New York for Beginners (26 page)

“But that was just on paper.”

“Your darling wife disagrees on that one. Otherwise she wouldn’t have come to New York to publicly announce that I’m sleeping with her husband, would she?”

“Vicky has absolutely no right to an opinion on this.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Zoe asked.

“We broke up because she cheated on me with my brother, Nate.”

Victoria “Vicky” Lancaster Fiorino had, as Zoe now learned, had a relationship behind Tom’s back with his brother, Nate, the heart surgeon. Shortly after it had begun, Nate had switched from New York-Presbyterian Hospital to King’s College Hospital in London so as to finally step out of his father’s shadow. His relationship with Tom, the firstborn, had always been tense. Nate had never forgiven Tom for not switching to an elite boarding school in Connecticut, which would have been the expected move. Instead, Tom had followed his father to Switzerland, where Mr. Fiorino had worked and researched at Zurich Children’s Hospital. Tom and Chuck had always been the closer team. Nate and Kitty weren’t very close. Later, at the American School in Lugano, Tom met Justus von Schoenhoff, who became like a brother to him. In short: Nate apparently felt like he had a score to settle with Tom.

And Tom? He had been cheated on for the first time in his entire life. But he hadn’t told anybody—not even his parents—about Nate’s leading role in the mess. Zoe thought at first that it must have been embarrassing for him to be put in the role of the cuckold. But Tom only said that it was a matter of honor that the three of them take care of the problem by themselves, without their parents getting involved. To Zoe, that all sounded a lot like Cosa Nostra, but she had to admit that she was impressed by Tom’s resilience.

“When I got to know you better, when I saw you at Fashion Week and in Miami and when we went to IKEA, I realized that you were a breath of fresh air for me, Zoe, just as I was about to drown,” Tom said, trying to explain why he’d broken his self-imposed rule.

The reason Vicky had let herself become involved with Nate could be explained by upper-class mating customs, Zoe supposed. In the upper social echelons, love seemed to be a negligible factor in a relationship. Marriage was a strategic move, it seemed, even today. In New York, museums, parks, and bridges were named after the Fiorino dynasty, who, according to their family tree, belonged to the branch of Whitneys who were related to the Rockefellers and the Tafts. In such marriages, everything was primarily about preserving the family’s inheritance, or about forging an alliance with a family of the same status.

It wasn’t as though Tom and Vicky hadn’t been madly in love in the beginning, though. On the contrary! But their passion had never turned into a deep love, Tom told Zoe. He realized much too late that he was playing the lead role in a play that had been written by someone else.
A play that looked so perfect at first glance that it almost had to be reality,
Zoe mused.

Tom had had no idea that there was more than familial affection between Vicky and Nate. Then, Nate’s girlfriend called Tom from New York one night, crying and asking if Nate was having an affair with another woman. She was sure that his mistress was at Nate’s apartment at that very minute. That had sparked Tom’s curiosity, so he decided to make a spontaneous visit to his brother’s place—not only finding the suspected mistress, but also discovering, to his surprise, that she was his scantily clad wife, who was supposed to have been at a spa in Switzerland. He handed in his notice with Plachette in London and accepted the CEO job in New York that Schoenhoff had already offered him multiple times. He filed for divorce before he even got on the plane.

And so, Tom and Zoe sat and talked in their deck chairs on their respective patios for over an hour, neatly separated by the garden fence, until Tom finally got up and asked pragmatically: “My place or yours?”

Zoe stepped over the railing, and Tom put the “Please do not disturb” sign on his bungalow’s door.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Zoe asked. She was lying on Tom’s bed, and he had made himself comfortable across from her in a wicker chair.

“Somehow the moment never seemed to be quite right, and at some point it was just too late. Besides, I wanted to finally do something right with a woman. That’s why I was really intent on pulling off the whole friendship thing with you.”

“At which you failed miserably.”

Tom grinned. “And of course it had nothing to do with what you wanted.”

Zoe laughed, but she still couldn’t quite grasp Tom’s train of thought. “And why, then, didn’t you take a flight to Germany to come and talk to me?”

“Believe me, I’ve been to Germany so often in the last few months that Lufthansa offered me a Senator Card.”

Zoe couldn’t believe her ears. “And what exactly were you doing there?”

“I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“Excuse me?”

“I saw you buying the computer equipment for your new project, full of anticipation. I saw you having dinner with your ex-boyfriend at that Italian place. And I saw you making a huge scene with the poor guy at the train station, in front of everybody.”

Zoe could barely process the information. She didn’t know if she should feel flattered or file a restraining order at the next police station. “Tom, that’s called stalking. That’s prosecutable. You had no right—”

“I wouldn’t be sitting here,” he interrupted with a serious expression, “if I didn’t know you were unhappy in Germany. I’m only sitting here because I saw with my own eyes that the escape into your past didn’t work.”

