Hedge Fund Wives

Caroline assessed my hat. ‘That’s a nice one,’ she said, before turning on the heel of her boot and returning to the table.

I decided to take her stilted compliment as progress, and made my way over to the table. Dahlia nodded a frosty hello to me before flicking her attention back to Caroline, and there were a couple other women I didn’t know but knew of seated around the table. One of the women, Magdalena, was married to Herb Zimmer, the head of ZAC Capital, an equity-market focused hedge fund. She had dark olive skin, large breasts, flashing dark eyes, and masses of chestnut-colored hair, and as I would later learn (in one of Caroline’s saunas, from another houseguest) was often the subject of mean-spirited gossip.

It came with the territory since Herb was one of the wealthiest and most successful of all the hedge fund kings; his net worth was close to seven billion according to Forbes magazine’s annual survey. He’d grown up on Long Island, the son of a prominent local businessman and librarian, went to Harvard business school and eventually, after a stint in arbitrage, started his own fund. His first marriage ended in divorce after twenty years—the wife was said to have grown tired of his eccentricities—and Herb suddenly found himself alone and desirous of female companionship but not interested or willing to go through the usual dating rigmarole. So instead he asked his psychologist to help him make a list of all the attributes he wanted in a new wife—from physical traits to professional background and weekend hobbies—and he forwarded this list of ‘requirements’ to his closest friends. Hundreds of women sent in pictures and biographies and Herb, again with the help of his psychologist, narrowed the applicant pool down to ten candidates. Over the course of the next six months he took each of the women out on a date (always to the same restaurant, the Four Seasons in New York) and asked them each to complete a Myers-Briggs test to determine their personality type. With each round of dates he came closer to finding his candidate and eventually, after only four rounds, settled on Magdalena.

They married in a simple ceremony with Mayor Bloomberg presiding, and Magdalena, an interior designer from Argentina, quickly settled into Herb’s life as, it was often joked, ‘the forty-third staff member’. (At the time of their wedding, ZAC Capital had forty-two employees.) Magdalena couldn’t care less that everyone gossiped about her behind her back. Say what they liked, Herb was king of the hedgehogs, she was queen, and no one could take that scepter away from her.

I took a seat on the far end, as far away from Magdalena, Dahlia, and Caroline as I could manage, and ordered a Coca-Cola from one of the waiters perpetually hovering around the table. The altitude was making me a bit nauseous, and I was feeling overwhelmed by the buzz of chatter and competitive energy in the room. Not two seconds after I took my first grateful sip of pop (we Minnesotans call Coke and Sprite and most other carbonated, sugary beverages ‘pop’) Jill Lovern Tischman floated into the room, looking cozy and warm in a chocolate mink cape that she held closed with her delicate hand. A massive sea-green opal sparkled from one of her fingers.

Fur and baubles aside, I couldn’t have been more excited (and relieved) to see her. She spotted me in the crowd and came right over, enveloping me in a big Gardena-scented hug, and made me feel instantly at ease. Across from me, Fred Reinhardt made room for Jill on the banquette and she instantly began peppering me with questions: Had I ever been there before; did I snowboard; and had I gotten a room at the Sky Hotel? I barely had a chance to tell her where John and I were staying—she and Glenn had their own ‘little’ chalet on Red Mountain and were there with her children and two nannies, plus some friends with their own brood in tow—before Irina Khashovopova descended on the table and took the seat next to mine.

Dressed in a chinchilla vest and hat, gray leopard print jeans, and fur-lined boots, Irina scooped up the champagne bottle and poured a glass out for herself and Jill before sitting back down and sighing dramatically. She whipped out her phone, punched out a telephone number with a finger that was adorned with a pink tourmalineencrusted frog, barked into the mouthpiece in Russian for thirty seconds before snapping it closed and slipping it into her vest pocket. After draining her glass of champagne and ordering five more bottles for the table, she announced gravely, ‘I just come from the boutique in Little Nell. They will not honor my discount.’

‘What discount?’ Jill inquired, running a hand through her light brown hair.

