Читать книгу The Idea of Him - Holly Peterson, Holly Peterson - Страница 8

The next morning, I rushed to see my boss for fifteen minutes before a client meeting at New York’s famed Tudor Room. It didn’t help my mood that I was meeting him at a restaurant that operated more like a private club for high-octane achievers than a pleasant place for lunch. Absolutely nothing in my makeup or past experiences prepared me to hold my own in the ring with the wealthy gladiators who lunched there regularly; I just happened to be employed by one of them. I walked into the restaurant lobby with a confident stride, wondering if the people watching my entrance pegged me as an imposter.

My boss, Murray Hillsinger, a toadlike man, had already positioned his large bottom smack in the middle of a coveted corner banquette, twisting his jowls left and right to survey the scene from his primo lily pad. He was very proud to have his square corner banquette (even though it wasn’t as prestigious as the center round tables—those went to higher rollers with huger titles, companies, and net worths). I took a deep breath and walked over, smoothing my hair as I did so, trying to exude professional acumen, the only attribute I could for sure hold on to.

“Allie, come here. Glad you came before my lunch partner shows up.” He patted the leather next to him. “You’re going to do fine, kid.”

Like so many guys named Murray, it seems, he grew up poor on the backstreets—in this case, Long Island City, Queens. His nose was crooked from one too many fistfights, and his large forehead was now crowned with an unfortunate shoe-polish comb-over. The expensive loafers he sported were not designed for feet that caused the leather to crack in a fault line next to his big fat pinkie toe.

I moved my way around the seat on Murray’s right. “Relax. It’s going to go fine,” he told me as he chomped on a large cauliflower cluster drenched in green dip and roughed up the back of my hair like I was his kid sister. I was a kid when I started this job a decade ago in my early twenties, and neither he, nor I, to my dismay, ever got past that initial dynamic.

Georges—the famous-in-his-own-right maître d’ of the Tudor Room—rushed to the table, an invisible cloud of his cologne preceding him. Georges ladled more dip into the ramekin dish as he asked, “Would you rather I pour the sauce on your tie directly, or should I allow you to stain it yourself?”

The very French Georges knew that the powerful always favor those employees willing to show jocular insubordination. I watched as he moved off into the room, slipping from table to table making clever, and often hilarious, asides to the assembled men and women who pretty much ran every major hedge fund, real estate empire, and media conglomerate in Manhattan.

Murray sat at the helm of the biggest public relations firm in New York, Hillsinger Consulting, hell-bent on saving the reputations of most of the people in this very room, many of them guilty as charged for causing the recurring economic downturns that trickled down and crippled the rest of us. The Tudor Room was a new hotspot for these powerful warriors who dined in packs, many having migrated from the more clubby Four Seasons Grill Room. The new place was part lunch spot and part womblike secret society where they all felt cozy in their amniotic bubble—this protective coating thickening ever since they had been targeted by America for causing the biggest economic downfall since the Great Depression.

“Order something, Allie!” Murray barked, always solicitous in his own special way.

“Thanks, no food, my meeting is soon,” I said. “Besides, I’m too on edge.”

“About what? You’re tough. That’s why you got the big job,” Murray said, trying to prop me up for my meeting in fifteen minutes at the Tudor Room bar to placate the unreasonable newswoman Delsie Arceneaux. If I didn’t always have the keen sense that Murray believed in me, and if I hadn’t always witnessed him doing the mensch-y thing, like promoting all the smartest women in the office, I would have quit doing crazy things for him long ago.

Sitting at the bar, Delsie Arceneaux glanced over and winked at Murray through her signature large tortoiseshell glasses as she barked into her phone before our meeting started. She was the impetuous, African American news anchor of the “all Delsie all the time” cable news network, most famous for draping her fortysomething, voluptuous body over an army tank while she interviewed the commander of the U.S. forces in Kabul. The perennial glasses had been Murray’s idea to disguise her beauty queen looks and highlight her legitimate cerebral side.

“No,” I replied. “You got the big job. I service your requests and put your crazy notions on paper.” Today’s particular request was to placate a news anchor, known for alienating her staff by overriding their every decision and action. “Does she even know we are also representing the people who are asking her to speak …”

“Order some broth, Allie.” Conflict of interest was a concept that Murray Hillsinger found utterly tiresome. “Calm the fuck down. Nothing wrong with us booking our own clients for our other clients and taking a little cut on both sides.” He pushed the tan parchment paper menu too close to my face and pointed at the appetizers.

