Envy(71)

“I thought perhaps Noah had told you.”

“No, I haven’t seen Noah in, hmm… actually, I think it was the night I saw the two of you at the awards banquet.”

They made small talk until the waiter returned with their drink order, then listened to his recitation of the chef’s specials. Nadia requested a few minutes for them to think over their selections. This delay in the proceedings seemed to perturb Maris, but Nadia wasn’t going to be brushed off like a piece of lint.

She didn’t like Maris in the least, and she was absolutely certain that her dislike was reciprocated. Both were successful businesswomen, but their approach to their careers, to men, to life in general, couldn’t be more dissimilar.

Maris Matherly-Reed had enjoyed all the advantages that Nadia had been denied. Maris had been born into a wealthy and well-respected family and had cut her perfectly straight teeth on a silver spoon.

She had attended exclusive private schools and was a frequent guest at the tony parties held in the tony estates in the Hamptons. Her photograph often appeared in the society columns. She had traveled extensively.

Maris had culture out the ass—an ass that hadn’t required painful, expensive liposuction to get it slim and taut. Shapely as it was, however, you couldn’t melt an ice cube on it.

Nadia, née Nadine, had been born poor. Her family’s poverty was forgivable. It was their ignorance and uncouthness she had found intolerable. As early as preadolescence, she determined not to remain in Brooklyn and marry some boorish loser of a husband with whom she would fight over how they were going to house and feed their ever-increasing brood.

She was destined for far better things.

She lost her virginity at thirteen to her first employer, the manager of a novelty store where she clerked in the afternoons after school. He caught her stealing nail polish and lipstick from the store’s stock and had given her a choice between his sweaty coupling or arrest and juvenile court.

Besides the discomfort of being screwed on top of shipping crates in a dank stockroom by someone with clumsy, damp hands and garlic breath, it hadn’t been that bad a trade-off.

That was only the first of many times Nadia bartered sex to get something she wanted or to avoid something she didn’t. She perceived high school as a sentence she must serve, but amused herself by stealing her classmates’ boyfriends.

She didn’t give a fig about the broken hearts she caused. It didn’t worry her that she didn’t have a single girlfriend. As long as there were boys lusting after her, vying for her attention, giving her presents, and taking her places in exchange for doing what she would have enjoyed doing anyway, why should she care?

When her grades fell short of meeting graduation requirements, her rudimentary math teacher agreed to favorably adjust her score in exchange for a blow job. Her world history teacher, a pathetically homely woman, had been tearfully grateful when Nadia professed a secret affection for her. In the span of one rainy evening in the teacher’s apartment that smelled of cat-litter boxes, Nadia’s grade escalated from a D to a B+.

Once she had her diploma, she eschewed higher education. She had no patience for scholastics. Instead, she plowed straight into the workforce, moving from job to job at six-month intervals, until she was hired as a copy editor for a local neighborhood weekly newspaper.

This was the first job that had appealed to her and that she felt was worthy of her. Within weeks of being hired, she resolved that this was the field in which she would re-create herself—beginning with changing her name—and become famous.

Eventually she talked the managing editor into letting her write an occasional article. The negotiation took place in the backseat of his car in the shadow of the row house where he lived with his wife and four children. Nadia had straddled his lap and, working him into a state of near delirium, got his gasping promise to give her idea a trial run.

The Nadia Schuller pieces were gossipy, chatty, anecdotal stories about the lives and loves of people who lived in the neighborhood. It soon became the most popular feature of the newspaper. Nadia was on her way.

Now, twelve years and countless lovers later, she sat across from Maris Matherly-Reed, behaving in a civilized manner but harboring an enormous amount of antipathy for a woman who bested her without even trying. Were Maris to hate her more, Nadia would hate Maris less. What she couldn’t tolerate was Maris’s seeming indifference toward her. As though she merited no notice at all.

For instance, when they met at the entrance to the restaurant, Nadia had remarked on the light tan Maris had acquired while she was in Georgia and rather cattily reminded her how damaging sun exposure was to the complexion.

Maris’s cool comeback had been, “Next time I go, I’ll be sure to take a hat.”

They placed their entrée orders with the waiter. As Nadia passed Maris a basket of bread, she remarked, “Tragic news about Howard Bancroft.”

That elicited a reaction. Maris declined the bread basket with a small shake of her head and her eyes turned sad. “Very tragic. I didn’t learn of it until I returned late yesterday afternoon.”

“How many years had he been at the helm of your legal department?”

“Since before I was born. We were all shocked.”

“Has anyone speculated on why he killed himself?”

“Nadia, I—”

“Oh, this isn’t for ‘Book Chat.’ The facts were in the newspaper account, and it painted a grisly scene. I got the official, sanitized press release from your PR department. It said little about his manner of death and was more about his contribution to Matherly Press.”