by Tara Brent
“That’s... flattering, I guess. First time anybody compared me to Patton.”
“It’s not flattery, Kira. I really, really want you. No one else can do it like you will.”
I want to say yes to him so badly. Matter of fact, I want to say yes to anything he asks me to do. But this wedding? It just sounds impossible. I’m about to say no, when he tosses this in.
“Besides, I want you for... Well, I’d just love to spend time with you.”
“With me and mom?”
He laughs. “You are a remarkable person, no, I mean it. Skinny dipping in that pool last night...”
“No, hold on. Before you build a legend, I was not skinny dipping.”
“Okay, true, but it didn’t take much imagination for me to get...”
“Get what? A woody?” Even I am shocked I said that, but he busts out laughing again.
“That’s what I mean. You strike me as someone who says exactly what’s on her mind. Who does whatever the hell she feels like; because she feels deeply and with true passion. I’ve never been with a woman like you.”
“And it’s not like you haven’t cast a wide net.”
“Oh, well. Don’t believe everything you read in the supermarket tabloids.”
“Really? You’re not really dating an alien from Venus who’s carrying your love child?”
“Absolutely not. She’s having twins.”
“Congratulations.”
“She means nothing to me.”
“I’m sure there are dozens of girls who could say that. Like the pool bunny this morning.”
That shuts him up. I’m surprised at the look of hurt in those eyes. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I have no right to talk about your private life.”
“No, but... Well, maybe I deserved that.”
“Why?”
“Maybe some-day I’ll tell you.” His eyes wander off somewhere. Anywhere but on me. What is he acting so ashamed about? He’s a Bad Boy Billionaire Playboy. I just have to keep that in mind.
But I can’t help myself. Something makes me want to reel him back in. Even though I know what a terrible idea that is; professionally, personally and every which way I can think of. Which is why I hear myself saying “Let’s do this, tomorrow I’ll meet your mother. She’s the one who I’d work with, right?”
“Well, yes. Although I’d want to keep my eye on things.”
Kira, Kira, Kira. You are looking for a world of trouble. Again...
Chapter 4: The Mothers
The next morning, I head for my meeting with Mama Okoye. Igor calls first, to instruct me. U.S. Grant hotel, on Broadway, downtown by the Gas Lamp district. It’s a beautifully restored 1910 classic Beaux Arts style. Named for a president, and more than a dozen presidents have stayed here. So did Charles Lindbergh, and even Albert Einstein. And it has one of the world’s great bars, in my humble opinion.
That’s where I find Mrs. Cynthia (call me Cici) Okoye, sipping a dirty Manhattan. Not even a Bloody Mary, as it is only ten-thirty. I refuse the offer to indulge in an eye-opener.
“Suit yourself, dear. I love this hotel, and I had to come by to check our reservations.”
“Aren’t you staying on Coronado?”
“Oh, not for me. Out of town guests. I’ve booked up everything they had at the Del, but I blocked out forty rooms here, for overflow. That’s why I came here straight from the airport.”
Well, at least she didn’t just come here for the bar.
“God, I hate the ‘red eye’.” She doesn’t look like she just got off a cross country ‘red eye’ flight. She doesn’t look the fifty-plus age that math tells me she has to be. She does look regal enough to have been Blake’s mother, however.
“How was New York?”
She shrugs. “It’s always New York,” she says. “I try not to spend a lot of time there, but, you know, friends and relatives and all that. I went to college there, you know. I’ve considered myself a New Yorker ever since.”
“No kidding? My mother got hitched after high school. She lives in Arizona now.”
“We’ve spent some lovely winter visits there. At the Biltmore. Do you know it?”
“I haven’t stayed there, but I’ve always been crazy about anything built by Frank Lloyd Wright.”
“Agreed! See, I already love your taste!” She takes a good sip. “I wouldn’t dare stay there in the summer, though. God, it’s an inferno. How does your mother stand it?”
“She doesn’t, much. She spends a lot of time up in Prescott, with friends. Or here. She visits me for a couple of weeks every year.”
