Amazonian “Devil”

Daddy always told me I’d grow up to be a statuesque woman (parent speak: “Mamma, looks like our girl’s gonna be tall, maybe a little chunky”)… But I never knew I’d be Amazonian!

Eight months before Belle in the Big Apple hits the shelves and I’m already on Amazon.com! Pre-order away! (HERE). I only wish y’all could see the cover image. Evan Gaffney, the artist who designed the cover of the crazy best-selling novel, The Devil Wears Prada, designed my cover also. Mine is a beauty!

The Beauty Expert

She was a gorgeous, glowing sight for sore eyes. I hadn’t seen Ms. Nadine in two years. We left things off at Giorgione 508, several good glasses of Southern red and a plate of mixed bruschette between us (I swear I recall my life as a menu…). Our respective books had just been sold and she was off for twenty-four months of polo, Euros and an absolutely fabulous life. Me? I had big, big plans… to stand at the stove, write recipes, debate the merits of Afghan versus Spanish saffron…

But back to the beauty expert! Tuesday night dinner at Fred’s and I get Nadine and her oeuvre–Beauty Confidential. One day and counting before her Today Show appearance and she’s as cool, calm, collected and glowing (have I already used that descriptor?) as any celeb on the red carpet. The point is, the girl and her beauty regime (on a budget!) are doing something right.  

Go here and learn all of Nadine’s secrets. After highlighting every second page of Beauty Confidential I didn’t know whether I should hit CVS or Barney’s for my updated beauty buys. Her book is written for the priss and pauper in each of us working girls. Need I sell you more?

Lorelei’s Book

Let’s forget that the diamonds ‘round Lorelei Lee’s (“Gentleman Prefer Blondes”) elegant neck are eventually replaced by the noose of marriage and suburbia. Let’s remember when life was a promise and she happened upon the beginnings of a book, a memoir, a pamphlet on how to use untrained intelligence, looks and energy to get the most from life.

“A gentleman friend and I were dining at the Ritz last evening and he said that if I took a pencil and paper and put down all of my thoughts it would make a book … So it might have all blown over but this morning he sent me a book. And so when my maid brought it to me, I said to her, “Well, Lulu, here is another book and we have not read half the ones we have got yet.” But when I opened it and saw that it was all blank I remembered what my gentleman acquaintance said, and so then I realized that it was a diary. So here I am writing a book instead of reading one…It would be strange if I turn out to be an authoress.”

Let’s remember her excess and focus on the days when life was damn good and she dealt with heartbreak and the luncheon hour in the most wonderful way.

“I mean champagne always makes me feel philosophical because it makes me realize that when a girl’s life is as full of fate as mine seems to be, there is nothing else to do about it. So this morning the steward brought me my coffee and quite a large pitcher of ice water so I will stay in bed and not have any more champagne until luncheon time.”

There was a remedy for her sadness. I’ll put a bookmark there and try not to read any more for a good, long while.

Job Security

Fabio? Si, ho detto Fabio. Once-upon-a-time Emma was one of those highly specialized models that couldn’t do runway (too short), wasn’t right for print (still too short, asymmetrical features) and didn’t quite measure up for lingerie work (read: flat-chested, white girl’s rear). The gray area in between? Carefully ripped bodices and prairie skirts whilst straddling a horse and falling helplessly into Fabio’s arms. For verisimilitude, they fell in love and moved in together.

Whose life is that anyway?

That, of course, was after she and A.Z. had a brief flirtation back in the early 80’s. This dalliance, affair—call it what you will—was the reason she landed the 6-figure “marketing director” position with A.Z.’s company. Back in the day, if she coughed, he came running. Now, the tables were turned. Emma wasn’t a nubile 21 year-old and A.Z. was a self-important “husband of” that had begun to build his hip hotel empire from wifey’s Rolodex. Suddenly, he was someone. 

