TATIANA BONCOMPAGNI
Hedge Fund Wives

For Max

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

One Baptism by Champagne Fountain

Two The Accidental, the Westminster, the Stephanie Seymour, the Former Secretary, the Socialite, the Workaholic, and the Breeder

Three Missing Spanx and Other Morning-after Anxieties

Four The Worst Hedge Fund Wife on the Planet

Five Becoming a Rules Girl

Six Parties Galore

Seven Setting the Table

Eight Nip Slips, Gilded Cookies, and Screen Sex (In other words, dinner at Jill’s)

Nine Gynomania

Ten And the Socks Come Off

Eleven I Say Oblivious, You Say Ubiquitous

Twelve Eco-disaster

Thirteen Surprise, Surprise

Fourteen Of Course

Fifteen Drinks Anyone?

Sixteen Asset Stripper

Seventeen Baggage and All

Eighteen Spread to Worst

Nineteen Take This Portfolio And Stuff It

Twenty Money Ain’t the Only Thing Green

Twenty-One Where’s the Antacid?

Twenty-Two Just When You Think It Can’t Get Any Worse...It Does

Twenty-Three Down to Business

Twenty-Four Reckoning at Bergdorf’s

Twenty-Five Baby Shower 2.0

Q & A with Tatiana Boncompagni, Author of Hedge Fund Wives

Acknowledgements

About The Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

ONE Baptism by Champagne Fountain

When I first opened the invitation to Caroline Reinhardt’s baby shower, I thought I’d received it by mistake. I barely knew anyone in the city besides my husband John, who six months earlier had been recruited from his desk at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to trade energy derivatives for a New York-based commodities-focused hedge fund. They made an offer we couldn’t refuse, and in the short span of a week, we were packing our boxes for Manhattan and toasting the Windy City goodbye with vodka gimlets in the bar at the top of the John Hancock Tower.

Now, half a year later, it was early December, and I was surrounded by hedge fund wives. With the sun shining bright against a clear sky, the air refreshingly cool on the necks of the fur-and-diamond-clad shower guests as they streamed past a pair of gargantuan front doors—doors that had reputedly once graced a fourteenth-century Venetian palace—and into the lavishly decorated home of Dahlia Kemp, wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Thomas Kemp, the day held nothing but the promise of pleasure. Once inside and relieved of their furs, the women would fill their flutes at a free-flowing Perrier-Jouët champagne fountain and nibble on passed hors d’oeuvres of beluga caviar and jamón ibérico, all the while studying (furtively, of course) the Kemp’s impressive art collection and gossiping in excited half-whispers about the expense to which Dahlia must have gone for the event.

Certainly a three-course gourmet meal accompanied by rare vintage wines, a five-tiered Sylvia Weinstock cake and goody bags stuffed with diamond earrings and fourfigure day spa gift certificates had to amount to an important sum, even for the wife of a man who had cleared ‘three point two’ (billion) the previous year. Even the invitations, which had been hand-delivered by a white-gloved courier and sent with a small gift, an Hermès silk scarf, to underscore the party’s theme (Rue du Faubourg) and dress code (French chic), were absurdly costly. No, no detail had been skimped on or forgotten for Caroline’s shower, and years later all of the guests would remember the party as the last of its kind.

Although no one spoke of it, the economy had begun to sour and every day brought fresh tales of falling fortunes. Most of the women assumed that their vast monetary reserves would protect them from having to alter any aspect of their enviable lives, but of course they were wrong. Wealth is relative by nature, and if one day you have a hundred million dollars and the next you have only fifty, the things that were once within reach—the private jet, the home in Aspen, or even five-tiered Sylvia Weinstock cakes—are suddenly out of it. Under such circumstances, it’s not long before a marriage built around material possessions and predicated upon the shared responsibility of their care and maintenance, begins to crumble.

But on the day of Caroline’s shower, at least, the wealth flowed as freely as the champagne, and I was more than happy to partake in the merriment. Not because of the gourmet morsels and vintage bubbly—I’m more of a cheese plate and glass of white kind of girl—but because I was desperate to make some friends. I’d done little to no socializing since we’d moved, partly because shortly after arriving in New York I’d fallen pregnant—I later miscarried—and partly because I was, to be completely honest, deeply afraid of the other wives. They all seemed so…well…perfect; and fitting in with them felt like such a daunting task. Ergo, when the invitation to Caroline’s shower arrived, I had originally assumed there had been a mix-up at the calligraphers. I was just about to post the response card back with a little note alerting the host to the error, when John returned home from the office and assured me that the invitation really had been intended for me. Apparently one of his new colleagues at Zenith Capital had a wife who was expecting their first child and wanted to invite me to her shower.

On the day of the party, I had my hair blown out at the hair salon on the corner, and after getting caught with a stylist who was convinced they could pump more volume into my unrepentantly limp locks, ended up arriving a bit late to the Kemp’s four-story Upper East Side townhouse on a tree-lined block off of Fifth Avenue. I was only ten minutes late, but already the first gush of guests had trickled out of the entry foyer and into the first-floor living room, allowing me to make a mostly unnoticed entrance, which turned out to be a stroke of luck. When I spotted the rack of designer furs in the front hall, I realized that my bright pink puffer would have stuck out, literally, like a sore thumb among all that sable and mink; and I crossed my fingers that no one but the maid, whose sole job it was to keep an eye on the coat rack, would connect me with my pink marshmallow parka. Chicago’s anything-goes-as-long-as-it-keeps-you-from-getting-frostbitten approach to outerwear clearly didn’t apply in New York City. This was a chinchilla-or-bust kind of town, and I made a mental note to go shopping for a new winter coat as soon as possible.

Taking a deep breath I made my way through the mirror-walled marble foyer into the Louis-XIV-antiques-decorated living room, and surveyed its contents: a couch and several arm chairs upholstered in lustrous dove-gray silk; marble-topped side tables and a coffee table made of mercury glass; a huge ivory oriental rug and a pair of gargantuan Lalique vases filled with fresh-cut pale pink-and-white flowers. A large Dutch pastoral painting hung on the far wall just above the couch, and a slew of Impressionist paintings from Renoir, Degas, Monet, Cézanne, and Pissarro covered nearly every available inch on the others. I counted about twenty-five female guests milling about, each wearing at least eight carats of diamonds and shoes that cost as much as my first car.

I took another deep breath, fluffed my hair a bit, and decided to introduce myself to Caroline. Only problem: nearly everyone was pregnant. And not just a little pregnant—at least half of the women there were sporting basketball-sized bellies, making it next to impossible to know who I was supposed to be congratulating. Luckily, I didn’t have to take more than three steps toward a tray of mini croques monsieurs and Gruyère gougères before a striking blonde greeted me with a double air kiss.

‘Marcy, I’m Caroline,’ she said. ‘Thanks for coming.’

Caroline Reinhardt had pin-straight blond hair that hung in an impossibly thick curtain down her back, dark blue eyes, and rubbery lips. She was wearing a wool pencil skirt and sleeveless ivory silk blouse that showed off her toned arms, perky, full breasts, and flat stomach. In other words, there was no way this woman was pregnant. It took me a second, but when it finally dawned on me that she was having the baby via surrogate I managed to eke out a passably hearty congratulations.

‘Thanks so much for inviting me,’ I said, given that the usual ‘you’re glowing!’ and ‘how do you feel?’ were obviously not applicable.

‘Of course we had to include you. There was no question,’ she smiled, revealing a row of perfectly white teeth. Veneers, no doubt, and from the look of them, the best and most expensive kind ($50,000 easily). ‘How are you finding the move?’ she asked, crossing her long arms right below her perfect breasts.

‘Decorating our new place has kept me pretty busy, but to be honest I’ve been really lonely. It’s no fun shopping alone for armchairs,’ I said.

‘Don’t tell me you’re not working with an interior designer?’ she balked.

I shook my head, helping myself to one of the Gruyère puffs. Cheese was my one big weakness in life, a mild obsession that would forever necessitate the wearing of body-fat encasing (or restructuring, as I liked to call it) undergarments.

‘Not to worry. I’ll call Jasper on Monday and ask him to see you straightaway. He’s finishing up our place on Bank Street. He’s marvelous and does so many of the girls’ homes here,’ she said.

‘Did he do this place?’

‘Oh Lord no. He’s much more, shall we say, décor forward? But Thomas Kemp is such a stick-in-the-mud traditionalist,’ she said, conspiratorially. ‘Anyway, there’s a chance Jasper’s in Chicago doing a taping with Oprah but I know I’m going to see him next Tuesday. Should I tell him to give you a ring?’

‘Oh no, don’t do that,’ I said, wondering exactly how much Jasper Pell, an interior designer who makes regular pit stops on The Oprah Winfrey Show, charged for a telephone, forget in-person, consultation. ‘I’m doing it on my own. Well, really John and I are doing it, but—’

‘Ohh, you’re an interior designer. No one told me,’ she said, suddenly excited. ‘Will you come over and tell me what you think of the nursery? I can’t decide if we should go with the faded sea foam or dusty wisteria color palette. Which one do you think is more progressive yet soothing?’

I told her she’d gotten the wrong idea, that I wasn’t an interior designer and was useless when it came to such dilemmas.

‘Oh,’ she sighed, her lips furling with disappointment. Then she started scanning the room in search of someone else to introduce me to, and I knew I’d blown it—my one big shot to make a good impression, and hopefully, a friend. John wasn’t kidding when he said that if in the real world you get one chance to get in someone’s good graces, when it comes to the superrich, it’s thirty seconds.

‘Have you met the party host, Dahlia Kemp, yet?’ Caroline asked distractedly.

We walked over to the couch where two women, both thin and blonde and dressed in pastel tweed skirts, silk blouses, and gold necklaces, were bent over their BlackBerries, tapping out emails. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I recognized the one on the right from a copy of Vogue that I’d thumbed through at the hair salon that morning.

The one on the left spoke first. ‘So tell me Caroline how are you staffing up for the baby’s arrival?’

‘We’re thinking a cook, baby nurse, and a nanny should do it.’

Three people for one little baby?

‘We did the same when Carolina and Alexander were born,’ Dahlia sniffed. ‘It’s so important to have a backup nanny in case of emergencies. Of course now that our children are six and eight, we’ve had to staff up with specialists: language and culture tutors, tennis, golf, and swimming instructors, and so on. But you don’t have to worry about that just yet. And whoever handles your domestics headhunting can help vet your candidates.’

Caroline said she would have to remember to ask for more details at a later date, and then put her hand lightly on my shoulder before introducing me. ‘Dahlia Kemp, Ainsley Partridge, this is Marcy Emerson. Her husband John works with Fred at Zenith,’ she said, taking a small step away from me, almost as if I were being presented at court. For a moment I had the distinct yet surreal impression I was meant to curtsey.

‘Lovely to meet you,’ I said, offering my hand across the mercury glass coffee table. I waited for Dahlia to grasp it but she didn’t. Instead, she daintily fingered one of the multiple Van Cleef & Arpels clover Alhambra necklaces strung around her neck and looked away while Caroline hissed in my ear, ‘She doesn’t shake.’

What, like the pope? Confused and embarrassed, I withdrew my outstretched hand and stuffed it in the little front pocket on my dress, and as I fumbled with the pocket, it occurred to me that maybe I had been meant to curtsey before.

‘You have a beautiful home,’ I said finally.

Dahlia looked around the room as if she’d never really noticed how nice it was and parted her thin lips, hesitating for a second before gesturing to the portrait hanging above a large marble-topped armoire. ‘I’m not sure about the Cézanne over there. Thomas just bought it at Christie’s. What do you think, Ainsley?’ she asked, turning to the blonde seated next to her.

‘I like it.’ Ainsley shrugged and looked back down at her BlackBerry.

‘Well, anyway,’ Dahlia sighed, rolling her wide-set, almond-shaped eyes at Caroline, who snorted quietly into her hand in response. ‘I suppose we could always put it in the Greenwich house when that’s finished.’

‘How’s that going?’ Caroline asked.

‘Meier is gouging us. Twenty million for the glass porte-cochere alone. The bastard refuses to get bids from other contractors. Thomas is considering firing him, but I’ve talked him out of it, thank God. Could you imagine the scandal?’ Dahlia said.

Caroline shook her head. ‘Would be a nightmare. But tell me, I’ve been meaning to ask. Preston Bailey or David Monn?’

‘Bailey was busy today so Monn planned the event. Personally, I think they’re both talented but Monn does better florals,’ Dahlia replied before sliding open the golden pyramid covering the face of her wristwatch to check the time. ‘I think we should start lunch,’ she said, motioning to one of her many housekeepers to begin ushering the guests into the dining room.

