Younger

by Suzanne Munshower

  “It makes its point. Getting old sucks, doesn’t it?” Jan asked, so loudly a few heads turned. She lowered her voice. “I mean, look at old George up there.” She nodded toward the front, where her husband was being congratulated. “Older than me yet he’s considered in his prime, while I’m past my sell-by date, just an aging woman pampering a buncha spoiled rich brats.”

  The resentment in her voice shocked Anna. “C’mon, Jan. George loves you. You like your work. You’ve got a great job, lots of friends.”

  “Yeah, right.” She snorted. “Lucky me. Notice how I’m even wearing makeup? I feel like a fake but, I mean, everyone’s a fake, aren’t they?”

  “Surely not all of us.”

  “Look in the mirror, honey. You pretend you’re happy. But what have you got? No man, no kids, not even a dog. Just clients. And money, of course. One thing about us, huh? No matter what happens, we’re set for life. I’ll get half of George’s pile if he ever dumps me.”

  Anna tried to look amused, but Jan’s remarks, in addition to being mean-spirited, had hit home. “No half of a pile for me. If I didn’t have work, I’d just be old and poor.”

  “Come on. What about that money your grandmother left you? Must now be a nest egg big enough to keep you in omelettes for life. Invested for decades, right?”

  “Oh, that. I hardly ever think about it. Anyhow, it’s not all about money, is it?”

  “If I knew what it was all about, do you think I’d still be married to George, sitting in this fucking wannabe hacienda, waiting for him to ditch me?” Jan stood up. “C’mon, I gotta go say buh-bye to these freeloaders.”

  Out front, chatting with Allie and Shawna in front of her car before leaving, Anna confessed that she was losing Coscom. “Oh, God, that’s not good,” Allie commiserated. “So that’s why you were talking about going in-house?”

  “Too late now. And no one wants to know me lately. I’m starting to get scared.”

  “It’s not the end of the world,” Allie said crisply. “Why not give up consulting? Write that novel you’ve been threatening to work on since college. Travel. Or take a little time off and reinvent yourself. Why not put Grandma’s money to good use?”

  Had no one forgotten about that fucking trust fund? “Maybe.” She exhaled deeply. “Anyhow, enough ‘woe is me.’ It was such fun sitting with you guys at dinner.”

  Allie nodded. “Nice party. Plus, I managed a relaxing little nap during the movie, and I didn’t even snore.”

  Shawna winked at Anna. “Just one little snuffle, and I nudged her foot just when the guy was going for someone’s neck, so no one noticed her jump.”

  “C’mon, group hug.” Allie held out her arms. “And stop worrying, Anna. You’ll be fine.”

  As she headed east on the freeway to Studio City, Anna was shaking her head in amazement. Would people ever stop telling her she’d be fine? And how could she have forgotten that damned inheritance? Did everyone know about it? If they did, it might be a blessing, making her seem like not such a colossal loser. But more likely it would be a curse: fewer people would take her plight seriously.

  Neither blessing nor curse, in fact, the inheritance was, plainly and simply, invention. Sheer hokum.

  Oh, Gram, you must be rolling in your grave.

  Her grandmother, Ella Walinski, had come to the United States from Poland before the Second World War with her husband, Lorenz, a plumber, and their son. In Philadelphia, Gram had worked as a laundress; after her husband died, she’d moved in with her child, Walter, his wife, Alice, and their daughter, Anna, in Wayne, a leafy Philly suburb that was part of the social register’s Main Line.

  Anna’s father had changed the family name by deed poll to Wallingham; still, in that neighborhood at that time, the family wasn’t recognized as “one of us.” Her mother was the unglamorous sort of housewife—one with no country club membership, housekeeper, or bridge club. Her dad was sales manager for a car parts company, closer to the automotive blue book than to society’s. They scrimped and borrowed to send Anna to Goucher, a women’s college that had social cachet. And they never outgrew being embarrassed by Walter’s sturdy peasant mother, with her heavy accent and permanently work-reddened hands.

