One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [126]
“Of course,” Connie had said. “Don’t you?”
“Not really,” Annalisa said. Connie looked hurt, and Annalisa felt bad, having inadvertently dismissed one of Connie’s great pleasures in life. And Connie took such pride in the fact that Annalisa was her friend, boasting to the other women about how Annalisa had written a scholarly book in college and appeared on Charlie Rose, how Annalisa had met the president, and how she had worked in Washington. In turn, Annalisa had become protective of Connie’s feelings. Connie was such a tiny thing, reminding Annalisa of a fairy with her small bones and graceful hands. She loved everything sparkly and pretty and pink and was always nipping into Harry Winston or Lalaounis. Displaying her recent jewelry acquisitions, she would insist that Annalisa try on a yellow diamond ring or a necklace of colored sapphires, pressing Annalisa to borrow the piece.
“No,” Annalisa always said firmly, handing the jewelry back. “I’m not going to walk around wearing a ring worth half a million dollars. What if something happened?”
“But it’s insured,” Connie would say, as if insurance mitigated one from all responsibility.
Now, sitting in her dining room in her grand penthouse apartment, stuffing envelopes with Connie and the other women on the committee, Annalisa glanced around and realized they were like children working on a craft project. She placed another stamp on another envelope as the women chitchatted about the things women always talked about—their children and their husbands, their homes, clothes, hair, a piece of gossip from the night before—the only difference being the scale of their lives. One woman was debating sending her daughter to boarding school in Switzerland; another was building a house on a private island in the Caribbean and was urging the other women to do the same “so they could all be together.” Then one of the women brought up the story in the latest W that had dominated the conversation of this clique for the past three weeks. The story had been a roundup of possible socialites who might take the place of the legendary Mrs. Houghton, and Annalisa had been named third in the running. The story was complimentary, describing Annalisa as the “flame-haired beauty from Washington who had taken New York by storm,” but Annalisa found it embarrassing. Every time she went out, someone mentioned it, and the story had increased her visibility so that when she appeared at an event, the photographers shouted her name, insisting that she stop and pose and turn. It was harmless, but it freaked Paul out.
“Why are they taking your picture?” he’d demanded, angrily taking her hand at the end of a short red carpet behind which sat posters with the logos of a fashion magazine and an electronics company.
“I don’t know, Paul,” she’d said. Was it possible Paul was this naive about the world of which he’d insisted they become a part? Billy Litchfield often said these parties were for the women—the dressing up, the showing off of jewelry—so perhaps Paul, being a man, simply didn’t understand. He had always been terrible at anything social, having nearly no ability to read people or make small talk. He became stiff and angry when he was in a situation he didn’t understand, and would thrust his tongue into his cheek, as if to forcibly prevent himself from speaking. That evening, seeing his cheek bulge, Annalisa had wondered how to explain the rules of this particular society. “It’s like a birthday party, Paul. Where people take photographs. So they can remember the moment.”
“I don’t like it,” Paul said. “I don’t want pictures of me floating around on the Internet. I don’t want people to know what I look like or where I am.”
Annalisa laughed. “That’s so paranoid,