Arm Candy

by Jill Kargman

  “Kipp always gets the best shit. Oh, this is great. Eden?”

  “No, thanks, I’m okay.”

  “No, you have to, it’s insane. You can’t turn down amazing shit like this.”

  Eden ignored the offer.

  As she watched Otto lasciviously watch a bent-over Mary, Eden realized that despite rumors that women’s sexual peak was their late thirties, she strangely felt her libido turned off since her split. Which terrified her. And as she got older, like Matthew Mc-Conaughey in Dazed and Confused said, Otto’s young off-the-Greyhound hard-bodied sycophants and suck-o-phants seemed to eerily “stay the same age, yes they do.”

  Eden decided to get dressed. “I think your work is clearly done for today, so I’m off.”

  “So soon?” Otto asked, mildly alarmed at her eagerness to leave.

  “I have to finish my care package for Cole’s birthday.”

  “Okay, then . . . ,” Otto said, not wanting her to leave.

  Eden opened the large steel industrial door onto the street and breathed in the fresh air. In that gulp of oxygen she realized just how happy she was to get the hell out of there, the place she once upon a time drooled over. She had been euphoric to unpack her belongings in there, to be the mistress of that killer domain. It was New York real estate heaven, full of exaggerated broker superlatives, but now it seemed like Hades. Somehow, even though the cubic footage of the large looming loft was gargantuan, Eden was growing claustro despite its gleaming massive white walls. And oddly, in her snug and cozy one bedroom, devoid of massive floor-to-ceiling windows, skylights, and space, she felt sublimely released, like her snug living room was an airy field, wide-open and free.

  25

  Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.

  —Audrey Hepburn

  It was in Trevi Nails on Lexington that Eden connected the social dots. Allison was leafing through Gotham magazine, perusing the hottest bachelors in the city, when her finger landed on a candid shot of Wills Fine, the überstudly buff best pal of Chase Lydon.

  “Oh, spread me some of that on toast points!” cooed Allison. “Yummy. I love the Eligible Bachelors issue. I read it in bed at night during Jon Stewart.”

  “You’re too funny,” replied Eden, checking out the nail polish hues. “What does Andrew say?”

  “He doesn’t care! He knows I am mad for him.”

  Min-Wah Kwang, known in this nation as Roseanna (selected because of the song by Toto), filed Eden’s perfect nails to a smooth clean finish. “Whacala?” she asked.

  “Let’s see,” said Eden, studying the names of the tiny bottles of pinks, peaches, and reds. “These nail polish names are hilarious. I mean, Vampire Bite? Vegas Quickie? What’s next, Gstaad Roadwhore?”

  “How bout Back Seat B.J.,” laughed Allison.

  “Okay,” said Eden, handing Roseanna two bottles. “I’ll do one coat of Limousine Lovin’ and one coat of Hamptons Orgy.”

  Allison turned the page of the magazine to find a huge photo of Wills’s best friend, Chase Lydon, ranked as the Number One bachelor in New York City.

  “Holy shit,” Eden said. She jerked mid-top coat, causing Roseanna to paint her skin.

  “Whoops, sorry!” Eden said.

  “I fix, I fix,” said Roseanna, dipping her stick into the acetone.

  “Alli, that’s the guy—the guy Chase I met on the street who I saw at that benefit,” Eden explained. “He’s in this magazine? Who is he?”

  “Wait a minute—Eden, he’s only the HOTTEST guy in town. You didn’t know who he was?”

  “No, why would I? I’ve been living downtown for twenty years. I don’t know the Upper East Side from Minsk.”

  “Oh my gosh, he is so fine. I bet you he is, like, in love with you already.”

  “No. He has a girlfriend. I saw them at that benefit. She’s pretty.”

  “So? You are foxier than all those girls.”

  “Really pretty. Blond Muffy type. Betty Draper.”

  “I bet she’s completely asexual! Those socialites are all the same. You think she shags him rotten? Hell to the No. She’s probably some cold fish country club matron who would rather do TV than KY, if you know what I mean. They know Grey’s Anatomy better than their husband’s anatomy.”

  “It’s weird, I’m so much older, but we did have this bizarre flicker of chemistry.”

