we’re producing this event on a shoestring. Of course everything still has to look pretty. These design people couldn’t care less about how the food tastes, as long as it looks good.’
‘Seems like a metaphor for my life,’ I said before I could stop myself.
Gigi set down her notebook and peered at me over her reading glasses. ‘Is there something you want to talk about?’
‘I’ll elaborate when we don’t have thirty people due for dinner in less than two hours,’ I said in an effort to deflect any more questions.
I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, but John and I had gotten into an argument in bed on Saturday night when I finally had a chance to tell him about my plan to help Gigi with her catering business while I started looking for a full-time job. John’s objections were two-fold: First, he didn’t want me to work as a catering waitress, which he deemed ridiculously below me; and second, he didn’t want me to go back to work—period. He said that people would get the wrong impression if I was seen slaving away for Gigi and asked if I wanted them to treat me even more dismissively than before.
‘Do you even realize that your job will entail scraping other people’s half-masticated meals off dirty plates?’ he asked, his face turning a frustrated shade of crimson. He set down his copies of Alpha and Trader Monthly magazine, which could be best described as the hedge funder’s Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar for all the obsessive reading it inspired.
‘John, I’m doing this,’ I said. ‘You’re the one who said I should make friends.’
‘Let’s be clear on one thing—Gigi will be your employer, not your friend, if you do this.’
‘Can’t she be both? Geez, John, according to you everyone’s either a master or a slave. This isn’t ancient Egypt. What are you, Hegel?’
‘Actually, Marcy, it’s less far off than you think. But I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to let you learn that for yourself. Maybe then you’ll understand what I’m trying to accomplish for us, instead of fighting me at every turn.’ He picked up his magazine and began reading again.
‘Well, I’m so glad you approve,’ I said acerbically.
John glared at me before flopping over on his side and opening the drawer of his side table. He pulled out his bottle of Ambien, popped a pill in his mouth and swallowed it with a swig from his bottle of Evian.
Shortly after we moved to New York, John started having trouble sleeping. I encouraged him to stop reading his finance magazines in bed and offered to make him chamomile tea or hot milk, but he insisted on going to the doctor to get a prescription.
‘All the traders take the stuff on a nightly basis,’ he claimed, and so, he, too, started relying upon the drug to get to sleep. I didn’t think it was a good long-term solution, but I also knew that he was under a lot of stress at work and, like me, was still getting acclimated to our new life. I was also relieved that the cocaine binge (which we never discussed) had ended in Aspen, and hoped that once John settled in to his job and had become used to its demands and pressures, he would be able to quit the Ambien as easily as he had seemingly quit the cocaine.
Washing down the pill, he lay back down and shifted over on his side (away from me), sending his magazines in a flurry to the floor. He didn’t bother to pick them up but announced without turning around to face me, ‘Just don’t expect me to dry your tears when Gigi scolds you for serving from the wrong side or showing up with a stain on your collar. Then we’ll see how you define your relationship.’
I said nothing, but in my head, I thought: Man, my husband’s becoming an asshole.
Gigi was nervously chewing on her bottom lip, reading through her notes, and jotting a few words down here and there in the margins when the doorbell rang. Jill’s nanny, a diminutive Filipina woman with a tidy appearance, ran to get the door and two pretty young women appeared in the kitchen’s doorway.
‘Where are the aprons?’ asked one. She had dark brown hair and bore a heavy resemblance to Katie Holmes, pre-Tom Cruise and her Scientology-condoned makeover.
Gigi closed her notebook and plucked four starched white aprons, still in their dry cleaning bags, off of a coat rack in the corner of the kitchen. ‘Here you go, Maggie,’ she said, unwrapping an apron and handing it to the dark-haired girl, before doing the same for each of us. ‘I need you two to start assembling the canapés. You’re on the mini BLT towers,’ she said, nodding to Maggie. ‘Can you manage the vichyssoise with truffle-foam shot glasses, Gemma?’ Gigi asked the other girl, this one with sea glass-colored eyes, freckled skin, and shoulder-length strawberry blond hair.
‘Yeah, no worries,’ she said. Her voice was soft, and she had a lovely British accent.
‘And, Marcy, I’d like you to help the girls and then set the tables. The china is already out in the living room in crates, and you should find the tablecloths and silver there as well. The flower arrangements are lined up in the foyer—I’m sure you saw them coming in. Once you’re done with that, would you put out the place cards? Here’s the layout,’ she said, handing me the evening’s seating chart. ‘Each one should be tucked into the silver clam shells you’ll find in a box with the salt and pepper shakers.’
I slipped the crisp white apron over my head, tying its waistband in a bow at my back, the way Gigi had styled hers, and got to work assisting Maggie and Gemma with their prep work. Maggie said she was working every day that week with A Moveable Feast and had taken on extra hours with another catering outlet. Her boyfriend, a mortgage broker, had been sacked from his job and wasn’t able to cover his share of the rent. They were both scrambling to find a cheaper place but in the meantime Maggie was working at all hours and had missed several casting calls because of it.
Gemma, meanwhile, was possibly going to have to withdraw from NYU because her father, an office-supplies salesman, had promised to pay for her tuition but the credit crunch had also taken a toll in the U.K. and he hadn’t made enough in sales commission to be able to afford Gemma’s school fees. Even Bear was having money problems. He’d lost a bundle on the stock market after he’d followed a bad tip given to him by a drunken dinner guest. To make matters worse, he commuted to work from upstate New York and the spike in gas prices was biting into his monthly income. He and his wife had been forced to tap into their IRA accounts to make ends meet. Their plan to move to Florida and retire in five years had been scrapped entirely.
Their stories made me feel guilty. It didn’t seem fair that so many people were struggling to keep their dreams alive—you couldn’t watch the news or open a paper without being confronted with a dozen similar tales—and I, one of the very few, very lucky ones whose lives hadn’t been negatively impacted by the economic downturn, didn’t feel particularly lucky.
After the girls had moved on to assembling other hors d’oeuvres, I made my way across the foyer into Jill’s living and dining rooms. I nearly gasped as I entered the living room, which bore the hallmarks of what was known as mod-baroque design: lots of color and bold geometric patterns, and plenty of eclectic, ornate furniture and decorative objets. For example, in Jill’s dining room a carved wooden sideboard, painted in high-gloss paint, was topped with a collection of large Murano vases and set against a wall covered in lime-green jacquard wallpaper. A chandelier constructed out of champagne flutes, hugged the ceiling, and the walls were covered with abstract oil paintings, one of which had to be a Willem de Kooning, an artist whose work I’d seen at the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the adjacent living room, there was a sky-blue area rug, a ’50s era dark purple velvet couch, and a pair of antique armchairs covered in real zebra hair; sculptures constructed of neon lights stood in the corners and a set of sexually charged out-of-focus black and white photographs hung on the walls. I’d never seen anything like it.
Unable to help myself, I tiptoed down the hall toward the Tischmans’ private quarters. Passing a small office, which featured indigo blue walls, a writing table encrusted in seashells spray painted Ferrari red, red-and-white-striped Roman shades, and an inky leather chair made out of ebonized