Bergdorf Blondes (14 page)

“No one could feel worse than me right now, not even me. What did you think of the note?” I asked.

“
What did I think of the note?
Who do you think you are, Sylvia Plath?”

Charlie totally understood me at that moment. At least if I’d died everyone would have realized I’d read lots of important literature, like
Mrs. Dalloway
and
Valley of the Dolls
.

“Well, it’s funny you should say that because I was totally going for the whole Virginia Woolf thing actually,” I replied.

He grabbed me hard by my shoulders and shook me. I was shocked. “You’ve got to grow up and stop being so incredibly childish. This could have been serious,” he said.

“Stop it!” I whimpered. “Stop being so nasty to me about it all! I’m just not feeling too good about things now. Life is terrible.”

He let me go.

“Things might be terrible. But what about all the people who love you? Your parents, Julie, all your friends? Did you ever stop to think how terrible it might be for them if you killed yourself?”

“Of course,” I said, which wasn’t exactly totally true. I hadn’t thought about anyone except
moi
since my disengagement. “They’d be better off without me like this though, I’m just a burden now.”

“You’ve got to pull yourself together. Stop being so self-indulgent.”

“I can’t ‘pull myself together,’ I’m too unhappy,” I said.

“We’re meant to be unhappy sometimes. That’s life. Hearts get broken. Bad things happen. You get through them, you don’t go off doing selfish things like OD’ing. If you were happy all the time, you’d be some talk show host. Like Katie Couric.”

I started to cry. Why do people have to be so mean about Katie? She can’t help it if she’s being paid like $60 million to smile until 2010.

“Stop being so harsh,” I wailed. “I need some kindness.”

“Kindness? Put this on and get some sleep.” Charlie handed me the Ritz robe.

“I can’t wear that,” I said. “It’s part of my suicide outfit. I know, why don’t you take me to Café Flore for breakfast? I love St. Germain. That would cheer me up.”

“You’re going nowhere. You’re going to stay here and sleep it off.”

“Well, maybe later you could take me for a really glamorous dinner at Lapérouse. I mean, they do this
flambé tarte tatin
there that is beyond.”

“I don’t care,” replied Charlie, “if the fucking Eiffel Tower is being fucking flambéed, you aren’t moving.”

For someone who was supposed to be a good friend, Charlie was being very hostile. Hadn’t anyone told him you don’t swear at suicide victims?

“You’re sick and you need rest. You’re staying right here all day and all night. You’ll drink hot milk and eat rice and that is that,” he said.

Rice?
He hated me, he really did. Just then there was a knock at the door. It was Julie, with Todd in tow.

“Hey boo!” she squealed, hugging Charlie. “You’re here! This is Todd-ee. We are gonna have so much fun.” She didn’t seem fazed by introducing her boyfriends to each other, but her face fell when she saw me. “My god, sweetie, what happened, why are you dressed like a street person?”

“Can we go next door?” said Charlie. “And maybe ‘Todd-ee’ could come back later. I need to talk to you, Julie.”

Todd sloped off looking embarrassed, and Charlie led Julie into the other room. He closed the door. Typical. Just when I was about to get some much-needed
compassion from Julie, Charlie whisked her away. God, he was so interfering! I couldn’t wait for him to go back to LA, where he belonged, along with all those other impossibly controlling, anal-retentive movie directors. Suddenly, I felt like I was going to vomit. I staggered into the bathroom. I’ll spare you the details.

Things didn’t improve all day. Julie loved all the things I’d left her in my will and asked if she could have the Ambien tablets even though I wasn’t dead. Once Mom realized that I’d managed not to kill myself, she said she was not at all happy that I was so honest in my will about her limited talent for fashion. The only person who was thrilled with his bequest was Dad.