  “See? Toldja. You know with these things! When I met Andrew I knew right away!”

  Allison tilted the magazine toward Eden, revealing a photo of Chase with his brothers at a sailing regatta looking J. Crew-ready and so sexily outdoorsy you could practically smell the salt air. Whale pants central. Ribbon belts galore. Cough and a Teva might fly out.

  “Look! It’s from a new coffee table book of photos by Patrick McMullan all about the good life. See?” Allison said.

  “Whatever. He doesn’t need an almost-forty-year-old hag when he has that young blondie with the pearls,” Eden said.

  “Let me guess, you saw Mary?” Allison ventured. “I’ve never seen you threatened by blondes, or any woman for that matter.”

  “I did see Mary. Damn, she’s young. She’s, like, half my age!”

  “Eden. You have got to get over this. If you are going to get depressed about the inevitable, then you will be inevitably depressed.”

  “I know. I hate myself like this.”

  “Come on, E. You know you still got it.”

  “Trust me, I might have ‘it’ for some guys, but not some cute prep type like him,” Eden said, gesturing to Chase’s photo with her chin as her polished nails were drying to a shine.

  “You never know,” said Allison. “You can’t tell about people from the outside. Look, everyone thought you and Otto were the perfect duo. Every paper in town wrote you were the It Couple. And then what? Maybe Chase is bored with her. Maybe he’s itching inside that bespoke suit. Maybe someone like you is just what he needs.”

  Maybe. Eden exhaled with a shrug. She didn’t know. But she did know one thing: whether she was feeling up to it or not, it was time to get back out there.

  26

  Women are most fascinating between the ages of 35 and 40 after they have won a few races and know how to pace themselves. Since few women ever pass 40, maximum fascination can continue indefinitely.

  —Christian Dior

  The Lydons sat down to dinner in their grand dining room, the low chandelier light glistening off the crystal and china.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Price said, waltzing in wearing a T-shirt and messenger bag. “I was out with Fitz.”

  “Dude, I hear Duke lost his job again. What’s he gonna fucking do now, go ski in Aspen for two years like last time?” asked Pierce between mouthfuls of food.

  “Pierce DuPree Lydon!” his father said furiously, restrained by his impeccable manners. “Mind your mouth.”

  “Sorry, Dad,” Pierce replied sheepishly. He was thirty-one, but if you reversed the digits you would find his actual maturity level.

  “Nah, he’s gonna go be a gardener again. Remember he spent some winter in Palm Beach doing that? Slept with half the married women on Ocean Boulevard!”

  “Nice, he’s going from hedge fund to trimming hedges.”

  “Yeah, I wonder if the ladies’ hedges are trimmed down there!” he joked, raising his arm up for a high five. “Awww, yeah!”

  “Guys,” Chase interrupted, out of respect for his mother, despite the fact that she hadn’t a clue that her sons were discussing pubic landscaping at her dinner table. I mean, please. As Prince once crooned, Act your age, not your shoe size.

  “Yeah, wasn’t he banging Cooper’s mom after the divorce?” Price gave a mischievous grin.

  “Who wasn’t?” Pierce replied.

  “BOYS! Knock it off. This instant!” Mr. Lydon fumed. He looked at his son Chase, dutiful and calm, eating in silence. At least he had one son he could count on.

  In an effort to change the subject, Chase asked a
bout his parents’ previous weekend at Lyford for a wedding.

  “Oh, it was so lovely,” Brooke said, dreaming of wedding bells for her own family. “Actually,” she said, looking to her husband carefully, “we bumped into Skip and Bitsey van Delft down there. And I know it’s none of my beeswax—”

  “Darling, don’t,” interrupted Chase’s father.

  “No, dear, I won’t restrain myself this time. I’ve had enough. Chase, I was embarrassed. It’s humiliating to see them! With nearly three years gone by, it’s—it’s time. You can just tell Patricia is simply chomping at the bit for a wedding. Chomping! She always uses Ron Wendt and it would be simply stunning. It’s what everyone wants! I can’t keep running into them at the Colony; it’s awkward!”

  “Mother, I know,” Chase replied, feeling the back of his neck grow hot as his brow perspired under the nuclear rays of his mother’s hot gaze. “I just . . . I’m not sure if Liesel is The One.”

