to do?”
Digger looked at Patty and grinned. “Well, I figure if he needs my money that
badly he can keep it.”
There was a gasp on the other end of the line and then a small silence, followed
by Janey’s melodic laugh. “How terribly, terribly . . . Buddhist of you,” she said, unable to keep a slight sneering tone out of her voice. And then, not knowing
what else to say, she added, “I suppose I’ll be seeing you at Mimi Kilroy’s tonight.”
“Mimi who?” Digger asked, adopting the same bored tone of voice he
employed when someone asked him about Britney Spears. He knew exactly who
Mimi Kilroy was, but, as she came from that segment of society that, like so many
of his generation, he reviled—i.e., WASP Republican—he had no intention of giv-
ing Janey this satisfaction.
“Mimi Kilroy,” Janey said, with mock patience. “Senator Kilroy’s daughter . . .”
“Oh, right,” Digger said. But he was no longer paying attention. Patty had sat
down next to him and, shifting his weight, he wrapped a skinny leg around her
waist. She turned her face toward his and touched his shoulder, and as usual he felt an overwhelming desire for her. “Gotta go,” he said, clicking the off button on the phone. He pulled Patty on top of him and began kissing her face. He was deeply
and romantically in love with his wife in a completely uncynical manner, and as far as he was concerned, that was all that mattered. Peter and Janey could go fuck
themselves, he thought; and they probably would.
Well, really, Janey Wilcox thought. If Digger cared so little about money, why
shouldn’t he give some to her?
She peered through the windshield of her silver Porsche Boxster convertible at
the endless stream of cars jammed up in front of her on the Long Island Express-
way. It was so passé to be stuck in traffic on the way out to the Hamptons, especially if you were a supermodel. If she had an extra million, she thought, the first thing she’d do would be to take the seaplane out to the Hamptons, and then she’d get an
assistant who would drive her car out for her, just like all of the rich men she knew.
But that was the problem with New York: No matter how successful you thought
you were, there was always someone who was richer, more successful, more
famous . . . the idea of it was sometimes enough to make you want to give up. But the sight of the gleaming silver hood of her car revived her a little, and she
reminded herself that at this point in her life there was no reason to give up—and every reason to press on. With a little self-control and discipline, she might finally get everything she’d always wanted.
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Her pink Chanel sunglasses had slipped down her nose and she pushed them
up, feeling a little thrill of satisfaction at owning the must-have accessory of the summer. Janey was one of those people for whom the superficial comfortingly
masks an inner void, and yet if anyone had called her shallow she would have been
genuinely shocked. Janey Wilcox was a particular type of beautiful woman, who,
acknowledged only for her looks, is convinced that she has great reserves of
untapped talents. Hidden under her glossy, nearly perfect exterior was, she believed, some sort of genius who would someday make a significant contribution to the
world, most likely artistic as opposed to commercial. The fact that there was no evidence to support this hope didn’t dissuade her, and, indeed, she believed herself
equal to anyone. If she were to meet Tolstoy, for instance, she was quite sure that he would immediately embrace her as a kindred spirit.
The traffic had slowed to twenty miles an hour, and Janey drummed her left
hand on the steering wheel, her eighteen-karat-gold Bulgari watch flashing in the
sun. Her fingers were long and slender—a fortune teller had once said that her
hands were “artistic”—marred only by stubby fingertips with nails bitten to the
quick. In the past nine months, ever since she’d been picked, Cinderella-like, to star in the new Victoria’s Secret campaign, every makeup artist in town had pleaded
with her to stop biting her nails, but it was an old childhood habit she couldn’t
break. The physical pain she inflicted on herself was a perverse way of controlling the emotional pain the world had inflicted on her.
And now, the frustration of sitting in traffic while imagining the seaplane flying overhead bearing the smarter members of the New York social set nearly drew her
fingers to her mouth, but for once, she hesitated. She didn’t really need to bite her nails—after all, she was finally on top of the world herself. Just a year ago, at thirty-two, she’d been practically washed up—her acting and modeling career had ground