Trump Tower

  Zeke dropped his keys on the table in the vestibule and found a note there from Birgitta, saying that she was playing tennis. He called out for their maid, Maria, but she didn’t answer. He found his sixteen-year-old son, Max, upstairs in his room. However, Max was much too engrossed in some NBA video game, and the music blaring from his headset was so loud that Zeke could hear it at the door.

  He went back downstairs.

  Knowing that Max would surface when he wanted food, and figuring that Birgitta would come home when she was ready, Zeke went out through the kitchen door to the pool house he used as an office.

  He picked up his iPad and a phone and reached into the fridge for a copper-bottled Samuel Adams Utopia.

  Now on the deck, facing the pool, he pulled one of the six large, yellow-and-blue cushioned chairs over to a glass table, sat down and, surrounded by trees and shrubs, cracked open the beer and started making calls.

  He wanted to be certain that everything was ready for Monday.

  He found Lenny Silverberg on the golf course in East Hampton, on Long Island. “I still don’t know why we’re not doing this in New York,” Silverberg said.

  “So that you have the excuse to shack up at the Bel Air with the singer from Mexico City.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, “sounds like a plan. See you Monday.”

  Then he found Bing O’Leary on his boat off the coast of Catalina. “Everything’s ready to go,” he assured Zeke. “My father-in-law says he’s in if you still have room.”

  “For Harry, there is always room.”

  After that, he called Carl Kravitz at his weekend home in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. “I’m flying in very early Monday morning. I’ll come straight to Malibu from the airport.”

  “What about the other guy?”

  “His name is Isbister.”

  “What kind of a name is that?”

  “Apparently Scottish.”

  “How’s he getting here?”

  “I don’t know him. Never met him. He said he would find us.”

  Before Zeke could make another call, his phone rang, and caller ID said it was Bobby Lerner. “You get home all right?”

  “Yeah. You back yet?”

  “No, I’m in Chicago, but I’m home tomorrow night.”

  “Looks like everybody is ready to go.”

  “See you Monday.”

  Now Zeke phoned the last man on the list, Ken Warring in Omaha.

  “We’re all set for Monday morning,” Zeke told him.

  “Only problem is,” Warring said, “I’ve got to be in Dallas Monday night. I’m out of your place right after lunch.”

  “No problem,” Zeke assured him, then thought to himself . . . lunch. The idea of food hadn’t even dawned on him. So he phoned Olinda, his housekeeper in Malibu, and said they’d be eight for lunch on Monday.

  She asked him what he wanted her to prepare.

  “Call Nobu. Tell them I want a big selection for ten.” Then he changed his mind. “No . . . portions are too small . . . tell them for fifteen. But no waiters. They deliver, but they don’t come inside. You serve. Okay?”

  Hanging up with her, he took a long pull of his beer, ran through his e-mails, and spotted a note from Caroline Tremblay.

  “Sorry I missed speaking to you while you were in New York,” she wrote. “I’m on my mobile all weekend.”

  “Shit.” He got her on the phone and apologized. “I meant to call, really.”

  “It’s all right. You will be at the sale, won’t you? Otherwise . . .”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Good. I’ll meet you in the room, say nine forty-five? It starts at ten.”

  “Yes, I will be there. And . . . what kind of interest is there?”

  “The market is soft,” she warned.

  “Doesn’t sound encouraging.”

  “It really depends if you’re buying or selling.”

  He reminded her, “Both.”

  “Then we’ll have to see.”

  “Thanks. See you Wednesday.” He hung up and said out loud, “Optimism is not the woman’s strong suit.”

  He took another pull of his beer, said out loud, “Speaking of optimism . . .” and dialed his first wife, Miriam.

  She’d been his high school sweetheart back in Chicago. “My mother asked for you. She might even have sent her love. But with her it’s always hard to tell.”

  “Of course, she sent her love. She says it all the time. I speak to her twice a week.”

