you gay?” I asked, expertly choking back the laughter welling up in my throat.
“Fuck,” he said, hanging up.
Then there was the column I wrote about a writer at Slaid’s paper who was caught fabricating a news source in a story that he covered without ever going to the scene. Story after story ensued as if the paper was so guilt-ridden that it felt it had to purge itself repeatedly, in print.
I ended my column:
News about newsmakers is replacing the real news, inadvertently turning liars and cheats into media stars and future authors of tell-all books. Can’t TV-news types find more reputable people to interview? Can’t Slaid Warren drop his long columns about soul-searching over lunch at Vong and instead find someone gifted, talented or at least more illuminating to lunch with for his column? It’s time to leave the fate of bad journalists to the editors and publishers who hired them and move on to the real news.
“So why didn’t you write about your lunch with heads of state instead of wasting trees to write about my column?” he said, putting me on the spot.
“You’re too sensitive,” I said, yawning. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to take things so to heart?”
“It happens to be a major scandal among serious journalists. I guess that fact passed you by.”
“I got it,” I said, “about eight million words ago. Give it up.”
“Sweetheart,” he said, getting to his famous exit line. “I didn’t get where I am by giving up.” He hung up and there I was holding the phone once again after the line went dead. I pressed redial and he picked up on the first ring.
“Slaid?”
“Yeah.”
“Just one more thing,” I said. Then I hung up.
Chapter Two
It was several weeks before Christmas and I left the office early to buy presents. There were no time clocks to punch. As long as my columns were in on time, my hours were my own. Unfortunately, that meant that I usually worked myself harder than any boss would have dared. News didn’t stop for weekends or holidays, and neither did I. Almost any time of day or night, I might hear the first bars of “A Little Night Music,” my cell’s ring du jour. If I could have figured how to do it, I would have used “A Hard Day’s Night” or “Working on a Chain Gang.”
Every year I vowed to start squirreling away gifts in August, so that by December first I’d have the whole heap of them wrapped up all pretty and ready and I’d be spared any and all anxiety of what to buy and where to go. But that happens in the closets of meticulous homemakers who take pleasure in offering gifts of homemade flavored vinegars in antique bottles bearing scalloped labels hand printed in olive-colored ink, following instructions they’ve clipped from the perfect holiday pages of House & Garden or Real Simple.
It had been a year now that Chris and I had been living together. Since I had a one-bedroom apartment when we met and he had a two-, I moved in with him, a definite step up, so to speak from my small walk-up on the Upper East Side with no view to speak of.
Chris’s apartment was open, airy and contemporary, a mix of Mies, Ikea and Craig’s List. It was in Kips Bay, a modern high-rise complex in the East 30s designed by I. M. Pei with floor-to-ceiling picture windows and exterior walls of exposed concrete that gave it a spare, contemporary look, even though it was built decades back.
Things between us were good and I wanted to get Chris a serious present. Unfortunately, I hadn’t put in the time sleuthing through his closet to check his size or to figure out what he needed. Yes, I should have known, but for some reason I couldn’t keep the numbers in my head and remember whether he was a 32 or 34 waist, or a 16 shirt collar or 16-½. And then there was the question of what a medium translated to or whether a shirt or sweater should be bought in a large.
Why was it so much easier to shop for women? Off the top of my head I could come up with twenty things that would be perfect gifts for me: a cashmere scarf, a cashmere bathrobe, a pashmina wrap, a great silk nightgown, gold, anything gold, better yet platinum, a fabulous Marc Jacobs handbag, a Tod’s handbag (yes, they’re all a fortune, but don’t put a price on my happiness), Juicy anything, sable makeup brushes, or maybe even an expensive hairbrush.
I knew that I would buy my best friend, Ellen Gaines, a cashmere camisole and matching cardigan. My mother would get a silk blouse and a new scarf, and I’d buy my father plaid flannel pajamas and a robe from his favorite Web site, L.L. Bean.
But when it came to boyfriends, it seemed as though I was stuck buying the same clichéd goodies year after year—a new lamb’s-wool crewneck or a cashmere turtleneck sweater, a couple of whimsical ties from MOMA, although I really couldn’t remember the last time Chris wore one, and the old fall-back staples like the latest tomes of nonfiction (or anything by Stephen Ambrose) or the Swiss Army knife with multipurpose pullout tools that could do jobs ranging from opening beer bottles to jump-starting cars.
Fortunately, Chris wasn’t obsessed with material wealth. He worked in advertising and was an REI (you know, the sporty catalog) kind of guy. His hair was dirty blond and he had pale blue eyes. His wardrobe? Think of Wranglers, Frye boots, pullover sweaters, T-shirts, a beat-up leather baseball jacket and one or two preppie-looking sport jackets. I don’t think that he owned a serious tie. If he ever wore ties, I wasn’t around to see it. In fact, the only time I remember seeing him take a tie out of his closet was when he decided to tie my hands together one day, on a whim, after we had finished a bottle of particularly good champagne and were feeling, well, experimental.
I wanted to give him something that would remind him of me whenever he looked at it. Something that he would keep for ages that would get even better with time, like a great leather jacket. So pj’s were out, which he never wore anyway, and so was a bathrobe, even though I loved the thick terry ones that were as cozy as down on a cold night. Of course, Chris never got cold, and when he did, he pulled on a hooded gray sweatshirt.
I walked the aisles of Saks, and then headed uptown to Bloomingdale’s—the after-hours pastime of every red-blooded, material New York woman. I started out in the men’s fragrance area sniffing one cologne after another until my nerve receptors were on overload and I was unable to tell the differences and was getting a dull headache. What was I doing? Chris didn’t wear cologne anyway—hated it, he once said—still I felt I had to cover all the bases. The store was hot, crowded and overheated—big surprise—and I peeled off my coat. The truth was, Chris was Dial-soap clean and on-sale shampoo. He had a full bottle of Calvin Klein body wash that was a gift from way back that he had never even opened.
Finally, I picked out a great camel-colored leather overnight bag with lots of side pockets, which I knew that I’d probably use more than he would. It had great brass hardware, and I knew the leather would soften with age and look better the more he used it. Of course, he didn’t travel much—it was always tough for him to get away from the office, especially since he worked on so many different accounts, and inevitably seemed to be on deadline.
As I stood in line to pay for the bag, it occurred to me that if Chris ever decided to leave me, he would be walking out in style, a disturbing thought. I bought it anyway, and as I was making my way out of the store, I passed a display for
