“Comic-Con?” Penelope asked.
“The comic book convention,” Walt said, rolling his eyes.
Two minutes later, Penelope, in the smelly, nasty bunny suit, tripped down Seventh Avenue South with the crew to Maven’s Bakery, which had Easter cakes in the window. Thanks to an unseasonable cold snap, it was freezing and the wind was tearing down the avenue, whipping up garbage and silt, making it hard for Penelope to fully open her eyes despite the bunny teeth blocking the wind.
“I feel like a camel in a freezing sandstorm,” Penelope shivered as Eric and Stew set up the cameras for the shot. “A really hideous, promiscuous bunny-camel.”
“Get into a sexy stance!” Thomas yelled through the wind at Penelope when they reached the bakery. “Make sure the egg cakes are in the shot!”
She put her hand on her hips, grinning madly while thrusting her chest out in her best manic mascot pose. “Um, okay…how’s this?” Penelope—who’d never considered herself particularly sexy—asked.
“Well, how about something…sexier,” Thomas suggested. “Lean against the glass and jut your hip out…yeah, yeah, that’s it. Now put one hand up on the wall and one on your hip…yeah! Perfect!”
“I look like a bunny version of Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver,” Penelope said. “I could take a stand and say I’m not doing this. I used to be a respectable reporter, you know.”
“Marge said she really wanted it,” Thomas said. “I’ll admit, it was a stupid idea, but Marge liked it and it will be both our asses if you walk out on the big shoot of the day. Besides, what else are you gonna do today—dodge Trace’s clammy hands while you find more teeth whitening paste for him?”
Penelope backed down. “Okay. You have a point. Besides, nobody watches NY Access anyway, right? But you’d better tell her I deserve a raise for this.”
“Fine, fine, just pose…okay great…now look at the camera and say, ‘This Easter, come hop into bed with New York Access!’”
A guy in a black town car rolled his window down and wolf-whistled at Penelope.
“Hey, thanks!” Penelope said, waving after the car. Looking toward Thomas, she said, “That’s the first time I’ve been whistled at since, like, junior high.”
“Let’s go, Penelope,” Thomas said. “Say the line and we’re out.” Several people stopped to stare at the shoot and the oddity in front of them, creating a small crowd.
“Um,” Penelope said, feeling more than a little awkward and shy in front of an audience. “In front of all these people? Seriously?”
“Oh, come on. You look kind of cute, actually,” Thomas said. “Just say it…they probably won’t even run it!”
“I look cute? Really?” Penelope blushed. Maybe the bunny outfit wasn’t so bad.
Cars honked their horns as they drove by and a man from a nearby scaffolding screamed, “Hey bunny babe, wanna find my Easter egg?”
“Ooooh, that’s a good one,” Thomas said. “We’ll do that too!”
“Oh, no,” Penelope said. “Fine, I’ll say the first one—but I’m not saying the bad pick-up line. A bunny has got to have standards.” She got herself back into the “sexy stance” on the bakery’s glass window, positioned in between an egg cake and an Easter basket. As the wind howled in her face, she screeched, “This Easter come hop into bed with…Argh!”
Someone had tossed a half-eaten hot dog at her head from a passing car. The actual hot dog and bun had bounced off the top of the bunny face, but the condiments remained. Relish dripped down the bunny’s buck teeth onto her face and Penelope suddenly contemplated going back to the Telegraph.
After Eric, the cameraman, helped her clean off, Penelope regained her composure, once again assumed the “sexy stance,” and howled into the wind, “This Easter come hop into bed with New York Access!”
“Perfect!” Thomas said. “Now, let’s do it again.”
“Satan,” Penelope said, shivering.
LIBRA:
Your work environment will change. Expect a sudden influx of creativity that will be noticed—and envied—by all.
As Penelope was being tortured in the West Village, Lipstick was uptown covering a trunk show at Portia Vanderven’s East Ninetieth Street townhouse with Ashley. Portia was a former model who, immediately after her 1999 wedding to Goldman Sachs managing director Ralph Vanderven, had set about sealing the deal by providing him with two adorable children, Maxwell and Harriet. The children, who spoke fluent Spanish and called their nanny, “Madre Marta,” and Portia, “Madre Portia,” were the light of her life and “so precious, no diamond could compare to them.” But even more important, Maxwell and Harriet provided physical assurance of a heftier divorce settlement should her husband Ralph ever leave her for the Russian rhythmic gymnast he was rumored to be seeing on the side.
