Trading Up (32 page)

She stumbled forward, grabbing on to the mantelpiece, where, she saw, he had placed a photograph of an exotic, dark-haired woman, most likely his mother.

“What the hell is your problem?” she shouted, wiping her mouth.

“What is
your
problem?” he asked furiously, as if he were the injured party.

“How can I make it more obvious that I
don’t
want to have sex with you?” She was so surprised by his answer that at first it barely registered. His lack of interest was not a possibility, she thought, unless he was gay. “That’s ridiculous,” she said boldly, finding her emotional footing again. “Everyone wants to have sex with me.”

For a moment, he looked at her pityingly, as if he didn’t find her sexy at all; under his gaze, she felt her confidence drain. “Yes,” he said softly. “That’s the problem.” He bent over to pick up her skirt; as he did so, she was suddenly full of fear. She wasn’t sure what he meant, but his words had the effect of draining the blood from her face. “You wanted to sleep with me . . . this summer,” she gasped.

“No.” He shook his head, handing her the skirt. “Please,” he said. “Get dressed.

Don’t make this more embarrassing for yourself . . .” Between them, the skirt hung from his hand like a flag; it was a symbol of her failure and she could not take it from him. She thought he was unbelievably arrogant. She hated him and desired him at once. She felt she must win, she felt driven to come away from this experience with something, no matter what the cost to herself. “You
did
want to sleep with me this summer. Why won’t you admit it?” she demanded.

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For a second he looked at her fearfully, measuring her anger and her level of craziness. Without taking his eyes off her, he laid the skirt on the couch. “If you don’t want to get dressed, I won’t force you,” he said. “But I’m going out. I have an appointment I must keep.”

“With Mimi?” she spat.

“With Harold Vane,” he said. “We have the matter of some horses to discuss.”

“Horses!” she sneered, followed by a cruel laugh. “So that’s it. You prefer horses to women . . .”

“Sometimes,” he said, looking her up and down. Then he passed by her and went into the bedroom.

Some small rational corner of her brain told her to gather up the threads of dignity she still had left, to get dressed and to go. But she had reached that irrational emotional point where the only place left to go is down; she would disgrace herself, she would make the womanly sacrifice of her pride and self-respect in the misguided idea that this would somehow make him love her. Years ago, when she was in her early twenties, she’d dated a wealthy young man who had dropped her with no explanation after they ran into his parents at a restaurant, and in a fury, she had filled his Jeep with mud when she’d spotted it parked outside the Conscience Point Inn, a club in the Hamptons. He’d called her insane, of course, but she wanted him to explain his behavior. She’d heard rumors that he’d heard something unsavory about her past, and the not knowing made her crazy, made her want to punish him . . .

And now, watching Zizi move about in the tiny bedroom, she was filled with the same fury. How dare he walk away unscathed? She marched into the bedroom, coming up behind him—he was changing his shirt and his bare, lean, muscled back was in front of her. “I want to know
why
!” she shouted. He turned, grabbing a button-down shirt from on top of the bed and sliding it over his arms.

“That is stupid,” he said.

She slapped his arm. “Why did you choose Mimi over me?”

“It wasn’t a choice,” he said evenly, pushing past her. She followed him through the living room. “Tell me!” she cried. “I won’t leave until you tell me.”

“There is nothing to tell,” he said, with the typical frustrating male obstinacy that drives women crazy. He went to the front closet and removed a tie, then he went into the bathroom to fasten it in front of the mirror.

“What does she have that I don’t have?” Janey screamed, flailing at him with her hands.

He had reached that point where she was no longer of interest to him. She had gone too far, but this kind of thing happened to him with women all the time. She was broken now, sobbing in the corner of the bathroom, turning her wet, swollen 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:23 PM Page 172

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face up to him and asking, “Why, why, why?”—but for him she was like a dirty wet rag tossed on the floor. He stepped by her and took a cashmere sports jacket from the closet. He put it on, and then slipped a long tweed coat over it. He picked up his gloves from the mantelpiece and when he turned around, she was standing in front of the door with arms and legs akimbo, blocking his exit.

