Everyone Worth Knowing

‘What, and miss Mr Aaron Brown’s blatantly opinionated coverage of Mr Frank Rich’s blatantly opinionated coverage of whatever the hell they’re talking about? Seriously, Bette, let us not forget that this is the very same paper whose reporters simply create stories when deadline looms.’ He took a swig and jabbed at the remote to silence both televisions simultaneously. Only fifteen seconds tonight – a record.

‘Enough for now,’ he said, hugging me and giving me a quick peck on the cheek. ‘You look great, honey, as always, but would it kill you to wear a dress once in a while?’

He’d not so deftly moved to discussing his second-favorite topic, my life. Uncle Will was nine years older than my mom and both swore they’d been born to the very same set of parents, but it seemed impossible to comprehend. My mother was horrified I’d taken a corporate job that required me to wear something other than caftans and espadrilles, and my uncle thought the travesty was the suit as uniform instead of some killer Valentino gown or a fabulous pair of strappy Louboutins.

‘Will, it’s just what they do at investment banks, you know?’

‘So I’ve gathered. I just didn’t think you’d end up in banking.’ That again.

‘Your people, like, love capitalism, don’t they?’ I teased. ‘The Republicans, I mean – not so much the gays.’

He raised his bushy gray eyebrows and peered at me from across the couch. ‘Cute. Very cute. It’s nothing against banking, darling, I think you know that. It’s a fine, respectable career – I’d rather see you doing that than any of those hippie-dippy-save-the-world jobs your parents would recommend – but you just seem so young to lock yourself into something so boring. You should be out there meeting people, going to parties, enjoying being young and single in New York, not tied down to a desk in a bank. What do you want to do?’

As many times as he’d asked me this, I’d never come around to a great – or even decent – answer. It was certainly a fair question. In high school I’d always thought I’d join the Peace Corps. My parents had taught me that that was the natural step following a college degree. But then I went to Emory and met Penelope. She liked that I couldn’t name every private school in Manhattan and knew nothing about Martha’s Vineyard, and I, of course, loved that she could and did. We were inseparable by Christmas break, and by the end of freshman year, I had discarded my favorite Dead T-shirts. Jerry was long dead, anyway. And it was fun going to basketball games and keg parties and joining the coed touch-football league with a whole group of people who didn’t regularly dread their hair, or recycle their bathwater, or wear patchouli oil. I didn’t stand out as the eccentric girl who always smelled a little bit off and knew way too much about the redwoods. I wore the same jeans and T-shirts as everyone else (without even checking to see if they originated in a sweatshop) and ate the same burgers and drank the same beer, and it felt fantastic. For four years I had a group of similar-minded friends and the occasional boyfriend, none of whom were Peace Corps-bound. So when all the big companies showed up on campus waving giant salaries and signing bonuses and offering to fly candidates to New York for interviews, I did it. Nearly every one of my friends from school took a similar job, because when you get right down to it, how else is a twenty-two-year-old going to be able to pay rent in Manhattan? What was incredible about the whole thing was how quickly five years had gone by. Five years had just vanished into a black hole of training programs and quarterly reports and year-end bonuses, leaving barely enough time for me to consider that I loathed what I did all day long. It didn’t help matters that I was actually good at it – it somehow seemed to signify that I was doing the right thing. Will knew it was wrong, though, could obviously sense it, but so far I’d been too complacent to make the leap into something else.

‘What do I want to do? How on earth can I answer something like that?’ I asked.

‘How can you not? If you don’t get out soon, you’re going to wake up one day when you’re forty and a managing director and jump off a bridge. There’s nothing wrong with banking, darling, it’s just not for you. You should be around people. You should laugh a little. You should write. And you should be wearing much better clothes.’

I didn’t tell him I was considering looking for work at a nonprofit. He’d start ranting about how his campaign to unbrainwash me from my parents had failed, and he’d sit dejectedly at the table for the rest of the evening. I’d tried it once, just merely mentioned that I was thinking of interviewing at Planned Parenthood, and he’d informed me that while that was a most noble idea, it would lead me straight back down the path to rejoining, in his words, the World of the Great Unshowered. So we proceeded to cover the usual topics. First came my nonexistent love life (‘Darling, you’re simply too young and too pretty for your job to be your only lover’), followed by a bit of ranting about Will’s latest column (‘Is it my fault that Manhattan has become so uneducated that people no longer wish to hear the truth about their elected officials?’). We cycled back to my high school days of political activism (‘The Incense Era is blessedly over’), and then once again returned to everyone’s all-time favorite topic, the abject state of my wardrobe (‘Ill-fitting, masculine trousers do not a date outfit make’).