Not that Portia was alone in her predicament. The ladies of the Upper East Side were all atwitter. Just a year ago there were several high-profile splits: the Kramers, the Gettys, the von Furstmergs. All of which had involved women from the same “Russian Invasion,” one member of which was trying to coerce Ralph into international relations.
Portia was on red alert. News of Ralph’s affair was all over town, whispered about over lunch at Fred’s, the racks at Bendel’s, and the bar at La Goulue. But Portia’s options were limited. She wasn’t going to leave him and hand over her husband, the private plane, the yacht, and the houses in the Hamptons and Palm Beach to some woman he’d happened to have met at the notorious hunting grounds of the Bull & Bear after work one day, and who’d been flexibly fucking him for just six months. That Russkie would have to work much harder than that. “You don’t leave your husband over infidelity. That’s ridiculous. Men aren’t supposed to be monogamous—that’s just a bourgeois lie that Americans made up. I’m more…European. Ralph and I have a partnership, a corporation. There’s more to marriage then just romance and sex,” Portia, momentarily letting her guard down, had told Lipstick over lunch a week earlier. “Besides, what would become of me if I did leave him? Or, God forbid, he left me? I’ll tell you what—not much. There’s not much of a market for a forty-two-year-old divorcée with two children who demands a certain lifestyle these days. He would remarry and that hooker would get the money and the name and I would be forgotten.”
So to combat the anger, boredom, and frustration of having fulfilled all societal and connubial promises—and still be stuck in a semiloveless marriage that may or may not be torn asunder by a lithe and limber gymnast—Portia decided to do what several others in her situation had done: start a handbag/jewelry line, and then have a big party to celebrate it.
“It’s shimple really,” Portia, who was on her fifth Grey Goose gimlet by then, said to Lipstick. “I love handbagsh, I have about a million of them—and I obvioushly know fashion. I’m front row at Parish couture every year. Sho why not shtart my own very upshcale acceshories line?”
Lipstick noted the framed picture on one of the mantels of Portia with her good friend, socialite-turned-designer Tory Burch, whose eponymous line not only sold out at Saks Fifth Avenue but, thanks to several Oprah appearances, had sold out everywhere else as well. “Tory and her husband shplit—and she shtill got to keep her shocial shtanding,” Portia slurred, picking up the picture and looking at it closely. “She’s more entrenched than ever becaushe of that line. It made her. Shocially. Financially. I mean, she’s famous now. She’s got more money than her ex and she got to date Lanshe Armshtrong. That clothing line let her be the man and get the man.”
“Okaaay, Portia,” Lipstick said, taking the picture out of Portia’s hands and breaking her trance. “Let’s take a break from the drinks, just for a little bit, ’kay? Oh, look, Bethie and Birdie just arrived….”
“Darling,” Portia, looking Lipstick up and down with her gimlet-soaked eye, said in a loud, drunken voice before Lipstick could make a clean getaway, “who are you wearing?”
Just as Portia demanded to know about Lipstick’s sartorial surprise, there was a l
ull in the room. All eyes turned toward Lipstick and on her latest creation: a crimson-red silk cocktail dress made from a Miu Miu dress and matching jacket she’d deconstructed and ripped apart at the seams a week earlier. It had a high collar that swept around the back of Lipstick’s neck, draping on her shoulders and coming together in a low V. It was perfectly shaped, thanks to Lipstick’s workmanship and the corset in the old Miu Miu dress that flared out to just above her knee—making it look like a Dior dress from the 1960s. Neal’s old Vogues had come in handy after all.
The eyes belonged to Ashley, Lipstick’s coworker; the women who made up Bitsy Farmdale’s posse, also known as The Bitsies: Peaches Swarovski, the crystal heiress; Gwendolyn “Gwynnie” Bacardi, the rum heiress; Mary MacDaniels (her father was a Scottish lord); Fernela Branca, who’d married into the family that created the liquor Fernet Branca; and Lulu Ward-Nass, of the textile monopoly. Thankfully, Bitsy herself had yet to show up. Also milling around was SueAnne Cavendish from Dolce & Gabbana, Ivanka Baer from Vogue, Marybelle Whitehead from Glamour, Susan Naim from Harper’s Bazaar, Bethany Applewood, the head buyer for Bergdorf, and a host of other fashionistas. All looking at Lipstick’s dress.