‘I told lady, Bergdorf give me twenty percent off

J. Mendel but she no listen. I try to buy a hat. Just a fucking hat. Do you know how much I spend on J. Mendel fur? Hundreds of thousands, and they will not give me a twenty percent discount on a fucking hat? I told lady I never shop J. Mendel again. From now on, I get all my fur from Fendi.’

‘But how can it be J. Mendel’s fault if the Little Nell won’t give you a discount? They’re just a retailer,’ I said.

Irina sneered at me. ‘You obviously don’t know who I am. Karl Lagerfeld put me front row at his Chanel show last season. Denise Rich won’t throw a party on her yacht unless I am there. Angelina Jolie sends me Christmas cards, so who the fuck are you to question my right to ask for a discount?’

‘Irina, I get that you’re mad, but that’s no excuse to take it out on Marcy,’ Jill said.

Jill’s comment only served to fluff Irina’s feathers more. Gritting her bright white teeth, she said, ‘Is the principle of the matter. I spend so much money. I’m good customer. And they want to argue with me over a measly three hundred fucking dollars. Nyet.’

Jill wisely decided that she wasn’t going to engage Irina any further and we let the matter drop. As the hour wore on, I removed my hat and set it on the seat next to mine. The lounge was heating up and one of the bodyguards, this one belonged to the Kemps, kept bumping me on the head as he reached over me to hand Dahlia her phone and then take her coat and ear muffs away from her.

As the hour wore on, the group jostled around—I noticed several of the guys, including John, heading to the bathroom with suspicious frequency—and I ultimately found myself seated next to Caroline, who was by then well into her cups. She slurred as she addressed me, and reiterated how glad she was that we had made it, that her husband really, really loved John, and that she wanted us to go out to lunch in the city when we got back. I was pleased that she was being nice to me—I’d thought I’d blown it when I couldn’t tell her what color I thought she should paint the walls of her nursery—but also highly skeptical of her true motivations. I was smart enough to know that Fred could have put her up to hosting us and getting to know me, in order to find out more information about John. We were playing in the big leagues now, literally rubbing elbows with some of the wealthiest people in America, and I had to be on my guard.

I sipped my Coke and asked Caroline what she had in store for all of us. The Reinhardts were hosting a 100-person dinner in a heated tent on the great lawn of their home on New Year’s Eve. This was the third year they were throwing the party, and John said that in years past they had blown everyone away with private performances from Jay-Z one year and Mariah Carey another. This year it was rumored that they had lined up Rihanna, but Caroline wouldn’t confirm that for me. She, however, did divulge that she and Fred had flown in the acclaimed Belgian artist and photographer Jean-Luc Moerman to paint temporary tattoos on guests and a number of ex-Cirque de Soleil contortionists to perform during the intermission. Before she stood up she placed her hand on mine and gave it a good squeeze. ‘Oh you have no idea what it takes to put this party together. Even working with an event specialist, it all ends up resting on my shoulders,’ she said, and for the first time I could see that the stress was, indeed, getting to her.

‘Caroline, honestly, I’m in awe,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

She seemed to appreciate my accolades greatly. ‘I’ve made up my mind. I’m putting you and John at the table with Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio. John would like that, right?’

Forget John. I was so excited I thought I might pee in my pants, but I smiled and said that yes, indeed, John would be thrilled since he was very passionate about environmental preservation.

‘Oh, good,’ Caroline hiccupped, ‘because Fred just sent the jet this morning to pick up Leo and his girlfriend.’

The Reinhardts’ New Year’s party was, according to local gossip, not quite as fabulous as the previous year’s. But you could have fooled me. Everywhere I turned there were famous faces and bold-faced names, trays of champagne flutes, and six-foot floral arrangements. I felt, as usual, underdressed in my simple jewel-toned column, especially when I saw Jill in a partially see-through dress that was made of silk and tulle, with a front panel of close-cropped gray mink. Her shoes, open-toed sandals, were constructed entirely of peacock feathers. Caroline, meanwhile opted for an asymmetrical fire-engine-red gown with a crystal-encrusted bodice and short hemline, while Dahlia chose a discreet ecru satin party frock and matching fox-trimmed bolero, that was pinned with a large diamond and pearl orchid brooch.

