Mercury in Retrograde (9 page)

Five minutes later, in the calm of the lobby of 198 Sullivan—past the old Jewish star tiled on the foyer floor, in between the mounds of boxes piled at the foot of the stairwell and the mailboxes, which were above the overflowing trash cans where residents dropped their garbage before Stan the super took it out every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday—Lipstick felt herself slipping into hysteria.

Sitting down on the bottom stair, Lipstick looked, with the mania of a caged rat, from the boxes to the top of the stairs, to the mailboxes (number 10 had a new white label that read
LIPNCRAFF
), back to the boxes, to the trash, back again to the boxes. She felt like she was going to hyperventilate.

In a panic, Lipstick called Neal. When he picked up, she described the accounts of the day, then she began crying, tears running down her face, “My ball gowns for the gala season! All of them—gone! Jack is going to kill me! Everyone will find out what has happened—everyone will know I've been cut off and forced into disgrace. I'll be ruined socially! Bitsy will die of happiness—she'll post it all over that damn Socialstatus.com website. I'll be a laughing stock! I'll be fired and out of a job with no money and then I'll be evicted…. It'll be worse than that time in seventh grade when she locked me out on her balcony all night during the big sleepover.”

“Lipstick,” Neal said sharply, “get a hold of yourself. Don't be ridiculous. No one will find out unless you tell them, and that balcony thing happened years ago. The dresses are a problem, but I have an idea.”

“You do?” Lipstick sniffled.

“Yes. I will come over in a couple of hours when I'm done with Nan's new terrace garden and elaborate.”

“But I need help now,” Lipstick wailed. “How am I supposed to move all these boxes?”

“You're going to move them by putting one foot in front of the other and drag them up the stairs like you did the first one.” Neal sighed, “I'd come earlier but a girl's got to make a living, you know, and I do have a day job. You wanted to be on your own, so start taking responsibility for your stuff and for yourself. The way you're acting you'd think you were lost in the Gobi desert!”

“Oh,” Lipstick, sitting upright, said, “right. Of course. I knew that.”

“Well then, get a move on,” Neal said, “and I'll see you soon,” before hanging up.

Lipstick was disgusted at her own self-pity and she'd had enough of it. She would move the boxes and be done with it.

 

But moving the boxes was easier said than done. On Lipstick's sixth trip up the stairs, towing a huge box of what she assumed were shoes based on what sounded like four-inch heels rattling, Lipstick backed into someone on the top step just as she was about to hit the end of the fourth flight. Lipstick dropped the box and it fell down to the third floor and burst open, spilling eight-hundred-dollar Louboutins and Manolos everywhere.

“Dag!” said Lipstick, who rarely if ever cursed (too déclassé), stamping her foot. “Dag, dag, dagdagdag!”

“Oh, my gosh—I'm so sorry,” said a sweet, familiar voice behind her. “Let me help you with that!”

Lipstick turned from the disaster scene to face Sally Brindle, her longtime yoga instructor and only friend besides Neal who was not a social or in “the crowd.”

“Sally,” Lipstick said, taken aback, “what're you doing here?”

“I could ask the same thing.” Sally, dressed in white yoga
pants and a white down jacket (“white is very pure”), smiled. “What's with the box of shoes? How come you're not at
Y
today?”

“Um, erm,” Lipstick mumbled, looking away and slowly backing down the stairs to the box of shoes. “Well, I…had a day off.”

“Wait a minute, these are yours,” Sally said, moving past Lipstick to pick up a pair of five-inch Louboutins with a corset-like lace-up on the heels. “I know this fuck-me footwear—they're the ones that scratched up my studio floor last year when you conveniently forgot to read the No Shoes signs that are up everywhere.”

“Yeeees,” Lipstick said, averting her eyes as she tried to shove the errant heels back into the busted box.

“Are you doing a shoot here for the magazine or something?” Sally asked.

“Not really,” said Lipstick, feeling like a trapped rat.

