by Jill Kargman
“I don’t feel a thing.” He smiled, squeezing her hand. “You make me feel impenetrable.”
“Me, too. Spartan army. We’re soldiers three hundred one and three hundred two!”
Chase smiled. “How did I get so lucky?” he asked, almost transfixed.
Eden’s red lips sipped her champagne and she leaned into him, her bare shoulder silky and tantalizing. “How about we leave in a few so we can go home and you can really get lucky?”
Across the buzzing salon, Otto couldn’t help but notice Eden whispering to Chase. Normally the center of a wheel from which all of the social spokes extended, Eden was off to the side, causing necks to crane. When a famed DJ mixed vintage Michael Jackson with the newest technobeats from Paris, not a soul was left sitting down save Eden and Chase, who cooed as if they were in a small café in a winding street.
Otto danced with the young and sexy hangers-on, including a very scantily clad Mary, who was wagging her ass on the dance floor, hands in the air like she-don’t-care. Eden didn’t even notice her, she was so engrossed in Chase. But Otto noticed. Mary thought she was so cool and sexy doing that Raise Da Roof crap, but in truth she was embarrassing herself. Suddenly, Otto acutely felt the sting of Chase, the pedigreed interloper. He walked away from Mary and interrupted his celebrated dealer, Lyle Spence, dancing with his wife, Kiki.
“Spence, tell me something.”
“Sure, what is it?”
“That Chase Lydon. Was he the one who bought Beside Eden?”
“Nope. Some lawyer in Midtown, partner in a big firm.”
“Okay, good,” Otto said, relieved. “I was worried that little trust fund shit got the prize of the show.”
“Well, they are big collectors. It never hurts to be on a Lydon’s wall. They have enough of them, and a couple of your early pieces, I might add.”
“Fucking brat,” said Otto, who pounded his scotch, his gaze never leaving Eden conversing with Chase in the corner cabaret table. “As long as he didn’t get that one. That’s my best piece.”
“I agree,” added Lyle. “You keep getting better and better.”
Otto ignored the compliment, he was so seized by jealousy. His rage was emboldened by Chase’s loving gaze in his ex’s direction. He stormed across the space to the bar, his eyes fixed on Eden and Chase in the corner.
“Sheesh, someone’s just a tad jalouse,” said Lyle’s wife, Kiki, as she watched Otto’s unsubtle surveillance.
“Well, even though they’ve split up, she’ll always be his inspiration,” Lyle said with a shrug. “When he started painting her, that’s when he really took off. She’s his muse.”
“More like his doll,” she replied, staring as Otto tilted back another shot, then violently plunked the empty glass down on the bar. “Clearly he does not want to share his toys.”
After pounding two more shots, a wasted Otto approached Eden and Chase in their amorous corner perch.
“Eden,” Otto interjected, woozy with blurred vision and a blood alcohol level that would horrify a Hilton sister, “you deserve more than this little Swiss bank account piece of crap!” He muttered, the vapor of his scotch knocking the couple out.
“I know what it’s like, tapping that sweet ass,” he taunted Chase. “Does she throw you down on the floor, huh? What does she whisper in your ear?”
“SHUT UP, OTTO!” Eden fumed, spinning around to grab her bag with the fury of a Fujita Scale F5 tornado.
“Wait—I’m sorry,” Otto slurred. “I’m drunk—”
“I’M DONE!” she blazed. “In vino veritas.”
“No, Eden—wait,” he slurred, reaching for her.
She pushed his hand away.
“I tried to take the high road, work with you, stay ‘friends.’ But friends sure as hell don’t treat each other this way. You don’t even know what real friendship is. Actually, I take that back—you have two true friends: your ego and your dick. And I don’t get along with either of them.”
Eden stormed out toward the exit, Chase following her. Her face was flushed with wrath and embarrassment. Over his shoulder, Chase looked back at Otto, as the wasted artist got enough grasp of his waning motor skills to give Chase an evil laugh, muted by the blaring bass—and flip him off.
HEY, OTTO, TREAT HER RIGHT!
