‘Excuse me? Are you talking to me?’ I asked, quickly covering my copy of Every Woman’s Fantasy with an oversized English-Greek dictionary that resided nearby.
She nodded and moved in closer to whisper, ‘I’m just saying, you don’t have to be embarrassed any longer. There are others.’
‘Who said I’m embarrassed?’ I asked.
She peered down at my now-shielded book and raised an eyebrow. ‘Look, my name’s Courtney and I’m hooked on them, too. I’ve got a college degree and a real job and I’m not afraid to admit that I love these goddamn books. There’s a whole group of us, you know. We meet once or twice a month to talk about them, have a few drinks, convince each other that it’s okay to do what we do. It’s part book club and part therapy session.’ She rooted through her Tod’s shoulder bag and found a crumpled receipt. She uncapped a Montblanc pen with her teeth and scrawled an address in SoHo and an email address.
‘Our next meeting is this Monday night. Come. I’ve included my email address if you have any questions, but there’s not much to know. We’re reading this’ – she discreetly flashed a copy of Who Wants to Marry a Heartthrob? – ‘and we’d love to have you.’
Perhaps it’s a sign of true addiction that I actually showed up at a stranger’s apartment a week later. I soon learned that Courtney had been right. Each of the other girls was smart and cool and interesting in her own way, and each loved romances. Except for one set of twin sisters, none of the women were friends or colleagues from the outside; all had stumbled upon the group in much the same way I had. I was surprised and somewhat delighted to see that I was the only one who was out about my habit: not one of the other girls had yet revealed to husbands or girlfriends or parents the real content of their book club. In the two years since I’d joined, only one had admitted her reading preferences to her boyfriend. The ridicule she endured from him was life-changing; she eventually broke up with him after realizing that no man who truly loved her (like a hero in a romance novel, it was implied) could ever mock her so mercilessly for something she enjoyed. We’d seen each other through new jobs and weddings and even one lawsuit, yet if we’d run into one another on the street or at a party, there’d be nothing more than a curt hello and a knowing look. After missing last week’s meeting, I’d been looking forward to tonight’s session all week, and I was not about to let Will ruin it for me.
Simon, Will, and I piled immediately into a car, but when we pulled up to the restaurant at Eighty-eighth and Second, we were clearly not the first to arrive.
‘Brace yourselves!’ Simon managed to hiss just before Elaine waddled over.
‘You’re late!’ she barked, pointing to the back room, where a few people had gathered. ‘Go deal with your people, I’ll bring you back your drinks.’
I followed them to the back room of the casual but legendary restaurant and looked around. Books covered every square patch of wall space and competed only with framed and autographed photographs of what seemed like every author who’d published in the twentieth century. The woody and familiar ambience might just feel like a regular neighborhood joint had I not been able to recognize the handful of people who’d already clustered around the table set for twenty: Alan Dershowitz, Tina Brown, Tucker Carlson, Dominick Dunne, and Barbara Walters. A waitress handed me a premixed dirty martini and I began slurping at it immediately, downing the last drop just as the table filled completely with an eclectic group culled primarily from the media and politics.
Will was offering a toast for Charlie Rose, whose new book we were all gathered to celebrate, when the only other woman under forty leaned over and said, ‘How’d you get roped into this one?’
‘Niece of Will, given no choice.’
She laughed softly and placed her hand on my lap, which made me very nervous until I realized she was trying to discreetly shake my hand. ‘I’m Kelly. I put together this little dinner party for your uncle, so I guess I’m sort of obligated to be here, too.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ I whispered back. ‘I’m Bette. I was just sitting at their apartment earlier and somehow ended up here. It seems like a very nice dinner, though.’
‘Honestly? Not really my scene, either, but I think it works for your uncle’s purpose. Good group of people, everyone who RSVP’d actually showed – which never happens – and Elaine held up everything on her end, as usual. All in all, I’m pretty happy with the outcome. Now if we can just keep them all from getting too drunk, I’ll say the evening was perfection.’
The group quickly polished off the first round of cocktails and was now tucking in to the salads that had appeared before them. ‘When you say you “put this on,” what does that mean, exactly?’ I asked more out of an effort to just say something rather than any genuine interest, but Kelly didn’t seem to notice.
‘I own a PR company,’ she said, sipping a glass of white wine. ‘We represent all sorts of clients – restaurants, hotels, boutiques, record labels, movie studios, individual celebrities – and we do what we can to increase their profile through media placements, product launches, stuff like that.’
‘And tonight? Who do you represent here? Will? I didn’t know he had a PR person.’
‘No, tonight I was hired by Charlie’s publisher to put together a dinner of media elites, those journalists who are recognizable in their own right. The publisher has internal PR people, of course, but they don’t always have the connections to put on something this specialized. That’s where I come in.’
‘Got it. So how do you know all these people?’
She just laughed. ‘I have an office full of people whose job it is to know everyone worth knowing. Thirty-five thousand names, actually, and we can get in touch with any one of them at any time. It’s what we do. Speaking of which, what do you do?’
Thankfully, before I could piece together some appropriate white lie, Elaine discreetly beckoned for Kelly from the doorway, and she scooted out of her chair and strolled to the front room. I turned my attention to Simon, who was seated on my left, before noticing that a photographer was subtly snapping photos without a flash from a crouching position in the corner.
I remembered the first media dinner Will had dragged me to, when I was fourteen and visiting from Poughkeepsie. We’d been at Elaine’s that night, too, also for a book party, and I’d asked Simon, ‘Is it weird that there’s someone taking pictures of us eating dinner?’
He’d chuckled. ‘Of course not, dear, that’s precisely why we’re all here. If there’s no photo in the party pages, did the party really happen? You can’t pay to get the kind of press he and his book will receive from tonight. That photographer is from New York magazine, if I remember correctly, and as soon as he leaves, another one will slip right in. At least, everyone hopes so.’
Will had begun teaching me that night how to talk to people. The key was to remember that no one cares what you do or think, so sit down and immediately begin asking questions to the person on your right. Ask anything, feign some sort of interest, and follow up any awkward silences with more questions about them. After years of instruction and practice I could manage a conversation with just about anyone, but I didn’t enjoy it that night any more than I had as a teenager, so I said my good-byes and ducked out after the salad course.
The book club meeting was at Alex’s apartment in the East Village. I jumped on the 6 train and scrolled through my iPod playlist until settling on ‘In My Dreams’ by REO Speedwagon. When I got off the train at Astor Place a very petite woman who resembled a school librarian literally body-checked me. I apologized for my role in the incident (being there) with a sincere ‘Excuse me,’ at which point she whipped around with the most contorted, demon-like face and screamed, ‘EXCUSE ME? MAYBE THAT WOULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU WALKED ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE SIDEWALK!’ and then walked away muttering profanities. Obviously she could use a few hours with The Very