Читать книгу Hedge Fund Wives - Tatiana Boncompagni - Страница 9

‘Honey, all of us hedge fund wives have to put up with the same Goddamn quid pro quo,’ said Gigi Ambrose.

Gigi and I were having lunch at Nello, home of the fifty-dollar plate of pasta. No joke. The smoked salmon ravioli actually costs fifty-five dollars. But despite the exorbitant prices—or maybe because of them—and the fact that Christmas was a mere three days away, the place was packed, buzzing with the kind of excitement such extravagance tends to generate. You feel the same thing walking into Bergdorf’s shoe salon, but there it’s overpriced platform heels that get everyone salivating, while at Nello, it’s the overpriced veal chops.

‘What quid pro quo?’ I asked, craning my head forward with interest.

‘Your husband may make tons of money, but you never get to see him.’

I laughed. ‘Too true.’

I took a bite of my penne rigate, which I must admit tasted like heaven—the hot and sweet sausages somehow managed to be both delicate and hearty—and surveyed the room. There was a maitre d’ hovering by the bar, nervously keeping an eye on all the tables. Waiters in black vests and white aprons tied at the waist were zipping around, taking orders, delivering plates of aromatic delicacies—artichokes drizzled in white truffle oil, pan roasted veal chops with sautéed wild mushrooms, and Chilean sea bass cooked in a lobster, saffron velouté. On one side of me a pair of older women with shopping bags at their feet pushed forty-two dollar tuna tartares around their plate; on the other side, a foursome of men, all devouring the veal and wearing wedding bands, openly ogled the lithesome young girls seated at the table next to theirs.

‘Rule Number Two,’ Gigi continued, snapping me back to attention with a flick of her hand, the same hand that happened to be sporting nine carats of flawless, colorless diamonds (Grade: F, Color: D, for those in the know). I was learning that one diamond wasn’t good enough for a Hedge Fund Bride; nothing less than three would do. Take Gigi’s engagement ring for example. There was the center stone, an emerald cut stunner that was, to my untrained eye, at least five carats, and then two triangle-shaped stones, each about two carats, flanking it. In Chicago, my three-carat engagement ring was considered flashy; here, it was barely worth flashing.

She had made it her mission that day to school me in the art of hedge fund wifehood and I, having been the ignorant newcomer I was, was most grateful for the lesson.

‘Never ask him about work. If he wants to talk about it, he will. And make sure you keep people who want stock tips, or in John’s case, predictions about fluctuations in the price of crude far away from him at social functions. There’s nothing that grates on Jeremy more than someone who wants free market advice.’

‘Is that Rule Number Three?’ I asked, trying to keep up.

‘No, three is to never talk about your own problems, especially any that might be work related, if you do happen to have a job.’

I opened my mouth to comment, but Gigi pressed on. ‘Rule Four,’ she said. ‘Keep the baby talk to a minimum. Children should never be a disturbance, especially at night.’

With that, Gigi bent her head in concentration over her fettuccine al funghi, and I couldn’t tell if she was a) focusing on the flavors, trying to discern the ingredients; b) trying not to get any of the rich mushroom and cream sauce on her ruffled silk blouse, which I assumed was made by a famous designer, and therefore wildly expensive; or c) thinking about the last thing she said, the thing about keeping children off the conversational menu.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t observed Rule Four over the previous six months. In fact, I had f lagrantly violated rules one through four. I was a fantastically shitty hedge fund wife. I didn’t fit the mold at all, but for that matter, neither did Gigi. She seemed too outspoken and vivacious, and she had her own thriving career. Plus she clearly loved talking about her daughter Chloe. She had spoken of nothing else during the first half of our lunch.

As Gigi expertly twirled her pasta around the tines of her fork, using the bowl of a spoon to anchor the pasta, I took the opportunity to continue studying her face. She had wide-set eyes, a straight nose, and full lips, but in the sunlight I could see that she was wearing a thick layer of foundation and that there were wrinkles creeping out from around her eyes and lips. She looked older and less sprightly than she did on television or on the cover of her book jackets, but she was still arrestingly beautiful.

When we were finished with our entrées, Gigi ordered a bowl of gelato for us to share and spooning the creamy, cold ice cream into my mouth, I was reminded of my childhood in Minnesota. Whenever my sister and I did well on our report cards, my father would take us for ice cream at Byerly’s, an upscale grocery store in the suburb where we lived. This happened pretty infrequently since Annalise rarely studied—she was too busy with boys and cheerleading practice—so more often than not my father would take just me. We usually went on Friday nights when Annalise had a game to cheer, so she wouldn’t feel bad about her academic shortcomings, or at least that’s what my father said. Now, in hindsight, I think Dad was more concerned about making me feel better. After all, I was the one stuck at home on a Friday night when most kids were out with their friends, partying and whatnot.

