Bergdorf Blondes (12 page)

As Julie had predicted, the brasserie was empty.
We sat at a corner banquette sipping coffee. I felt much better again: it was a great place and our waiter was totally hot. Julie read
Us
magazine and I managed to swallow a mouthful of eggs benedict.

“Julie, do you think it’s really true what’s happened to me?” I said.

“Well, it’s in
Us
magazine and once something’s been in
Us
magazine it’s official,” said Julie, holding up the Hot Stuff Extra! section.

I gasped. As you know, when it comes to gossip I am a believer. Now that I was Manhattan magazine gossip, everything must be real. This was truly hideous.

“O-o-h, no, I can’t even keep it a secret now. I’m so embarrassed,” I cried.

“Look at it this way, at least you won’t have to go through the hell of actually telling anybody the wedding’s off, since they’ll all read about it. It’s better this way, honestly,” replied Julie. “Free negative publicity has advantages.”

“Hey!” A chirpy voice interrupted us. It belonged to a girl who was way too pretty for me to deal with right now, Crystal Field. She was tan and carrying a mini basket out of which peeped an adorable Teacup Pomeranian wearing a red bow in its hair. Teacup puppies are very in (because you can take them as hand luggage on the plane to Paris) and so are mini baskets from Chinatown to carry them in. Crystal is very in. In fact, Crystal is perfect. It was
très
tragic to have Crystal appear at a moment like this in my life.
She was depressingly glowing. A few seconds later Billy, her boyfriend, joined us. Billy is very gorgeous and very in, too. They held hands. They were openly “in love.” This did not concern me: Crystal and Billy were simply too in to have a real relationship. It wouldn’t last.

“You’re both so tan,” said Julie.

“The honeymoon,” smiled Billy. “We just got back.”

Why did thrilled couples feel some unfair need to go around brutalizing uncoupled people like me? It was beyond selfish. Then Crystal asked me, “When’s your wedding?”

I stared at her for a few moments. This was a moment more humiliating than I had ever faced in my life. I was actually going to have to
tell
someone,
in public
, that I was fiancé-less. It took some time before I answered, so long in fact that Crystal and Billy started looking nervous and the dog started yapping. Finally I just said, “It’s off.”

Silence. No one knew what to say when faced with such a tragedy at midday in Pastis, a place where the clientele knows only pleasure.

“Eew,” said Crystal. Her mouth stuck in the shape of a large O.

“Yeah, eew,” said Billy. Even supposedly straight men in New York have started saying
eew
to keep in with their girlfriends. They made excuses and left abruptly.

No one wanted to be near a romantic failure like
moi
in case I was infectious. Love was everywhere in New York but I couldn’t get any of it. It felt a lot like that time Gucci brought out that Jackie bag. It was sold out in about nine minutes and everyone had one except me. I put myself down on the wait list, hoping something would change, but the fact was I was never going to get a Jackie because there just weren’t enough to go around, like there isn’t enough love.

By the time we arrived
chez
Vandy I felt about as self-confident as Chelsea Clinton before she found out about straightening irons. Julie assured me no one at the Vandys’ would have cute husbands in tow. The twins lived in a converted sweatshop way down on Mulberry Street. Everyone was lounging on giant floor pillows from Moss and drinking antioxidant tea. Veronica and Violet Vandonbilt were both wearing custom jackets printed with the words
IT’S OUR WORLD YOU’RE JUST LIVING IN IT
on the back. When they saw us they tilted their heads massively and said, “Oooh. We’re sooo sooorry for you. We got our acupuncturist in especially when we heard. Group hug!”

Suddenly everyone started asking Julie why the Vandys were so sorry for me and before I knew it the whole party was giving me group hugs. Julie led me off to a secluded pillow.

“Do not go near the twins’ acupuncturist,” she said. “God, why do they have to be so
nice
? It totally creeps me out that they don’t even know you and they are
offering you needles. And have you seen how much they flick their hair? It’s so tacky.”

The Vandys came and sat with us. Julie was all smiles, asking them what they were up to.

“Actually, I’m opening a thirty-thousand-square-foot spa on the Bowery,” said Veronica.

“And I’m buying a jewelry store on Elizabeth Street,” said Violet.

“How wonderful!” smiled Julie. “How generous of Daddy Vandy.”

“LVMH is backing us,” they said in unison.

“I love your bracelet,” said Julie, rapidly changing the subject and grabbing Veronica’s wrist. “What is that?”

Veronica was wearing a gold ID bracelet engraved with the number 622.