  “You do?”

  “Why not? I’ve known her as long as I’ve known you, and she is the grandmother of my children.”

  “But she likes her other grandchildren better.”

  “Actually, she doesn’t,” Miriam insisted. “However, I know for a fact that she likes me better than any of your other wives. And she tells me she likes me better than she likes you.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “You could be nicer to her.”

  “I’m wonderful to her.”

  “That’s not her version of events. What’s this about you taking money away from her?”

  “She tell you that?” He groaned loudly to show her that he was annoyed. “It’s too complicated. Believe me when I say I’m not taking anything away from her.”

  “Your brother and sister don’t believe you. But I will, if you really need someone to.”

  “My brother and sister? You talk to them too?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve got to go. Goodbye.”

  She hung up before he could ask if Zoey was there.

  Shaking his head, he dialed Zoey’s cell but got voice mail. “This is your father who loves you, even if you are screening calls, which I suspect you do because I only ever get voice mail.”

  Putting the phone down and going back to his beer, he wondered for a moment what life would be like if he and Miriam had stayed together. They were good together in high school before they started having sex, and really good together at Northwestern, when sex was all they ever seemed to do. They got married, and while he went through University of Chicago Law, she taught at an inner-city elementary school.

  They had Zoey, and then they had Max, and then they moved to LA, which is where everything changed. He made money and she started calling herself Miri because, she said, “Miriam Greenberg Gimbel sounds too East Coast.”

  He reminded her, “We’re not from the East Coast, we’re from Chicagoland, that’s the Midwest, and the nickname for Miriam is Mimi, not Miri.”

  “This is LA,” she insisted, “where if I want to be Miri, I can be Miri.”

  Maybe, he thought, I was too busy to understand why being Miriam Greenberg Gimbel was not who she wanted to be anymore. Or maybe she was fooling herself into thinking she was someone else. Or maybe that’s what LA does to you if you’re not ready for LA. Whatever it was, their marriage went steadily downhill until the day she decided it was over. They were living in Brentwood and had gone out to dinner at a local Italian place. A few glasses of wine and he was thinking the mood was right to wind up making love all night when she announced over dessert, “I want a divorce.”

  Two years after he moved out of the house, leaving Miriam there with the kids, he married a long-legged brunette dancer whose name was Savannah Galleria.

  Except it wasn’t.

  “Did your mother name you after a shopping center somewhere?” He’d asked her on their first date, which turned into a weekend shacked up in Las Vegas.

  “No,” she said, “my mother named me Savannah because that’s where I was born, and the family name is Boots. But Savannah Boots sounded too silly for an actress, so I changed it. I named myself after a shopping mall. Cool, no?”

  That marriage barely lasted six months.

  She wasn’t getting work as an actress, and he said that booking her through his agency would be a conflict of interest—by which he really meant that it conflicted with the agency’s interest in only having clients who were good enough to get jobs—
so she decided to leave the agency, to leave him and to leave town.

  They’d gone out to dinner, to Celestine’s—they’d been on the waiting list for nearly two months because, in those days, it was the toughest restaurant in southern California to get reservations—and had eaten and drunk their way through an exquisite meal when the dessert menu arrived. He asked Savannah if she wanted the chocolate mousse cake or the apricot soufflé, and she said, “Actually, I want a divorce.”

  “Lucky for me we’ve got a pre-nup,” he muttered as they were walking out of Celestine’s. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford this place.”

  A year later, he met a blonde, Swedish, bathing-suit designer named Birgitta Mathias. She’d been in LA for nearly ten years and had already gone through two marriages herself.

  As they got to know each other, Birgitta told Zeke she was done with the LA party scene and wanted to settle down. That sounded good to him, so after five months of dating, they got married, at which time she stopped designing bathing suits and turned herself into a kind of reality-show LA housewife. She shopped and played tennis and lunched and otherwise hung out with a bunch of other women who shopped and played tennis and lunched. She and her gal-pals were seen at all the best restaurants. And at all the best parties. And at all the fanciest plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills.

