The Right Address

by Carrie Karasyov

  “I will assist you when I am available.”

  “By the time you’re available, I’ll be at Cartier spending thousands,” said Maria, turning on her heel and storming out of the store, pushing the doors with a heavy hand and boiling heart.

  Morgan was deeply immersed in his spreadsheets when his secretary knocked gently on his door and entered.

  “Mr. Vance, there’s someone here to see you,” she said nervously.

  “I said I cannot be disturbed now, Lizzie,” said Morgan.

  “I think it’s that maid who used to work here,” whispered Lizzie. “She’s very insistent. I tried . . .”

  Morgan turned beet red. “That’s all right, Lizzie. You can send her in.”

  Lizzie tried to suppress her surprise, but her face betrayed her.

  “It’s okay—it’s a mentoring program I’m involved in,” explained Morgan clumsily.

  “I see,” she said, leaving the room.

  Moments later Maria burst into the room.

  “I will not be kept fucking waiting! Does your wife have to be kept waiting?” said Maria, flinging her fur coat (that cost Morgan twenty grand) on his charcoal gray armchair. She was wearing an inappropriately tight black spandex top that clung to her fat rolls, and black leather pants.

  “Maria, shut up and sit down.”

  Morgan walked over to the door and made sure it was firmly closed.

  “Shut up? Why? Why you want to keep me quiet? You show me some respect! I have your baby sitting at home. It took me a day to squeeze out your fucking child, so you better show me some fucking gratefulness.”

  “Maria, listen. I’m tired of your antics. What is it now?” asked Morgan with a mixture of fear and exasperation.

  “I was treated like shit in Tiffany’s.”

  “That is why you came storming into my office? Have you no discretion?”

  “Your wife was there,” said Maria, an evil smirk on her face.

  Morgan panicked. “You talked to Cordelia?”

  Maria sat down on the chair on top of her coat and put her feet up on Morgan’s desk. She folded her hands behind her head. “They were kissing her old blond ass, and you know what she did? She STOLE from them! She’s a Winona Ryder! She shoplifts! I may have no education, but I know a THIEF!”

  “What are you talking about? You’re crazy—”

  “I saw with my own eyes! You’re wife is a fuckin’ jewel thief! Like in the movies!”

  “What did you say to my wife? How dare you . . .” said Morgan, rage brewing up inside him like lava. He didn’t know if he was angrier at Maria or himself for getting in this position.

  “You don’t care? You don’t care if your wife is a kryptomaniac? I do! They treat her like the queen, and she is no queen!” Maria sat up and exploded. “I’m calling Tiffany’s and telling!”

  “They already know,” sighed Morgan, defeated.

  “What?”

  “I have an arrangement with them. They just send me the bill. It’s taken care of monthly, and it’s none of your concern.”

  “WHAT? She’s a fucking robber and they treat her with more respect than they treat me? Just ’cause she’s a fucking Vance? I want my last name to be Vance!”

  “Maria, you must tell me what you said to Cordelia,” said Morgan evenly.

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I said to.”

  Maria and Morgan stared at each other. Morgan was fuming. Maria had never seen him like this. Finally she raised her eyebrows and threw up her arms. “I told her we worked together.”

  “You stay away from my wife!” his voice rose so much that he nervously calmed himself down so as not give Lizzie the ultimate water cooler gossip through the door.

  “It’s time you make an honest woman of me!”

  “This is ridiculous!” he said, almost raising his voice again but funneling his ire instead to a harsh whisper. “I give you everything you need . . .”

  Maria stood up and put on her coat with the same dramatic flail she had seen on so many soap operas. “You leave Cordelia real soon or I’m going to make your life a living hell,” she said with sheer threatening confidence. With that, she smiled ruefully and stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind her.

  chapter 19

  “I’m picturing, in this space . . . medieval art; you could do so much with the richness of an ecclesiastical hall here, and perhaps painted clay tiles around this exquisite fireplace.”

  Vincent Delvaux, one of the city’s top decorators, walked through the Korns’ house, offering suggestions and mock-ups crafted by his studio. He was a screaming queen but was married with four children and lived in an extraordinary penthouse on Fifth, which was featured in every shelter mag on planet Earth. Normally he would never deign to work with the likes of Melanie Korn, but when he heard the magic words “sky’s the limit” and “carte blanche,” he was sprinting into his town car like a jockey-spurred Kentucky Derby racer.