DING, DING, DING! Ladies and Gentlemen of the Art World, the heavyweight fight of the year! Put down the paintbrushes and pick up the boxing gloves! In one corner: famed artist Otto Clyde. In the other corner: his ex-lover and baby mama, Eden Clyde, model, muse, and current flame of uptown hottie Chase DuPree Lydon, scion of the famed political family. Otto and Eden, who have up until now remained “on close, friendly terms,” according to one insider, went from frames to fisticuffs at the after-party for his sold-out opening at the Lyle Spence Gallery. Otto was pounding shots while a source says Eden and Chase “were practically doing the lambada” on the dance floor. Says the snitch, “He was on her like hair on a weasel.” In a jealous rage, the off-kilter Clyde verbally attacked the lovebirds, who flew off for greener pastures—not before the inebriated Picasso gave Lydon another kind of bird: the finger.
45
When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
—Cherokee proverb
Brooke Lydon fainted.
“Oh Lord! Mr. Lydon!” Clemenza screamed, hand on heart as she knelt beside the woman she had simply called “Meesus” for close to thirty years.
In fact it was Clemenza who did much of the raising of Chase and his brothers when their parents were off at Davos, Sun Valley, or Paris, or taking on the slopes during an impromptu trip to Aspen. Clemenza loved the family and was treated as part of it, with access to the inner sanctum of their secrets and dreams.
“MEESTER LYYYYDON!!!”
Grabbing the New York Post from the ring-covered clutch of the unconscious Brooke, Clemenza began to fan her mistress. But the back-and-forth motions of the tabloid came to a sudden stop as Clemenza beheld the headline on the subway paper teasing the gossip item inside: TROUBLE IN PARADISE: LYDON SCION STROLLS EDEN’S COUGARIFIC GARDEN CAUSING SNAKEBITES FROM OTTO CLYDE. Beneath the screaming bold font was a candid photo of Chase kissing Eden’s cheek at the packed gallery opening.
“Clemenza! Oh dear God. Brooke! Brooke, can you hear me?” Grant yelled. He lifted her head onto his lap and clapped loudly as he instructed Clemenza to dial 911.
“Meester, she sees this photograph, I think.”
She handed him the paper. His eyes widened as he beheld their son on the front page. Within minutes the sirens rang out on Fifth Avenue. Paramedics were able to resuscitate Mrs. Lydon, but for precautionary measures they brought her to Weill Cornell.
When Chase got the call, he had been sound asleep in Eden’s arms. Stunned out of the reverie by Nokia chimes, Chase jerked into consciousness and saw his father’s cell phone number.
“Dad?”
“Your poor mother’s nerves are now mincemeat thanks to your shenanigans. We’re in an ambulance. You have a lot of explaining to do. Meet us in the family wing.”
Click.
“What is it, Chase?” Eden purred, kissing his upper arm. “Want to cook a fabulous breakfast together? Why don’t you blow off work and play hookie with me. Let’s see a matinee.”
“I . . . can’t. My mother is not well.”
“Oh gosh, sorry—is everything okay?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll be back tonight, though. Can I see you tonight?”
“Yeah, I’m having some friends over. We’re going to cook and drink a shitload of wine and play parlor games.”
“Okay.” He smiled. “I miss you already.”
He kissed her forehead, and she flopped back down in the sheets like a weary teenager happily remembering it was Saturday, ready to snooze till noon.
In the DuPree Pavilion of the hospital, Chase charged through the grand halls of the brand-new glass lobby, pressing the up button nonstop until
the green arrow lit and the bell dinged. On his mother’s floor he sprinted down the hall and found his mother in a huge suite near where his beloved grandmother had died. The room overlooked the East River, quiet with serene views of sail-boats and the soft light of a cloud-obscured sun. She faced the window blankly and didn’t turn her head as he walked in.
“Romping and cavorting with trash is not what I imagined for my sons, whom I poured everything into,” she whispered from a stone face. “And this, in the papers, your grandmother is rolling in her new grave,” she said, stabbing her son with her venom-spiked words.
