One Fifth Avenue

“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 worked! No, they didn’t solve your problems, didn’t make them go away. But one no longer cared quite so much.

Now Billy took a seat at the bar and ordered a glass of water. He stared at Thayer Core and briefly felt sorry for him. What a terrible way to earn a living. The young man must be filled with self-loathing. He was only a few feet away, but an enormous ocean of thirty years of knowledge separated them like two continents in which neither population understood the other’s customs and mores. Billy decided he didn’t care about that, either, and, glass of water in hand, went off to work the room.

Thirty minutes later, the luncheon was in full swing. “I love your TV show,” shrieked a woman dressed in a beaded suit to Schiffer Diamond, leaning across Billy to address her.

Schiffer looked at Billy and gave him a wink. “I thought no one was going to talk about the TV show. I was promised.”

Ever since Lady Superior had aired three weeks ago on Showtime, Schiffer had been invited everywhere and decided to enjoy herself in the little playground of New York society. Everyone wanted to fix her up. So far she’d dated a famous billionaire who’d been more intelligent and pleasant than she’d expected, but who, after a three-hour dinner, had said he didn’t believe they were suited to each other and should move on; and a famous movie director who was desperately looking for a third wife. Today she was seated next to Derek Brumminger, who was sixty-three years old and rugged and pockmarked (by both acne and life, Schiffer decided), who had been fired two years before from his position as CEO of a major media corporation and been given eighty million dollars in compensation. He had just returned from a yearlong worldwide journey on which he had tried to find himself and failed. “I realized I wasn’t ready to retire. I don’t want to get off the stage. And that’s why I came back,” he said. “What about you?”

“I’m not ready to get off the stage, either,” she said.

At the next table, Annalisa Rice was sitting next to Thayer Core. “That must be a very interesting job, blogging,” she said.

“Have you ever done it?” Thayer asked.

“I’ve sent e-mails,” she said.

“It’s the kind of thing anyone can do. And does,” Thayer replied with a mix of disdain and loathing.

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It is,” Thayer said. “It’s a bullshit way to make a living.”

“Being a lawyer might be worse,” she joked.

“It might be,” he agreed. “I thought I was going to be a novelist. What did you think you’d be?”

“I always wanted to be a lawyer. Once you’re a lawyer, you’re always a lawyer, I suppose. But today I went to see a piece of art—everyone was talking about it—and it turned out to be a pair of running shoes and a plastic dinosaur glued to a baby’s blanket. For half a million dollars.”

“Doesn’t that piss you off? It pisses me off. We live in a world full of douchebags.”

“I guess one person’s baby blanket is another person’s art,” Annalisa said, smiling at him.

“That’s not a very original thought,” he said, finishing off his third glass of champagne.

“Oh, I’m not trying to be original,” she said without malice. “This room is full of original people. I’m still trying to figure out New York.”

Thayer thought Annalisa was one of the most decent people he’d met at one of these things in a while. “If you were an emoticon, what would it be? A smiley face?” he asked.

Annalisa laughed. “I’d be perplexed. A K with a colon underneath.”

“Because of the baby’s blanket. For half a million dollars. You didn’t buy it, I hope.”

“No,” she said. “But my husband is building a giant aquarium in our apartment.”