For All the Wrong Reasons (10 page)

“But of course. She had nothing to lose. Very discreet, but I knew the signs,” Natty added.

“We thought you did, of course, or we'd have said something.”

Diana pushed her hair out of her eyes. “If I'd known, wouldn't I have done something?”

“I don't see why,” Jodie said judiciously. “So many hubbies do it. It leaves us girls free to make our own arrangements.”

They seemed so calm and collected. Diana didn't want to seem overly naive. Maybe this was just the way of it in America.

“Isn't that awfully cynical?” she said.

“I prefer to say practical,” Natasha pronounced.

Diana took another sip of her wine. “Do your husbands stray like that?”

Shocked heads shook. “Of course not, darling,” Jodie said, with a touch of smugness. “He's got no reason to.”

Diana blushed; she suddenly felt her inexperience, and her foreignness, and, strangely for her, an unpleasant little wash of failure. She was furious at Ernie for exposing her to pity. Thank goodness I've got my girlfriends, she told herself. People I can rely on.

“Maybe you spend too much time at home, sweetie.” Natasha signaled for the check. “No, no, let me, I insist, you're having an awful day. Too bad to find this out. And so long after it started, too.”

“We're always here for you,” Felicity said softly, giving Diana a warm hug.

“Call if you need anything,” Jodie pressed. “Anything at all.”

And with a lot of air kisses and warm pressings on her arm, they suddenly melted into the sunshine.

Diana stood for a moment watching her friends leave. She felt such a fool. Grateful to them, of course, but what a silly girl she'd been. Maybe she had been willfully blind to it. Ignored all the girls that liked to drape themselves over Ernie's arm at her parties. He'd been very receptive, but she'd thought it was just flirting. After all, in England, what mistress would be so crass as to hit on a husband at a dinner party in his own home, in the presence of his wife?

She absently retrieved her coat and overtipped the coat-check girl.

“Shall I get you a cab, ma'am?” the maître d' was asking.

She glanced at him, not noticing the glitter in his eyes as they swept her form in the silk shantung dress that was tight in all the right places.

“No thanks. I'll walk.” She smiled. No need to advertise to the whole world how she was feeling. Diana went through the door another man held open for her, hardly even looking where she was going. She needed to walk around and gather her thoughts.

Tears prickled in her eyes. Obviously she was not the prize she had imagined. How it hurt to hear Jodie saying of course
her
man would not stray,
he
had no need to. But Ernie had felt that need.

What on earth could Mira Chen and Henrietta Johnson and all those other
tarts,
Diana thought viciously, do for her husband that she couldn't? A sullen fury took hold of her as she marched along the street. Maybe it was the fact that she was too easy to please, always there. Surely Ernie had lied to her when he said that he liked the idea of a traditional wife. Talking to Jodie and the others, a traditional wife seemed to be one who let her husband screw around without making a fuss, while she did the same—except that their husbands were somehow exempt from this rule.

In the future she thought she would confide more in Felicity. Felicity had been through a divorce and was single now, she couldn't triumph over Diana. Oh stop, she chided herself, they were being supportive, trying to help you. She wanted to believe that, so she told herself it was true.

Well, I've done my wifely duty, Diana thought, getting angrier by the second. I've thrown his parties and entertained his contacts, I've dressed perfectly, I decorated his house, hired his servants and fucked him whenever he asked for it. And I refuse to lose him to some trampy little slut. I don't see why I should sit at home while he fakes his meetings like I fake my orgasms. I can work too, if that's what he likes. I can get a job. I could—

Here her imagination failed her, and she stamped her foot in the street. A few Japanese tourists giggled and stared like she was a mad bag lady. Diana pouted and hailed a cab.

*   *   *

“No, of course I don't think you're crazy,” Milla soothed her.

The long-distance line was crackly, and there was the sound of screaming children in the background, and a hissing noise like something was cooking on the stove. What
right,
Diana thought, did Milla have to sound so happy and contented all the time? She weighed a good ten pounds too much, she wasn't even married to somebody rich and she worked like a slave.

