The First Wives Club (27 page)

“And I’ll have the steak all poivre,” Stuart said. “And another double.

” They were silent for what seemed like several minutes, both aware of the awkwardness, the strain.

“How is your daughter?” Stuart asked suddenly. “You said she was away at a new school.”

”She’s adjusting. Sylvie’s fine.”’ Annie felt herself start to choke up. She hoped Sylvie was fine. She herself wasn’t. Aaron was remarrying. Gil was an invincible monster. Stuart was a drunk and certainly not right for her. She felt herself sigh again, and to her embarrassment, her eyes filled with tears.

Stuart reached over and patted her hand. “And Aaron? Are you over him yet?”

Annie withdrew her hand abruptly. “Please, let’s not talk about him or Gil Griffin. Oh, look, our dinners are coming.”

It actually hadn’t been such a bad evening, Annie thought as she let herself into her apartment. Chris was a delight to be with, although his news and meeting a woman in his life had given her a start. And once she’d given up on Stuart as a possibility, he had charmed her with gossip and triviality. He could be amusing, even if he was under the influence. And maybe I can use that information about Mitsui Shipping.

Maybe Brenda and Elise will be interested.

Despite her disappointment she felt all right, she realized. It would be a coup to tell them about her discovery. But she wouldn’t tell them about Aaron’s marriage. She couldn’t. Not just yet.

In her foyer, she opened the hall closet and hung up the kimono.

There, on the console in the hall, still waiting in a neat pile, was the mail. She picked it up and made her way to the bedroom.

Throwing off her shoes, she lay on the bed, for once oblivious to wrinkling the bedspread and duvet. Quickly she sorted through the mail. A few bills, a note from her aunt, some catalogues. And the Federated Funds Douglas Witter trust fund statement. Annie opened it with a sigh. She glanced at it quickly, ready to put it on her bedside table to file. Then she stopped and looked again. It was a trade notice. A trade. A hue trade. Virtually all the balance, and the margin, too. What the hell was this? There had to be some mistake.

She checked the name, then the account number. What the hell was going on?

Jerking upright on the bed, she reached for the phone. It may be eleven-thirty and it may be awkward, but she was going to find out who the hell had put in an order for all those shares of Morty the Madman stock. Neatly filed in her Rolodex was her broker’s home number. Her heart pounded. She had never authorized this. There had to be some mistake.

Larry Cochran Larry stepped out of the cramped bathtub onto the worn linoleum of his kitchen floor. ‘Only the poorest of the poor in New York have a bathtub in their kitchen,” he said out loud as he always did after using the ancient tub and the hand-held shower. He had a front room, twelve by twelve, a kitchen with a tub and old cabinets infested with five hundred generations of roaches, a tiny back room on an air shaft, and a toilet in a closet. He washed and shaved in the kitchen sink. And all this for only $742 a month.

Self-pity and panic were twisting in his insides. This month he didn’t have the $742. Since his encounter with Elise Elliot, his writing had taken a dramatic turn. He had become obsessed. Time had passed in a fever of creation.

Now, at last, he finally had a plot for a screenplay clearly in mind, and he saw Elise playing the starring role. He was writing night and day, not stopping to think of anything. Not about his press pass, soon to expire again, or even where his rent was going to come from.

Usually, he was able to support his simple needs by taking pictures of empty-eyed celebrities and selling them to the newsmagazines and tabloids. But he had been so obsessed with Elise and the screenplay he was writing for her, he hadn’t thought of money until the rent notice arrived. And Mr. Paley, the landlord, eager to turn over tenants to increase the stabilized rent, was never patient.

This work was good. It really was. He knew it. He’d already completed three screenplays since getting out of graduate school, but they had been commercial crap. Or as close as he could get.

But not close enough, Larry-boy, he told himself. No one had bit. He didn’t even have an agent. What do you do after you sell out and nobody buys? he asked himself as he picked up the thin, torn towel.

You go back to art. Drying off his long, lean body, he shook his head, dripping water onto the torn linoleum. La Boheme. The haven for failures.

