Plan C (7 page)

Today I have a Russian driver named Anatolij, who vents decades of pent-up and incomprehensible rage. But you don’t need to worry too much about taxi etiquette, because you’ll soon find yourself grasping the door handle for dear life as the driver employs the ferocious skills he developed from years of navigating the alleys of Karachi. Cutting off other cars, yet miraculously hitting none of them, he makes you feel as if you’re spending your last precious minutes inside a Sony PlayStation.

Better to close my eyes and think of Kitty – my best friend now. Thinking about how we met….

It was three years ago. I was packing up some boxes for the church and I remembered the words of a favorite friend just before he passed away as he ran the last zip of packing tape across the carton marked “pots and pans.” He was a neighbor whom my daughter Madeline and I depended on as the fixer-upper guy. While fixing up something or other, he actually dropped dead. Unfortunately nobody could fix that. But he had managed to fix me up with his retired business partner’s niece, Katherine.

I had been working on a freelance article for
Marie Claire
magazine about women being single and loving it called “Could You Swear Off Men for Good?” That’s when my neighbor said: “Have I got the girl for you! You should interview her! She’s like a niece and she lives in New York. Whip smart gal. Promise me you’ll call her. Name is Katherine Morgan but she goes by ‘Kitty.’” He dropped dead a week later. The guilt was on. And the article was due.

Kitty and I set up drinks at Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel when I was in town visiting Ben. She was easy to recognize, her flaming red hair and green eyes transmitting some bold luck-o-the-Irish across the room. It’s a funny thing about redheads. They’re either homely and pale - their invisible eyelashes begging for mascara - or they’re stunningly beautiful, commanding the room like Scarlett O’Hara batting her eyes with those Tarleton twins at Tara. Kitty was the latter and acted like Scarlett O’Hara, too.

Before the waiter could take our orders, we raised our water glasses to my dead neighbor while I indulged in the idea that this New York City girl could share my same New England sensibilities. She did. Every bit: the accent, the fried clams – the ones with
the bellies- the hatred of traffic at the Sagamore Bridge on July 4th, even the Red Sox and the green monster that included the adoration of the fact that they had actually won the World Series thus ruining that age-old moan of “maybe next year.” Instantly, we were sisters separated at birth, wondering whether we should find our real mother who gave us up for adoption.

Kitty is the kind of woman who says it like it is. She’s like an Xray machine; revealing, penetrating and sometimes uncomfortable. But I love her. And I loved her interview for my article. She babbled a mile a minute. “I’m an art advisor – I have a small gallery - and I’ve learned to enjoy absolute freedom, to be the mistress of my own universe,” she said, sipping her champagne. “Men? Ha! We love them, and they’re undeniably wonderful but most women I know would agree that just like kids, they can be a
huge
distraction. The joy of being single in New York is the freedom it brings.”

I let her ramble until midnight, when the bartender told us it was last round. Even the piano player had wrapped at ten p.m. after playing “Someone to Watch Over Me.” Truth is, I was so taken with Kitty that if she had had a penis I might have dumped Ben on the spot and gone home with her for sex. But she didn’t. And since both of us secretly adored men whether we needed them or not, we settled on best friends, or as I say to her “Love-you-like-a-sister-only-better.”

One day, about six weeks after we met, she said, “What are you doing this weekend?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “Ben’s at a polo match with the twins. Why?”

“Pack your bags. We’re going to Miami. Art Basel’s there…”

“Oh? Is he a friend of yours?” I asked.

She roared with laughter. “Art Basel? It’s a famous art gathering. It’s
huge!”
Everything is huge to Kitty.

By the same time the next day, I was sandwiched between artists Jack Pierson and movie director, Julian Schnabel, as we lounged on cushy pillows by the pool of the Delano plopping cherries and cheese cubes into our mouths. Dennis Hopper held up the empty bowl for me to spit my cherry pits.

I loved watching Kitty in her element, demanding faux-urgent ten minute “holds” on auction bids, or romping through the design district, matching eclectic lamp shades to newly discovered artists. Nearby, New York’s biggest dealers, people like Larry Gagosian and Mary Boone, tried to listen in on what Kitty was in on. She was the Pied Piper of her world, bringing artists, dealers and investors together. At private Sotheby’s dinners the Veuve Cliquot flowed wildly, as insiders worshiped the latest contemporary artist from Prague who was going to be
‘huge!!!”