“And what if you’d found me happy?”

“Then I would have left you alone.”

Tom got up and sat down on the edge of the bed next to her. “Zoe, I’m very glad that you weren’t happy. Please come back to New York and to Schoenhoff. And to me. Please!”

Zoe looked at him for a long time and then slowly shook her head. “I can’t, Tom.” Then she left his room.

26

It was clear to Zoe that she couldn’t return to
Vision
in New York. That chapter of her life was closed. But she wasn’t as sure about things with Tom. Could she—or rather,
should
she—ever trust him again? He hadn’t lied to her, strictly speaking. He just hadn’t told her the entire truth.

Don’t you sugarcoat it, too, you idiot,
Zoe chided herself.

For the most part, she was a little embarrassed to have left New York on the spur of the moment like that, without giving him the chance to explain himself. But in that instant, under the Chrysler Building’s awning, she was firmly convinced that she had fallen for one of those serial offenders she’d researched for her mistress feature.

The crucial question remained: Could she ever trust Tom again? And if so: Would she spend the rest of her life fearing that he would deceive her again?

A knock on the door interrupted her brooding.

“Yes?” Zoe called out. She really didn’t feel like seeing visitors right now.

“It’s me, Justus. May I come in?”

“If you must,” Zoe murmured and opened the door.

Justus scrutinized her. “We were going to talk about Yearning
again tonight.”

“I, personally, am yearning for some peace and quiet tonight.”

“Did you talk to Tom?”

“He talked to me.”

“So?”

“So I don’t know. I can’t just go back to New York. I never quite got over Tom, but at least I’ve found a career path that I’m really certain about.”

“Well, that’s a good start. Because I’d like to do Yearning with you. Your presentation was really convincing.”

Justus held out a completely drafted contract. Zoe took it, sat down on the bed and began to read. “Partnership Agreement” was written in bold type above all sorts of clauses. It was signed by Justus von Schoenhoff. The contract specified a 49-percent copartnership of Yearning with Schoenhoff Publishing, including a second financing round of two million dollars. Zoe, Allegra, and Ben would divide up the other 51 percent among themselves. The only condition: Justus insisted that Yearning would not only be introduced in the German-speaking countries of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, but also in English in the US. The location for their shared start-up was to be Silicon Alley in New York.

This time, Zoe’s commitment had nothing to do with a man. With Yearning, she had found something she really believed in. Something she was passionate about. Yearning was Zoe’s very own organic ice cream parlor/yoga school in a nature reserve in the Kenyan jungle. She didn’t need to think it over. She signed the partnership agreement while still sitting on her bed.

She realized something else as she was signing. To the question “What would you do if you were not afraid?” Zoe had just one answer. It consisted of two parts: “I’d go to New York to start up Yearning. And I’d give Tom another chance.”

She jumped up, left Justus behind in her room, climbed the fence to the neighboring bungalow, and knocked on the door.

“Zoe,” was all Tom managed to utter when he saw her standing there.

“I can come back, after all,” she said.

The elevator doors opened noiselessly onto the Wooster Street loft. A real-estate agent in an Ann Taylor suit strode ahead of Zoe and Tom. She was trying, unnecessarily, to make the apartment tempting to them. It was so absolutely gorgeous that Zoe was dumbstruck. During their walk-through, Zoe kept surreptitiously knocking on the walls to make sure she hadn’t ended up on the set of some movie about young Wall Street moguls. But everything was real. Together, the living room and the Bulthaup stainless steel kitchen were about the size and height of a basketball court. The bathrooms, as the agent kept stressing, were equipped with “German fittings.” Hansgrohe here, Duravit there. In the open fireplace, a cozy fire was burning.

“It’s perfect,” Zoe whispered to Tom. “Like Bermuda in January.”

Tom grimaced. Apparently he didn’t find her joke very funny.

“But I insist on subtenant status,” Zoe added quickly. “I can offer $2,500 a month. For that, I’d like one of the three bedrooms all to myself, as an office.”

“It’s our apartment, darling. You don’t need to pay rent.”

“But I want to!”

“Don’t be silly. That’s so incredibly European and emancipated.”

“But that’s what I am.”

Tom laughed. Then he gave her a kiss. “You’ll be the most wonderful subtenant south of the North Pole.”

“And you really need to work on your clichés, pronto.”

Tom pulled out a checkbook, wrote a check for the first month’s rent as a deposit, and handed it to the broker. “We’ll take it,” he said.

The broker was apparently quite used to this kind of quick decision. She stowed the check in her briefcase and pulled out a rental contract, saying, “Please sign here.” Before she disappeared back into the elevator, she put down the keys on the kitchen counter, pulled a miniature bottle of champagne out of her handbag, and handed it to Zoe with a big “Congratulations!”

Tom waited for the elevator doors to close, and then he put his arms around Zoe and lifted her up onto the kitchen counter. “Welcome home, darling.” He kissed her. First her lips, then he worked his way down the side of her neck.