“I've always said you should get a job. It helps concentrate the mind. There has to be more to life than shopping.”

“I don't see why,” Diana said mutinously.

“And Ernie may not be cheating on you after all. These women don't sound like such good friends to me. They sound jealous.”

“They're not jealous. I trust them.”

“Well, that's very nice, sweetheart. Mary, stop that, please. Put it down, it's supper in just a second. But consider how quick they were to give you all those names. Pretending to be sorry for you when actually they were just gloating.”

“Milla—”

“All right,” her big sister said gently, “just remember, you can do anything you put your mind to. You worked at
Vogue.
Maybe you could do something along those lines over there.”

“That's a great idea. It would put me right back on the cutting edge,” Diana mused.

“Of course it is. Anyway, I have to go, because the potatoes are boiling over. And just don't trust those women. God bless, darling.”

“God bless.” Diana blew Milla a kiss and hung up. Somehow she always felt better after talking to her sister. Ernie would see her differently once she was working again. And the great thing was, she could take a job at a very low salary indeed.

She looked around her husband's den, with the extensive his-and-hers Rolodexes. Somewhere among those exclusive hairdressers and flavor-of-the-month manicurists were her old numbers from London; if she made a few calls she could get an excellent list of contacts and just go from there. Within a week, Diana exulted, I'll have a wonderful job and he won't be so certain of me anymore.

She pressed the kitchen buzzer and told the cook to make duck a l'orange, Ernie's favorite, for dinner tonight. No need for a big scene. She hadn't got her job lined up yet. Besides, Milla was probably 100 percent right. Ernie was faithful. Diana decided that maybe she'd misunderstood the call this morning. Maybe it
was
a business acquaintance. Ernie loved to make money, and she loved him to make money. I can't blame him for working hard, Diana said sedately to herself. She looked around the opulent, barely used little den, and past the mahogany walking-cane case out to her flagstone-floored hallway, with its gilt-framed paintings and subtle sconce lights on the walls. She was living in paradise here. Why rock the boat?

*   *   *

“But I don't understand,” Diana protested. The managing editor's office was immaculately decorated in tasteful white, with framed covers and black-and-white photographs of models. “You've seen my portfolio of work for
Vogue.
Why isn't there anything for me?”

“I keep trying to tell you, Mrs. Foxton.” Kathy Lybrand leaned forward, her long-nailed bony fingers folded one over the other. “We prefer single girls here at
City Woman,
and besides, you're about five years too old for our magazine.”

Diana swallowed both her anger and her pride. She was getting the run-around, and it had been the same way at American
Vogue, Glamour, Marie Claire, Elle
and all the other major fashion mags that she had targeted over the last fruitless week. She, Diana Foxton, was “too old.” At twenty-nine! She wasn't about to go crawling to some old dowdy
Redbook
- or
Family Circle
–type thing. Besides which, Diana had a sinking feeling that, even if she changed her mind, the answer there would still be no.

“Can I be frank?”

“Certainly,” Diana snapped. “Why stop now?”

Kathy gave her the smile of a feeding cobra and plowed right on. “You're a society wife, Mrs. Foxton, and that's just great for you. At
City Woman
we like our assistants to be hungry, ambitious and driven.”

“I'm driven,” Diana said, annoyed.

“Yes—by your chauffeur.” Kathy chuckled at her own joke. “It's hard to find a girl who's excited about sweating her way up to a contributing editor position on thirty to forty thousand a year when that's about your yearly budget for clothes.”

My yearly budget for clothes is a lot more than that, Diana thought, rather spitefully.

“In conclusion, if you want to find something to fill your time, might I suggest that you do whatever the other Fifth Avenue wives do—volunteer to organize charity balls and luncheons and write letters to
Town & Country,
” the businesswoman added with a sneer. “Although I never saw why they didn't just give away the money to charity and add on the cost of hosting the thing. Perhaps that's because of the lack of paparazzi involved in just writing a check.”