“Oh, John has one, too,” cooed Veronica, tilting her head. “That’s the number of our honeymoon suite at Cipriani Venice. Mmmm.”

Even highly sensitive nice people like the Vandys had to remind me that I hadn’t had a honeymoon and probably never would. I wiped a stray tear from my cheek. “Oh, noooo! Group hug,” burst out the twins. This was too much to bear. Suddenly my whole body started to hurt, even my nails, which felt like they were bleeding or something. Thank god for Julie. She made a quick excuse and rushed me out to the car and we sped back to the safety of her apartment. This was getting serious, I realized. I needed a re
placement fiancé or life in Manhattan would be so intolerable I would have to move somewhere foreign like Brooklyn.

The next day I went back to my own apartment. There was one message on my voice mail. It was from Mom: “We’ve all heard. Are you sure you’re cancelling? It’s very embarrassing for me in the village having to cancel the castle
again
so maybe
you
could do it this time. Okay. Be in touch.”

The place seemed very empty. The phone didn’t ring. No invitations
at all
arrived by messenger. As I’d suspected, absolutely no free clothes came randomly from fashion designers now that I was disengaged. I drifted around the apartment in my nightdress (actually rather a gorgeous vintage one) worrying how I was ever going to meet my deadline. The office wanted their Palm Beach story, but the only thing I could effectively achieve was sitting in my study, despairing. It seemed so quiet that I actually started to relate to the sad girls who owned DVD players.

I decided to go buy one and watch movies for the rest of my life since I was never going to be invited anywhere ever again. I got dressed and left the apartment. On the way to The Wiz I stopped off at Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker Street for an iced vanilla cupcake. I ate it in the taxi on the way to The Wiz. Those cakes are so sweet, I swear you can self-medicate with them. It lifted my mood, if only for a few minutes.

A trip to The Wiz on Union Square is enough to make your nails ache like mad even at the best of times. My god, I thought, as I wandered past a million cell phones towards the TVs, the champagne bubble about town has lost her fizz. It was a depressing moment. I picked out a machine and got on line. Then my cell rang. It was Julie, asking where I was. I told her. She freaked.

“The fucking
Wiz
? Buying a
DVD player
? You’re having a nervous breakdown.”

“I am not having a nervous breakdown,” I said, breaking into hysterical sobs. “I’m one hundred percent absolutely totally great.”

About fifteen minutes later Julie arrived and led me into the car. We headed up to Bergdorf’s—Julie couldn’t forfeit her highlight with Ariette even for my nervous breakdown. When we arrived we were ushered through to the color room. I sat and watched as Ariette started on Julie’s hair. Ariette also started on the disengagement. She wanted all the juicy details—a request that Julie loyally denied. She just said, “Ariette,
baby
blonde, please, think CBK, not Courtney Love, and do not mention my friend’s failed relationship.”

“Sweetie, you need to get in therapy
right now
. You are having a nervous breakdown. Trust me, I’m having one 24–7, I know what I’m talking about,” said Julie, turning to me.

“Julie, there’s no way I am going into therapy,” I
said. I mean, look what it had done to Julie. She wasn’t exactly the poster girl for analysis.

“Fine,” said Julie. I couldn’t believe I was getting out of it so easily. “I’ve got a much better idea. You know what I do every time I’m having a nervous breakdown and I’m over therapy?”

I shook my head.

“Rehab at the Ritz,” she said.

Julie thinks a stay at the Ritz Hotel, Paris, can cure all mental illnesses, even the super-duper troublesome ones like schizophrenia. But Paris? With a broken heart? It would kill me.

“I just want to stay in your guest bedroom for the next six years,” I said.

“Since you are mentally ill,” replied Julie, “and have no idea what is good for you, I am committing you and taking you to Paris. If you’re going to go nuts you might as well do it somewhere chic. You’ll be able to dine out for months on how crazy you went in Paris.” Julie’s eyes were sparkling with the potential social advantages of a best friend with a nervous system in shreds. “Oh, don’t cry! You’ve escaped a terrible marriage, with a psycho photographer who takes really weird pictures. God,” she sighed heavily, “sometimes I wish it was me having this nervous breakdown.”

Julie had a point. I mean, even in the depths of romantic woe I could see the appeal of suffering an ul-trasophisticated collapse in Paris with lots of shops
close by. I’d much rather have one there than somewhere deadly like the psychiatric department of the Beth Israel Medical Center, where there are no good boutiques as far as I know. The only thing I was beyond paranoid about was that niggling deadline. I took a very irresponsible executive decision only to announce my French trip after I’d returned from it. That way no one could stop me before I left on the grounds that I had a pressing story to write.