  That shame—the shame of being deemed “NOKD,” or “not our kind, dear”—had been an inherited meme. It had turned Anna into a little snob who pretended her Sears school clothes were fresh off the more expensive rack at Wanamaker’s. Nor had she stopped there: according to her, her father was president of his company and when she turned thirty, she’d get her hands on the sizable inheritance bequeathed by a grandmother who was, in her version, not only patrician but also conveniently dead.

  When her grandmother did die soon after Anna’s college graduation, it turned out she had saved up $200 in a bank account with Anna’s name on it, money Anna vowed to save forever, then spent immediately on clothes. When her mother died of cancer soon thereafter and her father, within a year, succumbed to a heart attack, she found out that, as the lyric went, all she’d been left was alone. The house had been a rental, and the family was in debt.

  Still, the inheritance story lived on, growing even more useful when she was working—it made her appear to be someone who wanted rather than needed this job or that one, someone whose independent streak must be respected. Socially, it swathed her in glamour, made her someone people wanted to know.

  She was still shaking her head at her duplicity coming back to haunt her when she pulled into her driveway. She sat in the car in the garage for a minute, savoring the immediate future when she’d walk into her home’s comforting embrace, trying to ignore the fact that it was a house of cards on which the bank held a 75 percent mortgage she would soon be unable to pay. Some madcap heiress you are, Anna Wallingham.

  She was a fake, all right. She led a double life as surely as any of those undead losers on the screen tonight.

  Chapter 3

  Anna liked to joke that one of her specialties was finding hot launch-party locations epitomizing the kind of place she’d never go to, and New York’s Block was no exception. Relentlessly chic, absolutely comfort-free, and obscenely expensive, it was everything the fashion-conscious adored.

  At twenty minutes past noon, she told the security man he could unlock the doors that opened onto West 54th Street, then walked back to the dark corner where Richard would stand until he deemed it the proper time to come forward. “Now,” she said, “let’s just hope Vogue, Bazaar, and In Style show up.” She chuckled nervously. “And Modern Maturity, of course.”

  “You say that every time, kiddo. I think it’s your lucky rabbit’s foot. Everyone will show up. They’d better, or Barton won’t be so thrilled he flew in for the launch.” Anna squeezed his hand. Neither she nor Richard had met the man, and certainly Richard’s future depended far more on Pierre Barton’s being pleased than hers did now.

  “The models look good, don’t they?” she asked. They stood in lines by the dining room entrance holding the press kits they’d hand the editors as they entered. All were over forty, dressed in sleek gray raw silk sheath dresses to match their glossy silver hair.

  “They’re perfect. Very Mad Men,” Richard assured her. “Which agency?”

  “All of them. Did you know every modeling agency now has a ‘senior’ sector? Wilhelmina calls theirs the ‘sophisticated women’ division. Others refer to it as their ‘classic’ category.”

  “They’re fabulous. How many needed their hair stripped to get back to gray?”

  “Are you kidding? Every one of them.” They both laughed.

  “This place is perfect, by the way.” Richard coolly surveyed Block’s wide-open spaces. Everything was blocky, from the square glasses to the cuboid plates to the uncomfortable boxy black leather chairs. Even the single touch of color—the fat red ranunculi filling the square white ceramic centerpiece vases—had been pruned like box hedges in
to squares. “Still, Studio 54 it ain’t. Where’s all the glamour gone? This is just so—”

  “Square?” She laughed, then gently nudged him. “Hey, here they come. Gird your loins.”

  It started as a trickle, then became a stream, as the most influential beauty editors in America arrived.

  After everyone had been greeted and seated, Richard dabbed any shine off his bald pate and gave Anna a nod.

  She took her place at a podium in the front of the room.

  Showtime.

  After a no-nonsense welcome, Anna said, “We’re here to proudly introduce Coscom’s exciting new line. And, of course, to enjoy what I promise is a low-carb and gluten-free lunch.” She heard some chuckles. “Entre nous, this product is so special that Pierre Barton himself has flown over from London and will be here to meet you. And we’ve got ginormous goody bags for you on the way out. Now, here’s Coscom’s maestro of marketing, Richard Myerson . . . and the woman he brought to the party: Madame X.”

