After a long 4th of July firework filled weekend spent by the pool watching small sailboats drift past the house on Fisher's Island, I'm back in Manhattan amid the restful hum of construction, traffic and air conditioning.
Holidays are exhausting - even when the car drops you off outside the Avedon exhibition then picks you up and drives you to the Whitney, then takes you back to mid-Town for dinner, then hovers outside the theatre when the play is over.
I've been primped, pummelled, manicured, pedicured, facialed, and massaged, and it has now been approximately five minutes since my last meal. I'm almost afraid to pop my head out of the guest room in case one of the three members of staff offers me something to eat. Antonio makes my coffee, Zena washes the cup and Paola makes the bed.
Cocktail hour seems to start at five pm, and lunch is at noon (today at the Metropolitain Museum which is two blocks away but I'm guessing we're not walking). The weather has been unseasonably cool, but even so, I'm glad not to spend too much time outside. On the Upper East Side there is not another woman on the streets my size who isn't in the service industry. They walk past me, the wizened and the gaunt; the withered and the well-preserved, the cosmetically enhanced and the too-young-yet to need it, but the one thing they all have in common, apart from perfectly coiffed hair, is bones. Visible bones. These women are competitively thin. It's like they're a different race, all cut from the same slim, petite, fat-free pastry. In comparison I am frankly obese. Of course, America is also the land of the large, and they're out there too. However, like Prince Philip and the Queen, they're usually walking two steps behind, either carrying the shopping, holding the baby, or - most likely of all - supporting the walker or pushing the wheelchair. So when I'm out with Audrey, slim and chic and with a diamond on one finger the size of a Brazil nut, I'm only a few skin shades away from being mistaken for her maid. If I was Hispanic, believe me, shop assistants would be giving me her packages to hold.
I'm suddenly very glad I didn't tan too much over the weekend.
It's not helped by the fact that we unwittingly seem to pick matching outfits every day. For instance, this morning she's in tangerine silk and I'm in Marks and Spencer's orange. You see what I'm getting at? It's like the before and after picture in one of those make-over shows. I really should just wear white overalls and pretend I'm her physical therapist.
We've also been doing a lot of culture:
Last night I saw Mary Stuart transferred here from the Donmar.
Heard in the audience:
First doddery old lady: Yeah it's about Mary Queen of Scots, you know her sister was a lesbian.
Second doddery old lady: A lesbian? My gosh. Really? Her sister or her cousin?
First doddery old lady: 'Not a lesbian. A-lizabeth!'
Second doddery old lady: 'A-lizabeth was a lesbian? Queen A-lizabeth...?
Tonight it's Ruined - a play about Congolese atrocities. Tuesday we caught The Hurt Locker - about an American bomb detonation squad in Iraq at the movies the other night (Audrey and I do like a chic flick), and at Twelfth Night in Central Park on Wednesday, Martha Stewart was in the same row, and Meryl Streep seated a few rows ahead. On Saturday it's a friend's birthday and a big party at the Rockerfeller Center for which another friend, Tim, the Style Guru, offered to lend me some of his jewelry.
(There's something off about that sentence, but I kid you not, he offered me some of his jewelry and we're not talking cuff links!)
Erm. Jewelry? I hadn't realised it was that formal. 'Oh don't worry about it. What are you wearing?' asks Audrey.
'My red dress. The one I wore to your daughter's wedding rehearsal two years ago, on the boat, remember?'
'Mmm. Noooo. I don't think so.'
Obviously I made a great impression.
'The invitation said that the theme was cherries and that we had all wear red and that the dress code was informal.'
Audrey makes a tiny moue of distaste. 'Yes, it did.'
'Why cherries, anyway?'
'He likes them.'
'So, what are you wearing?'
'Oh I have a long blue evening gown but I'm going to dress it down with silver jewelry.'
(I shuffle my hands with all my dressed down silver jewelry that until now I thought was pretty fancy.)
'What about your "something red"?'
'Coral earrings with diamond drops.'
Gulp. I have a sudden picture of everyone tastefully accessorised and me being the one big red blob of colour.
'...but don't worry I can lend you some bling. It'll be fine.'
Later that day we go to her daughter's studio in the flower district (while the driver idles outside and waits for us) who is doing the party planning for the event. She's carrying a red evening purse. Her husband has a red pochette.
'Don''t you two look cute in your matching outfits? You're like something from the Golden Girls...' says the daughter as we walk (in my case, pant - it's a fourth floor walk up) into her studio.
I'd be Bea - the one who looks like a man.
She and her assistant have made ten bonsai cherry trees from which they are hanging real cherries and tissue paper cherry blossom. She has cut out eighty-eight cherry decals which will decorate the napkins on all the tables. She shows us the red chargers that our friend has chosen to dress the tablecloths, swatches of which are laid out on her work table. She flicks through them trying out various place settings.
'This works with some of the tablecloths, but not all of them,' she says, setting them all out in a line.
The first is red and shimmery, almost sequined. The second has tiny stars sprinkled across it. And, the third, I notice with a horrible jolt, is red with white polka dots.
'Oh Frick!' I gasp (Btw - yet another of the museums we've visited, in which Audrey held her 25th Wedding Anniversary, so as we walked round instead of saying -'look at the Gainsborough', it was 'we had the drinks here... and the Gold Room was the disco, and we sat in front of that Degas...')
'What's wrong?' asked her daughter, glancing up from the faux table setting on which she was balancing piles of cherries.
'Do you remember the dress I wore to your wedding rehearsal dinner on the yacht?'
'No,' she said, 'but I'm sure it was lovely.'
'Well, I don't know about lovely, but what it was, was red with white polka dots.'
She winced.
So on Saturday night at the Rockerfeller Centre, that'll be me folks - the fat woman with the frizzy hair and borrowed bling in a sea of bright pillar box red, wearing the same frock as the fricking table cloths...
Thank gawd all the men will be gay -as well as wearing better jewelry.
