Silver Girl (42 page)

She made it back to her bedroom, shut the door, checked that the balcony doors were secure, climbed into bed, and buried her face in the sweet pink covers. It was too bad, she thought. It was such a beautiful day.

They had met Samantha when they bought the penthouse apartment at 824 Park Avenue. Samantha had seemed to come with the building. She was decorating three other apartments, and so her presence had been nearly as steady as that of Giancarlo the doorman. Meredith and Freddy kept bumping into Samantha in the elevator. Either she was holding great big books of fabric swatches, or she was accompanied by plasterers and painters. They bumped into her in the service elevator carrying a pair of blue and white Chinese vases once, and an exquisite Murano glass chandelier another time.

It was finally Freddy who said, “Maybe we should have that woman decorate our place.”

Meredith said, “Who?”

“That blonde we keep seeing around here. I mean, our place could use some help.”

What year would that have been? Ninety-seven? Ninety-eight? Meredith had tried not to take offense at Freddy’s comment. She had “decorated” the penthouse much the same way she’d “decorated” the other apartments they’d lived in, which was to say, eclectically. Meredith wanted to achieve the look of an apartment in a Woody Allen film—lots and lots of books crammed on shelves, a few pieces of art, a ton of family photographs, old worn furniture in leather and suede and chintz, most of which had been inherited from her mother and grandmother. Meredith liked Annabeth Martin’s silver tea service on a half-moon table next to a hundred-year-old Oxford dictionary that she’d found in a back room at the Strand. She liked a mishmash of objects that displayed her intellectual life and her broad range of tastes. But it was true that, compared to the apartments of the people the Delinns now socialized with, their penthouse seemed bohemian and cluttered. Unpolished. Undone. Meredith knew nothing about window treatments or fabrics or carpets or how to layer colors and textures or how to display the artwork they did have. As soon as Freddy suggested they hire a decorator, Meredith realized how pathetic her efforts had been in presenting what they owned. No one else had so many tattered paperback books on shelves; no one else had so many photographs of their children—it seemed immodest all of a sudden.

Furthermore, now that they had the penthouse, there were more rooms—whole rooms, in fact, that Meredith had no idea what to do with. The room that was to be Freddy’s personal den had walnut library shelves with nothing on them but his and Meredith’s matched framed diplomas from Princeton.

“It looks like a dentist’s office,” Freddy remarked.

And so, Meredith set out to introduce herself to this woman they kept seeing around, the decorator whose name (Meredith had discovered from eavesdropping) was Samantha Deuce. Meredith approached her one afternoon as she was standing under the building’s awning in the rain, waiting for Giancarlo to hail her a cab. Meredith introduced herself—Meredith Delinn, the penthouse—and asked if Samantha would be willing to come up to the apartment sometime so they could talk about the decorating.

Samantha had made a wistful face—not a hundred percent genuine, Meredith didn’t think—and said, “I wish I could. But I’m so slammed that I can’t, in good conscience, take on another project. I’m sorry.”

Meredith had immediately backpedaled, saying yes, of course, she understood. And then she’d retreated—shell-shocked and dejected—back into the building.

That night at dinner, she told Freddy that Samantha, the ubiquitous decorator, had turned her down.

“Turned you
down?
” Freddy said. “Who turns down a job like this? Were you clear, Meredith? Were you clear that we want her to do
the whole apartment?
”

“I was clear,” Meredith said. “And she was clear. She doesn’t have time for another project.” There had been something about the look on Samantha’s face that bugged Meredith. Her expression had been too
prepared,
as though she knew what Meredith was about to ask, as though she knew something about Meredith that Meredith had yet to figure out herself. Had Samantha heard unsavory things about the Delinns? And if so, what were those things? That they were nouveau riche? That they were without taste? That they were social climbers? Meredith and Freddy hadn’t known anyone else in the building at that time; there was no one to speak for or against them.

“I’ll talk to her,” Freddy said, and Meredith remembered that his decision to step in had come as a relief. She was used to Freddy taking care of things. Nobody ever said no to him. And, in fact, two weeks later, Samantha was standing in their living room, gently caressing the back of Meredith’s grandmother’s sofa as though it were an elderly relative she was about to stick in a home. (Which was true in a way: Samantha relegated nearly all of Meredith’s family furniture to storage first, and then, when it became clear that it would never be used, to the thrift shop.)

