One Fifth Avenue (30 page)

Now, as he shook his head about Lola while the stylist brushed the clipped hair from his shoulders, who should walk by the plate-glass window but James Gooch. Was Philip always going to run into James Gooch now, too? he wondered. How had this happened? They’d lived in the same building for years and had managed to coexist peacefully, without the acknowledgment of each other’s presence, and all of a sudden, ever since that afternoon at Paul Smith, he ran into James nearly every other day. He did not wish to increase his acquaintance with James, but it was probably inevitable, as James struck him as one of those men who, knowing he is not wanted, only becomes more insistent on pushing his way in. Sure enough, James spotted him through 206

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the selection of wigs in the shop window and, with a look of surprise, came into the salon.

“How are you?” he asked eagerly.

Philip nodded, trying not to speak. If he spoke, it was all over.

“I didn’t know they cut men’s hair here,” James said, taking in the purple velvet chairs and the fringed wall hangings.

“Been doing it forever,” Philip murmured.

“It’s so close to the building. Maybe I should start coming here. I still go to a guy on the Upper West Side.”

Philip politely inclined his head.

“We used to live up there,” James said. “I tell everyone my wife rescued me from my studio apartment and loft bed. If it weren’t for her, I’d probably still be there.”

“I hope not.” Philip stood up.

“What about you?” James asked. “Have you always lived downtown?”

“I’ve always lived in One Fifth,” Philip said. “I grew up there.”

“Nice,” James said, nodding. “What do you think about the Rices, by the way? Guy seems like an asshole to me. He hassles my wife, and then he’s putting in a two-thousand-gallon aquarium.”

“I’ve learned not to get involved in the altercations of the other residents,” Philip said dryly. “That’s my aunt’s area.”

“I thought you knew Schiffer Diamond, though,” James said. “Didn’t you two used to date?”

“A long time ago,” Philip said. He handed the cashier forty dollars and tried to get away from James by quickly slipping out the door. But James followed him. Now Philip was stuck with James for the two-block walk back to One Fifth. It seemed an eternity. “We should have dinner sometime,” James said. “My wife and I, you and your girlfriend. What’s her name again?”

“Lola,” Philip said.

“She’s young, isn’t she?” James asked nonchalantly.

“Twenty-two,” Philip said.

“That is young,” James said. “She could be your daughter.”

“Luckily, she isn’t,” Philip said.

They reached the building, and James repeated his offer of dinner.

“We can go someplace in the neighborhood. Maybe Knickerbocker?”

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Philip couldn’t see a way out. What could he say? “I never want to have dinner with you and your wife”? “Maybe after Christmas,” he said.

“Perfect,” James said. “We’ll do it the first or second week after New Year’s. My book comes out in February, so I’ll be away after that.”

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“What are you doing for Christmas?” Brumminger asked Schiffer Diamond over the phone.

“No plans,” Schiffer said, leaning forward in the makeup chair. She’d had four dates with Brumminger; after the fourth dinner, they’d decided to sleep together to “get it out of the way” and ascertain whether or not they were compatible. The sex was fine—adult and technically correct and slightly passionless but not unsatisfying—and Brumminger was easy and intelligent, although somewhat humorless. His lack of humor came from a residual bitterness over being fired from his position as CEO two years ago, then struggling with his perceived loss of status. If he wasn’t CEO, if he didn’t have a title after his name, who was he?

Brumminger’s yearlong hejira had taught him one thing: “Soul searching is good, but achievement is better.” He, too, had returned to New York to start over, trying to put together some deals with other former CEOs who’d been put out to pasture at sixty. “The First CEOs Club,”

he joked.

Now he said: “Want to go to Saint Barths? I’ve got a villa from the twenty-third until January tenth. If you can leave on the twenty-third, I can give you a lift. I’m flying private.”

Alan, the PA, stuck his head into the room. “You have visitors,” he mouthed. Schiffer nodded. Philip and his young girlfriend, Lola, came into the room. Philip had mentioned he’d be bringing her, and Schiffer had agreed, curious about this girl who had managed to hold on to Philip longer than Schiffer had expected.

Stating the obvious, Philip said, “I brought Lola.”

Schiffer held out her hand. “I’ve heard about you from Enid.”

