“Dag!” said Lipstick, who rarely if ever cursed (too déclassé), stamping her foot. “Dag, dag, dagdagdag!”
“Oh, my gosh—I’m so sorry,” said a sweet, familiar voice behind her. “Let me help you with that!”
Lipstick turned from the disaster scene to face Sally Brindle, her longtime yoga instructor and only friend besides Neal who was not a social or in “the crowd.”
“Sally,” Lipstick said, taken aback, “what’re you doing here?”
“I could ask the same thing.” Sally, dressed in white yoga pants and a white down jacket (“white is very pure”), smiled. “What’s with the box of shoes? How come you’re not at Y today?”
“Um, erm,” Lipstick mumbled, looking away and slowly backing down the stairs to the box of shoes. “Well, I…had a day off.”
“Wait a minute, these are yours,” Sally said, moving past Lipstick to pick up a pair of five-inch Louboutins with a corset-like lace-up on the heels. “I know this fuck-me footwear—they’re the ones that scratched up my studio floor last year when you conveniently forgot to read the No Shoes signs that are up everywhere.”
“Yeeees,” Lipstick said, averting her eyes as she tried to shove the errant heels back into the busted box.
“Are you doing a shoot here for the magazine or something?” Sally asked.
“Not really,” said Lipstick, feeling like a trapped rat.
“Well, then what?” Sally asked, as she placed the last pair of shoes inside the box. “It’s not like you’re moving in,” she said, looking closely at Lipstick.
“Actually, um, haha…I am,” Lipstick said, standing up straight and looking Sally squarely in the eye.
“Wait, really?” Sally said. “I was just joking. Why are you moving in? What happened to your beautiful place on West Twelfth? Is everything okay?”
“Help me with this box and I’ll fill you in,” Lipstick said.
Sally not only helped Lipstick carry the busted box into Lipstick’s new home, she stayed to help move the rest. Lipstick then finally filled Sally in on the past month’s debacles—only after, of course, Lipstick elicited a promise from Sally not to tell anyone of her plight, which Sally assured her was unnecessary. “Yoga teachers are like therapists—it goes against our ethics to blab. Besides, you’ve been a client and a pal for years. And I don’t even know the Bitsies. They bring their bad karma to Rashad uptown.”
“Wow,” Sally said, sitting down on a kitchen chair surrounded by boxes and looking at Lipstick in disbelief after Lipstick had finally finished her tale of woe. “Wow. Wow.”
“Yeah,” Lipstick agreed. “So, here I am, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, kicked out, basically disowned, for all I know. Weird, huh?”
“What does your mom say?” Sally asked. “Have you talked to your parents at all since this happened?”
“No,” Lipstick said, looking away. “I’m too angry to talk to them yet…I just think that there was a better way to do this. As in, maybe they could’ve given me a warning or something. Isn’t that the kind of thing you tell someone ahead of time, you know? Like, ‘Hey honey—after the long talks amongst ourselves and with you—we have decided to cut off your cards, cash, and apartment’?”
“Maybe you should call them,” Sally suggested.
“Later,” Lipstick said. “I mean, they raised me to be like this. They were the ones who begged me to go to $10,000-a-seat galas and wear $6,000 dresses. In fact, Mother was distressed if my picture wasn’t taken and put in the Styles section or on that stupid Socialstatus.com website. It made her look better to her friends. She treated me like some doll she could dress up and control. And Daddy always kind of liked the perks that came with everything, including my job that he now says he hates. He was happy Mother was happy and used my career for his own purposes too. I mean, how does he think he got his firm that great box for the playoffs? I had to put the box owner’s wife in Y for two months straight for that. And believe me—it was not easy convincing Jack to do that. He kept calling her a Bravo reality slut who wanted to buy her way into society. Daddy now wants me to go into the family business—and all because they’re bored at home and need some sort of distraction. It’s all been so humiliating and stressful to realize I was just their puppet. To be honest, I have no idea what I’m going to do about anything.”
“Sounds like you should come back to yoga,” Sally said, offering Lipstick a tissue.
