Filthy Rich (10 page)

“
It’s a disaster
area,” I cautioned my two intrepid sidekicks as we entered my apartment. “Don’t make fun. It’s been a bad week.”

“I’ve seen worse,” said Norma, coolly eyeing the empty Godiva boxes, fancy cookie tins, wilted floral offerings, rotting fruit baskets, crumbled chips bags, plates of half-eaten pizza slices, and cellophane sandwich wrappers bespeaking multiple deli deliveries that now constituted my home decor. Oh, and I forgot the ample scattering of white pistachio shells and plastic twenty-ounce bottles of Coke. When I’m depressed, only The Real Thing will do. For medicinal powers, I find, Diet Coke just can’t compete, though for three years I refrained from acting on that observation out of respect for Neil’s crusade against sugary sodas and their nefarious role in promoting tooth decay.

“Norma’s right,” said Lois. “We’ve seen worse. Remember the mess after the all-night year-end party we threw in our dorm suite with those Columbia guys freshman year?”

“How could I forget?” I said. Barnard’s dean put us on academic probation until we ponied up for the large window accidentally broken when some brainy male guests got the bright idea of playing catch blindfolded using an empty beer keg. The guys who co-sponsored this elegant soiree received no reprimand from the Columbia dean, a galling injustice that I believe was influential in shaping Norma’s feminist ideology.

“This is nothing compared to that,” said Lois. “You haven’t broken any windows.”

“Great,” I said, stepping carefully around the empty pints of Ben & Jerry’s Double Chocolate Chocolate Chip that dotted the floor of my living room and bedroom like so many gooey grenades. Why is it that some intelligent, highly educated career women react to personal traumas by turning their normally neat living quarters into veritable pigpens? Maybe Norma can examine the phenomenon in her next book, I started thinking, only to be interrupted by the feminist author herself.

“Marcy, snap out of it,” she roared. “Get a grip. You’re a Personal Life Coach. Tell us what to do.”

I was grateful for the reprimand. “You’re right,” I said. “Let’s get busy.”

I assigned Lois to work with me picking up the pieces of debris defiling my apartment, and tossing them in a large green trash bag. Except, that is, for the Coke bottles, which
we tossed into a special blue plastic bag for recyclables, mindful that the environment shouldn’t suffer just because of my fragile emotional state. Lois performed this pickup without complaint, notwithstanding the sheer volume, and the obvious difficulty she had bending in her tight designer gown. Moreover, it was a wonder she avoided slipping and breaking a limb traipsing around the littered floors in her stockinged feet. That’s loyalty, I thought, working beside her. I was very touched.

But if there were a Gold Medal for loyalty, it would have to go to Norma. She followed Lois and me around with the vacuum, amiably performing a form of tedious low-level housework—generally considered “women’s work”—that surely would have offended her feminist sensibilities, potentially inspiring a picket line, were it not for our bond of friendship.

When that was done, Norma made the command decision to rejuvenate our flagging energy by loading my
Grease
sound track into the stereo, and turning up the volume until the whole place seemed to vibrate. The three of us picked up dust rags and began to bop around the apartment to the sound of the young Travolta, mouthing the words and pausing regularly to aggressively polish all adjacent surfaces. By about 4
A.M.
, the place was looking a lot better and reeking of lemon Pledge.

It was about this time that Lois unilaterally decided that pausing during my interview to offer Diane Sawyer home-baked cookies would add a homey touch that could only
enhance my standing with viewers. After a quick trip to an all-night Korean market for ingredients, Lois took over my small kitchen, sending the smell of baking Toll House cookies wafting through the apartment and weakening my newly renewed resolve to observe the oft-violated Rule Number Two of Marcy’s Magnificent Seven: “Shun fattening foods.”

While Lois was contentedly playing Betty Crocker in the kitchen, Norma, by now an old TV hand, started briefing me on the questions Diane Sawyer was likely to ask, and telling me how I should answer. The briefing continued once I got out of the shower, and Lois, in between batches of cookies, was blow-drying my hair, which made it kind of hard to hear.

