I let my guard down and forgot – for a split second – that I was talking to my boss. ‘I saw that chest when he got out of the shower this morning, and it was every bit as beautiful as you say,’ I added before I could realize what this implied.
Kelly’s head snapped around, and she stared at me with an odd combination of envy and urgency. ‘I’m assuming that when he calls you again, you’ll go out with him, right?’
This didn’t really sound like a question. ‘Oh, I’m not sure he’ll be calling,’ I mumbled, realizing that absolutely no one would believe we hadn’t slept together.
She peered at me intently and then broke into a wide grin. ‘Bette, sweetie, you might be the last person to realize this, but in your own unique way, you’re beautiful. And it’s a widely known fact that no one loves beautiful girls more than Philip Weston. Of course he will call. And you’ll say yes, right? And naturally, please invite him to all our events or stay out as late as you need to when you’re with him.’
I could feel a weird sense of elation – like a high school crush – rising in my chest.
‘Uh, sure. Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.’ Suddenly, I wanted to hug her.
‘Great. I’m so excited for you! Definitely keep me updated. Should we get started?’
‘Yes, let’s,’ I breathed, relieved to end this very strange discussion. ‘You were going to tell me about The List, right?’
‘Yes. The List. The single most crucial tool for ensuring a firm’s success. We’re nothing without the people we can provide for our clients, so I’ve spent years putting together one of the biggest databases in the industry. Pull your chair around so you can see.’
I yanked the furry stool to her side of the desk and settled in as she double-clicked an icon on her desktop. ‘Here it is,’ she purred. ‘My baby. The most comprehensive list of tastemakers ever, anywhere.’
The screen resembled a search page you might encounter on a personals or apartment-rental website. You simply chose your search requirements, ticked their adjacent boxes, and hit Find. There were four main locations you could browse – New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and the Hamptons – but smaller, less complete lists existed for another dozen cities in the United States, and about two dozen abroad. The search criteria appeared endless. In a vertical row starting in the upper-left-hand corner, they were listed, in no particular order: Art, Literary, Film Production, Newspapers, Fashion, Record Label, Social, Young Social, Media Elites, Finance, Magazines, Architecture, Retail, Miscellaneous.
‘You just key in the types of people you’re looking for and the program provides you with all the information. Here, watch.’ She quickly checked off ‘Literary’ and ‘Young Social’ and showed me the thousands of returns. ‘We know everything about everyone. Full name, home address, work address, all phones, faxes, pagers, emails, country houses, beach houses, international addresses, birthdays, spouse information, and details on both the children and their nannies. There’s also a subset – if you need to narrow it down even further – that tells you if a particular person is gay, straight, single, monogamous, or cheating, in addition to whether they party, travel, or get mentioned in gossip columns a great deal. It makes it pretty easy to hand-pick exactly who will be there when you know everything about their lives, you know?’
I just nodded, as there seemed no more appropriate response.
‘Here, let’s take your uncle, for instance.’ She typed his name into a search field and up popped all his relevant info: Central Park West address and phone, office information, his exact title at the paper and the name of the column, the number of years he’d been writing, his nationwide readership, his birthday, and a short sentence about how he traveled frequently to Key West and Europe. Under ‘cross-reference’ he was described as ‘Gay,’ ‘Literary,’ ‘Newspaper,’ and ‘Media Elite.’ I noticed there was no Christian Coalition Reactionary category, but I said nothing.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’ I was unable to tear my eyes from the screen.
‘It’s incredible, isn’t it? And that’s not all. If you’ll notice, there are no regular media people or celebrities in this database. We have separate ones for them since those are the two most crucial groups.’
‘Separate ones?’
‘Well, sure. Look.’ She closed down the first program and clicked on an icon that read ‘Press.’ ‘There are media elites – people like your uncle, Frank Rich, Dan Rather, Barbara Walters, Rupert Murdoch, Mort Zuckerman, Tom Brokaw, Arthur Sulzberger, Thomas Friedman, etcetera, etcetera, who of course you want at events because of their high profile, but you can’t honestly expect them to cover anything. They’re just like celebrities in their own right, which is why we need to have a completely separate database of real working media – all the people at the papers, magazines, TV, and radio who can actually give us the coverage we promise our clients. Of course, there’s always overlap. You can have a socialite who also happens to work in magazines or a film exec who writes reviews for a local paper, so we just cross-list everyone.’
I took the mouse from her and scrolled through the separate fields, noticing that the media database was broken down by demographic, so you could best pitch the specific people covering music, design, travel, lifestyle, fashion, entertainment, gossip, celebrity, sports, or social engagements.
‘This is absolutely incredible. How many are there total?’
‘Between all three databases, probably close to thirty-five thousand. You haven’t even seen the celeb one yet, which is our most important.’ Another couple clicks and a list of the world’s richest, most famous, and most beautiful people popped to the forefront.
‘This is the industry list. With each celeb, we’ve also listed their current publicist, agent, manager, assistants, and family information, in addition to birthdays, current and upcoming projects, and preferences – everything from airlines to flowers, waters, coffees, liquors, hotels, designers, and music. We update this one pretty much hourly.’
She opened the profile for Charlize Theron and I saw that she had homes in South Africa, Malibu, and the Hollywood Hills; was dating Stuart Townsend; would only fly American Airlines first class or private jet; was currently shooting a movie in Rome; was signed on for another film in five months; and maintained a staff of four, with her agent temporarily also acting as her publicist.
‘How do they all get updated? I mean, how could you possibly know all this stuff?’
Kelly threw her head back, clearly delighted by my shock. ‘Elisa introduced you to the List Girls, yes?’
I nodded.
‘It’s not the most glamorous job in the world, but they’ve got the right connections, and we give them lots of perks to read every single publication known to man – in print and online – and take from that whatever they can to fill in the blanks. There are three of them, and they’re all very socially connected family-wise, and they go out constantly anyway and meet people everywhere. Just this morning New York magazine came out with their Baby Power issue – the fifty kids in New York under the age of thirty who are the most accomplished in their fields. If they weren’t in there already, every one of them has now been entered into our database.’
‘Amazing. Really, Kell, it’s amazing.’
‘It sure is. Why don’t you put a practice list together? Let’s say we’re planning a party for Asprey to celebrate the opening of their second store in the United States. It’ll be held at the store on Fifth, and the company’s main concern is that Americans simply aren’t as familiar with the brand as the English are, and they’re looking for more name recognition. Pull five hundred total fits: four hundred regular attendees and a hundred mixed of celebs and targeted press. Of course, an actual event like that would only have a hundred to a hundred fifty, max, but this will just be an exercise.’
It