A Little Trouble with the Facts (3 page)

Anywhere. It was a big offer for a girl fresh off the farm. I had nowhere to go except home to my redheaded roommate in her Peanuts Gang socks. I was all dressed up with nothing to show for it. Anywhere sounded like the place to be. I lowered my chin and said in my best Audrey Hepburn, “Yes, please.”

If I’d been wise, I’d have made to the nearest pay phone and called an item in to Bernie: “Jeremiah Sinclair Golden Jr. seen making a trip to the WC and coming back glassy-eyed.” If I’d been smart, I’d have said, “What would a man like you want with a wildflower like me?” But after his “anywhere,” the room filled again with glitter, and all I could see was starlight.

“Where to?” he said, holding open the door of his stretch Lincoln Town Car at the edge of the grand plaza, as the fountain’s waters glowed in triumphant arcs behind him. I looked around for Billy Wilder, to see if his ghost was directing the scene. I searched for Samuel Taylor, his scriptwriter, because I didn’t know my lines. What would Audrey say? I told him the address of my tenement on East Fifth Street and he repeated it to his driver, adding, “Take the long way through the park,” just like William Holden. He didn’t need any prompting. Then he closed the glass partition with his remote.

It was one of those flawless New York City nights in the early blush of spring. The scent of lilacs drifted in through the cracked window. I leaned back on the soft leather bench and imagined the landscape montage that George Cukor would insert into this scene. We’d see the whole Central Park, from glorious glimmering Broadway down to the Plaza Hotel. The camera would pan out past the tinted glass of the limo, as I rolled down the window to smell the early blossoms. We’d see deer and elk frolic with foxes; see night shadows form on the Loeb Boathouse, near where—later in the movie—Jeremiah and I would have our first kiss in a rowboat. Swans would float in a moonlight-reflecting lake.

“You must be new to the city. I’ve never seen you before,” said Jeremiah.

I opened my eyes. “There are eight million people in this city. You couldn’t possibly have met everyone.”

“But if I’d met you, I would’ve remembered.”

My cheeks grew hot. “It’s true. I just moved here.”

“You see? I was right. You’re new. The new new thing.”

It felt like a kind of anointment. Then the old movies turned Blake Edwards–Technicolor. Jeremiah’s limo pulled to a stop in front of Tiffany, where Holly Golightly took her breakfast. The light changed and the car continued down Fifth Avenue, and the whole glinting panorama came to life. The gold-plated shops were like so many old friends from my magazines: Bergdorf and Trump Tower, Gucci and Brooks Brothers, Cartier and Saks. We drove through the Disney glow of Times Square—I saw Carolines and the Walter Kerr, TKTS and MTV—and past the Fashion District all the way down to the East Village.”

Jeremiah’s leg was leaning against mine as we sat in the limo in front of my East Fifth tenement, and this was all the encouragement I needed to sit still and wait. The car idled and the driver’s stereo played something jazzy and low. “Are you a fan of stuffed cabbage?” he asked. “I didn’t even touch my poached salmon.”

The car dropped us at Veselka on Second Avenue, a well-lit diner that specialized in kielbasa and cold borscht. The train of my gown draped into the aisle, tripping the Polish waitress. I was leaning on one fist, gazing into the black puddles of Jeremiah’s eyes as he regaled me with stories of the film world, the art world, the poetry slammers, and the “sad, terrible struggles that artists face to get any recognition for their crafts.” He talked a one-man symphony, conducting with his fork. I poked my blintz and memorized each note.

At 1:30, when our plates were lifted away, he mentioned martinis. I confessed I’d never tasted one. Minutes later, we were standing in front of a nondescript door in a darkened alley getting appraised by an electronic eyeball. The door swung open to admit us into a tiny room with a glittering wall of spirits. It was a drinking establishment all right. But the bartender, a Teddy boy in an Edwardian zoot suit, had vetted all the guests.

Teddy cleared a spot for us at the bar and Jeremiah helped me up onto a stool. He ordered us a round of dirty martinis. I asked him what made them dirty, and he said, “The person you’re with,” placing a hand on my knee.

I said, “Maybe you’ve got the wrong idea about me.” But I didn’t move my knee.

He said, “I’ve got a few ideas about you.”

I said, “We’ll have to start from the first idea and work our way down the list.”

