Читать книгу Hedge Fund Wives - Tatiana Boncompagni - Страница 5

When I first opened the invitation to Caroline Reinhardt’s baby shower, I thought I’d received it by mistake. I barely knew anyone in the city besides my husband John, who six months earlier had been recruited from his desk at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to trade energy derivatives for a New York-based commodities-focused hedge fund. They made an offer we couldn’t refuse, and in the short span of a week, we were packing our boxes for Manhattan and toasting the Windy City goodbye with vodka gimlets in the bar at the top of the John Hancock Tower.

Now, half a year later, it was early December, and I was surrounded by hedge fund wives. With the sun shining bright against a clear sky, the air refreshingly cool on the necks of the fur-and-diamond-clad shower guests as they streamed past a pair of gargantuan front doors—doors that had reputedly once graced a fourteenth-century Venetian palace—and into the lavishly decorated home of Dahlia Kemp, wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Thomas Kemp, the day held nothing but the promise of pleasure. Once inside and relieved of their furs, the women would fill their flutes at a free-flowing Perrier-Jouët champagne fountain and nibble on passed hors d’oeuvres of beluga caviar and jamón ibérico, all the while studying (furtively, of course) the Kemp’s impressive art collection and gossiping in excited half-whispers about the expense to which Dahlia must have gone for the event.

Certainly a three-course gourmet meal accompanied by rare vintage wines, a five-tiered Sylvia Weinstock cake and goody bags stuffed with diamond earrings and fourfigure day spa gift certificates had to amount to an important sum, even for the wife of a man who had cleared ‘three point two’ (billion) the previous year. Even the invitations, which had been hand-delivered by a white-gloved courier and sent with a small gift, an Hermès silk scarf, to underscore the party’s theme (Rue du Faubourg) and dress code (French chic), were absurdly costly. No, no detail had been skimped on or forgotten for Caroline’s shower, and years later all of the guests would remember the party as the last of its kind.

Although no one spoke of it, the economy had begun to sour and every day brought fresh tales of falling fortunes. Most of the women assumed that their vast monetary reserves would protect them from having to alter any aspect of their enviable lives, but of course they were wrong. Wealth is relative by nature, and if one day you have a hundred million dollars and the next you have only fifty, the things that were once within reach—the private jet, the home in Aspen, or even five-tiered Sylvia Weinstock cakes—are suddenly out of it. Under such circumstances, it’s not long before a marriage built around material possessions and predicated upon the shared responsibility of their care and maintenance, begins to crumble.

But on the day of Caroline’s shower, at least, the wealth flowed as freely as the champagne, and I was more than happy to partake in the merriment. Not because of the gourmet morsels and vintage bubbly—I’m more of a cheese plate and glass of white kind of girl—but because I was desperate to make some friends. I’d done little to no socializing since we’d moved, partly because shortly after arriving in New York I’d fallen pregnant—I later miscarried—and partly because I was, to be completely honest, deeply afraid of the other wives. They all seemed so…well…perfect; and fitting in with them felt like such a daunting task. Ergo, when the invitation to Caroline’s shower arrived, I had originally assumed there had been a mix-up at the calligraphers. I was just about to post the response card back with a little note alerting the host to the error, when John returned home from the office and assured me that the invitation really had been intended for me. Apparently one of his new colleagues at Zenith Capital had a wife who was expecting their first child and wanted to invite me to her shower.

On the day of the party, I had my hair blown out at the hair salon on the corner, and after getting caught with a stylist who was convinced they could pump more volume into my unrepentantly limp locks, ended up arriving a bit late to the Kemp’s four-story Upper East Side townhouse on a tree-lined block off of Fifth Avenue. I was only ten minutes late, but already the first gush of guests had trickled out of the entry foyer and into the first-floor living room, allowing me to make a mostly unnoticed entrance, which turned out to be a stroke of luck. When I spotted the rack of designer furs in the front hall, I realized that my bright pink puffer would have stuck out, literally, like a sore thumb among all that sable and mink; and I crossed my fingers that no one but the maid, whose sole job it was to keep an eye on the coat rack, would connect me with my pink marshmallow parka. Chicago’s anything-goes-as-long-as-it-keeps-you-from-getting-frostbitten approach to outerwear clearly didn’t apply in New York City. This was a chinchilla-or-bust kind of town, and I made a mental note to go shopping for a new winter coat as soon as possible.