Gigi wanted to know about my sister, so I told her that she had been the popular one and I the smart one. ‘A family of two daughters usually gets one of each,’ I said, adding that Annalise wasn’t exactly prettier than I was, but she had a better figure—larger breasts, longer legs—and had been the recipient of braces (whereas my parents, in their infinite wisdom, had decided I could go without) that had given her the killer smile that would eventually grace our local Dayton’s department store newspaper advertisements for its annual three-day back-to-school sale. Annalise, considered a minor celebrity in our high school thanks to those ads, was named Homecoming Queen her senior year. She had a string of boyfriends, tons of friends.

I didn’t.

I imagined this was why she couldn’t believe that I had married ‘well’ and she hadn’t. She was stuck in a shabby two-bedroom house with a husband who spent too much time watching sports (hockey, football, you name it…) on television and drinking beer (from a can, ‘not even a bottle’ she once complained bitterly to my mother, who then told me, even though I had on several occasions made it clear to her that I had no desire to know the inner workings of my sister’s marriage). It was down to Annalise to raise their two rambunctious boys—Jack, five, and Trevor, three—and fix things up around the house. My beauty-queen sister had to empty the gutters, mow the lawn, rake the leaves, shovel the snow, and on top of that clean the house and cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a grocery budget so small that they sometimes had to have hot dogs for dinner—five nights in a row. She couldn’t help but compare her life to mine and wonder where she’d gone wrong. It’s like I had disturbed the correct order of things, and she resented me to no end for it.

I explained this all to Gigi, who told me that she had a sister who was married, too, who was always jealous of her big city life until the day that Gigi started dating a Greek shipping magnate. In the beginning he was romantic and sweet and incredibly generous—he took her to nice restaurants and on lavish trips, and bought her expensive shoes. He also liked to rub her feet.

A little too much.

After a few weeks of dating, Gigi started noticing that her Greek magnate was getting a little too much pleasure out of touching her feet, and liked doing it at inappropriate times, like when he was driving them home from dinner or to his beach house in Bridgehampton. ‘He’d get hard just from touching the soft skin on the underside of my arch,’ she said. ‘That was his favorite part.’

Still, he was kind to her and seemed serious about their relationship—‘he told me that he couldn’t wait to introduce me to his parents’—so she put up with his sexual quirk. But then, he got mean. A few months into their courtship he started criticizing her. ‘If one of my nails was chipped, he’d tell me that I looked like a mess.’ One day she told him that if he cared so much about her nails, then maybe he should pay for her manicures. His response was to call her a gold digger and cut their meal short. Around the same time he became controlling about what shoes she wore. Sometimes, Gigi said, she had to change them four or five times before they went out.

She told me a story about one of their last weeks together, when they planned on meeting some friends for brunch at Felix, a restaurant and bar in SoHo. It was a cold Sunday in February and there was ice and snow on the ground. Gigi chose a pair of flat boots to wear with her jeans and sweater, but her Greek boyfriend pointed out that she’d already worn the boots once that week. ‘So I changed into my other boots that happen to have a lot of buckles, and he freaked out. He said they would be too hard for him to get them off. He threw a tantrum,’ she said.

The next day, she dumped him, and being a short man with a massive Napoleonic complex, he didn’t handle his dismissal well. For six months following their break up, he harassed her with vulgar, cruel phone messages and emails, and told all of their friends that he had dumped her because he figured out she was only interested in him for his money. ‘All rich men end up saying that. Even Jeremy has and John, if he hasn’t already, probably will.’

Gigi suddenly looked stricken and covered her mouth with her hands. ‘What am I doing? I’ve broken the most important rule of all. Rule Number Five: Never talk bad about your husband.’

I assured her that I was not going to tell anyone. ‘Who would I tell? I have no friends in New York.’ I reached across the table to squeeze her hand reassuringly.

‘No, sugar, you’ve got me now,’ she said.

The waiter cleared the bowl of gelato and took our coffee orders. One espresso dopio for Gigi, who explained that she needed the caffeine because she had been up all night with the baby and had to go to a meeting at her publisher’s after lunch. I ordered a cappuccino, extra foam, and told her that she didn’t have to justify her coffee order to me. ‘I drink way more than I should, and I don’t have kids or a job to legitimize my caffeine addiction,’ I said.