The next night while Julie was down in the spa getting a blow-out, Charlie asked me to meet him in the bar. At last he had realized that a postsuicidal girl didn’t need lectures, she needed champagne. I’d felt pretty dreadful yesterday—sick and weak and sad—but now I felt a little better. I was desperate for anything to distract me from thinking about what I’d done. I mean, I was embarrassed beyond belief, you can imagine. But when I got down to the bar Charlie didn’t even notice my new Chloé outfit that Julie had bought me to try and convince me not to attempt to kill myself again. He was frowning and serious.

“Better?” he said.

“Totally desperately lonely and brokenhearted
actually,” I said. “Could you get me a champagne cocktail?”

Charlie called over the waiter. “A vodka for me and a Perrier for mademoiselle, please.”

God, men are just as selfish as girls always say. Then he said, “You need a clear head if you’re going to sort out your life.”

“A clear head is not going to get me another fiancé,” I said.

“You don’t need a fiancé.”

Charlie didn’t understand that my life in New York would be ruined unless I found another fiancé. All anyone cared about in New York was who was married to whom, or was going to be. Didn’t he know it was like the nineteenth century there? Didn’t he know what had happened to poor Lily Bart?

Charlie continued, “You need to sort yourself out before you fall in love with someone else.”

“I’ll never fall in love again,” I sulked.

“Don’t be so cynical. Of course you will.”

Then out of the blue, Charlie said, “Is Julie seeing someone else, here in Paris?”

Yes, and you met him
, I thought. I didn’t like to lie to Charlie, but when one is in a situation where one’s loyalty is divided, I always say, lie anyway. I smiled reassuringly, and said, “No.”

“Be honest,” he said.

Can I be super-duper honest and admit something
très
terrible? I wasn’t paying that much attention to
this very tense conversation anymore because something happened while I was talking to Charlie that I never expected: I fell in love.

The entire time I was talking to Charlie a very handsome boy was making what I can only describe as very Brazilian eye contact from right behind Charlie’s left ear.

“She’s
nuts
about you. She never stops talking about you,” I said ultratruthfully.

God, Mr. Brazil over there looked hot when he turned to the right. He had dark blond hair and a sun-kissed forehead. I imagined he’d just come back from a weekend in the south of France or something glamorous like that.

“She’s seeing Todd, isn’t she?”

A waiter interrupted us. “Mademoiselle, for you,” he said. He put a glass of champagne in front of me. “From the Prince. Eduardo of Savoy.” The waiter gestured toward Mr. Handsome. I mouthed
merci
. He nodded back.

“Todd’s
gay
,” I said, superconfidently.

I wondered if the Prince’s parents would mind when he told them he was marrying me.

“Todd is about as gay as Eminem,” said Charlie. He was silent for a while, looking into his drink. “I think it’s over with Julie.”

I tried very hard to focus my thoughts on Charlie’s dilemma, but I couldn’t help being distracted when I recalled that this particular H.R.H. had a famously
wonderful summer house in Sardinia and estates scattered all over Italy in fact. Total PH material.

“I’m going back to LA tomorrow night,” said Charlie.

He looked up at me for reassurance. It was odd, as if the tables had turned and it was Charlie who needed support and advice from me. I gathered my thoughts so I could make a great speech about Julie’s virtues, but then wondered whether these two really were suited. I mean, Charlie was so bossy and Julie was such a delinquent. I made a lame attempt to make my case.

“But you and Julie are like…totally…great…” I trailed off, because I’d noticed that H.R.H. was reading Proust. How hot of him. No, how
smart
of him. The waiter approached and gave me a note. It read
Dinner, 8:30
PM
, V
OLTAIRE
. Charlie took it straight from me and shot me a furious look. He turned to the waiter who was hovering expectantly.

“Could you tell the young man that
mademoiselle
is not well enough to have dinner out tonight?” he said.

How dare he? Just when I was feeling a little better. He only wanted me to be unhappy because he was unhappy.

“Monsieur, tell him I’ll meet him there,” I said, gathering up my things.

