Trump Tower

by Jeffrey Robinson

  “No.”

  “Just as well. Dragon Lady probably serves it with her own homemade arsenic glaze? Good luck with this.”

  She put her hands on her head. “What have I gotten myself into?”

  “How many people in the building? And every single one of them is convinced that he or she has the best apartment.”

  “Except we do.”

  “And the best view?”

  “We don’t, but we tell people we do.”

  “And the best chef?”

  “Can we have a chef?”

  “What would we do with a chef?”

  “He would chef for us.”

  “Why do we need a chef?” Carson asked. “We bring food in. It’s like having nine thousand chefs all over New York.”

  “You’re probably right,” she conceded. “Especially because if we had a chef, whenever you woke me in the middle of the night, I’d have to ask, is that a tuna fish sandwich in your pajamas or are you just happy to see me?”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t wear pajamas.”

  “I have noticed,” she said, pushing him out the door, “and that ain’t no tuna.”

  ALICIA SPENT the rest of the morning going through every Internet mention of Trump Tower that she could find.

  And there were thousands.

  She pulled up references to the usual battles for planning permission and stories about other buildings that once stood on the same site, most notably, the famous old New York store Bonwit Teller.

  Next, she went through references that brought up dozens of new names associated with Trump Tower, people who’d supposedly lived there for a period of time, adding to her list Pia Zadora, Dick Clark, Paul Anka, Martina Navratilova and Susan St. James.

  Moving from Google to the very extensive news archives at NBC, which she could access from home, she continued listing names and facts and other leads to track down.

  That’s when her phone rang.

  “Are we ladies who lunch?” It was Cyndi.

  “No,” Alicia said.

  “Yes we are.”

  “We are?”

  “When Donato calls, we are.”

  “Donato called?”

  “Just now.”

  “I thought you two were having one of your every-other-month feuds.”

  “We are. I mean, we were. He wants to kiss and make up. Well, not exactly kiss because he doesn’t do tongue with girls . . . But making up is good. He said, come to lunch and bring Alicia.”

  “He said, bring Alicia?”

  “Not exactly. He said come to lunch, and I said I’ll bring Alicia, and he said I love Alicia.”

  “What time’s lunch?”

  “I’ve called for a car. Meet you in the lobby in thirty minutes.”

  “How wonderful.”

  “Ladies who lunch,” Cyndi said.

  “This time,” Alicia suggested, “let’s try to keep our clothes on.”

  Donato Firenzi had been Donatella Versace’s number two for many years before going out on his own to design women’s lingerie. But his wasn’t merely some up-market Italian version of Victoria’s Secret. Firenzi actually made Victoria seem celibate.

  As Firenzi himself described it once to Carson, “I create underwear for the whore that every man prays his mistress might become.”

  Alicia had been to these private lunches before. There were only six invited guests, but there was enough champagne for twice as many and the food was to die for. And even though Firenzi had the most gorgeous models in the world showing off his goods—more often than not, theirs, too—it wasn’t unheard of that one or two of the women who’d been invited for lunch wound up on the catwalk as well.

  He did these lunches once a month and invitations were always very last minute. All of the lingerie on show was, of course, for sale. But Firenzi never spoke about that. However, anyone who didn’t buy never got a second invitation.

  Alicia hurried back to the table to finish up.

  Her laptop screen had a dozen open pages and she needed to rush through them before she jumped into the shower.

  She bookmarked the pages she wanted to come back to and made a few extra notes on her pad. She closed out of Google and was about to sign off the NBC News archive site when she spotted a very small reference on the bottom of one page.

  It read, “A mysterious buyer, believed to represent L. Arthur Farmer, has become the first residential tenant in Donald Trump’s Tower.”

  That’s all.

  The date was 1979, the year construction began on the Tower.

  Of course she knew who Farmer was. Everybody in the country had, at some point, heard of him, much the same way everybody in the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies had heard of Howard Hughes.

