didn’t try to argue. I knew he was right on some level: Manhattan did harvest a huge crop of people who came to this city from small towns across the land and rose to become the lead players in their fields of art, fashion, publishing, or banking. Most of those tried-and-tested winners were in this very room.
The consommé arrived, and I know Murray made me order it just to prove his point: that a foie gras wonton floating in a small bowl of duck broth could actually command a $38 price tag. I tried the broth first. It went down smoky, gamey, with a big hint of honey. Even though it was a clear soup, it was so rich that just two sips made me thirsty. Like their patrons, the chefs had also overachieved to create something outstanding: they must have roasted three hundred duck carcasses to produce the heft of this broth.
I smiled. “You’re right. I mean, it’s not worth thirty-eight dollars of my money for a small cup of soup, but if you can afford it, I guess, yes, it’s very special.”
Murray splashed his big spoon in my broth, spilled a little on the table, and slurped up some for himself. “No. It is worth that money!” He was almost yelling at me. “It’s supply and demand and the effort to …”
There were supersized personalities back home in Squanto, Massachusetts, for sure—many of them in fact. My own father had led the pack. He had had no money to speak of, but I remember so much about how he behaved around the house: he always had his fellow fishermen over after they’d all chartered their boats out or had come in from a day on the sea. Everyone would bring burger patties or beer and they’d sit around pontificating just as loudly and confidently as the men and women in this restaurant. My father was one of the loudest and most charming ones—boisterous and charismatic—but he didn’t think everyone had to agree with his every opinion just because he walked into a room.
“And don’t forget to tell Delsie I want her covering the Fulton Film Festival I’ve worked so fuckin’ hard to put on the map. Art films. Science. Action. Whatever. Fuck Sundance!” Murray picked up an entire lobster claw from his salad with his fingers, put it on half a roll, and mashed both into his mouth. “Mark my words, Allie, maybe you’ll never have big money or pick up the check. But you’re going to be respected ’cause you did something great. You saved people. You invented people. Your PR helped them reach their greatest potential.”
Creating illusions had never actually been my plan. My plan had been to write novels or long magazine essays, not use my MFA creative writing degree to craft press releases that got people out of trouble or made them appear to be something they weren’t.
“Take that guy over there for starters,” Murray yelled as he glanced over to the podium at the entryway of the restaurant where Wade stood to have lunch with a potential interview subject. My husband came to the Tudor Room as a way to network with important people he needed to put in the magazine or to entertain potential advertisers. He was able to play in the power brokers’ sandbox by charging every lunch to his parent company.
“Maybe,” I allowed. Across the room, Wade smacked Georges’s shoulder while whispering some delicious bit of gossip into his ear. I adored my husband’s ability to get everyone on his side, but his arrival also made me feel even more out of place here, like everyone but me had a code and language and sense of humor I could never quite grasp.
When I first met Wade, I was instantly drawn to the symmetrical, thick, blondish-gray waves in his hair that neatly rolled down the back of his head, ending about a quarter inch below his collar. As I watched him walk up the movie aisle that first night, he flashed his smile back at me, having noticed me a few seats down. I felt my stomach churn because the long hair reminded me of brawny guys on the Squanto fishing docks I’d grown up with. When he joined a group of rapt partygoers to grab a drink beside the bar in the lobby, I instantly felt left out. That’s the effect he had on a room: his circle was the one to be in—and most of us were on the outside looking in.
Murray beckoned for Wade to come over. “Well, for one thing, your husband’s the only prick cocky enough to walk in here in jeans, and not even Georges stops him.”
My husband did have an uncanny ability to skirt the rules without acknowledging them in the first place. A brass plaque on the coat check downstairs clearly read: Jacket required. Please refrain from wearing blue jeans at the Tudor Room. Wade had on very blue jeans, a white Oxford cloth shirt, a beat-up leather blazer, and black sneakers. He was a bit of a rebel in his industry by always going after people in print he seemed to be cozying up with on the social front. “Always bite the hand that feeds you” was his professional motto.
Wade glad-handed his way toward us as Murray watched him. “M-E-R-I-T-O-C-R-A-C-Y, baby, I’m telling you. Your husband isn’t known for having much cash on hand, but he’s a member of this crowd no doubt. That magazine he runs is still a juggernaut, despite the fact that it’s a fuckload thinner than it used to be. Maybe his parent company is deep in the red right now and he’s always going to be low on personal funds because what the fuck does an editor make? Peanuts in this city.” Murray slammed the table so hard that the cauliflower popped out of the basket. “But he’s got primitive power—he turned Meter magazine around from a piece of dilapidated dusty old shit into the absolute number one must-read for everyone in this room. The ultimate media macher.” I didn’t remind Murray that my husband, ten years my senior, did all that twenty years ago—before YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blogs, and online anything. People who still worked on real glossy paper in 2013 had far more uncertain futures than anyone in the room, even if Wade did everything he could to dispel that. “And he had the sense to marry you!” Then Murray added, “And if he ever doesn’t treat you right, I swear I’ll kill him.”
Wade walked up to our corner, kissed me behind my ear, whispering, “You look hot,” and slapped Murray’s back. I didn’t feel hot and I doubt he meant that. He said it because he always did want me to do well and didn’t like to see me stressed. I quickly sipped my last fourteen dollars of broth, eager to get out of the booth and over to the bar before Wade and Murray got into their exclusionary boys’ club banter.
“Thanks for the soup, Murray. I’ll see you tonight, Wade,” I said to them, as I stood and smoothed my knee-length black skirt. “Wish me luck making an insanely insecure woman feel satisfied.”
“Knock her dead,” Murray answered.
Wade raised an eyebrow at my tight skirt and looked at me tenderly. “You look gorgeous. You always knock ’em out.”
I whispered to him, “Thanks, honey. But I don’t. You’re blind.”
“You do.” He brushed my cheek. “And I’m going to go to my grave making you believe that.”
I crossed the room to go meet Delsie at the red-paneled bar wondering why both my boss and my husband were being so awfully nice to me. It was only when I had a clearer view of that bar that I noticed at first a spectacular pair of bare legs belonging to a beautiful young woman. Her snakeskin sandals wrapped around her ankles, mimicking the reptile that had been gouged to make them. She was sitting alone and scarfing down the famous Tudor Room line-caught tuna tartare served in a martini glass before her, when Georges whispered something amusant into her ear. She tossed her shimmering blond curls over her sexy belted white Ralph Lauren jacket, where they flowed down into a V-shaped back and brushed against the top of a very round bottom.
Without even saying hello, Delsie started in with this: “I can’t do a speech for Murray one more time at another one of his charity ventures. I know I agreed, but now I want to back out. He wants me to whore myself out for every goddamn cause he’s attached to.”
“Whoring yourself out?” I asked.
“Yes.”