Charlie glared at me and said nothing. He really hated me now. I really hated him back, so we were quits.

I
t was
très
lucky that whole little Advil plot of mine didn’t work out. Eduardo quoted Proust throughout dinner. Can you imagine anything more intellectually stimulating than a man whispering,
“Il n’y a rien comme le désir pour empêcher les choses qu’on dit d’avoir aucune ressemblance avec ce qu’on a dans la pensée,”
to you over a glass of Château Lafite that’s older than you are? Even though my semi-fluent French didn’t exactly stretch to a translation, I knew it would be beyond romantic if I could have understood it.

“Giuseppe,” said Eduardo to his driver after we’d left the restaurant and were in the car, “please take us home.”

As I told Julie afterward—because she was super stroppy when she couldn’t find me at the Ritz the next morning—I swear I had zero idea that when Eduardo said “home,” he was referring to the family palazzo on
the shores of Lake Como. He kissed me like a demon all the way from Paris to Como, a drive of about 800 kilometers. It should take about eight hours. But when you have a driver like Giuseppe you make it in five hours flat. I secretly hope he never drives me again. No one needs to get anywhere at 185 kilometers per hour.

I think Eduardo was just about the perfect man. He wore more Malo cashmere than an entire mountain of goats. His mom was an ex-actress from Hollywood and his father would have been the King of Savoy if they still had kings there. Usually the Italian royal family isn’t allowed into Italy, but the government worshiped Eduardo’s mom so much he’d been given special dispensation to go in and out as he pleased. He’d studied French lit at Bennington and lived in New York “working for the family,” whatever that meant. I didn’t inquire, I mean, I’d seen
The Godfather
and everything and you just don’t ask Italians how they specifically get their money.

The palazzo was better inside than the Frick. I was living for the four-poster bed I woke up in the next morning. It was draped in Italian lace exactly like the kind Dolce & Gabbana use on their corsets. The shutters were open and I could see the lake and mountains outside, all Technicolor blues. No wonder there are no Italians in the Hamptons.

I was pretty amazed with the way life was turning
out. I mean, I was alive, I’d avoided a potentially disturbing Julie-Charlie breakup scene
through no fault of my own
, and I was eating breakfast in bed in a place that made the Ritz look like the Marriott Marquis. Everywhere you looked in the palazzo, there was a butler in a black jacket and white gloves bringing you a freshly baked almond cake or something delicious like that. I couldn’t believe how much better I felt already. Who knew you could recover completely from a suicide attempt in thirty-six hours? It was easier than falling off a cliff.

I must send a postcard to the girls in New York
, I thought; I mean, they needed to know about this. We walked down to the local village to buy a few things. As we left the house, two ferociously tanned Italian men appeared. They were dressed identically in navy bomber jackets, dark pants, and sunglasses. They were both wearing ear pieces. They looked so fit I swear they’d spent their whole lives at Crunch gym on East Thirteenth Street.
Bodyguards
, I thought. How glam to have your own personal protection. Of course, I acted super-duper nonchalant; I mean, I didn’t want Eduardo knowing I was totally freaked out by the security so I just said “
Ciao
” to both of them as if to say,
Everyone I know has armed guards
.

They walked us all the way into the village and back again, whispering into those little ear pieces. We didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger of an assassination
attempt or anything like that in the village—the only person we saw was a lone farmer herding a donkey along the main street. But it did occur to me that had someone wanted to identify and kill the Prince it would have been very easy to target him because there was no one else walking around the village that day with two very conspicuous undercover bodyguards trailing after him and a girl wearing heels and a black satin evening dress.

You know what’s really awesome about being an H.R.H. with more staff than the first lady? You can decide what you want for lunch while you are out walking, call the house where there’s a chef better than Jean-Georges Vongerichten on call 24–7, and have
melanzane
and
panna cotta
waiting the minute you get home. You can imagine what I wrote on my postcard:

I know Jolene was scheduled to get married and everything, but she should know what she might be missing out on in advance.

