“How . . . extraordinary,” Victory said.
“I arrived at the party late,” he said. “Just in time to hear you telling Pierre Berteuil that someday you’d have a yacht that was bigger than his.”
Victory dropped her spoon, which clattered to the floor under Lyne’s chair. How could she have said that to Pierre Berteuil? But it was exactly the kind of thing she would say. She bent down to pick up the spoon at the same time that Lyne did. He handed the spoon to her. “I’m sorry,” she said, with exaggerated politeness.
“No problem,” Lyne said. He really didn’t look too good himself, Victory thought, especially with that large red bump on the bridge of his nose. “I’m glad to see that you found my scarf and sunglasses,” he added.
“Oh! Are they yours?” she asked. “I found them in my room this morning.” This was looking really bad, she thought. And she suddenly recalled Lyne coming into her room, and finding the Frenchman there, and then dragging him out into the hallway. She cleared her throat. “Did you . . . uh . . . spend the night? In the hotel, I mean.”
She heard Lyne stirring his coffee, followed by a small slurp. “Technically. I woke up on your floor. Fully dressed, I might add.”
“I sensed that there was a man in my room,” she said lightly. She picked up the menu.
A minute ticked by. “Lyne?” she asked. “Was I really telling Pierre that I’d have a bigger yacht than his someday?”
“Insisting upon it,” Lyne assented.
She nodded. No wonder she kept seeing Pierre’s face bunched up like a potato. “Was it . . . unattractive?” she asked cautiously.
“That part wasn’t,” Lyne said. “I think Pierre was surprised. But he wasn’t angry, yet.”
“Oh dear.” Victory sat back in her chair.
“You were basically giving him the Victory Ford Special,” Lyne said, folding his paper.
“I see.” She paused. “And what was it exactly that pissed him off?”
“I can’t be certain,” Lyne said. A waiter brought him a plate of eggs. “It might have been the part when you told him that women were going to rule the fashion world and that he, himself, was likely to become obsolete within the next ten years.”
“That’s not so bad . . .”
“No, it isn’t. And as I said later, you had good reason to defend yourself.”
“Oh yes,” she said, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples. “I’m sure I did.”
“The guy did say that once you got the money, you should stop working and find a man and have children.”
“That was a lousy thing to say.”
“Yeah, well, I tried to explain to him that that wasn’t the kind of thing you should say to a New York woman.”
“He didn’t take it well, did he?”
“Nope,” Lyne said. “He said that he was sick of businesswomen, and that the whole world was bored with women acting like men, and women carrying briefcases, and that what women really wanted was to stay home and be taken care of.” Lyne paused. “These Gallic types are very provincial. No matter what they say.”
“It was awfully nice of you to stick up for me, though,” Victory said.
“You didn’t really need me,” Lyne said. “You did a pretty good job of sticking up for yourself.”
“Was I a tiger?” she asked, dropping three sugar cubes into her cup.
“You ripped him to shreds. By the time you were done with him, there was nothing left of that Frenchman except a flat puddle of champagne.”
“But I didn’t mean it. I really didn’t.”
“He certainly seemed to think you did. He got up and left in a huff.”
“Oh dear,” Victory said. She finished her coffee and poured herself another cup. “Do you think he was . . . irrevocably upset? I mean, he must have known that we were having a passionate, drunken kind of discussion, right? Is he a very sensitive type of man?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, only a very sensitive, babyish kind of man gets up in the middle of a discussion and walks away. It tends to mean only one thing. He’s spoiled, and he doesn’t like what you’re saying to him.”
“That is pretty much what you did say to him, word for word, I believe,” Lyne said dryly.
Victory groaned. She wanted to crawl under the table. Lyne was right. She had said just that.
“I don’t think he was at all pleased. I, on the other hand, thought it was hilarious. Pierre Berteuil is a spoiled baby, and it’s about time someone told him so.”
“I was damn right too,” Victory said. “I think I’m going to be able to eat some eggs now.”