Just as he was beginning a small soliloquy on the far-reaching benefits of owning a Chanel suit, the maid knocked on the study door to inform us that dinner was on the table. We collected our drinks and made our way to the formal dining room.

‘Productive day?’ Simon asked Will, kissing him on the cheek in greeting. He had showered and changed into a pair of Hefesque linen pajamas and was holding a glass of champagne.

‘Of course not,’ Will responded, setting aside his dirty martini and pouring two more glasses of champagne. He handed one to me. ‘Deadline’s not until midnight; why would I do a damn thing until ten o’clock tonight? What are we celebrating?’

I dug into my Gorgonzola salad, grateful to be eating something that hadn’t originated in a street cart, and took a gulp of champagne. If I could have somehow finagled eating there every night without appearing to be the biggest loser on earth, I would’ve done it in a second. But even I had enough dignity to know that being available for the same people – even if they were your uncle and his partner – more than once a week for dinner and once for brunch was truly pathetic.

‘What, we need to be celebrating something to drink a little champagne?’ Simon asked, helping himself to a few pieces of the sliced steak their housekeeper had made for the main course. ‘Just thought it would be a nice change. Bette, what are your plans for the rest of the evening?’

‘Penelope’s engagement party. I’m going to have to head there soon, actually. The mothers put the whole thing together before either Avery or Penelope could veto it. At least it’s at some club in Chelsea, though, rather than somewhere on the Upper East Side – I think that was their one concession to their children actually enjoying themselves.’

‘What’s the name of the club?’ Will asked, although there was little chance he knew anything about it if it wasn’t dark, wood-paneled, and filled with cigar smoke.

‘She mentioned it, but I can’t remember. Begins with a B, I think. Here,’ I said, pulling a torn slip of paper from my bag. ‘It’s on Twenty-seventh between Tenth and Eleventh. It’s called—’

‘Bungalow 8,’ they replied in unison.

‘How did you both know that?’

‘Honey, it’s mentioned so often in Page Six that you’d think Richard Johnson owned the damn place,’ Will said.

‘I read somewhere that it was originally modeled after the bungalows at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and that the service is just as good. It’s just a nightclub, but this article described a concierge who will cater to any whim, from ordering in a special kind of rare sushi to arranging for helicopters. There are places that are hot for a few months and then vanish, but everyone agrees that Bungalow 8 has staying power,’ Simon said.

‘I guess sitting at the Black Door on my nights out isn’t really helping my social life,’ I said and pushed my plate away. ‘Do you guys mind if I bail early tonight? Penelope wanted me there before the hordes of Avery’s friends and her family arrive.’

‘Run, Bette, run. Stop only to reapply your lipstick and then run! And it wouldn’t hurt a damn if you found yourself a dashing young gentleman to date,’ Simon declared, as though there would be roomfuls of gorgeous, eligible guys who were just waiting for me to walk into their lives.

‘Or even better, a dashing young bastard to play with for one evening.’ Will winked, only half-kidding.

‘You guys are the best,’ I said, kissing each one’s cheek before gathering my bag and cardigan. ‘You have no compunction whoring out your only niece, do you?’

‘Absolutely none,’ Will announced while Simon shook his head gravely. ‘Go be a good tart and have some fun, for Christ’s sake, will you?’

There was a crowd – three deep and a block long – when the cab pulled up in front of the club, and if it hadn’t been Penelope’s party, I would’ve had the cabbie keep driving. Instead, I plastered on a smile and strolled to the front of the forty-person line, where a giant guy wearing a Secret Service earpiece stood, holding a clipboard.

‘Hi, my name is Bette and I’m with Penelope’s party,’ I said, surveying the line and not recognizing a single face.

He gazed at me blankly. ‘Great, nice to meet you, Penelope. If you could just wait in line like everyone else, we’ll get you inside as quickly as possible.’

