“Good-bye,” he says. “We’re shooting two shows today, so I’ll be home late.”
“Whatever,” I say.
He gives me the sick smile, and it suddenly hits me: He’s going to divorce me.
He’s going to get rid of me the same way he got rid of his first wife.
Anastasia.
I can’t even bear to say the name.
She was crazy too.
BUT, I remind myself, he didn’t actually divorce her. The marriage was annulled. They were both young, and everybody said she was horrible. A spoiled little spitfire from one of those aristocratic European families who probably went to the same Swiss finishing school as the S. sisters, and who still turns up regularly in the completely outdated gossip column “Suzy.” Where “former wife of Prince Hubert Luxenstein,” is always written after her name, even though this is not technically correct, because if their marriage was annulled, it’s supposed to be like they were NEVER MARRIED—right? And when I was first married to Hubert and this offensive name with its offensive moniker would appear, I would tremblingly point to it and say, “Can’t you DO anything about this?” And he would say, fearfully at first, and then after the seventh or eighth time with great annoyance, “I don’t even talk to her anymore. I haven’t had a conversation with her for six years.” But of course, that wasn’t good enough, and I would brood about that damn Anastasia for hours. And sure enough, today, having thought about her once, I have to torture myself by walking past Ralph Lauren on my way to meet D.W. at lunch.
Which is where I met Anastasia, probably seven years ago. Right there in Ralph Lauren on the third floor. I was, UGH, actually working there, a fact that I couldn’t believe myself, because I was so bad at waiting on people, but at the time I felt like I had no choice. My mother had taken up painting, and my father was busy being gay in Paris. Everyone had forgotten about me, as I had suspected that someday they would, and I had no other way to survive but to take a job as a shopgirl at Ralph Lauren. Where the pay was bad but they gave you 70 percent off on the clothes.
My job seemed to consist mostly of folding sweaters, a feat I could never master. The other girls, the girls who had already worked there for six months or a year, were always trying to give me tips on how to fold the sweaters so I wouldn’t get fired. As if I cared. And one afternoon, when I was wrestling with pink cashmere, Anastasia turned up. With a girlfriend. I recognized her immediately.
She was tiny and dark-haired, with huge brown eyes, and she was stunningly, heartbreakingly beautiful, and she knew it. She actually snapped her fingers and motioned to me.
“Can you help me PLEASE,” she said. It wasn’t a question, it was a command, give
n in a heavy Spanish accent and with an attitude that made it clear she didn’t enjoy dealing with peasants.
I walked over and said nothing.
“You work here? Yes?”
“Yes,” I said noncommitally.
“I want the latest.”
“The latest . . . what?” I said.
“Everything. Dresses, shoes, handbags . . .”
“But I don’t know what you like.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed like a soap opera queen. “Bring me the clothes in the ads, then.”
“Very well,” I said.
I returned with one pair of shoes. ONE. She was sitting in the dressing room with her friend. Discussing Hubert, even though by then their marriage had been annulled for six months. What was she still doing in New York? “. . .’s going to his aunt’s house this weekend,” she said to her friend, as if she were spilling state secrets. She suddenly looked up at me. I smiled and held up the shoes. Thinking, AHA. She’s trying to get him back by looking American. But it won’t work. It’s over. And I remember thinking very clearly that I was going to get him, but also wondering how she had managed to develop that aura of arrogant confidence—was she born with it?—and whether I could get it too.
“Well?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“What are you waiting for?”
I stared at her, slitty-eyed. I took the shoes out of the box.
“Put them on my feet, please,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “This is America. We don’t treat people like servants here.” And I stormed out of the dressing room and bumped into a tall, still good-looking middle-aged but WASPy man who said, “I’m looking for a something. For my wife.” And I said, “Is that MY problem?” And he said, “If you work here it is,” and I said, “It isn’t because I’m about to get fired.”
“Really?” he said.