Social Crimes

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  Nate turned on his heel and paused in the middle of the room, assuming a kind of at-ease stance with his legs slightly apart and his hands behind his back. The afternoon light flattened his features.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about two hundred million dollars.”

  He made a show of looking at his watch. “Jo, I can’t help you.”

  I rose from my chair. “You know, Nate, sometimes my own naïveté astounds me. I believe what people tell me. That is always such a mistake in New York.”

  “It’s a nice quality, though,” Nate said.

  “Is it? I’d have thought it would have dimmed the glory of your conquest,” I said, paraphrasing his own quote from Corneille.

  “Not at all.” He proffered a knowing smile.

  “Well, if I were you, I’d watch my step. Especially when you two get married. That is one dangerous little lady.”

  “Thanks for the advice, Jo. Appreciate it.”

  Leaving that office, I believe I understood more fully than I ever had why handgun laws carry such stiff penalties in New York. Good manners notwithstanding, if I’d had a gun, I’d have shot the bastard.

  I literally couldn’t afford to dwell on my hatred of Nate or of Monique. I had real financial problems to keep my anxieties occupied. I had no idea how I was going to pay all my debts.

  That is not to say I was poor. By any standard—save the rarefied one of the world I’d inhabited for the past two decades where anyone with less than twenty million dollars is considered only “moderately well off”—I was not one of the Hundred Neediest Cases. Far from it. Though none would have called me rich, most people in the world would have thought of me as well off and lucky.

  But as we have learned from stock market crashes, everything is relative. I had no fixed income and my decorating business was a bust. Not one new job had come in since the Dent debacle. I sensed there was a whispering campaign against me.

  True, I’d been relatively poor as a child, but twenty years of living around people whose idea of economizing was to get rid of their private plane had left me with a skewed sense of values. I wasn’t buying nearly as much as I once had, but when I did make a purchase—be it clothes, shoes, bags, cosmetics, food, incidentals—it was always the very best. I was so used to thinking in those terms. It now began to occur to me that I would have to cut down even on what I considered to be the necessities of life. No more gourmet shops. It was the supermarket for me. I was going broke. Fast.

  In order to make ends meet, I had no alternative but to discreetly sell off the few remaining possessions of any value I had left—my jewelry, a few drawings, some furniture. I contacted my friend Prince Nicholas Brubetskoi, who worked for Chapel’s Auction House as head of their European furniture department. Nicky, as everyone called him, was a great-grand-nephew or cousin or something of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia—no one really knew or cared. He was a relative and that was good enough.

  Brubetskoi’s job was to travel around the world persuading people with pedigreed possessions to allow Chapel’s to sell their treasures on the open market. His royal heritage gave him special entrée to the most ancient, secretive families in Europe.

  Nicky helped me dispose of some things at auction as “the property of a lady,” so no one would find out how tough times were for me. Understanding that important auctions confer luster on lesser goods as surely as important parties confer luster on lesser guests, Nicky had made sure that the items I consigned to Chapel’s got into a top sale where they would sell, in some cases, for much more than they were worth.

  I did not go to the auction of Important Old Master Drawings where I was getting rid of a set of four eighteenth-century flower drawings from my Southampton house that Lucius had given to me for my forty-first birthday. They were very decorative, but not great quality. After the sale, Nicky called to tell me they had sold well—triple the high estimate. I was pleased. Nicky was gracious, but I knew him well enough to sense a certain hesitancy in his voice, as if he had something more he wanted to tell me. I also knew him well enough to know that though he was usually discreet, there were occasions when he could be persuaded to part with confidential information, particularly if the party asking him was somehow involved. So I pressed him until he said the magic words: “I really shouldn’t be telling you this, Jo, but you didn’t hear it from me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Your drawings were bought by the Countess de Passy.”

  My gut tightened. “I see.”

  “And she’s instructed a colleague of mine that if anything of yours comes up for sale, she wants to know about it. It’s a bit bizarre, no?”