“How nice,” she says and sounds like she actually means it.
“It really is, although it can be hard spending as much time together as I’d like to. Lots of weddings in the summer. My busiest time, really.”
“What a shame. And I’m sure Sebastian’s wedding will keep you hopping. I spoke to Blake. I understand how taxing this sudden schedule makes it for you. Especially with vendors, he told me.”
“Well, I’m glad he prepped you.”
“Thoroughly.”
She smiles at me, quite warmly. Which makes me sure he didn’t say anything about the escape in the pool. “That doesn’t surprise me. I didn’t pull any punches, so I’m sure he got the picture. He was even taking notes. I found him... very impressive.”
“And he’s very impressed with you, I have to say.”
Really? Tell me more! That’s what I want to say. Instead, I turn the conversation back to business. “I’m especially worried about finding a great caterer on this short notice.”
“And I’ve been thinking about that. In a way, I’m rather excited at the challenge.” She signals to the waiter to bring her another Manhattan. “I’ve had some ideas. Even a few wild ones.”
Whatever that means. I almost wish I could tell her a few wild ideas I have about Blake, but she goes on:
“Tell you the truth, I’m only too happy to be rid of those stiffs.”
“Pardon?”
“Williams and Bartholomew. Such terrible snobs. Which fits right in with their reprehensible politics.”
“They are very well respected for their work, though”
“If you go in for that tight-ass formality. I find it a dreadful bore. I want this event to different. Memorable. Wild and passionate. And I know that’s an atmosphere you can deliver.”
“We’ll definitely make it exciting. I’m sure it will be full of surprises.”
“Oh, I have no doubt! Rose petals. Brilliant!”
Oh, shit. How much did he tell her?
“In fact, it reminded me of me. Me and my best friend got pretty wild on our High School Prom Night. Although our skinny dipping adventure took place at three a.m. on the beach at Coney Island.”
Skinny dipping? Thanks for sharing, Blake.
“And the thing with the rose petals? It really sold me.”
“I’ll try not to put us in that situation.”
“Oh, but there will be something, there has to be.”
“Well, I try to plan for contingencies.”
“As you should, but I’ll tell you a secret. I’ve given dozens of fancy wing-dings. Political fund raisers. Charity balls. Anniversaries, holiday parties, you name it. And my favorite part, the part I actually look forward to, is the disaster.”
“That’s... unusual.”
“Also practical.”
“How do you mean?”
Because, as you are no doubt very aware, nothing ever goes one hundred percent according to plan. Never. Something is certain to go totally wrong. So, instead of worrying about what it will be, and flying into a stressed-out panic, I embrace the moment. I say ‘Aha! Here it is! This is the fuck-up. The mystery is over. Here’s that ‘bad thing’. And now we know what it is, and we deal with it, but I find that when I just wait for it, knowing something will inevitably happen, I never worry about what it will be. And when it happens, I relax even more, because instead of wondering what disaster might h
appen, I know what it is. It already happened. Now we can enjoy the rest of the party.”
“That’s... an amazing attitude.”
“Yes. Rather Zen, wouldn’t you say?”
And you know what? Just hearing her explain that makes me relax, too. Because she’s right. No matter how exactly I plan things down to the last detail, something ALWAYS goes wrong. So why not welcome it? Why not say Don’t have to worry about anything now. We know what the fuck up is now.
So, we talk and laugh, plot and plan, knowing that we’d do our best, and that’s all fate could ask of us. It was liberating.
One of my most important techniques for a successful event is to get to know the host as well as I can. What they like, what they don’t. What lets them feel all the joy and leave the worries to me. So, we talk about the bride and groom. The in-laws. The Best Man, and Bridesmaids, and Groomsmen.
Sebastian was her second son. Very different than Blake, she admitted. Not at all a jet-set playboy. Seb was the serious one, the studious one, the self-motivated, achievement-oriented one. Simply put, Seb was his father’s son. And Blake? Well, he was daring, passionate, and uninhibited. Like his mom.