And then we’d be up at the crack of dawn to get into the NADA Fair early enough to see….

“Daniel Reich’s booth!” she’d explain calling back to answer from twenty feet in front of me. “Come on, Libby. Hustle,” she’d return to my side to drag me along with one hand, her other hand clamping her cell to her ear. “Don’t go higher than one million! No. Hold there. Because I said so!”

Kitty’s passion for art pierced right to any potential buyer’s soul, whether naïve with money to burn or the most discriminating - like those who promised never to sell - only to find themselves seduced by Kitty to “Buy now! Are you crazy? This is
Amazon.com
in 1999!”

Kitty could pedal a painting the way Monet could make a lily shimmer, the way Pollack could drip dots on a canvas and be called a genius, and the way Peggy Guggenheim could sip champagne in a Parisian café while the French countryside was being bombed. And when Kitty loved an artist, she loved him, even if nobody else did, just like Guggenheim, who, when told by the Louvre that her collection was “worthless,” stashed all those soon-to-be famous paintings in a barnyard. And no doubt, calmly ordered another glass of champagne.

Kitty managed to get us into every party. In her Prada attire she was more colorful than a Miami sunset. In my Ann Taylor dress, I’d just stand and smile, sipping my sauvignon blanc, looking like a sneaker lace stuck in an escalator and going nowhere. Eventually, I was edged out of the circle of conversation. What did a woman who wrote “To Breast Feed or Not to Breast Feed: That Is the Question?” have to say to Jerry Speyer, a “famous collector” about Abstract Expressionism?

When the artist Kehinde Wiley shook my hand, all I could think was “Kehinde? That’s really your name?”

Kitty was like radar to every potential collector. In the 80s, she had turned one million dollars into fourteen million for Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic records. Her main clients were wealthy Wall Streeters who knew nothing about art, but everything about spending, spending, and more spending. Now Wall Street had crashed, the art market had slumped, and Kitty had an ever bigger problem – the Wall Street guys’ wives. It was clearer than the financial scroll across a CNN screen that they were threatened by Kitty’s beauty. When Kitty saw one of these wives standing stupid like a damsel-of-the-art-world-distress,
she’d whisper to me, “She’s a wealthy wife. Her scarlet soles give her away.”

“You can tell she has money by the bottom of her shoes?” I asked.

“Red bottoms mean Christian Louboutin,” said Kitty. “French shoes - short for money.”

“Learn something new everyday,” I mumbled into my crystal flute, but Kitty was already sauntering over to the potential buyer.

*

My daydreaming comes to an abrupt halt as I grab onto the door handle of the taxi and rearrange my rib cage. Anatolij, my Russian driver, makes a screeching stop outside the café, because when you’ve reached your destination and your heart has returned from your stomach, be prepared to jump out of your cab quickly – as quickly as you ripped open your wallet to pay the driver. He’s on a clock after all, so the sooner he rids his taxi of you, the sooner he’s onto his next…er, quarry?

I rearrange my dress, pulling it down to cover my knees as I slide out the to avoid the Britney Spears crotch shot. I ask myself ‘why do we take taxis in NYC? Because we have to?’ Well, sure, but there are other advantages. It’s the one place you can talk on your cell phone at the top of your lungs. After all, that’s what the driver’s doing. It’s a great place for discreet calls to your mistress, your drug dealer, your plastic surgeon. Besides, it’s the only down time some of us have, the only place in the whole bustling metropolis where we can stop and smell – well, usually the driver.

The little Italian restaurant is bustling with CEOs, moguls, mistresses, fashion designers, skinny bitches and newscasters. Some are seated inside and some outside under an awning which gives the place the faux-feel of a Roman trattoria - quaint, traditional, slightly euro-trash. Everybody comes here to be seen and heard.

My cell rings, and I struggle to find it in my purse, between my wallet and keys. “Hello?”

“I see you,” says Kitty. “I’m over here, near the window. I’m the one who looks like Kitty Morgan, only older.”

“Very funny,” I say, stretching my neck to find her. The hostess approaches me with a warm welcome.

“Hi” I say, flashing my big, white, toothy grin. “I’m meeting my friend. She’s the beautiful one near the window.”

