She picked up a forkful of salmon, grimaced at it, and let it drop back to her plate. “Don’t bother. Nothing interesting happened. All we said to each other was ‘excuse me’ as I was going into the bathroom.”
Well, that was disappointing. I turned my attention to Vienna’s plate, from which she’d eaten almost nothing. Understandable, considering it wasn’t very good, but also, Vienna had a history of not eating enough during times of stress. She went practically skeletal while we were waiting for college acceptances back in the day. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she said. As if anticipating my next point, she stuck a big forkful of roasted carrot into her mouth and chewed hard. Okay, so she still didn’t want to talk about it. Sure enough, she changed the subject. “How are you feeling about your inaugural gala? I think it’s gone quite well so far.”
“I’m feeling pretty good,” I said, glancing over at the side entrance again. Bibi had emerged, gliding past the crowd with her sharp chin held high as if she didn’t feel all the stares on her. She sat down beside her husband to pick at her salad.
Soon enough, it was time for the after-dinner mingling to commence. A string quartet played light but delicate tunes in the corner as our hopefully full and sated and slightly tipsy guests were given the opportunity to donate big checks before the champagne buzz or urge to compete with one another wore off.
I, for one, beelined for the three white whales. Denise Ryan first. As I approached her, I ran through the notes my assistant, Lina, had made me in my head, careful not to mouth anything out loud. “Denise! So glad you could make it!”
“Pom,” she said, smiling wide and white. “So glad you invited me.”
I had no idea how true that was. Since her widely publicized divorce and the even more widely publicized vow she’d taken to give her entire half of her ex’s tech fortune away, she’d been invited to every single gala in every single city in every single state. If anything, I was honored that she’d shown up here when she could’ve been off helping struggling farm workers in SoCal or investing in small theaters downtown. “How is dual-coast life?” I asked. I’d read she was now splitting her time between her old home in Seattle and here in the city, closer to her parents and siblings in the Philly area where she’d grown up. “I’ve been considering starting a West Coast branch of Pomona’s Treats.”
“Oh, please start one in Seattle,” she said. “Whenever I’m there I so miss your chai spice buns.”
I doubted that she’d ever stepped foot in my bakery or let one of my buns pass her lips (or any buns, considering the way she was encased in a size-zero bandage dress at age fifty-four), but I appreciated whatever assistant had told her about them. “You know, I haven’t spent a lot of time in Seattle. Whenever I’ve been out west, it’s mostly been LA.”
“Oh, Seattle is wonderful,” she said. “You must come visit. You’re welcome to stay with me, of course.”
There would certainly be plenty of room; she’d supposedly gotten the house in the divorce, all eleven bedrooms and fourteen bathrooms of it. “Oh, thank you. That would be delightful.”
“Of course,” she said, teeth gleaming with her smile. The cello thrummed in the background. “Though of course it’s far more fun here. The lights. The sound. The energy. God, it’s incredible. If my younger self could see me now…”
Denise’s past was no secret: it had been plastered over every newspaper that wrote an article about her divorce, which was every single newspaper. She’d met her ex-husband when they were students together at Penn. He’d gotten his degree in engineering; she’d studied English. After school, she’d done unpaid publishing internships during the day and bartended at night. All the articles called her a former bartender, which seemed unfair, considering the main reason she was bartending was to make enough money to support the two of them while he was working full-time on the fledgling company that eventually blew up.
“I bet your younger self would be so proud of you,” I told her. “It’s incredible what you’re doing. Deciding to give all your money away to worthy causes…”
She didn’t take the heavy hint. “Honestly, I think younger me would be more excited about the fashion and the food and the celebrities.” Her laugh was open-mouthed, genuine. “I got invited to the Met Gala, and my ex didn’t. That alone would’ve floored her.”