  In fact, since Hughes’ death in 1976, Farmer had taken on the mantle of America’s most famous recluse. Google and Bing had thousands of references to him—Where is he? Is he alive or dead? How much is he worth?

  A man whose business interests were wide and varied, he held significant positions through various companies in electronics, aviation, insurance, oil and mining. However, the heart of his empire, where he made his fortune before World War II, was food staples. He grew, processed, manufactured and/or distributed wheat, barley, rye, maize, tea, bananas, pineapples, olive oil, coconut oil and sugar.

  But even those businesses paled in comparison to his hold on the planet’s most important staple, the one at the heart of the diet for a huge portion of the human population—rice.

  L. Arthur Farmer controlled nearly 20 percent of the world’s rice.

  Accordingly, his Wikipedia entry cited Fortune magazine, “He may be richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. No one knows for sure. The only certainty is that he is not significantly poorer than either of them.”

  Alicia went back to the NBC query page and did a fast search for L. Arthur Farmer and Trump Tower. Only that single line reference appeared. She also tried Google and Bing, which brought no responses at all.

  Now she really had to get ready. She shut down her computer, jumped into the shower, threw on a Versace pantsuit—being invited to this luncheon meant dressing the part—and was downstairs at the same time as Cyndi.

  On the way to Firenzi, Alicia asked Cyndi, “Did you know that L. Arthur Farmer lived in our building?”

  Cyndi shrugged, “Who?”

  DONATO FIRENZI had a huge loft way downtown, on Washington Street, a block away from his former lover, Antoine de Maisonneuve.

  Alicia and Cyndi were the first to arrive.

  Security at the door checked off both their names before they were allowed upstairs.

  Firenzi himself greeted them as soon as the elevator brought them up to the top floor.

  Wearing tight, white leather pants and a bright green silk shirt open to his navel—with a large gold- and ruby-encrusted cross dangling from a heavy gold chain around his neck—he fawned all over Cyndi, kissed and hugged Alicia, then kissed and hugged Cyndi again.

  “Cara mia . . .”

  He was tall and thin, with dark eyes and a beautifully molded face. “We mustn’t fight, cara mia,” he said to Cyndi, playing up his accent as he brought the two women into the room where one large table at the very end of the catwalk was set for seven. “Cara mia . . . I love you so much. Ti amo.”

  Cyndi played her role to the hilt. “I love you too, so much so that there are times when I wish you had real balls.”

  “Darling,” he laughed and hugged Alicia. “Isn’t she wonderful? I love Cyndi.”

  “We all do,” Alicia said, looking at Cyndi and mouthing the words, “Real balls?”

  The elevator went down to the ground floor, then came back. Two more women arrived. And Firenzi moved away to greet his guests.

  A gorgeous young woman wearing nothing but a white silk bra, white silk panties and a garter belt with stockings—some of Firenzi’s tamer designs—walked over to Alicia and Cyndi, carrying a tray with champagne.

  T
hey both took a glass and waited for Firenzi to bring over the two women who’d just arrived.

  One was Michelle Chevalier, who had modeled briefly for Dior in Paris when Cyndi was the face of Dior. She’d left the business to marry the French rock star, Percy Priest—his real name was Jean Marie Hubert, but on his first trip to Nashville, someone took him to the local lake with the same name and he decided that was a better name for a French rock star than his own—and now she spent most of her time traveling between homes in Paris, the Riviera and Nashville.

  Michelle greeted Cyndi not like an old friend, because they weren’t that, but like an old acquaintance who was too old to bother with the petty jealousies of youth.

  Cyndi introduced Michelle to Alicia, and then Michelle introduced both of them to the young woman accompanying her, Sophie Gosselin.

  She was the gorgeous nineteen-year-old who’d won this year’s Cesar—the French equivalent of the Oscar—as Best Actress for her role as the seventeenth-century writer and consort to King Louis XIV, Françoise d’Aubigne de Maintenon.

  Alicia politely said hello, and so did Cyndi, but when Sophie realized that Cyndi was Cyndi, she screamed with childish joy and hugged her. “I can’t believe I’m meeting you. I grew up wanting to be you. I can’t believe it.”