Wielding a round styling brush, Lois was trying to undo the great Giovanni’s damage by tucking under the ends of my multilayered shoulder-length mop, an uphill quest she hoped would eventually reveal my missing cheekbones, and achieve the youthful yet sophisticated fashion look my celebrated stylist had promised in that lilting Italian accent of his, and then woefully failed to deliver. But my hair wouldn’t cooperate. The right side went under all right, but on the left, each defiant layer kept separately popping up, creating multiple flips that left me looking like a stranded extra from an old Elvis movie.

Fortunately, we had better luck with my clothes. Rummaging through my closet and drawers, we found a perfect informal outfit for a morning show: a straight khaki skirt
with a simple periwinkle-blue collared shirt that would show up well on television—both Banana Republic. There was a nervous moment when I tried to put the skirt on and found, after three days of bingeing, that I couldn’t button it, but Norma eventually saved the day, successfully pulling up the front zipper and closing the snap while Lois pressed my stomach in and I held my breath. We spontaneously broke out in giggles and exchanged enthusiastic high fives. Miraculously, my skirt stayed buttoned during this activity, but I maturely decided not to tempt Fate by eating one of Lois’s cookies before the show.

Next my makeup. Diane Sawyer wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another hour and a half. But Lois and Norma thought it best to get an early start, given the daunting beauty challenge posed by the flaking, dry skin and criss-crossing fine lines wrought by my emotional turmoil, plus the pitch-black rings under my eyes that brought to mind the dalmatians who tormented Glenn Close.

Beginning this beautification project, I was reminded of Rule Number Four on Marcy’s Magnificent Seven: “Moisturize.” By including “Moisturize” on my short list, by the way, my intention was to emphasize the importance of moist skin for a vibrant, healthy appearance and to slow the aging process. I did not mean to minimize the crucial need to exfoliate your skin prior to applying your moisturizer—preferably a light, creamy formula made with only natural ingredients, though you needn’t spend a fortune on highpriced brands like La Mer. One interesting historical note.
Originally Rule Number Four had two parts, “Moisturize”
and
“Avoid wearing horizontal stripes.” But Norma found this offensive. She complained bitterly that offering what amounted to eight rules as my Magnificent Seven would further societal stereotypes about women being bad at math. So I foreswore commenting about the stripes, with the disconcerting result that I have several clients who still run around town looking like humongous mobile flags.

Around 5
A.M.
, just as my makeup job was nearing completion and I was almost looking human, there was an unexpected knock. It was my morning doorman, Frank, who was just beginning his shift. He said some neighbors had called downstairs to complain about noise coming from my apartment, so he’d come up to check.

“Everything okay, Miss Mallowitz?” he said, looking around.

“Fine, Frank. You can assure the neighbors there’ll be no more late-night vacuuming or dance parties.” I explained that the noisy cleanup owed only to Diane Sawyer’s imminent arrival.

“Diane Sawyer?” Frank said. “When?”

I checked my watch. “We’re at T minus fifty-five minutes and counting.”

“Almost a full hour, then. Good,” said Frank, barging right past me and into the apartment. “That still gives us time to do something about the furniture.”

“The furniture?” said Lois, emerging from her cookie duty in the kitchen, a red-checkered apron tied over her
designer gown. “What’s wrong with the furniture? Some of it she got from me when I upgraded after my divorce.”

“It’s out of harmony,” said my doorman.

It turned out Frank was taking a New School class in feng shui—the ancient Chinese science of arranging furniture and color schemes in alignment with nature—and I was to be the first beneficiary. I knew little about feng shui other than that it was all the rage among interior decorators serving the spiritual Upper East Side and the quaint if crowded Long Island towns comprising what I think of as the Greater Hamptons Region. But I was open-minded.

The same cannot be said of Lois. Still peeved about the implied slur on her former furniture, she only half-kiddingly bombarded Frank with cynical questions about his credentials. “How do we know you’re a qualified feng shui person?” she teased Frank. “Is it like karate? Do you get a black belt or anything?”

“Ignore Lois,” I told Frank. “I don’t want to be out of harmony when I meet Diane Sawyer.”

“No bother, I’m used to skeptics,” said Frank. “My own mother glued down her furniture to keep me from touching anything.”

As this exchange was transpiring, Frank was purposefully moving about the living room, fluffing pillows and changing the angle of the sofa in relation to the windows and the comfy, if bulky-looking dark green velvet sitting chair from Lois that I liked to curl up in for reading. It was just a small change. But even Lois had to admit it was an improvement,
having the effect of making the room seem bigger and more open.