“Mother. She’s not trash, she’s—”
“Defending your trollop to your sick mother who lies in her hospital bed, that’s rich.”
“I love her.”
Brooke’s eyes rolled as she limply lifted a hand to her heart. It was as if her frail aorta were scarred by the scratch of the cougar’s claw.
“Mother, Mother! This is not fair.”
“I can’t breathe,” Brooke muttered as Grant fanned her devotedly from the bedside.
“Mother, I love you. I respect you, but I haven’t been able to breathe my whole life! I feel like . . . someone has somehow lifted the top off the shoe box I have been living in!”
“A shoe box. Really?” Grant said, anger mounting. “Of all the things to say! For everything we have done for you!”
“All of it, Father, has been much appreciated. But it was all to service the world’s perfect perception of me. I was laced up, packaged, and shipped off to the right schools. I dated the right girls, like Liesel, all for you. For what? To have little perfect children and send them to the same schools and start this all over again?”
“Really! This is not the time for this discussion,” Grant stammered. “Look at your mother’s state!”
“It gives me zero pleasure, truly. But I need to get out of here.”
“The hospital? Why?”
“No. Yes, the hospital, but everything. The job. The scene, the world. I just can’t be the picture-perfect son anymore.”
And with that, as tears streamed from Brooke’s closed eyes and Grant grasped her tiny hand, shaking his head, Chase exited their flower-laden suite without looking back.
46
Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
—Herbert Asquith
“Where are you?” Otto demanded on the phone to
Eden. “I need to get to work.”
“What do you mean, where am I? I’m not coming. After the way you treated us, I quit.”
“Really? You quit. Over this . . . what do the papers call him? This modern-day JFK Junior?” Otto asked from his studio as he applied gesso to a huge canvas. “You can’t do this. I have the Paris show less than two months away.”
“I don’t care.”
“Clearly. You’re probably deriving joy from my humiliation. The tabloids are just loving this. Rupert Murdoch should send you dividends! So indiscreet, the two of you! I thought he was supposed to have some class, no? He couldn’t keep his signet-ringed paws off you.”
“Nor could you, once upon a time, I recall. And he does not wear a signet ring.”
Carmina Burana blared on the speakers behind Otto as he felt sick. As the music rose to more and more violent tones, Otto recalled how he had once painted Eden with such passionate vigor, his brushstrokes zigzagging wildly, re-creating her flesh in ecstatic blots of beige. And now she was defending her new puerile paramour. Sometimes when he looked at his collection of drawings of her that filled his walls, Otto longed to make love to her again. But it wasn’t she who lit his fire; it was the image he created and re-created of her. It was his narcissism. It made him fucking sick that that Lucky Sperm Club shithead got to bed her now. He knew he couldn’t ever get her back—not that he really wanted to.
“So you’re really done posing for me.”
“Yes.”
The two sat in silence, the emptiness on the phone receivers sad and heavy.
“So, have you spoken with Cole?” Otto asked, piercing his thick regret.
“We e-mail every day but it’s not the same. I miss him.”
“Me, too. I miss us all,” Otto admitted. “You know, Eden, Mary is nothing to me.”
“Otto. It’s too late. I’m not coming back. To your bed or to your canvases. It’s over. Too much has gone down. I’m a different person now.”
“Really? In a mere few months you are a different person,” he sneered, his nostalgia switching on a dime back into anger. “Wait till Cole meets Chase. He’ll be just as disgusted as I am.”
“Please don’t say anything to Cole about Chase, okay?” Eden asked, feeling vulnerable. “I don’t want you to poison him by stoking the fire.”
“You don’t think he would understand. Hmmm. Now that’s interesting. If you are trying to hide this relationship from your own son, don’t you think perhaps you should examine it a bit more and whether it’s even worth it to see this boy?”
Otto touched a nerve, reminding her of Callie and Sara, and she shuddered.
“He’s not a boy. And I’m not hiding it. Cole knows all about Chase. And you’re in no position to talk. Hello, you’ve been banging barely legals and you don’t ever get shit for it,” she fumed at the double standard.