I didn’t remember seeing her there, but, to be fair, it had been hard to see much of anything through the birdcage bars. (Or go to the bathroom. Though photos at the Met Gala were forbidden, someone had snuck one that had gone viral of last year’s Oscar winners for best actressandbest supporting actress helping me lift the birdcage over my head so I could fit into a stall.) “Amazing,” I gushed. “But anyway, I bet what would really floor her is how much she could help some scholarship students afford schooland living expenses while working their way up. We could even name one after you.”
“Oh, that would be so lovely,” she said, clasping one of my hands and giving it a squeeze. “You can, of course, expect a contribution to your very worthy organization.” She dropped my hand. “I’ll have to get it to you later, though—somehow I left my checkbook at home.”
“Oh, we take—” I started, but she was already patting me on the shoulder and bumping her cheek against mine in a goodbye. Which was totally fine. With these people, a commitment to contribute was basically just as good as the contribution itself. They wouldn’t want to be embarrassed if it leaked out that they were promising money they didn’t give. They’d never get invited to a gala again.
On to the next shiny golden goose. I swanned over to Kevin Miller, who was lurking by the chocolate fountain. “Kevin, such a joy to see you,” I said, leaning in for a handshake. His nearly crushed my fingers, but I held my own by not crying. “Your new book was amazing. So inspiring. I’m thinking about getting a copy for each of my students.”
I hadn’t read his book. I’d read the back, if it counted. It sounded the same as all his other books, TED Talks, and talk show appearances: basically a recounting of his childhood as a street urchin with ashes on his cheeks and no shoes, then a sermon on how he’d risen from those cheek ashes to become one of the richest men in the US. But the compliment worked—he beamed, his ruddy face going ruddier. He ran a hand through his head of thick dark hair. Threads of silver winked at me. “Aw, shucks. Thank you. Ping me if you want me to sign them,” he said, his old-school New Yawk accent still strong after years of being surrounded by Waspy mid-Atlantic diction. “I’m happy to. I always like paying it forward.”
Ugh, now I’d actually have to buy his stupid book. A while ago, one of my students had broached the idea of bringing himin to speak. But for all of Kevin’s blabbering about how he’d started out poor and eventually become part of high society with penthouses and mansions galore, he kind of skated over the details of how exactly he got all that money. My bet? He was involved in something sketchy he couldn’t elaborate on without the IRS training its beady eyes on him. “Wow, that’s so generous of you,” I said. “Speaking of paying it forward, I—”
“You know, I grew up in Chelsea,” he said, head tilting, eyes shimmering nostalgically in the direction of the ceiling. Great. What I really wanted was another recap of his street urchin years. “Chelsea was a very different place then, rich and poor all mixed together. I would pass those grand brownstones, like the one Conrad is lending you, and wish I lived somewhere like that.”
“Mmm,” I said. Vienna lived in a Chelsea brownstone. It was indeed beautiful, but it also had a lot of stairs. So many stairs. Navigating those stairs drunk and on heels when we’d stumble home in the middle of the night was a medal-worthy Olympic feat.
“It’s a shame the one Conrad’s lending you fell into such disrepair in the eighties and nineties, but that’s also an opportunity,” Kevin said. “You could really get into the place’s bones. Renovate it however you want.”
“That’s a fun idea,” I said brightly. “But I think it’s a little too much for what we want to use the building for. Our plan is just to do the basics—fix the flooring, take down the torn-up wallpaper, clear out the broken furniture, and dump all the moldy boxes in the basement. It’ll work perfectly well for our purposes.”
“Yes, but the opportunity.” His eyes gleamed. “I offered to buy it off Conrad, but he told me he couldn’t sell because he’d already promised it to you. You could tell him it’s okay, and then how about you have your pick from the buildings in my portfolio? I’ve got a great little duplex in Queens.”
Queens. I suppressed a shudder. I’d had quite enough of Queens after nearly being murdered there, thank you very much.“That’s very kind of you, but location is everything. We really need something centrally located.”
“I also have some vacant apartments up in Inwood—”
How stupid did this guy think I was? Just because I hadn’t climbed the ladder like him didn’t mean I couldn’t see the view from the top. That house in Chelsea was worth way more than anything in his outer-borough portfolio.