The hostess chuckles and grabs a menu from the rack. We head “right this way” to Kitty, who’s flagging me down while at the same time scrolling on her Blackberry. I wave with the enthusiasm of a high school teen whose best friend has reserved us a spot in the cafeteria.

“Hi dah-link!” I say to sound fake on purpose, but instead plant a very real kiss on her lips. No air-kissing for me. “Gosh, I thought we’d be the only two people eating lunch at three o’clock. This place is still packed.”

“How are you?” she asks. “Better than me, I’m sure. I can’t take these damn hot flashes anymore.” She fans herself with a menu. “I used to sweat over Johnny Depp. Now I just sweat.”

“Okay, you got me to lunch…”

“Yeah, sure, at practically dinner hour…” Kitty notices me noticing the full glass of wine at my place setting. “I took it upon myself to order you a nice sauvignon blanc,” she says, still scrolling her Blackberry.

“Kitty, you know I don’t drink during the day.”

“Why the hell not?” she says. “Wine improves with age. I improve with wine.”

“Can you stop Twittering or whatever you’re doing and tell me about this artist, what’s his name…,” I say, placing my hand over her scrolling hand, forcing her to stop.

“I don’t tweet, and I told you, his name is Helmut and he’s going to be
huge!
” she snaps, moving from one addiction to another – her wine glass. “Nobody believes me. You’ll see for yourself. I’m throwing his first multimedia show at the gallery Friday night. You’ll be there. Bring Ben.”

“If he can. He may have the twins. But I’ll come. Right after my interview.”

“What interview?”

“Talbots is hiring.”

“Talbots? The clothing store? What are you, your mother?”

“No. My mother’s dead. But aren’t we
all
our mothers?”

“But Talbots?”

“Look, Kitty, freelance writing is so inconsistent, and the TV station is cutting back…”

“Yes, I know, but Talbots?” she insists. “Gucci, okay.” And then thinking twice: “Unless you can get me clothes at cost.”

“Like you’d
wear
their clothes – even if they were free.”

“Well, I wouldn’t wear them
now
. But I’d store them in the back of a closet. Wear them in twenty years. They’ll be vintage then, like me.”

“Kitty, I have to take this job. I need a little spending money for these therapy lunches.”

“Okay, but can’t you just slip on the ice
outside
of Talbots and then sue the company?”

“Kitty!”

Kitty pats my hand. “Honey, how much do you need. Fifty? A hundred bucks? What?”

I shrug.

“You know, there used to be only two things in life that annoyed me. Now there are three,” says Kitty. “The first is people who lean on the horn in city traffic. I mean, if the car in front of you could move, he would! He’s not sitting there playing with himself at the wheel just to piss you off!”

“And two?”

“Thirty-year-old movie stars that tell us ‘how to stay in shape,’” she says, making quotation marks in the air. For God’s sake, when you’re thirty you don’t need a diet.
You can eat anything. Ask Susan Sarandon how
she
maintains her figure. I don’t want to hear it from Lindsay Lohan.” Kitty goes to gulp at her wine but the glass is empty. She signals the waiter, snapping her fingers like a deranged drunk. “GarCON!!!” He’s making his way toward us, albeit slowly. In the meantime, I discreetly slide my glass of wine in front of her. She starts sipping.

“Do I dare ask number three…” I say.

“It used to be guys who wear Hawaiian shirts and Birkenstocks with colored socks,” says Kitty. “Now it’s ex-wives who suck alimony.”

“Then I better not tell you how Ben’s ex just got back from summer camp over Labor Day.”

“Isn’t she a little
old
for camp?”

“She was picking up the twins. Rosemary spent $5,000 this summer to send them to camp.”

“What the hell does a kid get at a $5,000 summer camp?

“Vodka and a lap dance?”

“Then I should send my husband, the Brit!”

“You’re funny,” I say.

“You know the Brit pays alimony, too.”

“He does?” I’m stunned. “Wait, your Clive was married?”

“To some pop tart in the mother country.” She tackles the next glass of wine, which the waiter has barely set on the table. My glass, half full, has become her backup plan. “His ex is some washed-up go-go dancer. A real bumpkin.”

“Really?”

“Yes, and she collects so much paper she makes trees disappear!”

“Okay, but we can’t brood,” I say gently. “It is what it is. We have to accept, adjust and tolerate the situation.”

“What are you, the Dalai Lama’s love child? Why are you always so happy?”