  It wasn’t the lifestyle Zeke had in mind, but he didn’t have to play any of her games, and she pretty much stayed out of his life, except every night when she insisted that, before they fall asleep, they must have some kind of sex.

  “An orgasm is better for me than Ambien,” she liked to say while they undressed each other.

  He’d help her out of her clothes and whisper in her ear, “Tonight, do you want the brand name or the generic?”

  Now she called to him from the kitchen, “When did you get home?”

  He looked up and saw her there, still in her tennis clothes. “About an hour ago? Forty-five minutes ago. Half an hour ago. Something like that.”

  She stepped out of the house and started taking off her clothes.

  He watched as she pulled off her top and let her shorts fall to the patio floor.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “If we had music, it would be called a striptease.” She unsnapped her bra, twirled it over her head, and tossed it aside.

  Zeke had to admit she was the best-looking woman he’d ever slept with. And he loved it when she was naked. He loved it, too, that she often walked around the house like that. But now he had to warn her, “Max is home.”

  She pulled off her thong . . . “Won’t be the first time he’s caught me like this . . .” did a little wiggle, then dove into the pool.

  “What do you mean? Not the first time? When . . .”

  But she didn’t hear him start the question because she was under water, and she didn’t hear him try to finish the question because she was doing laps.

  He watched her swim, throwing one arm out, and then the other, and kicking with her feet, gliding perfectly through the water. He especially liked the way the way the water ran over her backside.

  “How do I want my Swedish women?” He asked himself out loud, then answered his own question. “Wet.”

  She swam to the pool house deck where he was watching her and pulled herself out of the water.

  Standing naked, she ran her hands through her hair.

  Zeke inspected her, nodding approvingly.

  “Jesus, Daddy, get a room.”

  He looked past her and saw Zoey standing in the kitchen door.

  Birgitta turned, waved, and went into the pool house to find a towel.

  “If you guys can’t wear clothes,” Zoey said, “I’m not coming home.”

  “I am wearing clothes,” Zeke told his daughter, then noticed a curtain in an upstairs bedroom move.

  Max had been watching Birgitta.

  “I phoned just now,” Zeke said. “You get my voice mail?”

  “I don’t do voice mail,” she said walking up to him and kissing the side of his face. “You’ve got to learn to text.”

  He smiled at his daughter, dark haired and a bit on the plump side, looking exactly like Miriam at that age. “That’s why you never return my calls?”

  Birgitta came back out, rubbing her hair with the towel, but still naked.

  “You know,” Zoey said to her, “my brother watches you like that all the time.”

  Birgitta shrugged. “It’s only a human body.”

  “To a sixteen-year-old boy?” Zoey said. “It’s boobs and booty.”

  “Nice mouth,” Zeke snapped. “Where did you learn to talk like that?”

  “If I told you you’d only get angry.”

  “I am angry,” he said, then turned to Birgitta. “Do me a favor please . . . wrap the towel around yourself.”

  “Fancy you telling me that,” she said, still drying her hair.

  “Hi.” It was Max walking out of the house.

  Birgitta reluctantly put the towel around herself.

  “When did you get home?” he asked his father.

  “Little while ago.”

  He nodded at his sister and at Birgitta. “I’m hungry. Where’s Maria?”

  Birgitta answered, “I gave her the afternoon off.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Max wondered.

  “I know it’s a hardship,” Zeke said, “but you may have to open the fridge door yourself.”

  “Never mind . . . it’s easier to send out.”

  Zoey shook her head disapprovingly. “I’ve got work to do for school. And I don’t have a date for tonight. Can we go out to dinner?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Zeke said, looking at Zoey, then Birgitta, then Max. “Anywhere special?”

  Zoey headed back to the house. “I like Spago.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Zeke said.

