Cat's Meow (13 page)

“Yes.” I nodded.

“Oh, well, I thought
arbiter
was too harsh, so I Frenchified it. It’s made-up.”

“Fabulous.”

“Fabulous.”

We smiled at each other.

“Then it’s settled,” Billy said happily. “I’ll expect to see you both on Monday.”

“Uh, how early do I have to be here?” I asked.

“Oh, not early at all—I don’t get up until about noon.”

“Where are our new offices?”

“You’re standing in it,” he replied.

India and I looked stricken. “Isn’t this apartment rather—cramped—for what we’ll need to do?”

Billy shrugged. “I suppose, but I think it will serve for now.” A well-worn copy of
The Millionaire Next Door
lay next to his computer.

I was chastened, but my curiosity was piqued. “But how did you start this?” I asked. “How did you get—um—funding?”

“Are you asking if I have a trust fund?” Billy laughed.

«Well—um—yes.”

“No, no, no. Not at all.”

“Several months ago, Billy won a settlement from his landlord,” India said proudly.

“Really!”

“Yes, really,” Billy said happily. “The ceiling in my bedroom collapsed due to water damage—it destroyed my stereo, my television, and just missed killing me. So I sued the bastards and won.”

“And with the money, he built his own online company,” India added.

“Fabulous!” I said. “Did you hire the Dream Team for your case?”

Billy shook his head.

“Cravath, Swaine and Moore? Skadden, Arps, Slater, Meagher and Flom? Dewey Ballantine?” I asked, ticking off the names of the most prestigious law firms in New York.

“More like Jacoby and Meyers,” he answered humbly. “Now,” he said, getting down to business. “As far as your salary is concerned, how do you girls feel about stock options?”

Under Billy’s plan, India and I would waive our salaries in return for equity in the company and a generous package of stock options. Billy explained that he was planning to take
Arbiteur
public in several months, and when that happened, India, Billy and I would be newly minted dot-corn gazillionaires. Until then, I could live on a line of credit secured from
Arbiteur
’s bankers.

“So I don’t have any cash?” I asked Billy.

“No. No cash. Not yet,” Billy replied.

“But I have equity.”

“Yes, which means you’ll own a part of
Arbiteur
outright.”

“And stock options,” I said slowly. That sounded fair enough, except I wasn’t sure if illegal Chinese baby brokers accepted stock options for payment. I didn’t think so.

“Yes. Those are options to buy more shares in the company at a bargain-basement price,” Billy said.

“So what are those worth?” I asked skeptically.

“Well, for now, nothing,” Billy explained. “They’re only worth something if we get bought out or if we go public. We’re going public, so they’ll be worth millions. That is, if the market is good. But it will be. Most tech stocks launch with very high multiple and we could presumably have a valuation equal to LVMH.”

“What’s a multiple?” I asked. I had always been bad at my times tables.

“It’s a … oh, it’s too hard to explain, but just trust me … we’re going to be huge.”

“But what about the stock market?” India asked.

“What about it?”

“Isn’t it a bad time for tech stocks?”

“There’s nowhere it can go but up,” Billy replied.

That was true enough, I thought.

“But what am I going to do for money until then?” I asked. The financial rigmarole was all too confusing.

“Simple, live on credit,” Billy explained. “That’s what I’m doing. We have a line of credit from our investment bank.”

That I understood. Living on credit was practically my middle name. “Do you think this is a good idea?” I asked India.

“Of course, darling. It’s just like therapy. You have to hit bottom to find your way out. Darkness before the light. In our case, we’re going have to get
into
debt to get
out
of debt. You’ll see.”

Billy and India watched me closely as I wrestled with my decision, which took all of two seconds.

“Has anyone got a pen?” I finally asked.

“Here you go,” Billy said happily, handing me a chewed-up Bic.

I looked at the two of them skeptically, and took in the sight of
Arbiteur
’s world headquarters: a 180-square-foot space that was so small India really had to suck it in so all of us could fit. I signed with a flourish.

“We’re going to be rich!” India cheered, popping a champagne cork.

F
or a while there, I was fearful that by the time I finally got the money together, my baby would be old enough to audition for MTV’s You Want to Be a VJ contest. Thank the Lord for
Arbiteur
. After signing the contract, I was able to withdraw a sizable personal advance on the
Arbiteur
credit line and was finally able to wire Bannerjee the amount needed to adopt my much-anticipated baby daughter. I also express-mailed Banny her brand-new visa, which the immigration lawyer I’d consulted in a run-down section of Fulton Street (his office carried the sign: “Passports/Driver’s License/Green Cards/Abogado”) had sold me for several thousand dollars.

“Oh, Miss Cat, the baby is so beautiful!” Bannerjee enthused during a transatlantic phone conversation after she had paid off the illegal baby brokers. “You have done a great thing, Miss Cat. The baby had nothing. All she had in the world was several dirty diapers in a brown paper bag.”

I beseeched Bannerjee to bring the baby home immediately—I wanted that child out of cotton rags and in antique French lace! In preparation for my baby’s arrival, I had even enrolled in a Lamaze class at Jivamukti called “Mama Yoga.” So what if I wasn’t actually
pregnant? I still wanted to partake of all the fun things pregnancy brought. India even agreed to be my Lamaze partner. “Mama Yoga” was great—there was no jumping around, and most of the time I worked on my breathing. And God knows I already knew how to do that.

