Oh! You Pretty Things (30 page)

I
'm crossing back through Times Square when Scout finally answers:
OMG, we're having the most amazing meal at this place Eva found, Pure Food and Wine. She says get your ass over here now. We got you food.

Pure Food and Wine is a fancy raw vegan restaurant I told Eva about last week. It's owned by the same goddamn woman who owns One Lucky Duck. In fact, there's a One Lucky Duck annex
that's part of the restaurant
.

Maybe if I'd slept more than fifteen minutes in the past thirty-six hours it wouldn't feel like a personal slight, but I haven't, and it does. When we pull up to the hotel, I swipe Eva's credit card in the machine in the back of the taxi and add a 75 percent tip, bringing the total to over two hundred dollars. Fuck her expenses.

The driver's expression is easily the best moment I've had all day.

I wait until I'm in the elevator before I text Scout back.

Just got this. AT&T sucks. I'm already at the hotel.

Then, to Eva:
My phone is acting up. Just got back to hotel. Have all your stuff. Will unpack and hang now.

By the time Eva and Scout come in from their excursion, flushed and giggling and clutching to-go cups of frozen hot chocolate from Serendipity, I've hung all of Eva's purchases on a borrowed rolling rack.

“Hey,” Eva says, flipping through the thousands of dollars of fluttering clothing. “Thanks for doing this. I hope it didn't cut into your morning off too much.”

This is the part where a good assistant says nothing. Well.

“My morning off?” I say. “I've been running around nonstop since you left for the
Today
show.”

“Really?” she says, sounding like this is the first she's heard of it. “I told you to take the morning off.”

“Yeah, then you started asking for shit before I even had a cup of coffee.”

Eva shoots an exasperated look at Scout and then me. “What are you talking about? We've been waiting for you to show up all day. I thought you were just chilling.”

I can't think of a single thing to say. Correction: I can't think of a single appropriate thing to say.

“Oh my God,” Scout pipes up. “It's almost five. What time is Tony going to be here?”

“I'm meeting him in the lobby at six thirty,” Eva says. She takes a fluttery green washed-silk Stella McCartney tunic from the rack, tags still dangling from the bodice: $1,855.

Why
don't I have my own room, again?

“I'm thinking this with those gold Prada flats I got.” She scans the room, looking for shoeboxes. “Where are the shoes from Jeffrey?”

“There weren't any shoes.” I gesture to the rack and the side table where I've laid out the various accessories. “Everything is right here.”

“There were three pairs of shoes. No, two. I didn't get the Demeulemeesters.”

“I'll call right now,” I say.

“This is such a bummer,” she says, as anguished as if I've just told her one of the Rosebuds died. “How did this even happen?”

“Why don't I jump in a cab and go down there while Jess figures it out?” Scout says, then tells me, “Text me once you've handled it?”

“Scoutillish, you're so awesome,” Eva says.

I punch in the phone number for Jeffrey from the receipt I've stacked with the others on the coffee table while Scout stands with her hand on the doorknob, waiting for someone to call her off her fool's errand.

“This is Jess with Eva Carlton,” I tell the associate who answers the phone. “I think you left a bag out of a pickup I made earlier.”

“Ohmygod,” the guy says, his voice escalating from ennui into obsequiousness. “We've been freaking out. We didn't have a number. It's right here. We're so sorry.”

I give Eva a dorky thumbs-up. “We'll have someone come down and get it right now.”

“Absolutely not,” he says. “Tell me where you are and we'll bring it to you right away.”

“Parker Meridien on Fifty-Sixth. Take my cell”—I spool out the number—“and call me from the lobby.” I turn to Scout with what I hope is a convincing smile. “Stand down, soldier.”

Eva's wrapped up in her phone screen, not even paying attention anymore. “Dude. Tony texted me a poem! You want to hear it?”

“I don't really get poetry. That's more Scout's kind of thing.”

Eva reads us the poem. He compares her eyes to a jungle cat, a panther, and, just for emphasis, a tiger, too. I can't tell if it's poetic or if he saves the good stuff for the
Mississippi Review.

“He's been on night shoots for the past three days,” she says. “I'm going to have him here for dinner. Oh, shit, that reminds me. Can you go to Diptyque or wherever and get me a shitload of candles? The lighting in here is like a morgue.”

It isn't, but I'm not going to argue, nor am I going to point out that the only Diptyque stores in New York are nowhere near midtown. The “or wherever” part is what I'm taking to heart. One hour and $575 in tips and merchandise later, I'm back at the door, carrying a large brown-and-white-striped bag stuffed with a variety of candles from Henri Bendel, which I had the concierge coordinate and execute, and the Jeffrey bag with the shoes Eva so desperately needs. I'm feeling pretty perky, because I also snuck in a shower at the hotel spa, and had room service bring me a bourbon on the rocks. They even gave my clothes a tumble with some Febreze or something, so I don't smell like the waitresses' locker room at a Vegas casino.

When I walk in the door, Rihanna's “Umbrella” is blaring from Eva's travel speakers, there's an empty bottle of Cristal on the coffee table, Eva's standing barefoot on the desk chair and shimmying in the Stella McCartney like she's in front of a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden while Scout is wearing a Rachel Pally caftan that I've been coveting since I saw it in one of the tabloids on a pregnant Jessica Simpson. It's black-and-gray-patterned, with a floor-sweeping hem and open sleeves that show just enough shoulder to keep it from looking staid. That's a three-thundred-dollar dress. A drop in the bucket, but still: I'm fucking envious.

And holy shit, Scout's face. Minka worked some kind of esthetician voodoo, and Scout looks like a twenty-first-century Greek goddess, her eyes lined in kohl, her hair pinned on her head in a loose pouf and cascading down her back in abundant curls. Despite my spa shower and fluffed-up clothes, I suddenly feel like I'm rattling a used Starbucks cup for change over on Sixth Avenue.

