666 Park Avenue (9 page)
Authors: Gabriella Pierce
“J
ane!
” L
ynne trilled, shattering
J
ane’s morning-after
calm. She had hoped to find the kitchen empty again, but there was Lynne, large as life and twice as fashionable in what absolutely had to be vintage Chanel. “This was waiting when I came in.”
Lynne handed Jane an ivory card, which matched her long, ivory nails perfectly. It contained a record of a phone call from an Archibald Cartwright at the Museum of Modern Art. There was no real message, just a return number.
“Who is this?” Lynne asked, curiosity shining in her dark eyes.
“No clue,” Jane replied honestly. After yesterday’s interview debacle, she probably would have answered the same even if she had known. The less Lynne knew the better. “I guess I’ll have to call him back.”
“Do let Sofia make you something first, dear. Does she know how you take your eggs yet? She’s not what you would call a fast learner.” That last remark was accompanied by a sharp glare at the tiny maid, whose eyes bulged a little extra in fear.
“Yesterday’s were perfect,” Jane blurted, unable to resist defending the anxiously hovering girl, even if it did earn her a scathing eye-roll from Lynne. She pretended not to see, and pulled her iPhone out of her purse while Sofia spun gratefully toward the oversized La Cornue faux-antique range.
To her surprise, Archibald (“Archie, please!”) Cartwright was the director of human resources at the MoMA, and he declared that Jane would be “absolutely perfect for a job that just opened up here.” It was only part-time, but he’d heard that she had spectacular qualifications, and perhaps it could lead to more responsibility down the line. “How do you feel about special-event planning?”
“Event planning?” Jane repeated numbly. Where would he have ever gotten the idea that she was “spectacularly qualified” at party planning . . . or even particularly interested? “Where did you say you got my name from?”
Lynne craned her neck like a cartoon vulture. Jane instinctively shielded the phone with her palm.
“Oh, honey! The whole town’s buzzing. Besides, I’ve got my sources . . .” Archie chuckled.
Sources?
Jane glanced at Lynne out of the corner of her eye. Not her, certainly . . . but maybe Malcolm had believed Jane’s suspicions after all. A warm glow spread through her chest.
“I know it’s a bit different from what you’ve been doing,” Archie went on cheerfully, “but it offers a great opportunity to network in Manhattan with all sorts of fabulous people—including local architectural luminaries.”
“That does sound exciting,” Jane admitted. And given that Lynne had (almost definitely) torpedoed her last interview, it would be helpful—maybe even necessary—to make some contacts of her own. True, throwing parties for one of the premiere modern-art museums wouldn’t be exactly the same as dazzling the curators with her drafting skills, but who was to say that one thing couldn’t lead to the other? She was surprised at the thrill of excitement that ran through her.
Parties, art-lovers, and a chance to get out of the house for something non-wedding-related? Thank you, Malcolm. Note to self: this totally calls for that striptease thing he likes . . . possibly even including those ridiculous marabou heels.
“So you’ll come in on Monday? Just ask the ticket-takers for Archie, and they’ll wave you through.”
“Great. See you then.” Jane hung up and turned to Lynne, who was leaning so far over the counter that she was halfway out of her seat. Lynne immediately turned her attention to a stoneware vase containing peach roses that matched her lipstick, trying to cover the fact that she’d been eavesdropping. It took everything Jane had and more to not roll her eyes.
She considered letting Lynne stew in her curiosity—especially since she didn’t want a repeat of the Pamela debacle. But Malcolm had picked something that even Lynne would have to like: it was part-time, was basically practice for planning a wedding, and gave her all sorts of opportunities to Be a Doran. Besides, Lynne would obviously find out sooner or later. It would probably be better to enlist her support than to tick her off. “Job. MoMA. Part-time, and event planning,” she informed her, ticking off the bullet points on her fingers.
Lynne’s peach smile was only a fraction of a second late. “How lovely, dear.”
“Yes, it is lovely,” Jane inserted before Lynne could get to “but.”
“But—”
Jane sighed.
“But you certainly can’t work at the MoMA in
that
.” Lynne’s nose wrinkled in the general direction of Jane’s marine-striped tunic and jeans. “Imagine how people would talk! You’ll have to make a trip to Barneys. Sofia, let Yuri know to pick Miss Boyle up out front as soon as she’s done eating. And Jane, dear, go ahead and use our account. Just tell the girls to charge whatever you need.” With that, she swept from the kitchen, a subtle wave of Guerlain L’Heure Bleue lingering in her wake.
I really never
do
know what’s going to come out of her mouth,
Jane reflected.