Another minute passed, and then she spun around in a panic. “Lyne,” she said suddenly. “He wasn’t . . . really angry, was he? I mean, not angry enough to call off the deal . . . ?”
“I think you’d have to ask him that,” Lyne said. He smiled sympathetically.
Victory got up from the table and grabbed her cell phone, hurrying down the steps. A few minutes later, she returned, dragging her feet. She sat down in her chair in shock.
“Well?” Lyne asked.
“He said it was a good thing I hadn’t signed the papers yet, because this deal was something we both needed to think long and hard about.”
“I’m sorry,” Lyne growled softly.
Victory stared out at the sea. She could feel tears forming in her eyes. “It’s okay,” she said thickly. The tears spilled out under the sunglasses. She wiped them away with her napkin. “I’m a fuck-up. That’s all. And now I’ve probably ruined my business.”
“Aw, come on,” Lyne said. “You haven’t ruined your business at all. You’ve still got it, don’t you?”
“It isn’t just that,” she said, twisting her napkin. “I’ve just realized something terrible about myself. I behaved exactly the same way toward Pierre Berteuil that I do with every man I get involved with. Whether it’s business or romance. At a certain point, I freak out. And then I lose it. I . . . how would you say it . . . rip them a new asshole. And they run away. And who can blame them? I did the same thing to you and Pierre . . . And I never even slept with him . . .”
“Well, you know what they say: A business partnership is a kind of marriage,” Lyne said. “And if it goes bad, it’s worse. In any case, at least you’ve identified the problem. And as you always say, you can’t solve a problem until you identify it correctly.”
“Do I really say that?” she asked, lifting her head. “Gosh. I do say an awful lot of crap sometimes.”
“And sometimes it’s actually true,” Lyne said, standing up.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“We’re going shopping,” he said, holding out his hand.
She shook her head. “I can’t go shopping now. I’m broke.”
“I’m buying, kiddo,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her to her feet. “This is a tit-for-tat deal. Next time one of my deals falls through, you can take me shopping.”
“That’s sure to be an expensive proposition.”
“And by then I expect you’ll be able to afford it.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “I like to think of it this way,” he said, casually removing her sunglasses and returning them to his own face. “It’s not every day that you get to lose twenty-five million dollars. I mean, how many people can boast about that?”
Chapter 14
NICO O’NEILLY LEANED FORWARD, AND PEERING CLOSELY into the magnifying mirror, parted her hair at the scalp, looking for visible signs of gray hair. Her roots were maybe an eighth of an inch, and right at the scalp, mixed in with the slightly darker and duller hair that was her natural shade, were defiantly bright and silvery hairs that glistened like Christmas tinsel. These hairs were of a different form and nature than her regular hair, springing up like inch-long Slinkys, creating a halo of frizz that could no longer be tamed by the blow-dryer. Even when they grew, they were still resistant to dye, and when she examined pieces of her hair, she found a disturbing number o
f strands that resembled tarnished silver. Her mother had cried the day she’d found her first gray hair at thirty-eight, and Nico remembered the afternoon she’d come home to find her mother in tears, staring at a gray hair she’d plucked out from the front of her scalp. “I’m old. I’m oooooold,” she’d sobbed.
“What does that mean, Momma?”
“It means that Daddy won’t love me anymore.”
Even back then, at fifteen, Nico thought this kind of insidious negative thinking was ridiculous. “I will never allow myself to be that way,” she decided. “I will never be in that position.”
She stepped away from the mirror and sighed, washing her hands. Despite her best efforts, in the last six months she felt as if she had aged. There was, she knew, nothing that could ultimately be done to stop the process, and someday all her hair would be gray and she would go through menopause. But lately, she’d found herself wondering what she would really look like if you took away the restylane, botox, veneers, and hair color. Sometimes now, she had the distinct sensation that underneath these common cosmetic improvements was an old crone, held together with a bit of glue and paint.