I did my best to make my way gracefully over—the women, I noticed, didn’t so much walk as they did waft—to the dining room, where four round tables, each set with ten place cards, had been draped in baby blue linens and set with white china and silver. I found my place card, sat down in my seat, and for an agonizing three minutes (I apparently hadn’t wafted slowly enough) I waited alone at the table, reading and rereading the lunch menu:

Fava bean and mint salad

Kobe beef filet mignon with blanched white asparagus

and chanterelle toasts

Or

Grilled wild salmon in black currant sauce, sautéed

mushrooms and a wild-rice timbale

Herb-scented sorbet trio and Chocolate-and-espresso

cake

I was just about to get up from the empty lunch table and excuse myself to the ladies room when a petite woman with straight, shoulder-length light brown hair, luminescent olive skin, and sharply defined facial features plopped herself into the seat next to mine. She was breathing hard, as if she had just run a couple miles in her Roger Vivier pumps.

‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ she said once she’d caught her breath.

‘Marcy Emerson. I’m new. My husband and I just moved here from Chicago.’

‘Jillian Lovern Tischman, but everyone calls me Jill,’ she said, extending her hand.

I sighed with relief and shook her hand. ‘So this is not a totally verboten form of human contact after all?’

‘Oh, did you met Dahlia already?’ she replied, placing her Hermès Medora clutch on the table.

I nodded and took another big sip of my champagne.

‘Pace yourself,’ she warned, eyebrows raised, as the tables filled up around us. ‘These things have a way of dragging on forever.’

‘Sounds like you go to a lot of baby showers.’

‘I’ve done the math, and by my calculations I’ll go to one hundred and fifty of them before everyone’s done spawning.’

‘How do you get to one hundred and fifty?’ I asked.

‘Fifty women, give or take. Three babies each because three’s the new two, four’s the new three, and, well, you get the point.’

I told Jill that John and I hoped to start a family, but didn’t delve much deeper into my recent reproductive history. ‘My dream is to have a house full of kids, but in general I try to avoid becoming a cliché,’ I said.

‘Well, good luck. Because try as you might, you’re probably destined to end up in one of the seven categories of hedge fund wives.’

‘You make this place sound like Dante’s Inferno.’

Jill thought for a second. ‘You know, it’s actually an apt comparison,’ she said before lifting her glass and taking a long swallow from her own flute.

So much for pacing oneself.

TWO The Accidental, the Westminster, the Stephanie Seymour, the Former Secretary, the Socialite, the Workaholic, and the Breeder

I was curious to hear more from Jill, but before I could get any more out of her, Dahlia stood up to give a speech about Caroline and we all had to be quiet. I didn’t have a chance to chat privately again with Jill until we were all shunted upstairs to eat cake in the second-floor sitting room, which itself resembled a petit four with its mint and cream décor and huge Venetian glass chandelier suspended from the center of the ceiling. I asked the woman cutting wedges of cake for a large piece and sat down next to Jill to watch Caroline tackle her mountain of presents—including the cashmere baby blanket I’d brought.

‘If there are seven kinds of hedge fund wife, which one are you?’ I asked Jill, digging into my chocolate-espresso-cream confection.

‘Oh, I’m an Accidental,’ she demurred. ‘When I met my husband I thought he’d end up in politics like the rest of his family. Glenn moved from being an equity analyst tracking tech stocks for Merrill to a fund called Conquer Capital when we were engaged, and unlike most of the other hedge fund brides, I actively opposed his transition into this world.’

‘But why?’

‘Because I knew it would mean that I’d spend the rest of my life at parties like these, listening to someone prattle on about their latest trip to a five-star, obscenely expensive resort where they lunched at the table next to Diane von Fürstenberg and Barry Diller’s and sunned in beach chairs next to Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner.’ She rolled her dark eyes and slouched in her chair.

‘So how do I spot other Accidentals? They sound like my people.’

‘We’re usually the last to arrive and the first to go. We’re also the least likely to host a social gathering or send out holiday cards.’

I was enthralled as Jill broke down all the different types of hedge fund wives, or HFWs, as she sometimes referred to them. According to her the Westminster (as in pedigreed and pure bred) has a recognizable and respectable last name (which she’s kept, non-hyphenated), belongs to all the right clubs (Junior League, Harvard, and Doubles) and is more likely to subscribe to Emily Post than to the New York Post. While the Westminster always looks groomed, she isn’t gauche about it (no false eyelashes except for black tie functions, no breast implants, etc.) and strives above all to appear elegant and natural. She may have a job but it isn’t all-consuming, and thanks to her years of co-chairing this and that, she’s constructed a first-rate social network. If you need a letter for the co-op board of the building you are hoping to buy into, the Westminster’s your gal. Applying for membership in, say, Piping Rock, the most exclusive golf and beach club on Long Island’s North Shore, she’s the first call you make. Ditto for nursery school applications, benefit committee aspirations, etc., etc. But as likeable as the Westminster is, ‘her perfectionism can rub some the wrong way,’ Jill sniffed.

Later, I would learn that Jillian Lovern Tischman, in addition to being a mother of two, was a contributing editor for House & Home, a monthly glossy magazine that mainly featured the city, country, and vacation homes of socialites and B-list celebrities. She was also on the boards of numerous noteworthy charities and cultural institutions around town, and thus far more Westminster than Accidental.

Named for the famous supermodel who, by settling down with Peter Brant, a massively wealthy investor, art dealer, and racehorse breeder, inspired droves of models to secure their own hedge fund honey pots, the Stephanie Seymour is so used to getting away with being nasty and rude—even their husbands let them treat them like dirt—that they’ve actually forgotten how to be gracious. They also tend to only want to talk about shopping, their last session with the physical trainer (whom you get the sneaking suspicion they might be having an affair with), or their last trip to the dermatologist’s office (ditto). They have kids, but you never hear about them unless they’re referencing a plastic surgery procedure, as in, ‘I had the breast lift six months after I gave birth to fill-in-the-blank Junior.’ Stephanie Seymour wives take the whole yummy mummy thing to another level, make that universe.

Without a doubt, Caroline Reinhardt was a prime example.

The third kind of HFW, the Former Secretary, is self-explanatory. Their husbands were too lazy or busy (or both) to go look for a wife, so they simply married the first girl who did a decent enough job organizing their lives at the office. They also never talk back and give surprisingly good blow jobs. Former Secretaries are often the snobbiest of all HFWs because they feel so insecure about their lowly backgrounds, and tend to be the most protective of their territory (i.e., husbands) because they have the most to lose. Unlike the Stephanie Seymours, they don’t have good looks to fall back on, and since they aren’t terribly charming, they also don’t have many friends who would side with them in a big city divorce battle. After hearing this description, it shocked me when Jill said that none other than Dahlia Kemp was this cat-egory’s reigning queen.

‘That’s the point, you’re not supposed to be able to spot them. Their whole raison d’être is to blend in with the other HFWs,’ Jill said.

The fourth category of wife, the Socialite, cares about one thing and one thing only: social status. She’s as vain as the Stephanie Seymour, as connected as the Westminster, as cutthroat as the Former Secretary, but has a past as cloudy as the East River. Even the ones that come from upper-middle-class backgrounds, like Ainsley Partridge, have skeletons bursting out of their closets, which, it should be noted, are stuffed with borrowed dresses they just ‘happened’ to forget to return. The Socialite, Jill said, was a shameless cheapskate and never paid for anything—not her clothes, her hair, her makeup, her transportation, her gym membership, or her meals. The list goes on and on. In fact, if there is one way to tell a Socialite from the rest of the HFWs it’s that she will stick you with the bill for lunch while the other four won’t even let you see it.

The Workaholic, on the other hand, will inform you that you’ll be splitting the bill even before the waiter takes your drink order—and even though both of you know she’ll be expensing it, along with the black town car hovering outside the restaurant’s front door and the holiday gift—a crate of halfway decent California cabernet—she’ll be sending you in December. Like her husband, the Workaholic is married firstly to her high-powered, although not-quite-so-lucrative job as a magazine publisher/interior decorator/real-estate broker/corporate lawyer. She has no children and has talked herself into believing that she’ll be able to easily reproduce up until the age of fifty. But before you start feeling too sorry for the Workaholic, remember that she has a closet full of perfectly tailored Akris suits and Manolo Blahnik heels, takes pleasure in tearing her workplace underlings to shreds, and has a seven-figure bank account in the Cayman Islands that even her husband doesn’t know exists. ‘What’s his is mine and what’s mine is mine,’ is her motto. Welcome to the hedge fund wives’ version of women’s lib.

Of course, the Workaholic’s exact opposite, the Breeder, is hardly a poster child for the feminist movement either. Of all the hedge fund wives, the Breeder is the easiest to identify. She’s often sporting a big, pregnant belly and either carrying a new tot in a shearling-lined Louis Vuitton baby carrier or pushing one in a Bugaboo stroller. And in case you happen to catch her without one of her three, four, or five children, she wears their baubleequivalents—little enamel and gold shoes—on a chain around her neck.

By the time Jill had finished schooling me on the seven types of hedge fund wives, the cake plates had been cleared and Caroline had opened all of her gifts (I’d never seen so much Tiffany silver in my life). Jill walked me down to the entry foyer, where we were both given our gift bags and stood waiting for our coats when Ainsley sidled up to Jill to ask her if she was coming to her annual holiday party. ‘I can’t come. Glenn’s parents are expecting us in Oyster Bay that weekend,’ she said.

‘Oh really, that’s too bad,’ Ainsley pouted.

‘Why don’t you invite Marcy and her husband John?’ Jill suggested.

Ainsley protested, stammering through a half-cooked explanation that it was really just a small get-together and her husband Peter was already complaining about the number of people she’d invited. Jill pointed out that since she wasn’t coming, it wasn’t like John and I would be adding to the final number of guests. I felt stupid standing there as the girls argued about me, but I’d also visited the champagne fountain enough times over the course of the afternoon to dull my sense of shame and self-pity.

‘I suppose two more isn’t a big deal,’ Ainsley finally growled at Jill, tossing a handful of her long, pale blond hair behind her back. She turned to face me. ‘The party is in two weeks, Jill can fill you in on the rest,’ she said. Then she grabbed her fur from a patiently waiting maid and stomped outside.

‘Now you get to see Ainsley’s apartment and meet some of the other wives who weren’t here today,’ Jill said. She was quite pleased with herself, having exercised her considerable social power for seemingly good use.

‘I know. I can’t wait, I just wish that you were going to be there.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ she said before wafting outdoors into the brilliant sunshine, ‘as long as you don’t wear that coat.’

THREE Missing Spanx and Other Morning-after Anxieties

Two weeks later, on the morning after the Partridge’s annual Christmas party, I woke up with a lethal case of cottonmouth, throbbing head, and little memory of what had happened after half-past one the night before. Plus I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d done something really life-altering embarrassing, like maybe-I-need-to-move-to-Dubai-now embarrassing. Then the phone rang, punctuating the merciful silence of my darkened, cool bedroom with a sound so shrill, so loud, it made my brain feel like it was imploding on itself, and I lunged for the bedside table to snap it up, if only to prevent it from ringing again.

‘Hello?’ I croaked.

‘Good morning.’ It was John, my husband, who was predictably at work even though it was a Sunday, and according to the clock on my bedside table, not even nine o’clock.

‘Oh, I get it—you’re being ironic,’ I said.

I quickly calculated: The man had had at most four hours’ sleep the previous night. How and for God’s sake why he had made it into work when his appearance wasn’t required was beyond me. Was he in a bad mood because he felt just as hung over as I did or because of something else? Something involving me and the bottle of tequila with which I had spent the better portion of last night familiarizing myself ?

‘How are you feeling?’ John asked humorlessly.

‘About as bad as I sound, maybe worse,’ I said. ‘What happened last night anyway? I don’t remember anything after we ordered that second bottle of Patron.’

‘So you don’t remember the incident?’ he asked.

‘Incident? What incident?’ I didn’t like the sound of that word. It sounded like something that required the involvement of the police and lawyers, documents and affidavits, judges and juries. This couldn’t be good.

‘There was an altercation at the bar,’ John continued.

‘With who?’

‘With whom,’ he corrected me.

My husband, the grammar nut. I blamed his pedantry on his mother, a former middle school English teacher turned real estate broker, with whom (thank you, John) I had what I called a ‘civil’ relationship. Let’s just say that after almost seven years of marriage I’d learned to put up with the things I couldn’t change.

‘Okay…whom?’ I asked again.

‘A girl. She meant to throw her drink at Ainsley, but Ainsley ducked and it hit you instead.’