As promised, Yuri was waiting by the back door of a nondescript town car. Jane was troubled to find that he looked no less intimidating in broad daylight than he had the night she arrived. At well over six feet, he seemed nearly as wide as he was tall, and from the way his shirt cut in sharply just below his ribs, Jane was quite sure his bulk was all muscle. His bald head and apparent unwillingness to speak—ever—completed the impression that this was someone who would normally have a job description much scarier than “family driver.”
Bodyguard?
she wondered, sliding in through the door he silently opened.
Private security? Guy who hides the bodies?
“Barneys, please,” she said, and the car pulled smoothly away from the curb. It was a short ride to Madison and 61st, but Jane couldn’t help but think that every time she looked up, Yuri had
just
stopped watching her in the rearview mirror.
Of course he has to check traffic behind us,
she reprimanded herself.
The drivers here are almost as bad as the French.
But she checked again in spite of herself, and was almost sure that his eyes had just flickered away.
It was a relief to arrive at the red-awninged department store. Jane hightailed it out of the car with a quick thanks and pushed her way through the revolving glass door. Case after case of jewelry sparkled up at her—though she couldn’t help noticing that nothing there was quite as magnificent as her own engagement ring. She hustled past a trunk show of antique items from England and the Balenciaga display, and rode the elevator up to the Co-Op on 7.
The moment she stepped out of the mirrored lift, a young woman named Madison swooped in and announced that she would be thrilled to be Jane’s personal shopper for the day. She towered over Jane by nearly a foot, but didn’t appear to weigh even an ounce more (unless the extra was in her sizable breasts), and her tan screamed, “Ask me what tropical paradise I spent the holidays in.” Her chestnut-colored hair looked as though it had been blown-out at lunch, and a set of flawless scarlet nails completed her striking look. A little more intimidated than she wanted to be, Jane squared her shoulders firmly and followed along as Madison led her on a dizzying circuit of the floor.
“Do you already have an account with us?” Madison asked cheerfully, pausing briefly to squint at Jane and pull a size-six Rag & Bone sheath off the rack they were passing.
“It’s under Doran.” Jane was working so hard to keep up with Madison’s extra-long legs she nearly crashed into the girl when she stopped abruptly.
“Doran with a D?” The friendly voice sounded the tiniest bit forced. “Are you a relative?”
“Almost,” Jane said, holding out her left hand, where the Harry Winston diamond glittered fiercely. “I’m engaged to Malcolm.”
“Oh.” Madison’s scarlet lips clamped firmly shut for a moment, and she twirled a silver key ring between her fingers. Was that skepticism? Did people try to defraud iconic department stores on a regular basis?
Waves of conflict seemed to roll off the salesgirl, reaching out toward Jane in little electrical sparks.
Oh no.
Jane took a step back.
Control, Jane, control.
Now was
not
the time for a magical light show.
Madison stepped back as well, knocking into a toothpick-skinny woman with perfect caramel highlights. The woman glared at Madison before making her way to the wall of jeans. A security guard in all black stood in the corner, his eyes narrowed as they followed the proceedings.
“I’m so sorry, but I’m going to have to leave you here for just a minute to check on something.” Madison practically spit out the words and then vanished without waiting for an answer, leaving Jane to stare open-mouthed at the space where she’d been.
“Lynne said it would be fine to use the account,” Jane whispered to no one in particular. Was this Lynne’s idea of a practical joke . . . or payback for taking a job without her consent? For one panicked moment, she thought that the security guard was going to come arrest her for attempted theft, but he seemed to just be shifting his weight.
For now.
“Jane?” A throaty voice broke into Jane’s reverie. Jane whirled around to see a thirtysomething woman with pin-straight copper hair bearing down on her with a giant armload of clothes. “I’m Lena, and I’m so, so sorry about Madison’s little meltdown. I’ll be speaking with her supervisor.”
A couple of Nordic-looking blondes giggled by the register, and an iPhone hummed nearby.
“Huh?” Jane had been so prepared to explain about the charge account that no other words came to her.
Lena grabbed a cotton dress off the Loomstate rack without seeming to register her client’s bafflement. Jane trailed along automatically behind her. She couldn’t quite make sense of what was going on, but for the moment it seemed to involve browsing. After rounding the Splendid and Nanette Lepore sections, they sailed along toward the private shopping space.
“This room will be yours.” Lena ushered her inside a well-lit room the size of Jane’s bedroom in Paris. “Try these first.” Her fingers grazed Jane’s as she handed over a blazer and a pair of supertight suede pants from The Row. An explosion of sparks fired in Jane’s brain, and suddenly Lena’s voice felt as though it was shouting directly into her eardrums.