Mutton dressed as lamb, she thought.
On the other hand, if you really considered it, mutton was much more interesting than lamb, if only for the simple fact that it had survived long enough to become mutton. Lamb got eaten, mutton did not.
And on this slightly cheery note, she went downstairs.
Seymour was in the breakfast room, studying expensive real estate brochures of town houses in the West Village.
“Do you really want a bigger house?” she asked.
“Yes, I do,” Seymour said, circling something in one of the brochures. “Real estate in Manhattan is the best investment right now. If we buy a five-million-dollar town house and renovate, it will probably be worth fifteen million in ten years.” He looked up. “Have you eaten your breakfast yet?”
“Yes.”
“Liar,” he said.
“I had my egg,” she said. “I promise you. If you don’t believe me, go check the dishes in the dishwasher.”
“That won’t do any good,” he said, sitting back in his chair and regarding her affectionately. “Even if you have eaten, you won’t have left one speck of egg on the plate.”
“I have eaten, my darling. I promise you.” She leaned over his shoulder. “Anything good?” she asked, glancing down at the brochures.
“There’s a forty-foot-wide town house on West Eleventh Street that’s in bad shape. A musician owns it—he used to be the lead guitarist in a heavy metal band. It’s five floors and over eight thousand square feet.”
“Do we need that much space?” she asked.
“I think we should buy another house someplace too,” he said. “Maybe in Aspen.”
All this house buying, Nico thought, sitting down. Was he bored?
“You haven’t eaten your breakfast, have you?” he said knowingly.
She shook her head.
He stood up. “I’ll make you an egg, then,” he said. She touched his arm. “Not a soft-boiled egg,” she whispered. “I’m sick of them.”
“Is that why you haven’t been eating breakfast for the past few days?” he asked. “You couldn’t think of what else you wanted to eat?”
“Yes,” she said. Now she was lying.
“Scrambled then. And toast,” Seymour said. “Or are you sick of toast as well?”
“A little,” she admitted. “It’s just that,” she said, with sudden passion, “our lives are so regimented . . .”
“Are they?” he asked. “I don’t think they are at all. New things are always happening to us. You have your new job, and soon we’ll have a new town house. We’ll throw bigger parties. I wouldn’t be surprised if the president came someday. We can certainly get the past one.”
He began to walk to the kitchen and stopped. “You should have told me if you wanted the ex-president here. I can get him in a heartbeat.”
She ought to care, she knew. The ex-president at one of their parties. It wasn’t such a far-fetched idea. The rumor would spread all over New York and through Splatch-Verner: Nico O’Neilly had the ex-president to her house for a dinner. But it suddenly felt unimportant. How could she tell him that she didn’t care one way or the other? She couldn’t. “Seymour,” she said, “you’re wonderful.”
“That’s what some people say,” he nodded. “How about a muffin instead of toast? The cook brought some little blueberry ones. Katrina likes them . . .”
She glanced idly at the brochures. “That would be nice,” she murmured. But she wasn’t really hungry. She was strangely nervous these days. It was the pressure of the new job. Some days she woke up full of great ideas, and other days she woke up with an angry buzz in her head as if her brain were attached to electric wires. She hadn’t been eating her breakfast lately, and apparently, Seymour had discovered this. In a few minutes, he returned with a scrambled egg and a small muffin and half a pat of butter and a teaspoon of jam on a china plate. She smiled up at him, thinking, “Oh, Seymour, I’ve done you wrong. Do you care? You’ve noticed everything else, but not that,” for she was still having that affair with Kirby, although it had decreased in intensity and frequency. But if she gave it up, she thought, she’d practically have no sex at all.
Seymour stared at her. “You look nice,” he said, after a pause.
“It’s Victory’s. Wendy’s premiere is tonight, remember?” she asked. “Do you and Katrina want to meet me at the office or the theater?”
“The theater, I think,” he said.
“Will you wear a suit?” she asked.
“Do I have to?”