“I can’t afford it anymore,” Lipstick said, taking the tissue and blowing her nose. “Do you know Y pays me less than a first-year investment banker at my dad’s firm? I’ve been there for seven years!”
“My treat,” Sally said, rubbing Lipstick’s back. “You’ve always been so supportive of me over the years, getting all your friends to come when I opened my own studio and then writing about it in Y. It’s the least I could do.”
“I can’t,” Lipstick said, “I can’t face walking into a studio and having to see…well, anyone. I just can’t. It’s hard enough to go to work and work functions these days pretending everything is fine.”
“Well,” Sally said, slowly, “what if we did it in the building?”
“Here?”
“Yeah, here. I have a private client in the building, and frankly, she could use some company.”
“So that’s what you’re doing here,” Lipstick said. “Why is she getting yoga in the middle of the day? Doesn’t she work?”
“She took the day off.”
“Is she…normal?”
“No, silly,” Sally laughed. “No one is! But she’s fine. She’s just been having a rough year. Anyway, I’m going back upstairs to ask her now.”
SAGITTARIUS:
Forming harmonious, warm social friendships, possibly related to group activities within a club, can figure now.
Dana was just stripping off her yoga clothes when she heard a knock at the door and Sally’s voice came floating through, “Dana? Sweetheart? Are you decent?”
Karl Gluck started foaming at the mouth and barking hysterically, as he did when anyone came to the door, and Dana pulled her yoga pants back on, sighed, and said, “Coming…” She was tired. It was like all the emotion of the past year had finally caught up to her. She’d called in sick for the first time ever and had had Sally come over for an emergency yoga session.
Dana opened the door and immediately knew Sally was up to something. She had this impish look on her face.
“Dana…honey. I have a proposition for you.”
“Yeeees?” Dana asked, shooing Karl, in a full-blown barking orgy, away from the door.
“Honey, remember when we talked about you maybe starting to meet people again?”
“I can’t go to classes in the studio yet.” Dana sighed. “I just can’t.”
“No, no, of course not,” Sally said, smiling. “But may I please, please, please bring someone to you? Now, before you say no, she just moved into the building and is a very good friend of mine who seems to have fallen on some hard times. She is a lovely girl—you will just die for her, I swear—and just needs a little help right now.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Dana said, feeling a bit put upon. She had never had anyone in her apartment except for Sally, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to open up her haven to a stranger.
“It would be a huge favor to me,” Sally said. “And to sweeten the pot, I’ll cut my rate in half.”
“This woman means that much to you?” Dana asked. Sally’s home visits, at two hundred dollars a pop, were expensive.
“She does. I wouldn’t have half my business if it weren’t for her.”
“Can we do it on a trial basis and see how it goes?” Dana asked, too tired to say no.
“Absolutely!”
“Fine. Tell her to come next Wednesday.”
“You. Are. A. Doll!” Sally squealed and hugged Dana before rushing back downstairs.
LIBRA:
Every dark cloud has a silver lining. You may just have to sew it in yourself.
<
br /> As Lipstick was attempting to open her boxes and put things away, Sally came running down the stairs and burst into her apartment. Kissing Lipstick on the cheek, Sally said, “It’s all done! Dana says it’s fine—she’d love to have you. She lives on the top floor and we meet every Wednesday evening at seven and Saturdays at two.”
By 6:00 p.m., Lipstick had arranged the furniture and managed to assemble a sort of closet area in the bedroom by the time Neal came over with a bottle of wine and a large box.
“Darling, I’m confused,” Neal said, putting the wine on the kitchen counter, placing the box on the floor, and taking off his black cashmere coat and Paul Smith scarf, “Why is the bed in the living room?”
“Well,” Lipstick said, “the bedroom is supersmall and has only one tiny closet, so I decided to make the bedroom the closet, the living room the bedroom, and the kitchen the dining area. It’s not like I’ll ever have anyone over here anyway and fifteen boxes of clothes, ugh, make that thirteen, just won’t fit in one tiny closet.”
“Okay,” Neal said, opening the wine, “That makes sense. Oh! Now, open your present I brought you,” pointing toward the box by the sink.