  Anna stood far off to the side, watching as Richard quickly went through marketing promotions and technological advances, then wrapped up with the screening of the first TV commercial to what sounded like genuinely enthusiastic applause. “I think it’s time to go to the table.” Clive Madden had materialized beside her, nodding toward the empty table set up for just four in the front, where Richard was about to sit down.

  Fighting the urge to shrug off his hand, Anna let him gently propel her across the room, then smiled wildly at Richard and slid in at his left. Clive took the seat on Richard’s right, and Anna realized she must be about to have the great Pierre Barton himself seated next to her. Why in the world would he want to sit next to someone he’d just fired? Maybe Clive just didn’t want it to be him.

  And then the man himself was walking over. Even if she hadn’t recognized him from photos, she’d have known he was Someone. Some people just have it, she thought as she watched him stop along the way to introduce himself and shake editors’ hands; he was obviously asking how they’d liked the presentation and they nodded enthusiastically, clearly dazzled.

  What was it that gave Pierre Barton an almost palpable aura of success and money? His bearing, for one thing, ramrod straight yet relaxed in the shoulders, hinting at what Anna knew he had experienced: a moneyed childhood in England and France and an education at Harrow, Oxford, and the Sorbonne. More than that, it was his air of easy self-confidence, the demeanor of a man who had nothing to prove.

  He was undeniably handsome, and he carried his sixty years extremely well. Dark hair graying at the temples, a sort of craggy prettiness reminiscent of Pierce Brosnan. As he came closer, she could see a generous mouth that seemed to smile easily. His gray wool suit, pale blue shirt, and navy-and-gray necktie whispered of fittings on Savile Row, yet he wore his clothes as nonchalantly as if he’d thrown on jeans and a sweatshirt on the way out the door.

  “This must be the woman of the moment!” he said as he reached the table, lightly squeezing her shoulder. He nodded to the men. “Clive. And the famous Richard, I believe.” His touch glided smoothly from Anna’s shoulder to Richard’s hand.

  “Richard’s presentation was quite impressive,” Clive said as Barton slid gracefully onto his chair. “Sorry you missed it.”

  Barton grinned. “It was indeed brilliant, and I didn’t miss it. I was hiding behind the bouncer at the door. And now I should toast our editors and thank them for showing up.” He reached for the open bottle of Sancerre, one of which had been placed on each table.

  Anna was glad Barton spent lunch talking business with Richard and Clive. When the last editor had departed, she thanked the models, then left it to Richard to oversee packing up. This was it, then. Her sole client was now her ex. She had just sat back down when a fresh espresso appeared before her. “Thought you could use this.” Pierre Barton set his own cup on the table and reclaimed his seat.

  “Thanks. I thought you left with the editors.”

  “No, just saying good-bye to Clive.” He took a breath. “Look, I know what’s happened, and I am very, very sorry. If I’d known that you were responsible for all this, I would have insisted Clive cut his budgets elsewhere.”

  She wondered if he expected an understanding expression, but all she could come up with was a noncommittal shrug.

  “You know, I can’t go against Clive, can’t undermine his authority but . . .”

  Well, that woke her up. “But?”

  “But I might have something for you. Can you bear another meal with me? Lunch tomorrow?”

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “I’ll explain tomorrow.” He looked at his watch, a Patek Philippe, she noted. “I’ll book a table at Seven East. You know it? Seven East 63rd, just off Fifth. I’ll see you there at one o’clock. I’m at the Plaza if you need to get in touch with me.”

  He stood for a moment, smiling down at her. “Superb launch. Truly.” Then he moved swiftly to where Richard was supervising his packers, said something that made Richard’s face light up, and went straight out the door. The room seemed suddenly dimmer in his absence.