He padded into the tiny space where he slept on a single bed, reached into the mess of clothes hanging from a suspended broomstick that he laughingly called his closet, and took down his old, very old, standard dress-up outfit. Just as he viewed the apartment lately through the eyes of poverty, he now saw his blazer and gray slacks as they really were, worn, shiny, and frayed. This is no way to live, he thought for the hundredth time in the days since his encounter with Elise.

He took down a blue oxford shirt from the wire hanger, smelled the armpits to see if it could make it through one more wearing, and clipped some frayed threads off the collar. The loafers were scuffed and run-down at the heels. He threaded his pants with his black snakeskin belt—a present from an ex-girlfriend who bought it on employee’s discount when she had worked at Bloomingdale’s one Christmas. Now it was peeling away from its backing. Let’s see, he thought, how long ago was that? Three years? Four years. I haven’t bought a belt in four years, for chrissake !

He picked up his watch from the sink, fumbled, and dropped it.

Perfect. Just what I need. But when he snatched it up off the floor, it was fine, if a Timer could ever be called fine. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking, he thought, snapping it onto his wrist. It was already five past five, and he had told Asa he’d be there at six.

Jesus, if he had to hit up his best friend for a loan, at least he could be on time to do it.

He rushed out of the apartment, locking the double locks as he went.

What a laugh, he thought. What am I protecting? A broken TV I can’t afford to have fixed and an ancient KLH turntable. Who the fuck uses a turntable anymore?

Only CDs. I’m so out of it, I haven’t even gotten around to a cassette machine that’s already obsolete. Take that, Madison Avenue. I missed a whole generation of obsolescence.

He passed down the dimly lit hall, the creaking floorboards muffled by the arguing from the super’s apartment. Rosie was drunk again. Well, she wouldn’t be up to see him about the rent tonight or tomorrow morning. Let’s hope for a bender, Larry thought. I might get three days’ grace out of it.

Reaching the sidewalk, he immediately felt better, felt freed from the oppression of his poverty prison. Autumn in New York. The ginkgo trees lining York Avenue were shedding yellow fans onto the gray sidewalk. He walked briskly toward the Seventy-ninth Street crosstown bus and remembered to ask for a free transfer as he boarded. Every little bit helped. He had $216 available in his checking account, and $31 in his pocket. And no other resources. His mom, back home in Missouri, lived on her teacher’s pension. She saved some of it, he knew, but he’d never take a dime from her, he had sworn to himself after he graduated. His dad had abandoned them when Larry was still a baby. Someday, he’d give her money, not take it. But what will I do now?

Larry knew his charge cards were up to their limit—he had even used up the cash advances on them both. Asa was his last shot until the money from People magazine came in. He winced, remembering how painful it had been to sell the picture of Elise.

He had thought he wouldn’t stoop to selling her picture. No, he had thought, he could never do that. But out of desperation, he had. It had felt like an act of betrayal, now that he had crossed over the line from being in love with her image, her picture on the screen, to loving her, actually loving her. And he did. He loved her. He’d developed the photos he’d taken of her and hung them all over the apartment. He obsessively went over every moment they had spent together in Room

705.

He took breaks from his writing only to go to her films when they played at the Thalia or Biograph. He loved her, and his work was showing it.

He began to go over how he was going to ask Asa for a loan. After all, they used to do this back and forth all the time when they were in college, and even after that whenever one of them was short. But neither had borrowed from the other for a long while. Asa got by on his modest salary at the Wall Sreet Journal, and Larry managed to keep his bills up to date through occasional picture sales. Until now, the situation had been okay. Not great, but okay.

But not anymore. Larry was sick of it. Five years out of school, and still feeling like a broke student. No resources, no assets. Nothing to sell.

Except, of course, the picture of Elise.

God knows, he should have been out there this week, hustling. But he hated it, snatching pictures of the greats, the near-greats, and the ingrates. It made him sick. He just hadn’t been able to make himself do it. Plus his writing had become an obsession. And it was going so well, so smoothly.

Larry understood women, worthy women, lonely women. Jesus, he’d been raised by one. And this screenplay, this story of a lonely, mysterious woman, was coming along so beautifully. He’d hate to have to stop it all now and risk losing his vision, breaking the spell. He’d just have to get some money from Asa to tide him over until People sent him his check.

