Four Blondes

by Candace Bushnell

  And the horrible thing about it is that the more I think about it, the more compelled I am to do it. After all, Hubert is my husband, and what could be more natural than a wife’s going to visit her husband at lunch-time? Especially if she thinks he might be having an affair (which he might be), and especially if she thinks that he probably has other plans for lunch (which he most likely does). This conundrum will force him to choose his wife or the previous lunch plans. His choice will tell the wife just about all she needs to know about her husband, which is a) if he chooses work over his wife, he’s a shit and he doesn’t love her, or b) if he chooses his wife over his work, he’s probably still a shit but he may love her. Either way, I have a feeling that Hubert is going to lose today, and I want to be there to witness it.

  For some reason, I am wearing a navy-blue hat and navy-blue-and-white-striped gloves when I tap on the receptionist’s desk with a gold Dunhill lighter. I also have a cell phone that doesn’t seem to work in my bag, along with two old tampons and a crumbly dog biscuit. “H.L., please,” I say to the receptionist, who doesn’t do anything at first and then says in a cold, bored voice, “Whom shall I say is here?” and I say, “His wife,” and she looks me up and down and says, “Just a minute,” and all I can think about is that she hasn’t recognized me, for some reason, and this infuriates me and makes me want to KILL her, so I bang annoyingly with the lighter again.

  Then I remind myself that I am getting better.

  She picks up the phone and says to someone, “Is H. there?” and then, as if there’s some question about it, she says, “Well his wife is here?” Then she puts down the phone and says, “Someone will be out to see you.”

  “What do you mean, someone will be out to see me? Where’s my husband?” I say. “I didn’t come here to see someone, I came to see my husband.”

  “He’s not in his office.”

  “Is anybody ever in their office these days?”

  “Does he know you’re coming to see him?”

  “Of course he does,” I say, realizing that this is beginning to go badly.

  “Well, he’s probably on the set. Dianna Moon is on the show today.”

  “And am I supposed to care about Dianna Moon?”

  The receptionist seems to look at me for the first time. Her nails are fake, lacquered in red, white, and blue stripes. They appear to be her only distinguishing feature.

  “A lot of people . . . care . . . about Dianna Moon.”

  I remove my gloves, pulling at each of the fingers. “Is that because she . . . murdered her husband?”

  The receptionist looks around nervously. “He died of a drug overdose. And besides, Dianna Moon is a . . . hero. The ratings are going to be huge.”

  I yawn loudly. “But what has she ever done?” I ask, realizing this is a totally arrogant question on my part, as it could be argued that I’ve never done anything myself, except for marrying Hubert, supposedly one of the world’s most eligible bachelors.

  The receptionist glares at me. “I’ll just see if I can find H. for you.”

  At that moment, Constance DeWall walks through the gray armored door that leads to the secretive maze of studios belonging to The Network.

  “Cecelia,” she says, holding out her hand. “So nice to see you again. Unfortunately, this isn’t a good day for a surprise visit. We’ve got Dianna Moon on the set and she’s . . . well, she’s Dianna Moon.”

  “And I’m Princess Cecelia Kelly Luxenstein,” I say, somewhat casually, cringing about the princess bit, knowing that it’s the kind of thing that sets people off and makes them ring up gossip columns. “And I’d like to see my husband.”

  “Is this urgent, Princess Luxenstein?” Constance says with extreme sarcasm, which I will make her pay for later, perhaps by trying to get her fired. She is, I’ve heard, a “younger, nicer, smarter” version of me. What I know is that she’s madly in love with my husband (just like all those other dummy Harvard graduates), has been trying to get him into bed since she first started as his line producer two years ago, and truly believes he would be better off with her instead of me.

  “Does the situation have to be urgent for me to see my husband?” I ask, with equal sarcasm.

  “It’s just that . . . we’ve got a lot of security around.”

  “To protect Slater London from Dianna Moon, I assume.”

  Constance and the receptionist exchange a quick look. The receptionist looks down, pretending to rearrange phone messages.

  “I can put you in the green room,” Constance says finally. “But I can’t guarantee anything.”

  Minutes later, illegally smoking cigarettes in the green room, I’m half watching the TV monitor as Dianna Moon, wearing a satin evening gown (one strap carelessly fallen off her shoulder) leans toward Slater London and, with complete earnestness, says, “I never look back at the past. I’ve been lucky and”—staring directly into the camera—”I thank Jesus every day.” Then she sits back triumphantly, crossing her legs and throwing her arm over the back of the chair so that her cleavage is exposed. She giggles.