  “I could see some wood-carved mahogany paneling along the ceiling. And great embroidered wool and silk wall hangings and tapestries, or maybe some trompe l’oeil painted plaster to simulate crests and stonework up here . . .”

  He continued with flourishing hand gestures and talk of gothic hall chairs, but Melanie’s eyelids were already at half mast. Boooring. She wanted to have good taste and a world-class, knock-’em-dead apartment; she just didn’t want to get her hands dirty with . . . choosing stuff. Mr. Guffey followed them around with a clipboard, taking notes, and once she shot him the “Get me out of here” look, he pulled out the proverbial hook.

  “Madam, I beg your pardon, but your lunch date has arrived.”

  “Yes, yes. Thank you so much for stopping by,” said Melanie, practically catapulting Delvaux out into the elevator vestibule. After slamming the door shut, she looked at Guffey wearily. Three down, two to go.

  “Next.”

  Lilly Saint-Pierre was fluttering around the house like a decapitated bird, chirping about colors and ornate fabrics. Her skeletal frame was swathed in a fitted suit, and her pin-sized calves—restricted by her narrow pencil skirt—moved in tiny steps. As she cluck-cluck-clucked around the marble floor in her pointy shoes, Melanie knew already that this would not be a match.

  “I see a single fabric here for the walls, curtains, and bedding. I love a richly festooned brocatelle. And how about a parquet inlaid floor in the living room? I love this Queen Anne, early-eighteenth-century Palladian-style cabinet, but I’d lose the rest of this and work around this piece. Maybe infuse the quarters with this kind of infinite detail—maybe some embossed leather on the walls and then maybe some Georgian carved balusters to amp up this staircase a bit . . .”

  Gag. Melanie wanted to take a frying pan and bash this woman’s minute face in like on a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

  “And this room would be heavenly if we juxtaposed traditional elements with modern or did French and Danish! No, Swedish and English,” Lilly said quickly. She spoke so fast that words just tumbled out of her mouth as rapidly as a toddler dumps over a box of building blocks. Her nervous energy was ultimately unbearable to both Melanie and Mr. Guffey, and she was eventually shown the door.

  The final suitor was Jerome de Stingol, also in the AD 100, but really more because of his closer-than-close relationship to the editrix in chief than for his prowess in the decorating department. Those who had worked with de Stingol would really consider him as more of a “guide” or a “muse” who was wonderfully adept at pointing out deficiencies but not as skilled in implementing, well, anything. (His detractors, usually husbands who glanced at his bills and recoiled with horror, referred to him as “the great pillow fluffer.”)

  Jerome had initially been aghast when Mrs. Korn had telephoned him and explained her needs. At first he thought Joan Coddington was having a goof on him, but when he realized that it was indeed the former flight attendant herself, he was speechless. And when it sunk in, it made sense: here was a woman attempting to fit in
to society, and he was a man who could make it happen. Working with him would buy her a slice of the crème de la crème’s teacake. As she chatted away about her ignorance of decorating, her urgency to get it all done as quickly as possible—and any cost—capped off by her almost embarrassed defensiveness about the current state of her apartment, he smiled along. He heard the ka-ching of a cash register and even felt a small burst of pity somewhere in the lower part of his body. But when she suggested they meet to discuss if they were “a match,” he became irate. He preferred to be begged for a job, as many of society’s followers did, shoving their checkbooks down his throat as a means to get in with him and his gaggle of glamorous walkees.

  And so he was prepared to refuse the stewardess. He had his red leather Smythson address book ready in his sweaty left hand and with one swift move was primed to call all his friends and have a laugh at Melanie’s expense. But when he glanced at his checkbook and thought about his recent acquisition of a Chippendale dresser at Sotheby’s and the fact that he had not really worked in months, he realized he had no choice. So when he set off for the Korns’ on a rainy afternoon, he was predisposed to hate. More than the other decorators, he was bitter about having to come in and pimp himself to a potential client.