‘No, this is Penelope’s party, and I’m her friend. She asked me to be here early, so it’d really be better if I could go in right now.’

‘Uh-huh, that’s great. Listen, just step aside and—’ He placed a hand over his earpiece and appeared to listen intently, nodding his head a few times and studying the line that now looped around the corner.

‘Okay, everyone,’ he announced, his voice causing immediate silence among the barely dressed would-be partiers. ‘We’re already at capacity right now, as determined by the FDNY. We’ll only be letting people in as others leave, so either get comfortable or come back later.’

Groans all around. Well, this simply isn’t going to work, I thought. He must not understand the situation.

‘Excuse me? Sir?’ He peered at me once again, now visibly annoyed. ‘You’ve obviously got a lot of people waiting to go in, but it’s my friend’s engagement party, and she really needs me there. If you only knew her mother, then you’d understand how imperative it is that I get inside.’

‘Mmm. Interesting. Look, I don’t care if your friend Penelope’s marrying Prince William. There’s no way I can let anyone else in right now. We’d be in violation of the fire code, and you certainly don’t want that.’ He backed off a bit. ‘Just hang out in line and we’ll get you in as soon as possible, okay?’ I think he was aiming for soothing, but it only served to incense me more. He looked vaguely familiar, although I wasn’t sure why. His faded green T-shirt was tight enough to show that he was quite capable of keeping people out if he so desired, but the slightly baggy, faded jeans that hung low on his hips suggested he didn’t take himself too seriously. Just as I was conceding that he had the best hair I’d ever seen on a guy – longish, dark, thick, and annoyingly shiny – he shrugged on a gray corduroy jacket and managed to look even cuter still.

Definitely a model. I restrained myself from announcing something super-snotty about what a power trip this must be for someone who most likely hadn’t made it past seventh grade, and skulked to the back of the line. As repeated attempts to call both Penelope’s and Avery’s cell phones went straight to voice mail, and the front-door goon was only allowing in an average of two people every ten minutes, I stood there for the better part of an hour. I was fantasizing about the many ways I could humiliate or otherwise harm the bouncer when Michael and his girlfriend slinked outside and lit cigarettes a few feet from the door.

‘Michael!’ I shrieked, aware of how absolutely pathetic I sounded, but not really caring. ‘Michael, Megu, over here!’

They both looked over the hordes of people and spotted me, which probably wasn’t hard considering I was screaming and waving with zero dignity. They waved me over, and I practically ran to them.

‘I need to get inside already. I’ve been standing outside this goddamn hellhole forever, and that guy won’t let me in. Penelope’s going to kill me!’

‘Hey, Bette, great to see you, too,’ Michael said, leaning over to kiss my cheek.

‘Sorry,’ I said, hugging first him and then his girlfriend, Megu, the sweet Japanese med student with whom he now shared an apartment. ‘How are you guys? How on earth did you both get out for this?’

‘It happens like once every six months.’ Megu smiled, taking hold of Michael’s hand and tucking it behind her back. ‘The schedule just falls into alignment for one twelve-hour period when I’m not on call and he’s not at work.’

‘And you came here? What, are you crazy? Megu, you’re a really good sport. Michael, do you realize what a girl you have here?’

‘Sure do,’ he said, gazing at her adoringly. ‘She knows Penelope would kill me, too, if we didn’t make an appearance, but I think we’re out. I’ve got to be at work in, oh, let’s see, four hours now, and Megu was hoping to sleep for a full six-hour block of time for the first time in a few weeks, so we’re going to bail. It looks like people are headed inside now.’

I turned to see a massive exchange of gorgeous people: one crowd surged outside, apparently on their way to a ‘real’ party in TriBeCa, and another seeped in through the door when the bouncer lifted the velvet rope.

‘I thought you said I was next on the list,’ I said flatly to the bouncer.

‘Feel free to visit Princess Penelope,’ he told me, sweeping expansively with one arm and adjusting his earpiece to hear what I’m sure was crucial information with the other.

‘See, there you go,’ Michael said, pulling Megu out into the street with him. ‘Call me this week and let’s grab a drink. Bring Penelope – I didn’t get a chance to even talk to her tonight, and it’s been forever since we all caught up. Tell her I said good-bye.’ And they were gone, undoubtedly thrilled they’d managed to escape.