We were sitting in the drawing room after lunch
drinking espresso when one of the staff rushed in with the telephone and handed it to Eduardo. He said something very fast in Italian and then put the phone down and jumped up. He was on high alert.

“Okay, we’re leaving!” he said. “We go back to New York tonight.”

“Why?” I said.

We were having such a heavenly time. It seemed crazy to go back to New York though it had crossed my mind in the last few days that I really needed to contact the Palm Beach heiress.

“
Carina
, I have some…family business to take care of. I’m sorry. But we’ll come back here in the summer, I promise.” I loved that Eduardo called me
carina
—it means “darling” in Italian.

He looked depressed.

“But I’ve left my passport and everything in Paris,” I said.

“You don’t need a passport with me.”

God, how glam. Even the president needs a passport.

There were six e-mails from Julie when I got back to New York very late that night. I dreaded reading them—Julie was never going to forgive me for leaving her alone in Paris, or, rather, alone and rejected
by a man in Paris. It would be her turn to have a nervous breakdown now. The first one read,

Thank God. Julie still had Charlie. Even though he’d been undeniably vile about the whole Advil incident and I’d made an executive decision never to speak to him again, he made Julie happy. That was all that mattered.

Julie’s other e-mails listed her various shopping purchases in Dickensian detail. She was mainly scooping up Marc Jacobs outfits at Colette. This seemed sort of weird since she could just buy them for a lot less on Mercer Street back in New York. But as she said, “Look, if you are going to have to wear Marc Jacobs because it’s just too good, at least stand out from the crowd and be able to say you bought it in Paris.” I e-mailed her back and asked her to bring back my passport and clothes. I knew this wouldn’t trouble her at all,
because, like all Park Avenue Princesses, Julie always has someone else pack her bags and then ship them because they are always three times as heavy as the baggage allowance.

You know how I was totally gutted after the disengagement because my apartment suddenly became an invitation-free zone? Well, the minute everyone in Manhattan knew I’d been a guest of the Prince at the palazzo, my mantelpiece became so crowded with stiff white cards I needed a crane to clear it. I was secretly concerned that these were transparently tactical invites sent
in case
I became a Princess. But I decided to imagine that I was receiving them because I was genuinely popular. Otherwise I would have been headfirst back into that Advil bottle. Denial can be very beneficial for one’s social life.

There’s nothing like dating an “of” in New York. Apart from the fact that Eduardo was just dreamy on the looks and personality front, everyone in New York wants to marry an “of.” Felipe of Spain, Pavlos of Greece, Max of Sweden, Kyril of Bulgaria—those boys have gorgeous American girlfriends and wives coming out of their ears. Like most exiled royalty, they all love being in New York, where they feel appreciated. (Apparently Europeans aren’t nearly as
friendly to them as us.) No one here minds at all that the Princes don’t have kingdoms anymore. Most people in New York think Savoy is a very swanky hotel in London, but they still adored Eduardo. It doesn’t matter where you’re “of,” the point is to be “of” Somewhere. A New York girl would kill to marry a domain-less Prince and get to call herself a Princess. The only people who mind about the whole kingdom thing are the Princes themselves, who take it all
très
seriously.

Eduardo lived in an immaculate bachelor pad on Lexington and Eightieth. It was an excellent place for late-night trysting. Whenever I couldn’t fluently translate all that French quotation stuff Eduardo was into, I amused myself by scanning the walls and bookshelves, which were crammed with paintings and sepia photographs of his ancestors in crowns and majorly sparkly tiaras. Who knew they were so into Harry Winston back then? If only they put that in the history books, New York high school girls would consider the unification of Italy a very important part of their education.