Gigi asked if John and I planned on starting a family soon, and, given the confessional turn of our lunch, I told her about my miscarriage. I didn’t say much about what happened in the hospital, because nobody wants to hear the gruesome details, but I did talk about the grief that followed and how I was trying to pick up the pieces of my life. She was careful not to ask too many questions and to dab the tears from her eyes before they had a chance to ruin her makeup.

Then, because our lunch was coming to an end and I didn’t want to leave her on a sad note, I told Gigi that I knew John and I were fortunate, that there was a lot in our lives that was a lot better than before. Better and bigger and brighter.

‘Our apartment has floor-to-ceiling windows in the living and dining rooms and we’re updating all our furniture to eco-conscious midcentury modern. It’s all clean lines, natural wood finishes, dye-free textiles, that sort of look. It’s what John likes.’

‘And you?’

‘Me? I don’t know the first thing about interior décor. Nothing matched in my house growing up. What do I know about bamboo flooring and hemp silk?’

‘Everyone likes splurging on something. What is it for you? Shoes, handbags? Mesotherapy?’

‘Meso-what?’

‘Nevermind. Better you not know.’

‘I guess I do like eating well. It’s nice to be able to order whatever I want when we go to restaurants. No more “Just the house salad for me, thanks.”’

She laughed. ‘Poverty is the best diet in the land.’

‘But really, there’s so little off limits, it blows my mind,’ I continued. ‘We bought brand new cars for our fathers. This summer John wants to rent a nice house in Southampton and last weekend he ordered a couple of custom made suits and a ton of shirts from a store on Fifty-Seventh Street.’

‘Turnbull & Asser.’ Gigi nodded knowingly and crossed her long alabaster arms over her ample chest as she leaned back in her chair.

‘Yes! And his shoes cost fifteen hundred dollars.’

‘John Lobb.’

‘John says you have to have these things. People notice.’

‘It’s true.’

‘Who knew men were such label whores?’

‘They can be worse than women.’ Gigi nodded.

‘I mean, bespoke cashmere? Have you ever heard of anything more pretentious in your life?’

We both snorted.

‘John is a little confounded by my thriftiness, but I just don’t see the point in blowing a thousand dollars on a purse that will be declared “out” on the pages of Harper’s Bazaar in three months. And besides, I feel like a bad feminist spending his money. When we lived in Chicago I had a job and if I wanted something, I’d use my own money.’

‘So get a job here.’

‘I know. I should. I’ve been meaning to start making some calls. But I can’t seem to motivate. Our couch is just too comfortable.’

‘Well, if you’re looking for some part-time work while you look for something permanent, I could use your help with a few catering events I have coming up. You could help me with advance prep, or with room décor if you don’t like kitchen work.’

‘Oh no, I love baking. I’ll do whatever you need.’

‘Can you work the events too? I have one coming up the first week after New Year’s. My friend is a contributing editor for House & Home and she’s hosting a party celebrating next month’s designer of the year issue. She’s a hedge fund wife, but one of the good ones. You’ll love Jill.’

‘Jill Lovern Tischman?’

‘You know her?’ Gigi asked.

I nodded and told her all about Caroline’s baby shower—the goody bags, the cakes, the mountain of presents Caroline received.

‘I heard that the surrogate wasn’t invited,’ she said.

I had assumed that whoever was carrying Caroline’s baby lived in Idaho or something and Caroline would be going there to retrieve her baby once it was born, but apparently the Reinhardts were putting the woman up in their West Village townhouse and had plans to keep her on as the child’s wet nurse once the baby was born. The day of Caroline’s shower she’d stayed home, but as Caroline had later boasted, she’d remembered to send the woman a piece of the Sylvia Weinstock cake home with her driver. As if it was so darn thoughtful of her to save her a slice of cake, and then not even personally deliver it.

I tossed my napkin on the table, and Gigi checked her watch, a white oversized one with a diamond bezel.

‘So can you help me for Jill’s event? The other wives will probably think it’s weird that you’re doing it, but I’ll tell them I begged you to pitch in,’ she said, standing up. ‘Do you think your husband will mind you spending an evening out with me?’

I raised my eyebrow at her. ‘Are you kidding? John’s never home before ten, most nights it’s eleven.’

‘Oh right. I forgot. You’re a hedge fund wife.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ I snorted.

Together we exited the restaurant, bundled up in our heavy coats, ready to face the inclement weather outside. It had begun to sleet, and the freezing pellets of rain struck down on us as soon as we set foot on the sidewalk.

As I bundled my coat against the precipitation, I received a text on my BlackBerry.

John: Fred and Caroline Reinhardt have invited us to Aspen for New Year’s. Please find appropriate housewarming gift (Budget: $3,000-$5,000). We’ll discuss wardrobe needs tonight. Love, me.