“Thank you for your speculations,” Diana said crisply. “I'd rather you kept them to yourself.”

“I dare say you would.” Kathy tapped her long nails on the desk. “I'd rather you didn't waste my time in the office just because you once had my boss to dinner. Lots of people need the job you're asking for to put bread on their tables—
and
they have a passion to work. That's the kind of people we're looking for.”

Completely discomfited, Diana sprang to her feet.

“I'll show myself out,” she said in her coldest, crispest tone, the one she used when personal shoppers were late for an appointment or some hapless maître d' couldn't fit her and Ernie in at the last minute.

“You do that,” Kathy said, ignoring her rage completely. Diana paused at the door to her office, hoping that some snappy quip would spring to her lips; something really cutting and harsh. But nothing suggested itself, and the managing editor was already busy with the papers on her desk.

Diana marched out of her office, barely able to stop herself from slamming the door, which would have been childish, and given the bitch more satisfaction. The only difference between this interview and the others was that in this one the insults had been open. In the other ones, they had been veiled. But Diana knew when she was being mocked.

The elevator ride down seemed eternal and depressing. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach matched the sinking feeling in her life. Diana gazed at the well-put-together, slim, curvy figure that gazed back at her from the shiny elevator inner doors. It was a beautiful reflection, no two ways about it. But how long would it stay that way? She was trembling on the threshold of thirty; and she hadn't felt this depressed since she turned twenty and could no longer call herself a teenager. Too old to be a fashion assistant? But that was—unfair. Ridiculous. Ageist. Diana wanted to hit somebody. She felt a few tears prickling at the backs of her eyes, and that was unforgivable, because they would make her mascara bleed and her foundation would go all gray.

I'm supposed to be the hottest new bride in town, Diana thought. So why do I suddenly feel so abandoned and useless?

*   *   *

By the time she got home it was four
P.M.
The sun was still high in the sky, and yet she felt exhausted. Right now all she wanted to do was to get into a hot bath and then go to bed.

“
Buenos dias,
senora,” Consuela said, giving her a bright, fake smile. “Senora Felicity and Senora Natasha call for you. They say to ring them. Also, Senor Cicero waits in the guest room.”

Diana steadied herself against her dark oak balustrade, trying to process this information. She certainly didn't want to deal with Natty and Felicity in her present mood. And who in the name of goodness was Senor Cicero?

“Mr. Cicero?”

“
Si, si.
Ees friend of Senor Foxton.”

“Oh. Let me go and say hello.” Diana said faintly. She searched her memory, trying to figure out exactly which of Ernie's myriad business contacts this man was. And why had he come over to the house?

She hurriedly smoothed down her skirt, and slapped on a smile she didn't feel, and pushed open the door.

“Oh hell,” Diana said, “it's you.”

TEN

A month earlier, Michael walked purposefully down Seventh Avenue and people got out of his way, as they always did in New York. He was young, true, but he carried himself like a much older man. Most thirty-year-olds didn't wear heavy-cut, dark suits and sober paisley ties. And most thirty-year-olds weren't built like a Giants linebacker. But then again, most thirty-year-old males in this city weren't running their own companies out of a midtown skyscraper.

In bars, at night, Michael had sometimes been mistaken for a stupid guy. Some men—weaker men—took one look at the hard, thick chest, and the muscular arms and strong thighs, and assumed he was a jock, an idiot. Michael didn't mind. It was human nature to be jealous. Like a beautiful blond woman, he was thought to have no brain. It was more enjoyable to cut down sarcastic remarks with words than with fists, of course. Besides, when Michael asked another guy to step outside, he usually took one look at him and then backed down.

Since he started wearing suits, he got a little more respect. But he didn't care about the thoughts of lesser people, he would force them to respect him. Actions spoke louder than looks.

Green Eggs was his ticket out. As he strode along the sidewalk, looking up at the towering buildings on either side of him, Michael felt the headiness of it. A week ago he was driving around trying to hawk tiny print runs of his books to libraries. Now, suddenly, it was the big time.