‘It did?’ I couldn’t believe that I didn’t remember having a drink thrown in my face. The only other time I’d blacked out was during my sophomore year of college, when I drank one (okay, six) too many beers while tailgating a Northwestern football game. ‘So then what happened?’ I asked.

‘You threw your drink right back at her.’

‘I did?’

‘Then she said something and you shoved her and then she socked you in the face.’

Feeling the tender spot around my eye, I uttered, ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yeah. I would have tried to protect you, but it happened too fast.’

‘Do you know why I shoved her? I mean it’s not exactly like me to engage in bar brawls.’

I heard John shuffling some papers, the sound of a drawer opening, and I knew there was something he wasn’t telling me. He always went into organizational mode when he was holding something back. It was his tell.

‘Spill,’ I said.

‘The girl who hit you…’ He paused, weighing his options.

‘Yes?’

‘She told you to put your girdle back on.’

‘Spanx. Girdles are for grandmothers. There’s a difference.’

‘I’m just repeating what the girl said. Can we not get lost in semantics, please?’

‘Alright, why were my Spanx off ?’

‘You tell me. You’re the one who took them off.’

‘Did I take them off…in public, in front of other people?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

Oh fuck.

‘You took off your stockings, too,’ he added, unbidden.

Doublefuck.

‘But I wasn’t wearing any underwear!’ The dress I’d worn was a little (okay, a lot) on the short side. Everyone in that club must have gotten an eyeful of my Britney Spears. For a moment everything went dark, and I had to move a pillow under my head.

‘Everyone must think I’m a lunatic. Why didn’t you stop me?’

‘Marcy,’ he sighed. ‘Of course I tried to stop you. But you wouldn’t listen.’

‘Did I slur?’ It was a masochistic question, but I needed to know everything.

‘There was slurring, drooling, stumbling, spilling, nudity, and fighting. Shall I continue or was that enough?’

‘John, help me out. I’m mortified!’

‘Well then that makes two of us,’ he said, and I realized that as stupid as I felt, John must have felt ten times more embarrassed. After all, I didn’t ever have to face these people again if I didn’t want to, but John had no choice; he worked with them every day.

I cleared my throat. ‘I’m sorry, honey. I know what a big deal it was to you that I make a good impression,’ I said.

‘Actually you sort of did,’ he grumbled. ‘Peter thought you were hilarious and Ainsley felt so bad after that girl decked you. They want us to all have dinner after New Year’s. Go figure.’

I’d rather let John control the TV remote for the next five years than have to go to dinner with the socialite and her husband.

I groaned dramatically.

‘Marcy, we aren’t in Chicago anymore. New York works differently. Deals aren’t made in conference rooms, but over cocktails and dinner tables. Zenith rewards rainmakers, the guys who are good at reeling in potential new investors. If I could do that, I could be pulling in much bigger bucks.’

‘But, John, we have plenty of money.’

‘My portfolio has outperformed all the partners’ expectations, and I’ve been rewarded for that, but I’m never going to move up the ladder if I don’t start bringing in new capital. And to bring in new money, we need to be out there meeting the people who have it.’

‘You want to rub shoulders with rich people. I don’t understand how this requires my involvement.’

‘I’d like for you to get us invited to more parties like the Partridge’s. Last night I met a Venezuelan banking scion and an Ecuadorian flower exporter. They want to set up a dinner and talk about Zenith’s investment returns. And why? Because they saw us with the Partridges and figure we’re connected. Marcy, despite, or maybe because of the crap you pulled last night, people here love you. You had tons of friends in Chicago. I know that if you set your mind to it you could get us invited to the right parties and fundraisers.’

‘John, you know I’m not big on schmooze fests. Can’t you just go out without me?’ I gulped down the glass of water on his bedside table since mine was already empty. My headache was getting worse by the second.

‘It looks bad for a guy to be at parties on his own. People will think I’m trolling for chicks.’

I spit my water back into the glass. ‘Say what?’

‘My point is that I want you with me. All you have to do is be your normal, charming, and hopefully not inebriated self, and I’ll do all the real work. We might have to throw a few dinner parties when our apartment is ready, but otherwise your actual input is minimal.’

‘I don’t know, John. I thought we agreed that we were going to focus on getting pregnant again. What I want is a baby, for us to be on diaper-duty, not schmooze-control every night of the week. That’s not at all how I pictured our lives here.’

‘So you’re telling me that you have no interest in making friends and having fun? Because basically that’s what I’m asking you to do. And I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get pregnant again before you have a chance to form a social network. God forbid if anything happens next time, you’ll at least have some friends to lean upon for support.’

‘I’d rather lean on barbed wire than any of the wives I’ve met.’ I snorted.

He sighed with exasperation.

‘John, one woman wouldn’t shake my hand, another snubbed me because I don’t have an interior decorator, and just last night someone sneered at me because she didn’t like my dress.’

‘They can’t all be that bad.’

‘There are two nice ones,’ I confessed.

‘I know you miss Chicago, but it’s time you start trying a little harder to settle in.’

‘Umm, need I remind you of what happens when I attempt to settle in? I get blind drunk and moon people.’

‘How about you try skipping the tequila next time?’

‘Sober socializing? No, thanks. My couch is way too comfy,’ I joked.

‘You owe me after last night,’ he said, in a tone that suggested I not attempt to breathe any more levity into the conversation.

In the spirit of moving forward, I decided to make a concession. Also because I felt really guilty about having made such a total idiot of myself in, of all places, the Rose Bar in the Gramercy Park Hotel. It was the hot spot in New York; on any given night it was filled to capacity with the city’s most influential editors, wealthiest power brokers, and hottest model-actress-socialite-whatevers (the new ubiquitous hyphenate). If it were up to me I’d never set foot in there again, but if I ever wanted to get the baby I’d dreamed of having, it sounded like I had to.

‘Okay, John, but once I have a so-called social network, then can we try again for a baby?’

‘Whatever you want, Marcy.’

‘Then I guess we have a deal,’ I said.

‘That’s my girl.’

‘I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?’

Oh, if only I’d known.

FOUR The Worst Hedge Fund Wife on the Planet

Heaving myself out of bed, I guzzled down the rest of my glass of water and threw on an old T-shirt and a pair of John’s boxers. Sunlight poured through a gap in our curtains, illuminating a wedge of vanilla carpet where my outfit from the previous night lay in a sad little heap. I picked it up and tossed it in the little hamper we used to collect our dry cleaning, then retrieved my shoes, a pair of leg-lengthening, bank-breaking black pumps, and my quilted black satin clutch, both from Chanel, both carelessly scattered around the room. I shelved them in their appropriate tissue-lined boxes while at the same time eyeing the floor for my stockings and Spanx.

Oh right, I’d left those at the club.

Along with my self-respect.

Nice.

I needed coffee, lots of it. Without it, I knew I would be unable to function for the entire day, not that I had anything in particular to do, but still. I slipped on my fleece slippers and padded over to the kitchen, where I sloshed some milk in a saucepan, ground some coffee beans and dumped the entire grinder’s worth of grounds into the liner. Once it was brewed, I poured a couple cups of the coffee into the saucepan with the warmed milk and then emptied the whole mixture into the red-and-white snowflake mug I’d used since high school. If there was one thing I had down to a science, it was making coffee just the way I liked it.

Taking my first gulp of the hot, dark liquid, I peered inside the refrigerator, where I found the signs of a drunken, middle-of-the-night food binge—the pumpkin pie I had made two days earlier was almost entirely eaten and one of my earrings was nestled in between a halfeaten round of Camembert and a carton of orange juice that had been full when we had left for the Partridges but was now mostly gone. Feeling even more disgusted with myself, I closed the door of the fridge and looked down at my stomach. It was bloated and distended.

Gross.

My head pounded behind my left eye socket, and without thinking I reached up to apply pressure on it, causing a thunderbolt of pain to rip through my head as soon as my fingers made contact. I stooped down to check my reflection in the mirrored backsplash, only to have my fears confirmed: I had the beginnings of a black eye. A real, Oscar-de-la-Hoya-worthy shiner. It was gonna be ugly.

Gulping down another mouthful of coffee, I started trying to piece together the previous night’s timeline. There had been three glasses of champagne, which I had downed in rapid succession. Not advisable, obviously, but I always drink quickly when I’m nervous, and that night, surrounded by John’s hyperwealthy colleagues and their expensively maintained wives, I certainly had cause to be. You see, it was pretty clear that most of the other wives at the Partridges’ party grew up with nannies and private school kilts hemmed just so, while I had carried a house key around my neck on a dingy white shoelace and braved the Minnesota winters in multigenerational hand-me-downs. Even last night, wearing a new designer dress and multiple coats of a new mascara the woman behind the cosmetics counter swore was what all the movie stars use, I still felt like a prairie girl among princesses.

However, for John, I put on a brave face. He seemed to be reveling in our transition into a higher tax bracket and new city as much as I was floundering in it. Since being recruited by Zenith from his desk at the Merc, John had been completely obsessed with his work. His job as a specialist in trading energy derivatives required him to, for example, predict, hopefully correctly, how much the price of a barrel of oil was going to rise over the next quarter and why. It was all tremendously complicated, time-consuming, and stressful, but it turned out that John was really good at it, and in the span of less than a year, he’d managed to make the fund an obscene amount of money, which had in turn made us wealthier than we’d ever dared to dream.

For anyone without an intimate understanding of what hedge funds do, in a nutshell they invest other people’s money. We’re talking super-wealthy individuals who have the five to twenty million dollars you need to play ball with these funds just lying around, gathering dust, twiddling their little green thumbs. If everything goes right, the investors get back whatever profit (or return) is made, minus twenty percent and two percent of the total investment that the fund keeps as compensation. (A few managers take a full fifty percent of the profits, but they’re more the exception than the rule.)

For a long stretch of time everything did go right—the rich got richer and a bunch of guys in the right place at the right time minted huge fortunes virtually overnight. And then the economy tanked, and the party was suddenly over.

John and I were a total anomaly. While we were upgrading our furniture and researching luxury vacations, the rest of Wall Street was taking it on the chin. The banks had all underestimated their exposure to the subprime mortgage industry meltdown and had been forced to write off billions of dollars. As they started reining in on the amount of loans they were making to small and large businesses, deal flow slowed and with fewer deals in the pipeline, profits dipped. Soon thereafter pink slips started to fly. The Federal Reserve intervened to save the banks from going under, but at the expense of the dollar, which sank even lower in value. To make matters worse, the boost U.S. exports received as a result of the weak dollar was far smaller than previously anticipated or hoped for, and the president’s pro-ethanol policy was making the cost of all food higher as Midwestern farmers ditched less profitable crops in order to grow corn. To top it all off the Saudis were once again raising the price of crude, mainly because of the weakening dollar. The long run of American prosperity was coming to an end.

But not for us. Ours was just starting.

Although we were lucky, I didn’t feel like it. Moving to New York had been difficult for me. Okay, gut wrenching. Shortly after our relocation, I had gotten pregnant. A dream, since we’d spent a year trying before it finally happened. You could say that I was—and am

- totally obsessed with babies. I love the way they smell, the sounds they make when they eat, their tiny little hands making angry little fists when they cry. It hadn’t mattered to me that I vomited five times a day and could only stomach Saltines and cheese sandwiches for the duration of the whole first trimester. I’d watch those Gerber baby commercials on television and just melt with happiness. I was going to be a mom.

Everything was going great until I hit the twenty-week mark and started bleeding. First it was just some spotting, but when the flow got heavier, my doctor put me on monitored bed rest in the hospital and they shot me full of drugs that were supposed to help. But it was too late. I miscarried. It wasn’t meant to be, the doctor said. We’d try again, John said. A lot of people said a lot of things, but nothing could allay the pain. My world was black. I couldn’t stop crying. For weeks, all I did was cry. Cry and eat cheese—Burrata, fresh off the plane from Tuscany, weeping with moisture, and Stilton from England, massive slabs of the salty, piquant stuff. John brought me only the best, unpasteurized, illegal cheese. I could eat it now: I wasn’t pregnant anymore. There was no danger of ingesting a piece of Listeria-laden fromage and losing the baby.

I had sat on our new couch, my misery wrapped around me like a blanket, and thought of my baby. I wondered what he would have looked like, whether he would have inherited John’s blondish hair or my dark locks, John’s lean, athletic build, or my softer, shorter one. Would he have been popular? Bookish? Funny? Preferred pancakes to waffles, bacon to sausages? I’d never know. All I could do was imagine. Imagine and then weep. I told John that I wanted us to move back to Chicago. New York held only unhappiness for me. I missed our old lives and I missed our friends.

‘We’ll make more,’ he assured me.

