Perfect. Okay.
Only maybe I’ll shop in Luke’s neighborhood, instead of down here, since I don’t want to have to carry a lot of stuff uptown on the subway. Whereis the subway, anyway?
“Um, excuse me. Can you tell me how to get to the six train?”
Oh! How rude!
And I’m not an asshole. How can someone be an asshole just for asking where the subway is? God, is it really true what they say about New Yorkers? So far they do seem kind of rude. Is this why Kathy Pennebaker came back home? I mean, besides the whole other-people’s-boyfriend addiction thing?
Or was she driven to steal even more boyfriends by the uncaring attitude of her New York neighbors?
Okay, where am I? Second Avenue and Ninth Street. East Ninth Street, because the east and west sides are divided by Fifth Avenue (where Luke’s mother’s apartment is. Overlooking Central Park… and the Met). Luke told me that to get to Fifth Avenue, if you’re heading west from the East River, you have to cross First, Second, and Third avenues, and then Lexington, Park, and finally Madison (to remember the order in which these non numbered avenues go, Luke told me to “Look Past My Face”—or Lexington, Park, Madison, Fifth).
The streets—East Fifty-ninth Street, home to Bloomingdale’s, and East Fiftieth Street, where Saks is, for instance—run perpendicular to the avenues. So Bloomingdale’s is on Fifty-ninth and Lexington Avenue, Saks on Fiftieth and Fifth Avenue. Luke’s mother’s place is on Eighty-first and Fifth… around the corner from the Betsey Johnson on Madison between Eighty-first and Eighty-second.
Then of course there’s the West Side. But I’ll have to learn that later because right now I’m having a hard enough time figuring out the side I’m actually living on.
Okay, so the subway up and down the East Side runs along Lexington Avenue. So all you have to do when you’re lost, Luke said, is find Lexington, and you’ll eventually find the subway.
Unless of course you’re in the Village, like I am, where Lexington suddenly turns into something called Fourth Avenue, then Lafayette, and finally Centre Street.
Again, not something I’m going to worry about right now. I’m just going to head west from Second Avenue, hoping to find Lexington in one of its many forms, and a subway stop home, somewhere around here…
Home. Wow. I’m already calling it home.
Well, isn’t that what any place is? Any place that you share with someone you love, I mean?
Maybe that’s why Kathy left New York. Not the rude people or the incomprehensible street layout or the whole boyfriend-stealing thing, but because there just wasn’t anybody here that she loved.
Who loved her back, anyway.
Poor Kathy. Chewed up by the big city, then spat out again.
Well, that’s not going to be me. I’m not going to be the next Kathy Pennebaker of Ann Arbor. I am not going back home with my tail between my legs. I am going to make it in New York City if it kills me. Because if I can make it here, I can make it any—
Oooh, a cab! And it’s vacant!
And okay, cabs are expensive. But maybe just this once. Because I’m so tired, and it’s so far to the subway, and I want to get back in time to start making Luke dinner, and—
“Eighty-first and Fifth, please.”
— oh, look, there’s the Astor Place subway stop right there. If I had just walked one more block, I could have saved myself fifteen bucks…
Well, that’s okay. No more cabs this week. And this is so nice, sitting in this clean air-conditioned cab, instead of fighting my way down the stairs to the smelly platform to wait for a super-crowded train where I won’t even be able to get a seat. And then there are the panhandlers in every car, asking for money. I can never seem to say no. I don’t want to turn into one of those hardened, jaded New Yorkers, like Multiple Facial Piercings, who seemed to find my Gigi Young dress so amusing. When you can’t empathize with another’s hardship—or realize how hard it is to even FIND a Gigi Young dress in wearable condition—what’s the point of even being alive?
So I end up getting off the subway five dollars poorer every time I ride it, not even counting the fare. It’s practically cheaper to take a cab. Sort of.
Oh God. Shari’s right. I have to get a job—and a life.
And fast.
If you are on the petite side, why not try an A-line gown? Full skirts can make a short bride look as if she is being swallowed up by material—unless she opts for a ballgown or fishtail cut… but this does not flatter every petite bride universally, so tread with caution when trying on “princess” or “mermaid” gowns!
Off-the-shoulder and scoop necklines—even thin straps—are recommended for the petite bride. Column or sheath skirts are not. Remember, you are getting married, not working behind the counter at Ann Taylor Loft!
LIZZIENICHOLSDESIGNS™
Chapter 5
Show me someone who never gossips, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t interested in people.
—Barbara Walters (b. 1929), American television journalist
I’m marinating the steaks when the phone rings. Not my cell, but the apartment phone—Luke’s mother’s phone.
I don’t answer it because I know it’s not for me. Besides, I’m busy. It’s no joke trying to prepare a semigourmet meal in a New York–style galley kitchen, which is basically about as big as the inside of the cab I took to get back uptown this afternoon. Luke’s mom’s apartment is really nice, as one-bedroom Manhattan apartments go. It’s still got its original prewar crown molding and gold fixtures and parquet floors, and all.
But the kitchen seems to have been built more for unpacking take-out than preparing eat-in.
Mrs. de Villiers’s answering machine kicks on after about five rings. I hear her voice—her Southern accent exaggerated for dramatic effect—drawl, “Hello, you’ve reached Bibi de Villiers. I’m either on the other line or nappin’ at the moment. Please leave a message, and I’ll get right back to y’all.”
I giggle. Napping.Vogue should do a spread on Bibi. Talk about professional hostesses. Plus, she’s married to a prince. Well, a pseudo prince. And she’s got great—if slightly conservative—taste in clothes. I’ve never seen her in anything but Chanel or Ralph Lauren.
“Bibi.” A man’s voice fills the apartment… which is also filled with the smell of freshly chopped garlic, which I’m using in the marinade, along with soy sauce, honey, and olive oil, all of which I picked up at Eli’s over on Third Avenue… which is quite a hike from Fifth. “I haven’t heard from you in quite a while. Where have you been?”
Clearly, this friend of Bibi’s does not know she reconciled with her husband during her niece’s wedding in the South of France, and that the two of them—Luke’s parents—were still in Dordogne, tripping the light fantastique … as the French would say. Or not, actually.
“I will be waiting for you in the usual place,” the man goes on, “this weekend. I only hope I do not wait in vain.”
Wait a minute. The usual place? Waiting for her? Who the heck is this guy? And how come, if he and Bibi are so close, he doesn’t even know which country she’s in?
“Good-bye for now,chérie ,” the man says. And then he hangs up.
Chérie? Was this guy for real? Who goes around leaving messages on people’s machines, calling them chérie ? Except maybe gigolos.
Oh God. Did Luke’s mother employ a gigolo?
No, of course not. She wouldn’t have to. She’s a vital, beautiful woman—and obviously loaded, as one can tell merely by glancing at the art on the walls of her Manhattan pied-à-terre. The Renoir is the crown jewel of her collection, of course. But she has no shortage of Mirós and Chagalls and even a tiny Picasso sketch