His first guess: “I bet in a few weeks you won’t even remember the girl you are today, the girl in front of me in this cotton-candy dress, these pink pumps, the big eyes, hungry for a taste of everything. You’ll be amazed to find that you’re a creature of the city, through and through.”

My naïveté was like so many buttons on a flimsy silk blouse. He’d undone them and I felt exposed. “I certainly hope that’s true,” I said.

He drained his martini glass. “Careful what you wish for.”

The bar was a music box. It wound up each time a new group of sanctioned visitors waltzed through the velvet curtain. A guy in a smoking jacket told Jeremiah he’d loved the latest Odyssey release,
Chance Meeting at Midnight.
Jeremiah answered that he wished he could take the credit, but the real geniuses were the grips.

“Everyone said I was a born candidate, like my dad,” he confided once his admirers dispersed. “But I’m really a very private person. Still, I needed to prove I was good for something.”

“I’m sure you’re good for plenty of things,” I said, leaning closer.

He moved closer too. “To me, you see, the arts are a more powerful tool. An intimate tool.” He moved his hand farther up my thigh. “A work of art can change everything, so I support groundbreaking artists. I buy their work; I encourage them. I give them the impetus to keep working. I can be very hands-on.”

He certainly was hands-on. His hands were all over the place.

I’d known my share of commune boys out west. I’d dated at Reed, young men with carefully disheveled hair who were eager to quote Kristeva. But I’d never been this close to a man who was so willing to play the part. Jeremiah didn’t apologize for having money; he flashed it. He didn’t play down his connections; he dropped names like a barman drops ice into a glass. And he wasn’t afraid to be forward. His hand sneaked unrepentantly from my knee to my thigh and I didn’t move to swat it.

Just before dawn, when his Town Car was back on East Fifth Street, my battered tenement already seemed like a relic of the salad days that would be over soon enough. In three or four days, it would be all sorted out. I’d have that
Vanity Fair
job, thanks to a few calls from Jeremiah to the right people, and I’d phone my mother from under the plush duvet in his penthouse flat to tell her I was permanently engaged back east.

Jeremiah leaned in to kiss me, right on cue. And then he backed me up against the limo. “Wow,” I said. “What a wonderful night. I can’t wait to see you again.”

“Mmmmm,” he said, and pushed at the side of my gown.

“I’d better get inside.”

“Sounds great,” he said.

I moved to the side, to press him away. Even if things happened fast in the movies, the first kiss always ended with a polite hat tipping at the door, a happy skip in his step as the leading man backed away. But Jeremiah wasn’t budging.

“Can I make you dinner next week? I’m a very good cook, and I…”

Now he stumbled back. He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “No, no, not possible.”

“Not possible?”

“I’m not going to meet your mom, okay?”

“Of course not, silly; she’s in Oregon,” I said. “I mean, if she visited—”

He leaned against his limo and shook his head slowly. “You seem like a very nice girl, and we’ve had a good time tonight. But, uh, this”—his arm swept the air, to indicate, well, everything—“this doesn’t mean we’re dating, okay?”

“But what about…?” I was about to say it, to articulate my celluloid dream, as if he’d been in on it with me all along.

Jeremiah touched my face, placing two fingers under my chin. “Don’t you read the papers, princess? I’m engaged to an Astor.”

“You’re engaged to an…” It took a minute to sink in. “I didn’t know…. I thought…”

“Yeah. I know you thought. Funny. Girls and their ideas. Oh well.” He hopped back into the limo and gave me a halfhearted wave. Then the car door shut with a decisive thud. I stood there for a long time, until I saw the sun coming up over Avenue C, like an egg over hard.

I have to hand it to Jeremiah. He taught me one essential lesson: never skip the tabloids.

After that, the city became my teacher, and she was a strict schoolmarm. She didn’t like innocents and was suspicious of charmers. The city wasn’t teeming with Larrabees, only colorful cads who’d twirl a girl at midnight and disappear by dawn. She was quick with a ruler when she saw me falling into George Cukor daydreams, and she taught me that success didn’t fall out of the sky like pollen in springtime; it was won by hardscrabble sweat.

My schoolmarm’s daily pop quiz asked one question, and one question only: Who’s on top?

Who’s on top? I didn’t have the answer. I didn’t even know where to begin. To find it, I tried loitering near the jockeys at
the “21” Club and lingering near the Picasso stage curtain at the Four Seasons Grill Room. I idled in the velvet chairs at the Algonquin, sipping Earl Gray, watching for signs of a new Dorothy Parker salon. But my hours in these haunts were long and futile, as they were only living shrines to ghosts of cachet.

