A crowd of tourists gathered and through the flashes of light I saw Chase with a crew standing outside Harry Winston, across the street. Would he swoop down on us, too? After all, he was one of them. As I saw Mocha aggressively working his way through the thick crowd, I held one of the D&G bags in front of my face.
“Hey, Tabby, who’s your new girlfriend?” one guy asked, and I wondered what that meant. A camera flash went off almost point-blank in my eyes, and I began to panic.
“Back off!” I heard her say. I worried Tabitha would slug someone in a drunken rage. We were jostled, mauled, and surrounded. There was no way out. Being photographed seemed beside the point. It flew through my mind that the stiletto-heeled marketing director had contrived this entire sequence to get these photographs, regardless of whether I reviewed her bags or not.
“We’re just doing our job, Miss Eden,” someone shouted. In the darkening light, the flashes were dizzying, like a strobe, and I was losing my balance.
As one of the beefiest of photographers walked right up to me with his camera poised to flash, I grabbed one of the D&G bags to shield my eyes. He gripped my arm, pulled the bag away, and shoved his camera up to my face. The flash stunned me, and I stumbled. I saw the sidewalk before I crashed.
But nothing happened.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself looking at Chase. He was holding me up. In the chaos, I hadn’t even seen him slip in. He unceremoniously set me on my feet, as one of his crew held a giant white card, those big sheets of foam board they carry for video shoots, to protect us and give us room to recover.
The paparazzo tried to squeeze around, but Mocha had finally broken through and was standing guard. He seemed ready to throw a punch. Chase stepped in front of Tabitha and me as they removed the card.
“Dude, you’re ruining the shot,” one of the men said.
“This is my interview,” Chase said, and though he was a pipsqueak compared to the hefty photographers, he didn’t seem like he was bluffing.
“Who the hell are you?” another photographer asked as Mocha started shooing away the rest of them.
“Love you, Tabitha,” the beefy guy said as he left. As if. Chase and his crew began gathering their gear.
“Thanks, Chase,” I said, embarrassed, trying to pull myself together.
“I’ve seen you before,” Tabitha asked suspiciously.
“I’m a fashion shooter for Lux.” Chase gave me a conspiratorial wink. “I just wanted to make sure you guys were all right. I’ve got to get back to a shoot across the street.”
His phone buzzed.
“Shit. Here now?” He looked up, and I saw the stunned expression on his face and what he was looking at—Dahlia Rothenberg and her entourage approaching.
Dahlia wore a tight beige skirt with towering heels and a see-through blouse under a YSL boyfriend jacket—it screamed money, power broker, and sex in the same breath. There was a makeup person trying to catch up behind her. As she made long, elegant strides our way, I could see the curl of her wicked smile. I wanted to run.
“Lisbeth, nice to see you,” she said, swooping in, her eyes all daggers. “Slumming with our little Tabby?”
Chase leapt to make amends. “My apologies, Miss Rothenberg. We had just set up for you when we saw…” But Dahlia walked right past him.
“It’s nice to see you’re finally getting a touch of class, Tabby, trying to buy something with taste instead of wearing those slutsuits you usually wear.” Mysteriously silent, Tabitha seemed easily intimidated by Dahlia. Then again, Dahlia rendered everyone speechless, and you could see the satisfaction on her face. We had just been through this crazy situation, yet she managed to make us feel apologetic. For reasons unclear to me, I felt uncharacteristically obligated to stand up for all of us.
I took a deep breath and did my best to channel Holly Golightly at her most flamboyant. “I’m so sorry, Dahlia,” I began. “We’ve just had the most ghastly time at Dolce and Gabbana, not a bit ‘dolce,’ I’m afraid.” Then, dipping into Holly Golightly’s goofy French, “The entire mise-en-scène was très fou, but nothing more fou than this little paparazzi disaster. Please accept our apologies for the delay.”
Dahlia was stunned. Either she was aghast at my backbone, offended by my mangled French, or thought I was plain crazy. But who cares? When you have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain, I guess. After all, I was just a Jersey girl. I recognized that our little Fifth Avenue confrontation was essentially the same trash talk that went down in the girls’ locker room at Montclair High, only we were wearing better clothes.
Dahlia took the longest time glaring at me, hoping I’d sizzle to vapor, I suppose. If I hadn’t just rambled on in the silliest way, I assume, I would have. But on this strangest of days, I had something I don’t think I’ve ever had before—audacity. Why the effin’ not? I thought. I wanted to make the sign of the horns and dance around her sorry ass like some football player who’s made it to the end zone.
“Well, thank you, Lisbeth,” she said finally, regaining her composure. “Chase, come along. I only have a few moments now, or we’ll have to reschedule.” She spun around and walked back toward Harry Winston, awkwardly waiting to cross the street with Chase following obediently behind her.
Tabitha seemed dazed as we piled into the limo and headed “home” to East Seventy-seventh Street. We sunk back into the black leather seats, and she looked at me with a sense of admiration, it seemed. I felt for a moment like the older sister I never had. As Mocha pulled up to the Mark, I stopped worrying about my fake address and told him to let me off by the lobby. He deposited the Dolce & Gabbana handbags inside with the young hotel doorman’s help. Tabitha hardly noticed me leave—she was pretty hung over anyway.
There I sat in the middle of the Mark Hotel lobby with all those bags and not a clue where I should go or what I should do. I felt only disgust for the D&G marketing woman and these handbags that were likely worth thousands of dollars. I considered hocking them on eBay. I remembered the little black and gold card in my purse, and the tiniest thought occurred to me. I rose, and the attentive doorman sprinted over immediately.
“Can I be of service?” he asked.
“Would you retrieve an item I checked?” I asked, handing him the ticket from the concierge. “And also if you wouldn’t mind, please call the number on this card and have them collect these bags? I’d be so grateful.”
“Certainly,” he said.
I smiled in thanks and he tipped his hat.
I stepped through the doors onto the street with my tiny white La Perla bag and my clothing bag and headed home feeling like a million dollars.
36
Once in the eleventh grade, I attended an art opening at my high school in South End Montclair. They hung paintings and drawings all the way up to the ceiling in the main entranceway of the school for a night. I think they even served juice and Coke. The kids who were good at drawing were buzzing with self-importance. Some of them were pretty talented. This one guy made these dot paintings that were almost like optical illusions, sort of ethereal visions of heaven that he called Change, Loss, Memory and AIDs. Then there was this girl who specialized in photographs of roadkill, mostly deer and rabbits. Sometimes she’d frame the actual flattened creature next to the photograph. I’m not sure what that statement was supposed to mean, but it started smelling pretty funky after a while. That’s what I used to consider an art opening.
Wrong.
Actually, I had never really been to an art opening before. Think fashion, celebs, glamour—a “Schnabel opening,” at the Mary Boone Gallery in Chelsea, was more like a Hollywood premiere.
El Schnabel, as ZK referred to him, would be the larger-than-life artist Julian Schnabel, as I discovered in a Guest of a Guest post. The bearded, barrel-chested, sixty-something art provocateur was famous for painting with broken pottery on giant canvases and making art-savvy movies that never quite made it to the Clearview Clairidge Cinema near me. Fashion-wise, he attended art openings in his jammies and slippers, wearing yellow-tinted sunglasses, looking like a homeless bum out squandering his lottery winnings. He was also ZK’s godfather.