The First Wives Club (19 page)

”Ladies and gentlemen, please,” Hazzenfus boomed. “I’m glad you are enjoying yourselves, but let us remember the reason we are here tonight.”

The buzz of conversation began to die down, except at the head table where Gunilla Goldberg continued to whisper to Shelby Cushman. “Do you see Perseus Daglevi?”’ she asked.

Shelby followed Gunilla’s stare. ‘Is she the skinny woman in black?”’ “They’re all skinny women in black, dear. This is New York. I mean the one who is sitting next to Pat Buckley.”

”Do you mean the one who looks like some kind of Arab or Iranian?”

Shelby asked in her soft southern drawl.

“Never, but jamais, call a Persian an Arab, dear.” Gunilla shook her glossy head. “Awfully bad taste. Remember, they’re the ones who invented Aryan.”

Shelby, chastised, nodded. There was still so much to learn. ‘What about her?”

“She had a breast reduction. Well, really, it was her third. For the future, remember the rule, twice is the limit for any body part.

Otherwise you wind up with Michael Jackson syndrome. Anyway, there was a foul-up with Perseus’s procedure and now she has no nipples on her breasts at all. Oddest thing you’ve ever seen. She lost one, and they decided it was more symmetrical to remove the other. Now she glues on latex prostheses to show under her clothes.

I used to use the same adhesive for false eyelashes. Messy stuff. I wonder if it stains her dresses? I’m so glad those lashes went out of style. My husband-not Sol—my second husband, hated them.” She paused, as if considering. ‘Of course, he hated me, too.”

Shelby giggled. Gunilla arched a brow, narrowed her eyes, and continued, “Listen, dear. You may be Southern, but you’re not stupid and I know it. After all, you snagged Morty Cushman, and don’t tell me it was easy to land the fat bastard. I like you. I want to help you.

So remember this, all men hate all women. There are no exceptions.

When you meet one you think is an exception, and you fall in love, it’s time to check into a spa for a week till your blood sugar stabilizes.”

She turned from Shelby. Robert Hazzenfus was still droning on. Gil Griffin this, Gil Griffin that. God, Gunilla thought, everyone knew he was an exceptional bastard in a world full of ordinary ones. She looked over at her husband, Sol, and wondered if it was true that his latest affair was a threat.

The children were getting too old to protect her now, she’d have to try to protect herself. She turned back to Shelby and continued her lesson.

“Of course, all women hate all men back. This is the basis for civilization as we know it.”’ She picked up her evening bag, snapped it open, took out her red Paloma lipstick, and reapplied it carefully, just slightly over the lip line.

Despite her care, the deep red bled into the hundreds of tiny lines, like a spider’s web radiating from her mouth. That she could do this in front of a room full of five hundred socialites astounded Shelby.

She watched, mesmerized, until Gunilla was done and looked up at her and then at the large, glittering crowd.

“We all hate one another, dear. Never forget it.”

B O O K T W O The Husbands Getting Scared The Sweetheart Deal.

Three of the four husband-targets of the First Wives Club were congregated in a celebratory tea. Tea! thought Morty Cushman.

Fucking elegant. Just like this joint. Yeah, the Federated Funds Douglas Witter board room was impressive. No denying that. Of course, Morty thought, they spent plenty to make it impressive. These guys know what to do, and do it well. They’ve been in the business of robbing widows and orphans since the Revolutionary War. He looked at Gil Griffin and Bill Atchison. Definitely sons of bitches of the American Revolution.

In fact, the goddamn room looked as if it were built back then. It was paneled with some kind of dark, shiny wood halfway up the walls, and then striped-cream-and-blue wallpaper went up to the high ceiling. The center of the room was completely filled by a gleaming, long table lit overhead by a huge brass chandelier with about twenty arms holding goddamn candles, real candles! It was some kind of special antique out of fucking Washington’s headquarters or something, Gil had said. Of course, discreetly placed electrical lights were also sunken in the ornate plaster ceiling. The floors were dark, shiny wood, too, like in a real house. The goddamnedest thing was that the whole mgilllh sat on the sixty-eighth floor of 120 Wall Street, its windows looking out on the spectacular view of New York Harbor. That is, if you could see through the goddamn authentic windows, which you couldn’t because of the wavy glass and the bubbles. That was class, having the resources to create colonial fucking Williamsburg on the top of a skyscraper and then ignoring the view. You had to hand it to these alte goyim.