  “That’s fine with me,” Max waved and followed his sister inside.

  “Why not,” Birgitta agreed, unwrapping the towel and drying her hair again.

  Zeke looked at his naked wife, then reached for his beer and said softly, “Spago it is.”

  For most people, getting a table at Spago this late on a Saturday would be impossible. But Zeke had a special unlisted number for last-minute reservations—a number that was handed out to fewer than one hundred of the restaurant’s best customers and friends—so when Zeke asked, “Tonight, table for four?” the answer was, “What time?”

  A lot of people who eat there regularly like the front tables because they want to be seen. Or they like the patio because it’s a pleasant place to have dinner. But Zeke always took a table at the back because he liked walking through the place and seeing who else was there.

  They arrived at quarter to seven, which is early even for LA, and there were still empty tables. But Orlando Bloom was there with friends and happy to introduce Zeke to them, and Eddie Murphy hugged Zeke, and Julia Roberts said she couldn’t get over how grown up Zoey and Max were.

  Then Max spotted Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sitting with a small group of people.

  Tugging at his father’s arm, Max nodded toward the basketball great. His father looked over and decided Kareem was too busy talking to the people at his table.

  “Aw, come on,” Max pleaded.

  “No,” Zeke said. “You know the rules.”

  Just then, Kareem looked up, spotted Zeke, and waved. Zeke waved back, and Max took that as a sign of approval. He hurried over to Kareem’s table to shake hands and get an autograph.

  Courteney Cox, who’d followed Zeke in with three other adults and half a dozen kids, was seated at the next table. She made a point of telling the maître d’, “We’ll have whatever Mr. Gimbel and his family are having, and be sure to put it on Mr. Gimbel’s bill.”

  Zeke sent her and her friends a bottle of wine.

  Max came back, proudly showing everyone the autographed napkin.

  The waiter took their order, and as a way of saying thanks, Zeke also sent a bot
tle of wine to Kareem’s table.

  Zeke, Birgitta, Zoey, and Max all started with the hamachi and sashimi. Zeke and Birgitta had the steamed loup de mer, Zoey had the rack of lamb, and Max had the spicy beef goulash. Zeke ordered a bottle of French Gewürztraminer for Birgitta and himself and offered some to both his kids, but Zoey insisted she couldn’t possibly drink white wine with lamb, and Max said he’d prefer a Coke, which his father refused to order because, “Coke doesn’t go with anything in restaurants that don’t have drive-through windows.”

  Zoey and Max had to settle for sparkling water.

  After their main course, the waiter brought the dessert menu.

  The four of them were studying it when Zeke wondered, “Who’s having the peach dessert?”

  Birgitta announced, “No dessert for me. But I want a divorce.”

  SUNDAY

  17

  Alicia stirred, looked over to the other side of the bed for Carson . . . and found Cyndi.

  At the same time, Cyndi turned from one side to the other, opened her eyes, and saw Alicia. “What happened?” she said groggily.

  “Firenzi,” Alicia reminded her.

  “What time is it?”

  Alicia glanced at her clock radio. “Nine fifteen.”

  “Want to go to a movie? We can still catch . . .”

  “In the morning.”

  Cyndi’s eyes opened wide. “In the morning? I hate Firenzi,” she said, lifting the sheets to look at herself and then at Alicia. “I don’t even leave these things on all night when I’m with a guy.”

  Alicia laughed. “Want breakfast?”

  Cyndi pointed to Alicia’s thong. “Those really candies?”

  Alicia told her, “I was thinking, something more like coffee and toast.”

  “Nine fifteen in the morning?” Suddenly, Cyndi jumped out of bed. “Oh my God!” She raced around to the side of it to fetch her clothes. “I’ve got to be someplace at ten.”

  “Where?”

  “I have two dates.” Cyndi pulled on her jeans over her garter belt and stockings.

  “Two?”

  “At ten and eleven.”

  “With who?”