Now in the kitchen, I considered the empty seat at the breakfast table and silently cursed John for making me go to the Partridges. I had wanted to stay home and watch an episode of Lost, but he wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I promise, once you have a glass of wine and start talking to people, you’ll be glad you’re there,’ he’d argued, and when I still refused to budge from our big comfy couch, he pulled out the heavy artillery: ‘My bosses will be there. It won’t look good if you’re not with me.’

I harrumphed, unimpressed.

‘We haven’t been out in months. Don’t I deserve a night out with my wife every once in a while?’

Thus reminded that I, baby or no baby, still had some wifely responsibilities to perform, I pried myself off the couch and let him prod me into our bedroom in the direction of our walk-in closet, where I squirmed into my trusty Spanx, a pair of stockings, and that stupid dress. And although I had resigned myself to spending the night quietly sipping champagne in a corner, hoping that no one noticed what a big, friendless loser I was, I actually ended up having a good time.

The highlight of the evening had been—no, not the tequila—but meeting Gigi Ambrose, the well-known caterer, cookbook author, and frequent Today Show guest. With masses of auburn hair, Jessica Rabbit curves, and enough Southern sass for a whole cotillion’s worth of debutantes, she was the kind of woman you want to hate, but can’t. She was too charming, and on top of that, her recipes had always served me well in the kitchen. Even so it had taken me half an hour to work up the nerve to walk up to her and introduce myself.

‘I love the kumquat glazed chicken skewers,’ I’d said in reference to one of the hors d’oeuvres being passed around on silver trays that evening. There had also been caviar-topped quail eggs, blue cheese and candied fig tartlets, not to mention grilled polenta squares and seared tuna bites. But the chicken skewers had been my favorite, and as a conversation opener I had asked Gigi if she’d included the recipe for them in her next book, a home entertaining guide she’d already started promoting on her Today Show segments.

‘Oh, I’m not catering tonight,’ Gigi had drawled in response. Her voice was deep and warm, and she smelled of vanilla and rosewood. ‘Ainsley went with another company, which is more than fine by me. I’m here with my husband.’

‘I am, too,’ I said just as a woman in a chinchilla coat clomped through the doorway on five-inch platform heels. She had raven hair, large, probably surgically enhanced breasts, and a thin gold phone pressed to her ear. She was barking something in Russian into it. Later I would learn from Gigi that the fembot’s name was Irina and she called herself a matchmaker, but most believed her to be a madam. Irina set up pretty Russian girls, many just off the plane, with rich old men who wanted hot young things to take to dinner—and then home to bed. Eliot Spitzer was rumored to have been one of her better customers.

‘Darling, hello. I haven’t seen you in a while. It’s so nice to see you,’ Irina purred, leaning down—she stood six feet two in her heels—to give Gigi a double air kiss salutation.

‘Have you met Marcy Emerson?’ Gigi asked, putting her arm around my waist and giving it a reassuring squeeze.

Irina shifted her eyes, a pair of icy blue slits rimmed in heavy black liner, to me.

She was intimidating all right, and I had fumbled for my words, finally sputtering something like ’its cold out there, isn’t it?’ thinking that I’d be safe talking about the weather.

But I’d thought wrong.

‘In Russia we have a saying,’ Irina said, her voice as frosty as her glare. ‘There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothes.’ She had made a show of looking me up and down before stomping off into the living room.

‘Umm, is it my imagination or did she just sneer at me?’ I asked Gigi.

‘Not your imagination.’

‘Well, then, what a friendly lady. I’m so glad I came.’

Gigi laughed. ‘You couldn’t get out of tonight, either, could you?’

‘Is it that obvious?’ I replied, and for the next ten minutes Gigi and I swapped our bullet-point biographies. She was originally from North Carolina, recently married her husband, one Jeremy Cohen, an ex-Goldman Sachs banker who’d originally made his money trading junk bonds (à la Michael Milken, minus the jail time). His particular knack was distressed investment, which meant that he bought and sold stock in troubled corporations. He’d started his first vulture fund in the late nineties following the International Monetary Fund crisis in Asia. After making a killing flipping undervalued companies in South Korea, Jeremy launched another fund and amassed yet another fortune buying securities in a string of utility companies across Texas. Immediately after Gigi married Jeremy, she got pregnant with a girl, now six months old and named Chloe, and moved into Jeremy’s gargantuan, feng shui-ed apartment in a newly refurbished luxury condo/hotel on Central Park South. I told her that I’d grown up in a suburb of Minneapolis, went to college in Chicago, where I worked post graduation at an investment bank, most recently as a relationship officer for the bank’s wealthy clients, and met John, whom I had been married to for five years.

Gigi and I finished our glasses of champagne and agreed it was time to join the others in the living room; our husbands were probably wondering if we’d left without them. Gigi suggested we take the long way back, through the Partridges’ dining room, where we gawked at a china hutch full of plates etched with two fancifully entwined P’s and an A.

‘Monogrammed tablewear,’ Gigi whispered, rolling her eyes. I giggled and she leaned in close to my ear to dispense a torrent of insider information, the importance of which I would realize only later, once it was too late.

‘I actually shouldn’t be making fun of poor Ainsley. Jeremy told me earlier tonight that Peter’s closing his fund. He started it three years ago and it never reached critical mass.’

I nodded. Critical mass in private-equity-speak referred to the amount of capital he had been able to raise. It was a common death knell for hundreds of startup funds.

‘Plus he cleared all his trades through Bear Stearns,’ Gigi continued.

In the aftermath of the subprime lending debacle, Bear Stearns, once one of the most venerable banks on Wall Street, was forced to sell itself to JP Morgan for less than it was worth. Much of its well-paid staff, including several of Peter’s friends, had been laid off, leaving Peter to scramble to forge relationships with new brokers.

‘And to top it all off, Peter was personally heavily invested in Bear stock. He’d worked there for ten years before he left to do his own thing. When Bear sold to JP Morgan for a pittance, the Partridges lost just about everything they had. Lord knows why they’re throwing this party. They really can’t afford it.’

‘I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose so much so quickly.’

‘Hey, this is New York. Fortunes are made and lost every day, especially in a market as volatile as this one.’

This, I knew to be true. John and I, for example, had profited from fluctuations in the energy markets. We were overnight success stories, but we were the exception. Far more had lost their shirts. No one could have anticipated that Greenwich, Connecticut, aka hedgefundlandia, would become rife with home foreclosures.

‘Hey, let’s have lunch next week, my treat. Do you like Nello?’ Gigi asked, mentioning the name of a popular Italian restaurant on Madison Avenue.

‘I’ve never been, but John has and he tells me it’s good.’

‘It is. The pasta is incredible. Tuesday at noon work for you?’

‘Absolutely,’ I’d said, and for the first time since the miscarriage, I actually had something to look forward to.

Gigi handed me her card in case I had to cancel—which I promised her I wouldn’t, my agenda being completely empty and all—and we walked back toward the living room, where the party was just starting to pick up steam. The music had gotten louder and drinks stiffer. At around eleven, Gigi bade us all goodbye—she’d promised her babysitter it wouldn’t be a late night—but before she left she introduced me to Peter Partridge, who immediately plunked a pair of felt antlers on my head and asked me to pose with Ainsley in front of their fifteen-foot Christmas tree.

Clad in a strapless chartreuse mini, her hair tumbling in her trademark flaxen waves over a pair of lightly tanned shoulders, Ainsley was every inch the Woman About Town. She had the kind of haughty aura that is particular to people accustomed to being at the center of attention anywhere they went. Ainsley’s parents were upper middle class, but socially ambitious enough to know that by sending their daughter to Exeter in Massachusetts for boarding school and then to Rollins in Florida for college, they would be giving her an opportunity to join the ranks of high society. They were right: Ainsley met Peter at a charity benefit while she was working as a summer intern for House & Home, however it wasn’t until she bumped into Peter two summers later at Piping Rock that the pair began to date. They were married a year and a half later (a picture appeared in Town & Country magazine), and Ainsley gave up her job working in Vogue’s fabled fashion closet to dedicate herself to charitable works full time, or so she told the New York Times Vows columnist at the time.

For several subsequent years, Ainsley and Peter were considered New York’s golden couple. She had beauty and charm, he, pedigree and (it was assumed) tons of old money—still the best kind. They were photographed at parties, written about in all the newspapers, celebrated everywhere. I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t thrilling to be momentarily allowed into their inner circle, even if Ainsley had kept calling me by the wrong name. (Where she got Tricia from Marcy, I’ll never know.)

I had been sitting on the couch for a while, pretending to listen to John and one of his colleagues discuss the latest round of firings at an investment bank downtown, when Peter suggested that we all do a round of shots, which, when they arrived, turned out to be closer in size to tumblers, filled close to the brim with tequila. Everyone threw theirs back in one, and I, not wanting to stand out in the crowd, followed suit. It was a bad move. The quails’ eggs and tiny tartlets might have been delicious, but they hadn’t provided much in the way of stomach lining. I was immediately drunk.

I found John in the hallway between the kitchen and dining room, talking to Ainsley. Tugging lightly on his shirt, I tried to get his attention.

He didn’t notice, so I tugged harder. ‘Honey, I’m going to get my coat,’ I said.

‘Really?’ he asked, looking at his watch.

I nodded and swayed, and John moved to steady me. But Ainsley moved faster. Clasping a skinny, sinewy arm around my waist, she pouted prettily and said in a surprisingly husky voice that I simply could not go, that she was just getting to know me. (Err, Tricia?)

‘C’mon, Marce, let’s stay a little longer,’ John seconded.

I agreed—stupid me—and whiled away some time thumbing through a stack of coffee table books (most of which featured Ainsley in some way or another) in front of the fake fireplace in the Partridges’ living room. Three-quarters of an hour later, I was no longer tipsy but tired and truly ready to go home. But when I went to find John, I stumbled into Peter, who somehow talked me into accepting a glass of Montrachet from him in the kitchen. He’d just opened the bottle, the last in a case he’d won at a charity auction and said it would be a shame not to drink it. Okay, okay, I relented. And, yes, I could have declined Peter’s offer and left the party, slipping out into the foyer and through the front door without anyone noticing, but the thing is that I really felt like it would have been rude to turn down the guy. He’d just lost his business and the majority of his savings. The least I could do was share a bottle of Montrachet with him.

From then on my recollection of events starts to get blurry. I do remember that all of us piled into a couple of cabs and headed downtown to the Gramercy Park Hotel, where there was a velvet rope that Peter and Ainsley had no trouble transcending, and inside the music was great, the vibe electric. Bottles of champagne, tequila, fresh orange juice, pomegranate juice, and soda crowded every square inch of our table. Once we were all settled, Peter handed me another drink, a tequila mixed with the pomegranate juice, and I honestly don’t remember anything of what happened after finishing it—no idea how or why I’d disrobed in front of a room full of the city’s most sophisticated, well-connected movers and shakers, or started a fight with a girl whose face and name I cannot, for the life of me, remember even to this day.

FIVE Becoming a Rules Girl

‘Honey, all of us hedge fund wives have to put up with the same Goddamn quid pro quo,’ said Gigi Ambrose.

Gigi and I were having lunch at Nello, home of the fifty-dollar plate of pasta. No joke. The smoked salmon ravioli actually costs fifty-five dollars. But despite the exorbitant prices—or maybe because of them—and the fact that Christmas was a mere three days away, the place was packed, buzzing with the kind of excitement such extravagance tends to generate. You feel the same thing walking into Bergdorf’s shoe salon, but there it’s overpriced platform heels that get everyone salivating, while at Nello, it’s the overpriced veal chops.

‘What quid pro quo?’ I asked, craning my head forward with interest.

‘Your husband may make tons of money, but you never get to see him.’

I laughed. ‘Too true.’

I took a bite of my penne rigate, which I must admit tasted like heaven—the hot and sweet sausages somehow managed to be both delicate and hearty—and surveyed the room. There was a maitre d’ hovering by the bar, nervously keeping an eye on all the tables. Waiters in black vests and white aprons tied at the waist were zipping around, taking orders, delivering plates of aromatic delicacies—artichokes drizzled in white truffle oil, pan roasted veal chops with sautéed wild mushrooms, and Chilean sea bass cooked in a lobster, saffron velouté. On one side of me a pair of older women with shopping bags at their feet pushed forty-two dollar tuna tartares around their plate; on the other side, a foursome of men, all devouring the veal and wearing wedding bands, openly ogled the lithesome young girls seated at the table next to theirs.

‘Rule Number Two,’ Gigi continued, snapping me back to attention with a flick of her hand, the same hand that happened to be sporting nine carats of flawless, colorless diamonds (Grade: F, Color: D, for those in the know). I was learning that one diamond wasn’t good enough for a Hedge Fund Bride; nothing less than three would do. Take Gigi’s engagement ring for example. There was the center stone, an emerald cut stunner that was, to my untrained eye, at least five carats, and then two triangle-shaped stones, each about two carats, flanking it. In Chicago, my three-carat engagement ring was considered flashy; here, it was barely worth flashing.