Taking a deep breath I made my way through the mirror-walled marble foyer into the Louis-XIV-antiques-decorated living room, and surveyed its contents: a couch and several arm chairs upholstered in lustrous dove-gray silk; marble-topped side tables and a coffee table made of mercury glass; a huge ivory oriental rug and a pair of gargantuan Lalique vases filled with fresh-cut pale pink-and-white flowers. A large Dutch pastoral painting hung on the far wall just above the couch, and a slew of Impressionist paintings from Renoir, Degas, Monet, Cézanne, and Pissarro covered nearly every available inch on the others. I counted about twenty-five female guests milling about, each wearing at least eight carats of diamonds and shoes that cost as much as my first car.

I took another deep breath, fluffed my hair a bit, and decided to introduce myself to Caroline. Only problem: nearly everyone was pregnant. And not just a little pregnant—at least half of the women there were sporting basketball-sized bellies, making it next to impossible to know who I was supposed to be congratulating. Luckily, I didn’t have to take more than three steps toward a tray of mini croques monsieurs and Gruyère gougères before a striking blonde greeted me with a double air kiss.

‘Marcy, I’m Caroline,’ she said. ‘Thanks for coming.’

Caroline Reinhardt had pin-straight blond hair that hung in an impossibly thick curtain down her back, dark blue eyes, and rubbery lips. She was wearing a wool pencil skirt and sleeveless ivory silk blouse that showed off her toned arms, perky, full breasts, and flat stomach. In other words, there was no way this woman was pregnant. It took me a second, but when it finally dawned on me that she was having the baby via surrogate I managed to eke out a passably hearty congratulations.

‘Thanks so much for inviting me,’ I said, given that the usual ‘you’re glowing!’ and ‘how do you feel?’ were obviously not applicable.

‘Of course we had to include you. There was no question,’ she smiled, revealing a row of perfectly white teeth. Veneers, no doubt, and from the look of them, the best and most expensive kind ($50,000 easily). ‘How are you finding the move?’ she asked, crossing her long arms right below her perfect breasts.

‘Decorating our new place has kept me pretty busy, but to be honest I’ve been really lonely. It’s no fun shopping alone for armchairs,’ I said.

‘Don’t tell me you’re not working with an interior designer?’ she balked.

I shook my head, helping myself to one of the Gruyère puffs. Cheese was my one big weakness in life, a mild obsession that would forever necessitate the wearing of body-fat encasing (or restructuring, as I liked to call it) undergarments.

‘Not to worry. I’ll call Jasper on Monday and ask him to see you straightaway. He’s finishing up our place on Bank Street. He’s marvelous and does so many of the girls’ homes here,’ she said.

‘Did he do this place?’

‘Oh Lord no. He’s much more, shall we say, décor forward? But Thomas Kemp is such a stick-in-the-mud traditionalist,’ she said, conspiratorially. ‘Anyway, there’s a chance Jasper’s in Chicago doing a taping with Oprah but I know I’m going to see him next Tuesday. Should I tell him to give you a ring?’

‘Oh no, don’t do that,’ I said, wondering exactly how much Jasper Pell, an interior designer who makes regular pit stops on The Oprah Winfrey Show, charged for a telephone, forget in-person, consultation. ‘I’m doing it on my own. Well, really John and I are doing it, but—’

‘Ohh, you’re an interior designer. No one told me,’ she said, suddenly excited. ‘Will you come over and tell me what you think of the nursery? I can’t decide if we should go with the faded sea foam or dusty wisteria color palette. Which one do you think is more progressive yet soothing?’

I told her she’d gotten the wrong idea, that I wasn’t an interior designer and was useless when it came to such dilemmas.

‘Oh,’ she sighed, her lips furling with disappointment. Then she started scanning the room in search of someone else to introduce me to, and I knew I’d blown it—my one big shot to make a good impression, and hopefully, a friend. John wasn’t kidding when he said that if in the real world you get one chance to get in someone’s good graces, when it comes to the superrich, it’s thirty seconds.

‘Have you met the party host, Dahlia Kemp, yet?’ Caroline asked distractedly.

We walked over to the couch where two women, both thin and blonde and dressed in pastel tweed skirts, silk blouses, and gold necklaces, were bent over their BlackBerries, tapping out emails. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I recognized the one on the right from a copy of Vogue that I’d thumbed through at the hair salon that morning.

The one on the left spoke first. ‘So tell me Caroline how are you staffing up for the baby’s arrival?’

‘We’re thinking a cook, baby nurse, and a nanny should do it.’

Three people for one little baby?

‘We did the same when Carolina and Alexander were born,’ Dahlia sniffed. ‘It’s so important to have a backup nanny in case of emergencies. Of course now that our children are six and eight, we’ve had to staff up with specialists: language and culture tutors, tennis, golf, and swimming instructors, and so on. But you don’t have to worry about that just yet. And whoever handles your domestics headhunting can help vet your candidates.’