  Slater London, who is half English and half American, former teenage screen heartthrob whose own career ended (briefly) when he was discovered wearing women’s clothing, leans across his desk and says, “Dianna. Have you become a Jesus freak?”

  Dianna Moon’s face goes blank, and without seeming to be able to help herself, she says, “Slater. Do frilly pink underpants mean anything to you?”

  Slater, who is caught off guard but covers it up by running his hand across his blond crew cut, says, “Wasn’t Alice in Wonderland wearing them when she went down the rabbit hole?”

  “Hole,” Dianna says flirtatiously. “Is that a word you like?”

  Slater looks at the camera. “Okay, folks. That’s all the time we have. Dianna, thank you so much for being on the show, and good luck with your new movie. . . .” Then he smiles at the camera for a few seconds before ripping off his mike and screaming, “I hope we can cut out that last bit.” The sound goes off as technicians walk onto the set with Hubert following. Dianna throws her arms around him as she looks over her shoulder at Slater, then they all walk off and the screen goes blank.

  I suddenly feel sorry for my husband.

  Does he know he’s being USED? What IS his job, really? Booking guests and making sure that Slater isn’t convicted for statutory rape? Who would choose to do this?

  Hubert. EUROPEAN CROWN PRINCE IS NOT ONLY GORGEOUS, HE’S A REGULAR GUY, a headline screamed three years ago when Hubert first took the job. On his first day, he was photographed buying a sandwich from the corner deli, and when he came out, brown bag in hand, he actually waved the bag at the photographers and smiled. PRINCE’S FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL was the cover of The New York Post the next day, and I actually did not, at the time, think it was strange.

  “I just want to do something normal. Like a regular person,” Hubert had said. And I had agreed. “I just want us to be able to walk down the street and buy an ice cream cone,” I had said, pouting, even though I HATE ice cream because it makes you fat, and Hubert had said, “So would I baby, so would I.” Mournfully.

  I encouraged him to take the job. Show biz. How difficult could it be? Hubert had already had a spate of jobs in banking, all of which, strangely, had turned out to be disasters. He had no head for numbers; in fact, he left generous tips because he couldn’t calculate 20 percent. I ignored this back then.

  But now I suddenly realize: My husband is charming, convivial, and beautifully mannered. But also kind of . . . dumb.

  They’re USING him for his connections.

  I light a cigarette in disgust, and as I do, the door to the green room opens (that damn Constance probably locked me in), and Hubert comes in with Dianna Moon, who for some strange reason rushes over to me and throws her arms around me like a two-year-old, nearly knocking the cigarette out of my hand.

  “I’ve always wanted to meet you,” she gushes. Then she stands back and says, “You are as pretty
as everyone says.” She takes my hand and says, “I hope we can be really good friends.”

  I want to hate her but I can’t, at least not right then.

  “Constance told me you were here,” Hubert says lamely. “And Dianna said she wanted to meet you.”

  “I was hoping you might be able to have lunch,” I say. Wondering, Is it me or is his Dianna comment subtly hostile?

  “Let’s all have lunch together. At one of those Ladies Who Lunch places,” Dianna says. “I’m feeling very, very ladyish today.”

  “Can’t,” Hubert says casually. “Bob and I have a standing invitation for lunch every Wednesday.”

  “Oh really,” I say.

  “Of course, there’s no way you would have known that,” Hubert says.“If you’d called before you came. . . .”

  “Oh, who’s this damn Bob person? Blow him off,” Dianna says. “Tell him you’re having lunch with me. I’m sure Bob will understand.”

  “He’ll understand, but he’s the head of The Network,” Hubert says.

  “But don’t you want to have lunch with your wife?” Dianna asks, in what seems to be genuine confusion. “She’s so pretty. . . .”

  “We hardly ever see each other,” I say in a completely neutral tone, pulling on my gloves.

  “Norman and I used to spend every minute together,” Dianna says. “Every minute. We couldn’t get enough of each other. We were obsessed. We’d spend days and days together in bed. . . .” She screws her face up. “I miss him. I miss him so much. No one really understands.” And then she begins to cry.