“Holy fuck.” I give the Prada box to Eva, then start unpacking candles. “You guys look beyond amazing.”

“Tony's going to be here any minute,” Eva says. “I made you guys reservations at Má Pêche.”

“Má Pêche?” I say. “In the Chambers Hotel?”

I've never been to the restaurant, but I stayed at the Chambers once when my ex-husband and I were first dating. Even at my glammed-out best, I felt like an imposter just sitting in the lobby.

“I can't go to Má Pêche looking like this,” I say, gesturing to my anemic hair and wilted white T-shirt.

“You're fine,” Scout says. “C'mon, let's get out of here. We're so invading Eva's space right now.” She grabs her new Rebecca Minkoff studded clutch. “Text us after your dream date. We won't come home until the coast is clear.”

O
n the walk to Má Pêche, Scout starts lecturing me on how to be Eva's friend. “You have to give her space when she wants it,” she says. “You get that she's under a microscope ninety-eight percent of the time, right?”

“And
you
get that I'm not here as a friend, right?”

Scout stops in front of an oddly placed Benihana restaurant. “I honestly don't know what is wrong with you. The universe keeps throwing you a life preserver and you still act like you're drowning.”

I don't know what to say to that, and we stand there awkwardly for a minute, then start walking again.

At Má Pêche, Scout orders pineapple upside-down cake as her entrée and the waiter doesn't raise an eyebrow. To his credit, he's equally gracious when I order an El Diablo and tell him to hold the cassis and the ginger.

“So basically you want a glass of tequila,” he says.

“You got it,” I say.

When we finish dinner, it's not even 9:00
P.M.
The bill is almost two hundred dollars and the only thing I ate was a dish of ice cream that is famous only because it tastes like the leftover milk from a bowl of cereal. I pay with Eva's card and we head up the curving staircase and through the lobby to the street.

“Let's get Red Bulls at the bodega and find a coffee shop,” Scout says.

“You know what?” I say. “I'm really wiped, and I need to go over all the press stuff for tomorrow.”

“What press stuff? I thought she just had Kelly Ripa in the morning.”

“She has Kelly Ripa, then Jon Stewart, which tapes at six
P.M.
, then there's a red carpet at the Levi's store for some new limited-edition denim jacket or something.”

“That's so gay,” she says. “I wanted to go to Brooklyn tomorrow. There's a tarot reader in Park Slope who's supposed to be amazing.”

There are so many things wrong with that statement, but Scout's use of the word “gay” to mean
boring
or
stupid
is an irritant and she knows it. It's one of those button-pushy things friends do to each other, I guess, but I'm not in the mood.

“Unless you want to pony up ten grand for an hour of Eva's time, then you're going to have to deal with the
gayness
of the schedule,” I say. “Here, let me give you the
Reader's Digest
version of your tarot reader: You've been through heartbreak. You feel creatively stifled. A recent disappointment weighs on you heavily.”

“Fuck you,” Scout says, but she's laughing. “Wait, Eva's getting ten thousand dollars to show up at the Levi's store? That's fucking retarded.”

Well, first of all, the only thing worse than
gay
as a put-down is
retarded
. And second, I'm immediately twanged with guilt that I just talked about Eva's income.

“Listen,” I say. “I don't want to be a buzzkill, but I need to get some work done. I'm going to head back to the hotel and hang in the lobby or whatever.”

The thing about needing to work is only marginally true, but the thought of spending three hours in a midtown coffee shop with Scout hopped up on Red Bull makes me want to put spikes in my ears.

“You can't hang out at the hotel,” she says. “What if Eva comes in with that guy?”

“Am I going to turn into a pillar of salt? It's been a long day and my shirt smells.”

Scout fires up a clove. “We wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for her. Don't be such an ingrate.”

Before I can fling her into the path of an oncoming bus, she twirls around with her arms in the air. “Look at where we are,” she says.

A homeless woman squatting in the doorway of the Norma Kamali store raises her head and says, “Best fuckin' city on the planet.”

Apparently the movie of my life involves wise homeless ladies whose advice must be heeded, because I let Scout drag me toward Fifth Avenue. “Let's go have an adventure.”

Turns out Scout's idea of an adventure is a short ride on the N train and a walk through Times Square to the Paramount Hotel. She and Eva had an epic stay here once, that ended with Scout kissing a Native American bellman named Bodaway in the ice-machine room while Eva was entertaining Johnny Depp or someone in her suite.

Eva finally texts at midnight.
I'm so bored. He kept talking about books. What r u guys doing? Come home.

Scout and I link arms and weave through the drunken tourists as we leave Times Square and walk up Seventh Avenue. When we near our street, Scout turns to me, taking both my hands in hers, all caffeinated seriousness. “Eva is my best friend.”

“I know that,” I say. “And I don't ever want to come between you.”

Scout rears back, affronted. “You couldn't.”

“I know, I get it. You and Eva are inseparable. I'm the chicken in the bacon-and-egg breakfast. You guys are the pig.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The chicken is involved and the pig is committed.” I've had five drinks and I'm not in any shape to explain myself. “I just don't want to triangulate.”

“You can't,” Scout says, and there's a controlled anger in her voice. “I just mean, you don't seem to have her best interests at heart. I thought you would have her back.”

“How do I not have her back?”

“Well, you felt compelled to tell me that she's getting paid ten grand for her appearance tomorrow.”

“Jesus, I didn't realize I was being deposed.” With a little edge, I say, “And after all, you're best friends.”

“I'm just saying be extra careful with the information you're slinging around. I mean, if I mentioned that you'd told me she was getting paid for that Levi's thing, she'd freak.” She considers. “But I would never. I don't want to create drama.”