he’d argued, and when I still refused to budge from our big comfy couch, he pulled out the heavy artillery: ‘My bosses will be there. It won’t look good if you’re not with me.’
I harrumphed, unimpressed.
‘We haven’t been out in months. Don’t I deserve a night out with my wife every once in a while?’
Thus reminded that I, baby or no baby, still had some wifely responsibilities to perform, I pried myself off the couch and let him prod me into our bedroom in the direction of our walk-in closet, where I squirmed into my trusty Spanx, a pair of stockings, and that stupid dress. And although I had resigned myself to spending the night quietly sipping champagne in a corner, hoping that no one noticed what a big, friendless loser I was, I actually ended up having a good time.
The highlight of the evening had been—no, not the tequila—but meeting Gigi Ambrose, the well-known caterer, cookbook author, and frequent Today Show guest. With masses of auburn hair, Jessica Rabbit curves, and enough Southern sass for a whole cotillion’s worth of debutantes, she was the kind of woman you want to hate, but can’t. She was too charming, and on top of that, her recipes had always served me well in the kitchen. Even so it had taken me half an hour to work up the nerve to walk up to her and introduce myself.
‘I love the kumquat glazed chicken skewers,’ I’d said in reference to one of the hors d’oeuvres being passed around on silver trays that evening. There had also been caviar-topped quail eggs, blue cheese and candied fig tartlets, not to mention grilled polenta squares and seared tuna bites. But the chicken skewers had been my favorite, and as a conversation opener I had asked Gigi if she’d included the recipe for them in her next book, a home entertaining guide she’d already started promoting on her Today Show segments.
‘Oh, I’m not catering tonight,’ Gigi had drawled in response. Her voice was deep and warm, and she smelled of vanilla and rosewood. ‘Ainsley went with another company, which is more than fine by me. I’m here with my husband.’
‘I am, too,’ I said just as a woman in a chinchilla coat clomped through the doorway on five-inch platform heels. She had raven hair, large, probably surgically enhanced breasts, and a thin gold phone pressed to her ear. She was barking something in Russian into it. Later I would learn from Gigi that the fembot’s name was Irina and she called herself a matchmaker, but most believed her to be a madam. Irina set up pretty Russian girls, many just off the plane, with rich old men who wanted hot young things to take to dinner—and then home to bed. Eliot Spitzer was rumored to have been one of her better customers.
‘Darling, hello. I haven’t seen you in a while. It’s so nice to see you,’ Irina purred, leaning down—she stood six feet two in her heels—to give Gigi a double air kiss salutation.
‘Have you met Marcy Emerson?’ Gigi asked, putting her arm around my waist and giving it a reassuring squeeze.
Irina shifted her eyes, a pair of icy blue slits rimmed in heavy black liner, to me.
She was intimidating all right, and I had fumbled for my words, finally sputtering something like ’its cold out there, isn’t it?’ thinking that I’d be safe talking about the weather.
But I’d thought wrong.
‘In Russia we have a saying,’ Irina said, her voice as frosty as her glare. ‘There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes.’ She had made a show of looking me up and down before stomping off into the living room.
‘Umm, is it my imagination or did she just sneer at me?’ I asked Gigi.
‘Not your imagination.’
‘Well, then, what a friendly lady. I’m so glad I came.’
Gigi laughed. ‘You couldn’t get out of tonight, either, could you?’
‘Is it that obvious?’ I replied, and for the next ten minutes Gigi and I swapped our bullet-point biographies. She was originally from North Carolina, recently married her husband, one Jeremy Cohen, an ex-Goldman Sachs banker who’d originally made his money trading junk bonds (à la Michael Milken, minus the jail time). His particular knack was distressed investment, which meant that he bought and sold stock in troubled corporations. He’d started his first vulture fund in the late nineties following the International Monetary Fund crisis in Asia. After making a killing flipping undervalued companies in South Korea, Jeremy launched another fund and amassed yet another fortune buying securities in a string of utility companies across Texas. Immediately after Gigi married Jeremy, she got pregnant with a girl, now six months old and named Chloe, and moved into Jeremy’s gargantuan, feng shui-ed apartment in a newly refurbished luxury condo/hotel on Central Park South. I told her that I’d grown up in a suburb of Minneapolis, went to college in Chicago, where I worked post graduation at an investment bank, most recently as a relationship officer for the bank’s wealthy clients, and met John, whom I had been married to for five years.
Gigi and I finished our glasses of champagne and agreed it was time to join the others in the living room; our husbands were probably wondering if we’d left without them. Gigi suggested we take the long way back, through the Partridges’ dining room, where we gawked at a china hutch full of plates etched with two fancifully entwined P’s and an A.
‘Monogrammed tablewear,’ Gigi whispered, rolling her eyes. I giggled and she leaned in close to my ear to dispense a torrent of insider information, the importance of which I would realize only later, once it was too late.
‘I actually shouldn’t be making fun of poor Ainsley. Jeremy told me earlier tonight that Peter’s closing his fund. He started it three years ago and it never reached critical mass.’
I nodded. Critical mass in private-equity-speak referred to the amount of capital he had been able to raise. It was a common death knell for hundreds of startup funds.
‘Plus he cleared all his trades through Bear Stearns,’ Gigi continued.
In the aftermath of the subprime lending debacle, Bear Stearns, once one of the most venerable banks on Wall Street, was forced to sell itself to JP Morgan for less than it was worth. Much of its well-paid staff, including several of Peter’s friends, had been laid off, leaving Peter to scramble to forge relationships with new brokers.
‘And to top it all off, Peter was personally heavily invested in Bear stock. He’d worked there for ten years before he left to do his own thing. When Bear sold to JP Morgan for a pittance, the Partridges lost just about everything they had. Lord knows why they’re throwing this party. They really can’t afford it.’
‘I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose so much so quickly.’
‘Hey, this is New York. Fortunes are made and lost every day, especially in a market as volatile as this one.’
This, I knew to be true. John and I, for example, had profited from fluctuations in the energy markets. We were overnight success stories, but we were the exception. Far more had lost their shirts. No one could have anticipated that Greenwich, Connecticut, aka hedgefundlandia, would become rife with home foreclosures.
‘Hey, let’s have lunch next week, my treat. Do you like Nello?’ Gigi asked, mentioning the name of a popular Italian restaurant on Madison Avenue.
‘I’ve never been, but John has and he tells me it’s good.’
‘It is. The pasta is incredible. Tuesday at noon work for you?’
‘Absolutely,’ I’d said, and for the first time since the miscarriage, I actually had something to look forward to.
Gigi handed me her card in case I had to cancel—which I promised her I wouldn’t, my agenda being completely empty and all—and we walked back toward the living room, where the party was just starting to pick up steam. The music had gotten louder and drinks stiffer. At around eleven, Gigi bade us all goodbye—she’d promised her babysitter it wouldn’t be a late night—but before she left she introduced me to Peter Partridge, who immediately plunked a pair of felt antlers on my head and asked me to pose with Ainsley