Hedge Fund Wives

‘Thanks so much for inviting me,’ I said, given that the usual ‘you’re glowing!’ and ‘how do you feel?’ were obviously not applicable.

‘Of course we had to include you. There was no question,’ she smiled, revealing a row of perfectly white teeth. Veneers, no doubt, and from the look of them, the best and most expensive kind ($50,000 easily). ‘How are you finding the move?’ she asked, crossing her long arms right below her perfect breasts.

‘Decorating our new place has kept me pretty busy, but to be honest I’ve been really lonely. It’s no fun shopping alone for armchairs,’ I said.

‘Don’t tell me you’re not working with an interior designer?’ she balked.

I shook my head, helping myself to one of the Gruyère puffs. Cheese was my one big weakness in life, a mild obsession that would forever necessitate the wearing of body-fat encasing (or restructuring, as I liked to call it) undergarments.

‘Not to worry. I’ll call Jasper on Monday and ask him to see you straightaway. He’s finishing up our place on Bank Street. He’s marvelous and does so many of the girls’ homes here,’ she said.

‘Did he do this place?’

‘Oh Lord no. He’s much more, shall we say, décor forward? But Thomas Kemp is such a stick-in-the-mud traditionalist,’ she said, conspiratorially. ‘Anyway, there’s a chance Jasper’s in Chicago doing a taping with Oprah but I know I’m going to see him next Tuesday. Should I tell him to give you a ring?’

‘Oh no, don’t do that,’ I said, wondering exactly how much Jasper Pell, an interior designer who makes regular pit stops on The Oprah Winfrey Show, charged for a telephone, forget in-person, consultation. ‘I’m doing it on my own. Well, really John and I are doing it, but—’

‘Ohh, you’re an interior designer. No one told me,’ she said, suddenly excited. ‘Will you come over and tell me what you think of the nursery? I can’t decide if we should go with the faded sea foam or dusty wisteria color palette. Which one do you think is more progressive yet soothing?’

I told her she’d gotten the wrong idea, that I wasn’t an interior designer and was useless when it came to such dilemmas.

‘Oh,’ she sighed, her lips furling with disappointment. Then she started scanning the room in search of someone else to introduce me to, and I knew I’d blown it—my one big shot to make a good impression, and hopefully, a friend. John wasn’t kidding when he said that if in the real world you get one chance to get in someone’s good graces, when it comes to the superrich, it’s thirty seconds.

‘Have you met the party host, Dahlia Kemp, yet?’ Caroline asked distractedly.

We walked over to the couch where two women, both thin and blonde and dressed in pastel tweed skirts, silk blouses, and gold necklaces, were bent over their BlackBerries, tapping out emails. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I recognized the one on the right from a copy of Vogue that I’d thumbed through at the hair salon that morning.

The one on the left spoke first. ‘So tell me Caroline how are you staffing up for the baby’s arrival?’

‘We’re thinking a cook, baby nurse, and a nanny should do it.’

Three people for one little baby?

‘We did the same when Carolina and Alexander were born,’ Dahlia sniffed. ‘It’s so important to have a backup nanny in case of emergencies. Of course now that our children are six and eight, we’ve had to staff up with specialists: language and culture tutors, tennis, golf, and swimming instructors, and so on. But you don’t have to worry about that just yet. And whoever handles your domestics headhunting can help vet your candidates.’

Caroline said she would have to remember to ask for more details at a later date, and then put her hand lightly on my shoulder before introducing me. ‘Dahlia Kemp, Ainsley Partridge, this is Marcy Emerson. Her husband John works with Fred at Zenith,’ she said, taking a small step away from me, almost as if I were being presented at court. For a moment I had the distinct yet surreal impression I was meant to curtsey.

‘Lovely to meet you,’ I said, offering my hand across the mercury glass coffee table. I waited for Dahlia to grasp it but she didn’t. Instead, she daintily fingered one of the multiple Van Cleef & Arpels clover Alhambra necklaces strung around her neck and looked away while Caroline hissed in my ear, ‘She doesn’t shake.’

What, like the pope? Confused and embarrassed, I withdrew my outstretched hand and stuffed it in the little front pocket on my dress, and as I fumbled with the pocket, it occurred to me that maybe I had been meant to curtsey before.

‘You have a beautiful home,’ I said finally.

Dahlia looked around the room as if she’d never really noticed how nice it was and parted her thin lips, hesitating for a second before gesturing to the portrait hanging above a large marble-topped armoire. ‘I’m not sure about the Cézanne over there. Thomas just bought it at Christie’s. What do you think, Ainsley?’ she asked, turning to the blonde seated next to her.

‘I like it.’ Ainsley shrugged and looked back down at her BlackBerry.

‘Well, anyway,’ Dahlia sighed, rolling her wide-set, almond-shaped eyes at Caroline, who snorted quietly into her hand in response. ‘I suppose we could always put it in the Greenwich house when that’s finished.’

‘How’s that going?’ Caroline asked.

‘Meier is gouging us. Twenty million for the glass porte-cochere alone. The bastard refuses to get bids from other contractors. Thomas is considering firing him, but I’ve talked him out of it, thank God. Could you imagine the scandal?’ Dahlia said.

Caroline shook her head. ‘Would be a nightmare. But tell me, I’ve been meaning to ask. Preston Bailey or David Monn?’

‘Bailey was busy today so Monn planned the event. Personally, I think they’re both talented but Monn does better florals,’ Dahlia replied before sliding open the golden pyramid covering the face of her wristwatch to check the time. ‘I think we should start lunch,’ she said, motioning to one of her many housekeepers to begin ushering the guests into the dining room.

I did my best to make my way gracefully over—the women, I noticed, didn’t so much walk as they did waft—to the dining room, where four round tables, each set with ten place cards, had been draped in baby blue linens and set with white china and silver. I found my place card, sat down in my seat, and for an agonizing three minutes (I apparently hadn’t wafted slowly enough) I waited alone at the table, reading and rereading the lunch menu:

Fava bean and mint salad

Kobe beef filet mignon with blanched white asparagus

and chanterelle toasts

Or

Grilled wild salmon in black currant sauce, sautéed

mushrooms and a wild-rice timbale

Herb-scented sorbet trio and Chocolate-and-espresso

cake

I was just about to get up from the empty lunch table and excuse myself to the ladies room when a petite woman with straight, shoulder-length light brown hair, luminescent olive skin, and sharply defined facial features plopped herself into the seat next to mine. She was breathing hard, as if she had just run a couple miles in her Roger Vivier pumps.

‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ she said once she’d caught her breath.

‘Marcy Emerson. I’m new. My husband and I just moved here from Chicago.’

‘Jillian Lovern Tischman, but everyone calls me Jill,’ she said, extending her hand.

I sighed with relief and shook her hand. ‘So this is not a totally verboten form of human contact after all?’

‘Oh, did you met Dahlia already?’ she replied, placing her Hermès Medora clutch on the table.

I nodded and took another big sip of my champagne.

‘Pace yourself,’ she warned, eyebrows raised, as the tables filled up around us. ‘These things have a way of dragging on forever.’

‘Sounds like you go to a lot of baby showers.’

‘I’ve done the math, and by my calculations I’ll go to one hundred and fifty of them before everyone’s done spawning.’

‘How do you get to one hundred and fifty?’ I asked.

‘Fifty women, give or take. Three babies each because three’s the new two, four’s the new three, and, well, you get the point.’