  When he entered the apartment, Jerome sneered at the sheer gut-churning horror of it all—such a tacky jumble of nontastes; colonial-style statuary built-ins fused with Renaissance with a dash of flowery Victorian pieces and neo-Jacobean elements. Vomit. Everything was schizo and competing and bursting at the seams. It was too much to take—he felt as if he were in a foliage-painted, mother-of-pearl-covered gingerbread house from hell. As Melanie greeted him, he could barely speak.

  “God! It’s worse than I thought . . .” sputtered Jerome, walking with the crazy instability one gets when disembarking the Tilt-A-Whirl.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” said Melanie, surprised by his audacity. After all, he didn’t have the job yet.

  “Lord have mercy on my soul, the ceilings! Disaster. Sinful. It’s like what happened to Yasmine Guest’s apartment.”

  Jerome shot the butler a look after he said this, certain that he would be the only one who understood. Disgust flickered in Mr. Guffey’s eyes, and they both muttered under their breath as if saying a solemn prayer.

  “So,” said Melanie, offering him a seat. “We looked at your sketches. Very interesting.”

  “We?” inquired Jerome.

  “Well, me. I also asked Mr. Guffey, my butler . . .”

  Jerome looked again at the butler. “Oh, yes, I think I recognize you. You were with Diandra,” said Jerome.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Guffey.

  “Wonderful woman. How is she?”

  “I’m not quite sure, sir.”

  “Pity she moved. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful woman. Such class,” added Jerome with a sneer.

  Melanie squirmed uncomfortably. “Anyway, yes—so your sketches were very interesting.”

  “Glad you liked them,” forced out Jerome with his best saccharine smile.

  “So, tell me what you have in mind for my apartment.”

  “Oh, you know,” said Jerome, waving his arms around as if that explained it.

  “I’m not sure I do,” said Melanie.

  Was she really going to make him explain things? “Well, I normally work in conjunction with other decorators. I like to oversee things.”

  “So what would you oversee here?”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I mean, what is your vision for my apartment?”

  Jerome stared at her coldly. Was she serious? He was about to spit on her imitation Oriental carpet and walk away when he thought about December and how he was just itching to rent Princess Margaret’s former home on Mustique again. So with great effort and pain, he decided to stash away his pride and make an effort.

  “I’m a fan of empire style—I did the Vances’ place upstairs. Here are some photos,” he said, slapping some pictures in her face. If she wanted it, she could have it. “And I think some fresh plasterwork, maybe some neoclassical columns, some French gilded consoles here, fresh colors could really open the place up.” He looked at her and could see she was expecting more. What, did this slut want him to prostitute himself to her? He sucked in his cheeks and took a deep breath. He pictured the crystal blue waters on Macaroni Beach and continued.

  “You see, Mrs. Korn, this apartment is crying out to breathe. It is charged with a crowded energy and it is begging, just whimpering to exhale. I will be the respirator. I will free it, let your home simmer in honeysuckles and moiré—use these full-height windows! Don’t smother them! Let’s open it all up!”

  He rose and marched out of the public rooms through to the hallway, looking in the bedrooms as Guffey and Melanie followed. “See, your private quarters have as much formality as the public rooms. It’s sickening, really. Did you have some queen from Miami Beach decorate? It’s like they’re trying too hard, with these grand pieces around the perimeter—if you like the dark choking colors of the main rooms, fine, but these should be relaxed and comfortable with a softer, perhaps paler palette. I mean, really—someone didn’t know his decorating ABCs.”

  He promenaded into one room as Melanie and Guffey followed, and moved his arms around dramatically like a choreographer instructing the dancers with his vision.

  What a fool, thought Guffey. So condescending.

  “I want it lighter, more elegant. A portico with a fanlight, a robust William Morris wallpaper here, like Cordelia’s. I did Capucine de Mendide’s drawing room all in this light arts and crafts hand-pressed paper, which is more to my taste than the excesses of this more rococo era . . .”

  Excesses? Was he insulting her apartment? Melanie first felt embarrassed, then angry. Who was he? Why was he so great?

  Finally, Jerome must have realized that he went a little too far in the criticism department and it was time to become an obsequious sycophant. “Melanie, darling,” he began in a whisper. He was trying to convey his most “we are girlfriends, you and I” mode. “We will do marvelous things! People will talk! You will be a hit!”