“Cookie?” she said to Frank, tendering a sample from her Toll House project in a gesture of friendship.

“Delicious,” said Frank, taking a bite. “It would make sense feng shui-wise to have them out when Diane Sawyer is doing the interview.”

“Exactly what I told Marcy,” said Lois. “Maybe there
is
something to this feng shui stuff.” She pronounced it feng sooey.

“That’s
shway
, Lois, with an
h
,” corrected Norma. “One syllable. Rhymes with ‘hay.’” Then to Frank: “What else? There’s not much time left.”

“You sure you want to hear?” said Frank.

“Frank, we’re grown-ups. We can take it,” said Norma.

“Okay, then,” Frank said. “But you’re not going to like it.”

His bottom line was that my living room chair was too dark and heavy. It had to go. “We’ve got to find another,” he said.

“Furniture shopping at this hour?” I said. “The corner deli has a good salad bar, but I don’t think it delivers living room chairs yet.”

“No problem. I know just the thing,” Frank said. “It’s in Mrs. Schwartz’s apartment. We can go get it.”

I was confused. “Since when has my cranky neighbor gone into the all-night furniture business?” I said.

Mrs. Schwartz was away, Frank explained. She’d flown down to Boca Raton with her sister to join Richard Sim
mons for a special weight-and-fitness program for people over sixty-five, called “Rolling
with
the Oldies” by the weird fitness guru to distinguish it from the more active “Rolling
to
the Oldies” you’ve seen advertised in late-night infomercials. The mention of Richard Simmons caused Lois to chime in with a savvy if irrelevant observation I was pretty sure she didn’t pick up on
The Brady Bunch
.

“Hairy men shouldn’t wear tank tops,” she said.

“Why just tell
us
?” said Norma. “You should write one of your letters, Lois. I’m sure Richard Simmons would be very interested. Not to mention the whole tank-top industry.”

But back to the story. Before going away, Mrs. Schwartz had put Frank in charge of feeding, walking, and otherwise entertaining her poorly potty-trained schnauzer, Bruno, a job that called for him to carry a copy of her key.

“She has an antique wooden captain’s chair with open arms that would be perfect for Diane Sawyer,” said Frank. “It has a classic design and simplicity that would help maximize the energy flow in the room. Also, it has a red cushion, which is very good.”

Red, according to traditional feng shui interpretation, symbolizes intelligence and clarity.

“It’s the space-time balance we’re looking for,” said Frank.

“I thought we were looking for harmony,” said Lois.

“Don’t quibble,” said Norma.

“But, Frank, we can’t just go in and take the chair,” I said, which then led me to carefully review for the benefit of all the would-be participants in this heist, Rule Number
Seven on Marcy’s Magnificent Seven: “Be bold! But don’t take unnecessary risks!” I noted that the criminal code has a name for such behavior. It’s called breaking and entering, and it carries a minimum of six years in New York State. No time off for good behavior.

“This isn’t worth getting locked up for,” I urged. “I don’t care if prison stripes
are vertical
.”

“I’m the dog-sitter, remember?” said Frank, our very own Johnnie Cochran supplying the defense for burglary. I could practically hear his summation to the jury: “Because I sit, you must acquit.”

“Besides,” Frank continued, “she’ll never know. We’ll put the chair back when Diane Sawyer leaves.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said, my ethics and caution worn down by Frank’s persuasive presentation.

Next thing I knew, Norma, Lois, and I were bickering in whispers, straining under the load of my heavy green living room chair as we slowly made headway to Mrs. Schwartz’s apartment. Frank walked ahead of us, keeping on the lookout for nosy neighbors.

We dropped my big chair in Mrs. Schwartz’s foyer, and were about to abscond with her elegant wooden one when Lois spotted Bruno, the great watchdog, sleeping soundly on the sofa in the next room. It gave her an inspired idea.

“Let’s take him,” said Lois.

“Take the dog?” I said, certain I must have heard wrong.

But, alas, I’d heard correctly. On top of offering cookies, Lois thought it would add just the right touch of warmth for me to have Bruno on my lap during the interview.