. . .
Honestly, I don’t know when Carlos will stop hiring these children. I know that party girls make good backdrops, but is it worth it if they’re going to drag every little personal thing in to work with them? These girls are just too young to have the slightest idea how to separate their jobs from their love lives . . .
Jane gasped and pressed her fingers to her temples.
“Are you all right?” Lena asked, her voice concerned.
The blaring voice in her mind ceased, and Jane was the only person in her own head again. She cleared her throat, trying to get her bearings. “Lena, do you mind if I ask what happened to Madison?”
Lena looked a little chagrined, but opened her mouth to gossip nonetheless. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but Madison
claims
that she dated your charming fiancé for all of three minutes last summer. She managed to convince herself that they were practically engaged, even though it was probably nothing more than a conversation at some nightclub. And then the real thing shows up—can you imagine? I found the girl hyperventilating in the break room.” She handed Jane a featherlight Vince sweater, as an afterthought. “This’ll go under the Marc blazer, Jane, and then, hmmm, you’ll need a good black bra for that. Hang on, I’ll be right back.”
Jane slipped the sweater on over her head, then tugged on the blazer. The clothes fit like a dream and looked about a thousand times better than her thrifty attempts to approximate the same looks in Paris, but it was impossible to fully enjoy it. As she examined herself in the mirror, Madison’s boobs loomed large—very large—in her mind, followed quickly by her blood-red lips and salon-perfect hair. Of course Malcolm had dated girls before he’d met Jane. But just how many girls? And did they all look like Madison? Her exes paled in comparison to Malcolm. Scratch that. There
was
no comparison. But while hers were tucked safely away in France, his stunning life-size Barbie dolls were scattered all over New York like landmines.
Ugh.
“Here Jane, try these next.” Lena bustled in and dumped a whole mound of clothes on the chair in the corner. Jane sighed and settled in for what was shaping up to be a very long day of playing dress-up.
“C
hampagne?
”
“God, yes.” Lynne Doran sighed waspishly at the waiter. “For everyone, I should think, after that god-awful weather.”
Jane resisted the urge to point out that they had been outside for a grand total of thirty seconds—fifteen from the front door to the car, and another fifteen to the door of La Grenouille. The rest of the day had been spent indoors: the library and newly discovered indoor pool for her, the game room for Ian McCarroll, and the den for Malcolm’s father. Blake Helding had rounded up all the thirtysomething men for a card game of some sort. His wife, Laura, had her manicurist make a house call, much to the delight of Ian’s little sister Ariel, although the rest of the children had favored a wild, five-story version of hide-and-seek.
All three branches of the family had done whatever it took to avoid having to actually step outside in the subzero temperatures and driving sleet, but their reservation at La Grenouille—Jane’s “official” welcome party—had forced their hands. Andrew McCarroll had been on the phone for half an hour trying to bribe the executive chef into coming to the mansion to cook for them in-house, but eventually had had to grant that the chef’s objections (“ambiance,” “supplies,” and “sous-chefs”—he didn’t bother with “a restaurant full of other customers”) were probably valid. Jane suspected that if Lynne had been the one on the phone, they would all be dining in after all, but Lynne and her twin cousins, Belinda and Cora, had locked themselves in the west-facing atrium on the eighth floor with strict instructions that no one should interrupt their “girl time.”
And now here they were, all twenty-odd of them, tucked into a private room.
“Isn’t Jane sick of French food, though?” Ian piped up from the end of the long, flower-adorned table. He wore a preppy light blue Brooks Brothers button-down and tan cords. “Isn’t that what she, like, ate at home?”
Before Jane could mention that her version of French cuisine was hardly five-star, Malcolm saved her the trouble.
“If she’s willing to put up with all of us at once, she should get
something
familiar out of the deal.” He ruffled Ian’s hair and took a sip from his champagne flute. Jane did the same, minus the ruffling. The bubbles tickled her nose.
“It’s really lovely,” Jane offered sincerely. The cozy space was covered in so many dense sprays of flowers that she had felt as though she had walked into a garden. Recessed French windows led to balconies that were so inviting she could almost forget about the hostile weather on the other side. She had been a little anxious about being the center of attention twice in four days, but the lush private room and champagne had worked wonders on her nerves.
