Me & My Gals

“Toss that bit of hair over your left shoulder. Okay, now look this way. Lower your chin.”

“Like this?”

“Perfect,” I said, rather enjoying this fashion photographer cosplay. It was a bright Sunday afternoon and I was kneeling on a tufted dining room chair, snapping photos of my client, V.

The wife of an obscenely wealthy investment banker, V lived in a hushed Tribeca loft with a shiba inu named Barnett and an hermitage of shoes that would make Imelda Marcos blush. When I arrived at V’s townhouse, the housekeeper ushered me into a well-appointed dining room where I was to be received. I wandered around the room, studying it as though the police might soon arrive and demand that I describe it in precise detail. From across the room, on a polished credenza, a large framed photo of V smiled at me. In the photo, she wore an attractive silver cocktail dress. She was stunning. She was effortless. She was —

“Hello.” She was right behind me. I spun around and there she was, wearing the same dress from the photo, flashing that same smile. After talking through the party details, V asked if I would take a few photos of her as she scampered out of the room.

I was horrified when she returned and shoved a camera fit for a National Geographic adventure photographer into my shaking hands. “So I just push this button?” V shrugged and began posing, leaning seductively against the dining room table, standing against a door frame, looking wistfully over her shoulder. While the staff stared and set up around us, V and I had our own private photoshoot. Just me and my muse.

There are many strange pockets in the cargo pants of New York but, for me, none so bizarre as the relationship between the wealthy women of Upper Manhattan and their caterer. For many years, I worked for a catering firm in an office buried in the bowels of a historic building near the West Side Highway. The phone would ring and I would beg the gods of fortune to deliver unto me a simple corporate client. Unfortunately, I would often end up on a call taking endless notes from a woman with a name like Bixie.

There is a delicate artistry in private entertaining in New York. There are rules. There are standards. There are things a person simply does not know until, well, until they do.

For instance, the complex nervous system of service entrances in New York residential buildings is a real shock. Caterers arrive with a parade of rolling metal hotboxes filled with sheet trays of food, lugs of ice, and countless cases of wine and liquor. The staff descends into the catacombs via a freight elevator which often leads to a winding maze of corridors with a single painted line on the concrete floor to guide you to your final destination. Sometimes, there’s no elevator at all, rather, a narrow flight of death stairs leading from the street down to the service entrance. Waiters and chefs work as a team, spread out on the staircase, passing each individual case of wine, sheet tray of hors d’oeuvres and heavy metal cabinets down until the job is complete. When the sweaty staff finally land in the actual residence, they are often met with the tapping Chanel slingback of a very irritated woman.

If the labyrinth of Manhattan service entrances is enough to make your head spin, navigating the twisted minds of the people who live in those buildings will give you a cerebral concussion.

I once had a rather severe, older client who preferred never to cross paths with catering staff. There was an invisible line they knew never to cross as it would place them in a direct line of vision if she happened to be in her study. If she wanted, say, a glass of water while staff was setting up near the kitchen, a convulsing assistant would materialize and beg in a panic, “You have to clear this area! She’s going to walk down this hallway! Please!” On a phone call, I once asked her what time I could swing by for a site visit. I could hear her flipping casually through her planner. “Well, Chinese Seamstress comes at 9; can you be here at 9:30?”

Then there was B. B was never unkind but a bit annoying. One afternoon, I was in her home when she suddenly offered me a tour. She glided through each room, pointing at a plate, “I got that in a small shop in Monaco,” or a beautiful book, “My friend, [insert famous person], I’m sure you’ve heard of him, sent me that for my birthday last year. Isn’t that dear?”

The more objects she pointed at, the more sorry for her I felt. With her husband always at work and her child off at college, she was all alone in this massive place, surrounded by her things. She wanted company. So why not throw a party every month. You go, B!

I followed her into a palatial bedroom. She walked to the window and absentmindedly fingered the edge of a sateen curtain draped from the ceiling. “Look at that.” I walked to the window and stood next to her. Across the street, stood the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The iconic stairs. The oversized exhibit banners. “It’s too much,” she whispered, pained. “You know, I do throw a Met Gala party every year, of course. We all huddle together here and watch the arrivals. But the rest of the year? All those people. It’s just too much. It’s far too much. Thank God for my house in Litchfield.” We were so intimate. Like two old friends. What could I say? I nodded knowingly and whispered, “Thank God for that.”