Chasing Harry Winston

‘Mmm, I’m sure she’s terrified.’ To the phone: ‘Did you hear that, Leigh? You have to marry Russell immediately or Gilles is going to seduce him.’

Gilles brushed the solution onto a lock of hair using a smooth upstroke followed by a slight wrist flick. He then swirled the ends into the roots and crisply folded the foil over the whole goopy mess with a precise tap of the comb. ‘What did she say?’

‘That he’s all yours.’ Gilles opened his mouth, but Adriana shook her head and held up one hand in a ‘stop’ motion. ‘Splendid! Count me in. Of course I have plans tonight, but I’ve been desperate for a reason to cancel. Besides, if Emmy wants to go out, who are we to stand in her way? What time? Perfect, querida, we’ll meet in the lobby at nine. Kiss!’

‘What’s wrong with Emmy?’ Gilles asked.

‘Duncan met a twenty-three-year-old who’s dying to have his babies.’

‘Ah, but of course. How’s she doing?’

‘I actually don’t think she’s devastated,’ Adriana said, licking a puff of foamed milk off her lip. ‘She just thinks she should be. There’s a lot of the “I’ll never meet anyone else” stuff, but not much that really has to do with missing Duncan. She should be fine.’

Gilles sighed. ‘I dream of getting my hands on that hair. Do you even realize how rare virgin hair is these days? It’s like the Holy Grail of coloring.’

‘I’ll be sure to pass that along. Want to come tonight? We’re going for dinner and drinks. Nothing major, just the girls.’

‘You know how much I love a girls’ night, but I’ve got a date with the maître d’ from last weekend. Hopefully he’ll be leading the way directly to a quiet table in the back of his bedroom.’

‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.’ Adriana clearly focused on the tall, broad-shouldered man in a checked blue dress shirt and perfectly pressed slacks who had approached the reception desk.

Gilles followed her gaze to the door as he secured the last lock of hair into a foil and waved his hands in a ‘voilà!’ motion. ‘I’m finished, love.’ The Bambi-eyed assistant grasped Adriana’s arm and led her to a dryer seat. Gilles called out from his station loud enough for everyone – and certainly the newcomer – to hear, ‘Just sit there and concentrate on keeping your legs closed, darling. I know it isn’t easy, but fifteen minutes is all I ask.’

Adriana rolled her eyes dramatically and gave him another finger, this time holding it high enough for the entire salon to see. She relished the shocked looks from the society ladies, all of whom looked like her mother. She saw out of the corner of her eye that the man who had watched her and Gilles wore a small smile of amusement. I’m too old for this, she thought as she sneaked another look at the handsome stranger. The man walked past her and turned his smile toward her. With equal parts calculation and natural instinct, Adriana gazed up at him through wide eyes, eyes that said ‘Who, me?’ and placed the tiniest tip of her tongue in the middle of her upper lip. She simply had to stop acting like this, there was really no question; but in the meantime, it was just too much fun.

Moving quietly around her apartment so as not to wake Otis, Emmy realized there wasn’t all that much to straighten. It was a small apartment, even for a studio in Manhattan, and the bathroom was a bit grimy and the light – especially on Saturday afternoons, when you were accustomed to staying at your boyfriend’s place – was virtually nonexistent, but how else could she hope to live on the best tree-lined block of the West Village for under $2,500 a month? She had decorated it as carefully as her graduate school budget would allow, which wasn’t much, but at least she had managed to paint the walls a pale yellow, install a space-saving Murphy bed in the far wall, and place some comfy floor cushions around an extra-fluffy shag carpet she’d found on clearance in a remnant store. It wasn’t big, but it was cozy, and so long as Emmy didn’t think about the kitchens in Izzie’s Miami apartment or Leigh’s new one-bedroom or Adriana’s palatial penthouse pad – especially Adriana’s – she might have even liked it. It just seemed so fundamentally cruel that someone who loved food as much as she did, who would happily spend every free minute at either the farmers’ market or the stove, should not have a kitchen. Where else on earth did $30,000 a year in rent not entitle one to an oven? Here she was forced to make do with a sink, a microwave, and a dorm-sized refrigerator, and the landlord – only after a ridiculous amount of begging and pleading – had bought Emmy a brand-new hotplate. For the first few years she’d fought valiantly to create dishes using her limited facilities, but the struggle to do anything more than reheat had worn her down. Now, like most New Yorkers, the ex-culinary student only ordered in or dined out.

