Sex and the City

“As long as I get to keep all of them,” the Bone said.

RIVER’S PARTY

River Wilde’s annual Christmas party. Loud music. People everywhere. In the stairwell. Doing drugs. Someone was peeing off the balcony onto

the head of the unsuspecting superintendent below. The Bone was ignoring Stanford Blatch, who showed up with twin male models who had just come into town. Skipper was making out with a woman in the corner. The Christmas tree fell over.

Skipper broke free and came up to Carrie. She asked him why he was always trying to kiss women. “I feel like it’s my duty,” he said, then asked Mr. Big, “Aren’t you impressed with how fast I moved?”

Skipper moved on to River. “How come you never include me anymore? I feel like all my friends are dissing me. It’s because of Mark, isn’t it? He doesn’t like me.”

“If you keep this up, no one is going to like you,” River said. Someone was puking in the bathroom.

At one A.M., the floor was awash in alcohol, and a cadre of druggies had taken over the bathroom. The tree had fallen over three times and no one could find their coat.

Stanford said to River, “I’ve finally given up on the Bone. I’ve never been wrong before, but maybe he really is straight.” River stared at him, dazed.

“Come, River,” Stanford said, suddenly happy. “Look at your Christmas tree. Look at how beautiful it is.”

23

Party Girl’s Tale of Sex and Woe: He Was Rich, Doting, and . . . Ugly

Carrie was walking out of Bergdorf’s when she ran into Bunny Entwistle.

“Sweetie!” Bunny said. “I haven’t seen you for years. You look great!”

“You, too,” Carrie said.

“You must have lunch with me. Immediately. Amalita Amalfi—yes, she’s in town too, and we’re still friends—stood me up.”

“Probably waiting for a phone call from Jake.”

“Oh, is she still seeing him?” Bunny tossed her white-blond hair over the shoulder of her sable coat. “I have a table at ‘21.’ Please have lunch with me. I haven’t been in New York for a year, and I’m dying to dish.”

Bunny was fortyish, still beautiful, L.A.-tanned, a sometime TV actress, but before that, she’d been around New York for years. She was the quintessential party girl, a girl so wild no man would consider marrying her, but plenty tried to get in her pants.

“I want a table in the back. Where I can smoke and no one will bother us,” Bunny said. They sat down and she lit up a Cuban cigar. “The absolutely first thing I want to talk about is that wedding announcement.” She was referring to a notice about the marriage of Chloe—thirty-six, still considered a classic beauty—to a homely fellow named Jason Jingsley in a ceremony on the Galápagos Islands.

“Well, he is rich, smart, and sweet,” Carrie said. “He was always friendly to me.”

“Please, darling,” Bunny said. “Men like Jingles, and there’s a whole group of them in New York, are not the type of guys you marry. They make great friends—attentive, always there when you’re in a tight spot—and late at night when you’re lonely and desperate as hell, you whisper to yourself, ‘Well, I could always marry a guy like Jingles. At least that way I wouldn’t have to worry about paying the rent.’ But you wake up and really think about it, and realize that you’d have to share a bed with him, watch him brush his teeth, that stuff.”

“Sandra said he tried to kiss her once,” Carrie said. “She said, ‘If I wanted a fur ball in my bed, I’d get a cat.’”

Bunny snapped open a compact, pretending to check her eyelashes but really, Carrie thought, checking to see if anyone in the restaurant was looking at her. “I’d love to call Chloe and ask her about it directly, but I can’t, because she hasn’t exactly been talking to me for years,” she said. “Strangely enough, I did get one of those invitations to one of those Upper East Side museum benefits, and sure enough, Chloe is once again a cochair. I haven’t gone to that benefit for years, but I actually thought about paying the $350 and going by myself. Just so I could see what she looked like.”

Bunny laughed her famous laugh, and several heads swiveled around to look at her. “A few years back, when I was kind of fucked up and sometimes even had dried coke residue around my nostrils, my father used to call me up and say, ‘Come home.’ ‘Why?’ I’d ask. ‘So I can seeeee you,’ he’d say. ‘If I seeeeee you I’ll know whether or not you’re all right.’

“It’s the same thing with Chloe. If I can just see her, I’ll know everything. Is she filled with self-loathing? Is she on Prozac?”

“I don’t think so,” Carrie started to say.

“Or do you think she’s had some kind of remarkable religious experience?” Bunny continued. “People do these days. It’s very chic.

“Anyway, I have my reasons for wanting to know. A few years ago, I almost married a guy like Jingles,” Bunny said, slowly. “The situation is still not resolved and probably never will be.

“Let’s have champagne. Waiter!” Bunny snapped her fingers. She took a breath. “Well. It all started after a nasty breakup with a man I’ll call Dominique. He was an Italian banker, Euro-trashy and proud of it, with a personality like a scorpion. Just like his mother. Of course he treated me like shit and I put up with it, and strangely enough, I didn’t mind that much. At least, not until the end when I drank too much psychedelic mushroom tea in Jamaica and realized he didn’t love me after all. But I was a different person back then. I still had my beauty—you know, strangers stopped me on the street, that kind of thing—and a good-girl upbringing that comes from growing up in a small town in Maine. But on the inside, I was not nice. I had absolutely no feelings at all, emotionally or physically. I’d never been in love.