Ooh, I thought to myself, as I stepped onto the Air France plane the next evening, this
crise de nerfs
(that’s French for mental crisis) is going
absolutely brilliantly
. I was almost cheerful that night. Even when I saw a hot young couple in the aisle next to Julie and me, trying to upset me by publicly sharing a bottle of echinacea as though they were the pre-divorce Tom and Nicole or something—you know, one droplet for him, one for her sort of thing—I just smiled and thought, next time I’m really in love I’m going to do that too. I was definitely getting better.

When we got to the hotel early the next morning everyone on reception was just glowing with pleasure to see us.

“Congratulations,
mes chéries
,” said the concierge, Monsieur Duré. He always takes care of everything Julie wants there and knows her needs “beyond intimately.”

“
Merci, monsieur
,” I said in my intermittently fluent French, which was coming in truly useful already.

French people are so nice to people about nervous breakdowns I can’t imagine why they have such an icky reputation. M. Duré was the cutest, kindest person I had ever met in my entire existence.

“So, Duré, where are you putting us? Somewhere heavenly I hope,” said Julie. “Oh, and could we have some
café au lait
sent up to the room immediately, darling? And a
petit
bit of
foie gras
would be divine too.”

Duré led us to the first floor and a double doorway. It was painted duck-egg blue and SUITE 106 was written on it in gold leaf. This
crise
was making me really, really happy already.

“
Voilà!
Our
plus romantique
suite. We are so ’appy to ’ear of the engagement,” said Duré, grandly throwing open the doors.

The sad thing is I never saw the view because I passed out on the threshold. This was very lucky because it gave the maids time to change all the pale pink “engagement” roses to violets before I got to see them.

“Duré, it’s a
dis
engagement,” Julie was whispering angrily when I came to.

“Oh! What is a disengagement?” Dure asked.

“It’s when the marriage is stopped,” I sighed.

“Ah,
vous-êtes une
spinster?” he said.

“
Oui
,” I replied. I got through an entire box of Julie’s Versace tissues in the next ten minutes, despite the loveliness of our suite. It had a huge drawing room with a balcony and a view over the Place Vendôme. Two bedrooms led directly off it, both with en-suite bathrooms stuffed with soaps stamped with the Ritz logo and shampoos and shower gel in glitzy Ritz bottles. Usually this would have cheered me up. Today the glamour of the bath accessories had zero impact on my mood.

The problem with negative mind states is that they are about as predictable as ex-boyfriends—you never know when they’re going to come back unannounced. One minute you can be feeling as happy as a rap star in a blacked-out SUV, and the next second something takes your mind to a place almost as hideous as the lobby of Trump Tower. (I say almost because even the ugliest emotional place you can go isn’t as poorly decorated as that golden interior.) I must have been beyond deranged to think things would improve in Paris. I spent my days listlessly trailing after Julie at Hermès and JAR, where she bought a ring set with a cushion-cut cognac diamond for $332,000 because she’d heard Roman Polanski had given his beautiful young French wife the same
one. She never wore it because it was insured only while in a safe.

The Ritz depressed me more than some of Laura Bush’s worst outfits. Duré barely acknowledged me. The maids cast pitying glances my way, even when I tipped them with fifty euro notes I had borrowed from Julie’s wallet. There were no Prospective Husbands here either—I was convinced one of those would resolve my feelings of inadequacy immediately. I had come to the detrimental conclusion that despite everything brilliant Gloria Steinem and Camille Paglia and Erica Jong had said on the subject, it would be
très
embarrassing to be in New York minus a fiancé. My mind spiraled tragically: why would anyone want to marry me anyway? I wasn’t interesting, I wasn’t really pretty (kind people just pretended I was), and the only boyfriends I had had were with me because they felt sorry for me. Never again would I get the round table at Da Silvano; I could forget about the chef’s special white truffle pasta at Cipriani that he made for favored guests; my platinum Bergdorf’s complimentary card would be taken away the minute the board of directors found out what had happened; when they saw how beyond my breakuprexia had become, the designers would stop sending me clothes to borrow; the VIP room at Bungalow 8 would be off limits; and never again would I see a movie before everyone else because
there would be no more invitations to premieres. If I was lucky, the most I could look forward to was a friends-and-family screening for Showtime’s Movie of the Week.