At Fifth Avenue he transferred to a downtown bus and his meeting with Asa at the opening of some stupid exhibit. Asa had insisted, had gotten them both invitations. Well, who knows, he might luck into a few pictures there and get a loan. He stepped off the bus at West Fiftyseventh Street and walked to the address he was given.

Getting into the elevator, he thought, please, Asa, please loan me just enough to pay the rent this month, just until the end of October. I know I’ll have the screenplay done by then, and the photo money will be in. I’m so close, Asa. And it’s great, Asa, really, really great.

You never heard me say that about my writing before.

And once I get the loan, I’ll get on the stick and shoot every fucking asshole celebrity in New York! I promise.

West Fiftyseventh Street When Annie arrived at Elise’s corporate office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, she found Brenda waiting for her at the information desk in the lobby. ‘Elise’s office is on the thirty-ninth floor,” Brenda said.

The building was the focal point of Rockefeller Center, and a perfect exemplar of art deco design and architecture in New York. As they walked toward the elevator bank, Brenda looked around and said, “It will always be the RCA Building to me,” and sighed.

“I know what you mean,” Annie said. “Somehow I can’t bring myself to call it the GE Building.” She, too, sighed. ‘I guess everything is changing.”

“You got that right,” Brenda said. ‘And so are we.”

Elise had been cheerful when she called. In fact, for a woman in the midst of divorce negotiations she seemed almost too cheerful. Annie hoped she hadn’t been drunk. It wasn’t polite to mention it, of course, but Elise’s drinking was apparent to everyone, though over their last lunch she seemed to have slowed down. Well, sometimes a shock, such as a divorce, actually helps people to reassess themselves, Annie thought. And of course, this support group of theirs could be helpful, too. Anyway, Annie hoped it would work that way for Elise.

And she hoped—no prayed—that something, anything, would work for her.

Now Annie was distracted by the trouble with the trust account. John Reamer knew nothing about the trade. Then she had tried Aaron, but he hadn’t returned her calls. She figured her broker would straighten it out, yet it was making her jumpy. Then Brenda shook her out of her thoughts. “Annie. It’s our floor.”

The elevator doors slid back to reveal Elise standing at the receptionist’s desk, waiting for them. She turned when she heard the elevator open. ‘Well, girls, you’re right on time. Come on into my office.”

”Wow,” said Brenda without a wisecrack for once. The window behind Elise’s desk overlooked Central Park and as far north as the eye could see.

“It’s beautiful,” breathed Annie. “What a view, Elise. It’s like sitting on a cloud.”

“Well, let’s call the meeting to order,” Elise suggested.

“Now you’re taking over,” Brenda told her. “I’ll call the meeting to order this time. And I’ve got some news to report, Angela told me Shelby was rejected by the Junior League and that she’s furious at Morty.”

“Why at Morty?” Annie asked.

“She says she was turned down because of his Hebrew heritage.” Brenda hooted with laughter. “He’s had to promise to take her to Aruba for Thanksgiving to make up for it.”

Elise smiled. She took out her notebook and checked that off. ‘Now, I found out something, too. Unfortunately, Gil has already been accepted at the co-op on Fifth. Lally wasn’t very cooperative. However, the good news is that the Securities and Exchange Commission has been investigating Gil Grifffin for years. A man named De Los Santos is in charge.”

“Why hasn’t he ever been indicted?” Brenda asked.

“Who knows? Maybe no evidence, maybe Gil bought his way out. Annie, I think you should go see Mr. De Los Santos at the SEC.”

“Why me?” Annie asked, fearfully thinking of Sylvie’s portfolio.

“Well, you were Cynthia’s best friend. Maybe you should share Cynthia’s letter with him. After all, it was you who received it. See if he is serious. Has he been paid off by Gil? And if not, see if he can help us or if we can help him.

Poke around. Is he friend or foe?”

“All right,” Annie agreed. “Now, what about Bill?”

Annie could see Elise’s mind working. “Brenda, could you get copies of Bill’s client billing sheets through Angela? Didn’t she work at Cromwell Reed during the summer?”

”Yes, she interned there. She’s friends with some of the secretaries.

But I don’t know. Maybe. Why?”

“Well, I don’t want your daughter to take any risks, but I have an idea. Let’s not talk about it until we see if we can get the billing sheets.”