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  9

  They say that age is all in your mind. The trick is keeping it from creeping down into your body.

  —Anonymous

  Any latent guilt Eden had about Wes was drowned in her immediate joy when Otto told her The New York Times Magazine wanted to photograph her for a story on his new works. Her renewed ambition trumped any lingering grief. And then Otto showed her to her own room, massive and clean, gleaming white, and a huge marble bathroom just for her.

  Things were finally happening. No more record store. No more roaches. She could smell the next step, taste it. She’d come a long way from her roots as a brilliant but bored rural high school dropout from the wrong side of the wrong town, itching to get out. And now here she was, posing for Otto Clyde and The New York Times.

  Eden couldn’t help but pinch herself. While everyone would be dead and disintegrated in a century’s time, her image would still stare down from museum walls spanning the globe, tantalizing viewers forever. After her glum childhood and dreams of bigger and better things, here she was: She had pulled it off.

  Later that night, after the other studio hangers-on and one of the dealers left at nightfall, Eden and Otto remained, as he was on deadline for his new show at the Lyle Spence Gallery, which would feature the first finished canvases of his new muse. Eden, newly single, was supercharged and ready to pounce. As the sun was setting and the pair shared a snack in the industrial, skylit kitchen, Eden suggested they get back to work.

  She opened her robe and let it fall to the floor. She walked back to her chaise and lay down as Otto went back to his easel. The artist was fully clothed in khaki pants and a white button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up a bit, with dabs of paint on it. After an hour of painting, and with Eden’s heated gaze alone raising the temperature, they were both even more flirtatious than before. Eden’s back was arched, her brow cunning. Otto unbuttoned his shirt a bit.

  “Is it hot in here?” he asked.

  Without a word, Eden sexily swung her legs over the edge of the chaise. She got up and casually walked over to his easel and faced him. She took the paintbrush out of his hand and chucked it on the floor, red paint from its wet bristles staining the wood. He was clearly stunned: He was used to sexual hunts with beautiful women, but usually he was the predator, not the prey. Eden stepped toward him and pressed her naked body onto his clothed one and kissed him forcefully. Otto shuddered, then molded into her grasp, feverishly returning her kiss. As the great artist breathed and sighed, Eden recognized the texture under her fingertips. She’d known it from the first guy she made out with at a spin-the-bottle party in seventh grade: putty.

  Eden and Otto stumbled against the large white wall behind him as she put a smooth, young leg around him. He turned her around and he kissed her against the wall as she slowly moved her hand downward. The normally in-charge Rembrandt was positively enslaved. His hands shook, and he felt his heartbeat in every pore of his skin. He needed to be inside her. It was the sexual equivalent of a gulp of oxygen after being forced underwater. If he didn’t fuck her that instant, he would die.

  He lived.

  And sadly, that first time Eden and Otto had mad sex on the floor of his studio, the red paint from his hands smearing her breasts and waist, poor Wes, her love of nearly a year and a half, didn’t even enter her mind, not so much as a cameo in her unfolding, color-splattered, libidinous drama. As Otto flipped her over on all fours, Eden had flipped a mental switch. She ravaged Otto, knowing she had her talons in and she would not let go—she would be riding this celebrity train to the finish line, never looking back.

  Just as Otto gasped in climax and screamed Eden’s name, the word echoing in the cavernous loft, her fate was sealed. She had made it: Not only was she in Oz as she had once dreamed, but she was in the arms of the Wizard.

  Va-Va-Voom! Artist Clyde and New Muse Take City by Storm

  Get a Room! Famed painter Otto Clyde kicked up some paint at an exclusive party at the Plaza Hotel on Wednesday night as he engaged in Tonsil Hockey with a mysterious model. Awed onlookers gazed in amazement as the frisky pair pawed each other in a PDA-palooza. “They couldn’t keep their hands off each other!” marveled one reveler. “I thought he was going to eat her face off.”