Seb was a top student at Cornell. Pre-Med. When he got into Harvard Medical School, he found himself drawn away from patient care, and developed a hunger for medical research. This is where he felt he could do the most good. After all, he was unreasonably wealthy. As a clinical physician, he couldn’t see more patients that a colleague who was hammered by student debt. There was a real limit to how much good he could do.
However, with research, he was thinking big. Following a path to new treatment, new cures, things that could benefit thousands. Millions. And as a researcher, while others spent precious time chasing grants, or selling their soul to Big Pharma, Seb could focus on things he cared about. Diabetes. Cancer. Arthritis. In short, he was a good man, and I liked him even before I met him.
The money in the family had come from his father’s side. Joseph Okoye came from Nigeria, where his father and grandfather had been shrewd politicians and visionary businessmen. Their political connections enabled them to become millionaires, but they were also men of conscience, who struggled with the morality (or lack thereof) and corruption that was all but unavoidable in government. Joseph’s grandfather made his fortune in gems. Not the diamonds that were plentiful in South Africa, but rare precious stones; emeralds, sapphires, rubies. His father had parlayed a small fortune into a large one, making an early entry in the rich oil deposits that Western petroleum conglomerates began to develop.
Joseph was an Oxford man, brilliant and highly educated. He came to the United States after his father was named an ambassador. Joseph continued his post-graduate studies at Yale, where he studied economics, and later also earned a law degree. Then he took a job with Goldman Sachs. After five years, he had surpassed his family’s wealth with his own. When his father died, he inherited that fortune as well. He left Goldman and began an even more lucrative career as an arbitrage specialist. By fifty, he was a multi-billionaire.
On the other side, Seb’s fiancé, Michelle Conroy, was also a doctor – in her case, a pediatrician. She had been working in a large practice when she attended a conference where Seb was making a presentation about therapy breakthroughs for Juvenile Diabetes. Michelle found him fascinating, in a way most people did not. After dating for six months, she left the regular practice she worked in and moved to a cutting edge cancer treatment hospital. Her insights on the clinical side were a valuable complement to Seb’s more lab-oriented approach to problem-solving. They made a hell of a team. They were engaged after a Valentine’s Day proposal.
Seb’s Best Man, Harold Parker, had been his college roommate and his best (practically only) friend. Harold was a brilliant and dedicated programmer. When Seb had opened his research center, Harold joined the team as a computer specialist and developer. The two men remained close friends. Harold arranged a bachelor party staged on a luxurious yacht rigged and tricked out for big game fishing. The eight attendees were flown to the Caribbean on the Okoye family Gulfstream. Among the Groomsmen attending the fishing voyage were a molecular biologist, a veterinarian, an ophthalmologist, and two oceanographers. Blake offered to furnish a few pulchritudinous deck hands to help the lonely sailors through the long three nights at sea. Harold politely nixed that.
So, by the time Cici and I finish the dossiers of the players, I have a pretty good idea what kind of people Seb, his fiancé, and his friends are. Altruists. Humanitarians. Gods of Philanthropy.
I’m not even a very good tipper.
I also learned why all this wedding plan stuff was in Cici’s lap. I’d almost always worked with the parents of the bride, not the groom. I had assumed it was a money thing – since the Okoye fortune was vast.
But that wasn’t it. Like their daughter Michelle, the bride-to-be’s parents, Dr. James Conroy, and Dr. Annette Miller-Conroy, were social do-gooders. In their case, their focus was on oceans. Pollution, warming, habitat collapse. James had been chairman of Marine Biology at the University of Michigan. He met Annette at a conference she hosted at the University of Oregon, where she was also a department chair. After their marriage, they knew they couldn’t both be a department chair at the same university. So, they relocated to work out of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, a private, nonprofit research facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering. They’d spent the past six months at sea, studying the degradation of coral reefs in the Pacific. They were coming in for the wedding, and there’s no way they were going to be planning anything. Not on land, anyway.
Anyway, here’s where I decide to probe Cici herself. “You mentioned that you have an idea that’s kind of... ‘wild’, I think you said?”
