“That’s right, Philip,” she said. She looked at him, her expression vulnerable. She had yet to have her makeup done. Her face was clean, and there were little lines around her eyes. “I keep wondering why we can’t do that. Make it work.”
“I fucked up again, didn’t I?” Philip said.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “And I guess I did, too. All those years, I kept thinking, What if ? What if I hadn’t gone to Europe. Or what if I’d seen you that time when you came to L.A.”
“Or what if I’d managed to break up with Lola?” Philip asked. “Would you still being seeing Brumminger?”
“You have to ask?” Schiffer said.
“Yeah,” Philip said. “I guess I’ve never managed to ask the right question.”
“Will you ever manage it, Philip? If not, we should end this right now.
I need to know. I want to move on one way or another. I want it to be clean.”
Philip leaned back in the chair and put his hands in his hair. Then he started laughing.
“What’s so damn funny?” she asked.
“This,” he said. “This situation. Look,” he said, sitting next to her on the bed and taking her hand. “This is probably the worst time to ask you this, but do you really want to marry me?”
She looked down at his hand and shook her head. “What do you think, schoolboy?”
19
Acouple of hours later, Schiffer Diamond, made up and wearing a long gown for the scene at the Ukrainian Institute, came out of her trailer. Philip was still holding her hand, as if he didn’t dare let go of her, and after he helped her down the steps, the photographers closed in with their cameras. Philip and Schiffer exchanged a look and began running down the sidewalk to a waiting van. The paparazzi were taken by surprise, and there was a jostling in the crowd, and two photographers were knocked down. Nevertheless, Thayer Core managed to hold up his iPhone and snap a picture of the happy couple, which he then e-mailed to Lola. “I think your BF is cheating on you,” he wrote.
Lola got the e-mail immediately and tried to call Philip. She’d suspected something like this would happen, but now that it had, she couldn’t believe it. Philip didn’t answer his phone, of course, so she texted Thayer Core to find out where he was. Then she opened the closet to get dressed, her hands trembling so violently with frustration and anger that she knocked several tops off their hangers. This gave her a wicked idea, and she went into the kitchen, found the scissors, and pulling several pairs of jeans from the shelf on Philip’s side of the closet, cut the legs off. She refolded the tops of the mangled jeans and replaced them on the shelf.
Then she kicked the cutoff legs under the bed, put on her makeup, and went out.
She found Thayer standing behind a police barricade on Seventy-ninth Street. There was a carnival atmosphere, with the presence of the paparazzi drawing the attention of passersby who kept stopping to find out what was going on. “I’m going in,” Lola announced grimly, stepping around the barricade. Four beefy Teamsters were blocking the entrance.
“I’m Philip Oakland’s girlfriend,” she said, attempting to explain why she must be allowed to pass.
“Sorry,” one of the Teamsters said, impassive.
“I know he’s in there. And I have to see him,” she wailed.
A young woman sidled up next to her. “Did you say you were Philip Oakland’s girlfriend?” she asked.
“That’s right,” Lola said.
“He just went in with Schiffer Diamond. We thought they were together.”
“I’m his girlfriend,” Lola said. “I live with him.”
“You’re kidding,” the girl said, and put her cell phone in Lola’s face to record her remarks. “What’s your name?”
“Lola Fabrikant. Philip and I have been together for months.”
“And Schiffer Diamond stole him from you?”
“Yes,” Lola said, realizing she had an opportunity to play a significant part in this drama. Rising to the occasion, she summoned her most confused tone of voice and said, “I woke up this morning, and everything was fine. Then two hours ago, someone texted me a photograph of the two of them holding hands.”
The girl gasped in horror. “You just found out?”
“That’s right. And I might even be pregnant with his baby.”
“What a scumbag!” the girl declared in female solidarity.
Hearing this pronouncement on Philip’s character, Lola was momentarily worried that she’d gone too far. She hadn’t meant to say she was pregnant, but she’d gotten caught up in the moment, and it had just slipped out. But she couldn’t take it back now — and besides, Philip had wronged her. And it certainly was possible that she could be pregnant.
“Brandon!” the girl shouted, waving at one of the photographers and pointing at Lola. “She says she’s Philip Oakland’s girlfriend. And she’s having his baby. We need a photograph.” The photographer leaned across the barricade and snapped Lola’s picture. Within seconds, the rest of the pack followed suit, aiming their cameras at her and clicking off shots.
Lola put her hand on her hip and posed prettily, glad that she’d had the foresight to dress in high heels and a trench coat. At last, she thought.
This was the moment she’d been waiting for her entire life. She smiled, knowing it was crucial she look stunning in the photographs that would undoubtedly be all over the Internet in a matter of hours.
Billy’s death was not ruled a suicide but an accidental overdose. He hadn’t taken as many pills as suspected; rather, it was the combination of four different kinds of prescription medication that did him in. Two weeks after his death, a service was held for him at St. Ambrose Church, where Billy had mourned the death of Mrs. Louise Houghton just nine months earlier.
It turned out that Billy had recently made a will, leaving all his worldly belongings to his niece and requesting that a service be held in the church patronized by his idol, Mrs. Louise Houghton. Many of the hundreds of people who knew Billy came, and although the Brewers claimed Billy had sold them the Cross of Bloody Mary, there was, people agreed, no way to prove it, especially when Johnnie Toochin revealed that Mrs. Houghton had left Billy a wooden box filled only with costume jewelry. However, the box was never discovered, and so the provenance of the cross remained a mystery, and Billy’s reputation stayed intact.
During his memorial service, several people gave eulogies about how wonderful Billy was, and how he represented a certain era in New York, and how, with his passing, that era was finished.
“New York isn’t New York anymore without Billy Litchfield,” declared an old-monied banker who was the husband of a famous socialite.
Perhaps it wasn’t, Mindy thought, but it still went on, the same as always. As if in confirmation of this fact, Lola Fabrikant flounced in halfway through the service, causing a stir in the back of the church. She was wearing a short black low-cut dress and, inexplicably, a small black hat with a veil that just covered her eyes. Lola thought the hat made her look mysterious and alluring, in keeping with her new role as the slighted young woman. The day after Schiffer and Philip were photographed together, Lola’s picture had appeared in three newspapers, and there were discussions about her on six blogs, in which the general consensus was that she was a babe and could do better than Philip. But after that, the interest in her had quickly waned. Now, although it would mean seeing Philip and Schiffer and Enid, she and Thayer had decided she ought to attend Billy’s service, if only to remind people of her existence.
Lola had agreed reluctantly. She could face Philip and Schiffer if she had to, but she was terrified of Enid. The day she’d gone to confront Philip on the set at the Ukrainian Institute, she’d returned to One Fifth after being “assaulted” — her words — by the paparazzi, realizing if she hung around any longer, she would lose her mystique. Safely inside Philip’s apartment, she waited for him all afternoon, going over the situation again and again in her mind and wishing she could take it all back. She reminded herself that she didn’t know for a fact that Philip and Schiffer were really together; he might have only been comforting her after all. She would have to figure out a way to exonerate herself. But at about five, Enid appeared in Philip’s apartment, coming up silently behind Lola, who was in the kitchen, pouring herself yet another vodka. Lola was so startled she nearly dropped the bottle.