“You should. It’s a big deal tonight. It’s a special occasion for Wendy. She’s been working on this movie for ten years.” She paused to place a forkful of egg in her mouth, concentrating on chewing and swallowing. “If Ragged Pilgrims is nominated for Best Picture and it wins, Wendy won’t have to worry for a couple of years.”
“What about Selden Rose?” Seymour asked, studying his brochures again.
“He’s been neutralized,” Nico said. She looked at the top of Seymour’s head and felt an emotion resembling love. “I’m going to buy you a tie. To wear to the premiere tonight.”
“I’ve got plenty of ties. You don’t need to do that.”
“I want to,” she said, thinking, “Seymour, I love you. But I’m not in love with you.” For a moment, she tried to imagine being in love with Seymour, but somehow, it just didn’t fit. “I’ll take Katrina to school today,” she said suddenly. “And I might have to go back to the office after the premiere, so I’ll send a car for you that you can keep all evening.” She stood and picked up her plate. Seymour looked up and smiled nonchalantly. “Have a good day,” he said. “I want to make arrangements to see some of these town houses this weekend. Can you do it on Saturday afternoon?”
“Sure,” she said. She went out of the room, suspecting that if she had been “in love” with Seymour, their lives would have been much messier.
* * *
IT WAS COLD OUTSIDE that day; twenty-four degrees, and it was only December first! The air had a white expectancy, as if something wonderful were about to happen. At the bottom of the steps, idling at the curb, was Nico’s new car and driver. When she’d been the editor in chief of Bonfire, she’d used town cars, but now as the CEO and president of Verner publishing, the company had leased a car for her (pretty much any car of her choice, as long as it was brand new—that was for insurance purposes) with a driver who was on twenty-four-hour call. When she got old, she thought, when she was seventy or eighty—decades away, but not that far; the decades could go so quickly now—she would look back and think, “I had my own car and driver once. A silver BMW 760Li Sedan with a dove-gray interior. The driver’s name was Dimitri and he had shiny black hair that was like patent leather.” Or perhaps, at seventy or eighty, she would be a grande old dame, still rich, still good-looking, and maybe still working like V
ictor Matrick, and driving around in her old silver BMW like those fabulous women you saw at the ballet luncheon and still having her good friends. How wonderful it would be to say “We’ve known each other for nearly fifty years.” How wonderful it would be to always have your life.
She went down the steps and got into the car. It was toasty warm. “Good morning Mrs. O’Neilly,” Dimitri said heartily, with his old-world charm. He was Greek and handsome, married with two children nearly in college, and he lived across the river in New Jersey. There was something about Dimitri (the fact that he’d been born in another country, perhaps) that always made her think of him as being middle-aged and older than she, but she suspected he was actually younger.
“Good morning, Dimitri,” she said warmly. “We have to wait for a minute. My daughter is coming. We’re going to drop her off at school.”
“Very good. I am always happy to see Miss Katrina,” Dimitri said, nodding enthusiastically, and in a few seconds, Katrina came out of the town house, tripping lightly down the stairs. She was wearing a white wool coat with toggle buttons that Seymour had picked out for her, and on her head was a huge fluffy white hat, that Nico hadn’t seen before.
“Hello!” Katrina exclaimed, jumping onto the backseat and filling the car with the magical freshness of youth.
“Is that a new hat?” Nico asked.
Katrina shrugged. “Victory sent it to the house yesterday. I think it was for you, but I knew you wouldn’t wear it ’cause you wouldn’t want to mess up your hair. So I took it. You don’t mind, do you, Mommy?”
“Of course not,” Nico said. “It looks stunning on you.”
“It’s terribly bling and hip-hop and sophisticated too, don’t you think? Sort of like Audrey Hepburn,” Katrina said, turning her head from side to side in order for Nico to appreciate the full effect. “Do you think it will snow today?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It feels like it, doesn’t it? I hope it does. I hope it’s the first day of snow. Everyone loves it so—it makes people happy.”