  I hung up the phone and sat still for a long moment, remembering how Monique had admired those drawings when they’d hung in the library in the country. I could understand she would want to have them back. They were perfect for the room. But her desire to know whenever anything of mine came up for sale gave me a feeling of being stalked.

  A couple of months later I learned that she had hung the drawings in one of her guest rooms in the city. She told everyone they were a gift from me. June told me she was trying to make people think we had made up.

  My obsession with Monique was growing, like a cancer. Whereas before there were many days when I went without giving her a thought, now I thought about her all the time. Her image was engraved on my retina. She was my constant companion, my first thought in the morning, my last thought at night. I sat in my bathtub having imaginary conversations with her out loud where I took both our parts. I fantasized running into her in different places and planned what I would do. My plans ranged from attacking her physically to cool indifference, depending on my mood. One thing was sure: We had a score to settle.

  Gradually, the obsession took on a life of its own. The more hollow my insides, the more I burst at the seams. I was feeding constantly, but never satisfied. I thought of myself as a master manipulator, but now I know I was only playing solitaire.

  Chapter 19

  The infusion of cash I realized from the sale of the drawings did as much to remedy my financial situation as a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. I had a growing sense of panic. My good friends like June, Betty, and Trish Bromire were supportive. But their lives diverged from mine in one fundamental way: They were rich and I was not. It was as simple as that. I had to watch both my time and my money very carefully. I couldn’t donate to my favorite charities—I was still paying off my damn pledge and other business debts. Nor could I go on trips, buy clothes, give parties, or even go out for lunch without calculating the cost. Keeping company with those who lived so effortlessly, even though they were my dear friends, frankly depressed me. Making ends meet was all I ever thought about. I understood too well the priceless comment of another fallen socialite who, years ago, had remarked: “Being poor in New York is hideously expensive.”

  Ethan Monk was the only one of my friends to sense my distress. He invited me over for dinner one night, just the two of us. Ethan was a marvelous cook. He and I used to joke that if he ever lost his curator’s job at the Muni, he could come and cook for me. “God knows, I’d get paid more,” Ethan joked, referring not only to his own salary from the museum but to the astronomical wages garnered by private chefs in New York. I used to pay our chef close to one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars a year, not including benefits or housing.

  Ethan lived in a small garden apartment in a converted brownstone in the Eighties, just off Central Park West. Architecturally, it was unimpressive except for a large, well-proportioned living room. Otherwise, the space was cut up and cramped. Nevertheless, it was clearly the dwelling of a cultivated man who had used limited resources and a keen eye to collect wisely. His walls were covered with Old Master drawings he had bought over a lifetime—many for a song—in the early days before drawings became such a major area of interest to collectors. The prize of the collection, which included Jan Fryt, Jacob de Wit, Antoine Dieu,
Agostino Carracci, Greuze, Guercino, Tiepolo, and others, was a study of a male nude by Tintoretto I’d given him for his fortieth birthday.

  Over a bottle of heady red wine and a delicious dinner of risotto, veal scallopini, and French beans, Ethan and I sat in his library dining room and talked frankly about my situation, particularly regarding the Municipal Museum. Because he was a very good friend and I trusted his judgment, I asked him for his opinion on whether or not I should resign from the board. I confided to him that I might not be able to pay off the entire pledge, particularly not at the rate things were going for me: “To be perfectly honest, Ethan, I’m broke.”

  “Join the club, Jo. I’m always broke playing the grand acquisitor, as you see,” he said sweeping his hand toward the cluttered walls.

  “Yes, but I actually owe a fortune. It’s not just the pledge. I still have to pay the workrooms, the lawyers, taxes. Nothing’s coming in. No one will hire me. I have a few things left I can sell, but when they’re gone I have no idea what I’m going to do. Do you think I should just resign from the board and have done with it?”

  Ethan didn’t answer me immediately. He offered me a calvados, which I declined. He poured himself a snifter. I nursed my glass of wine.