But, Emma had a long memory— and videotapes—of the early days so she was comfortable, an office fixture that would never be updated for a younger, sleeker model. Forget contracts and professional performance: Emma soon showed me (patience, dear readers) that in the Big City, VHS tapes are the best job security of all…

"Page 6"

April 26th and I’m almost feeling good. The Burberry jacket is a step up, I muse. And I certainly feel more at ease in the 6th Avenue milieu of hyper paper pushers, diamond dealers and town car smog this time around. But the building—that god-forsaken white monolith—still makes my tongue twitch and my throat constrict—like someone high on the 17th floor had force-fed me a spoonful of sodium from the non-existent News Corp cafeteria.

Hadn’t they done their research? Didn’t they know who they were interviewing? Didn’t everyone check into “Gawker” on their lunch hour? I am the enemy—the tell-all blogger “Belle” that slaved away at their affiliate news station—and yet my name persists in bold type in their Outlook.

BROOKE PARKHURST: 3PM INTERVIEW
POSITIION—“PAGE 6” STAFF REPORTER.

I’d be the “fourth chair,” replacing Jared Paul Stern, Fernando Gil, Lisa Marsh and Christopher Tennant. A few friends were excited by the prospect of my potential day job—elated, really, “Think of the perks! The drinks, the dinners, the PARTIES! We’ll have CARTE BLANCHE!” We? Then there were the few trusted advisors that simply asked, “Why check your baggage onto a sinking ship?”

But, it was PAGE 6.
It was the dapper Richard Johnson.
It was the rag that jumpstarted my mornings, giving me a Gatsby glimpse into how the other half lives.

I had declined Richard’s lunch invitation, instead favoring a trip to company headquarters. We’ll call this my Russian Roulette. I like taking chances. I like that nauseating, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. More than anything, I relish the thought of running into one of my old producers by the elevator bank. I see this scenario as saying that, in a few short years, I had moved from peon to personage… But, how the hell would I explain my presence back inside the computerized gates?

One limp handshake later and it was too late. The elevator sucked me and Richard up to the high floors, back into the world of Murdoch, madness and shady deals…

Magic & Minutiae

And, what’s it like? How does the air smell, the ground feel beneath your feet once you’re inside a building shrouded in mystery and legend?

Anti-climactic dose of reality—the Fifth Avenue and 48th Street "Scribner" is now the makeup emporium, Sephora. But, the new building—the "Simon & Schuster" on Avenue of the Americas and 48th—is strikingly grand and cool. Beige and cream marble dominates. The elevator bank is huge and when you’re whisked to the Scribner floor you wonder about the Frank McCourts and Annie Proulxs before you.

Why am I here?
What god blessed me to make this journey?
To what secret room do they whisk away my thoughts and worries and memories-- bind them and distribute them as galleys?

Magic.

Magic is made in that building. You feel it when you walk in and then you taste its absence once you step back out onto the avenue, into the normal air with normal people who exhale their worries and everyday minutiae. A woman pulls at her panties through her skirt. A man checks his watch in frustration, yanks at his tie and picks up the pace. My phone rings—it’s Fernando the building super and he’s waiting to fix my dishwasher.

Wait! I want to go back in! I want to grab one more book off the shelf to take home with me. My editor and the editor-in-chief already stacked me high with half a dozen slick hardbacks but I want more to tide me over. I look at my visitor’s pass—it’s expired. Move along, Belle, into the Midtown twilight, try to smell the cool magic that still clings to the books’ ivory pages…

Wings

Mamma’s last meal in New York City was take-out buffalo chicken wings (from “Down the Hatch,” nonetheless) and red wine. The play at the “Cherry Lane Theatre” that proceeded our bar food bacchanal was nice and light and filled with just enough sexual innuendo to entertain us for 3 hours. However, it had not been stimulating enough to keep us awake through another prix-fixe menu. Dinner at home would be nice change of pace, I thought. Really, though, “dinner” and “home” are very loose descriptors for where my poor mother was forced to rest her head, what processed chicken parts I made her eat.

The aluminum container arrived, steam seeping out of the side and top creases. I ceremoniously doled out our dinner, and with a certain flourish, poured each of us a glass of Rioja to accompany our “entrees.” Such a good sport, Mamma. She perched atop the leather ottoman while I sat on the only kitchen chair, the seat’s rattan digging into my thighs, leaving its mark on my white, city flesh. We hunched over our dinner plates—perilously balanced on tops of knees, piled high with wings, little thighs, plastic containers of blue cheese dressing—looking up now and again to talk about town gossip and my then-precarious job situation. Our faces were unapologetically marred with vinegar-hard hot sauce and creamy dip.