She gave up on the idea of cleaning, flopped onto her unmade bed, and began to flip through the pages of the hardcover photo book she’d designed at kodakgallery.com to commemorate the first three years of her relationship with Duncan. She’d spent hours selecting the best pictures and cropping them to varying sizes and removing the red eyes. Click, click, click – she clicked the mouse until her fingers tingled and her hand ached, determined to make it perfect. Some of the pages were collage-style and others had only a single dramatic candid. The one she’d chosen for the cutout window on the cover had been her absolute favorite: a black-and-white photo someone had snapped at Duncan’s grandfather’s eighty-fifth birthday dinner at Le Cirque; Emmy remembered the transcendent sesame-crusted cod more than anything else from that night. She hadn’t even noticed until now, years later, how her arms wrapped protectively around Duncan’s shoulders, or the way she looked at him, grinning, while he smiled in that controlled way of his and gazed in another direction. The body language experts at US Weekly would have a field day with this one! Not to mention the fact that the book, presented at a dinner celebrating their third anniversary, had elicited the kind of excitement one usually expects only from the receipt of a scarf or a pair of gloves (which, incidentally, was precisely what he had given her, a matching set, prepackaged and professionally wrapped). Duncan tore the paper and ribbons painstakingly selected for their masculinity and tossed them aside without bothering to unstick – never mind read – the card taped to the back. He thanked her and kissed her on the cheek and flipped through it while smiling that tight smile and then excused himself to answer a call from his boss. He asked her to take the photo book home with her that night so he wouldn’t have to carry it back to the office, and it had remained in her living room for the next two years, opened only by the occasional visitor who inevitably commented on what a good-looking couple Duncan and Emmy made.

Otis cawed from his cage in the corner of her L-shaped studio. He hooked his beak around one of the metal bars, gave it a determined shake, and squawked, ‘Otis wants out. Otis wants out.’

Eleven years and counting, and Otis was still going strong. She’d read somewhere that African Greys can live to be sixty, but prayed daily that it had been a misprint. She hadn’t particularly liked Otis when he was squarely under the ownership of Mark, the first of Emmy’s three boyfriends, but she liked him even less now that he shared her 350-square-foot apartment and had learned (with zero coaching and even less encouragement) an uncomfortably large vocabulary that focused almost exclusively on demands, criticisms, and discussions of himself in the third person. At first she had refused to watch him for the three weeks when, the July after graduation, Mark went to hone his Spanish in Guatemala. But he had pleaded and she conceded: the story of her life. Mark’s two weeks became a month, and a month became three, and three became a Fulbright to study the aftereffects of civil war on a generation of Guatemalan children. Mark had long since married a Nicaraguan-born, American-educated Peace Corps volunteer and moved to Buenos Aires, but Otis remained.

Emmy unhooked the cage and waited for Otis to shove the swinging door open. He hopped ungracefully onto her proffered arm and stared her straight in the eye. ‘Grape!’ he shrieked. She sighed and plucked one from the bowl that nestled in the puff of her down comforter. Generally Emmy preferred fruit that she could cut or peel, but Otis was fixated on grapes. The bird snatched it from her fingers, swallowed it whole, and immediately demanded another.

She was such a cliché! Dumped by her cad boyfriend, replaced by a younger woman, prepared to shred the pictorial symbol for their sham of a relationship, and kept company only by an ungrateful pet. It would be funny if it weren’t her own pathetic life. Hell, it was funny when it was Renée Zellweger playing a sweet, chubby girl in the throes of an alcohol-fueled pity party, but it somehow wasn’t so hysterical when you were that sweet, chubby girl – okay, skinny, but not attractively so – and your life had just morphed into a chick flick.