The whole team was assembled to celebrate the offering. Morty the Madman stock was now—this very minute—being traded on the Big Board.

It was unbelievable.

Morty had had his share of success, and as a streetfighter he’d put himself up against anyone, but these guys were something else. They were goddamn animals.

Morty had heard enough about their tactics to know. These guys originated “go for the throat,” and they did it with so much class.

That was the paradox that fascinated Morty.

He surveyed the room. Gil was at the head of the table, looking for the world like a fucking emperor, his head inclined slightly, listening to his wife, Mary Birmingham, who sat beside him, whispering in his ear. How does he get his suit to fit like that? Morty wondered. He knew it took more than money.

No, it hadda be in the genes. Like the perfect shape of Gil’s head, the blond hair that improves with age when it mixes with gray. And a neck. Morty envied that. Gil’s neck held his jaw up and out, giving him the appearance of integrity. Morty noticed Gil’s steel blue eyes flicker for a moment as he placed a long, thin index finger to his upper lip and nodded at Mary. Morty continued to gaze around the table.

A dozen Young Turks, all in immaculate white shirt collars and pressed gray or navy suits, were seated around the table. The hair, of those that had any, was slicked back, the glasses, of those that wore them, gleamed. The ties were those boring little patterns on pink or red or light yellow silk. Fucking “power ties” they called them. They all looked rich and clean. Rich and clean.

Morty admitted to himself that he looked neither. He was overweight, his five-o’clock shadow showed up daily at noon, and he had only to put on a suit to wrinkle it. Still, he thought as he leaned back and took a pull on his cigar, he was here.

He was here because he deserved to be, because he’d worked hard, because he was smart, and because—he would admit to himself—he’d gotten lucky. He was riding the wave of the eighties, and for him, the wave had just peaked. He was sitting at this table with $61 million in his pocket, and that made for a hell of a bulge in your pants. Christ, he thought with exultation, I’m probably the richest one of these fuckers.

Being so goddamn rich was better than anything Morty had ever known—better than eating, better than a great game of ball, better even than sex.

These people fascinated him. He had to admit that. Fascinated and infuriated him. Yeah, he resented them. He had to admit that, too They were shtarkers, really powerful men who could make things happen.

When the idea of going public came along, he had sat down with a few investment banks. They took one look at the figures and walked away without a glance back. But Gil had seen the potential. He hadn’t seemed to mind the poor cash flow, or the overexpansion. He’d said he liked the picture. Then Gil Grifffin, who had never built a store from a hole-in-the-wall to a chain, who had never dirtied his hands making anything or selling anything, had sat at a table with Morty and told him, told him, that he’d take him pubic. It would cost him—of course 2 million shares. And Bill’s law firm would get another 5 million. It almost doubled the nut they had to raise in the offering, money raised on Morty’s sweat, on Morty’s name, but he had to admit that these guys had floated the shares. What a racket! Were they geniuses or gonifs or both?

“I wanted to mark this successful close of the offering,” Gil was saying, “with something that would reflect both the delicacy that was necessary to achieve it and the beauty of an offering that can only be called a sweetheart deal for everyone.” The handpicked audience of thirty lawyers, brokers, and numbers crunchers smiled appreciatively Gil had their full attention, and in his hand, a small remote-control unit allowed him to open doors, lower the movie screen, dim the lights, contact security, or buzz the administrative or housekeeping staff to enter and serve them. ‘I don’t think I have to remind you that our management of the deal resulted in a record-setting fee for Federated Funds Douglas Witter, and that means a pleasant Christmas for us all.”

There was a murmur of appreciation.

Morty knew that bonuses were distributed at Christmas, often doubling these guys’ already huge salaries. ‘And a token of appreciation for all the hard work and long hours is being distributed now,” Gil said.

Discreetly, two men moved through the group with madonnablue Tiffany boxes, leaving one at each place. Morty reached for the white satin ribbon, until he noticed that no one else reached for theirs. He dropped his hand to his lap.

Well, he remembered, coming back to earth, Gil is richer than me. How many of these deals had he done?