What did my mother really think about my trials and failures in New York? What advice did she withhold out of good breeding and spirit? How silly and insignificant did my life and city loves look to her then?

I consider the advice and the encouragement that I will give my daughter when she decides to make the bold flight North, away from me and her father, the culture she instinctively trusts. I know that she will move because she’ll have my strong, stubborn spirit and her father’s charming (and bumbling) naivete. Anywhere my daughter goes, in her eyes, will be home.

I’m going to tell her that the free drinks aren’t worth it. In fact, you know what? I’m going to give her a Cocktail Stipend. Just as Granddaddy and Grandmother sent me money for taxis, I’m sending her a check for martinis and nice glasses of wine. “They’ll get to be asses as the night wears on. That’s when you say goodbye and use the money that Mamma sent you.” I just can’t BELIEVE the ridiculousness I put up with for a damned $10 dirty martini. The hubris, the posing, the invasive questions—my daughter will NOT have to endure that.

I will advise her to go buy a “toy” on Christopher Street. Forget the potential one-night stands and inflated promises of dinner dates. Leave them at the door and, well, how shall I phrase this? Go back to yourself. A stranger in a bar is much more likely to disappoint than a “AA” battery or two.

Take yourself out to dinner. Observe the people around you—the ones that you aspire to become, the others that you pity. Jot down notes on your cocktail napkin. Keep a folder of these and refer to it every so often when you feel that the city is changing you.

Skip the club opening/loft party, catch a foreign film. What is an investment banker in a loft on Chambers Street going to tell you about yourself that you don’t already know? “Has anyone told you that your eyes are as blue as the water that laps the shores of Round Hill, Jamaica?” Bertolluci, Mastroianni and Truffaut—THEY can illuminate a thing or two.

Call home. Don’t forget where you’re from. That’s how you got to the Big Apple in the first place.

I’ll give my daughter her wings--just like Mamma gave me mine--and hope that she’ll fly. If not, well, I suppose we can dunk ‘em in a bowl of blue cheese dressing and call it a day.

Fifth Avenue Rich

Fifth Avenue at the base of Central Park--within arm's reach of the gargoyles of the Plaza Hotel--is the place to be rich. I always think of this. Possibility and a brilliant future loom large when you walk past the row of Hansom cabs, tuck into a warm bowl of minestrone soup in the elegant, low-ceilinged confines of "Cipriani's," admire the silks and cashmeres in the window of "Bergdorf Goodman." I walk these beautiful blocks alone in the summer and wintertime thinking about the gold watches I want to buy, the roof-top terraces I will own, the vacations I must take and then describe in letters back home. When the July heat beats down, I step into a store perfumed with retail extravagance, cooled down to the temperature of my local Cineplex back home. In the bitter February snow, I warm up by the fires of street vendors roasting chestnuts or on the dark, velvet banquet of the St. Regis. I've always been able to go anywhere and do anything because I'm young and just pretty enough. But, now all that is changing.

Ever-present in my mind: Granddaddy, Jamie, babies. It's not just me anymore. I know that Pappy is now somewhere watching, praying that I don't miscalculate my future. Jamie is cooking and struggling and hoping that I don't expect too much. The babies, well, just thinking about a little one makes my heart swell and my throat close up.

There is something beyond money and Fifth Avenue and my original New York City dream. This hits me hard.

Granddaddy and I used to tango on the back porch. It was nothing like the dance I learned in Buenos Aires (or like they practice at "Belle Epoque" on Broadway) but, it made the cousins laugh and Grandmother smile that gorgeous smile of hers. Cheek-to-cheek, arms extended, we stared down the long, sun-filled room out to the lake and then the lake beyond. This is what he liked to do when the sun tucked behind his tall, strong pines--right before the deer came up to feed. "If I go down like this, with a beautiful blonde in my arms, I'll die a happy man." my Pappy told me more than once. His life was rich. Our life together was rich. We were leagues away from Fifth Avenue and the Plaza Hotel...