“This reminds me of the Hamptons,” Zoe breathed, “when Lucia came into the kitchen.”

“Now I’ll finish what I started back then. I promise,” Tom whispered. “And this time there isn’t anybody to come in and surprise us.”

“The interior design is completely in your hands, my dear,” Tom told her the morning after their intense testing of the built-in kitchen. “You can have whatever you want, but, please, no DIY furniture to assemble.”

And so, Zoe, who’d never furnished an apartment or an entire house from scratch, had gratefully accepted the help of Mimi’s interior designer. Lara Mulligan was a petite, wiry woman in her early fifties. Mimi described her as “no nonsense.”

“If she’s working for you, she’s a pain in the neck. She only lets go when the project is 100-percent perfect. But if you’re working for
her
, she’s a nightmare. You don’t want to know what the contractors call her.”

That was how the “pain in the neck” ended up in Zoe and Tom’s apartment a few days later, scoping out the rooms. According to the expression on her face, their place wasn’t completely hopeless. Then she unrolled the loft’s floor plan on a folding table that a silent assistant had carried in for her.

“Where’s your mood board?” she asked Zoe somewhat impatiently.

“My mood board?”

“This is usually the moment when my clients pull out boxes of magazine cutouts, possible color schemes, and materials. So I know what direction to go in,” she explained.

“Oh,” Zoe answered. She felt like a second grader who’d forgotten to do her homework for her favorite teacher. Instead of worrying about the interior decor she’d gone out to explore the neighborhood. That was what she had hired an interior decorator for, wasn’t it? On the very first morning after they signed the rental contract, she had walked from the loft to Café Gitane. Seven minutes and forty-two seconds. Not bad! Then she went looking for a supermarket. But, apart from the fine foods store Dean & DeLuca, she hadn’t been able to find one. Whoever lived in SoHo could probably afford to pay $6.50 for a small cup of strawberries that had been watered with Evian and picked by Peruvian virgins. After that, she had gone to Balthazar’s for a welcome-back lunch with Mimi and Eros.

“All right, then,” the decorator said in resignation. “We’ll go to ABC Carpet & Home. That’s New York City’s mood board, per se.”

“I’m so confused,” was all that Zoe could manage to say when they stopped for lunch. All morning, she had been combining and testing so many style, color, and material options that she had no idea what she wanted anymore. It seemed like she and Lara Mulligan had analyzed every single piece of furniture together in the store. They had wandered through all the ethnic pop-up shops on the ground floor, with their dinner services crafted from clay by Tibetan monks. They had inspected handmade rugs from guaranteed child-labor-free family businesses, hand-painted silk tapestries, couches made from certified organic wood, beds, bedding, lamps and candelabras, curtains, pots, vases, and whatever else a well-situated, eco-friendly New Yorker with exquisite taste and an unlimited Amex Centurion card would want to put in their apartment.

“Let’s have some lunch before discussing our options,” Lara said in a kind, soothing, grandmotherly tone. She ordered two prix-fixe lunches without even asking Zoe what she wanted first.

They were sitting in a restaurant called ABC Kitchen, which was adjacent to the furniture store. It belonged to celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, whose cuisine was called “haute organic,” which meant gourmet organic food. The place was decorated cleanly in whites and wood. The heavy wooden beams on the ceiling, which were probably supposed to remind you of an old farmhouse, had once been planks on a fishing boat in Maine. The rustic tables finished with a white varnish were made from wooden railroad ties, and the eclectic silverware came from various estate sales. That was what it said on the menu, anyway—which was, of course printed on 100-percent recycled paper.

Zoe and Lara ate barbecued calamari in a pretzel crust, followed by a mini pizza with mint, mussels, and fiery-hot chilies. For dessert, they had ice cream sundaes with salted-caramel popcorn. Everything was organic, carbon-neutral, and absolutely fantastic.

When Zoe could finally think straight again, she looked around and said to Lara, “This is exactly what I want. Sustainable, natural, simple, and sexy.”

For the remainder of the afternoon, the two of them created a mood board with catalogue cutouts, fabric and wood samples, and various cell phone pictures of ABC Carpet showroom pieces and elements from ABC Kitchen that Zoe liked. Somehow, wondrously, Lara managed to print out the phone pictures somewhere in the furniture store. Apparently she knew people there. And then, two weeks later, Zoe and Tom’s new apartment was completely furnished in a style that Zoe had baptized Urban Zen.

“We should throw a spontaneous housewarming party tonight,” Zoe suggested, and detached herself from Tom’s morning embrace so she could turn over in bed to face him. The first night at the loft had been somewhat sleepless, due to the new Ligne Roset bed—and not just that. Zoe yawned.
It’s funny,
she thought,
what an effect elevators, natural dining tables, and waterfall shower heads can have on you.