At the New York Public Library, behind the great lions, I began my research. I found clippings about the city’s oldest families and the rise of the nouveau riche. I jotted notes from
Forbes
and
Fortune, Us
and
W, Interview
and
Details
. Between admin duties at
Gotham’s Gate,
I searched the Internet for Mormon-style genealogies of Manhattan family trees. I tacked a map to my wall and marked off notable natives and recent arrivistes. I connected dots, and I followed my own routes, until I could’ve led a Hollywood-style Starline tour.

And then I did the tour. I pressed my nose to the glass at Pravda and Pastis, observing how the clientele swirled their $100 reds. Skulking around Gramercy Park, I took notes on where and how to walk a well-groomed pet. With my snoop’s pad and pen, I lurked behind mailboxes and streetlamps, scuttled under canopies, and raised the suspicions of a thousand doormen, just to figure out who could be who.

Whenever I had a free minute from my admin duties at the magazine, I badgered Bernie Wabash for legwork on his column. Despite my coming up zilch at the gala, he gave me another shot and made me a sometime stringer. When I did well, he printed my tidbits. “Inside Line” under Bernie wasn’t true gossip, but rather a stargazer travelogue of celebrity spa treatments, club sightings, and sunbathing shots on million-dollar cruises. So while I worked with Bernie, I took notes on how the column could be improved. I had a plan brewing: once I had enough ideas about remaking “Inside Line,” I’d find a way to sell the idea to an even glossier mag.

It wasn’t just career ambition that kept my fire fed. I also
had a secret plan—to find my family, my father’s family, and to secure my spot in my own blue-blooded lineage. If I could find them, I wouldn’t be on the outside looking in anymore. I’d be more like
My Man Godfrey,
the society escapee who returned in the form of a butler and taught his society peers to see how the other half lived. Well, more like him, anyway.

But even with my private study, I still got it wrong. My schoolmarm asked me, Who’s on top? And I didn’t know. Because all I had were charts and maps and facts and lists. I was nowhere near the door.

Until one day—the day Bernie Wabash keeled over at his desk while he was eating a fistful of fries. Zip Winkle called me into his office and told me the news, saying he didn’t have anyone else to replace Bernie, so until he could find someone permanent, I would need to keep the column afloat. Before he handed over the keys to Bernie’s office, he said, “Trouble is, we can’t have any Sunburst Rhapsody
anything
as a byline for a gossip column. You need to change that. Think of a name that will look swell in print.”

I stayed up all night, pacing, trying to come up with something that would make Zip make me Bernie for good, and not search for another replacement. My plan: to scrap “Inside Line” and rename the column “Inside and Out.” Instead of paparazzi shots on the
Law and Order
set or pillow talk from the masseurs at Bliss, I would dish out “power gossip.” Who was an insider and who was still pressing against the glass? Who was getting a raise and who was getting the boot? I wanted to make and break Manhattan. I spent the wee hours jotting ideas for my new name. I wanted it to have the ring of an old-time starlet, to honor my father; it had to feel quick on the tongue. But mostly, it needed to be the kind of name that would make anyone famous in a day.

The next morning, I dropped some Visine in my eyes,
dressed in my best knit suit, donned a black felt cloche, and I went straight to Zip’s office, looking like a cherry-blond Rosalind Russell. I introduced myself all over again. That was the last day of the Oregonian wildflower, and the first day of Valerie Vane. Zip leaned back in his massage chair and nodded. “Sounds about right,” he said. “Sounds about right. You’ve picked the right time to do it. The city is on fire out there. I want you to show me every flame!”

Back in Bernie’s musty office, I wiped down the coffee stains and flipped opened the Rolodex, containing the names of every has-been and never-was in Manhattan. I started punching numbers into the phone, knowing that I had to refresh that Rolodex fast, and if I could, I wouldn’t be subbing for long. I needed sources in the worst way, and all I had for leverage was an expense account.

“Hello, this is Valerie Vane, the new columnist for
Gotham’s Gate
’s ‘Inside and Out,’” I said to the booker at Picholine. “I’d like to reserve a table for two for lunch each day this week.” There was nothing like free urchin panna cotta and wild mushroom rabbit risotto, gratis, to make a source spill.