Meredith said brightly, “Oh, I’m glad you came up to see the apartment after all.”

Samantha said, “Your husband convinced me.”

Meredith thought,
He talked you right out of your good conscience?

And now, it was clear that he had.

Samantha Champion Deuce was a brassy blonde, nearly six feet tall. She towered over Meredith. She had broad shoulders and large breasts and hazel eyes and a wide mouth. She wore lipstick in bright colors: fire-engine red, fuchsia, coral. She wasn’t a beauty, though there were beautiful things about her. She captivated. She was always the dominant personality in the room. She had a sexy, raspy voice like Anne Bancroft or Demi Moore; once you heard it, you couldn’t get enough of it. She would say to Meredith, “Buy this, it’s fabulous.” And Meredith would buy it. She would walk into a room and say, “We’re going to do it this way.” And that was how the room would be done. She never asked for Meredith’s opinion. The few times that Meredith expressed disapproval, Samantha turned to her and said, “You mean you don’t
like
it?” Not as though her feelings were hurt, but as though she couldn’t imagine anyone in the world not liking it.

Hmmpf,
she’d say. As if Meredith’s response had stumped her.

Samantha moved through her life with extreme self-confidence. It was so pronounced that Meredith was drawn to studying Samantha’s mannerisms: her wicked smile, the way she swore to great, elegant effect (“fucking Scalamandré, I fucking love it!”), the way she shimmered in the presence of every man from Freddy Delinn to the Guatemalan plaster guy (“José, you are a beast and a god. I could
eat
you”).

As Meredith got to know her better, she learned that Samantha had been raised with four older brothers in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Her family was middle-class royalty. The four brothers were the best high-school athletes the town had ever seen; they all received Division I athletic scholarships. Samantha herself had played basketball all the way through Colby College. She married her college sweetheart, the preppy, handsome, and completely underwhelming Trent Deuce. They had lived downtown on Great Jones Street until their first child was born, when they moved to Ridgewood, New Jersey. Trent had worked for Goldman Sachs, but he’d been canned after 9/11. He then worked for a buddy who had a smaller brokerage firm—really, the details of Trent’s career were always presented vaguely by Samantha, though Freddy had gathered enough information to conclude that Trent Deuce was a loser and would be better off at a car dealership in Secaucus selling used Camaros. (Freddy rarely spoke badly of
anyone,
so hearing him say this was flabbergasting. Now, Freddy’s dismissal of Trent made perfect sense.)

Somewhere during the course of Trent’s peripatetic career, Samantha had deemed it necessary to go back to work. She decorated a friend’s house in Ridgewood. (Here, it should be noted that Meredith and Freddy had never once been invited to Samantha’s home in Ridgewood, and Meredith had been grateful for that. Who wanted to make the trip from Manhattan to the Jersey suburbs? No one. In Meredith’s mind, Ridgewood was soccer mom/Olive Garden hell.) After the success of the Ridgewood friend’s home, Samantha decorated the Manhattan apartment of the Ridgewood friend’s mother, who happened to be fantastically wealthy, have millions of friends, and entertain often and lavishly. This set Samantha’s career on its way. By the time Meredith met Samantha, she was a wealthy woman in her own right.

But not quite.

There was a subtle class distinction between Samantha and the Delinns—always. On the surface, Samantha told Meredith and Freddy what to do and they did it. But there was the underlying fact that she worked for them.

The Yankees memorabilia, the antique piggy banks. A certain lavender Hermès tie, Freddy’s favorite tie, had also been one of Samantha’s picks. Even the pink and tangerine palette of the Palm Beach house—which Meredith had bucked against—Freddy had defended. Pink and tangerine? Seriously? Samantha had used a pair of Lilly Pulitzer golf pants as her inspiration.

She’s the expert,
Fred said.

Samantha had something that Freddy valued. A knowledge, a perspective. He was a rich man. They, Freddy and Meredith, were a rich couple. Samantha was the one who showed them how to be rich. She had shown them how to spend. Nearly every extravagance that Meredith indulged in, Samantha Deuce had introduced her to.

Six and a half years. The summer of 2004. Had Fred and Samantha been in love?
Think, Meredith! Remember!

