Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“Yes, and it’s eleven there and you still look like you could step out on a red carpet. I hate you.”
Nora, on the other hand, had bedhead and a shiny face from her nighttime moisturizer because she was back in New York and in bed.
“You can’t sleep?” I asked my closest friend.
Nora was Eleanor Ellington’s youngest daughter.
She was eight years older than me, and she was her mother of a new generation. A society dame loaded with old money who lunched, sat on boards, raised money, and popped out children for the husband who divorced her for a younger model, a man she actively detested beyond rationality, and he deserved it.
Now, she dated the “dregs” (her words), who would “have me in my advanced state of decay” (also her words, and further a lie, she was gorgeous). And she spent what was left of her time at spas, shopping for things she didn’t need, traveling to places where she could shop for more shit she didn’t need, going to the ballet (which she loved), the opera (which she loathed, but her family had been a patron for four generations, so it was ingrained), and either in person or on the phone with her girlfriends, doggedly complaining about everything that annoyed her.
Which was pretty much everything.
She also slept terribly, which helped our friendship because I had no routine, no schedule. As noted, I was up when I was up, I slept when I slept. And as such, the chances were good anytime she wanted me, even in the dead of night, even when I was in her time zone and it was late, I would pick up the phone when she called.
“I’m done trying to sleep. I’m becoming Martha Stewart. She sleeps four hours a night. I’m getting up. I’m making muffins. I’m going to start an empire at fifty-six, making muffins and arranging flowers and turning compost.”
“You live in an apartment on Central Park West. What are you going to do with compost?”
“I have a place in the Hamptons, stupid. Remember?”
I smiled. “Ah, right. Silly me. I forgot.”
“I’ll drag it up there. Or I’ll tell Alyona to drag it up there.”
“You might want to ask Alyona if there’s flour in the house. You’ll need that to make muffins.”
She assumed a mock-horrified face. “Muffins have gluten? The horror!”
I started laughing.
“Well, that’s out,” she said through my laughter.
“Perhaps you can take up knitting.”
“And give myself arthritis?”
“Does knitting give you arthritis?”
“I’ve no idea. Doesn’t doing blindingly boring things eventually cause physical maladies?”
God, I loved this woman.
“You could try reading,” I suggested.
“Stop attempting to sort my problems and tell me something exciting. What’s happening with you?”
“Tom Pierce came by today.”
Her phone jostled as she sat straighter in bed.
“Say that again,” she demanded.
“Tom Pierce came by today.”
“Oh, good Lord. Did you tackle him? Did you have sex on the kitchen floor? Or get all muddy doing it by your pottery wheel?”
“I don’t have a pottery wheel.”
“Shush, darling. Mother’s fantasizing.”
“We fought,” I shared.
Her lips turned down in an exaggerated frown any mime would kill for before she asked, “You what?”
“We fought. I was bitchy to him. He didn’t like it. He threw it in my face and walked out.”
“Can we step back two dozen paces, and you explain why that fine specimen of a man walked in in the first place?”
I took a deep breath and reminded myself this was Nora. She knew so much dirt on so many people, starting with her mother sharing things from days of yore that would bring down the most powerful families in America (and a variety of western European countries besides), to Nora amassing her own nuggets along the way.
As every Ellington had done before, she’d parcel those out to her own children (if she hadn’t done that already), then take what she knew to her grave.
Therefore, I had no hesitation in baring all. Sharing about meeting Tom years ago and liking him. Tom standing in my kitchen essentially admitting by omission of any denial that he’d cheated on his wife. And the contents of that envelope I got which was enough to blacken the life of Andrew Winston for the rest of it, even if the statute of limitations had run out (I’d checked) on his heinous crimes.
But further, his largest sponsor risked much more if anyone knew the lengths they’d gone to keep things quiet.
I finished this with sharing I’d called Tom to talk to him about Winston and giving details of what had happened earlier that day.
“Right, darling, first,” she began when I stopped speaking, “when you tell Mother this kind of thing, you warn her beforehand to go pour herself a gin and tonic.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, grinning at her.
“Second, there are a variety of manners of justice. That blackguard having the world know he’s a rapist is one, even if he serves no time. But more, Core Point Athletics needs to be brought to its knees. So I agree with you, you must do something with this information you’ve been given.”