All of a sudden I was gripped by terrible fear that I wouldn’t be able to handle being back at work, but I said, “I’m good to go, Lauryn.”
“Good! Because we have, like, a lot happening right now.”
“Just bring me up to speed.”
“Sure. And you let me know, Anna, if you can’t cope.” She didn’t mean this in a kind way. She meant for me to let her know if she needed to sack me. “And when will that…thing…on your face be better?” They hate physical imperfection round here. “And your arm? When will it be out of the cast?”
Then she noticed my bandaged fingers. “What’s that all about?”
“Missing nails.”
“Jesus H,” she said. “I’m gonna throw up.”
She sat down and breathed deeply but didn’t throw up. In order to throw up, it’s necessary to have something in your stomach and there was scant chance of that having happened.
“You gotta do something about them. Go see if you can get them fixed.”
“Yes, but…okay.”
A flash of silver caught my attention—it was Teenie! Wearing a silver boiler suit, tucked into orange, vinyl knee boots. Today her hair was blue. To match her glittery blue lips. “Anna!” she said. “You’re back! Ooh, your hair is pretty. It’s gotten so long.” Together we discreetly sidled away from Lauryn and Teenie said quietly, “Sweetie, how’re you doing?”
“Okay.”
“You are?” She quirked a blue, glittery eyebrow at me.
I slid a glance at Lauryn; she was far away enough not to hear. “Okay, maybe not exactly, but, Teenie, the only way I’ll get through this is if we pretend everything is the way it always was.”
I couldn’t have anyone’s sympathy, sympathy meant that it had actually happened.
“Lunch?”
“Can’t. Lauryn says I’ve got to get my nails fixed.”
“What’s up with them?”
“They’re missing. But they’re growing back as fast as they can.”
“Eew.”
“Yes, well,” I said, going to my desk.
This was the longest I’d ever been away from my job and things felt familiar, yet very different. The temp—or temps—had rearranged my stuff, and someone had put my photo of Aidan in a drawer, which made me briefly but corrosively angry. I took it out and banged it down on the spot it always stood on. And they said I was in denial?
“Oh my gosh, Anna, you’re back!” It was Brooke Edison. Brooke was twenty-two and loaded and lived with Mommy and Daddy in a triplex on the UES (Upper East Side). She took a car service to work every single day—not the subway, not even a cab, but an air-conditioned Lincoln Town Car with bottled water and a polite driver. Brooke didn’t actually need to work, she was just filling in time until someone put a massive rock on her finger and moved her to Connecticut and bought her a station wagon and three perfect, highly gifted children.
She’d been hired as the Candy Grrrl junior, the person who did the heavy lifting, like stuffing envelopes with samples for the magazines. But she was always having to leave work early or come in late because she was attending charity benefits or having dinner with the chairman of the Guggenheim, or getting a ride in David Hart’s helicopter to the Hamptons.
She was sweet, obliging, and quite intelligent, and did everything perfectly. When she did it. Which, like I say, wasn’t that often. We picked up the slack a lot.
Ariella kept her on the staff because she knew everyone—people were always being her godmother or her dad’s best friend or her old piano teacher.
She did her private-girls’-school-in-Europe walk over to my desk, swinging her thick, glossy, naturally beautiful hair, which glowed with privileged rich person’s health. Her skin was fantastic and she never wore makeup, which would have been a sacking offense for me and Teenie, but not for her. Same with her clothes: Brooke wasn’t even remotely kooky and no one said a thing. Today she wore wide-cut pants in greige cashmere and a dinky little fawn sweater, also in cashmere. I didn’t think she knew that there were other fabrics and a rumor persisted that she’d never bought anything from Zara in her life. She shopped at the three Bs—Bergdorf, Barneys, and Bendel, the golden triangle—and get this: sometimes her dad bought her clothes. He took his “baby girl” on weekend sprees and said, “Make your father happy, let me buy you this vintage bag/embroidered Japanese coat/Gina sandals.”
This is not conjecture, this is actual reportage of a real event, because one Saturday Franklin was in Barneys spending money on his hot young (penniless) boy, Henk, in the hope that he wouldn’t leave him. Next thing Franklin spots Brooke and Old Man Edison (who is richer than God) looking at Chloé bags. At first Franklin thought the old guy was Brooke’s boyfriend, and when he heard the desk clerk say, “Hey there, Mr. Edison,” he nearly puked. He said it was pedo stuff, nearly like incest. I don’t think he really meant it, Franklin is simply phenomenally mean-spirited. He hates everyone, except Henk, and sometimes I think he hates him, too. (Henk is Franklin’s trophy wife—a skinny, sly-eyed boy, with jeans hanging indecently superlow, displaying a narrow, sinewy abdomen. His hair is highlighted cream, silver, and honey and he gets it cut in a mad, sticky-up do at Frédéric Fekkai. He doesn’t have a job, probably because his hair care takes up so much of his time. Franklin bankrolls all of this primping, but occasionally Henk stays away nights and goes downtown to play with his rentboy chums. I really like Henk, he’s very, very funny, but if he was my boyfriend, I’d be on sixteen Xanax a day.)
In addition to the nonstop cashmere, Brooke always wore at least five different items from Tiffany. Mind you, everyone wore stuff from Tiffany. You had to. I think you’d be asked to leave New York if you didn’t.
She extended her hand (with short, neat, clear-glossed nails), didn’t even flicker as she scanned my scar, and said with genuine-sounding sincerity, “Anna, I am so sorry about what happened.”
“Thank you.”
Then she left; she didn’t labor it—an awkward situation, handled just right. Brooke always got everything just right. She was the most appropriate-aware person I had ever met. She also knew exactly what to wear in every eventuality and it was already in her wardrobe. In triplicate. She inhabited a world with strong rules and she had the money to obey them. I often wondered what it must be like to be her.