Bergdorf Blondes by Plum Sykes Page A

captured last week. She was freaking out all night because she was terrified that people would now think she was a self-obsessed Park Avenue Princess with no interest in Israel or anything below Seventy-second Street.(Which is pretty close to the truth but I would never be cruel enough to actually tell Lara how narrow-minded most of us think she is because she has a heart of gold, she really does.)
    “I’ve never had a Shame Attack,” I said. I’d come close, sure, but I don’t think I’d ever had a full-fledged shame crisis.
    “Never?” said Lara, turning whiter than her minuscule skirt.
    “Look at her,” said Jolene. “Of course she’s never had one. She even looks like she’s never had one.”
    “I’m going to get something really beautiful for Zach’s mom at the sale,” I said, changing the subject.
    The Chanel sample sale drives most New York girls to frantically gobble up as many gilt quilts as they can for themselves and totally forget everyone else. (Then they go down with an attack of GQG: gilt quilt guilt.) I decided I would do the opposite and use the opportunity to perform an uncalled-for act of kindess: I would buy the best purse for my mother-in-law-to-be.
    “Oh, what a cute idea,” said Lara.
    “What a terrible waste,” said Jolene. “She won’t understand it. She comes from Ohio.”
    I ignored Jolene’s protestations and called Zach’s office from the table: I wanted to check what color his mom might like.
    “Hey. The office,” came the reply.
    It was Zach’s assistant, Mary Alice. She talks in the monosyllabic bark favored by a clique of cool bicoastal assistants. (Even though she has had her picture in Paper magazine more than three times, Mary Alice is transparently miserable. She always dresses in shapeless, avant-garde Belgian clothes, which would make anyone unhappy. When I tried to help and explained that being a champagne-bubble-about-town was preferable to being a depressive-about-town she said, “Yeah. Right,” and didn’t do anything about herself.)
    Resolutely chirpy, I replied, “Hi! It’s me—”
    “I’m taking messages only. He’ll return,” M. A. interrupted.
    All the Manhattan assistants were doing the “message-return” thing after they found out it’s standard at Spielberg’s H.Q. on the West Coast.
    “I need to ask Zach a very urgent shopping question—”
    “Who’s speaking?”
    M. A.’s started pretending she has no idea who I am recently. Apparently that’s protocol at Calvin Klein’s New York office.
    “Its me !”
    “‘Me’?”
    “His fiancée .”
    “He’ll return.”
    The line went dead. What was going on with Zach?This was getting weird. I looked up to see Jolene and Lara staring at me as though something really sad had happened, like I’d let my roots grow in or something desperately depressing like that.
    “Are you okay?” said Jolene, cautiously examining her steak, which had just arrived.
    “Fine!” I said.
    I smiled my most radiant, in-love smile as if to say, I’m happier than you can imagine . If Nicole Kidman could look that glamorous while she was divorcing Tom Cruise, I could smile my way through a few unreturned phone calls. But it’s really hard, you know. I realized that day that actresses like Nicole really deserve all those free clothes because looking blissfully happy when your blood is turning to tears in your veins is extremely skilled work. I say, Nicole didn’t deserve an Oscar, she deserves the Nobel Prize.
    “Why won’t he talk to you?” added Lara.
    I felt sick. Was M. A. blocking my calls or was Zach cooling off? I tried to put my doubts to one side. What was I thinking! Zach adored me. Why had he just given me that wonderful necklace otherwise? The simple explanation must be that M. A. wasn’t passing on my messages.
    “It’s not him ,” I said, maximizing my smile. “It’s his assistant. She’s very protective. Professional, you know.”
    Before I could go on I was interrupted by Julie