  His words echoed in the hallowed halls, but he was not thespian enough to fool Melanie or, most of all, Mr. Guffey. It was clear to Guffey that Jerome had done his best but that he was, in fact, a hack. Plus, his seeming politesse was spiked with the most bilious undertones, and Guffey even knew what his somewhat naive employer did not: that the rivers of vitriol boiling within this snobbish man would not be contained should Melanie turn him down for the job.

  “Let’s do it together, Melanie. Let’s make them all forget Diandra,” said Jerome. He put his small, hairy hand on Melanie’s wrist, as if to pat her sympathetically. He shook his head in commiseration and looked down at the floor with simulated drama.

  Time was up for Melanie. She slowly raised a recently waxed brow, and Guffey got the barbed facial memo.

  “Thank you, sir, for coming. Your portfolio was quite impressive,” Mr. Guffey interrupted, and within moments Jerome was waiting by a lit elevator down button Guffey had pressed before shutting the large door in his face. It was as if they had a giant electric cattle prod that they used to expel him at top speed, and before he knew it Jerome had descended to the lobby. They must be so sure I’m the one, he thought. That peroxide-dipped floozy wouldn’t know good taste if it hijacked her Gulfstream. He reflected on how he would face the challenge of having to see her at parties and admit she was a client. No matter, her husband’s casket biz could unleash him to do whatever his heart desired, and he could just whiff the sweet smell of an HG cover in the wings after he had his way with their palatial spread and milked them for every red cent.

  Back inside the Korns’ apartment, a pooped Melanie kicked off her Louboutin mules, flopped on the overstuffed Regency sofa, and looked up at Guffey, who was carrying the pile of sketches and curriculum vitae.

  “Ugh, I’m absolutely exhausted. I feel exhumed from a grave after all that
! I need a nap. Or a massage. It’s so much work trying to find decorators.”

  “Then rest, madam. But you must make a selection if you want to have the place refurbished so quickly.”

  “Who did you like best?”

  “It’s really not important what I think, madam. It is, after all, your home.” Guffey glanced at the clipboard. “So, I should tell Mr. Harrington?”

  Melanie watched Guffey closely.

  “Tell Mr. Harrington . . .” she began, and tilted her head, squinted her eyes, and waited for Guffey to prompt her.

  “No,” said Guffey.

  “No. Yes. Tell him no.”

  “And Ms. Saint-Pierre?”

  Again, Melanie’s head bobbed in a questioning circle. “Tell her . . .”

  “No,” said Mr. Guffey.

  “Yes, tell her no.”

  “And Mr. de Stingol?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s a no. A definitive no.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. Geez, Guff. It’s a total relief that we’re on the same page! They were all kind of snobby and pretentious, don’t you think?”

  “I think they were ill fitted for the work at hand.”

  “But who in the world shall I get?”

  Mr. Guffey solemnly took the sheet of notes off his clipboard and held it up before his employer. Then he smashed it up into a ball and tossed it to the rubbish.

  “I think if you want the best, you should hire the best.”

  “Well, I want to, naturally. These were all listed as the top—”

  “The real best don’t sully their hands by pandering to magazines for edification. They simply don’t need the business; they are constantly turning clients away. Might I suggest Diandra’s two favorites?”

  chapter 20

  After repeated threatening phone calls, a bombardment of pages, and reams of nasty e-mails, Morgan had no excuse but to go visit Maria and the baby at their apartment. He had been avoiding it since his last encounter with her, but she was too dangerous to ignore. So after sending Cordelia off to the opera with Jerome, Morgan headed over to Maria’s building on Central Park South. It had been the perfect location to sequester a mistress. Although the buildings held a commanding view of the city—some might even say they possessed a better panorama than most of the buildings on Fifth—Morgan knew no one that lived there, so he never risked running into an acquaintance. It was as if the crème de la crème of the city had decided to relinquish Fifty-ninth Street to the tourists at the hotels and out-of-towners who chose to have pieds-à-terre there. And although it had first proved sufficient for Maria, in her cunning she had gleaned that it still wasn’t good enough, so she was already making noise about an impending move. Well, he knew just how to fix that.