“I won’t let you leave until you tell me why!” she screamed hysterically.

He sighed. Why did women always make these scenes? He didn’t want to be unkind, but when he treated her like a human being she took it as a sign that he was in love with her. He had been slightly interested in her at the beginning of the summer—for one minute, because she made such a show of herself it was impossible not to look at her and wonder. But he had been informed as to her nature, and he didn’t want a woman like that. In a neutral voice, he said, “I will ask you to move away from the door.”

“And I will ask you to tell me
why,
” she said, defiantly, starting all over again.

He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her away from the door. She tried to grab on to him, so he had to shove her to the side. She took a couple of steps to try to steady herself, and in that moment, he took the opportunity to yank open the door and propel himself into the hallway, slamming the door behind him.

For a moment, he stood taking a breath as he ran his hands through his hair.

Then he started down the steps. She wouldn’t come after him now, he thought, dressed only in her bra and panties—even she couldn’t be that crazy. When he saw her next, she would probably ignore him out of embarrassment over her behavior; he would never tell anyone about the incident and, he guessed, neither would she—

it was too shameful and made her look like a fool, and it would ruin her reputation to present herself as a failed seductress. And so, while the matter might never be forgotten, it wouldn’t be spoken of, and he was safe, he thought.

But then he heard someone clattering down the stairs behind him. He turned, shocked that she’d been able to get dressed so quickly, and the sight of her sickened him. Her hair stuck out in disarray and she hadn’t bothered to button her blouse; her face was grotesquely swollen and her red-rimmed eyes were glazed with anger.

This was the real Janey Wilcox, he thought—a shrieking harridan whose true nature obliterated her superficial beauty. His first instinct was to run—but then fury took over. He wasn’t an animal who could be forced to provide sex on demand, nor was he under an obligation to provide sex to the multitudes of women who “fell in love” with him because he was beautiful. “Do you want to know why I won’t sleep with you?” he shouted. The fact that he was going to answer her took her aback, and she stopped three steps above him.

“Why?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips.

“Because you’re a
whore,
” he spat. “And I don’t sleep with whores.” 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:23 PM Page 173

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She took a step forward as if to slap him, but he turned quickly, racing down the stairs as she tripped after him. “You’re a fool!” she screamed. “That’s a real joke . . . Everybody knows that Mimi is the biggest whore in town . . . She’s only with George Paxton because of his money . . .” Finally reaching the entry door, Zizi twisted open the bolt and stepped outside. He looked up and down the street in search of a taxi, and in that second she was upon him.

“Don’t think you can get away with this,” she hissed. “I’m going to tell Mimi that you tried to seduce me . . . I wonder how you’ll feel when your meal ticket dries up. You’re the only real whore in this situation . . .” Adjusting his gloves, he said coldly, “I didn’t hate you until that remark.” And as he took a step back, a woman’s voice said tentatively, “Janey? Janey Wilcox?” She didn’t take her eyes off his face, but immediately underwent a transforma-tion. Her face relaxed and she smoothed one hand over her hair, clasping the top of her fur coat together with the other. With a maniacal smile, she turned and said,

“Yes?”

Zizi’s only impression of the woman was that she was the sort of blandly pretty blond woman one saw constantly on the streets of the Upper East Side; she could have been anyone, really. The woman was looking at Janey with an expression of eager surprise that slid into perplexity at the realization that Janey hadn’t recognized her.

“It’s Dodo. Dodo Blanchette . . . ?”

“Ohmigod,
Dodo,
” Janey said.

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Dodo said, looking from Janey to Zizi with an insinuating smirk.

“I have to be going,” Zizi said sharply. Seeing his escape, he turned and walked quickly up the street.

Both women watched him from behind. He possessed an indefinable elegance that made him look as if he were too good for her old street of run-down brownstones, and thinking about him that way made Janey want to cry again. She couldn’t figure out what had happened or why—all she knew was that she felt a terrible sense of loss, as if something essential had been taken from her, and she was depleted.