“Because, unlike you, my dear, I am discreet.”
“So, what, I’m supposed to dart in the shadows and hide whom I’m seeing?” she asked, starting to see the clear difference in Otto sleeping with a younger girl versus her sleeping with a younger guy.
“You are part of this studio. Whether you like it or not. This studio is a family, a business, a house,” he said, reddening.
“Otto, I don’t think you understand: I’m not part of the studio anymore.”
“You always will be. The oeuvre is out there! You are part of the body of work and synonymous with me. He’s beneath you, against everything we’ve stood for, with these lowlifes with their compounds in Maine and crests on their silverware. It pulls the studio down, too. I mean, this is everything we have always loathed!”
“Speak for yourself. I don’t have nearly as much class anxiety as you! And by the way, don’t pretend to not be elite with your town house and trips around the world. Why are you no different?”
“Because I create things. These robots move money around. They live high on the hog while people’s pensions swirl down the shitter!”
“You’re so high and mighty. Did you ever stop to think what one of your million-dollar canvases could do for a village in Africa? Huh? I mean, seriously, it’s a few damn dabs of paint, and you get a boatload of money!”
“I never heard you complaining.”
“I don’t complain. Unlike some people.”
“Let’s not have these quarrels. They’re so tedious. You used to be fun. Maybe those stiffs got to you. Your little schoolboy’s boring ways are rubbing off on you.”
“Actually, funny you should say that . . . ,” Eden trailed off, smiling out the window. “In this weird way I feel like I’m the young one in the relationship.”
“Oh?” probed Otto, calmer now and intrigued. He was like a tempestuous roller coaster, slow and steady or plunging with speedy screams.
“His family is so conservative and old-line but he’s almost roaring to break out of it and I guess I help him do that.”
“No doubt they are not pleased, my dear, about you.”
“I’m sure they aren’t. But I think we make each other better. He’s an old, old soul and I make him feel younger. I’ve always been a free spirit and he makes me feel grounded and more mature. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You obviously have such disdain for him. For this relationship.” Eden shook her head and looked at her watch.
“No, I’m sorry. Eden, honey, I . . . can’t lie to you. Naturally I always suspected that perhaps you might leave me for a younger man. You were my model who revered me, but of course I knew one day I’d wake up from my reverie to find th
at the student had outshined the master.”
“Otto, don’t be so dramatic. You did the leaving, might I remind you. You’re the one porking every hot piece of ass that comes through there.”
“It is what it is.” He shrugged matter-of-factly. “You know I love you more than anything. Always.”
They were bound together, forever, and they would have to get over this hurdle, not just for her future with Chase but because of their lifelong tether through Cole.
“I apologize for my shallow jealousies. They are foolish,” he admitted. “Tell me more about him.”
“I don’t know, I just . . . his devotion is so full, so persistent. Actually, he kind of reminds me . . .”
Her voice trailed off as it broke a bit. She could never utter Wes’s name to Otto. In that moment, on the phone with Otto, of all people, Eden realized something. That familiarity she loved in Chase? It wasn’t him. It was her. Her old self. Chase didn’t so much remind her of Wes—they were incredibly different. It was that Chase reminded her of her, back then.
“Yes,” Otto probed. “Who does he remind you of?”
“Nobody. Just my old self, that’s all.”
“I remember that girl. She was effervescent and beguiling and tempting and sparkling, and she still is.”
Eden sat quietly, wondering if Chase saw those qualities or thought of her as old and wise, experienced-sexy versus hot-sexy.
Otto continued, “I want you to know I love you still and want you to come over to talk, to sketch. Will you consider forgiving me and posing tomorrow? Working through this together?”
“No. I’m sorry, but no.”
“No? That’s it?”
“I can’t, Otto. I have to move on. Of course we’ll still be friends for Cole but as for spending time working together, I just can’t do it. Why torture each other with this feeding-tube crap? It’s better for everyone this way.”
“So that’s it? You’re just going to burn this bridge?” he sneered, surprised. “All this work we create together?”