“Really?” Lola said, looking pleased.

Schiffer held up one finger and went back to her phone call. “What do you think?” Brumminger asked.

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“It’s a great idea. I can’t wait,” Schiffer said, and hung up.

“Can’t wait for what?” Philip asked with the curious familiarity of having once had an intimate relationship.

“Saint Barths. At Christmas.”

“I’ve always wanted to go to Saint Barths,” Lola said, impressed.

“You should get Philip to take you,” Schiffer said, looking at Philip. “It’s one of his favorite islands.”

“It’s one of everyone’s favorite islands,” Philip grumbled. “Who’re you going with?”

“Brumminger,” Schiffer said, looking down so the makeup artist could apply mascara.

“Derek Brumminger?” he asked.

“That’s right.”

“Are you seeing him now?”

“Sort of.”

“Oh,” Philip said. He sat down on the empty chair beside her. “So when did that happen?”

“It’s new,” Schiffer said.

“Who’s Brumminger?” Lola asked, inserting herself into the conversation.

Schiffer smiled. “He’s a man who was once rich and powerful and now isn’t quite as powerful. But definitely richer.”

“Is he old?” Lola asked.

“Positively ancient,” Schiffer said. “He may even be older than Oakland.”

“They’re ready,” Alan said, poking his head in.

“Thanks, darling,” Schiffer said.

Schiffer took Lola and Philip to the set. Walking through the maze of hallways, Lola kept up a pleasant patter about how excited she was to be there, oohing and ahing over a backdrop of the Manhattan skyline, the number of people milling around, the plethora of cables and lights and equipment. Schiffer wasn’t surprised Enid hated the girl—Lola seemed to have Philip wrapped around her black polished fingernail—

but she wasn’t so bad. She was perfectly friendly and seemed to have some spunk. She was just so young. Being with her made Philip look slightly desperate. But it wasn’t, Schiffer reminded herself, her problem.

Both she and Philip had moved on years ago. There was no going back.

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With a glance at Lola, who was sitting blithely in the director’s chair, completely unaware of her faux pas, Schiffer stepped onto the set and tried to put Philip and his girlfriend out of her mind. The scene she was shooting took place in her office at the magazine and involved confronting a young female employee who was having an office affair with the boss. Schiffer sat down behind her desk and put on a pair of black-framed reading glasses from the props department.

“Settle,” the director called out. “And action.”

Schiffer stood up and took off her reading glasses as the young actress approached the desk.

“Ohmigod. It’s Ramblin Payne,” Lola squealed from behind the monitors.

“Cut!” the director shouted. He looked around, spotted the interloper in his chair, and strode over to confront Lola.

Schiffer scooted out from behind the desk and tried to intervene. “It’s okay. She’s a friend.”

The director stopped, looked at her, and shook his head, then saw Philip standing next to Lola. “Oakland?” he said. He went over and shook hands with Philip and patted him on the back. “Why didn’t you tell me Oakland was here?” the director said to Schiffer.

“I wanted to surprise you.”

“How’re you doin’, man? I hear you’re getting
Bridesmaids Revisited
made.”

“That’s right,” Philip said. “We start shooting in January.”

The director looked at Lola in confusion. “Is this your daughter?”

he asked.

Schiffer tried to catch Philip’s eye, but he refused to look at her. Poor Philip, she thought.

Later, in the car going back to the city, a black cloud of melancholy descended over Philip of which Lola was seemingly unaware. She chattered away, ignorant of his silence, nattering on and on about how she’d had an epiphany standing on the set. It was, she realized, where she belonged. She could see herself in front of the cameras, doing what Ramblin Payne did, which wasn’t so hard, really. It didn’t look hard. But maybe she’d be better off on a reality show. They could do a reality show about her life—about a young woman taking on the big city.After all, she pointed 210

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out, she did have a glamorous life, and she was pretty—as pretty as all the other girls on reality shows. And she was more interesting. She was interesting, she asked Philip, wasn’t she?

“Sure,” Philip said, his response automatic. They were crossing the Williamsburg Bridge into lower Manhattan, which presented a very different view than the famous midtown skyline. Here, the buildings were brown and gray, low-slung, in disrepair; one thought of desperation and resignation as opposed to renewal and the fulfillment of one’s dreams.