Georges came over to hover and pour two thousand more calories of dill cream into the dip ramekin.

“I don’t want any soup, Murray.”

“Give her the soup, Georges. She works too damn hard and deserves a little pleasure once in a while. You know the good one I mean. The light one, the brothy one. With those duck balls.”

“Foie gras wontons, sir.” Georges wrote the request down with his dainty fingers wrapped around the tip of a miniature gold pen.

“Really, Murray?” I pleaded. “Thirty-eight dollars for consommé I don’t even want?”

“She’ll have the consommé.” Murray looked at the maître d’ and then back at me. “You got some time before your meeting. It’ll settle you down. Gimme the lobster salad before my guest arrives as a little preappetizer. Double order.” Georges nodded and left the table.

“Why are the most famous people also the most neurotic about public speaking gigs? She looks into a camera and speaks to four million viewers and she can’t give a speech to two hundred people?”

He patted my hand. “All the news anchors do this. The camera is her guardian and her barrier. Without it, the live audience terrifies her. Just go handle her nerves for me. And have some soup.”

Next to me, a glamorous newspaper publisher in a sunny yellow Oscar de la Renta spring dress and matching bolero sweater raised her index finger in the air at Georges and mouthed Charge it to my account as she sashayed toward the door.

I leaned toward Murray, whispering, “I don’t need the soup because I don’t like to throw money away like all your friends in here.”

“It’s not about the money in this room. It’s about what you’ve accomplished.” He stole my nose with his finger like I was five years old. “M-E-R-I-T-O-C-R-A-C-Y, kid. ’Tis the beauty of this room. Money gives you power in here, but only if it’s ‘fuck you’ money you earned. There’s no one with Daddy’s inherited cash in here. Self-made or get the hell out.” Murray’s voice was thick, more truck driver yelling at someone to get out of the way than genius spinmeister. As Murray turned his head to wave with feigned friendliness to a rival, two little curls of hair behind his ears bounced out from the hair gel meant to smooth them down, making the flat part of his comb-over seem that much more incongruous.

I looked at my watch. Five more minutes before my meeting. Across the room, I saw Delsie throw the long end of her spring, lime-green cashmere scarf around her neck and behind her shoulder. “What about Delsie with her four-point-five-million-dollar annual salary you worked so hard to leak?” I asked. “It’s not about the money in here?”

“That broad’s got raw star power and black and white viewer appeal no one can touch. Delsie took over that cable network and got the ratings they’d coveted for years. No one can say she didn’t do that on her own.”

“On her own? Really? You believe everything you peddle, Murray? Delsie secretly pays us to doctor her appearances and often her scripts. Did you forget you have me fixing her lame copy at all hours?”

He smiled at me. “Even a fuckin’ genius like me can’t spin something out of nothing. Everyone in here has to deliver the goods.”

I didn’t try to argue. I knew he was right on some level: Manhattan did harvest a huge crop of people who came to this city from small towns across the land and rose to become the lead players in their fields of art, fashion, publishing, or banking. Most of those tried-and-tested winners were in this very room.

The consommé arrived, and I know Murray made me order it just to prove his point: that a foie gras wonton floating in a small bowl of duck broth could actually command a $38 price tag. I tried the broth first. It went down smoky, gamey, with a big hint of honey. Even though it was a clear soup, it was so rich that just two sips made me thirsty. Like their patrons, the chefs had also overachieved to create something outstanding: they must have roasted three hundred duck carcasses to produce the heft of this broth.

I smiled. “You’re right. I mean, it’s not worth thirty-eight dollars of my money for a small cup of soup, but if you can afford it, I guess, yes, it’s very special.”

Murray splashed his big spoon in my broth, spilled a little on the table, and slurped up some for himself. “No. It is worth that money!” He was almost yelling at me. “It’s supply and demand and the effort to …”

There were supersized personalities back home in Squanto, Massachusetts, for sure—many of them in fact. My own father had led the pack. He had had no money to speak of, but I remember so much about how he behaved around the house: he always had his fellow fishermen over after they’d all chartered their boats out or had come in from a day on the sea. Everyone would bring burger patties or beer and they’d sit around pontificating just as loudly and confidently as the men and women in this restaurant. My father was one of the loudest and most charming ones—boisterous and charismatic—but he didn’t think everyone had to agree with his every opinion just because he walked into a room.

