Someone Else's Shoes(14)
“This is what you want.” He hands her a Jiffy bag. And before she can say anything, he turns and is gone, swallowed by the throng of sweaty, extravagantly gyrating bodies.
six
The problem with having more than one home is that the thing you want at any given time is nearly always in another place. Likewise, the problem with only having rich people as friends is that they are always in the wrong damn country. Nisha has three friends living in London—if you can call them friends—Olivia, who, her answering service tells her, is currently at her house in Bermuda, and Karin, who is back in the US, visiting family. She calls both but is put onto voicemail. It’s a time-zone thing. She asks, in as casual a tone as she can manage, whether they might call her back when they get this message. When she puts the phone down she realizes she is not entirely sure what she will say to either of them when or if they do.
Angeline Mercer has been divorced twice, the second time after she caught her husband sleeping with the nanny. She at least might be sympathetic to Nisha’s situation. Angeline greets her charmingly, listens while Nisha explains insouciantly that there has been a little situation with Carl—all rather embarrassing—and could she possibly just see her way to wiring her a small sum while she sorts it all out? Angeline’s voice is just as smooth when she tells her that, yes, Carl had explained the situation to James, and she is very sorry but they don’t really feel they can get involved. “It would be like taking sides,” she says sweetly, making it quite clear which side they have taken.
Nisha wants to ask what the “situation” was that Carl had described, but some last vestige of pride will not allow her to. “I quite understand. So sorry to have troubled you,” she says calmly. And then lets out three curses so bald and extreme that they would have sent her grandmother racing for the emergency Bible.
She does not try anyone else. Nisha is not big on female friends. School had left her with a deep distrust of the subtly volatile dynamics that form when girls get together. Female friendships were febrile, prone to little explosions, frequently leaving you feeling like the ground was shifting under your feet in ways you couldn’t quite fathom. After she left home and started her new life in the city, she was too nervous of betraying herself to feel she could truly unburden herself to anyone, except Juliana. And she doesn’t think about Juliana any more. Some things are just too painful. No, women trade compliments or troubles like currency. Women smile understandingly at your confidences, then use them against you like weapons. Men she finds predictable, and Nisha likes predictability. You behave a certain way, a man responds in a way that is manageable. She understands the rules of this game.
And then, of course, as the wife of any wealthy man knows, other women become competitors, threats to a hard-won status quo. When she was newly married to Carl, there were the women who eyed her with disdain—team Carol—who couldn’t believe Carl had been so disappointingly predictable, so obvious. But Nisha didn’t put a foot wrong as Carl’s wife. She educated herself into his world so comprehensively that there was no tiny crack in which weakness could be exposed. She had watched Carl’s friends’ marriages implode around her in stages, just as his first had, and she understood exactly what was going on with the new wives, their careful, blank faces and honeyed words, that each was loyal only unto her husband and her own position.
Yes, that had served her very well indeed, until she reached forty and learned there was a whole new threat. The younger women. The ones who would sniff out a sell-by date, and decide, like a targeted missile, to home in. Tight young bodies, willing to please, pleased to be willing, with nothing to lose and not yet weighed down by disappointment or anger or just plain exhaustion at trying to be all the things all the time. Nisha, in response, learned just to be better. She was a good-looking woman, her hair lustrous, her skin the constant recipient of whatever top-of-the-range serums and moisturizers hit the market, so that she frequently passed for someone ten years younger. She worked out every day, had her nails done weekly, her waxes done fortnightly, her hair extensions refreshed every four weeks, Botox every twelve. She was there, ready for him in La Perla, fresh flowers in his room, his favorite wine in the cellar. She laughed at his jokes, applauded his speeches, flattered his colleagues and emphasized his superiority and virility in infinite subtle ways, in public and private. She replaced his shirts and pants, booked his barber’s appointments before the assistant knew they were even due, made sure every property was ready for his arrival with his favorite food and wines. She allowed no domestic stresses to impede his path. She let nothing drop. She was all over this being-female thing.
And it turns out even that isn’t fucking enough.
Nisha has walked to four different cashpoints in the vicinity and each one has either swallowed her remaining array of cards or spat them out, telling her in bald digital terms to contact bank staff. But she doesn’t have to contact bank staff to know what is going on here. She had walked to Mangal, the exclusive boutique she had used for the past five years whenever she was in London, and before she had even tried on the thick Alexander McQueen coat, Nigella, the manager, had come out to explain that she was very sorry but Mr. Cantor had closed their account that morning and without a credit card they were not going to be able to help. She had peered surreptitiously at the toweling robe as she said the words, as if trying to assess if this was some new-season fashion-forward item she hadn’t been aware of.