Trading Up (63 page)

Turning away from the window, and unable to think of any other way to amuse herself, she sat down on the couch and picked up a fashion magazine. She’d read this one at least three times by now; she’d been so bored she’d even read the ads. She 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:25 PM Page 336

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threw the magazine back on the coffee table in disgust, wondering how she was going to fill her time until Selden got home at six. She could call Jerry and ask him to get her some new magazines; she might even ask him for a book. But she was too distracted to read anything that might require as much concentration as a book . . .

and she was sick of TV.

Oh! she thought in frustration. She was sick to death of
everything
. . .

She stood up and began pacing the short length of the living room. She’d
wanted
to get away—maybe to Europe or to one of those horse ranches in Montana—but Selden said he couldn’t. Despite their troubles, he still had to be in his office every day, and he didn’t trust her on her own. How much longer was she going to be trapped in this suite then? she wondered. Two
more
weeks? A month?

Six
months . . . ?

Peering through the curtains yet again, she thought: Why
shouldn’t
she go out?

The photographers were nearly gone anyway . . . And Wendy was right—she was going to have to leave the suite sooner or later. Why shouldn’t it be
today
?

But where—and with whom? She glanced at the clock—it was just before noon. Normally at this time she would be getting ready to go out to lunch at Dingo’s . . . and she suddenly realized that that was
exactly
what she should do.

Dingo’s, she decided, was perfect: There would be just enough important people there—enough so that her entrance would have an impact, but not so many that it would appear that she was trying to make some kind of statement. Of course, it was also a bit of a risk. What if they didn’t give her her usual table . . . What if they wouldn’t even let her in. But they would have to—and Wesley loved her anyway.

Why, she had practically made that place . . .

But who could she go with? she wondered, nibbling at a scab on her index finger.

There was only one person, really—her sister. Patty wouldn’t want to go, but Janey would make her.

But there was a more important question that concerned her, and that was specifically:
What to wear?

She had to look perfect for her reentrance into society, she thought, hurrying to her closet. There was the Luca Luca red tweed suit with the beautiful fur collar . . .

She could wear the suit with the black pearls. And with her six-karat diamond engagement ring and pavé Tiffany diamond wedding band sparkling on her left finger, she would look the very opposite of anybody’s idea of a prostitute . . .

No,
white
! she thought, suddenly. She
must
wear
white
. White was the color of purity. It signified innocence and virtue . . . But most of her white clothes were for summer—except for the vintage Kors dress she’d worn to that dinner in Connecticut . . . She gasped at her boldness—did she
dare
wear
that
? She did, she thought with excitement, hurrying to her closet to pull out the dress. It would be shocking, 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:25 PM Page 337

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it would be audacious even; it would show them
all
that she didn’t care
what
they thought of her. And she had a white wool coat she could wear over it. And she would wrap her head in a white pashmina and put on a pair of dark glasses . . .

She went into the bathroom and began preparing her face. She hadn’t worn her makeup in so long, the maid had wedged her makeup kit onto the top shelf of the medicine cabinet. She yanked on it, and as she did so, her last tube of Pussy Pink lipstick fell out and dropped into the marble tub. Its pink cap snapped and broke off on impact, and she cried out in horror.

What did it mean? she wondered, sadly picking up the broken pink plastic pieces and holding them in her hand. The lipstick was ruined—she couldn’t carry it in her purse without a top, because it would somehow twist out and stain everything else in her bag. But maybe, she thought, touching the pieces and then dropping them into the small wastepaper basket, it wasn’t such a bad omen after all.

Maybe it was simply a sign that her old life had ended, and somehow, a new, better one had begun.

Selden Rose sat at his desk, staring at the contract in front of him.