“It’s beautiful,” Susan gushed. “Where did you get it?”
“I didn’t see that at any of the viewings last fashion week,” Ivanka said. “Is it Prada?”
“No,” Lipstick said evasively. “Just a dress I picked up in my travels.”
“Figures,” said Peaches. “Every time I see someone with a gorgeous creation, they never want to share the designer. Come on, Lena, it’s not like we’re all going to run out and buy the same dress. We just want to know where we can get it.”
“Seriously, I’m not being a bitch,” Lipstick said, “I got it in Paris last summer—”
“Oh, the French! They are just divine,” Susan from Harper’s sighed.
“You’ve been wearing a lot of this mysterious designer lately,” Fernela said. “There was that blue gown you wore to the Alzheimer’s benefit, the pantsuit at the Bahrain ball, the dress at the Tourrette’s luncheon…you seem to have an awful lot of these clothes. Yet you won’t share?”
“The designer is very…shy,” Lipstick explained. “Although I’m sure she will be thrilled that you’ve been keeping tabs on all the clothes she’s made for me.”
“So! It’s couture!” Lulu gasped. “I thought I knew all the couturiers in Paris. Who is she?”
“I…I can’t say, sorry,” Lipstick stammered. “I have to go, I’m expected at a dinner downtown in ten minutes.”
“Why rush off? Bitsy will be here in a second,” Lulu sniped. “She’ll know who you’re wearing. She knows everyone.”
“Sorry, dinner plans, you know…” Lipstick gasped.
“Well, will you be wearing her to the Met next month?” Fernela asked, slyly. “Because as you know, you have to register the designer who is sitting at your table. And as I’m on the committee, I noticed you purchased your table months ago but never listed a designer.”
“You’ll see,” Lipstick said, grabbing her coat and heading toward the door. “I don’t have to register until two weeks before. So I guess you’ll just have to wait.”
Lipstick rushed outside into the freezing wind.
Ten minutes later Lipstick tried to navigate the whole “subway thing” at the East Ninety-sixth Street and Lexington station, but was having a hell of a time with her MetroCard. She swiped her card at the turnstile. It beeped and flashed, “Swipe Again at This Turnstile.” After eight swipes, Lipstick got frustrated and went to another turnstile. When she swiped her card there it read, “JUST BEEN USED.” She could hear the train rumbling its approach.
She ran up to the ticket booth. The station clerk ignored her.
“Excuse me, sir,” Lipstick said, tapping on the glass. “Um, I swiped and swiped and it kept saying swipe again, but then I tried at another one and now it won’t let me in! Help?”
The clerk, an ancient man of indeterminate age, didn’t lift his eyes from the New York Post he was reading. “Should’ve kept swiping at the first turnstile, like it told ya.”
“But I did and nothing was happening and now the train is here and I have to get home.”
“Nothin’ I can do. If it’s a monthly or weekly card, you’ll have to wait twenty minutes till you can go in again. I just can’t bend the rules for everyone who wants to swipe their friends in.”
“But I didn’t swipe anyone in,” Lipstick cried, frustrated, as she saw the train pull into the station. “Oh, darn. Forget it!” And, as the clerk kept reading, Lipstick did what she thought she would never do (besides riding the subway): something illegal. She jumped the turnstile and ran onto the train just as the doors were closing.
Trembling with excitement, Lipstick sat on the 4 express train to Union Square, where she transferred to the local and got out at Bleecker Street, wearing a huge grin on her face the whole way.
Later that night at yoga, Lipstick was still excited.
“You guys—you should have seen it!” she gushed to Penelope, Dana, and Sally during their sun salutations. “It was so cool, I was a criminal!”
“Okay, Jesse James,” Penelope said, rolling her eyes and attempting to stand on one leg without falling. She liked Lipstick but thought that sometimes her “look at me having fun being poor” tales were annoying. “Take it easy there. I can’t afford bail if you get caught, and I don’t even want to think about what that damned society website that you’re so obsessed with would say if there was a police report.”