The sight of these buildings caused Philip to have his own epiphany.

Schiffer Diamond had returned to New York and taken up her new life with ease; she was celebrated and had even found a relationship. But what, Philip thought, of his own life? He hadn’t moved on at all; he’d taken no new steps in years. The subject matter of his work changed, his girlfriends changed, but that was it. Thinking ahead to Christmas, he became more aware of his discontent. His Christmas would be spent with his aunt—usually, they went to the Plaza for dinner, but the Plaza was no longer the Plaza, under renovation as an exorbitantly priced condominium—and now he didn’t know where they’d go. Schiffer was going to Saint Barths. Even Lola was going home to her parents’. He felt old and left behind and had to forcibly remind himself that this wasn’t like him. And then he saw a way out of his depression.

“Lola,” he said, taking her hand. “How would you like to go to the Caribbean for New Year’s?”

“Saint Barths?” she asked eagerly.

“No,” he said, not wishing to spend the holiday running into Schiffer Diamond and her new lover. “Not Saint Barths. But someplace just as good.”

“Oh, Philip,” she said, throwing her arms around him. “I’m so happy.

I was so worried we weren’t going to do anything for New Year’s—I thought maybe you forgot. But I guess you were saving it as a surprise.”

Unable to contain her excitement, she immediately called her mother to give her the good news. Her mother had been funny lately, and Lola thought this would cheer her up.

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Three days later, Lola, in a haze of excitement, flew down to Atlanta. Her thoughts were concentrated on her trip with Philip; she would leave on the twenty-seventh and fly directly to Barbados, where she would meet up with him and fly to Mustique. Everyone knew that when a man took you on vacation, he was testing you to see how you got along when you were together all day for several days; if the trip went well, it could lead to an engagement. And so, in the week before she left for the trip, she had almost as much to do as a bride: She needed to buy bathing suits and resort wear, wax herself from head to toe, have her calluses scraped and her elbows scrubbed and her eyebrows threaded. Sitting on the plane, she imagined her wedding day. She and Philip would marry in Manhattan; that way they could invite Schiffer Diamond and that funny novelist James Gooch, and the wedding would get into
The New York Times
and the
Post
and maybe even the tabloid magazines, and the world would begin to know about Lola Fabrikant. With these happy thoughts firmly in mind, Lola collected her bags from the carousel and met her mother at the curb. Each of her parents drove a new Mercedes, leased every two years, and Lola felt a swelling of pride at the easy superiority of their lives.

“I missed you, Mother,” Lola said, getting into the car. “Can we go to the Buckhead Mall?” This was a Christmas tradition for mother and daughter. Ever since Lola had gone away to Old Vic University, she and Beetelle would go straight to the mall when Lola came home for the holidays. There, mother and daughter would bond over shoes and accessories and the various outfits Lola tried on while Beetelle waited outside the dressing room to exclaim over the “cuteness” of a pair of jeans or a Nicole Miller dress. But this year, Beetelle was not dressed for shopping. It was her personal edict never to appear in public without her hair straightened and blown dry and her makeup applied, and wearing midpriced designer clothes (usually slacks and a blouse and often an Hermès scarf and several heavy gold necklaces), but today Beetelle wore jeans and a sweatshirt, her naturally curly hair pulled back in a scrunchy. This was her “work” outfit, donned only at home when she jumped in and helped the housekeeper with special chores, such as polishing the silver and washing the Tiffany crystal and moving the heavy oak furniture for a thorough vacuuming of the rugs. “A scrunchy, Mother?” Lola said with affection and annoyance—

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living in New York had made her mother’s flaws all too apparent—“You can’t go to the mall like that.”

Beetelle concentrated on maneuvering the car through the line of holiday pickups. She’d been preparing for this scene with her daughter for days, rehearsing it in her head like the psychologists suggested in anticipation of a difficult conversation. “Things are a little different this year,”

she said.

“Really?” Lola said. She was deeply disappointed, having imagined getting started on her shopping spree right away. But then she was distracted by the satellite radio, tuned to seventies hits. “Oh, Mother,” she said. “Why do you listen to this sentimental crap?”