Five years down the drain. Ages twenty-four to twenty-nine had been all Duncan, all the time, and what did she have to show for it now? Not the position Chef Massey had begun offering a year ago that would give her the opportunity to travel around the world scouting new restaurant locations and overseeing openings – Duncan had begged her to keep her general manager position in New York so they could see each other more regularly. Certainly not an engagement ring. No, that would be reserved for the barely legal virgin cheerleader who would never, ever have to endure vivid nightmares involving her own shriveled ovaries. Emmy would just have to make do with the sterling silver Tiffany heart pendant Duncan had given her on her birthday, identical to the ones – she later discovered – he’d also bought for his sister and grandmother on their birthdays. Of course, were Emmy being really masochistic here, she might note that it was actually Duncan’s mother who had selected and purchased all three in order to save her busy son the time and effort such gift-giving required.

When had she gotten so bitter? How had everything played out like this? It was no one’s fault but her own; of that she was absolutely certain. Sure, Duncan had been different when they first started dating – boyish, charming, and if not exactly attentive, then at least a bit more present – but then again, so had Emmy. She had just left a waitressing job in Los Angeles to go back to culinary school, her dream since girlhood. For the first time since college she was reunited with Leigh and Adriana, and exhilarated by Manhattan, and proud of herself for taking such decisive action. Granted, culinary school wasn’t exactly as she had envisioned it: the classes were often rigorous and tedious, and her classmates were shockingly competitive for externships and other restaurant opportunities. Since so many were temporary New Yorkers and knew no one but other students, the social life quickly became incestuous. Oh, and there was that small incident with the visiting Michelin-starred chef that had circulated in less time than it took to make a croque-monsieur. Emmy was still in love with cooking but disillusioned with culinary school when she scored an externship at Chef Massey’s New York restaurant, Willow. She’d met Duncan during that externship: a crazy, sleep-deprived time in her life when she was beginning to realize that she enjoyed the front of the house more than the kitchen and was working around the clock to figure out where, if anywhere, she belonged in the food-service industry. She hated the egos of the chefs and the lack of creativity it took to merely re-create carefully dictated recipes. She hated not being able to interact with the actual people who ate the food she was helping to prepare. She hated being stuck for eight, ten hours at a time in steaming-hot, windowless kitchens with only the shouts of expediters and the clanging of pots to remind her she wasn’t in hell. None of this had featured in her romantic notion of what her life would be like as a world-famous cook. What had surprised her even more was how much she loved waiting tables and tending bar, getting to chat with customers and other servers, and, later on, as assistant general manager, making sure everything was running smoothly. It was a time of turmoil for Emmy, of redefining what she really wanted from her career and her life, and she realized now that she had been ripe for picking by someone like Duncan. It was almost – almost – understandable why she’d fallen so immediately for Duncan that night at the after-party for the Young Friends of Something or Other benefit, one of the dozens that year Adriana dragged her to.

Emmy had noticed him hours before he approached her, although she still couldn’t say why. It could have been his rumpled suit and loosened tie, both tastefully conservative and expertly matched, so different from the baggy polyester chef uniforms to which she’d grown so accustomed. Or maybe it was the way he seemed to know everyone and offered back-slaps and cheek kisses and the occasional gallant bow to friends and friends-to-be. Who on earth was this confident? Who could move with such ease among that many people without appearing the least bit insecure? Emmy’s eyes tracked him around the room, subtly at first and then with an intensity she herself didn’t understand. It wasn’t until most of the young professional crowd had moved on to late dinners or early bedtimes and Adriana had flitted off with her man du jour that Duncan appeared next to her.

‘Hi, I’m Duncan.’ He slid himself sideways between her stool and the empty one next to it, leaning on his right arm against the bar.

‘Oh, sorry. Here, I was just leaving.’ Emmy scooted backward off the stool, placing it between them.

He grinned. ‘I don’t want your seat.’

‘Oh, uh, sorry.’

‘I want to buy you a drink.’

‘Thanks, but I was just, uh—’

‘Leaving. Yeah, you said that. But I’m hoping I can convince you to stay just a little longer.’

The bartender materialized with two martini glasses, petite compared to the fishbowl-sized ones most places served. Clear liquid in one, cloudy in the other, and both with a spear of mammoth green olives.

Duncan slid the one in his left hand toward her by the very bottom of its stem, his fingers pressing into the flattened glass base. ‘They’re both vodka. This one’s regular and this one’ – as he pushed his right hand she noticed how clean and white his nails were, how soft and groomed his cuticles looked – ‘is extra dirty. Which do you prefer?’