  Anna had lied to Richard when she said she was meeting a potential client for dinner at P.J. Clarke’s, partly because she didn’t want even him knowing she had no prospective clients, but also because he was one of the many who didn’t know she had an ex-husband. The image of Anna Wallingham schlepping trays of beer in a Greenwich Village bar while watching her bartender husband slide into alcoholism wasn’t the young Anna she wanted to project. It was, as Allie, who knew the story, had once told her, “Not your most marketable self-presentation.”

  Anna had been twenty-two, a budding actress fresh out of Goucher College and dejected about not having found a job in summer stock, when she visited a former sorority sister who was waitressing in New York for the summer before grad school. When her fellow Pi Phi suggested she move into the bedroom being vacated by a girl about to get married, she quickly said yes. She wanted excitement, not the stuffy Philadelphia Main Line.

  She told herself she would waitress only until she found some acting gigs, but life in the West Village turned out to be “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll” in all its awesomeness, and she never managed to get to the non-Equity tryouts. Six months after arriving, while waiting tables at a dive on Bleecker Street, she met Mitchell “Monty” Montgomery, the black sheep of a wealthy New England family who, when he wasn’t tending bar, concentrated mostly on staying high and/or drunk. Mistaking great sex for love was an easy mistake when rarely fully sober, and so they married. After one great year, two hideous fighting and yelling ones, then three living separately, they divorced and eventually realized they actually liked each other.

  The years passed, Monty joined Alcoholics Anonymous, Anna actually started going to open calls to read for off-off-Broadway plays and getting some parts, and they stayed friends. Just friends: Monty had remarried shortly after getting sober and had two kids. Now her ex was standing at the bar talking to the bartender when Anna entered Brasserie Monty, his popular Upper East Side restaurant, and his freckled face split into a big grin. “Hey, Anna!” He hugged her. “Pat, open a bottle of our best Puligny-Montrachet and pour the lady a glass. What’s cookin’, sweetheart?”

  It was probably weird, she thought later, that her two oldest friends—the only ones who knew about Monty—didn’t know she was still in contact with him. She’d have been hard-pressed to explain why she didn’t tell Allie and Jan. It was no big deal, but Anna had always liked having little secrets. Maybe the white lie about her inheritance had instilled in her a taste for other deceptions. Anyhow, it wasn’t as if Monty had been the love of her life. No, that had been David Wainwright, somebody no one in her current life, including Allie and Jan, had ever met or ever would.

  Please don’t tell me I’ll land on my feet, she thought to herself when they were seated with big veal chops on plates in front of them and sh
e told him about losing her only account. But empty platitudes weren’t Monty’s style.

  “That’s a bitch. I know from regular customers in the ad game that things are tough right now. Just keep hustling and don’t give up.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me I should start spending my grandma’s money?” she asked impishly.

  “C’mon, honey, this is Uncle Monty you’re talking to here, not Mr. Born Yesterday. I know you well enough to know that, if it ever existed, you probably went through it all years ago.” He winked. “So, just keep hustling and don’t give up.”

  As Anna approached the white neo-Edwardian façade of Seven East the next day, she tried not to feel either intimidated or excited. For all she knew, Pierre Barton was going to offer her five hundred bucks to write copy for some new jock itch cream.

  The doorman’s standard dark coat and gold braid belied the calculating eyes of trained security with which he regarded arrivals. His role was undoubtedly to keep the riffraff at more than arm’s length from the biggest names in banking, business, and politics. He even had a Secret Service–style earbud and lapel mic to announce Anna, making sure she was expected before opening the heavy iron and glass door. “Take the elevator to the second floor,” he said. “Someone will be waiting.”

  The elevator doors closed noiselessly. Fancy schmancy. Anna had been to other members-only places but never one this exclusive. She was glad she’d dressed in her black-and-white Emporio Armani suit with the short skirt that showed off her legs; they probably wouldn’t let even Hillary Clinton in here wearing one of her trademark pantsuits.

  When the elevator doors opened, a handsome young Indian man in a white jacket and dark trousers was there to lead her to a cocktail table with brown leather club chairs arranged around it and take her drink order. She’d taken just a sip of her spritzer, peering around as casually as possible at the senator, the famed Internet CEO, and two national news anchors when Pierre Barton appeared.