She had made it her mission that day to school me in the art of hedge fund wifehood and I, having been the ignorant newcomer I was, was most grateful for the lesson.

‘Never ask him about work. If he wants to talk about it, he will. And make sure you keep people who want stock tips, or in John’s case, predictions about fluctuations in the price of crude far away from him at social functions. There’s nothing that grates on Jeremy more than someone who wants free market advice.’

‘Is that Rule Number Three?’ I asked, trying to keep up.

‘No, three is to never talk about your own problems, especially any that might be work related, if you do happen to have a job.’

I opened my mouth to comment, but Gigi pressed on. ‘Rule Four,’ she said. ‘Keep the baby talk to a minimum. Children should never be a disturbance, especially at night.’

With that, Gigi bent her head in concentration over her fettuccine al funghi, and I couldn’t tell if she was a) focusing on the flavors, trying to discern the ingredients; b) trying not to get any of the rich mushroom and cream sauce on her ruffled silk blouse, which I assumed was made by a famous designer, and therefore wildly expensive; or c) thinking about the last thing she said, the thing about keeping children off the conversational menu.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t observed Rule Four over the previous six months. In fact, I had f lagrantly violated rules one through four. I was a fantastically shitty hedge fund wife. I didn’t fit the mold at all, but for that matter, neither did Gigi. She seemed too outspoken and vivacious, and she had her own thriving career. Plus she clearly loved talking about her daughter Chloe. She had spoken of nothing else during the first half of our lunch.

As Gigi expertly twirled her pasta around the tines of her fork, using the bowl of a spoon to anchor the pasta, I took the opportunity to continue studying her face. She had wide-set eyes, a straight nose, and full lips, but in the sunlight I could see that she was wearing a thick layer of foundation and that there were wrinkles creeping out from around her eyes and lips. She looked older and less sprightly than she did on television or on the cover of her book jackets, but she was still arrestingly beautiful.

When we were finished with our entrées, Gigi ordered a bowl of gelato for us to share and spooning the creamy, cold ice cream into my mouth, I was reminded of my childhood in Minnesota. Whenever my sister and I did well on our report cards, my father would take us for ice cream at Byerly’s, an upscale grocery store in the suburb where we lived. This happened pretty infrequently since Annalise rarely studied—she was too busy with boys and cheerleading practice—so more often than not my father would take just me. We usually went on Friday nights when Annalise had a game to cheer, so she wouldn’t feel bad about her academic shortcomings, or at least that’s what my father said. Now, in hindsight, I think Dad was more concerned about making me feel better. After all, I was the one stuck at home on a Friday night when most kids were out with their friends, partying and whatnot.

Gigi wanted to know about my sister, so I told her that she had been the popular one and I the smart one. ‘A family of two daughters usually gets one of each,’ I said, adding that Annalise wasn’t exactly prettier than I was, but she had a better figure—larger breasts, longer legs—and had been the recipient of braces (whereas my parents, in their infinite wisdom, had decided I could go without) that had given her the killer smile that would eventually grace our local Dayton’s department store newspaper advertisements for its annual three-day back-to-school sale. Annalise, considered a minor celebrity in our high school thanks to those ads, was named Homecoming Queen her senior year. She had a string of boyfriends, tons of friends.

I didn’t.

I imagined this was why she couldn’t believe that I had married ‘well’ and she hadn’t. She was stuck in a shabby two-bedroom house with a husband who spent too much time watching sports (hockey, football, you name it…) on television and drinking beer (from a can, ‘not even a bottle’ she once complained bitterly to my mother, who then told me, even though I had on several occasions made it clear to her that I had no desire to know the inner workings of my sister’s marriage). It was down to Annalise to raise their two rambunctious boys—Jack, five, and Trevor, three—and fix things up around the house. My beauty-queen sister had to empty the gutters, mow the lawn, rake the leaves, shovel the snow, and on top of that clean the house and cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a grocery budget so small that they sometimes had to have hot dogs for dinner—five nights in a row. She couldn’t help but compare her life to mine and wonder where she’d gone wrong. It’s like I had disturbed the correct order of things, and she resented me to no end for it.

I explained this all to Gigi, who told me that she had a sister who was married, too, who was always jealous of her big city life until the day that Gigi started dating a Greek shipping magnate. In the beginning he was romantic and sweet and incredibly generous—he took her to nice restaurants and on lavish trips, and bought her expensive shoes. He also liked to rub her feet.

A little too much.

After a few weeks of dating, Gigi started noticing that her Greek magnate was getting a little too much pleasure out of touching her feet, and liked doing it at inappropriate times, like when he was driving them home from dinner or to his beach house in Bridgehampton. ‘He’d get hard just from touching the soft skin on the underside of my arch,’ she said. ‘That was his favorite part.’

Still, he was kind to her and seemed serious about their relationship—‘he told me that he couldn’t wait to introduce me to his parents’—so she put up with his sexual quirk. But then, he got mean. A few months into their courtship he started criticizing her. ‘If one of my nails was chipped, he’d tell me that I looked like a mess.’ One day she told him that if he cared so much about her nails, then maybe he should pay for her manicures. His response was to call her a gold digger and cut their meal short. Around the same time he became controlling about what shoes she wore. Sometimes, Gigi said, she had to change them four or five times before they went out.

She told me a story about one of their last weeks together, when they planned on meeting some friends for brunch at Felix, a restaurant and bar in SoHo. It was a cold Sunday in February and there was ice and snow on the ground. Gigi chose a pair of flat boots to wear with her jeans and sweater, but her Greek boyfriend pointed out that she’d already worn the boots once that week. ‘So I changed into my other boots that happen to have a lot of buckles, and he freaked out. He said they would be too hard for him to get them off. He threw a tantrum,’ she said.

The next day, she dumped him, and being a short man with a massive Napoleonic complex, he didn’t handle his dismissal well. For six months following their break up, he harassed her with vulgar, cruel phone messages and emails, and told all of their friends that he had dumped her because he figured out she was only interested in him for his money. ‘All rich men end up saying that. Even Jeremy has and John, if he hasn’t already, probably will.’

Gigi suddenly looked stricken and covered her mouth with her hands. ‘What am I doing? I’ve broken the most important rule of all. Rule Number Five: Never talk bad about your husband.’

I assured her that I was not going to tell anyone. ‘Who would I tell? I have no friends in New York.’ I reached across the table to squeeze her hand reassuringly.

‘No, sugar, you’ve got me now,’ she said.

The waiter cleared the bowl of gelato and took our coffee orders. One espresso dopio for Gigi, who explained that she needed the caffeine because she had been up all night with the baby and had to go to a meeting at her publisher’s after lunch. I ordered a cappuccino, extra foam, and told her that she didn’t have to justify her coffee order to me. ‘I drink way more than I should, and I don’t have kids or a job to legitimize my caffeine addiction,’ I said.

Gigi asked if John and I planned on starting a family soon, and, given the confessional turn of our lunch, I told her about my miscarriage. I didn’t say much about what happened in the hospital, because nobody wants to hear the gruesome details, but I did talk about the grief that followed and how I was trying to pick up the pieces of my life. She was careful not to ask too many questions and to dab the tears from her eyes before they had a chance to ruin her makeup.

Then, because our lunch was coming to an end and I didn’t want to leave her on a sad note, I told Gigi that I knew John and I were fortunate, that there was a lot in our lives that was a lot better than before. Better and bigger and brighter.

‘Our apartment has floor-to-ceiling windows in the living and dining rooms and we’re updating all our furniture to eco-conscious midcentury modern. It’s all clean lines, natural wood finishes, dye-free textiles, that sort of look. It’s what John likes.’

‘And you?’

‘Me? I don’t know the first thing about interior décor. Nothing matched in my house growing up. What do I know about bamboo flooring and hemp silk?’

‘Everyone likes splurging on something. What is it for you? Shoes, handbags? Mesotherapy?’

‘Meso-what?’

‘Nevermind. Better you not know.’

‘I guess I do like eating well. It’s nice to be able to order whatever I want when we go to restaurants. No more “Just the house salad for me, thanks.”’

She laughed. ‘Poverty is the best diet in the land.’

‘But really, there’s so little off limits, it blows my mind,’ I continued. ‘We bought brand new cars for our fathers. This summer John wants to rent a nice house in Southampton and last weekend he ordered a couple of custom made suits and a ton of shirts from a store on Fifty-Seventh Street.’

‘Turnbull & Asser.’ Gigi nodded knowingly and crossed her long alabaster arms over her ample chest as she leaned back in her chair.

‘Yes! And his shoes cost fifteen hundred dollars.’

‘John Lobb.’

‘John says you have to have these things. People notice.’

‘It’s true.’

‘Who knew men were such label whores?’

‘They can be worse than women.’ Gigi nodded.

‘I mean, bespoke cashmere? Have you ever heard of anything more pretentious in your life?’

We both snorted.

‘John is a little confounded by my thriftiness, but I just don’t see the point in blowing a thousand dollars on a purse that will be declared “out” on the pages of Harper’s Bazaar in three months. And besides, I feel like a bad feminist spending his money. When we lived in Chicago I had a job and if I wanted something, I’d use my own money.’

‘So get a job here.’

‘I know. I should. I’ve been meaning to start making some calls. But I can’t seem to motivate. Our couch is just too comfortable.’

‘Well, if you’re looking for some part-time work while you look for something permanent, I could use your help with a few catering events I have coming up. You could help me with advance prep, or with room décor if you don’t like kitchen work.’

‘Oh no, I love baking. I’ll do whatever you need.’

‘Can you work the events too? I have one coming up the first week after New Year’s. My friend is a contributing editor for House & Home and she’s hosting a party celebrating next month’s designer of the year issue. She’s a hedge fund wife, but one of the good ones. You’ll love Jill.’

‘Jill Lovern Tischman?’

‘You know her?’ Gigi asked.

I nodded and told her all about Caroline’s baby shower—the goody bags, the cakes, the mountain of presents Caroline received.

‘I heard that the surrogate wasn’t invited,’ she said.

I had assumed that whoever was carrying Caroline’s baby lived in Idaho or something and Caroline would be going there to retrieve her baby once it was born, but apparently the Reinhardts were putting the woman up in their West Village townhouse and had plans to keep her on as the child’s wet nurse once the baby was born. The day of Caroline’s shower she’d stayed home, but as Caroline had later boasted, she’d remembered to send the woman a piece of the Sylvia Weinstock cake home with her driver. As if it was so darn thoughtful of her to save her a slice of cake, and then not even personally deliver it.

I tossed my napkin on the table, and Gigi checked her watch, a white oversized one with a diamond bezel.

‘So can you help me for Jill’s event? The other wives will probably think it’s weird that you’re doing it, but I’ll tell them I begged you to pitch in,’ she said, standing up. ‘Do you think your husband will mind you spending an evening out with me?’

I raised my eyebrow at her. ‘Are you kidding? John’s never home before ten, most nights it’s eleven.’

‘Oh right. I forgot. You’re a hedge fund wife.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ I snorted.

Together we exited the restaurant, bundled up in our heavy coats, ready to face the inclement weather outside. It had begun to sleet, and the freezing pellets of rain struck down on us as soon as we set foot on the sidewalk.

As I bundled my coat against the precipitation, I received a text on my BlackBerry.

John: Fred and Caroline Reinhardt have invited us to Aspen for New Year’s. Please find appropriate housewarming gift (Budget: $3,000-$5,000). We’ll discuss wardrobe needs tonight. Love, me.

SIX Parties Galore

It took me half a dozen tries to get the right hostess gift for the Reinhardts. My first instinct was to buy a case of wine, since it was guaranteed not to go to waste, but John said my suggestion lacked ‘originality’ and ‘panache’, and that all the other ‘dolts’ in his office had already shipped crates of Château Margaux to the Reinhardts’ sprawling Aspen chalet weeks ago. So it was back to the drawing board and Madison Avenue for me, and after having several more of my ideas shot down because they were also too ‘pedestrian’ or ‘obvious’ we went over budget and settled on half a kilo of Royal Sevruga caviar ($6,000) and three black lacquer globe presentoirs (at $350 a pop).

Our invitation was for only three days, but we took twice as many bags. John had gone a little crazy with the ski gear and had bought two entirely new outfits for himself, another ski outfit for me, including a little fox fur hat that looked like something Ivana Trump would have worn in her 1980s heyday, as well as top-of-the-line skis, boots, and poles for the two of us. I ski, but I would hardly consider myself an enthusiast, so the cash outlay on all the paraphernalia that I knew I would be using at most once a year seemed completely ridiculous. But then again, so was spending six thousand dollars on half a kilo of fish eggs, so I kept my mouth shut. It was John’s money, after all.

