seated next to her.
‘I like it.’ Ainsley shrugged and looked back down at her BlackBerry.
‘Well, anyway,’ Dahlia sighed, rolling her wide-set, almond-shaped eyes at Caroline, who snorted quietly into her hand in response. ‘I suppose we could always put it in the Greenwich house when that’s finished.’
‘How’s that going?’ Caroline asked.
‘Meier is gouging us. Twenty million for the glass porte-cochere alone. The bastard refuses to get bids from other contractors. Thomas is considering firing him, but I’ve talked him out of it, thank God. Could you imagine the scandal?’ Dahlia said.
Caroline shook her head. ‘Would be a nightmare. But tell me, I’ve been meaning to ask. Preston Bailey or David Monn?’
‘Bailey was busy today so Monn planned the event. Personally, I think they’re both talented but Monn does better florals,’ Dahlia replied before sliding open the golden pyramid covering the face of her wristwatch to check the time. ‘I think we should start lunch,’ she said, motioning to one of her many housekeepers to begin ushering the guests into the dining room.
I did my best to make my way gracefully over—the women, I noticed, didn’t so much walk as they did waft—to the dining room, where four round tables, each set with ten place cards, had been draped in baby blue linens and set with white china and silver. I found my place card, sat down in my seat, and for an agonizing three minutes (I apparently hadn’t wafted slowly enough) I waited alone at the table, reading and rereading the lunch menu:
Fava bean and mint salad
Kobe beef filet mignon with blanched white asparagus
and chanterelle toasts
Or
Grilled wild salmon in black currant sauce, sautéed
mushrooms and a wild-rice timbale
Herb-scented sorbet trio and Chocolate-and-espresso
cake
I was just about to get up from the empty lunch table and excuse myself to the ladies room when a petite woman with straight, shoulder-length light brown hair, luminescent olive skin, and sharply defined facial features plopped herself into the seat next to mine. She was breathing hard, as if she had just run a couple miles in her Roger Vivier pumps.
‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ she said once she’d caught her breath.
‘Marcy Emerson. I’m new. My husband and I just moved here from Chicago.’
‘Jillian Lovern Tischman, but everyone calls me Jill,’ she said, extending her hand.
I sighed with relief and shook her hand. ‘So this is not a totally verboten form of human contact after all?’
‘Oh, did you met Dahlia already?’ she replied, placing her Hermès Medora clutch on the table.
I nodded and took another big sip of my champagne.
‘Pace yourself,’ she warned, eyebrows raised, as the tables filled up around us. ‘These things have a way of dragging on forever.’
‘Sounds like you go to a lot of baby showers.’
‘I’ve done the math, and by my calculations I’ll go to one hundred and fifty of them before everyone’s done spawning.’
‘How do you get to one hundred and fifty?’ I asked.
‘Fifty women, give or take. Three babies each because three’s the new two, four’s the new three, and, well, you get the point.’
I told Jill that John and I hoped to start a family, but didn’t delve much deeper into my recent reproductive history. ‘My dream is to have a house full of kids, but in general I try to avoid becoming a cliché,’ I said.
‘Well, good luck. Because try as you might, you’re probably destined to end up in one of the seven categories of hedge fund wives.’
‘You make this place sound like Dante’s Inferno.’
Jill thought for a second. ‘You know, it’s actually an apt comparison,’ she said before lifting her glass and taking a long swallow from her own flute.
So much for pacing oneself.
I was curious to hear more from Jill, but before I could get any more out of her, Dahlia stood up to give a speech about Caroline and we all had to be quiet. I didn’t have a chance to chat privately again with Jill until we were all shunted upstairs to eat cake in the second-floor sitting room, which itself resembled a petit four with its mint and cream décor and huge Venetian glass chandelier suspended from the center of the ceiling. I asked the woman cutting wedges of cake for a large piece and sat down next to Jill to watch Caroline tackle her mountain of presents—including the cashmere baby blanket I’d brought.
‘If there are seven kinds of hedge fund wife, which one are you?’ I asked Jill, digging into my chocolate-espresso-cream confection.
‘Oh, I’m an Accidental,’ she demurred. ‘When I met my husband I thought he’d end up in politics like the rest of his family. Glenn moved from being an equity analyst tracking tech stocks for Merrill to a fund called Conquer Capital when we were engaged, and unlike most of the other hedge fund brides, I actively opposed his transition into this world.’
‘But why?’
‘Because I knew it would mean that I’d spend the rest of my life at parties like these, listening to someone prattle on about their latest trip to a five-star, obscenely expensive resort where they lunched at the table next to Diane von Fürstenberg and Barry Diller’s and sunned in beach chairs next to Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner.’ She rolled her dark eyes and slouched in her chair.
‘So how do I spot other Accidentals? They sound like my people.’
‘We’re usually the last to arrive and the first to go. We’re also the least likely to host a social gathering or send out holiday cards.’
I was enthralled as Jill broke down all the different types of hedge fund wives, or HFWs, as she sometimes referred to them. According to her the Westminster (as in pedigreed and pure bred) has a recognizable and respectable last name (which she’s kept, non-hyphenated), belongs to all the right clubs (Junior League, Harvard, and Doubles) and is more likely to subscribe to Emily Post than to the New York Post. While the Westminster always looks groomed, she isn’t gauche about it (no false eyelashes except for black tie functions, no breast implants, etc.) and strives above all to appear elegant and natural. She may have a job but it isn’t all-consuming, and thanks to her years of co-chairing this and that, she’s constructed a first-rate social network. If you need a letter for the co-op board of the building you are hoping to buy into, the Westminster’s your gal. Applying for membership in, say, Piping Rock, the most exclusive golf and beach club on Long Island’s North Shore, she’s the first call you make. Ditto for nursery school applications, benefit committee aspirations, etc., etc. But as likeable as the Westminster is, ‘her perfectionism can rub some the wrong way,’ Jill sniffed.
Later, I would learn that Jillian Lovern Tischman, in addition to being a mother of two, was a contributing editor for House & Home, a monthly glossy magazine that mainly featured the city, country, and vacation homes of socialites and B-list celebrities. She was also on the boards of numerous noteworthy charities and cultural institutions around town, and thus far more Westminster than Accidental.
Named for the famous supermodel who, by settling down with Peter Brant, a massively wealthy investor, art dealer, and racehorse breeder, inspired droves of