“And don’t forget to tell Delsie I want her covering the Fulton Film Festival I’ve worked so fuckin’ hard to put on the map. Art films. Science. Action. Whatever. Fuck Sundance!” Murray picked up an entire lobster claw from his salad with his fingers, put it on half a roll, and mashed both into his mouth. “Mark my words, Allie, maybe you’ll never have big money or pick up the check. But you’re going to be respected ’cause you did something great. You saved people. You invented people. Your PR helped them reach their greatest potential.”

Creating illusions had never actually been my plan. My plan had been to write novels or long magazine essays, not use my MFA creative writing degree to craft press releases that got people out of trouble or made them appear to be something they weren’t.

“Take that guy over there for starters,” Murray yelled as he glanced over to the podium at the entryway of the restaurant where Wade stood to have lunch with a potential interview subject. My husband came to the Tudor Room as a way to network with important people he needed to put in the magazine or to entertain potential advertisers. He was able to play in the power brokers’ sandbox by charging every lunch to his parent company.

“Maybe,” I allowed. Across the room, Wade smacked Georges’s shoulder while whispering some delicious bit of gossip into his ear. I adored my husband’s ability to get everyone on his side, but his arrival also made me feel even more out of place here, like everyone but me had a code and language and sense of humor I could never quite grasp.

When I first met Wade, I was instantly drawn to the symmetrical, thick, blondish-gray waves in his hair that neatly rolled down the back of his head, ending about a quarter inch below his collar. As I watched him walk up the movie aisle that first night, he flashed his smile back at me, having noticed me a few seats down. I felt my stomach churn because the long hair reminded me of brawny guys on the Squanto fishing docks I’d grown up with. When he joined a group of rapt partygoers to grab a drink beside the bar in the lobby, I instantly felt left out. That’s the effect he had on a room: his circle was the one to be in—and most of us were on the outside looking in.

Murray beckoned for Wade to come over. “Well, for one thing, your husband’s the only prick cocky enough to walk in here in jeans, and not even Georges stops him.”

My husband did have an uncanny ability to skirt the rules without acknowledging them in the first place. A brass plaque on the coat check downstairs clearly read: Jacket required. Please refrain from wearing blue jeans at the Tudor Room. Wade had on very blue jeans, a white Oxford cloth shirt, a beat-up leather blazer, and black sneakers. He was a bit of a rebel in his industry by always going after people in print he seemed to be cozying up with on the social front. “Always bite the hand that feeds you” was his professional motto.

Wade glad-handed his way toward us as Murray watched him. “M-E-R-I-T-O-C-R-A-C-Y, baby, I’m telling you. Your husband isn’t known for having much cash on hand, but he’s a member of this crowd no doubt. That magazine he runs is still a juggernaut, despite the fact that it’s a fuckload thinner than it used to be. Maybe his parent company is deep in the red right now and he’s always going to be low on personal funds because what the fuck does an editor make? Peanuts in this city.” Murray slammed the table so hard that the cauliflower popped out of the basket. “But he’s got primitive power—he turned Meter magazine around from a piece of dilapidated dusty old shit into the absolute number one must-read for everyone in this room. The ultimate media macher.” I didn’t remind Murray that my husband, ten years my senior, did all that twenty years ago—before YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blogs, and online anything. People who still worked on real glossy paper in 2013 had far more uncertain futures than anyone in the room, even if Wade did everything he could to dispel that. “And he had the sense to marry you!” Then Murray added, “And if he ever doesn’t treat you right, I swear I’ll kill him.”

Wade walked up to our corner, kissed me behind my ear, whispering, “You look hot,” and slapped Murray’s back. I didn’t feel hot and I doubt he meant that. He said it because he always did want me to do well and didn’t like to see me stressed. I quickly sipped my last fourteen dollars of broth, eager to get out of the booth and over to the bar before Wade and Murray got into their exclusionary boys’ club banter.

“Thanks for the soup, Murray. I’ll see you tonight, Wade,” I said to them, as I stood and smoothed my knee-length black skirt. “Wish me luck making an insanely insecure woman feel satisfied.”

“Knock her dead,” Murray answered.

Wade raised an eyebrow at my tight skirt and looked at me tenderly. “You look gorgeous. You always knock ’em out.”

I whispered to him, “Thanks, honey. But I don’t. You’re blind.”

“You do.” He brushed my cheek. “And I’m going to go to my grave making you believe that.”

I crossed the room to go meet Delsie at the red-paneled bar wondering why both my boss and my husband were being so awfully nice to me. It was only when I had a clearer view of that bar that I noticed at first a spectacular pair of bare legs belonging to a beautiful young woman. Her snakeskin sandals wrapped around her ankles, mimicking the reptile that had been gouged to make them. She was sitting alone and scarfing down the famous Tudor Room line-caught tuna tartare served in a martini glass before her, when Georges whispered something amusant into her ear. She tossed her shimmering blond curls over her sexy belted white Ralph Lauren jacket, where they flowed down into a V-shaped back and brushed against the top of a very round bottom.