Caroline said she would have to remember to ask for more details at a later date, and then put her hand lightly on my shoulder before introducing me. ‘Dahlia Kemp, Ainsley Partridge, this is Marcy Emerson. Her husband John works with Fred at Zenith,’ she said, taking a small step away from me, almost as if I were being presented at court. For a moment I had the distinct yet surreal impression I was meant to curtsey.

‘Lovely to meet you,’ I said, offering my hand across the mercury glass coffee table. I waited for Dahlia to grasp it but she didn’t. Instead, she daintily fingered one of the multiple Van Cleef & Arpels clover Alhambra necklaces strung around her neck and looked away while Caroline hissed in my ear, ‘She doesn’t shake.’

What, like the pope? Confused and embarrassed, I withdrew my outstretched hand and stuffed it in the little front pocket on my dress, and as I fumbled with the pocket, it occurred to me that maybe I had been meant to curtsey before.

‘You have a beautiful home,’ I said finally.

Dahlia looked around the room as if she’d never really noticed how nice it was and parted her thin lips, hesitating for a second before gesturing to the portrait hanging above a large marble-topped armoire. ‘I’m not sure about the Cézanne over there. Thomas just bought it at Christie’s. What do you think, Ainsley?’ she asked, turning to the blonde seated next to her.

‘I like it.’ Ainsley shrugged and looked back down at her BlackBerry.

‘Well, anyway,’ Dahlia sighed, rolling her wide-set, almond-shaped eyes at Caroline, who snorted quietly into her hand in response. ‘I suppose we could always put it in the Greenwich house when that’s finished.’

‘How’s that going?’ Caroline asked.

‘Meier is gouging us. Twenty million for the glass porte-cochere alone. The bastard refuses to get bids from other contractors. Thomas is considering firing him, but I’ve talked him out of it, thank God. Could you imagine the scandal?’ Dahlia said.

Caroline shook her head. ‘Would be a nightmare. But tell me, I’ve been meaning to ask. Preston Bailey or David Monn?’

‘Bailey was busy today so Monn planned the event. Personally, I think they’re both talented but Monn does better florals,’ Dahlia replied before sliding open the golden pyramid covering the face of her wristwatch to check the time. ‘I think we should start lunch,’ she said, motioning to one of her many housekeepers to begin ushering the guests into the dining room.

I did my best to make my way gracefully over—the women, I noticed, didn’t so much walk as they did waft—to the dining room, where four round tables, each set with ten place cards, had been draped in baby blue linens and set with white china and silver. I found my place card, sat down in my seat, and for an agonizing three minutes (I apparently hadn’t wafted slowly enough) I waited alone at the table, reading and rereading the lunch menu:

Fava bean and mint salad

Kobe beef filet mignon with blanched white asparagus

and chanterelle toasts

Or

Grilled wild salmon in black currant sauce, sautéed

mushrooms and a wild-rice timbale

Herb-scented sorbet trio and Chocolate-and-espresso

cake

I was just about to get up from the empty lunch table and excuse myself to the ladies room when a petite woman with straight, shoulder-length light brown hair, luminescent olive skin, and sharply defined facial features plopped herself into the seat next to mine. She was breathing hard, as if she had just run a couple miles in her Roger Vivier pumps.

‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ she said once she’d caught her breath.

‘Marcy Emerson. I’m new. My husband and I just moved here from Chicago.’

‘Jillian Lovern Tischman, but everyone calls me Jill,’ she said, extending her hand.

I sighed with relief and shook her hand. ‘So this is not a totally verboten form of human contact after all?’

‘Oh, did you met Dahlia already?’ she replied, placing her Hermès Medora clutch on the table.

I nodded and took another big sip of my champagne.

‘Pace yourself,’ she warned, eyebrows raised, as the tables filled up around us. ‘These things have a way of dragging on forever.’

‘Sounds like you go to a lot of baby showers.’

‘I’ve done the math, and by my calculations I’ll go to one hundred and fifty of them before everyone’s done spawning.’

‘How do you get to one hundred and fifty?’ I asked.

‘Fifty women, give or take. Three babies each because three’s the new two, four’s the new three, and, well, you get the point.’

I told Jill that John and I hoped to start a family, but didn’t delve much deeper into my recent reproductive history. ‘My dream is to have a house full of kids, but in general I try to avoid becoming a cliché,’ I said.

‘Well, good luck. Because try as you might, you’re probably destined to end up in one of the seven categories of hedge fund wives.’

‘You make this place sound like Dante’s Inferno.’

Jill thought for a second. ‘You know, it’s actually an apt comparison,’ she said before lifting her glass and taking a long swallow from her own flute.

So much for pacing oneself.