I turned around and saw that there were only a few people loitering on the sidewalk, talking on cell phones, apparently indifferent to whether they went inside. Just like that, the crowd had evaporated, and I was finally being granted entry.

‘Gee, thanks. You were extraordinarily helpful,’ I said to the bouncer, brushing past his massive frame and walking through the velvet rope he held open. I yanked open the giant glass door and stepped into a dark foyer, where Avery was talking very closely to a very pretty girl with very big breasts.

‘Hi, Bette, where have you been all night?’ he said, immediately moving toward me and offering to take my coat. In the same second Penelope bounded over, looking flushed and then relieved. She was wearing a short black cocktail dress topped with a sequined shrug and extraordinarily high-heeled silver sandals, and I knew immediately that her mother had dressed her.

‘Bette!’ she hissed, grabbing my arm and leading me away from Avery, who immediately resumed his intense conversation with the girl. ‘What took you so long? I’ve been suffering alone all night.’

I raised my eyebrows and looked around. ‘Alone? There must be two hundred people here. All these years, and I didn’t know you had two hundred friends. This is quite the party!’

‘Yeah, really impressive, right? Exactly five of the people in this room are here to see me: my mother, my brother, one of the girls from the real-estate department, my father’s secretary, and now you. Megu and Michael left, right?’ I nodded. ‘The rest are Avery’s, of course. And my mother’s friends. Where have you been?’ She took a gulp of her drink and passed the glass to me with slightly shaking hands, as though it were a pipe and not a champagne flute.

‘Honey, I’ve been here for over an hour, as promised. Had a bit of trouble at the door.’

‘You didn’t!’ She looked horrified.

‘I did. Very cute bouncer, but a total creep.’

‘Oh, Bette, I’m so sorry! Why didn’t you call me?’

‘I did, a few dozen times, but I guess you couldn’t hear your phone. Listen, don’t worry about it. Tonight’s your night, so try and, well, uh, enjoy it?’

‘Let’s get you a drink,’ she said, pulling a cosmopolitan from a circling waiter’s tray. ‘Do you believe this party?’

‘It’s crazy. How long has your mother been planning this?’

‘She read in Page Six weeks ago that Gisele and Leo were seen “canoodling” here, so I guess she called and booked it right after that. She keeps telling me that these are the kinds of places I should be patronizing because of their “exclusive clientele.” I didn’t tell her that the one time Avery dragged me here the clientele was basically having sex on the dance floor.’

‘It probably would’ve only encouraged her more.’

‘True.’ A model-tall woman wedged herself between us and began air-kissing Penelope in a manner so insincere I actually cringed, gulped my cosmo, and sneaked away. I got pulled into some inane conversation with a few people from the bank who’d just arrived and who looked a little shell-shocked to be away from their computers, and I chatted as briefly as possible with Penelope’s mother, who immediately referenced both the Chanel suit and the heels she was wearing and then pulled Penelope by the arm to another cache of people. I surveyed the designer-clad crowd and tried not to shrink in my outfit, which had been purchased online from a combination of J. Crew and Banana Republic at three in the morning a few months ago. Will had been particularly insistent lately that I needed ‘going out’ clothes, but the catalog orders were not what he had in mind. I got the feeling that any of these people could – and would – feel perfectly comfortable roaming around naked. Even better than the clothes (which were perfect) was the confidence, and that came from somewhere else entirely. Two hours and three cosmos later, certifiably tipsy, I was considering going home. Instead, I grabbed another drink and ducked outside.

The line to get in had cleared up entirely; only the bouncer who’d held me in club purgatory for so long remained. I was preparing my snide remarks should he address me in any way whatsoever, but he just grinned and returned his attention to the paperback he was reading, which looked like a matchbook in his massive hands. Shame he was so cute – but jerks always are.

‘So, what was it about me that you didn’t like?’ I couldn’t help myself. Five years in the city and I’d tried to avoid places with doormen or velvet ropes unless absolutely necessary; I’d inherited at least a bit of my parents’ egalitarian self-righteousness – or intense insecurity, depending on how you looked at it.

‘Pardon?’