As soon as we touched down in Aspen John received a text message from Fred saying that his chauffeur would be waiting outside of baggage claim to help us with our things and drive us to their home (in one of the three black Hummers they kept on hand for guests and staff to use). The Reinhardts’ home was located just north of town, on Red Mountain, which was apparently where the best properties were found. A Saudi prince owned the most impressive estate—its main house boasted fifteen bedrooms, a racquet ball court, and indoor swimming pool, and sat on ninety acres of closely guarded land—but there were others with values estimated at fifty million dollars and beyond. And bear in mind that these were homes that were used at most two to three times a year by the actual owners, and the rest of the year were tended to by armies of caretakers and staff who were under strict orders to keep everything ready in case the owners decided to make an impromptu stopover.

The Reinhardts’ mansion, or chalet, as Caroline liked to call it, was every bit as spectacular as I would have guessed it would be. The main house comprised of eight bedrooms, most of which had their own adjoining bathrooms, plus a screening room, full-size exercise room and Pilates studio, indoor pool and separate steam and sauna rooms for men and women. The great room, overlooking the city of Aspen, featured vaulted ceilings, a huge chandelier made of wood and real deer antlers, giant widows, hardwood floors, stone accent walls, and a double fireplace connecting the dining room and bar area. The room was also stuffed with exotic furniture—think zebra wood commodes and Biedermeier armoires and vitrines—and accessorized with fox fur and mink blankets, pewter lamps, and a huge ostrich-skin-covered ottoman that doubled as a coffee table. Our bedroom was similarly decorated with antique hunting prints, a stack of fur-trimmed cashmere blankets, and a real Tiffany lamp perched atop the demilune console.

By the time John and I were unpacked, and ready, and had transferred our hostess’s gift to the appropriate staff member (later that same housekeeper would hand me a handwritten thank you note from Caroline acknowledging her reception of the gift) we were instructed by the butler that the Reinhardts had headed over to the après ski at 39 Degrees, the luxe lounge at the Sky Hotel, a swank ninety-room mountain lodge, and wished for us to join them if we were so inclined.

One of the drivers—there were three on staff—whisked us up to the hotel and bar in question, and I swear, walking into that room, I had never seen so much mink in my life. Every single woman was blanketed in some form of animal pelt, and two of the toppers were gold furs made using a process pioneered by Fendi to meld real twenty-four-carat gold with fur via vacuum technology. Plus the jewelry! Diamonds glinting from every earlobe, wrist, and finger. I adjusted my J. Mendel hat (apparently still in fashion given the number of women wearing similar models) and grabbed John’s hand as we threaded through the crowd toward the Reinhardts’ table at the back of the lounge.

Caroline was sipping a glass of champagne, dressed in a matching white puffer jacket, pants, and ski goggles all marked with the Chanel logo, when she spotted us walking toward her. She hopped to her feet, past a man who I had to assume was their bodyguard from the grim expression on his face, black-on-black uniform, and foreboding presence, and came over to greet John and then me.

‘Kisses, love,’ she said, bussing John on both cheeks before turning to me. ‘Did you find everything all right? Is the room okay?’ she asked.

‘Yes, absolutely,’ I said. ‘Thank you so much for having us.’

John walked toward the table, where Caroline’s husband Fred, a large man in both stature and girth, with a potato-shaped nose and pink skin that suggested German ancestry, slapped him on the back and poured him a glass of champagne.

Caroline assessed my hat. ‘That’s a nice one,’ she said, before turning on the heel of her boot and returning to the table.

I decided to take her stilted compliment as progress, and made my way over to the table. Dahlia nodded a frosty hello to me before flicking her attention back to Caroline, and there were a couple other women I didn’t know but knew of seated around the table. One of the women, Magdalena, was married to Herb Zimmer, the head of ZAC Capital, an equity-market focused hedge fund. She had dark olive skin, large breasts, flashing dark eyes, and masses of chestnut-colored hair, and as I would later learn (in one of Caroline’s saunas, from another houseguest) was often the subject of mean-spirited gossip.

It came with the territory since Herb was one of the wealthiest and most successful of all the hedge fund kings; his net worth was close to seven billion according to Forbes magazine’s annual survey. He’d grown up on Long Island, the son of a prominent local businessman and librarian, went to Harvard business school and eventually, after a stint in arbitrage, started his own fund. His first marriage ended in divorce after twenty years—the wife was said to have grown tired of his eccentricities—and Herb suddenly found himself alone and desirous of female companionship but not interested or willing to go through the usual dating rigmarole. So instead he asked his psychologist to help him make a list of all the attributes he wanted in a new wife—from physical traits to professional background and weekend hobbies—and he forwarded this list of ‘requirements’ to his closest friends. Hundreds of women sent in pictures and biographies and Herb, again with the help of his psychologist, narrowed the applicant pool down to ten candidates. Over the course of the next six months he took each of the women out on a date (always to the same restaurant, the Four Seasons in New York) and asked them each to complete a Myers-Briggs test to determine their personality type. With each round of dates he came closer to finding his candidate and eventually, after only four rounds, settled on Magdalena.

They married in a simple ceremony with Mayor Bloomberg presiding, and Magdalena, an interior designer from Argentina, quickly settled into Herb’s life as, it was often joked, ‘the forty-third staff member’. (At the time of their wedding, ZAC Capital had forty-two employees.) Magdalena couldn’t care less that everyone gossiped about her behind her back. Say what they liked, Herb was king of the hedgehogs, she was queen, and no one could take that scepter away from her.

I took a seat on the far end, as far away from Magdalena, Dahlia, and Caroline as I could manage, and ordered a Coca-Cola from one of the waiters perpetually hovering around the table. The altitude was making me a bit nauseous, and I was feeling overwhelmed by the buzz of chatter and competitive energy in the room. Not two seconds after I took my first grateful sip of pop (we Minnesotans call Coke and Sprite and most other carbonated, sugary beverages ‘pop’) Jill Lovern Tischman floated into the room, looking cozy and warm in a chocolate mink cape that she held closed with her delicate hand. A massive sea-green opal sparkled from one of her fingers.

Fur and baubles aside, I couldn’t have been more excited (and relieved) to see her. She spotted me in the crowd and came right over, enveloping me in a big Gardena-scented hug, and made me feel instantly at ease. Across from me, Fred Reinhardt made room for Jill on the banquette and she instantly began peppering me with questions: Had I ever been there before; did I snowboard; and had I gotten a room at the Sky Hotel? I barely had a chance to tell her where John and I were staying—she and Glenn had their own ‘little’ chalet on Red Mountain and were there with her children and two nannies, plus some friends with their own brood in tow—before Irina Khashovopova descended on the table and took the seat next to mine.

Dressed in a chinchilla vest and hat, gray leopard print jeans, and fur-lined boots, Irina scooped up the champagne bottle and poured a glass out for herself and Jill before sitting back down and sighing dramatically. She whipped out her phone, punched out a telephone number with a finger that was adorned with a pink tourmalineencrusted frog, barked into the mouthpiece in Russian for thirty seconds before snapping it closed and slipping it into her vest pocket. After draining her glass of champagne and ordering five more bottles for the table, she announced gravely, ‘I just come from the boutique in Little Nell. They will not honor my discount.’

‘What discount?’ Jill inquired, running a hand through her light brown hair.

‘I told lady, Bergdorf give me twenty percent off

J. Mendel but she no listen. I try to buy a hat. Just a fucking hat. Do you know how much I spend on J. Mendel fur? Hundreds of thousands, and they will not give me a twenty percent discount on a fucking hat? I told lady I never shop J. Mendel again. From now on, I get all my fur from Fendi.’

‘But how can it be J. Mendel’s fault if the Little Nell won’t give you a discount? They’re just a retailer,’ I said.

Irina sneered at me. ‘You obviously don’t know who I am. Karl Lagerfeld put me front row at his Chanel show last season. Denise Rich won’t throw a party on her yacht unless I am there. Angelina Jolie sends me Christmas cards, so who the fuck are you to question my right to ask for a discount?’

‘Irina, I get that you’re mad, but that’s no excuse to take it out on Marcy,’ Jill said.

Jill’s comment only served to fluff Irina’s feathers more. Gritting her bright white teeth, she said, ‘Is the principle of the matter. I spend so much money. I’m good customer. And they want to argue with me over a measly three hundred fucking dollars. Nyet.’

Jill wisely decided that she wasn’t going to engage Irina any further and we let the matter drop. As the hour wore on, I removed my hat and set it on the seat next to mine. The lounge was heating up and one of the bodyguards, this one belonged to the Kemps, kept bumping me on the head as he reached over me to hand Dahlia her phone and then take her coat and ear muffs away from her.

As the hour wore on, the group jostled around—I noticed several of the guys, including John, heading to the bathroom with suspicious frequency—and I ultimately found myself seated next to Caroline, who was by then well into her cups. She slurred as she addressed me, and reiterated how glad she was that we had made it, that her husband really, really loved John, and that she wanted us to go out to lunch in the city when we got back. I was pleased that she was being nice to me—I’d thought I’d blown it when I couldn’t tell her what color I thought she should paint the walls of her nursery—but also highly skeptical of her true motivations. I was smart enough to know that Fred could have put her up to hosting us and getting to know me, in order to find out more information about John. We were playing in the big leagues now, literally rubbing elbows with some of the wealthiest people in America, and I had to be on my guard.

I sipped my Coke and asked Caroline what she had in store for all of us. The Reinhardts were hosting a 100-person dinner in a heated tent on the great lawn of their home on New Year’s Eve. This was the third year they were throwing the party, and John said that in years past they had blown everyone away with private performances from Jay-Z one year and Mariah Carey another. This year it was rumored that they had lined up Rihanna, but Caroline wouldn’t confirm that for me. She, however, did divulge that she and Fred had flown in the acclaimed Belgian artist and photographer Jean-Luc Moerman to paint temporary tattoos on guests and a number of ex-Cirque de Soleil contortionists to perform during the intermission. Before she stood up she placed her hand on mine and gave it a good squeeze. ‘Oh you have no idea what it takes to put this party together. Even working with an event specialist, it all ends up resting on my shoulders,’ she said, and for the first time I could see that the stress was, indeed, getting to her.

‘Caroline, honestly, I’m in awe,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

She seemed to appreciate my accolades greatly. ‘I’ve made up my mind. I’m putting you and John at the table with Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio. John would like that, right?’

Forget John. I was so excited I thought I might pee in my pants, but I smiled and said that yes, indeed, John would be thrilled since he was very passionate about environmental preservation.

‘Oh, good,’ Caroline hiccupped, ‘because Fred just sent the jet this morning to pick up Leo and his girlfriend.’

The Reinhardts’ New Year’s party was, according to local gossip, not quite as fabulous as the previous year’s. But you could have fooled me. Everywhere I turned there were famous faces and bold-faced names, trays of champagne flutes, and six-foot floral arrangements. I felt, as usual, underdressed in my simple jewel-toned column, especially when I saw Jill in a partially see-through dress that was made of silk and tulle, with a front panel of close-cropped gray mink. Her shoes, open-toed sandals, were constructed entirely of peacock feathers. Caroline, meanwhile opted for an asymmetrical fire-engine-red gown with a crystal-encrusted bodice and short hemline, while Dahlia chose a discreet ecru satin party frock and matching fox-trimmed bolero, that was pinned with a large diamond and pearl orchid brooch.

After a sumptuous five-course dinner with our new friends Al and Tipper Gore (Leo was a no-show) and a performance by Maroon Five (the Rihanna rumors were wrong), I went to the ladies’ room to powder my nose and get away from Al, who, to be honest, didn’t know when to stop talking. On my way out my heel caught on a duct-taped ridge covering one of the power cords leading toward the stage, and I knocked into Dahlia, who nearly had a heart attack when I instinctively grabbed her forearm to steady myself.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I tripped. I know you don’t liked to be touched.’

‘You should watch where you are going, Marcy,’ she said flatly. ‘And I mean that in more ways than one. Clumsy is not cute, and neither is playing the naïve little wife. I’ve seen a dozen women like you come and go, and as sure as I know my children’s names, I know that you will not last long. Your kind never does. Either your husband will not bear out to be the whiz kid that all the other men seem to think he is, or he will dump you for someone else. And whichever one of these comes to pass, believe me, Marcy, no one here will care.’

‘And a joyous and prosperous New Year to you, too, Dahlia,’ I said.

She regarded me contemptuously before continuing on her path through the throng of well-dressed guests.

