Sex and the City

A month later, Maeve went back to her husband. Her situation was not unusual—many of the women ended up dumping Peri, only to go back to the men they had broken up with.

But that didn’t mean that Peri went away. “There were faxes, letters, and hundreds of phone calls,” said Sapphire. “It was sort of awful. He does have a huge heart, and he’s going to be a great guy someday.”

“I kept all his letters,” Sarah said. “They were so touching. You could practically see the streaks of his tears on the pages.” She left the room and returned seconds later holding a letter. She read aloud: “‘You don’t owe me your love, but I hope you’ll have the courage to step forward and embrace mine. I don’t send you flowers because I don’t want to share or demean your love with objects not of my creation.’” Sarah smiled.

“WE’RE GETTING MARRIED”

Post-Peri, the women claimed they had uniformly done well. Jackie said she was dating her personal trainer; Magda had published her first novel; Ramona was married and pregnant; Maeve had opened a cafe; Sapphire had rediscovered an old love; Sarah said she was happy to be pursuing a twenty-seven-year-old boy-toy.

As for Peri, he recently moved abroad, in search of fresh marriage prospects. One of the women had heard he got dumped by an English woman who had really wanted to marry a duke. “He always dates the wrong women,” Sapphire said.

Six months ago, Peri came back for a visit and took Sarah out to dinner. “He took my hand in his,” she said, “and he was saying to his friend, ‘She’s the only woman I ever loved.’ For old time’s sake, I went back to his apartment for a drink, and he asked me to marry him so seriously, I couldn’t believe it. I thought he was lying. So I decided to torture him.

“He told me, ‘I don’t want you to see any other men, and I won’t see any other women.’

“I said, ‘Okay,’ thinking, How’s that going to work? He lives in Europe and I live in New York. But the next morning, he called me up and said, ‘You realize you’re my girlfriend now.’

“I said, ‘Okay, Peri, that’s cool.’”

He went back to Europe, and, Sarah said, she forgot about the whole thing. One morning, she was in bed with her new boyfriend when the phone rang. It was Peri. While Sarah was talking to him, her boyfriend said, “Do you want some coffee?” Peri went nuts.

“Who’s there?” he said.

“A friend,” Sarah said.

“At ten in the morning? You’re sleeping with another guy? We’re getting married and you’re sleeping with another guy?” He hung up, but a week later he called back.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“For what?” Sarah said.

“We’re getting married, aren’t we? You’re not still seeing someone, are you?”

“Listen, Peri, I don’t see a ring on my finger,” Sarah said. “Why don’t you send a messenger over to Harry Winston’s to pick something up, and then we’ll talk.”

Peri never called Harry Winston’s, and he didn’t call Sarah again for months. She said she sort of missed him. “I adore him,” she said. “I feel compassion for him because he’s totally fucked up.”

It was getting dark outside, but nobody wanted to leave. They all wanted to stay, transfixed by the idea of a man like Tom Peri, but not Tom Peri.

4

Manhattan Wedlock:

Never-Married Women, Toxic Bachelors

Lunch the other day. Vicious gossip with a man I’d just met. We were discussing mutual friends, a couple. He knew the husband, I knew the wife. I’d never met the husband, and I hadn’t seen the wife in years (except to run into her occasionally on the street), but as usual, I knew everything about the situation.

“It’s going to end badly,” I said. “He was naive. A country mouse. He came in from Boston and he didn’t know anything about her and she jumped at the opportunity. She’d already gone through so many guys in New York and she had a reputation. No guy in New York would have married her.”

I attacked my fried chicken, warming up to the subject. “Women in New York know. They know when they have to get married, and that’s when they do it. Maybe they’ve slept with too many guys, or they know nothing’s ever going to really happen with their career, or maybe they really do want kids. Until then, they put it off for as long as they can. Then they have that moment, and if they don’t take it. . . .” I shrugged. “That’s it. Chances are, they’ll never get married.”

The other guy at the table, a corporate, doting-dad type who lives in Westchester, was looking at us in horror. “But what about love?” he asked.

I looked at him pityingly. “I don’t think so.”

When it comes to finding a marriage partner, New York has its own particularly cruel mating rituals, as complicated and sophisticated as those in an Edith Wharton novel. Everyone knows the rules—but no one wants to talk about them. The result is that New York has bred a particular type of single woman—smart, attractive, successful, and . . . never married. She is in her late thirties or early forties, and, if empirical knowledge is good for anything, she probably never will get married.

This is not about statistics. Or exceptions. We all know about the successful playwright who married the beautiful fashion designer a couple of years older than he is. But when you’re beautiful and successful and rich and “know everyone,” the normal rules don’t apply.