  Cyndi did her best to calm her down, while Michelle quickly turned her back and walked away to get some champagne.

  The last two women to arrive were Amy Jane Hadley, whom Alicia knew because she was an up-and-coming television reporter at ABC-News, and her mother Melissa Hadley Jakes, who was the queen of Broadway press agents.

  “You bring your mother to Firenzi’s strip club?” Cyndi said much too loudly to Amy Jane.

  Melissa heard that from where she was getting a second glass of champagne, turned around and said across the room to Cyndi, “Darling, you never know what a woman has under her jeans.”

  Champagne and canapés, served by young women in underwear, continued until Firenzi announced it was time for lunch.

  The six women sat down at the table set with Royal Worcester’s fruit pattern service and sterling utensils. Firenzi sat in between Cyndi and Sophie—who was still in awe of Cyndi—and the young women in underwear proceeded to serve a fabulous three-course lunch. They started with a duck mousse on a bed of frisée salad, proceeded to red snapper filets with a citron and garlic sauce on a bed of angel hair pasta, and finished with mini cannoli alongside homemade guava gelato.

  There was still plenty of champagne, but now Firenzi brought out a bottle of homemade grappa, and after he poured seven little glasses, he announced, “Now ladies . . . the ladies.”

  The lights went dim and music came on, then a spotlight appeared and, one by one, Firenzi’s models arrived on the catwalk, wearing less and less.

  The bras and panties got smaller and smaller and, as the prices got higher and higher, the six women checked off what they wanted in little notebooks.

  The catwalk show lasted half an hour, until Firenzi turned to his guests and asked, “Who would like to present the honeymoon ensemble?”

  Cyndi whispered to Alicia. “Care to be naked in front of your new friends?”

  Alicia shook her head, “Been there, done that.”

  Michelle suggested, “I nominate Cyndi.”

  “I have a better idea,” Cyndi said and pointed to Melissa Hadley Jakes. “Speaking of what a woman has under her jeans . . .”

  The oldest woman at the table—she was in her early forties—looked at the others and, in her deepest, sexiest voice said, “Nothing under my jeans, darling.”

  The women laughed.

  Cyndi turned to the slightly embarrassed Amy Jane. “You know how lucky you are? My mother didn’t even have a pussy.”

  Now everyone laughed, while Firenzi poured more grappa and, in the midst of that laughter, Sophie stood up. “I’ll do it.”

  Before she could change her mind, one of the models took her back stage, and the next thing anyone knew, Sophie reappeared on the catwalk, unable to hide her nervousness, wearing a see-through gown, totally open at the front, with so little else that Cyndi remarked, “Obviously she’s not my mother.”

  Packages of newly purchased underwear and a fresh bottle of champagne accompanied each of the women downstairs to their waiting cars.

  “Let’s drink to your health,” Alicia started to sing the Cole Porter song from High Society as they rode uptown, all the while swigging champagne.

  “Nah,” Cyndi joined in, “let’s drink to your—boobs.” She took a long swig from her bottle.

  “That’s not in the song,” Alicia said. “You like Sigmund Romberg?”

  “I never met him.”

  Alicia started singing, “Drink, drink, drink . . .”

  “What’s that?” Cyndi wanted to know.

  “The Student Prince. Sigmund Romberg.”

  Cyndi leaned over to Alicia. “You know what? I’ve done students. And I’ve done princes. But my life’s work is not complete. I’ve never done a Sigmund.”

  Now Alicia broke into Julio Iglesias. “To all the men we’ve loved before . . .”

  They sang and drank straight out of their bottles up to the front door, on the sidewalk, inside the residents’ lobby and into the elevator.

  Still laughing at everything, they went to Alicia’s bedroom to try on what they’d bought.

  Alicia put on an undercupped bra that left her breasts totally bare, and a G-string that had pieces of candy in the front where material should be.

  Cyndi put on a garter belt, stockings and nothing else. “I’ll be your serving wench. Champagne?”