In fact, adoption had to be my best flight of fancy yet. I got to do all the fun things real moms did: yoga classes and stuffing myself with unlimited fruit smoothies without all the yucky things that came with an actual pregnancy, like elastic waistbands and flat’ soled shoes.

“So when do you think you’ll be home?” I asked Banny.

“Soon,” Bannerjee promised. “On first flight out of here,” I heard her mutter.

I considered it downright cruel to bring a child into the world and save her from a leaky orphanage and an uncertain future only to plop her down in the middle of a hotel suite, however nice the Mercer was. So, armed with a folder of documents showing I was a new partner for a hot Internet company, I bid adieu to hotel living and found a real-estate broker willing to take me around to look at apartments. Not many neighborhoods in New York are properly suitable for a down-at-the-heels self-styled fashionista/socialite.

I needed to live somewhere discreet, expensive, and charming. In the end I settled upon the cast-iron environs of the so-called “frontier neighborhood” of Tribeca and signed a lease on a new luxury loft. After all, if Mr. Bartleby-Smythe ever came to visit, he’d never dream it cost almost as much to live there as on Park Avenue. That’s the wonderful thing about New York—it costs a fortune to look as if you are saving money. Mr. Bartleby-Smythe was a bit doubtful when I told him about my new
Arbiteur
credit line and our impending IPO, murmuring something that sounded like “pyramid schemes,” but I didn’t know what Egypt had to do with it.

Sartorially speaking, Tribeca was still the domain of the splattershirted and the holey-jeaned, except the new residents’ intricately
shredded sweatshirts were “refurbished” by popular designers whose specialty was to take frayed garments routinely found in church bin giveaways, slash them on both sides, then sew them up with brightly colored ribbon netting to produce the desired effect: “salvation irony.” The kind of pseudo-low-rent wardrobe that cost six figures and goes hand in hand with condominium “lofts.” Since actual dank, converted warehouse spaces were few and far between, most developers had taken to calling any three-thousand-square-foot space with fifteen-foot ceilings a loft—even though it was my understanding that true loft-style living did not involve penthouse swimming pools, health clubs, and doormen. In the interests of keeping my foray into downtown living genuine, I commissioned Brother Parish, the lauded interior decorator and master of minimalism, to redesign my new apartment into a higher plane of architectural worthiness—to take away the embarrassingly high-end glossiness and give the space the raw, crude, art-directed edge that Melissa Steadman’s loft had displayed in
thirtysomething
.

His first order of business was to fire the painters and renovation crew I’d contracted to take care of a few minor details. I had retrieved my boxes from storage, but Brother Parish was horrified when I began to unpack. He hustled my things back into the moving van and declared my apartment a “no-fly zone.”

“You don’t need color!” he argued with a dismissive wave of his hand. Apparently I didn’t need texture, partitions, appliances, wall hangings, furniture, blinds, photo collages, tables, chairs, rugs, and bedding either. Even the behemoth, bow-bedecked Bellini crib I had bought for the baby was relegated to the dustbin in order to create this so-called “Zen of space.” Brother Parish assured me my baby would be better off, what with the dangers of SIDS and all.

“It’s all just clutter!” he cried, meaning my princess bed with matching four-foot-high footstool, formaldehyde cows, and Scandinavian commercial oven, which he carted, peevishly, to the sidewalk.

“You’ve been living as a bourgeois bohemian for too long,” he lectured. “You don’t need
things
” He grimaced. “You should have
virtual
furniture—please, join us in the twenty-first century.”

Brother Parish also eliminated divisions between public and private interiors, citing obscure references to dead German philosophers. This meant both the bathroom and shower were stripped bare for all to see—making my life not unlike a November sweeps episode of
Ally McBeal
. After he was done, I had to sleep on wooden platforms in the middle of the room and watch the neighbor’s television across the street with opera glasses.

“Stealth wealth,” I explained to India when she came to visit the other night, and saw that my home consisted of granite, cement, exposed I beams, and raw electrical cords hanging from the ceiling.

“It’s your place.” India shrugged. “So where’s the baby going to stay?” she asked, looking around at the wooden planks.

Oh, right. The baby. The reason I’d moved in the first place. Hmmm. “I don’t know, but I’m sure I’ll think of something before they get here” I said.

“Oh, well, you have anything to drink?” she asked, looking for the Sub-Zero.

I pointed to the portable coolers from Lechters that Brother Parish had approved of for their “ironic value.” At least with my new
Arbiteur
credit line, I didn’t have to resort to “Chandon,” the California version of “Moët.” I was worried what India would say if I offered her a glass of nonvintage champagne.

I
ndia and I arrived at the airport an hour before Bannerjee’s plane was scheduled to arrive, so we passed the time in the airport lounge, drinking cocktails as usual. I was beginning to feel a little anxious about this new stage in my life. True, the idea had come from wanting to impress Stephan with an altruistic gesture as well as inject some meaning in my life—but now I wasn’t so sure. I mean, when one goes into Barneys and purchases a knife-pleated dress but then goes home and decides one looks like an accordion, one can always
return
the offending item.

Not so a Chinese baby.

“Darling, tell me the truth, do you think I’m ready for motherhood?” I asked India nervously.

“No, of course not. Don’t be silly,” India scoffed.

“Well, then, maybe I can just march that tyke back to China where she belongs,” I braved.