Brandon Winters, whose expression suddenly became surprised, delighted, and obsequious. Lyne handed him a card.
“Well?” she said.
He took her arm, leading her away conspiratorially. “I bought one,” he said.
“How much?”
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
That was, she thought with satisfaction, about the same amount of money he would have lost if he had bothered to call her himself and she had rejected him. She decided to go to dinner with him after all, if only to see what other tricks she could play on him.
They were seated at a romantic table in the corner at Cipriani’s. The first thing Lyne did was to order a bottle of Cristal, which he drank like water. She was beginning to think he really did have adult attention deficit disorder, because he couldn’t keep still—he kept getting up to speak to people at other tables. She didn’t say anything about it, however, because the only way to make a man understand his bad behavior was to do it back to him. When he returned to the table for the third time, she got up and went over to the bar. There was a couple there that she knew, and she took her time ordering a ginger ale, and talking to them about their apartment renovation. Then she went back to the table.
“You were gone for a while,” Lyne said, put out.
“Saw some important people I knew.” She shrugged.
The waiter came over to take their order. “I’ll have three ounces of beluga caviar,” she said pleasantly, as if this were perfectly normal. Lyne tried not to look angry, being a billionaire and all, but she could tell he was slightly pissed off. “Most people are satisfied with one ounce of caviar,” he said crossly.
“I’m not most people,” she said. “And besides, I’m hungry.” Then she ordered a lobster and a chocolate soufflé for desert. She got him to talk about his childhood—about how his father left when he was fourteen, and he had two younger brothers, and he’d had to go to work in a deli, lying about his age to get the job—and she had begun to like him a little more. Underneath his ridiculous showiness, Victory sensed that he was probably a decent guy. It was just too bad that he felt compelled to act like an asshole most of the time.
When dessert came, she got up to go to the bathroom. She did go to the bathroom, but first she found the maître d’ and handed him her black American Express card, telling him to charge the dinner to her. She had planned to pick up the check from the beginning, but if you were going to do that, you never waited until the bill came to the table. You did it beforehand, smoothly and stealthily. That way, there could be no arguing over the gesture.
She had come out from the ladies’ room and signed the check. It was over a thousand dollars, but she didn’t care. Her business might have been in trouble, but Lyne didn’t need to know that. And besides, it would be worth it to see the expression on his face when he found out that she’d already taken care of the bill.
She returned to the table and waited, chatting pleasantly about various acquaintances they had in common. Maybe it was juvenile, but the truth was that picking up the check put you in a position of power, and even if it was something that most women didn’t fully understand, for businessmen like Lyne it was the most basic gesture of control. And she found that the minute she took the power, Lyne’s behavior no longer bothered her at all.
“Can we have the check please,” Lyne said, motioning to the maître d’.
Victory folded her napkin neatly and smiled, watching as the maître d’ scurried over to the table, looking from her to Lyne with a worried expression on his face. When he reached Lyne, he bent over. “The check has already been taken care of,” he murmured.
“Oh really? By who?” Lyne demanded, looking around the room with an expression of outraged disbelief.
“It’s ‘by whom,’ darling,” Victory said, casually correcting him. “It’s a subjunctive clause.”
“I don’t care if it’s subjunctive-itis,” Lyne said. “I wanna know who picked up my check.” And he actually looked as though he was ready to beat someone up.
The maître d’, who was no doubt used to dealing with the temper tantrums of his high-powered clientele, put his palms together and bowed his head. “It was the young lady. Ms. Ford.”
“Who?” Lyne said, still looking around the room as if he’d forgotten he was having dinner with her. Then he got it. “Oh,” he said.
She smiled, letting out a long breath. She had finally managed to silence him.
He still didn’t manage to speak for the next several minutes, while they put on their coats and went down the stairs. When they stepped outside, he said gruffly, “You didn’t need to do that, you know.”
“I don’t need to do anything,” she said. “I do what I want.”
“I was going to invite you back for a nightcap,” he said, “but I suppose this means you have other plans.”
God, he was such a baby! she thought. “I don’t have other plans,” she said, annoyed at his inference. “But I do have to go. Good night, Lyne,” she said, holding out her hand. “It was nice to see you.”
“Nice to see you too,” Lyne grumbled, as he walked off to his car. Bumpy stood holding the door open, looking at her curiously.
She raised her hand and hailed a cab. Well, she had found out everything she needed to know about him, she thought, sliding onto the seat. She’d had some fun moments with him, but he wasn’t a gentleman at all. He hadn’t waited for her to get a cab, and he hadn’t even said thank you for dinner. Maybe
he’d been too emasculated to walk her to a cab, but even so, a real man would never forget his manners. Was his ego really that fragile? It didn’t make sense. In earlier years, Lyne Bennett had bought companies and ruthlessly chopped them up. Probably out of spite, she now realized. And a little voice in her head said, you’re playing with fire.
But she suddenly recalled the expression on his face when he’d said he was thinking of inviting her back to his house. For a moment, he’d looked defeated, as if he’d once again realized how pointless dating was in New York and how useless it was to try. And for a moment she felt sad.
She didn’t give it a lot more thought, however, thinking that this would be the end of it, and he would never call again anyway.
“But of course he was going to call again,” Nico interjected. “He’d have to.”
Well, he did call, Victory continued, leaning over the table to make sure she wasn’t being overhead. At seven-thirty Saturday morning. By then, she had almost completely forgotten about him. Everyone in New York had weird dates, and she knew that when she ran into him, they would both act like nothing had ever happened. But Lyne wasn’t ready to give up. “Hello?” she’d said sleepily into the receiver, thinking at that early hour it might be Wendy calling.
“I want you to know that I’m potentially losing twenty thousand dollars here by calling you myself,” Lyne’s voice came over the line.
She laughed in spite of herself, surprised to find that she was actually pleased to hear from him. “Is that so?” she asked. “So you still make five thousand dollars a minute, even on weekends. What are you, the phone company?”
“They wish. I’m richer than the phone company,” he cooed.
“In case I forgot . . .”
“In any case, I got a good rate. Even if you reject me,” he said. “That hideous sculpture you made me buy? Just wanted you to know that you were right. I sold it to that Chicago museum for forty thou. So I figured you’ve got twenty thousand dollars’ worth of my time to turn me down. Which leaves you”—he paused—“with exactly ninety-two seconds . . .”