He’d been working on getting the contract for months—it commissioned a well-known playwright to create a series about a family who ran an underground gambling casino in the basement of a town house on the Upper East Side—and although the writer hadn’t officially written a word, there was already some good buzz about the project. Now that this contract was nearly finished, he intended to go after Wendy Piccolo to play the beautiful, wild, never-married daughter. But as usual these days, he found he could barely concentrate on the words right in front of his face . . . The very fact that he had to read a contract for a screenplay was a constant reminder of the situation with Janey. With a sigh, he pushed the contract to the side, and then got up and looked out the window at the downtown view. It was another overcast day, and he could barely make out the silver outline of the twin towers . . .

He looked at his watch—it was past eleven-thirty. He hadn’t gotten nearly enough work done that morning, and now he had to have a private lunch with Victor Matrick in the executive-executive dining room. He wished he could put it off—indeed, he would have given anything to be able to get out of it altogether—

but that, of course, was impossible. Victor’s secretary had called his secretary a week before to set up the lunch, and then she had called this morning to confirm.

He’d had only two lunches alone with Victor since coming to the company: One, when Victor had been thinking about making him the CEO of MovieTime, and the other, two weeks after he’d taken the job. But he wasn’t surprised that Victor wanted to have lunch with him. Not really. In fact, he’d been expecting it, given all the unwanted publicity Splatch Verner had received lately.

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He had no idea what Victor was going to say, but he imagined it wouldn’t be pleasant.

He’d been worrying about it all morning, considering every angle that the Old Man might take, but finally he had come to the conclusion that—once again—he was at a loss. Which was exactly what he told his mother when she called every third day at 5 p.m. like clockwork—just to see if there were any terrible “new developments” that she should brace herself for beforehand.

At ten minutes to noon, he went up in the elevator to the forty-second floor, then walked down the hallway to the private elevator that was the only means of access to the forty-third floor and Victor’s lair. The elevator had an intercom instead of a regular up button, and he pressed the tiny silver knob at the bottom.

“Yes?” one of Victor’s three secretaries inquired.

“It’s Selden Rose. For lunch with Victor . . . ?”

“Of course, Selden,” the woman said cheerily. “Come right up.” The elevator door opened and he got in.

In three seconds, he arrived on the forty-third floor. One of the secretaries was waiting by the elevator to greet him.

“Hello, Selden,” she said pleasantly. “Mr. Matrick is just finishing up a call; he’ll be through in about five minutes. In the meantime, I can take you into the dining room.”

They walked down a long, narrow corridor that was painted blue and hung with paintings in gilt frames. There were several doors on either side, painted a deeper blue, with molded trim that matched the blue on the walls. In the middle of the hallway, the secretary stopped and opened one of the doors, holding it open as she stepped aside for him to enter.

“I hope you have a lovely lunch,” she said; and then added, “Oh, I nearly forgot,” and handed him a small white card edged with the same blue as the doors.

“Your menu,” she nodded.

“Thank you,” he said. He stepped into the room and looked down at the card.

“Iceberg lettuce and California tomatoes
with
Maytag blue cheese dressing,” it read,

“
followed by
. . . fresh pan-fried Dover sole
with
asparagus and new potatoes . . .
followed by
. . . walnut brownie topped
with
homemade vanilla ice cream.” Sounds delicious, Selden thought grimly. And absentmindedly folding up the card and shoving it into his pocket, he looked around.

Every attempt had been made to make the diner think that he was possibly in Europe and not in a still-unfinished building on Columbus Circle—from the row of French doors that led out onto a terrace, through which were visible shapes of topiary now covered by snow, to the paneled walls, to the carved wooden dining room chairs placed around a long table laid with two place settings. The exception 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:25 PM Page 339

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was the large flat plasma screen set into the wall at one end of the room—presumably so the diners could watch the latest offerings from Splatch Verner while they consumed the cuisine prepared by the private, five-star chef.

One place was set at the end of the table facing the screen; the other was just to the right. Selden sat down in front of the latter.

He looked up at the screen and sighed.

