One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [89]
It was his third attendance at such a lunch, which appeared to be a regular once-a-week event, the purpose of which was the promotion of a movie (independent, often worthy, and usually boring). The guests were supposed to discuss the movie, like one of those middle-aged-lady book clubs that his mother belonged to, but no one ever did. Instead, they cooed over each other about how fabulous they were, which was especially galling to Thayer, who saw them as old and frightening and misguided. Nevertheless, he had managed to keep himself invited each week by not yet writing about the event in Snarker. He would have to soon. But in the meantime, he planned to enjoy his free lunch.
Thayer was always one of the first people to arrive, in order to do so anonymously. He took off his coat and was about to hand it to the coat-check man when he saw that Billy Litchfield had come up behind him. The sight of Billy filled Thayer with bile. Billy, Thayer had decided, was what could happen to a person who stayed too long in New York. What was his point? He appeared to do nothing but go to parties. He was a hanger-on to the rich and privileged. Didn’t he get bored? Thayer had been going to parties for only two years, and already he was bored out of his mind. If he wasn’t careful, time would pass, and he would end up like Billy Litchfield.
And now Billy had seen his coat.
“Hello, young man,” Billy said pleasantly.
“Hello,” Thayer muttered. No doubt Billy Litchfield couldn’t remember his name. He held out his hand aggressively, forcing Billy to take it. “I’m Thayer Core,” he said. “From Snarker?”
“I know exactly who you are,” Billy replied.
“Good,” Thayer said. Giving Billy a backward glance, he bounded up the steps ahead of him, if only to remind himself—and Billy—of his youth and energy. Then he took up his usual position at the bar, where he could observe and overhear and largely be ignored until lunch.
Billy handed his overcoat to the coat-check man, wishing he could have avoided shaking the hand of Thayer Core. Why was he here? Billy wondered. Thayer Core was a blogger on one of those vicious new websites that had popped up in the last few years, displaying a hatred and vitriol that was unprecedented in civilized New York. The things the bloggers wrote made no sense to him. The readers’ comments made no sense to him. None of it appeared to be written by humans, at least not humans as he knew them. This was the problem with the Internet: The more the world opened up, the more unpleasant people seemed to be.
It was one of the reasons he’d begun taking the pills. Good old-fashioned Prozac. “Been around for twenty-five years. Babies take it,” the shrink said. “You’ve got anhedonia. Lack of pleasure in anything.”
“It’s not a lack of pleasure,” Billy protested. “It’s more a horror of the world.”
The doctor’s office was located on Eleventh Street in a two-bedroom town house apartment. “We’ve met before,” the doctor said the first time Billy walked in.
“Have we?” Billy said. He was so hoping this wouldn’t be true, that he and his psychiatrist would have no acquaintances in common.
“You know my mother.”
“Do I?” Billy said, trying to put him off. But there was a degree of comfort in the information.
“Cee Cee Lightfoot,” the doctor said.
“Ah. Cee Cee,” Billy said. He knew Cee Cee well. The muse to a famous fashion designer who had died of AIDS back in the days when fashion designers had muses. How he missed those times, he thought. “What happened to your mother?” he asked.
“Oh, she’s still around,” the doctor said with a mixture of what sounded like despair and amusement. “She still has a one-bedroom apartment here. And a house in the Berkshires. She spends most of her time there.”
“What does she do?” Billy asked.
“She’s still very, very active. She’s involved with charity. She rescues horses.”
“How wonderful,” Billy said.
“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked.
“Not so good,” Billy said.
“You’ve come to the right place,” the doctor said. “We’ll have you feeling good in no time.”
And the pills—they actually