“Oh, I’ve got all kinds of oddball notions. I like to shake things up, but if you’d really like to hear—”
She stops, suddenly. Her eye line shifts, looking past me, at the entry that went through to the lobby. “Darling! What a surprise!”
As she stands up, and her arms open, I realize who the surprise is. I turn around, to see Blake breeze in, face bright with genuine affection. There’s a big mom-hug, and all the usual you look greats and so glad you’re heres.
And then Cici grabs me by the wrist – as if I would otherwise run for the hills. Is that ever wrong?
“This one,” she says, squeezing my arm now. “Such a treasure. I just love her!”
Blake looks a little embarrassed. Why? What grown man isn’t perfectly comfortable when his mother gushes over a woman he knows?
“I knew you two would hit it off,” he says. He swings those deep, dark eyes to me now. “Didn’t I tell you my mom’s a pisser?”
“No. You told me she was a hoot.”
“And?”
“She’s a hoot.”
“Are you here to join us?” She’s waving at the bar again, but Blake turns to wave them off. “Oh, pish posh,” she says. “Have a Manhattan.” I have to laugh. The only other person I’ve ever heard who says ‘pish posh’ is my mother.
“I really would rather sit here and get stiff-o with you and Kira, but we have to meet the Conroys, remember?”
“Oh, my. Completely slipped my mind.” She finally lets go of the forearm death grip. “Kira, dear. I’m so sorry. Bride’s family, just arriving you see. We’ll talk again very soon.”
“I look forward to it. And I want to hear all your ‘wild’ ideas.”
Blake laughs. “Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?”
“Oh, stop it,” Mama O. scolds him.
Blake leans in closer to me. “They’re all crazy ideas,” he says. “That’s why she’s a hoot.”
“Well, I hope to see you soon,” I tell her. And when I tell Blake, “I hope I’ll see you again, too,” I practically bat my eyelashes.
“Oh, you will.” And he leads mom out the bar. There’s still a slug left in Cici’s Manhattan. I resist the temptation to fire it down. I have to meet Jimmy
.
As I’m driving to meet Jimmy, I listen to a couple of voice mails. The first two caterers I contacted are (of course) unavailable. Ace Parking is no problem; at least that’s handled. No word back from my florist, but that’s not a worry. I’m going to need to spread the table and chair rental around – nobody has enough to fill the whole order. Pain in the ass, but no big deal.
Then there’s the voicemail from my mom. I have to pull over so I don’t drive off a cliff – on purpose.
Kira, honey. Wonderful news. You remember the Ecksteins, Heddy and Mort? Maybe not, now that I think of it. They’re new to the complex. Very nice people. Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, Heddy’s nephew Irving lives in Encinitas, and his son Morris is having a Bar Mitzvah and they decided with all the airport hassles, they might as well drive. They have one of those great big station wagon things, what do they call them? S.U.V.s? Anyway they just bought a brand new one last month. Terrible gas mileage, if you ask me, I don’t know why they would take it on a long road trip. Well, that’s Mort Eckstein for you. Mention something like that, he just digs his heels in, and does what he wants. My point is, it has been just blistering out here the last few weeks. It really makes you think about that global warming stuff. So I tell Heddy I’m planning a visit to you in a month or so. And she says, why spend on a plane ticket? We have plenty of room. Take a ride out to San Diego with us. Well, I know you’re always so busy with your work, we just pass like ships in the night when I’m there. And I do my best not to get in your way, you have to admit. Beside, did I tell you how hot it’s been? You could get heat stroke just walking to the mailbox. So unless it’s a big problem, we’re leaving for the coast first thing tomorrow morning. Love Love Love you, sweetie. I’m so excited to see you! Bye!
Well. Slap me in the belly with a wet fish, roll me in broken glass and set me on fire. That’s just exactly what I need. A visit from Mommy Dearest during the biggest, hardest, most stressful job in my entire life. Good old mom. She’s a hoot, too.
I knew I should have put that suicide hot line on speed dial.