Without even saying hello, Delsie started in with this: “I can’t do a speech for Murray one more time at another one of his charity ventures. I know I agreed, but now I want to back out. He wants me to whore myself out for every goddamn cause he’s attached to.”

“Whoring yourself out?” I asked.

“Yes.” She was now extra pissy because no one was allowed to challenge her opinions either—a charming trait apparently shared by every patron in the room. “Whoring out. That’s what I said and, funny as it may seem to you, that’s what I meant.”

I breathed in a slow breath. “Delsie. Let’s just review why you agreed to do the speech, because ‘whoring out’ has the connotation of maybe you’re being used or maybe this wasn’t your choice. You hired us for more visibility, so we got you the keynote speaker at the Fulton Film Festival media lunch, which is a very prestigious affair. Yes, it raises money for journalism schools but …”

She looked at me sternly, as though she was considering whether to call Murray over to reprimand me.

I went on, giving her a pitch I’d given so many times. “You’re getting paid a large speaker’s fee as a professional to MC the event, Delsie. And it’s an important celebration that will only bring you recognition in a media spotlight I know you care about. You will be impressive, don’t worry about that.”

She backed down a tad. “Who’s coming? Anyone important?”

“Who isn’t coming?” I responded. “Anyone important who cares about the future of this city. The Fulton Film Festival brings a bunch of first-class films here over the next month, so you are boosting New York’s culture and getting a lot of good press while doing so.” I may have successfully delivered the gist of this very pitch, but I was not anywhere close to present during it. My mind and eyes were drawn to the young woman down the bar. She was looking right at us—something in her eyes made me shudder.

Her bare legs glistened like the maroon curtains that draped the front windows, filtering the harsh noonday light now bursting through the storm clouds. The soaring height of the glass walls made it feel like we were on top of the world, looking out over all Manhattan, even though we were at street level. This young woman took a long, slow sip of her iced tea, no hint that she was secretly uncovering the madness that would detonate around all of us in due time.

I glanced over at Wade, who gave me an encouraging little wave, the kind he gave Lucy when she went blank last fall on her three Carrot Number One lines for the Vegetable Play.

I pressed ahead, bolstered by all the times I had to push powerful clients onto a stage. “I’m not sure there’s a downside, unless you don’t like hanging out with movie stars.” I then stared into Delsie’s needy eyes. “You need more culture in your portfolio if you’re going to crack Manhattan, be somebody in this room. I assure you this is good old-fashioned PR for a nice Carolina woman like you.”

I couldn’t help but remain half in, half out of my pitch as my gaze locked once again on the man-eater down the mahogany bar. She looked like she was maybe twenty-eight, but I figured she was really a poised twenty-five-year-old. I stealthily neatened up my blouse and the belt around my waist. My outfit was much like hers—a pencil skirt, no stockings, high Stuart Weitzman sandal heels, and a Tory Burch white blouse—but the sex appeal differential was enormous. My five-foot-four-inch height didn’t exactly make for sexy, lanky legs. I did have nice, thick dark hair that fell a little below my shoulders and a passable pretty thirty-four-year-old face, but more because of my unusual blue eyes and dark hair combination than actual head-turning beauty.

The woman down the bar then bit her thick, tomato-red lips, which matched the red lacquer walls, and walked over to us with great purpose.

She interrupted. “Excuse me for overhearing. I’d just like to say that Allie Crawford is known to have more innate PR business sense than anyone in this room.” She brushed her body ever so slightly against Delsie’s shoulder, whispering, “Including her boss, Murray Hillsinger. If you’re interested in doing something high profile, then I’d follow her advice and do whatever she wants.”

“Um, thank you …” This was all I could get out as she strode back to her barstool perch. At this point, I didn’t even know her name or have any idea why she wanted to help me.

Georges came over to address the beauty once again, her brown eyes sparkling back at him. He whispered something into her ear. At first, I assumed he might be having a little fling with her, but then I sensed that they were going over something. Out of his left blazer pocket, he took a casino chip and placed it discreetly in her purse. I saw a tiny piece of the chip, the top of a section with “Five” written on it, as in Five Thousand Dollars.

Also, as in the same goddamn chip that fell out of my husband’s shirt pocket the evening before.