  “Do you?” I pressed him, hoping he would say no.

  “Jo, I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Oh God. You think I should, don’t you?”

  Ethan absently swirled the calvados around in his glass, looking down at the honey-colored liquid, obviously avoiding my gaze.

  “I’ll tell you something that may be difficult for you to hear.”

  “Trust me, nothing can top what I’ve heard in the last month.”

  “This may, actually. Monique had lunch with Roger and Edmond last week.”

  It was startling and unwelcome news. “Oh, lord, here it comes . . .” I gulped down what was left of my wine. “Her dream is to go on that board.”

  “They’re in a very tough position, Jo. Especially Roger.”

  I perked up like some sort of trace hound who’s just smelled blood.

  “He’s not thinking of letting her on—the ungrateful rat! He absolutely cannot do that to me!” I leapt up and helped myself to more wine. “You don’t have any hemlock I can add to this, do you?” I said, draining my glass and pouring another.

  “Calm down, Jo. Roger’s very upset.”

  “So am I!” I turned on my heel. “And what’s more you can tell him that I refuse to resign my position so she can have it. I refuse, that’s it. I absolutely refuse. I’m staying on that fucking board no matter what!”

  Ethan crossed his hands over his chest in a gesture of helplessness. “Don’t yell at me. I didn’t do anything.”

  “I’m sorry.” I was so agitated, I could hardly breathe. I sat back down on the couch. Ethan reached across the sofa and patted my knee.

  “Roger discussed this with you?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” he said in a resigned tone.

  “Edmond too?”

  “No, just Roger.”

  “Ethan, please. We’re such old friends. You’ve got to tell me what he said.”

  Ethan exhaled fiercely. “It’s pretty simple, really. She’s offered him a helluva lot of money, plus all the paintings from Lucius’s collection when she dies. A life trust thing for tax reasons.”

  “My collection, thanks very much! I could kill her.”

  “And this may be the capper: She got your pal Agatha Dent lined up to make a really serious donation.”

  “Fine. Put Agatha on the board then!”

  “Exactly. Only I don’t think dear old Agatha has the slightest interest. Her field is politics. She wants to be Pamela Harriman. Or, barring that, she wants Neil to be Pamela Harriman,” he said.

  “Great. ‘Where does the billion-dollar gorilla sit?’ ” Ethan joined me in the old retort, “Anywhere she wants!”

  We laughed.

  “God, it’s so typical of this city, isn’t it?” I said, shaking my head.

  “Money makes the world go ’round.”

  “What happened to love?”

  “You know, I think the saying was always ‘love of money makes the world go ’round’ and we just got an incomplete translation,” Ethan said.

  The alcohol was beginning to have a calming effect on me. My insides had warmed up considerably and I drifted into a welcome state of mild inebriation.

  “So what’s Roger Rabbit going to do?” I inquired.

  “He’s clearly in a bind,” Ethan replied. “I don’t think he knows quite what to do. He loves you, Jo. He really does. Not only that, he understands he owes his present position to you. On the other hand, you picked him because he’s a great fund-raiser. So here’s the quandary: In order for him to do his job well, he’s got to betray the person who got him his job. I’d hate to be in his shoes, wouldn’t you?”

  “Better his than mine.”

  I reflected for a long moment.

  “I don’t even know why I’m upset. It’s so predictable,” I said at last. “There had to come a point when I’d be just too difficult to defend. ‘Nice is nice to me,’ and all that. But Roger’s a real disappointment, I must say.”

  “It’s ain’t over yet,” Ethan said, trying to be reassuring.

  “Let’s face it, Ethan. I’m not a player anymore. You should see the apartment I live in now. It would be a rattrap, only no self-respecting rat would reside there. No, Monique stole all my chips. And now she wants to sit down at the table. They have to let her play, Ethan. That’s the game.”

  “Reminds me of the Metropolitan Opera versus the Academy of Music,” Ethan said.

  “How so?”

  “You know the story.”

  “Refresh my memory.”