Over the past month or so, Penelope had had to face her snap judgments head on. Dana, whom she’d always thought was an aloof workaholic, was a workaholic, but was also very sweet. She’d let Penelope and Lipstick join her yoga class free of charge and was always there to offer advice if they needed it. Which they did. A lot.
But Penelope didn’t understand Dana’s depression. It had been, after all, a full year since her divorce. It was almost as if Dana were still trying to fit the image her jackass ex-husband had tried to stuff her into. The marriage was the one thing Dana, the ultimate type-A personality, had ever done that failed and, therefore, she couldn’t get past it.
As for Lipstick, Penelope had expected Neal’s friend to be an airheaded, cocaine-addicted snob—which, up until then, she’d assumed all socialites were. But she was fun and generous and didn’t touch the Colombian marching powder. However, sometimes her tendency to treat being “poor” like a trip to Epcot Center was grating. After all, Lipstick wasn’t really poor. Penelope and Lipstick were, according to national statistics, actually middle-class, although in New York, that placed them firmly in the lower middle-class section of society.
At that moment Lipstick leaned down to hug her head to her knees and came face-to-face with her burgeoning belly.
“Uch,” she moaned, disgusted. “I hate Rachael Ray.”
“Hello, non sequitur,” Penelope said. “I’ll admit—Rachael Ray’s annoying but why you gotta hate?”
Lipstick sighed, standing up straight, while Sally began to meditate in the corner and Dana lay flat on her back.
“I’ve been trying to live on like twenty-five dollars a day. I took your advice, Penelope. I got a monthly MetroCard, stole toilet paper from my office, and I’ve been making my own breakfasts and meals on the weekends. So I started watching the Food Network while I sew, and Rachael Ray is always like, ‘I do it cheap for the everyday family, blahblahblah…. Watch me travel on forty-five dollars a day, blahblahblah….’ And she lies! Lies! You just can’t do New York on forty-five dollars a day. I think the Food Network producers must’ve slipped her some cash. And then I watched her cooking show and I gained ten pounds off of those damn ‘sammies’ and ‘stoups.’ That’s it. I’m switching to Lean Cuisine and Martha Stewart.”
“Well, you could always go to Weight Watchers,” Dana said. “I…um. I went to a Weight Watchers meeting last night.”
“Is that where you’re always
going on Tuesday nights?” Lipstick asked.
“Huh?” Penelope asked. “What do you need to go to Weight Watchers for? You’re not that…heavy.”
Well,” Dana said, “I am a bit. And I was really fat once. I gained a lot of weight during my marriage and my husband used to make me go.”
“And you were sad when you two divorced?” Penelope quipped.
“Hey, I lost the weight—and kept most of it off. Kind of.”
“So why do you go back now?” Lipstick said.
“It’s hard to explain,” Dana said, lunging into a fantastic warrior pose.
“We’re waiting,” Penelope said.
“You guys are going to think I’m nuts,” Dana said, holding her pose and staring straight ahead.
“News flash, we already do,” Penelope said, trying to match Dana’s pose, but wobbling. “But we’re all nuts, so go on…”
“I can’t stop going. It’s like an addiction. For one hour every week I go to this church basement and I’m the skinny, pretty girl.”
“That’s sick,” Penelope said.
“Yeah,” Lipstick agreed, walking over to her purse and peeling open a low-calorie snack bar.
“Don’t judge,” Dana snapped, stepping back from her lunging pose. “You two aren’t exactly role models for having your life together—Penelope is working as a gofer-slash-sex bunny after she got fired, threw up on her boss, and almost burned down the Telegraph.”
“Hey,” Penelope interjected, “It was just the one room.”
“And you,” Dana said, turning to Lipstick, “are consumed with worry that a bunch of idiots will find out that you’re broke and even worse, can’t afford a ten-thousand-dollar dress anymore. And you don’t even know how to ride the subway, for chrissake. You’ve lived here your whole life.”
“Well, some people just don’t need the subway…” Lipstick said, looking down at her bare feet and dropping her snack bar.
Mercury in Retrograde Page 13