“It’s a little small to fit Bergdorf’s fourth floor,” Lipstick mused, tearing open the box.
“Hmmm,” she said when she finally succeeded in ripping off the tape and looked inside. “A sewing machine.”
“Voilà, my dear,” Neal said, flourishing his hand. “Your solution!”
“But what am I supposed to do with this?” Lipstick said, looking at the machine as if it were an alien artifact.
“Lips, please don’t be coy,” Neal said, sitting down in the armchair Lipstick had placed in the kitchen. “Were you not the best seamstress in Ms. Frampton’s etiquette classes?”
Lipstick shuddered.
Every afternoon of every second Saturday, from the time she was twelve until she graduated summa cum laude from The Spence School, she’d been forced to attend Ms. Frampton’s School of Arts and Etiquette, where society’s strict guidelines were drummed into her head: Use the right fork. Sit up straight. No borrowing dresses from designers, only buying. Absolutely, no cursing under any circumstances. Polite conversation is an art form, so practice. Sit with your legs closed, knees together, and with your left leg crossing your right leg at the ankle. Don’t cross your thighs—you’ll get spider veins. Never get up and dance at a party unless the hostess or someone higher in the social pecking order has done so first. At a dinner party, speak to the person on your right for the first course and switch to the person on your left for the second course—and after that you may leave your seat for a bathroom break, but not before.
In addition, she’d also learned how to “be a lady,” and was taught how to sew, embroider, set the perfect table, and play a good—but not too good—game of tennis.
“Yes, but that was years ago,” Lipstick moaned.
“Did you not make me the most beautiful slipcover, in under an hour, I might add, for the Ryans’ sofa when their schnauzer shat on it right before the Elle Decor magazine shoot? And did you not say you secretly enjoyed sewing it?”
“Okay, sure, but what does this have to do with what I can wear to the gala season?” Lipstick asked.
“Oh my, it’s going to be one of those spell-it-out-for-you days, isn’t it?” Neal sighed. “Make. Your. Own. Dresses.”
“Really? Me? From what?”
“Yes, silly, you. You always have to alter your clothes anyway and are constantly complaining about how boring everything looks off the racks—”
“Not Balenciaga or Dior!” Lipstick gasped as if she’d heard something libelous.
“Please. No one from Y can hear you—don’t mock-shock me, Lips,” Neal quipped. “Do it yourself. Isn’t that your motto these days?”
“Yeeees,” Lipstick said, rubbing her forehead again.
“So, use your old clothes. We may have edited, but there are still way too many in that closet-slash-bedroom, and it’s not like you can wear the same thing twice after Jack sees it anyway. To borrow a line from Tim Gunn: ‘Make it work.’ And to help, I brought you some old Vogues from the 1950s and ’60s. Don’t ruin them—they’re classics from my personal library.”
Lipstick, feeling overwhelmed, put her head down on the kitchen table and let out a sigh.
“It’s okay,” Neal said, “Let’s look on the bright side—you have a fabulous new apartment in Soho, which is way cooler than the Village, darling. Think of it as grungetastic! You are the Marc Jacobs of Y right now, dear—young, hip, urban, and downtown—and a designer.”
“Yeah,” Lipstick said, sitting up straight in her chair, “Marc Jacobs.” She instantly felt better.
“Now, let’s order Chinese. Penelope told me about this fantastic delivery called Mama Buddha. She said to order her the spare ribs.”
“Penelope?”
“Penelope, your new next-door neighbor who got you the apartment and whom I invited over. She should be here any minute now, probably dressed in something that used to be yours.”
As if on cue, there was a knock on the door and Penelope’s voice came floating through the cracks, “Neal? You there? It’s me….”
Neal opened Lipstick’s door to reveal a slightly harried Penelope, dressed, sure enough, in one of Lipstick’s hand-me-downs—a black Dolce & Gabbana sleeveless dress that clearly hadn’t been tailored yet and hung on her in a baglike way, topped off with a yellow cashmere cardigan with pearl buttons. She’d tried to straighten her hair for her first day of work, but it was still slightly frizzy and a few loose strands had escaped her ponytail, giving Penelope a fried halo.