‘I mean, when you wouldn’t let me in before, even though it’s my best friend’s engagement party.’

He shook his head and half-smiled to himself. ‘Look, it’s nothing personal. They hand me a list and tell me to follow it and do crowd control. If you’re not on the list or you show up when a hundred other people do, I have to keep you outside for a little while. There’s really nothing more to it.’

‘Sure.’ I’d all but missed my best friend’s big night because of his door policy. I teetered a bit and then hissed, ‘Nothing personal. Right.’

‘You think I need your attitude tonight? I’ve got plenty of people who are far more expert at giving me a really fucking hard time, so why don’t we just stop talking and I’ll put you in a cab?’

Perhaps it was the fourth cosmo – liquid courage – but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with his condescending attitude, so I turned on my too-chunky heels and yanked the door open. ‘I hardly need your charity. Thanks for nothing,’ I snapped and marched back inside the club as soberly as I could manage.

I hugged Penelope, air-kissed Avery, and then beelined to the door before anyone else could initiate any more small talk. I saw a girl crouched in a corner, sobbing quietly but with a pleased awareness that others were watching, and sidestepped a strikingly stylish foreign couple who were making out furiously, and with much hip grinding. I then made a big show of ignoring the meathead bouncer who, incidentally, was reading from a tattered paperback version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover (sex fiend!) and threw my arm in the air to hail a cab. Only the street was completely empty, and a cold drizzle had just begun, practically guaranteeing that a taxi was nowhere in my immediate future.

‘Hey, you need some help?’ he asked after opening the velvet rope to admit three squealing, tottering girls. ‘This is a tough street for cabs when it rains.’

‘No thanks, I’m just fine.’

‘Suit yourself.’

Minutes were starting to feel like hours, and the warm summer sprinkles had rapidly become a cold, persistent rain. What, exactly, was I proving here? The bouncer had pressed himself against the door to get some protection from the overhang and was still reading calmly, as though unaware of the hurricane that now whipped around us. I continued to stare at him until he looked up, grinned, and said, ‘Yeah, you seem to be doing just fine on your own. You’re definitely teaching me a lesson by not taking one of these huge umbrellas and walking a couple blocks over to Eighth, where you’ll have no trouble getting a cab at all. Great call on your part.’

‘You have umbrellas?’ I asked before I could stop myself. The water had soaked entirely through my shirt and I could feel my blanket-thick hair sticking to my neck in wet, cold clumps.

‘Sure do. Keep ’em right here for situations just like this. But I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested in taking one of them, right?’

‘Right. I’m just fine.’ To think I’d almost begun warming up to him. Just then a livery cab drove by, and I had the brilliant idea to call UBS’s car service for a ride home.

‘Hi, this is Bette Robinson with account number six-three-three-eight. I need a car to pick me up at—’

‘All booked!’ barked back an angry-sounding female dispatcher.

‘No, I don’t think you understand. I have an account with your company and—’

Click.

I stood there soaking wet, anger boiling inside me.

‘No cars, huh? Tough,’ he said, clucking sympathetically without looking up from the book. I’d managed to skim Lady Chatterley’s Lover when I was twelve and had already gleaned as much about sex as possible from the combination of Forever, Wifey and What’s Happening to My Body? Book for Girls, but I didn’t remember anything about it. Perhaps that had to do with a poor memory, or maybe it was the fact that sex hadn’t even been a part of my consciousness for the last two years. Or maybe it was that the plots of my beloved romance novels crowded my thoughts at all times. Whatever it was, I couldn’t even recall something snide to say about it, never mind clever. ‘No cars.’ I sighed. ‘Just not my night.’

He took a few steps out in the rain and handed me a long executive’s umbrella, already unfurled, with the club’s logo emblazoned on both sides. ‘Take it. Walk to Eighth, and if you still can’t get a cab, talk to the doorman at Serena, Twenty-third between Seventh and Eighth. Tell him I sent you, and he’ll work it out.’

I considered walking right past him and getting on the subway, but the idea of riding around in a train car at one in the morning was hardly appealing. ‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, refusing to meet what would surely be his gloating eyes. I took the umbrella and started walking east, feeling him watch me from behind.

Five minutes later, I was tucked in the backseat of a big yellow taxi, wet but finally warm.