Good lord! You’d think that would have been enough to activate anyone’s skeeve sensor, but noooo, not Emmy. She had found him positively captivating and, when invited moments later, had happily accompanied him home. Of course, Emmy didn’t sleep with Duncan that night, or the next weekend, or the one after that. She had, after all, been with only two men before him (the French chef didn’t count; she had planned to have sex with him until she’d tugged down his extra-tight white briefs and discovered what, exactly, Adriana meant when she insisted Emmy would ‘just know’ when faced with an uncircumcised situation), and both were long-term boyfriends. She was nervous. Her prudishness – something Duncan had yet to encounter from a girl – increased his determination, and Emmy stumbled, quite unwittingly, onto the concept of hard to get. The longer she held out, the more he pursued her, and in this way their interactions came to resemble a relationship. There were romantic dinners out and candlelit dinners in and big, festive Sunday brunches at trendy downtown bistros. He called just to say hi, sent her Gummi Bears and peanut butter cups at school, asked her out days in advance to ensure she wouldn’t make other plans. Who could have possibly predicted that all that happiness would screech to a standstill five years later, that she would have gained such a cynical edge and Duncan would have lost half his hair and that they, the longest-lasting couple among all their friends, would collapse like a sand castle at the first sign of a tropical breeze?

Emmy posed this question to her sister the moment she picked up the phone. Izzie had been calling twice her normal amount in the week since Duncan had dumped Emmy; this was already the fourth time in twenty-four hours.

‘Did you really just liken your relationship to a sand castle and the cheerleader to a tropical breeze?’ Izzie asked.

‘Come on, Izzie, be serious for a second. Would you ever have foreseen this happening?’

There was a pause while Izzie considered her words. ‘Well, I’m not sure that it’s exactly like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘We’re talking in circles, Em.’

‘Then be straight with me.’

‘I’m just saying that this isn’t completely and totally out of left field,’ Izzie said softly.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘It’s just when you say that everything collapses at the first sign of, uh, another girl, I’m not exactly sure that would be completely accurate. Not that accurate matters, of course. He’s an idiot and a fool regardless, and so not even remotely in your league.’

‘Okay, fine, so it wasn’t exactly the first sign. Everyone deserves a second chance.’

‘That’s true. But a sixth or a seventh?’

‘Wow. Don’t hold back now, Izzie. Seriously, tell me what you really think.’

‘I know it sounds harsh, Em, but it’s true.’

Together with Leigh and Adriana, Izzie had supported Emmy through more of Duncan’s ‘mistakes,’ ‘poor judgment calls,’ ‘oversights,’ ‘accidents,’ ‘slip-ups,’ and (everyone’s favorite) ‘relapses’ than anyone cared to remember. Emmy knew her sister and friends hated Duncan for putting her through the wringer; their disapproval was palpable and, after the first year, very vocal. But what they didn’t understand, couldn’t possibly understand, was the feeling she got when his eyes found hers at a crowded party. Or when he invited her into the shower and scrubbed her with cucumber-scented sea salt, or got into the cab first so she wouldn’t have to slide across the backseat, or knew to order her tuna rolls with spicy sauce but without crunch. Every relationship comprised such minutiae, of course, but Izzie and the girls simply couldn’t know what it felt like when Duncan turned his fleeting attention toward you and actually focused, even if only for a few moments. It made all the other drama seem like insignificant noise, which is exactly what Duncan always assured her it was: innocent flirtation, nothing more.

What bullshit!

She got angry just thinking about it now. How on earth had she accepted his rationale that passing out on some girl’s couch was understandable – hell, it was downright reasonable – when one drank as much whiskey as he did? What could she possibly have been thinking when she invited Duncan back to her bed without ascertaining an acceptable explanation for the rather disturbing message she’d overheard on his voice mail from ‘an old family friend’? And let’s not even mention that whole debacle that required an emergency trip to the gynecologist where, thankfully, everything was fine except for her doctor’s opinion that Duncan’s ‘nothing little bump’ was most likely a recent acquisition and not, as Duncan insisted, a flare-up from the old college days.

The sound of Izzie’s voice interrupted her thoughts.