The minute Julie hit New York we met for a decaf latte at Café Gitane on Mott Street. Gitane is wall-to-wall with supermodels dressed like street urchins in very expensive Marni clothes. Everyone thinks it’s supercool. I have to admit I’ve picked up a few fashion directions from the girls there myself on occasion.
Julie actually fit in surprisingly well because she was wearing her new “French” Marc Jacobs combat pants which looked genius on her. She’d chosen a table in a dark corner, which was odd because Julie usually wants to sit in the most prominent spot wherever she goes.

“Hi, darling,” she said when I arrived. “I know, I know, you’re looking at me weirdly because this is a freaky table for me but I’m being, like,
low-key
.”

I was confused. Julie is actually politically opposed to being low-key.

“Why? It’s so not you,” I said.

“Ssshhhh!”
she whispered, putting her sunglasses on. “We don’t want anyone hearing us.”

“Why?”

“You’re on suicide watch.”

“I’m fine. I’m totally off the Advil and
so
into Eduardo. Look at me, everyone says I’m radiant.”

“We all know the secret of radiant in New York after a breakup—Portofino, okay. So don’t even think about trying that one on us.”

“Us?”

“Me and Lara and Jolene. We’re watching you 24–7. You’re moving into mine, no arguments.”

“No way,”
I said. “Look, Tracey made that room stunning, but I don’t want to live there.”

“You have two options. Either you live in The Pierre with me, or you go into therapy.”

Julie was as transparent as a glass of San Pellegrino sometimes. Living with her was okay for five minutes when I was sick, but I didn’t want her stealing all my clothes. That was her real motive, I was sure of it. She never, ever gives anything back, even big things like Versace pantsuits. She’s a black hole for fashion and you don’t want any of your nice stuff near it.

I was convinced therapy would make me ill. Girls in New York who are in therapy are the worst to be around. They talk about their childhoods nonstop. Julie thinks therapy has all the answers and is totally into getting really upset over her childhood to try and figure out why she has so many tantrums. She just can’t admit that the tantrums are adult spoiled-brat tantrums. She thinks it really traumatized her that her mom forced her into Lilly Pulitzer dresses between the ages of four and ten in Palm Beach when all the other kids had been allowed to wear CK jeans. Julie’s shrink traced her adult addiction to shopping back to this public humiliation.

“Julie, I’m not doing either of them. I’m fine, I’m better,” I insisted. “I’ve fallen madly in love with someone else.”

“You’ve only known him a few days! You’re infatuated. Even if this royal kid is the real thing, you need to figure out why it is you stayed with Zach when he was treating you worse than the shit on the soles of his sneakers.”

“But Julie, I’ve forgotten all that now. It’s like I was never even engaged to Zach. I don’t even feel like it happened to me. I feel like it happened to someone else, in a movie. That wasn’t really
me
.”

“So who was it then? You can’t pretend this stuff didn’t happen. If you don’t figure it out now, you’re going to end up under someone else’s sneakers.”

Why did Julie think it was such a smart idea to relive something vile that I’d very successfully blocked out of my mind? She’s met with way too many head doctors. My view is that the best way to deal with icky things is to forget about them.

“You nearly died a week ago and you think you’re ‘fine’?” said Julie. “You could have grade two bipolar manic depression or something terrible like that. This is
very serious
. At least get a brain scan or something.”

Like most New York girls, Julie gets an MRI every time she gets a headache. She is so familiar with the grading system of depression she could diagnose it. She continued, “Does Eduardo know what happened?”

“Of course!” I said. “I told him everything.”

I would hate for Julie to know that I told her an outright lie, but
of course
I hadn’t told Eduardo a thing about what had happened in Paris. He thought I was there for the boutiques, like all American girls. The truth is, I absolutely hated myself for the whole Advil thing. Charlie hated me for it. Julie wasn’t exactly thrilled about it. I didn’t want anyone else hating
me. It would have been so not smart to tell Eduardo the truth about me at this early stage or he might hate me, too.

“Well, that makes me feel better about him,” said Julie. “But at least think about seeing Dr. Fensler. Even if you feel fine it could be useful.”