  “It’s a little capsule summary of the way things work in New York. Back in the early 1880s, old Cornelius Vanderbilt was considered too vulgar by the powers that be to own a box at the Academy of Music on Fourteenth Street. So he and a few of the other ostracized nouveau riche got together and built the Metropolitan Opera House. Everyone said it looked liked a brewery. But guess what? They could afford to pay more, so they got the top singers from all over the world. The elegant Academy of Music was soon history.”

  “I remember the story. But I fail to see how a bunch of rich snobs excluding a bunch of richer vulgarians applies to me, thanks very much.”

  “The point isn’t about the personalities of the individuals, Jo,” Ethan explained. “The point is that New York has always been about money in one way or another. Money’s the real ticket in this town because it’s the lasting ticket. Oh, I don’t say that power, fame, talent, and beauty don’t count in their ways. They do. But in the end, they’re all mere diversions at the table money sets. And these days your friend Monique is offering a big, sumptuous buffet.”

  I decided to walk back home to my apartment from Ethan’s—right across Central Park, where I was stalked by shadows and a chill wind. I didn’t care. I knew as I was doing it what a silly and dangerous thing it was to venture out like that alone in New York at twelve o’clock at night. But I was tipsy and angry and defeated and, frankly, I just didn’t give a damn if I got mugged, or worse.

  I crossed the park without incident and found myself on Fifth Avenue. And just for the hell of it, I walked downtown toward my old apartment. I stood across the street and stared up at the fifteenth floor. All the windows were lit up. I couldn’t see anyone—it was too high up—but I suspected Monique was having a party. And just then, two couples emerged from the front door, laughing and talking as the doorman signaled to a waiting limousine. I didn’t recognize the first couple, but the second couple were Neil and Agatha Dent.

  This is how crazy I was. I decided to wait around and see who else came out of the building—assuming, rather nuttily, that whoever else did emerge had automatically been to Monique’s. I leaned against the gray stone wall that enclosed the park and bided my time. An hour passed. Then two. I looked at my
watch. It was close to three in the morning. The lights on the fifteenth floor went out and I decided that was it. Time to go home. Just as I was leaving, however, I saw an all too familiar figure emerge from the building. It was Nate Nathaniel.

  He looked around for a taxi. When none came, he buttoned his topcoat and started walking down Fifth. I followed him, keeping a safe distance. I kept wishing I had a gun. It would be so easy just to shoot the son of a bitch, I thought. I figured he was headed home. He lived in a small townhouse in a hidden corner of New York called Sniffen Court. Finally, he grabbed a cab at Fifty-fifth Street and I lost him. I hailed a cab and went home.

  I traipsed up the three flights of steps, as usual, ignoring the indefinable stench in the hallway, pushed my key in the lock, leaned on the door, and practically fell into my apartment from fatigue and from a heavy, heavy heart. Stalking exhausted me.

  I switched on the lights and looked around the claustrophobic apartment with its brick wall view and thought, this is my life. I’d originally planned to transform the cheerless space into a chic and cozy enclave. But I soured on the idea of decorating, even for myself. I’d settled in with the cheapest furniture, unable to bring myself to unpack the crates and cartons holding the remainder of my possessions.

  Why bother?

  Putting beautiful objects on display in that place was, well, like wearing couture to a deli. June and Betty had both offered to come over and help me get things “in order,” as June put it. I ducked their calls. I had no desire to get things in order. Order for me meant permanence; chaos, at least, held out the possibility of change.

  Just before dawn, I got out of bed and located a box of my personal stationery in one of the many cardboard cartons lying around. On the tissue-thin pale blue sheet of paper with “Jo Slater” written in small white capitals across the top, I opted for a short, dignified exit, figuring that good manners were the one thing still within my control.

  Dear Roger,

  Please accept my resignation from the board of the Municipal Museum. I have enjoyed working with you and Edmond and the entire staff over these many years. I wish you all continued success. The remainder of my pledge will, of course, be honored in due course.