The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund (13 page)

“That was a show. And I ain't Sarah Jessica.”

We blared songs from my newly downloaded file on iTunes, which Kiki had introduced me to, blowing the cobwebs off my stereo and buying bands I'd never heard of but liked. I'd never felt so old: The rockers who crooned the tunes we shimmied to were a decade younger. And would probably laugh if they saw this mommy ramping up for a Saturday night.

I was oscillating from fear to excitement to cold strength. I knew it was “character building” to be dumped—I never had been ditched before—and I strangely almost found solace in the fact that this was a rite of passage for me; suddenly I was in on the Top 40 chart lyrics about heartbreak. Now I knew what all those dumb happy people didn't—there's a whole subworld of the miserable out there. And guess what? It's so much hipper! Kiki blared the Smiths as I brooded in front of the mirror applying eye shadow. The darkness was making me grow, and hey, everyone probably has one big earth-shattering heartbreak, right? Now mine's out of the way.

And now, along with my thinner frame (the Grief Diet is so amazing), I had something I hadn't had during the sad times in my marriage: hope. Loneliness when there's a human next to you is way worse than alone-loneliness for some reason. When you're single, there's always the accompanying reverie that you'll find Him, that special Dream Guy who will be forever your companion, laugh factory, lover, and, most of all, friend. But Tim and I hadn't even been close friends for a while. Before we had met, I used to see married couples and truly felt like they were little skipping in slo-mo through green pastures holding hands, like they had crossed over into happy-land and knew something all of us single ignoram uses didn't. But years into marriage, I realized that there is no gold-laced border into the land of rainbows and hazy sunsets. It was . . . the same. Or maybe worse. Because then the dream of finding that perfect love was over. And here I was on the outside again, back across that border in the realm of the unattached, where anything was possible. It was terrifying but electrifying.

To get to the way West Village, Kiki and I piled into a taxi, which stank so horrendously that you could toss your tacos. I was praying for the little yellow oxygen masks to spring out of an overhead compartment, but instead I just zoned out on the descending numbered street signs.

When we got to the party in one of the Raymond Meier buildings where one of the Olsen twins formerly resided, there was that crush of bodies that instantly transported me back in time. It wasn't that Tim and I hadn't been to parties; we just went to sedate, catered affairs with mostly married people. Or married people's hanger-on single friends who wanted to be married. This was not that at all; it was a full-on raucous rager, music blaring, lights low, hot-blooded hook-ups hours away. But it wasn't the fleece-and-headbands preppy twenties set, either; it was entirely new to me. There were some younger people, but there were plenty of thirtysomethings as well, just not older drones like uptown. These were edgier, cooler-seeming people who didn't seem to give a shit about aging. In fact, they dressed so young, they seemed younger, whereas the women at Miles's school may have been the same age but instead of vintage band T-shirts and fishnets and mod minidresses, they wore pleated kilts and cashmere twins sets and (gasp!) capes and looked way, way older than their years. I always had been somewhere in the middle—never matronly, but not edgy, either. But seeing people look so cool and stylish inspired me to take more risks and take clothing dares the way I did in college when Jeannie and I would flaunt our assets more than I had as a Mrs.

There was an energy bounding through the loft that I couldn't relate to, but wanted to. Reading my nervousness, Kiki squeezed my hand. She spied her friend Eliza across the crowded space and waved, dragging me behind her through the mass of dancing bodies.

There was a round of introductions yelled over remixes of Nine Inch Nails, and of the faces who mouthed their names over the din, one guy did catch my eye. He said his name was Matt Sevin, which seemed to ring a bell. Lucky seven: I liked the sound of it. There seemed to be a cool twinkle to him. We all sat near each other and tried to chat, but the music was so loud that it was a strain to gab freely. I gleaned he was a music journalist for
Spin
(hot!) and that he lived in DUMBO in Brooklyn, but not much else. I chatted with a few people plopped nearby, but I kept making eye contact with Matt. Finally, when everyone was heading out to some late-night party across town, my mommy clock kicked in, even though Miles hadn't called my cell. I wasn't exactly used to the words “after-party” and slowly felt myself turning into a pumpkin. My eyelids got heavy, and I even let a yawn escape as partygoers piled into the industrial elevator. As everyone hopped into cabs, I could sense Matt staying near our smaller posse, but what was the point of sticking around when I didn't have the energy to turn on the charm? I decided to bid everyone adieu and bolt. As it turned out, my non-strategy proved a good strategy.

“It was fun shouting over the music with you,” said Matt flirtatiously.

“Yeah, you, too. Very worth the laryngitis I'll have tomorrow,” I said, and smiled.

“Holly, do you want to grab dinner sometime?”

“Sure, I'd love that.”

“Somewhere quiet, I promise.”

And with that, I had set up my first post-divorce date.

 

 

 

K
iki had informed me that while the words “late night” weren't in my vocabulary (unless they involved Conan O'Brien), they were certainly in hers. Having never been woken by the sound of a newborn's lungy cry, she was used to partying hard and had, in fact, gone home with the bartender from the loft party.

“Kiki, how do you do it?” I asked over lunch a week later at Sarabeth's. “Don't you feel creepy about slithering in and out of some random guy's bed?”

“Guys don't. Why should I?” she said, sipping her club soda with a shrug.

“I need time alone. To rebuild,” I thought aloud. “And even when I am ready, it's not like I'm going to meet someone serious in some party like that.”

“Who said anything about serious?” Kiki mocked. “That is the last thing we need.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Okay, I need. I am so not ever remarrying. Ever.”