I was stunned, but not hurt. Dahlia lived in a bubble; she was totally lacking in social grace, not to mention delusional and completely removed from reality, and I wondered what it would take for her to come back to her senses and realize that she was no better than me, or the dozens of assistants and shop girls, nannies and waitresses she probably verbally assaulted every day.

It was close to midnight, and Justin Timberlake, along with Caroline and Fred, took to the stage to lead the crowd through a countdown to the next year. John found me in the swarm of bodies near the shockingly true-to-life ice sculpture of Caroline’s naked body and pulled me to him and kissed me warmly on the mouth as the gold and silver confetti fell from the ceiling and onto the crowd.

‘I love you, Marcy,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘This is going to be our year. Look around at all these people. By this time next year, we’ll be just as rich as them. You watch and see,’ he said, lifting his glass to me.

I took a long swallow of the champagne and smiled, but inside I was wondering if my husband truly meant to sound like a greedy asshole or if it was just the cocaine talking. By then I was almost sure that he was using. All the trips to the bathroom, dilated pupils and dry mouth, not to mention the sniffing that he kept on blaming on the frigid temperatures and high altitude? Give me a break. As if I wasn’t supposed to put two and two together. It incensed me that John wouldn’t volunteer that he was snorting lines, and I didn’t know what made me more upset, that he was trying to keep it a secret from me, or that he was using a drug that up until recently he considered something only trust-fund-addled playboys blew their money on. I tried to confront him about it a few times, but we were so rarely alone—there was always another houseguest or staff member around—that I decided to leave it until we returned to New York.

As the festivities continued late into the night, I tried to remind myself that I was lucky to have a husband with big and clear goals, even if it would have been nice, that is to say I would have respected him more, if he had been motivated by something other than the deepening of his own already deep pockets. I thought of the heavy, secondhand autobiography of Lee Iacocca my father toted around with him to some of the football games that Annalise cheered in high school. My father was a Liberal Democrat, like most of the people in our middle-class Midwestern neighborhood, but he looked up to Iacocca because he had resuscitated Chrysler and had saved and created jobs in the process. This, according to my father, was capitalism at its best. Iacocca deserved every bit of his success

John did not.

In fact, most of the people around us did not. They made money for the pure sport of it, and didn’t manufacture a product or create jobs. Sure, there were the dozens upon dozens of people they employed to take care of their offspring and belongings, and I supposed that in this regard their good fortune had trickled down to the nannies and busboys, cleaning ladies and garage mechanics, but was that enough to buoy an economy forever? I did not think so, but most of the people making merry in the crowd did. And they partied despite the darkening economic clouds, despite the millions of foreclosure signs popping up across the country like little red flags. A storm was coming, but no one wanted to see it, least of all, of course, the wives.

SEVEN Setting the Table

Jillian Lovern Tischman lived in Gramercy Park, a neighborhood named for the private park to which only the residents of the buildings abutting the manicured green square were given access. Her apartment was actually two apartments that had been combined into one a few years prior to my visit. It was on the same square as the Gramercy Park Hotel, aka the scene of my latest humiliation, which I could just make out if I hung my head out of Jill’s kitchen window and squinted through the trees of the park. It was in this position that Gigi found me when she swept into the room in a cloud of her vanilla and rosewood perfume.

‘Girl, you better get your head out of that window. I can’t afford to lose one more person tonight,’ she clucked. ‘The bartender’s not returning my calls and one of my servers called to say she’s come down with the flu, which knowing this one means she’s been asked out on a date. Probably by some jerk who’s gonna take her to a fancy restaurant, have his way with her, and never call her again. I keep telling her not to put out on the first date, but Lord have mercy does she ever listen to me?’

‘We’ve been wasting our breath,’ said Gigi’s chef, Bear, an older German man who was large and huggable enough to make his name seem appropriate rather than silly. He was vigorously stirring a chocolate sauce over a double broiler and paused midstir to add, ‘I’m starting to think she is the kind that never will learn.’

Gigi sighed, and turned to look at me. I was wearing a black Ralph Lauren cashmere turtleneck sweater and skirt, and the pearl necklace John had bought me a few months ago for my thirty-fifth birthday. ‘Thank you so much for doing this,’ she said as she walked over to the butcher’s block-topped kitchen island and pushed aside four stacks of industrial-sized, plastic-wrapped baking sheets to make room for her plastic binder. Flipping through the notebook, she found the page she was looking for and started explaining to me the timeline of the evening, starting with prep work, followed by the cocktail hour, and finally dinner service. Around ten we would clear the tables and rinse the dishes before restacking them into their plastic crates. Then they would be sent to a facility to be scrubbed clean inside industrial-sized dishwashers.

‘House & Home cut their budget down by a third,’ Gigi said as I perused the menu over her shoulder. ‘And half of my purveyors have jacked up their prices by twenty percent, so between the budget cut and price increase, we’re producing this event on a shoestring. Of course everything still has to look pretty. These design people couldn’t care less about how the food tastes, as long as it looks good.’

‘Seems like a metaphor for my life,’ I said before I could stop myself.

Gigi set down her notebook and peered at me over her reading glasses. ‘Is there something you want to talk about?’

‘I’ll elaborate when we don’t have thirty people due for dinner in less than two hours,’ I said in an effort to deflect any more questions.

I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, but John and I had gotten into an argument in bed on Saturday night when I finally had a chance to tell him about my plan to help Gigi with her catering business while I started looking for a full-time job. John’s objections were two-fold: First, he didn’t want me to work as a catering waitress, which he deemed ridiculously below me; and second, he didn’t want me to go back to work—period. He said that people would get the wrong impression if I was seen slaving away for Gigi and asked if I wanted them to treat me even more dismissively than before.

‘Do you even realize that your job will entail scraping other people’s half-masticated meals off dirty plates?’ he asked, his face turning a frustrated shade of crimson. He set down his copies of Alpha and Trader Monthly magazine, which could be best described as the hedge funder’s Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar for all the obsessive reading it inspired.

‘John, I’m doing this,’ I said. ‘You’re the one who said I should make friends.’

‘Let’s be clear on one thing—Gigi will be your employer, not your friend, if you do this.’

‘Can’t she be both? Geez, John, according to you everyone’s either a master or a slave. This isn’t ancient Egypt. What are you, Hegel?’

‘Actually, Marcy, it’s less far off than you think. But I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to let you learn that for yourself. Maybe then you’ll understand what I’m trying to accomplish for us, instead of fighting me at every turn.’ He picked up his magazine and began reading again.

‘Well, I’m so glad you approve,’ I said acerbically.

John glared at me before flopping over on his side and opening the drawer of his side table. He pulled out his bottle of Ambien, popped a pill in his mouth and swallowed it with a swig from his bottle of Evian.

Shortly after we moved to New York, John started having trouble sleeping. I encouraged him to stop reading his finance magazines in bed and offered to make him chamomile tea or hot milk, but he insisted on going to the doctor to get a prescription.

‘All the traders take the stuff on a nightly basis,’ he claimed, and so, he, too, started relying upon the drug to get to sleep. I didn’t think it was a good long-term solution, but I also knew that he was under a lot of stress at work and, like me, was still getting acclimated to our new life. I was also relieved that the cocaine binge (which we never discussed) had ended in Aspen, and hoped that once John settled in to his job and had become used to its demands and pressures, he would be able to quit the Ambien as easily as he had seemingly quit the cocaine.

Washing down the pill, he lay back down and shifted over on his side (away from me), sending his magazines in a flurry to the floor. He didn’t bother to pick them up but announced without turning around to face me, ‘Just don’t expect me to dry your tears when Gigi scolds you for serving from the wrong side or showing up with a stain on your collar. Then we’ll see how you define your relationship.’

I said nothing, but in my head, I thought: Man, my husband’s becoming an asshole.

Gigi was nervously chewing on her bottom lip, reading through her notes, and jotting a few words down here and there in the margins when the doorbell rang. Jill’s nanny, a diminutive Filipina woman with a tidy appearance, ran to get the door and two pretty young women appeared in the kitchen’s doorway.

‘Where are the aprons?’ asked one. She had dark brown hair and bore a heavy resemblance to Katie Holmes, pre-Tom Cruise and her Scientology-condoned makeover.

Gigi closed her notebook and plucked four starched white aprons, still in their dry cleaning bags, off of a coat rack in the corner of the kitchen. ‘Here you go, Maggie,’ she said, unwrapping an apron and handing it to the dark-haired girl, before doing the same for each of us. ‘I need you two to start assembling the canapés. You’re on the mini BLT towers,’ she said, nodding to Maggie. ‘Can you manage the vichyssoise with truffle-foam shot glasses, Gemma?’ Gigi asked the other girl, this one with sea glass-colored eyes, freckled skin, and shoulder-length strawberry blond hair.

‘Yeah, no worries,’ she said. Her voice was soft, and she had a lovely British accent.

‘And, Marcy, I’d like you to help the girls and then set the tables. The china is already out in the living room in crates, and you should find the tablecloths and silver there as well. The flower arrangements are lined up in the foyer—I’m sure you saw them coming in. Once you’re done with that, would you put out the place cards? Here’s the layout,’ she said, handing me the evening’s seating chart. ‘Each one should be tucked into the silver clam shells you’ll find in a box with the salt and pepper shakers.’

I slipped the crisp white apron over my head, tying its waistband in a bow at my back, the way Gigi had styled hers, and got to work assisting Maggie and Gemma with their prep work. Maggie said she was working every day that week with A Moveable Feast and had taken on extra hours with another catering outlet. Her boyfriend, a mortgage broker, had been sacked from his job and wasn’t able to cover his share of the rent. They were both scrambling to find a cheaper place but in the meantime Maggie was working at all hours and had missed several casting calls because of it.

Gemma, meanwhile, was possibly going to have to withdraw from NYU because her father, an office-supplies salesman, had promised to pay for her tuition but the credit crunch had also taken a toll in the U.K. and he hadn’t made enough in sales commission to be able to afford Gemma’s school fees. Even Bear was having money problems. He’d lost a bundle on the stock market after he’d followed a bad tip given to him by a drunken dinner guest. To make matters worse, he commuted to work from upstate New York and the spike in gas prices was biting into his monthly income. He and his wife had been forced to tap into their IRA accounts to make ends meet. Their plan to move to Florida and retire in five years had been scrapped entirely.

Their stories made me feel guilty. It didn’t seem fair that so many people were struggling to keep their dreams alive—you couldn’t watch the news or open a paper without being confronted with a dozen similar tales—and I, one of the very few, very lucky ones whose lives hadn’t been negatively impacted by the economic downturn, didn’t feel particularly lucky.

After the girls had moved on to assembling other hors d’oeuvres, I made my way across the foyer into Jill’s living and dining rooms. I nearly gasped as I entered the living room, which bore the hallmarks of what was known as mod-baroque design: lots of color and bold geometric patterns, and plenty of eclectic, ornate furniture and decorative objets. For example, in Jill’s dining room a carved wooden sideboard, painted in high-gloss paint, was topped with a collection of large Murano vases and set against a wall covered in lime-green jacquard wallpaper. A chandelier constructed out of champagne flutes, hugged the ceiling, and the walls were covered with abstract oil paintings, one of which had to be a Willem de Kooning, an artist whose work I’d seen at the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago. In the adjacent living room, there was a sky-blue area rug, a ’50s era dark purple velvet couch, and a pair of antique armchairs covered in real zebra hair; sculptures constructed of neon lights stood in the corners and a set of sexually charged out-of-focus black and white photographs hung on the walls. I’d never seen anything like it.

Unable to help myself, I tiptoed down the hall toward the Tischmans’ private quarters. Passing a small office, which featured indigo blue walls, a writing table encrusted in seashells spray painted Ferrari red, red-and-white-striped Roman shades, and an inky leather chair made out of ebonized oak, I reached Jill and her husband Glenn’s bedroom. It was painted in gray and hung with chartreuse graphic-printed silk curtains that coordinated with the upholstered headboard and a bench stationed at the foot of the bed. A large Dorothy Draper yellow screen painted with Grecian urns was tucked behind a gray suede fainting couch. Above the bed hung a partially nude portrait of a young Japanese girl, her schoolgirl socks still on and legs spread wide. Pressing forward down the hall to the last room, I found an incredibly messy guest bedroom—there were ties and men’s shirts scattered on a Chevron striped rug, half-empty water bottles crowding the surface of a puce Lucite bedside table, magazines and newspapers piled high on a mother-of-pearl tray on the floor next to the bed. Across the hall were the doors to the children’s rooms, behind one of which I could hear a cacophony of yelps, cries, and screams.