Neal enveloped Penelope in a hug, introduced her to Lipstick, and ordered Chinese food for the three of them while Lipstick, recognizing her dress and sweater, stifled a giggle. Penelope looked like a little girl playing dress up in her mother’s clothes. Lipstick liked her immediately.
Penelope, exhausted, was more than keen to meet her new neighbor, the socialite who’d fallen on hard times that she’d heard so much about in the past year. But when she saw her, Penelope couldn’t help but be irked by the fact that Lipstick had spent all day moving and still looked gorgeous. She was a tiny bit jealous of the other woman in Neal’s life, especially one who seemed to have had so much handed to her. But then Penelope saw her eyes, which were still red from crying, and she felt a pang of guilt.
“Hey,” Penelope mumbled, offering her hand, “nice to meet you. Thanks for all the clothes and stuff.”
“Oh no,” Lipstick said, grabbing her hand, “thank you for the apartment. You saved my life! And my dress looks better on you than it ever did on me.”
“Ha!” Penelope said. “Now I know you’re a liar—but I’ll take what I can get!”
Just then the food arrived, and they all crowded around Lipstick’s makeshift kitchen table.
“So, how’s the new job?” Neal asked Penelope. “How’s my David treating you?”
“Oh, man.” Penelope sighed, tossing a masticated rib into the garbage bag. “I love David—he saved my butt like ten times today, but everybody else at New York Access is nuts. They’re all sniffing some powerful glue.”
“Oh, sounds fun!” Lipstick said, slurping her sesame noodles.
“Well. Not exactly,” Penelope said, giving Lipstick and Neal an odd look.
SCORPIO:
Venus warms your privacy sector, and there can be very private love feelings and longings. But remember: In all areas, in order to move forward, you may have to take a step backward.
Penelope’s job as an “assistant producer” was slightly more demeaning than she’d anticipated.
Penelope arrived for work at the NY Access newsroom on East Twenty-eighth Street a full fifteen minutes early. Once again, Gladys made her wait in the dingy reception area until David okayed her entry, and once again, Gladys called her Pamela.
“Penelope,” David said when he saw her walk into the newsroom, “I’m so glad you actually
showed up. Let me take you around and introduce you to people.”
David guided her first to the “studio” area, which was divided into three sections: a sofa (“for interviews”), an anchor desk, and a green-screen area where the weather segment was done. It was all shiny and two dimensional in a way that television studios are, and while it may have looked authentic and homey through the distance of a TV screen, in person it looked cheap. Behind the IKEA sofa was a mock-up of Fifth Avenue so that when the cameras were on, it would look as if the studio were on the busy thoroughfare, in the heart of the city, rather than in the dingy warehouse district. The anchor “desk” was a shell of painted-over plywood, and there were signs that read NY Access: #1 for News! that could be rolled in or out of sight to add a three-dimensional aspect to any part of the set while reminding the viewers that they were, in fact, watching a high quality telecast.
Stepping over wires and dodging cameras, David took Penelope’s arm and walked her over to the makeup room just as Marge’s voice was heard ringing through the walls, “Coffee! David, where’s my coffee?”
“Oh, blast that bitch.” David sighed. “Penelope, wait right here; I’ll be back in a second.”
“Okay,” Penelope said, taking a seat in the director’s chair farthest from the door. “Take your time. I’m good.”
Five minutes later, in walked the station’s news anchor, Trace Howard. Penelope recognized him from his photo on the promotional poster by the front door where he stood with the station’s other anchor, Kandace Karllsen, linking arms and smiling. Trace was a preternaturally tan sixty-two-year-old man with dyed, thinning hair on his head but a full Magnum P.I. mustache on his face and a new, young girlfriend every month or two.
He strutted into the makeup room, dropped his briefcase by the door, took one look at Penelope, and announced, “I am a powerful and attractive man!” before taking the seat next to hers and demanding, “Teeth whitening paste, please.”
Mercury in Retrograde Page 10