“What?” I asked with surprise. “You don't want to get married again?”

“No. I want to be free. I want to be like a guy. Why the fuck shouldn't I be? Because Doris Days like Sherry Von think we should be there with oven mitts and plastered smiles? I am so not being someone's Mrs. again.”

Suddenly I saw Emilia d'Angelo getting up from her booth in the back, followed by Posey, Trish, and Mary Grassweather.

“I just hit an age where I said to myself, I'm just not doing my own hair anymore! Who has the time?” bellowed Emilia, retrieving her sable from the maitre d'.

“That's like me with sweaters,” said Mary. “I just got to this point where it's, like, if it's not cashmere, it's not going on my body. You know, life's short, why itch?”

They turned and saw us and immediately started whispering before approaching.

“Hi, Holly,” Posey said, coming over to kiss me hello. Trish and Mary did the same.

“Hi, Holly,” said Emilia, faux-pity infusing her voice. “How are you doing? You poor thing . . . I've been thinking of you during what must be an extremely difficult and unbearable time,” she said, making a sad face like one a child would draw, with an exaggerated downward arch of the mouth, as Mary and Posey looked on.

“She's fine, actually,” Kiki said. I was kind of embarrassed because it was obvious from her tone that she wanted to send the gang packing.

“How are you guys? I feel like I haven't even seen you guys in forever.” Translation: They had stopped inviting me everywhere. Not that I cared. But Posey's distance seemed to get under my skin a bit more than the other twos'. “How was your summer?” I asked with a smile.

“Uh-oh,” chimed in Posey. “Don't get her started on her rental.”

“It was the pits,” said Emilia. “We get out there, after signing the contract—half a mil for three months in Montauk—unpack the four kids with all their stuff, all the staff, only to discover the central air is kaput. Broke. Unfixable.” She threw her hands up, shaking her head at the horror.

“Can you imagine?” added Mary, hand to throat, with an intonation that put the catastrophe on par with the Hindenburg.

“So we just left,” said Emilia. “Started at square one. In June. It was awful. Marco took the seaplane out, and we scrambled to find a suitable alternative but naturally all the best properties are taken by then and it'll be two years before our Gin Lane house is ready—it's a total gut job. I'm talking Baghdad. Marco and I are poring over these blueprints every night, it's SUCH hard work.
Plus
, to add insult to injury, we had construction on the apartment here, and there are summer work rules, so we have two crews working day and night, around the clock, don't get me started. You have no idea how incredibly exhausting it is to be presiding over not one but
two
construction sites simultaneously!”

To say that our world was sheltered would be the understatement of the century. But now I saw it more than ever. Here I was, in the throes of a hellish year, and these so-called society mavens have the gall to complain about lives people would kill for. All perspective was clearly out the penthouse window.

As my frenemies Mary and Emilia went to put on their jackets, I said to Trish and Posey that I'd love to catch up and maybe grab a glass of wine sometime.

“Uh, sure, yeah . . . um, things are so crazed right now with Noelle's kindergarten applications, but yeah, let's definitely try—” Trish stammered.

I felt the sting of Trish's semidismissal of my offer. You can't bullshit a bullshitter, and I was the queen of wriggling out of invitations. Looked like I was being dethroned.

“Okay, whatever works down the road when things are less chaotic,” I said, letting her off the hook.

She bit her lip and gave that apologetic look for her crazy schedule (but hey, it's New York, we're all busy) and I just wondered if she thought the Divorce Disease was contagious.

Meanwhile, I could tell Posey felt a bit guilty. “Oh, Holl—save the date the thirteenth next month—it's the Winter Wonderland Ball; it's going to be great this year,” she offered. Meanwhile, I knew that benefit cost $10,000 a ticket, obviously something I could never afford, not that I wanted to go, anyway. I made some comment about checking the calendar, though we both knew inviting someone to purchase a ticket to a benefit was hardly a gesture of reaching out.

Posey waved good-bye with a sweet smile as she headed for the door, and after the trio departed for St. Sebastian's dismissal, it took all of seven seconds for Kiki to unleash.

“How happy are you to not be around those nasty bitches anymore? Tim had you seeing that crew, what, twice a week?”

“Sometimes more.”

 

 

 

At pickup, Miles skipped into my arms and I saw Emilia, Mary, Trish, and Posey all glancing toward me with that look of compassion mixed with fear. There I was, kissing my son hello and handing him some pretzels. That's what my life was to them, a salty twist. And like the carbo-loaded snacks Miles and I munched together, I was their darkest fears embodied.

 

 

 

T
he next week, on the night that Tim took Miles, I got ready for my little experiment: a date, post-apocalypse. I walked into the bar of Peasant, a warm little joint on Elizabeth and Spring streets, and scanned the joint for Matt. Then I heard, above the mild hum of the bar crowd, “See, I think ‘Dusting the Stars' was a seminal song that cut through the pop confections and offered them legitimacy, not to mention street cred.”

Music journalism lingo 101: “street cred” and “seminal.”

The speaker of these words was Mr. Sevin, a tall, lanky, hot guy with painter's pants and a vintage T-shirt. Even cuter than I recalled from the week before.

“Hi, Matt!”

“Holly, great to see you. And hear you, this time.” He smiled and introduced me to his pal, who was called Slam or something weird, I can't now recall, but it was a word and a verb. As we small-talked about the “killer” paninis, the wheels were turning in my head. If only the Carnegie Hill gang could see me now, with a cute Brooklyn boy with vintage Adidas sneaks who looked like the fourth Beastie Boy! He was the opposite of hedge fund land. Thank God.