After a sumptuous five-course dinner with our new friends Al and Tipper Gore (Leo was a no-show) and a performance by Maroon Five (the Rihanna rumors were wrong), I went to the ladies’ room to powder my nose and get away from Al, who, to be honest, didn’t know when to stop talking. On my way out my heel caught on a duct-taped ridge covering one of the power cords leading toward the stage, and I knocked into Dahlia, who nearly had a heart attack when I instinctively grabbed her forearm to steady myself.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I tripped. I know you don’t liked to be touched.’

‘You should watch where you are going, Marcy,’ she said flatly. ‘And I mean that in more ways than one. Clumsy is not cute, and neither is playing the naïve little wife. I’ve seen a dozen women like you come and go, and as sure as I know my children’s names, I know that you will not last long. Your kind never does. Either your husband will not bear out to be the whiz kid that all the other men seem to think he is, or he will dump you for someone else. And whichever one of these comes to pass, believe me, Marcy, no one here will care.’

‘And a joyous and prosperous New Year to you, too, Dahlia,’ I said.

She regarded me contemptuously before continuing on her path through the throng of well-dressed guests.

I was stunned, but not hurt. Dahlia lived in a bubble; she was totally lacking in social grace, not to mention delusional and completely removed from reality, and I wondered what it would take for her to come back to her senses and realize that she was no better than me, or the dozens of assistants and shop girls, nannies and waitresses she probably verbally assaulted every day.

It was close to midnight, and Justin Timberlake, along with Caroline and Fred, took to the stage to lead the crowd through a countdown to the next year. John found me in the swarm of bodies near the shockingly true-to-life ice sculpture of Caroline’s naked body and pulled me to him and kissed me warmly on the mouth as the gold and silver confetti fell from the ceiling and onto the crowd.

‘I love you, Marcy,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘This is going to be our year. Look around at all these people. By this time next year, we’ll be just as rich as them. You watch and see,’ he said, lifting his glass to me.

I took a long swallow of the champagne and smiled, but inside I was wondering if my husband truly meant to sound like a greedy asshole or if it was just the cocaine talking. By then I was almost sure that he was using. All the trips to the bathroom, dilated pupils and dry mouth, not to mention the sniffing that he kept on blaming on the frigid temperatures and high altitude? Give me a break. As if I wasn’t supposed to put two and two together. It incensed me that John wouldn’t volunteer that he was snorting lines, and I didn’t know what made me more upset, that he was trying to keep it a secret from me, or that he was using a drug that up until recently he considered something only trust-fund-addled playboys blew their money on. I tried to confront him about it a few times, but we were so rarely alone—there was always another houseguest or staff member around—that I decided to leave it until we returned to New York.

As the festivities continued late into the night, I tried to remind myself that I was lucky to have a husband with big and clear goals, even if it would have been nice, that is to say I would have respected him more, if he had been motivated by something other than the deepening of his own already deep pockets. I thought of the heavy, secondhand autobiography of Lee Iacocca my father toted around with him to some of the football games that Annalise cheered in high school. My father was a Liberal Democrat, like most of the people in our middle-class Midwestern neighborhood, but he looked up to Iacocca because he had resuscitated Chrysler and had saved and created jobs in the process. This, according to my father, was capitalism at its best. Iacocca deserved every bit of his success

John did not.

In fact, most of the people around us did not. They made money for the pure sport of it, and didn’t manufacture a product or create jobs. Sure, there were the dozens upon dozens of people they employed to take care of their offspring and belongings, and I supposed that in this regard their good fortune had trickled down to the nannies and busboys, cleaning ladies and garage mechanics, but was that enough to buoy an economy forever? I did not think so, but most of the people making merry in the crowd did. And they partied despite the darkening economic clouds, despite the millions of foreclosure signs popping up across the country like little red flags. A storm was coming, but no one wanted to see it, least of all, of course, the wives.