“Well, then what?” Sally asked, as she placed the last pair of shoes inside the box. “It's not like you're moving in,” she said, looking closely at Lipstick.

“Actually, um, haha…I am,” Lipstick said, standing up straight and looking Sally squarely in the eye.

“Wait, really?” Sally said. “I was just joking. Why are you moving in? What happened to your beautiful place on West Twelfth? Is everything okay?”

“Help me with this box and I'll fill you in,” Lipstick said.

Sally not only helped Lipstick carry the busted box into Lipstick's new home, she stayed to help move the rest. Lipstick then finally filled Sally in on the past month's debacles—only after, of course, Lipstick elicited a promise from Sally not to tell anyone of her plight, which Sally assured her was unnecessary. “Yoga teachers are like therapists—it goes against our ethics to blab. Besides, you've been a client and a pal for years. And I don't
even know the Bitsies. They bring their bad karma to Rashad uptown.”

 

“Wow,” Sally said, sitting down on a kitchen chair surrounded by boxes and looking at Lipstick in disbelief after Lipstick had finally finished her tale of woe. “Wow. Wow.”

“Yeah,” Lipstick agreed. “So, here I am, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, kicked out, basically disowned, for all I know. Weird, huh?”

“What does your mom say?” Sally asked. “Have you talked to your parents at all since this happened?”

“No,” Lipstick said, looking away. “I'm too angry to talk to them yet…I just think that there was a better way to do this. As in, maybe they could've given me a warning or something. Isn't that the kind of thing you tell someone ahead of time, you know? Like, ‘Hey honey—after the long talks amongst ourselves and with you—we have decided to cut off your cards, cash, and apartment'?”

“Maybe you should call them,” Sally suggested.

“Later,” Lipstick said. “I mean, they raised me to be like this. They were the ones who begged me to go to $10,000-a-seat galas and wear $6,000 dresses. In fact, Mother was distressed if my picture
wasn't
taken and put in the Styles section or on that stupid Socialstatus.com website. It made her look better to her friends. She treated me like some doll she could dress up and control. And Daddy always kind of liked the perks that came with everything, including my job that he now says he hates. He was happy Mother was happy and used my career for his own purposes too. I mean, how does he think he got his firm that great box for the playoffs? I had to put the box owner's wife in
Y
for two months straight for that. And believe me—it was
not
easy convincing Jack to do that. He kept call
ing her a Bravo reality slut who wanted to buy her way into society. Daddy now wants me to go into the family business—and all because they're bored at home and need some sort of distraction. It's all been so humiliating and stressful to realize I was just their puppet. To be honest, I have no idea what I'm going to do about anything.”

“Sounds like you should come back to yoga,” Sally said, offering Lipstick a tissue.

“I can't afford it anymore,” Lipstick said, taking the tissue and blowing her nose. “Do you know
Y
pays me less than a first-year investment banker at my dad's firm? I've been there for seven years!”

“My treat,” Sally said, rubbing Lipstick's back. “You've always been so supportive of me over the years, getting all your friends to come when I opened my own studio and then writing about it in
Y
. It's the least I could do.”

“I can't,” Lipstick said, “I can't face walking into a studio and having to see…well, anyone. I just can't. It's hard enough to go to work and work functions these days pretending everything is fine.”

“Well,” Sally said, slowly, “what if we did it in the building?”

“Here?”

“Yeah, here. I have a private client in the building, and frankly, she could use some company.”

“So that's what you're doing here,” Lipstick said. “Why is she getting yoga in the middle of the day? Doesn't she work?”

“She took the day off.”

“Is she…normal?”

“No, silly,” Sally laughed. “No one is! But she's fine. She's just been having a rough year. Anyway, I'm going back upstairs to ask her now.”

Dana was just stripping off her yoga clothes when she heard a knock at the door and Sally's voice came floating through, “Dana? Sweetheart? Are you decent?”

Karl Gluck started foaming at the mouth and barking hysterically, as he did when anyone came to the door, and Dana pulled her yoga pants back on, sighed, and said, “Coming…” She was tired. It was like all the emotion of the past year had finally caught up to her. She'd called in sick for the first time ever and had had Sally come over for an emergency yoga session.