After the speech, Gil turned, hit his remote, and the connecting door to his office suite opened. Two Japanese women, wearing traditional kimono and obi, were poised in the doorway. They bowed low to the room, to Gil, and then entered, immediately beginning some kind of elaborate ceremony. They were washing out bowls and filling them again, moving as if they were in slow motion. The whole thing was absolutely the most boring bullshit Morty had ever seen. He surreptitiously glanced at his gold Rolex with the diamond trim round the face. He was hungry and he had to piss. He hoped this would be over soon.

He looked across the table to Bill Atchison. The guy looked fascinated, but he was such a pussy hound, he’d watch women do anything. Morty knew he was involved with some crazy artist girl now, and God knows what he watched her do. Morty himself knew there was a lot more to life than good poontang. In fact, he’d rather go to a Knicks game with some neighborhood guys any day. He wasn’t saying that women didn’t have their place. You needed a wife to break into these circles, no doubt about it. But she had to be the right wife. And he had the right wife now. Shelby would know what these goddamn Nips were doing.

He had met her in a SoHo art gallery when that faggot decorator Duarto had taken him and Brenda around to buy something for the walls. Shelby had helped him, and then, when something else had come in she thought they might like, it was Morty she called, not Duarto or Brenda. And they had had a drink, and then dinner, and she had talked about what she wanted to do, her own gallery and the kind of shows she wanted to put together. She was working on a show with Ed Schlossberg, the Jew who had married JFK’s daughter, and she knew everyone and everything.

Now she did have her own gallery, Morty’s gallery really, and she was preparing a show of crazy Phoebe Van Gelder’s work. Morty knew it would help him if he could get into that world, a world that both fascinated and confused him. If he was going to play with the big boys, it would help if he polished his image. Like this bullshit with the oriental ladies. What was going on, for chrissake?

At last they were finished. Gil stood up and bowed to the slants, and then, at last, waiters rolled in carts of food. Fabulous. Morty had never been much of a drinker, but he liked to fress, no doubt about it.

But when the cart was rolled up to him, he was confronted with nasty bits of trayf. He wasn’t religious, but he knew what he liked, and this array of raw fish and whale droppings was not it. Christ, he hated sushi. Fucking faggot food. Shelby knew better than to try to make him eat this shit. He didn’t even eat pussy, for chrissake.

He turned to the impressive, bright-looking guy beside him, who had already selected a plateful. “Good, huh?”’ Morty asked.

”The best,” the jerk told him. So much for his judgment.

He turned to the guy on his other side. It was Stuart Swann, one of those classy but ineffective types from the old guard. He was the only person who looked less than thrilled with the proceedings. In fact, he looked disgusted. Well, good for him. Behind them an old grandfather clock began to chime.

“That was my family’s clock,” Stuart said. Morty knew the whole goddamn company had been his family’s once. Big deal. So where were you now, putz?

Morty hated old money gone to seed. Gil Griffin had taken old money and piled new on top. That was the way to go.

People had gotten up and were moving around, so Morty waved the waiter off and stood. Bill, of course, was talking to one of the geishas.

Morty had already figured the guy was a lightweight, but he was connected to one of the heaviest law firms in the city, and that made him a heavy. And it made Gil’s deals look real solid. Plus Gil could push him around. A pet lawyer. Real convenient.

Meanwhile, Gil Griffin and Mary Birmingham were beside the other geisha, surrounded by a cadre of the anointed. Morty moved toward them as did most of the others in the room. They were like a pack of dogs, he thought, with Gil the lead. And Morty knew that in the trip through life, unless you were the lead dog, the scenery never changes. He made his way over to them.

“Nice party,” Morty told Gil. He nodded to Mary, who stood there, as always, hanging on Gil’s every word. But they all did. ‘Very nice,” Morty repeated.

“Thank you. Did you enjoy the tea ceremony?” Gil asked. So that’s what it was.

Morty saw Mary shoot Gil a look. Why did the son of a bitch always seem to be mocking him?

“Yeah, it was great. Very unique.”

“In my work with the Japanese, I saw how much attention they give to detail.

Their precision has a Zen rightness to it. It’s what I like about the tea ceremony, each action is prescribed and perfectly executed. Just as our offering was.”