“What a
dish,
” Dodo said, as if Zizi were literally something she’d like to eat.

“He’s gorgeous. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought you two were having a
lovers’ quarrel
!”

Dodo was one of those nosy kinds of women who was always trying to get information, Janey thought. Her brows were tweezed down to thin rows of hairs that marched over her eyes like a line of ants; her bleached hair was broken off at the ends. But for a moment, Janey was tempted to tell Dodo the whole pathetic 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:23 PM Page 174

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story. She had a feeling that Dodo would be sympathetic—until she ran home and told the Splatch Verner crew about Selden Rose’s wife. Turning away, Janey realized that, while she longed to speak about it, there was no one she could tell. She had no real best friend, no confidante whom she could trust.

“Oh, Zizi?” she said, in a voice that was too unsteady and too high. “He’s my tenant. I was just collecting the rent check.” Dodo appeared disappointed by this information, but she didn’t press it. “By the way,” she said, “we’ve decided to go heli-rafting in the Grand Canyon in March and we’re hoping you and Selden can come.”

Janey was forced into several more minutes of pointless chitchat with Dodo, who was on her way to get a pedicure, and as she finally made her escape, it began snowing. She suddenly became aware of her feet, which were freezing, and the absurdity of wearing sandals in winter . . . She knew she should find a taxi but she was confused . . . she had to get herself together before she could go home, but she wasn’t exactly sure how.

Finally, she ducked into a narrow black marble doorway and took out her cell phone. A terrible sense of guilt made her want to call Mimi, to hear her voice—if Mimi behaved normally (and why wouldn’t she?), it would be like the whole incident with Zizi had never happened. But it
had
happened, and going over it in her mind—the way he had thrown her to the floor and called her a whore—she cringed with a shame that was like physical pain. He had hurt her—cruelly and deliberately, she thought—he was violent and dangerous. For a moment she hesitated—
should
she tell Mimi?—but then shame became anger, and she dialed her number.

She could tell that the Paxton household was in a state of confusion by Mimi’s hurried, “Hello?” She’d just returned from picking the boys up at the airport and they had brought their dog, which had peed on the carpet. “The boys keep asking about you, darling,” she said. “Jack keeps wondering when he’s going to see you . . .

You will come and visit them, won’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” Janey said, leaning against the wall. She passed her hand over her eyes; she thought she might become sick. She wished she
were
in Mimi’s warm, elegant house, which was homier than the one in East Hampton, drinking hot chocolate and playing with the boys . . .

“What did Selden say about the pearls?” Mimi asked, and then shouted to the dog: “Sadie, go to your room! Jack, please take Sadie upstairs . . .”

“He hasn’t seen them yet.”

“Oh?” Mimi said, distracted. “What did you do?”

“I went shopping. At Burberry . . .” and as soon as she said it, she realized that she’d left her boots at Zizi’s. It would give her an excuse to go back there, to settle 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:23 PM Page 175

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the score with him. Thinking about it now, she felt that there was something dark and unfinished between them. He had to be punished. He had to suffer for rejecting her, he had to feel the sting of her anger . . .

“Is everything okay?” Mimi asked. “You sound funny . . .”

“Well . . . ,” Janey began. She stepped out of the doorway and onto the sidewalk. She was back on Madison Avenue. She passed the Prada store and saw that there was a dress she wanted in the window. She stopped, realizing that Mimi’s question was her opening, but suddenly knowing that she didn’t have the guts to tell Mimi the whole sordid story.

“Did something happen? With Selden?” Mimi asked distractedly.

“No, Selden’s
fine,
” Janey said. “It’s just that . . .” She didn’t know where to begin. Zizi now had secret knowledge of her—would he share it with Mimi? she thought wildly. How often did they see each other anyway, she wondered, thinking if only there were a way to prevent them from getting together . . .

“Is it Patty?”

“Yes,” Janey said, with relief. She suddenly saw the solution to her problem.

“Patty and Digger are coming back next week . . . I just talked to her and it isn’t going well, so I think she’s going to need to stay in my apartment for a while.”