As if by magic, the screen flickered and a program appeared featuring a not unpleasant-looking middle-aged man. It was
The Jerry Springer Show,
and Selden sighed again. The Old Man was notorious for singling out executives to show them episodes of the show, after which he would pontificate about the significance of the show in American culture. It appeared that today he was to be the victim, and, despite his abhorrence of the show, he began watching, knowing that there would be some kind of quiz later.

Onscreen, a hideously unattractive young man with pimples and a rat tail of hair sprouting from the back of his head came out from behind a partition. After a few seconds of looking confused, he was joined by a prettyish blond girl (who was, Selden immediately decided, far too attractive for Rat Tail); in a moment, she began screaming in his face. Then another young woman in a pink tube top came out and started screaming at the blond woman. It was nearly impossible to understand what was going on or what they were upset about or indeed, what they were even
saying,
because the two women kept using expletives, which the censors had to constantly bleep out.

Then Blondie shoved Tube Top, and two burly security types, who looked as if they’d seen this far too often, pulled them apart. Blondie starting attacking Rat Tail again; meanwhile, Tube Top turned to the audience and, “shaking her booty,” pulled down her top, exposing her breasts. These delights were quickly covered by a black band. Selden sighed again, and began patting the top of his head.

Then he caught himself and stopped. The irony, no doubt, was that the net result of this debacle would be that all his hair would fall out from abuse.

On top of everything else.

The door opened and Victor Matrick came into the room.

Selden stood up.

Victor Matrick was a tall man of medium build; despite his age, which some insisted was over eighty, he looked the picture of health, with a headful of thick white hair and ruddy cheeks to go with it. He was notoriously hearty—or could be, anyway—and coming into the room with the slight slouch that tall men learn to adapt so they don’t hit their heads, he patted Selden on the back and then clasped both Selden’s hands in his and shook them up and down.

“Selden,” he said, nodding. “Selden Rose. It was so good of you to accept my 18947_ch01.qxd 4/14/03 11:25 PM Page 340

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invitation to lunch,” as if, Selden thought bitterly, he had had any choice in the matter. “Shall we sit down?” he asked, taking the seat at the head of the table. “The first course will be along in a minute; the staff here is pretty good at timing things . . .”

“Of course,” Selden murmured, sitting down after him.

Victor Matrick unfolded the linen napkin that had been placed in the middle of his plate. “So what do you think of the show?” he asked, nodding at the screen.

“Well. I . . .”

“I’m sure, like a lot of people, you find it fairly horrifying,” Victor Matrick said, giving Selden a smile that revealed perfectly white, evenly spaced teeth—obviously all fake. “I used to myself, so I understand . . .

“But then,” he continued—it was apparent that this was a speech he had given many times before—“I really began to think about it,” he said, nodding his great, white head. “I always like to spend a lot of time thinking about anything that really bothers me, because if you can figure out why something’s bothering you, chances are that you might discover something pretty amazing. And then I came to this conclusion.” Victor put his elbows on the table and pointed up at the ceiling with his two index fingers. “Do you want to know what it is?”
Do I have any choice?
Selden thought sarcastically; but, naturally, all he did was nod eagerly.

“It’s
bawdy,
” Victor said.

“Bawdy, sir?” Selden asked.

“Bawdy,” Victor nodded. “It’s the most basic form of entertainment, and it’s been around for a million years—probably since people first got the idea to entertain themselves. Look at that audience, Selden,” Victor said, causing Selden to look back at the screen. “It’s no different than it was four hundred years ago, when the peasants used to sit in the stalls and throw tomatoes at the performers onstage, right before the French Revolution . . .”

“I
think,
Mr. Matrick,” Selden ventured, “that the French Revolution took place about
two
hundred . . .”

“I was never good at history, Selden,” Victor Matrick said. “Most modern men aren’t—and it doesn’t make a bit of difference. Look at those guests, Selden,” he commanded. “The freaks, the geeks, the peasants . . . society has always found a use for them, and they’ve always been a part of society. Look at those
faces,
” Victor urged. “Do you see any intelligence there . . . any glimmer of a larger understanding of moral values?”