  Brooke dropped her sterling fork with a thud onto her Baccarat plate. “The One? Please. What is this, a Disney movie? Are you expecting bluebirds and bunny rabbits to sing on a hollow log? What a positively pedestrian notion! Be realistic, Chasie. I mean, honestly. You’re looking for a partner here.”

  “Mother, it’s not a business merger. It’s a marriage.”

  “What do you think marriage is?” She laughed.

  “Well, that’s sad,” Chase replied.

  “This is preposterous. Grant, knock some sense into him, please. This is insane! Of course you and Liesel are getting married. This was never a question of if. It was about when, you said! Now you’re telling me you’re not sure? What are you waiting for, some lightning bolt?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I can’t listen to this nonsense!” Brooke said, shaking her head and looking as though she might weep. “How am I supposed to see the Van Delfts? HOW?”

  “Son, take your time. If you’re not sure, then you’re not sure,” offered Grant with a pat on the back.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Brooke said, almost tearing up. “Grant, you LOVE Liesel!”

  “Well, of course I do, dear, but I’m not the one marrying her.”

  “SHE’S GIVEN YOU THREE YEARS!” she screamed at Chase. “FOR GOD’S SAKE, THIS IS RIDICULOUS!” Brooke fumed and stormed out. As a woman, on behalf of all women, she was horrified that her son would be one of those men who strings along a poor doting girl forever, stealing away childbearing years and tossing her aside to start over as her friends are walking down the aisle.

  Chase and Grant sat quietly after Brooke’s emotional departure.

  Grant pierced the silence. “Son, I meant what I said. You know we love Liesel, but you have to be the one who’s sure, not us.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Chase appreciated his father’s gesture, but they both knew Brooke was as determined as Liesel to seal the deal. The problem was, anything that felt like a deal probably wasn’t what Chase wanted in the long run. But one thing he did know for sure. As his crass brother Price would so gracefully put it, it was time to “shit or get off the pot.”

  27

  Life begins on your 40th birthday. But so do fallen arches, rheumatism, faulty eyesight, and the tendency to tell a story to the same person, three or four times.

  —Helen Rowland

  “With all due respect, Bro, they’re right, what the fuck are you thinking? What are you waiting for?” asked an incredulous Wills Fine on the Rover Club squash court when Chase reported the heated exchange with his mother. “Most guys would kill for a girl like Liesel. Hell, I would! She’s got it all.”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess? Dude, you oughta have your fucking head examined! When she started at Sotheby’s, every guy who wasn’t gay was falling all over himself. I remember I was the auctioneer for this contemporary sale and she walked in the gallery with her boss, and I almost fucked up the bids.”

  “I remember you telling me that,” Chase said, serving the ball.

  “I don’t know what crack pipe you’re on, man. She’s hot, she’s nice, she’s totally wife material.”

  “I know,” Chase said, feeling foolish taking for granted someone it seemed everyone would kill to wed, including Wills. “I’m just . . . not a hundred percent sure. It’s all there, everything you listed and more. I don’t know what my problem is.”

  “Hey, your problem is called cold feet. All men get that before taking the plunge. That’s why there’s a name for it, dude. It’s common.”

  “I guess,” Chase said, whacking the ball as hard as he could. As it bounced and ricocheted in the cube of their court, he felt his life was as out of control and zigzagged as that little black ball.

  After a steam and a shower, Wills and Chase decided to get some pasta at Sette Mezzo. The place was packed with people, flooding out onto Lexington, but Chase knew the owner, who waved them through, offering a table in five minutes. As Wills scanned the crowd for familiar faces (there always was one. Or ten), Chase was stunned to spot Eden. As crisp and clean as he felt post-workout, sweat started to form on his brow. His heart raced and he looked away before she could look up.

  Eden was at a table of six women, two still-married uptown mommy pals, Hannah and Maggie, Allison of course, plus single moms Sara and Callie, who were flipping through their mental black books of who they could hook up with. While Eden was like sisters with Allison, she was not a girls’ girl. She never had a Sex and the City pussy posse, and the idea of group dinner, Chardonnay, and chat about young bucks’ asses was fun once in a while but not about to become a weekly habit. Still, on a night when she would have been doing nothing but sitting around watching Mad Men reruns, it was nice to get a phone call inviting her out for a spontaneous moms’ dinner with Sara, Callie, Allison, and a few other friends from their school. They were not at all the nightmare uptown yummy mummies Eden had envisioned. In fact, she was surprised to find that they were all very cool, relaxed, and not afraid to lose the edit button.

