The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund (18 page)

“Come on, Holly. Chill out. Live a little.” At least he had a spare helmet so I wouldn't be some decapitated headless horsemom with brains scattered along Park Avenue. I am so not wired for risk. If I hadn't been drunk, it would be safe to say I would have gotten on that hog over my dead body.

But there I was. Flying up First Avenue. Though my thoughts were hazy, I remember thinking that if someone I knew could see me, they would probably faint in shock. Or at least thought I'd gone off the deep end. Holly Talbott with some guy on a motorcycle? Not a chance.

When we got to my neighborhood, the night doorman was already on duty (translation: asleep on the lobby couch), so there was no one to witness my very un-uptown chariot's arrival. Nick helped me off the seat, dress pulled up by my thighs. It was semi-undignified but, dare I say, badass?

“Holly. That was fun—”

The next thing I knew, he had kissed me, hard. He put his hands on my face and leaned me against his bike, grabbing my back as his mouth moved on mine forcefully. I finally had my own taste of a no-strings-attached kiss. It was a very rock-and-roll moment for me. I'd always been a prude, “saving it” for my first love. But I was now taking a page from Kiki's book—a little black book—and while making out was phenomenal, with the sound of Nick's leather arms moving around me as a sound track, it was also just a page from the book and not the whole book. In other words, I might have been able to engage in street-corner kissing, but I would not be sleeping with Nick. When I finally disentangled myself from his embrace and looked at him, he knew right away I would have to bid adieu and that he would not be scoring beyond this, but he was very cool and simply took my hand, gave it a squeeze, and got back on his bike.

 

 

 

After a long day of tours, I scooped up Miles and took him out for an early dinner in our favorite old-school diner, Three Guys, on Madison. He was so excited about some game Tim had scored tickets to, and I tried to just nod and be excited for him, but I knew this would mark the beginning in a grand game of one-upsmanship, where I was the Lame One because I wasn't ever going to be able to get backstage passes at concerts the way Tim could through his connections, or go to the Super Bowl or Olympics or God knows what else. While my ex provided Le-Bron James, I could only offer a grilled cheese.

It was cold on our walk home, but the twinkling Christmas lights that had sprung up everywhere somehow warmed us. Thanksgiving was a week away, and the vision of a majestic streaming row of glittering trees down Park Avenue soothed our bones despite the arctic chill in the air.

After some hot chocolate and homework, Miles was ready for stories and we climbed into his bed, piled among stuffed animals and fluffy pillows. He was in his favorite Spider-Man pajamas and leaned on my shoulder as we read
Rotten Ralph
, about a mischievous cat who did mean things like take a bite out of every cookie at a birthday party. But it had always made me smile since it mirrored the other side of childhood, the kooky one that is sick of the incessant litany of brush-your-teeth, wash-your-hands, manners manners manners. And somehow through the prism of my wild night before, I was happy to break free from my own locked-in rules of what was acceptable and go crazy. Maybe not rotten, per se, but definitely, and happily, a little less tame.

 

 

 

T
wo nights later, after Miles went to bed, Kiki called to report that, third grade-style, Nick the chef had told his friend that he wanted to see me again. Just thinking about him, and the fact that he was a
Wrinkle in Time
doorway to the youth I'd never had in my married twenties, gave me a little spring in my step. The following Saturday night we'd all hang out again when he finished work at midnight. Tim took Miles every weekend he was in town, and so I'd be solo and able to sleep super-late Sunday, but before I could get ahead of myself, I remembered I had roped Kiki into coming with me Thursday to the Lyle Spence Gallery for that opening of the other suitor in the hopper. It was amusing to me that there were twenty years between the two men. Nick (a.k.a. Chef Boy to Kiki) and John (whom she'd dubbed “L'artiste”) could not be more different. Both intrigued me. Both were NOTHING like Tim, so both were appealing just for that. I wondered which one I'd end up dating.

“You don't have to pick one,” said Kiki over the phone on the eve of John's opening. “You're
just
back out there! You have to have many irons in the fire.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means keep a bunch of possibilities hot. Stay open. Date up a storm.”

And while I loved stories and TV shows about women on the town juggling men, I never knew how they could sleep with all those different people. I'd gone off the market at twenty-four and was still frozen in the land of sexual baseball bases and hookups without full sex. But at thirty-four, no one was going up the shirt and stopping. It was kissing on a corner or pulling out the condom. After years on the pill I had forgotten I'd actually have to have someone bag it up for fear of diseases. Great.

“I don't think I'm an irons-in-the-fire kinda gal,” I confessed.

“Come on, Holly. Guys do it all the time. There's such a double standard.”

“But it's different. Women are more selective. It's like the egg and the sperm. We choose, and they spread their seed everywhere. I can't slut out and start sleeping with every guy.”

“What's with the word ‘slut'? Are you from the Stone Age? I feel like Sherry Von has entered your body like Patrick Swayze inhabiting Whoopi Goldberg in
Ghost
.”

“I'm not Sherry Von. I don't judge people who do it,” I said, shaking my head. “It's not that—it's just that I've personally never . . . slept around.”

“How many guys have you slept with?”

I stopped for a sec to count. On my fingers. On one hand. Tim was the thumb on the next.

“Six.”

“Holy shit,” Kiki said, laughing and covering her mouth. “
Six?
”

“Sorry, what, is that too lame for you? I'm like some church choir girl?”

“No, but you'll definitely think I'm a road whore. Add a zero.”