As Lynne prattled on to Belinda about invitations, and Ian told Malcolm about his Fantasy Football team, a crew of waiters delivered to the table artfully arranged plates of foie gras and blinis with caviar. The rich hors d’oeuvres turned Jane’s smile up a notch, and she popped a bubble of golden osetra against her teeth with the tip of her tongue. Malcolm patted her knee under the table. Mr. Doran and Blake clinked their champagne glasses, and little Ariel admired her metallic-purple manicure.
“Now Jane,” Cora McCarroll announced, setting her fork down decisively. “I hear you start a
job
next week.” She managed to pronounce the word “job” with precisely the same mix of confusion and disdain that her cousin typically used, as if it were some kind of family quirk.
The silence around the long table was deafening. In the awkward pause, all that could be heard was the clinking of silverware against china.
“It’s event planning,” Lynne informed the family with a dismissive wave of her glass.
“I thought she was an architect,” Belinda Helding snapped to her twin sister, and then whipped her silver-gray head toward Jane. “I thought you were an architect.”
“I was,” Jane replied weakly. “I am, I mean. Just not right—”
“God,” Laura sighed melodramatically, flicking her blond tresses off her shoulder. “A job? Are we
all
going to be expected to
work
now?”
“No one expects that of you, dear,” Blake slurred cheerfully from across the table. Jane felt suddenly, uncomfortably sure that the foot rubbing against her ankle neither belonged to Malcolm nor was there by mistake.
“Thank goodness.” Laura dug back into her blini.
“Ariel, stop playing with your foie gras. It’s not polite,” Andrew said.
Cora’s and Belinda’s eyes were still glued to Jane as though she were a bizarre museum exhibit. She braced herself, but no one else at the table seemed to register any tension at all.
“So no more architecture?” Cora drawled. Her steely dark eyes were as cold and unyielding as the black Mikimoto pearls on her necklace.
“Now’s not the right time for it,” Jane said, choosing her words carefully. “But I do really love it. Making a space into someone’s real
home
is so—”
“Of course,” Belinda interrupted, waving a finger in the air. “You’d like that sort of thing, as an orphan.”
Jane’s mouth dropped open. In an instant, Laura was up and tapping her shoulder. “I’m going to powder my nose. Jane?”
“Excuse me,” Jane murmured. Ariel dropped a piece of foie gras down the back of Ian’s shirt. She snickered behind her hand as Ian obliviously continued to shovel risotto into his mouth by the forkful.
“This way,” Laura whispered, leading her down a narrow wooden staircase.
“Thank you,” Jane whispered as soon as they were out of earshot.
Laura waved her off airily. “They take some getting used to, don’t they?”
The two women took the shortest path to the discreet hallway that contained the restrooms, their heels tapping dully on the thick carpet. Just when they came into view of the main dining room, a flash of blue-white light tore through the room, shaking Jane so badly that she dropped her clutch.
Jane swiveled her head frantically to look for the source of the disturbance, but no one else seemed to even notice it.
Am I seeing things?
The flash came again, along with a vaguely familiar clicking noise. This time, Jane spotted a bearded man crouching behind a vase of gladioli, and the disparate pieces of information came together when she saw that he was holding a bulky camera.
“Laura,” she whispered, “who is that?”
“Who knows?” Laura whispered back, then seemed to register her concern. “Probably Page Six, but he could be freelance. Just ignore him and look happy. The hostess will escort him out soon enough.” She looped her arm through Jane’s and pasted a smile on her face until they were in the relative safety of the bathroom.
“Does that kind of thing happen a lot?” Jane asked awkwardly. The marble bathroom was also covered in flowers. A bouquet of peonies drooped from a metal vase and a collection of gold soaps and lotions lined the vessel sinks. Wall sconces cast dim, flattering light throughout the room, but Jane’s reflection still looked pale.
Laura leaned into the mirror and applied a coat of Nars Dragon Girl to her lips. “You should have seen the fuss when I was trying to poison my mother-in-law.”
Jane’s mouth fell open. “You . . . what?”
Laura rolled her eyes. “I seriously don’t know where the tabloids get their stories. As
if
any sane person would cross one of those old bats.”
Jane snickered.
“But you,” Laura went on, dabbing a Jo Malone perfume behind her ears. “You are impressive. I wouldn’t trade
both
of the twins for Lynne. Malcolm might have been the hottest catch in town, but the idea of
that
as a mother-in-law could make a girl think twice.”
Jane stiffened, surreptitiously checking under the stalls for legs. Laura seemed nice, but Lynne was seriously well-connected—and well-informed. “We seem to be getting along all right,” she mumbled.
Laura shrugged again. “Well, good luck with that.” She smiled, as if at some private joke, before sashaying to the door. “You’re certainly going to need it.”