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Chapter One
Happy Birthday, Winston
Veronica stepped into the golden-pink glow of the Park Legend lobby, walked past the cocktail terrace with the gigantic flowers, around the statues of Artemis and Athena, through the swarms of tourists and conventioneers and luggage trolleys, to the entrance of the Tower Apartments. She halted, ducked into the ladies' lounge, locked the door, and bent over the sink to splash cold water on her face and neck. She had miscalculated the strength of her morning hangover, blithely assuming that by now it would've politely taken its leave; but no, it wanted to go to the party too.
Veronica surveyed the information in the full-length mirror: her short skirt barely covering the rip in her left stocking, her right jacket lapel crumpled, her hair three days overdue for a shampoo. Helena, her mother, would notice, but there was no turning back now. She leaned closer for one last perusal, searching for her reliable escape hatch . . . ah yes, there it was, thanks be to God, her natural beauty, weirdly aglow, hangover notwithstanding. Neither anxiety, sleep deprivation, nor alcohol overdose could deplete it. She swallowed three aspirins, applied vermillion lipstick, repositioned the run in her left stocking, and marched resolutely toward the Towers.
The elevator ascended through the 20s, 30s, 40s, and into the 50s, where her new extended family residence was on proud display. Veronica's father, Winston Ferris, had recently been named something of note at UNICEF, the UN's last bastion of über-WASP patrician elders, and with the new job came an exclusive residence in the Park Legend Towers. As diplomats, the Ferris family had for years perpetually shuttled from city to hotel to VIP lounge, but the Park Legend was the Mona Lisa of transit shelters. It functioned as an independent city-state amid midtown's roaring chaos; it housed visiting heads of state and had the best security, ballrooms, state rooms, restaurants, cafes, shops—and probably hookers and smugglers—collected under one vast, video-monitored roof. And for its bright new citizens, Winston and Helena Ferris, lifelong ambitions were now fulfilled; Winston had UNICEF and Helena had the crown jewel of real estate with an attendant five-star hotel staff. And so Winston's birthday had become one of the most exorbitant of the season's power-mingling rituals.
The elevator opened; Veronica stepped into the cheerful thunder of talk and drink that spilled into the long, salmon-orange hallway. Veronica saw Winston's pink-and-white head bobbing above the crowd. Her own head was not cooperating, so she grabbed a gin and tonic and raised the glass to her lips, when she caught sight of Helena's new bronze power helmet, every hair lacquered firmly into place; the oversized sparkling earrings (her trademark accessory), the long neck emerging from between bony shoulders; the moon-white, wrinkle-free skin, and the rest of her expensively maintained body encased in a silver taffeta tube that was supposed to be a dress . . . yes, the vast, swarming apparition loomed and approached. Tonight Helena was declaring her sovereignty over the upper tiers of Manhattan as she whirled magisterially about her new apartment, and it was scary as hell. Veronica momentarily considered fleeing, but Helena's antennae instantly identified the presence of a child, late and improperly attired.
"Young lady, what have you done to your hair?"
Curiosity had recently prompted Veronica to dye her long, chestnut-red hair jet black. Bad timing. "Why Mom, does it look different?"
"It's like you poured shoe polish on it. It looks terrible."
A man sidled up to Helena, winding his arm around her waist, and suddenly she was all effervescent grace, bending and dipping to tap a cigarette over an ashtray and tilting her ear to his confidential whisper. Veronica planted herself between the curtains and the buffet table to study the crowd. So here paraded two hundred of the world's wealthiest and most successful people, whose self-worth and happiness hinged on whether or not they got invited to a birthday party. It was a definite coup for the New Helena, who deployed party invitations to avenge grudges, solidify alliances, and commandeer useful new talent.
The New Helena's parties were a reliable index of which professions were currently fashionable. Helena had grown very fond of CEOs of late, and politicians were back on her list after a long absence, as were writers. Veronica's gaze glided toward a famous anchorman who was making a camera-worthy entrance. She had recently nursed a hangover staring dumbly at his nightly newscast, so seeing him in three-dimensional kinesis was weirdly disorienting. Even in the flesh, he didn't appear mortal; it was as if a marketing analyst had mixed the iconographic needs of the average American television viewer to come up with a successful fusion of prototypes, such as an insurance salesman who got fan mail. His wife, petite, blonde, and pink, was thoroughly perfumed, sanitized, and hygienically sealed. She was obviously the type of female who had never gone a day without mouthwash, deodorant, and hairspray. Veronica's habits would have horrified her.
Veronica also noticed several literary party fixtures in the crowd, now that Helena was an author again, with a cookbook entitled American Flavors Far From Home that had recently scored an undeserved two-page spread in Vogue. There was the feared and admired Jock Krispy, the once-prolific novelist willingly corrupted by celebrity, whose eyebrows writhed and bobbed beneath a tortured contrivance that suggested hair. And there warbled Irvy Wall, the renowned journalist and elevator lech. Irvy, you see, sensibly seized opportunity when it presented itself. Irvy was busy chatting up ballet-spinster/publishing heiress Bitsy Whipplair, a favorite lunch partner of Helena's who was similarly encased in a creepy tube that was supposed to be a dress.
Irvy and Bitsy were joined by Dolly Seabrook, Helena's tennis partner, a terrifying riot of color—yellow hair, orange lips, turquoise blouse, magenta suit—who readily believed it when anyone told her she looked ravishing. Dolly began flirting with Arno Slipper, a Wall . . .
Covergirl
Excerpted from Covergirl: Confessions of a Flawed Hedonist by Maura Moynihan
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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