I will do this for you, but I am very rushed too. What is the password for your home computer?! Couldn’t you have thought of this this morning?’
‘I was distracted this morning. By Dylan of course.’
Tapping my pen on a notepad, I sighed. ‘You were telling me the password …’
‘Uh …’
‘Phillip! What is the password?’
‘The password is Beaver.’
‘What? You’re kidding.’
No answer.
‘Phillip, your password is Beaver? That is so lame. Is this on your work computers too? In a stuffy law firm like yours? What happens if your IT guy has to get into your account?’
‘Why should I care about an IT guy?’
‘Phillip, I can’t believe you want me to type in B-E-A-V-E-R.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. It’s a private password. I’m the only person who knows it and now unfortunately for me you do too. I’m a horn-dog, so shoot me. Now go into my office when you get home and type B-E-A-V-E-R into my computer. Get the new safe code, it’s hidden in a document titled “Kids’ Activities”, it’s 48-62-something …’
‘And then what?’
‘On my desk, in the in-box, under some bank stuff, or just on a pile to the right on top of the desk you’ll see a folder marked Ridgefield. I need you to put it in the safe.’
‘Why?’
‘Carolina.’
‘Carolina what?’
‘First it’s the nail scissors. Then she puts a pile of newspapers to be thrown out on top of my desk as she’s dusting, then by accident, she grabs important folders, then she throws everything out. I lose everything. And I can’t risk losing this.’
‘Phillip, please. You’re being crazy neurotic. I’ll call her up and tell her not to touch your desk.’
‘Every day I tell her not to touch my nail scissors or my collar stays or my favourite Mont Blanc pen, and every day I can’t find any of them. She doesn’t listen.’
‘You know that husbands are more work than children, don’t you?’ My body was now splayed over my desk like a banana peel.
‘I never would be asking you this, but in this age, you never know.’
‘You never know what?’
‘Never know anything! It’s the information age! Everything is stolen from people’s trash, their mailboxes, their computers.’ Phillip was now in calm, lawyerly I-know-everything-there-is-to-know-on-the-planet mode. ‘I come from three generations of lawyers, and I am trained and versed in making prudent decisions. This is a prudent precaution and I’m going to Newark airport, no way to stop on the East Side. I want to leave knowing this is taken care of.’
‘Why can’t I just do it tonight when I get home?’
He’d lost his patience. ‘For the last time, I beg you, please stop questioning me. It’d be so much easier for me today, if, for once, just this once, you could just do as you are told.’
I harrumphed and went straight home, where I didn’t exactly do as I was told.
CHAPTER FOUR Everyone Knows That
It was pouring in New York at noon the next day.
‘Oui?’ The maître d’ stuck his enormous French nose through a crack in the thick, chocolate-brown lacquered doors.
‘I, uh, came for lunch?’
‘Avec?’
‘I’m getting wet here. Susannah, she’s …’
‘Qui?’
‘Susannah Briarcliff, surely you …’
The door opened. Jean-François Perrier looked right through me. I pointed out to him that I was with my friend Susannah over there, smiled foolishly and stared plaintively into his deep blue eyes. He waved his hands to motion for the busboy to take me there. No-contact rule in play. Francesca the check girl sized me up and concluded that I wasn’t really one of them. So she decided to sip her Diet Coke at the bar rather than bother with my raincoat. I shook the raindrops off my umbrella in disgust.
La Pierre Noire has no sign on the awning, no published phone number. It is the executive watering hole of one of the world’s most peculiar tribes: a breed of very rich humans inhabiting a specific grid that stretches from Manhattan’s 70th to 79th Streets to the north and south, bordered by Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue to the east and west.
Pity the poor West Sider who strolls by and mistakenly believes this is a restaurant operating by normal procedures, one that actually caters to the public. None too soon will they learn that they are not welcome, even though many tables are free. From the window, one can see rich tangerine velvet banquettes that surround the small, café-style mahogany tables. Handsome thirty-something French waiters dressed in blue jeans and starched, yellow Oxford cloth shirts squeeze between the tight tables.
My closest girlfriends don’t have lunch for a living like Susannah Briarcliff. Most of them have actual jobs, but Susannah is one of the few inhabitants of the Grid whom I go out of my way to see. It’s easy to forget that beneath Susannah’s fabulous wealth and stunning genes, there’s a fun girl that lurks inside. You can basically look for her in any column with party pictures – Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, the New York Times Style section – and it’s kind of like finding Waldo. Susannah has two kids, three dogs, seven on staff and one of the largest apartments in the city. All this courtesy of her family ties to one of America’s great real-estate dynasties. She’s five feet ten, has a thin athletic build and a shortish blonde Meg Ryan haircut. She is also married to a top editor for the New York Times, which sets her apart from most of the East Side socialites married to dead-wood bankers. Although she doesn’t reach the best-friend category – Kathryn from downtown and Abby and Charles from work all hold that title – she’s a close second.
I slipped into the plush banquette beside her. ‘Jamie. You look good. Really good.’
‘I’m not sure I’m properly dressed …’
‘Stop.’
Twelve of the fifteen tables were taken, filled with New York’s young socialites in fur-collared sweaters and their gay party planners, most of them charlatans who charge three hundred and fifty dollars an hour to pick out just the right fuchsia water goblet to go with a kasbah-themed dinner for twelve. Or just the right cheetah-print heel for a plain black suit. If any of these women purchase a recognizable piece of a certain season, they have to burn it before the following year. And once a blouse or shirt appears in Vogue, it’s already passé for them. I studied my khaki trousers, white blouse and plain black silk sweater. When I’d tell my mother about these women around me – and how sometimes I felt that I didn’t measure up – she’d chastise me for getting sucked into their nonsense. ‘How do you expect to get where you want to go if you’re rubbernecking at everyone else along the way? Don’t focus on what you wrongly perceive as your shortcomings.’
Ingrid Harris blasted through the door with her nanny and four-year-old daughter Vanessa. Jean-François stumbled on his thick French loafers as he ran to greet her. ‘Chérie!’ Kiss kiss.
He snapped his fingers and Francesca eagerly swept the tan shawl off Ingrid’s shoulders. She then unbuckled the fireman hooks from Vanessa’s rain jacket, revealing a pink tutu underneath. The nanny stood back, and held her own coat, used to this drill.
Ingrid looked perfectly gorgeous: she had far-apart brown doe eyes and long layered hair pulled back