  Hubert and I look at each other in alarm. Hubert does nothing. I cough politely into my glove.

  “He was the greatest love of my life. My only love. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to date anyone, even,” she says, although it’s a well-known fact that she is at the moment not only dating someone (the head of a movie studio) but, according to Star magazine, living with him (or at least leaving all her stuff at his house), but it’s clear the tears are just part of her little performance, because she suddenly grabs my hand again and says, “Well, at least you’ll have lunch with me. I just can’t be alone right now.”

  Hubert looks relieved. “Why don’t you go to Cipriani’s? The Network will pick up the tab, of course,” he says, adding, “Cecelia, just be sure to bring me the receipt, okay?”

  And I just stare at him in horror, not believing that he is saddling me with this woman and treating me like some kind of . . . EMPLOYEE, for God’s sake.

  “I’ll have Constance make the arrangements,” he says. And just at that moment, Constance walks into the room and appears to “immediately sum up the situation.”

  “I’ll call Giuseppe,” she says, nodding at Hubert. “I’ll tell them to be expecting you. That way you won’t have to wait.”

  “I never have to wait. Anywhere,” I say to Constance, not believing her insubordination. I look at Hubert for confirmation, or at least some kind of support, but all he can do is smile uncomfortably.

  “Well. Good-bye then,” I say coldly.

  “I’ll see you later. At home,” he says, like I’m annoying him or something.

  “Right. I’ll make that phone call,” Constance says, looking at Hubert but not actually going anywhere. “Slater was a real comedian today, wasn’t he?” she says, like she and Hubert are the only ones in the room. “It’s all because of that damn Monique. That’s what you get for dating a child. Except now it’s our problem.” And then she actually touches Hubert’s arm. Specifically, his bicep.

  I was right. He is having an affair with Constance.

  “Who was that fucking bitch?” Dianna demands as she falls into the limo. “Christ. If I were you I would have smacked her. Listen, honey, rule number one: Never let any other bitch mess with your man. Because, guaranteed, that bitch is after your man. If you knew how many women I had to beat up, I mean, literally beat the FUCK off Norman, you wouldn’t believe it.”

  I want to say that I would believe it, since Dianna Moon’s barroom brawls are legendary, but I am either too afraid or too polite or too pissed off at Hubert right now to say anything, so I just nod and light a cigarette, which Dianna grabs out of my hand and begins smoking rapidly with large gestures. “I nearly cut a bitch’s tit off once, did you know that?”

  “Actually, I didn’t,” I say, lighting another cigarette, figuring that surely even she can’t smoke two cigarettes at the same time. “It’s true,” she says. “Bitch wanted to sue, but Norman and me, we had the biggest most powerful lawyers you could get in show business.”

  She sits back against the gray leather seat. I stare at her, unable to help myself. Her face is at once beautiful and ugly, the ugly part being original and the beauty the result of skilled plastic surgeons. “Yep,” she says. “Everybody loved Norman. I mean everyone. The first time I saw him on that movie set—it was in the desert—I knew I’d seen Jesus. And everybody else knew it too.” She turns to me and takes my hand. “That’s why I love Jesus so much right now, Cecelia. I love Jesus because I’ve seen Jesus. Right here on earth. He was only here for a short period of time, just enough to make three movies that grossed over a hundred million dollars. But he touched everyone, and once he’d touched everyone, he knew it was time to go back up to heaven. So he went.”

  “But—didn’t Jesus consider suicide a sin?” I say, wondering how much more of this I can take and if Hubert and Constance are having lunch and whether or not it’s some secret love-nest lunch place that they go to practically every day where Hubert says things like “I love you, but my wife is crazy.”

  Dianna stares into my eyes. “He didn’t commit suicide, Cecelia. Norman’s death, as you may have suspected, was a complete mystery. No one knows exactly how he died. They don’t even know what time he died. . . .”

  “But surely,” I say, “modern medicine . . .”

  “Oh no,” Dianna says. “Modern medicine is not as modern as everyone thinks. There are some things even the doctors can’t figure out. . . .”

  Yes, I can’t help thinking, and you are one of them.

  “Like the fact that his body wasn’t found for four days.”

  “And,” I say, unable to help myself, “weren’t parts of it missing? Eaten by wild animals?”

  Dianna looks out the window. “That’s what everyone thinks,” she says finally. “But the truth is . . . the body parts may have been carried off by . . . special disciples.”

