Lipstick Jungle

“I think she was just reacting to the fact that women are the ones who have to have the babies in the first place,” Nico said.

“Anyway, Lyne completely freaked out,” Victory continued. “He said he thought he was going to be sick.”

“And this is a man you’re dating?” Wendy asked.

“Wen, they were pretty awful,” Victory said. “Not the subject matter, but the way they were done. Anyway, I decided to do this whole number on him, to get even with him for being such an asshole. I convinced him that the vagina sculptures would someday be just as important as the Venus of Willendorf—the prehistoric fertility statuette—and he actually believed me. He bought a vagina sculpture for twenty thousand dollars.” She sat back in her chair, recounting the moment at the Whitney when she had pulled Lyne, who was grumbling like a schoolboy about the “state of art in America today,” aside. “You know those pieces are going to end up in a museum,” she said. “No one took Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans seriously at first either.”

“You’re crazy,” he said.

“I might be crazy, but I doubt that Brandon Winters is.” Brandon Winters was the curator of the Whitney Museum, whom Victory knew a little and whom she’d made a great show of talking to in front of Lyne. “Didn’t you hear what Brandon said?” she asked. “There’s huge interest from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, as well as two museums in Germany. Brandon said that they’ve compared the vagina sculptures to the Venus of Willendorf . . .”

Brandon had said no such thing, but it was, she decided, the kind of silly nonsense he might say.

“The Venus of what?” Lyne demanded.

She looked at him as if she was confused. “The Venus of Willendorf. God, Lyne, with your interest in art . . . I would think you would have heard of it. Of course, it is only about twenty-five thousand years old, so maybe you missed it . . .”

And then Lyne had gotten a funny look on his face and had marched back into the crowd of onlookers who were gathered around the vagina installation. He had spoken a few words to Brandon Winters, whose expression suddenly became surprised, delighted, and obsequious. Lyne handed him a card.

“Well?” she said.

He took her arm, leading her away conspiratorially. “I bought one,” he said.

“How much?”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

That was, she thought with satisfaction, about the same amount of money he would have lost if he had bothered to call her himself and she had rejected him. She decided to go to dinner with him after all, if only to see what other tricks she could play on him.

They were seated at a romantic table in the corner at Cipriani’s. The first thing Lyne did was to order a bottle of Cristal, which he drank like water. She was beginning to think he really did have adult attention deficit disorder, because he couldn’t keep still—he kept getting up to speak to people at other tables. She didn’t say anything about it, however, because the only way to make a man understand his bad behavior was to do it back to him. When he returned to the table for the third time, she got up and went over to the bar. There was a couple there that she knew, and she took her time ordering a ginger ale, and talking to them about their apartment renovation. Then she went back to the table.

“You were gone for a while,” Lyne said, put out.

“Saw some important people I knew.” She shrugged.

The waiter came over to take their order. “I’ll have three ounces of beluga caviar,” she said pleasantly, as if this were perfectly normal. Lyne tried not to look angry, being a billionaire and all, but she could tell he was slightly pissed off. “Most people are satisfied with one ounce of caviar,” he said crossly.

“I’m not most people,” she said. “And besides, I’m hungry.” Then she ordered a lobster and a chocolate soufflé for desert. She got him to talk about his childhood—about how his father left when he was fourteen, and he had two younger brothers, and he’d had to go to work in a deli, lying about his age to get the job—and she had begun to like him a little more. Underneath his ridiculous showiness, Victory sensed that he was probably a decent guy. It was just too bad that he felt compelled to act like an asshole most of the time.

When dessert came, she got up to go to the bathroom. She did go to the bathroom, but first she found the maître d’ and handed him her black American Express card, telling him to charge the dinner to her. She had planned to pick up the check from the beginning, but if you were going to do that, you never waited until the bill came to the table. You did it beforehand, smoothly and stealthily. That way, there could be no arguing over the gesture.

She had come out from the ladies’ room and signed the check. It was over a thousand dollars, but she didn’t care. Her business might have been in trouble, but Lyne didn’t need to know that. And besides, it would be worth it to see the expression on his face when he found out that she’d already taken care of the bill.

She returned to the table and waited, chatting pleasantly about various acquaintances they had in common. Maybe it was juvenile, but the truth was that picking up the check put you in a position of power, and even if it was something that most women didn’t fully understand, for businessmen like Lyne it was the most basic gesture of control. And she found that the minute she took the power, Lyne’s behavior no longer bothered her at all.

“Can we have the check please,” Lyne said, motioning to the maître d’.

Victory folded her napkin neatly and smiled, watching as the maître d’ scurried over to the table, looking from her to Lyne with a worried expression on his face. When he reached Lyne, he bent over. “The check has already been taken care of,” he murmured.

“Oh really? By who?” Lyne demanded, looking around the room with an expression of outraged disbelief.

“It’s ‘by whom,’ darling,” Victory said, casually correcting him. “It’s a subjunctive clause.”

“I don’t care if it’s subjunctive-itis,” Lyne said. “I wanna know who picked up my check.” And he actually looked as though he was ready to beat someone up.

The maître d’, who was no doubt used to dealing with the temper tantrums of his high-powered clientele, put his palms together and bowed his head. “It was the young lady. Ms. Ford.”

“Who?” Lyne said, still looking around the room as if he’d forgotten he was having dinner with her. Then he got it. “Oh,” he said.