  The two women admired each other’s choice of clothes, then Alicia asked, “That’s your champagne. Where did I put my champagne?”

  “Here,” Cyndi started to hand her the bottle, “the drinks are on me.” But then she decided to take a swig and noticed, “It’s empty.”

  “More in the fridge,” Alicia announced and walked through her apartment in her new underwear to get another bottle. She opened it, took a sip and started back to her bedroom.

  She found Cyndi sprawled across her bed, fast asleep.

  “Ah.” Alicia stared at Cyndi for a long time, then pulled the duvet from under her and covered her with it.

  She took another sip of champagne.

  “You ever hear of L. Arthur Farmer?” She climbed into bed. “Did I already tell you he might have lived here?” She cuddled the bottle of champagne with one arm, “I’m going to tell you all about him,” put her other arm around Cyndi, “except nobody knows anything about him,” and promptly fell asleep too.

  13

  David was out of the apartment at the crack of dawn to drive sixty-five miles up the Hudson to Hopewell Junction, where he had an 8:10 tee-off time at the Trump National course there.

  He took the Ferrari 612 again.

  It was his monthly $1,000-a-hole skins game with the recently retired Eagles running back Lamar Duarte, the Detroit Red Wings left winger “Razor” Roland Guillaume and the Knick’s inimitable but aging power forward Jamal “The Poison” Sumac.

  All four of them played scratch golf, so for David this was the real thing. Last month he’d walked away losing six grand and considered himself unlucky because Razor and Poison both shot unbelievable four-under rounds. They couldn’t miss a putt. This time he picked up two grand and considered himself lucky because he couldn’t make a putt, blaming himself for leaving his Scott Cameron Tour Titleist triple black on the plane.

  Back at Trump Tower by three, he found Tina only just getting up.

  “You hungry?” He kissed her hello. “Where’s Luisa?”

  She was wearing his old Texas Tech football shirt and, even though it came down past her knees, he could see she had nothing else under it.

  “Probably downstairs doing the laundry.” She was still wiping the sleep out of her eyes. “You want breakfast?”

  “I’ll send out.”

  “We in tonight?”

  �
��Wasn’t there supposed to be something at the museum?”

  “What museum?”

  “Natural History.”

  “Oh . . . shit. I forgot all about that.”

  “Wanna go? We can still . . .”

  “No. What do we care about dinosaurs? I’ll send them a check.”

  “I like dinosaurs,” he said.

  “Then you send them a check.”

  “When’s the Bulgari party?”

  “Next week.”

  “So . . . we’re in tonight?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Chinese? Get the usual. I’ll call it breakfast and you make it last for supper.” She padded into the kitchen and went to her coffee machine.

  They each had their own.

  They’d started married life with an all-digital De Longhi Magnifica espresso machine that could be programmed weeks in advance to grind, tamp, brew and add frothy milk for a great cup of coffee. But one day David decided it was overly complicated—he could never get it to have fresh coffee waiting when he got up in the morning—and came home with a single-serve espresso machine, the kind that takes premeasured pods. “Only two hundred bucks,” he told Tina. “It was on sale.”

  What he didn’t tell Tina was that he’d also bought a year’s supply—$900 worth—of different flavored coffee pods.

  It turned out that he liked them all, but she wasn’t crazy about any of the pods and, by that time, it was too late to go back to the De Longhi because David had given it to Luisa.

  So she went out and bought herself a huge, chrome Jura Capresso Impressa Z5.

  “It’s the coffee machine equivalent of your Ferrari,” she bragged.

  “Can I drive it?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said, “when you let me drive the Ferrari.”

  Every morning, he made his coffee pod espresso, and she made her Jura Capresso espresso, and the possibility of her driving his Ferrari was never discussed again.

  “It’s the Coves,” David said when Keung answered the phone at the Autumn Moon on Third Avenue. This was one of the only Chinese restaurants in New York that did not deliver—except to some people. “Will you send up the usual, please?”

  “Cove?” Keung said.

  “Yes, Cove.”