  Oh dear.

  “I’m almost certain my husband is having an affair,” I say.

  “And these special disciples, they’re really . . .”

  “With Constance. That bitch.”

  “. . . they’re like angels, sort of. Sent down to kind of watch over him but . . .”

  “And I really don’t know what to do about it,” I say.

  “. . . the fact is that several people, I mean several people, think these special disciples are some kind of . . .”

  “I suppose I have to think about divorce.”

  “Aliens,” Dianna says.

  I just stare at her.

  She leans toward me. “You do believe Norman was Jesus, don’t you, Cecelia? Please say yes. Please. Because I really want us to be best friends. I could use a best friend in this town, you know?”

  Luckily, at this moment the limo pulls up in front of Cipriani’s.

  After a more-than-usual amount of fuss, we’re shown to a table in the front of the restaurant by the window. There are whispers all around us: “That princess . . . Cecelia . . . who’s that woman?. . . Oh, Dianna Moon . . . Norman Childs . . . Dianna Moon and . . . Luxenstein . . . Prince Hubert Luxenstein . . . dead, you know. . . .” And I know this will be an item in Page Six tomorrow, especially when I look up and see D.W. staring at me from five tables away, waiting for me to catch his eye so he can come over. He’s sitting with Juliette Morganz, the “little girl from Vermont” who’s marrying Richard Ally of the giant Ally cosmetics family at the end of the summer, at the A
lly estate in the Hamptons.

  The waiter comes over, and Dianna nearly slugs him when he attempts to place her napkin on her lap, but the brawl is averted by the appearance of D.W. He leans over and, in what is commonly called “syrupy tones,” says, “My dear. What an absolute delight to see you. I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather see more. You’ve made my day.”

  “Dianna Moon, D.W.”

  Dianna lifts her face to be kissed, and D.W. complies, kissing her on both cheeks. “Yeah,” she says. “What do the initials stand for?”

  “Dwight Wainous,” I say.

  “I was Cecelia’s first boss,” D.W. says. “Years ago. Since then Cecelia and I have been great, great friends.”

  I just look at him.

  “And I hear congratulations are in order,” he says to Dianna.

  “Yeah,” Dianna says, completely unimpressed.

  “On your Ally cosmetics contract.”

  “Can you believe that?” Dianna says. “Me, selling blue eyeshadow.”

  “The Allys are great, great friends of mine. In fact, I’m lunching with Juliette Morganz, Richard Ally’s fiancée, right now.”

  “Yeah?” Dianna says, squinting across the room. “You mean that little dark-haired thing?”

  Juliette waves eagerly.

  “I think I’m supposed to go to their wedding,” Dianna says.

  “She’s a very, very good friend of mine as well,” D.W. says.

  “Sounds like everyone in this town is a very, very good friend of yours. Maybe I should get to know you better,” Dianna says.

  “That,” says D.W., “would be a delight.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Dianna says as D.W. walks away from the table. “That guy looks like something someone dug up from under a rock in Palm Beach,” and I start laughing, even though Palm Beach reminds me of the two-week holiday Hubert and I took after we first got engaged, during which it became apparent to me that we may have had different expectations for our future together. Mine were: Louis Vuitton luggage, my hair always perfectly straight, jeeps in Africa, khaki jodhpurs, white columns set against the blue Caribbean Sea, dry-yellow Tuscan fields, a masked ball in Paris, emerald jewelry, the president, Lear jets, hotel suites, huge beds with white sheets and down pillows, an open roadster, my husband always kissing me, notes in my luggage that said “I love you,” and the wind always blowing through our hair. This is what I got instead: an “exciting” tour of America. Which began in Palm Beach. Where “the glamorous, just-engaged couple” stayed at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Brian Masters. Brian Masters (Hubert’s uncle) was a fat old man with moles all over the top of his head, whom I was seated next to at every meal, and who, on the first evening, leaned toward me and whispered, “This family was actually okay until Wesley went out to Hollywood and made all that damn money,” as a black man wearing white cotton gloves served lamb chops. His wife, Lucinda, who spoke with a slight English accent but was actually from, I think, Minnesota, had an odd sort of vagueness about her, and I discovered the reason why after a particularly frustrating game of mixed doubles in which I swore at Hubert and threw down my tennis racket.