I glanced at my watch and realized that I’d spent enough time ogling Jill’s apartment and needed to get started on setting the tables before Gigi discovered my delinquency and had a nervous breakdown. But just as I was about to high-speed tip toe back down the hall to the dining room, I heard a loud crash and the door to one of the children’s rooms banged open, revealing a little girl dressed in a navy jumper dress and gray cable-knot cardigan, her light brown hair clipped back by two plaid barrettes, her plump cheeks flaming red and streaked with tears. ‘I don’t love you anymore,’ she yelled behind her shoulder, before running smack into my thighs.

She reeled backward, and I braced her shoulders to keep her from falling. Once she regained her balance, she shook me off and raced back into her room. Her nanny appeared from inside the bathroom and regarded the fragments of what looked to be fine porcelain scattered all over the hardwood floor. ‘Ava,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘What did you do now?’

And with that, the girl burst into a fresh wail and threw herself on her pink shag rug. ‘But Mommy said she would have tea with me before my bath and Mommy doesn’t like drinking out of plastic!’ she cried.

I ventured into the room, which was decorated in various shades of pink, with butterfly-themed wallpaper, silk balloon shades, and a fuchsia crystal chandelier. A child-sized table was set with an elegant fine china gold and ivory tea service, minus the teapot. As the nanny began picking up the pieces, I carefully approached Ava and knelt down next to her writhing, kicking body.

‘Can I have some tea please, Ava? You’ve set such a nice table. And I’m so very thirsty.’

With a snivel, she raised her head and studied my face through her long, wet lashes. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

She had her mother’s olive skin tone and fine features. I told her my name and that I was there to help with her mother’s party. ‘But I’m suddenly very thirsty,’ I said, clutching my throat and swallowing hard. ‘Would you please, please share some tea with me?’

She nodded solemnly and rested her hand on mine. ‘You poor dear,’ she whispered. A post-tantrum hiccup escaped from her small mouth as she guided me to her table, where she instructed me to sit and stay until she returned with another teapot. After searching frantically through her toy box, a gorgeous little chest painted with butterflies and flowers, she finally found a teapot made of pink plastic, and poured me a cup. For the next few minutes, we sat like that—Ava pouring and I drinking and remarking on the delicious flavor and subtle aromas of her make-believe tea, as the little girl fussed with the imaginary pots of sugar and cream—until the nanny emerged from Ava’s en suite bathroom and clapped her hands together, calling an end to my diversion and her play.

‘Bath time,’ the nanny announced. ‘Say goodbye to your guest.’

Ava set her tea cup down carefully and circled around the table. ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ she said before bestowing me with a dramatic air kiss. ‘Let’s do this again soon.’

Regretfully I left her to her bath and returned to the dining room and my chores. I quickly laid down the white linen tablecloths and set the tables with the floral arrangements (long glass troughs tightly packed with raspberry-colored English garden roses) glasses (stemless red and white wine goblets) and plates (hand-painted with flowers and made of fine bone china) and began working on the place cards. I recognized quite a few of the names—Caroline’s was on the list, as was Dahlia’s and Ainsley and Peter Partridge’s. Jill, the evening’s hostess, was seated next to Jasper Pell, whom House & Home was honoring that night as their ‘designer of the year’ and who happened to be the very same decorator Caroline had suggested I hire at her baby shower.

The memory of Caroline’s quick dismissal of me at her shower made me suddenly realize that John was right about one thing: I wasn’t about to score any points with the other hedge fund wives by working as a server for A Moveable Feast. Cringing in anticipation of facing Caroline and Dahlia wearing an apron and carrying a tray of quivering canapés, I knew that it was too late to back out—I wouldn’t dare leave Gigi in the lurch, especially since she was already short-staffed for the night—and as much as I wasn’t looking forward to facing the other women’s sneering faces, I was genuinely happy to be working again.

Back in Chicago, before we moved to New York, I worked in private client services for Bloomington Mutual, a Midwest-based, multinational bank with brokerage, commercial, and investment arms. I’d started there fresh out of Northwestern University as a research analyst, and had always felt grateful for my job. Out of the fifty-two students who applied for the job from my college, I never thought that I’d be the one to land it. My grades were good, but so were those of the other applicants, and they’d all held prestigious internships at banks and law firms and showed up at the Bloomington Mutual informational meeting looking like they already had the job. I remember walking in and seeing them all there assembled in the career center’s main receiving room, their neat leather folders and Mont Blanc pens poised for note taking, the girls in fresh-pressed navy wool suits that didn’t look like they’d once belonged to their mother (like mine had).

But to my great surprise the Bloomington Mutual managing director in charge of recruitment had been impressed with my work history. ‘There’s nothing like a nine-to-five to teach a kid real responsibility. These unpaid internships are a bunch of malarkey,’ she had grumbled during our one-on-one interview the following day. I got the impression that she’d worked her way through college and high school like I had and perhaps even recognized a younger version of herself in me. Or maybe she just liked the cut of my mother’s DKNY. Who knows? What matters is that she picked me and after briefly returning home to Minnesota to reorganize my belongings and earn some cash to pad out my near-empty bank account, I moved into a small apartment near Wrigley Field with a couple of my girlfriends from school and started working at the bank.

I was good at my job. I didn’t mind pulling all-nighters in preparation for a big pitch or meeting, and loved trying to make sense of the endless charts and graphs that we were forced to produce. My strengths, according to the progress reports I received, were in proofreading documents and writing deal memos, rather than in the more analytical aspects of my job. To be honest, I was happy to leave the number crunching, and economic modeling to the other analysts, and they were happy to turn to me for help synthesizing complex deals into readable reports.

Little by little I started making a name for myself at BlooMu, which is how we referred to the bank in-house. As I mentioned earlier, my bosses liked me. I think it was because I was respectful and always on time, and didn’t bring my ego into the office every day like a lot of my contemporaries. No task was too menial, no deadline impossible. When my two-year research-analyst program ended, I was asked to stay on as an associate, received a nice bump in pay, and a lot more responsibility. My managing director, a forty-something man who resembled a geekier Richard Gere, took a liking to me, and brought me on overseas trips—I saw London, Seoul, Hong Kong, and Berlin—all on one deal, a merger between two liquor conglomerates. I made polite and witty (if I do say so myself) conversation at client dinners and cocktail parties, took copious notes at meetings, and never, ever took advantage of my corporate card. Five years and many deals later, when my MD was promoted and a vice presidency spot opened up, the word at BlooMu was that I was a shoo-in for the job.

But around this time things had started getting serious with John. We had met at a mutual friend’s housewarming and he asked me to lunch. I didn’t hear from him for a while, but then one night he called and asked me if I wanted to come over for a drink. It was a booty call of course, but, hey, I was lonely. My brutal work schedule didn’t exactly leave much time for socializing and I had no better prospects beating down my door, begging me for a date.

The same was true for John and after about twenty-or-so of these late night calls, he invited me to go to Wisconsin with him for the weekend for a friend’s wedding. We had a nice time, and so when the next wedding cropped up, he asked me again, this time introducing me as his girlfriend. A bunch of his friends got married that year—I think I went to six nuptials in all—but it was the one in Minneapolis that I remember best. The bride came from Swedish stock, and in the old tradition of the Vikings, you had to drink a shot of aquavit every time someone got up to speak. Needless to say, John and I were both completely drunk by the time the herring appetizers had been cleared, and over a plate of meatballs smothered with lingonberry sauce, he told me that he loved me.

I nearly choked on my Wasa bread when he said it. I’d only ever thought of our relationship as a warming drawer—nice and toasty, but not exactly fiery—and he’d never once given me the impression that he thought I could be The One. But then it occurred to me that John wasn’t the passionate type, and I’d been misreading his signals all along. He asked me to move into his apartment, and then a year later he asked me to marry him. That’s when we started talking about our future together, where we wanted to live, how many kids we wanted, the mistakes our parents had made that we didn’t want to repeat. That sort of thing. John was easy on a lot of fronts, but he felt passionately about one thing: Once we had children, he wanted me to stay home and take care of them.

His mother Penny, short for Penelope, had been first a school teacher—she taught sixth-grade English at a private school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, the posh suburb of Detroit where John grew up (and attended public school). She later became a real estate broker, and according to John, once she left teaching for real estate she became a real shrew. Penny was habitually rude to John’s father, who was a life insurance salesman and often brought home less income than she did, and was always too tired or too busy to make dinner (or breakfast and lunch, for that matter) or throw birthday parties for John and his younger brother Jake. She wore nothing but pastel twinsets and slacks, and had her nails done every Friday afternoon no matter what. John tells a heart-wrenching story about breaking his arm in Little League and having to wait on a plastic chair, his injured arm cradled in a makeshift sling while his mother’s fingers and toes were painted silver-flecked mauve.

Penny once confided in me that she’d gotten pregnant with John by accident and then, a couple years after he had been born, figured she’d have another baby so that John wouldn’t always be pulling on the bottom of her cardigans (‘stretching them out’). ‘He needed a playmate,’ she had said, smoothing a lock of dyed blond hair behind her ear.

John still resented her.

‘There’s no way I’m going to be like Penny,’ I told him over and over during our engagement, when it still seemed useful to discuss hypothetical middle grounds, like, what if the bank gave me a four-day workweek, or what if I could work from home. Eventually we figured out that there was no telling what the future would hold for us, but I knew for sure, that I, unlike Penny, wanted children. I wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of my middle-age years baking chocolate chip cookies, reading bedtime stories, and cheering at soccer games. I wanted nothing more than to become a mother. I liked working in finance but I didn’t want it to be my whole life.

Still, as much as I wanted to start a family with John, I was afraid of being dependent on him for financial security. I enjoyed the independence of having my own source of income, the feeling of empowerment that came with knowing that I could take care of our family if need be. What if the dynamics of our relationship changed for the worse? And what if John ever left me?

After much consideration, I eventually agreed to quit my job when I got pregnant with our first child. As afraid as I was of losing my independence, I was more fearful of losing John. He made me feel so safe. With him, I never felt alone, and the awful memories of my childhood didn’t seem to affect me as much. My parents had fought constantly and sometimes violently, and I knew that with John I’d be able to give our children the sense of security my sister and I had lacked growing up. And really, that’s what mattered most to me: creating a peaceful home environment. No lying, no yelling, and no hitting.

Caving into John, however, meant that even if I got the promotion to vice president at the BlooMu, I would eventually have to quit. But I never got to make that decision for myself, thanks to Michelle, a blonde from Evanston, Illinois. Pretty and well put together, Michelle had enough ambition and charisma to make up for what she lacked in intelligence and diligence. I sometimes had to cover for her at work, but she ingratiated herself with me by teaching me a battery of useful tricks, like how to use hair powder when I didn’t have time to shower or that tying a scarf through the belt loops of my suit pants could add a little flair to my outfit. My big mistake was confiding in Michelle that I wanted the vice presidency but was planning on leaving the bank as soon as I got pregnant. The next day she marched straight past me into our MD’s office and told him what I’d said. Before the end of the week, Michelle was announced as the bank’s newest vice president.

Michelle did her best to drive me out of the bank, and I did my best not to hurl her little plastic deal trophies at her face every time she called me into her office. But it wasn’t for another year when I was passed over again for a promotion (for reasons I still don’t understand) that I started thinking about requesting a transfer to another department.

The only thing open at the time was a job in private client services. Whenever anyone on the investment banking side went there, we joked that they were being ‘put out to pasture’, or that they weren’t ‘hungry’, meaning they’d lost their drive and couldn’t hack it in the big leagues. Some of the other bankers referred to it as ‘early retirement’. But I was desperate and determined, and spent the next three weeks begging everyone who would listen to me why I should be allowed to become relationship officer for the bank’s high net worth clients. Thankfully I’d built up enough goodwill at the bank to win the job on probation.

If the bosses at BlooMu had banked on me growing bored with client relations, they must have been surprised at how quickly I took to it. Even I hadn’t expected to find my new post as stimulating as my last, but it was. Whoever said figuring out how to weight a client’s portfolio in stocks, bonds, and alternative assets was less challenging than, say, charting the expected increase in economies of scale following a corporate merger was dead wrong. Plus in private wealth management I went to a lot of charity balls and fancy dinners and learned all about gourmet food, fine wine, flowers, décor, and etiquette—basically all the things that the daughter of a Post-it Note salesman (my dad worked as a B-to-B account manager for 3M) wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise. I went on golf weekends in Palm Beach, wine tours in Napa Valley, and to the Art Institute of Chicago’s big gala when Bloomington Mutual was one of the fundraiser’s main sponsors. Michelle got the big job, but I got the better one—one that, lo and behold, had prepared me better than I could have ever imagined for my new life in New York. It would be many months before I had this epiphany, but when it finally came, it would be worth the wait.

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