SEVEN Setting the Table (#ulink_c216c5d0-f86f-50dc-925e-81defc4a8fa4)

Jillian Lovern Tischman lived in Gramercy Park, a neighborhood named for the private park to which only the residents of the buildings abutting the manicured green square were given access. Her apartment was actually two apartments that had been combined into one a few years prior to my visit. It was on the same square as the Gramercy Park Hotel, aka the scene of my latest humiliation, which I could just make out if I hung my head out of Jill’s kitchen window and squinted through the trees of the park. It was in this position that Gigi found me when she swept into the room in a cloud of her vanilla and rosewood perfume.

‘Girl, you better get your head out of that window. I can’t afford to lose one more person tonight,’ she clucked. ‘The bartender’s not returning my calls and one of my servers called to say she’s come down with the flu, which knowing this one means she’s been asked out on a date. Probably by some jerk who’s gonna take her to a fancy restaurant, have his way with her, and never call her again. I keep telling her not to put out on the first date, but Lord have mercy does she ever listen to me?’

‘We’ve been wasting our breath,’ said Gigi’s chef, Bear, an older German man who was large and huggable enough to make his name seem appropriate rather than silly. He was vigorously stirring a chocolate sauce over a double broiler and paused midstir to add, ‘I’m starting to think she is the kind that never will learn.’

Gigi sighed, and turned to look at me. I was wearing a black Ralph Lauren cashmere turtleneck sweater and skirt, and the pearl necklace John had bought me a few months ago for my thirty-fifth birthday. ‘Thank you so much for doing this,’ she said as she walked over to the butcher’s block-topped kitchen island and pushed aside four stacks of industrial-sized, plastic-wrapped baking sheets to make room for her plastic binder. Flipping through the notebook, she found the page she was looking for and started explaining to me the timeline of the evening, starting with prep work, followed by the cocktail hour, and finally dinner service. Around ten we would clear the tables and rinse the dishes before restacking them into their plastic crates. Then they would be sent to a facility to be scrubbed clean inside industrial-sized dishwashers.

‘House & Home cut their budget down by a third,’ Gigi said as I perused the menu over her shoulder. ‘And half of my purveyors have jacked up their prices by twenty percent, so between the budget cut and price increase, we’re producing this event on a shoestring. Of course everything still has to look pretty. These design people couldn’t care less about how the food tastes, as long as it looks good.’

‘Seems like a metaphor for my life,’ I said before I could stop myself.

Gigi set down her notebook and peered at me over her reading glasses. ‘Is there something you want to talk about?’

‘I’ll elaborate when we don’t have thirty people due for dinner in less than two hours,’ I said in an effort to deflect any more questions.

I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, but John and I had gotten into an argument in bed on Saturday night when I finally had a chance to tell him about my plan to help Gigi with her catering business while I started looking for a full-time job. John’s objections were two-fold: First, he didn’t want me to work as a catering waitress, which he deemed ridiculously below me; and second, he didn’t want me to go back to work—period. He said that people would get the wrong impression if I was seen slaving away for Gigi and asked if I wanted them to treat me even more dismissively than before.

‘Do you even realize that your job will entail scraping other people’s half-masticated meals off dirty plates?’ he asked, his face turning a frustrated shade of crimson. He set down his copies of Alpha and Trader Monthly magazine, which could be best described as the hedge funder’s Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar for all the obsessive reading it inspired.

‘John, I’m doing this,’ I said. ‘You’re the one who said I should make friends.’

‘Let’s be clear on one thing—Gigi will be your employer, not your friend, if you do this.’

‘Can’t she be both? Geez, John, according to you everyone’s either a master or a slave. This isn’t ancient Egypt. What are you, Hegel?’

‘Actually, Marcy, it’s less far off than you think. But I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to let you learn that for yourself. Maybe then you’ll understand what I’m trying to accomplish for us, instead of fighting me at every turn.’ He picked up his magazine and began reading again.

‘Well, I’m so glad you approve,’ I said acerbically.