She remembered Samantha in Southampton, decorating the house in whites and ivories, despite Meredith’s protests that she had two teenage boys who also lived in the house, and Meredith wanted Leo and Carver and their friends to be comfortable dragging sand in, or sitting on the sofa in damp bathing suits. But the Southampton house had been done to Samantha’s specifications, in whites and ivories, including a white grand piano that Meredith found tacky. (“Don’t you think a white grand piano just screams Liberace? Or bad Elton John?” Meredith said. Samantha’s eyes widened. “You mean you don’t
like
it?”)

Fred and Meredith used to meet Trent and Samantha for dinner at Nick and Toni’s; inevitably, Freddy and Samantha would be seated on one side of the table, and Meredith and Trent on the other. Meredith struggled with conversation with Trent. She tried to remember to read the sports section of
USA
Today
before they all went out, so she would at least have that to fall back on. More and more often, Samantha showed up alone, claiming that Trent was stuck in the city “working,” or that she’d left him at home to care for the kids, because he absolutely never saw them during the week. Trent was always dismissed in this way, and so there had been many nights where it was just the three of them—Meredith, Freddy, and Samantha. Freddy used to say, “I’m going out with my wife and my girlfriend.” Meredith had laughed at this; she had found it innocent and charming. She had occasionally been suspicious of dark, exotic beauties—women who resembled Trina or the lovely Catalan university student—although, really, Meredith was so certain of Freddy’s undying devotion that these worries had flickered, and then extinguished.

It was around 2004 when Freddy had started to take care of himself again. Like everyone else, he stopped eating carbs for a while, but that was too hard, especially since he couldn’t resist the focaccia or the ravioli with truffle butter at Rinaldo’s. But he ate more vegetables. He had salads for lunch instead of reubens and omelets. He started working out at the gym in their building. The first time he’d told Meredith he was going downstairs to work out, Meredith said, “You’re going to do
what?
” Freddy had never been much of an athlete or an exerciser. His tennis game was adequate and he could swim, but he didn’t have time for golf. He didn’t even like tossing the lacrosse ball with the boys. Meredith could no sooner see him lifting weights than she could see him break dancing with the Harlem kids in Central Park. But he went at the workout regimen with a vengeance; he hired a personal trainer named Tom. Some days he spent more time with Tom than with Meredith. He lost weight, he developed muscles. He had to have a whole new set of suits made on his next trip to London. He let his hair grow longer. It was really gray by then, more salt than pepper, and his beard was coming in gray, and some days he went two or three days without shaving so he would have a scruff that Meredith found sexy but that she suspected was raising eyebrows at the office. She said, “Did you have a fight with your razor?” Freddy said he wanted to try something different. He grew a goatee.

Samantha had loved the goatee, Meredith remembered. She used to stroke it like a cat, and Meredith had found this funny. She had wanted Samantha to join her in teasing Freddy.
That’s his midlife crisis,
Meredith said.

Could be worse,
Samantha had said.

When Samantha was around, Freddy was looser, he laughed more, he occasionally had a glass of wine, he occasionally stayed out past nine thirty. Once, the three of them had even gone dancing at a nightclub. Samantha had been immediately absorbed by the crowd. When Meredith and Freddy found her, she was dancing with a bunch of the gorgeous, emaciated Bulgarian women whom Meredith had seen around town—working behind the counter at the fancy food store or babysitting the art galleries—and their hulking boyfriends. They all abandoned the dance floor for the bar, where they did shots of Patrón. Freddy had followed them to the bar, he magnanimously paid for ten shots of Patrón, and then he tried to convince Samantha to leave the club with him and Meredith. Nope, she didn’t want to go.

Meredith said,
Come on, Freddy. We’ll go. She can stay. She’s going back to Bridgehampton tonight anyway.

But Freddy didn’t want Samantha to stay. He had words with her that turned into an argument. Meredith couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other, though she did see Freddy take Samantha’s arm and Samantha pull her arm back. Now, of course, it was clear that it had been a lover’s spat. Freddy didn’t want Samantha to stay with this group of young, Eastern European hedonists. She might do drugs, she might participate in group sex and find a younger, hotter lover. But at that time, all Meredith thought was that it was a good thing she and Freddy had never had a daughter. Freddy’s concern for Samantha that night had struck Meredith as avuncular, bordering on fatherly, even though Samantha was only seven years younger than Meredith and nine years younger than Freddy.