Dana opened the door and immediately knew Sally was up to something. She had this impish look on her face.

“Dana…honey. I have a proposition for you.”

“Yeeees?” Dana asked, shooing Karl, in a full-blown barking orgy, away from the door.

“Honey, remember when we talked about you maybe starting to meet people again?”

“I can't go to classes in the studio yet.” Dana sighed. “I just can't.”

“No, no, of course not,” Sally said, smiling. “But may I please, please, please bring someone to you? Now, before you say no, she just moved into the building and is a very good friend of mine who seems to have fallen on some hard times. She is a lovely girl—you will just die for her, I swear—and just needs a little help right now.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Dana said, feeling a bit put upon. She had never had anyone in her apartment except for Sally, and she wasn't sure she wanted to open up her haven to a stranger.

“It would be a huge favor to me,” Sally said. “And to sweeten the pot, I'll cut my rate in half.”

“This woman means that much to you?” Dana asked. Sally's home visits, at two hundred dollars a pop, were expensive.

“She does. I wouldn't have half my business if it weren't for her.”

“Can we do it on a trial basis and see how it goes?” Dana asked, too tired to say no.

“Absolutely!”

“Fine. Tell her to come next Wednesday.”

“You. Are. A. Doll!” Sally squealed and hugged Dana before rushing back downstairs.

As Lipstick was attempting to open her boxes and put things away, Sally came running down the stairs and burst into her apartment. Kissing Lipstick on the cheek, Sally said, “It's all done! Dana says it's fine—she'd love to have you. She lives on the top floor and we meet every Wednesday evening at seven and Saturdays at two.”

By 6:00 p.m., Lipstick had arranged the furniture and managed to assemble a sort of closet area in the bedroom by the time Neal came over with a bottle of wine and a large box.

“Darling, I'm confused,” Neal said, putting the wine on the kitchen counter, placing the box on the floor, and taking off his black cashmere coat and Paul Smith scarf, “Why is the bed in the living room?”

“Well,” Lipstick said, “the bedroom is supersmall and has only one tiny closet, so I decided to make the bedroom the closet,
the living room the bedroom, and the kitchen the dining area. It's not like I'll ever have anyone over here anyway and fifteen boxes of clothes, ugh, make that thirteen, just won't fit in one tiny closet.”

“Okay,” Neal said, opening the wine, “That makes sense. Oh! Now, open your present I brought you,” pointing toward the box by the sink.

“It's a little small to fit Bergdorf's fourth floor,” Lipstick mused, tearing open the box.

“Hmmm,” she said when she finally succeeded in ripping off the tape and looked inside. “A sewing machine.”

“Voilà, my dear,” Neal said, flourishing his hand. “Your solution!”

“But what am I supposed to do with this?” Lipstick said, looking at the machine as if it were an alien artifact.

“Lips, please don't be coy,” Neal said, sitting down in the armchair Lipstick had placed in the kitchen. “Were you not the best seamstress in Ms. Frampton's etiquette classes?”

Lipstick shuddered.

Every afternoon of every second Saturday, from the time she was twelve until she graduated summa cum laude from The Spence School, she'd been forced to attend Ms. Frampton's School of Arts and Etiquette, where society's strict guidelines were drummed into her head: Use the right fork. Sit up straight. No borrowing dresses from designers, only buying. Absolutely, no cursing
under any circumstances
. Polite conversation is an art form, so practice. Sit with your legs closed, knees together, and with your left leg crossing your right leg at the ankle. Don't cross your thighs—you'll get spider veins. Never get up and dance at a party unless the hostess or someone higher in the social pecking order has done so first. At a dinner party, speak to the person on your right for the first course and switch to the person on your
left for the second course—and after that you may leave your seat for a bathroom break, but not before.

In addition, she'd also learned how to “be a lady,” and was taught how to sew, embroider, set the perfect table, and play a good—but not too good—game of tennis.