I was stunned. Even with Kiki's bold personality and various rolls in the hay with randoms since her split, I had no idea it would be that high.

“Sixty?!” I asked. “No way.”

“Okay, not that many. Maybe forty. There were a lot of fun quickies, after only a few dates. Or none, like that 9/11 firefighter who had lost half the guys in his ladder. I truly thought I was doing something good for my country.”

 

 

 

I decided to wear a plain black dress with silver buttons down the side, a gift Tim had bought me (probably out of guilt) from Barneys the previous year. I could only wear it in thin, non-period phases, and it zipped up perfectly. Miles was going to the Big Apple Circus with Sherry Von, and her chauffeur, Hubert, was in the lobby when I walked him downstairs and out to the awaiting Bentley.

Hubert looked at me and smiled as Miles piled into the car.

By the look on Sherry Von's face when she saw my spike heels and fur-collared coat, I could tell she was expecting my standard Theory black pants or Earnest Sewn jeans, Hollywould flats, and ponytail.

“Well, Holland, my, my, where are you off to?” she asked as if floored that I had access to someplace other than my apartment. She probably though it was covered in Kleenex from my tears. Which it had been certainly, but the white balls gathered at the foot of my bed from weeping were becoming less and less frequent. “Just a gallery downtown.”

“Oh. How nice,” she said, with acid, forcing a saccharine smile.

“With Kiki, actually!”

The corners of her smile slowly turned downward into a full-on grimace of Estée Lauder red lipstick. She said nothing, just flared her nostrils as if the two syllables of Kiki's name had somehow elicited an acrid odor out of the ether.

“Well, have fun!” I said, blowing a kiss to Miles. I could tell by her shocked face that she'd rather I'd said I was meeting my meth dealer.

“Miss Holland—” I heard Hubert whisper as he walked around the back of the car to his driver's seat. “You look divine.”

—Miss Piggy

 

 

 

T
hank goodness Kiki, who is usually always a half hour late, was standing by the door when I arrived on West Twenty-seventh Street. It was frigid out and just the half block from Tenth Avenue was enough to make me want to crawl into a vat of lava and boil myself.

“Hi! You look . . . wow. I might turn lezzie,” joked Kiki. “I just got here. Wait till you see these paintings.”

I had been curious. My Google image search had turned up mostly still-lifes, renderings of objects such as a spoon, a pipe, and a half-eaten slice of pie. But the gallery's website said that this show contained John's first-ever group of self-portraits. So I was intrigued, but not prepared for what was on view in the packed, bustling space filled with shaven-headed art people and their fashionista muses.

In a word: Buck. Self-portraits, as in
stark-ass-naked
self-portraits. Oh, sorry. I think the arty term is
nudes
. I moved into the room, past a stenciled charcoal gray heading that read “JOHN TAPLETT: SELF-PORTRAITURE,” to see eight huge images of John
in full
.

The six-foot canvases reminded me of a softer Captain Von Trapp, but with sausage in my face. My jaw dropped. But the images were good, really good. Sexy. They were done in heated, frazzled, impetuous lines, like a sketchbook come to life in oiled color. They were life-size and sometimes headless, just the neck down to the calves, with each in a different pose. I felt myself getting guiltily aroused, like this was art porn. Every muscle in his ripped but not-too-ripped torso was there, every crease and line in his pelvis and, yes, WIENER. I could not believe it. Wasn't he so embarrassed? I was fascinated.

Naturally it took Kiki all of five seconds to start teasing me. “You better shack up with this one, Holly. He's fucking hung like Seabiscuit.”

“Kiki, shut up!” I said, blushing. “I don't even know him!”

She walked up close to the, ahem, intimate painting, looking back at me with a smirk. “I'd say ya do now.”

“Holly, I'm so glad you made it,” said John, taking my hand in his, then looking up to find me reddening into a pomegranate hue.

“Th-this is my friend, Kiki Talbott,” I stuttered.

“Pleasure to meet you,” he said, shaking her hand. She still had that huge Cheshire Cat grin on her face, no doubt thinking of measurements. And I'm not talking about canvases.

“Can you join us as well for the dinner afterward?” he asked.

Before I shot her a longing look begging her to come, she had already began her weasel out.

“Oh, I wish I could, but I'm seeing Interpol tonight at Hammerstein. So sorry!”

“Oh, well, I'm sorry to hear it, but hopefully we'll see each other again—”

Just then an attractive man with longish hair and bright green eyes approached. “Hello,” he said, reaching out his hand. “I'm Lyle Spence.”

“Hi, Holly Talbott, nice to meet you. This is such an amazing gallery,” I said, recognizing him immediately from countless party pictures in magazines. “And congrats on the show! To both of you. I see some red dots already.”

“We're very pleased,” he said, while looking at Kiki. “And who is this beautiful creature?”

“Ugh,
creature
? Nice. That sounds like something from Animal Planet!” Kiki said, crossing her arms.

I almost spat out the white wine John had handed me. Here was the most powerful man in the art world and she blew him right off. In his own gallery, no less. While any girl in the joint would have her panties in a twist over a flirtation from Mr. Heartbreaker, she clearly didn't give a shit. And right away, Lyle Spence was intrigued.

“This is Kiki Talbott.” I said, trying to pave over her diss.

“Any relation?” Lyle asked. “Same animal phylum perhaps?”

Kiki smiled, reluctantly.

“How about joining us for dinner afterward? I have Bottino rented out in honor of John.”