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just snarfed all that gnocchi,” said Allison to her empty plate. “I am Shamu.”

  “Speaking of whales, did you guys see Chip Krakower out front?” asked Sara. “He has ballooned!”

  “Dewars is his water,” said Allison, shrugging. “Morbid obesity is the least of his worries. His son has more problems than a math book.”

  “He’s a biter,” said Callie, filling Eden in. “He has a constant shadow at nursery school. The class filed a petition to have him booted ’cause so many kids came home with teeth marks on their thighs. He breaks the skin every time.”

  “No!” gasped Hannah. “You lie.”

  “I wish I were,” said Allison. “You’ve heard of Teen Wolf? This is Tot Wolf.”

  “So, Eden, where should we go after this?” Callie asked, her eyes twinkling with estrogen. “Cipriani again?”

  “No. Too much competition. It’s C.C.S.,” said Sara, conspiratorially to the table. “Cougar Central Station.”

  “Wait, I thought that was Aspen?” asked Hannah, laughing.

  “Well, sure, Aspen is our mecca,” proclaimed Callie the self-professed cougar-in-chief. “All those hot ski instructors looking to get out of their parkas!”

  “You are killing me,” cackled Eden.

  “Oh, I swear, they are dumb as the rocks they ski on, but they sure know how to make you melt off the slopes,” said Sara.

  “They put the mount in mountain,” said Callie.

  “And the ass in Aspen!” added Sara with a mascara’d wink.

  “Yeah, and sure know how to punch my lift ticket,” Callie added, as the girls wailed.

  “Anyway, since we can’t troll for tail in Colorado tonight, we can do the next best thing and hit Bar & Books or the Lenox Room,” said Callie. “I met this hot, stressed-out Goldman analyst who never gets away from his desk, and I blew his mind. I gave him my card and said anytime they let you outta that cage, call me up! He couldn’t be cuter!”
<
br />   “Hotter than the Harvard Tutors guy who’s helping Kayleigh with math?” asked Hannah.

  “Yes, even hotter,” pronounced Callie.

  “Wait,” interrupted Maggie, horrified. “Are you seriously banging your kid’s math tutor?”

  “Oh yeah. He teaches her times tables, then after she goes to bed, he gives me some long division.”

  “Are you kidding? Every uptown divorcée does it!” Sara laughed. “Where have you been?”

  “Oh, Mags, everyone knows Harvard Tutors offer full service help,” concurred Sara. “I don’t even wait for the kids to hit the hay. They fill in the blanks on the quiz while he fills me in upstairs!”

  “EW! SHUT UP!” Maggie commanded, putting her hands over her ears, as Allison, Hannah, and Eden pounded the table with laughter.

  Just then, Allison abruptly stopped mid-guffaw with a sharp gasp. She threw down her wineglass and grabbed Eden’s tiny wrist.

  “Holyshitholyshitholyshitholyshit,” she whispered, prompting the others to lean inward.

  “Eden, it’s HIM. Wait, don’t turn around.”

  Eden turned around. She locked eyes with Chase and smiled, turning back to the henfest.

  “He’s cute, isn’t he?” she wondered aloud.

  “Wait, isn’t that Chase Lydon?” asked Hannah.

  “Uh, yeah! Is he a fox or what?” Allison asked. “He and Eden had a moment. So sexy.”

  “Gorgeous,” added Maggie. “But super young.”

  “Come on. It’s a new decade! We’re hot women here; we’re not our mothers and grandmothers,” said Allison indignantly. “Forty is the new thirty! Sixty is the new forty!”

  “Yeah, and didn’t you guys hear?” asked Eden, rolling her eyes. “Dead is the new sixty! Rotting corpse is the new seventy!”

  “Shut up, I’m serious,” said Allison. “If any of us were single we’d hop on that for shizzle.”