  Said another in the crowd of chronic-heartbreaker Clyde, who has been linked to Debbie Harry in the early ’80s, plus models Cheryl Tiegs and Tatjana Patitz, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Not so, says a source close to the artist, whose last show sold out opening night, fetching seven-figure price tags: “He’s smitten. He wants her to have his baby. He’s obsessed with her.” Clearly, so was everyone in attendance; the crowd couldn’t take their eyes off the doe-eyed vixen, whose first name was rumored to be Eden. “She’s the hottest girl I’ve ever seen,” said art collector Thor Quackenbush. “She’s pretty much as perfect as it gets.”

  10

  The first twenty years are the longest half of your life.

  —Robert Southey

  Fifteen years later.

  In a sea of black-clad, tattooed, faux-’hawk-sporting Sprockets, Eden and Otto clinked wineglasses in a cavernous white gallery on West Twenty-ninth Street. Steps from where tranny hookers with wigs and protuberant Adam’s apples had tottered on six-inch red patent stilettos only a decade back, the NoChelSoHell (North of Chelsea, South of Hell’s Kitchen) rectangle was now not only un-scary (b-bye to countless taxi garages, heroin dealers, and canine-sized rodentia) but actually borderline posh. The packs of rats had been replaced by Rat Packs of fancy high rollers on the prowl not for a White Castle crust or errant Sabrett hot dog remnant but to scavenge high-priced art, their eyes wide, mouths foaming, and wallets open.

  Schmucks abounded. There were pompous art historians spewing postmodern theory about race, class, and gender; insecure but wealthy collectors racing to put holds on various pieces; art students wearing serial-killer thick-framed glasses; and of course dealers, rubbing their hands together with glee as the show sold out before opening night.

  Tonight was a magnetic draw like none other: the opening of Otto Clyde’s provocative latest works, lauded by critics, chased by buyers as marquee must-haves for their collections. His fame had only ballooned in recent years, as he dabbled in film like Julian Schnabel, his debut lauded and his second feature nominated for a Best Director Oscar. Like Jasper Johns or Andy Warhol before him, his work had a signature, graphic style—part pop silkscreen, part Edward Gorey grisaille. Mostly portraits, his images had a look all their own, one unmistakably Clyde, like a big fat fashion logo for collectors to show off. They loved showing that they could afford a seven-figure Clyde canvas above their couch. It was Otto’s seventh solo show in The Eden Series, which featured the striking, mysterious, and brazenly sexy Eden Clyde, his sassy younger partner, muse, and best friend. Her job was lying nude on his mesmerizing canvases and playing a version of herself in his two movies. Otto had become not only the most famous artist in New York but also the world over, and Eden propelled him to new heights.

  And vice versa. Eden’s ascent by Otto’s side was so rapid, their fame was cometlike. Magazines, television, fashion shows, celebrity friends . . . the world was hers. She’d fallen fast for Otto (and his fast-lane lifestyle), and by her twenty-first birthday she had become pregnant with the child of this thirty-eight-year-old budding international star. She was thrilled to have his baby, a son they named Cole. Despite their frenetic lives, the globe-trotting travel, from the Venice Biennale to fairs in Basel, Maastricht, Toyko, and Miami, to museum openings of his work, Cole was Eden’s passion, and she made sure to create a stable base for him. She wanted him to be centered, despite the dartboard-on-a-map existence they led. While Otto gave gallery talks or had speaking engagements at various arts clubs, Eden would try to sneak off with Cole and weave in and out of winding city streets, discovering tucked-away churches and hidden architectural gems in all the nooks and crannies.

  All the while, Eden didn’t mind the lack of bended knee and ritual
rings—Otto always made it clear that matrimony was for the masses, a biblical opiate to tame the rowdy hordes into little submissive units. It wasn’t for him. And that was fine. It wasn’t for her, either.

  The years passed and she remained cool with it, even as friends like Allison, at twenty-nine, happily walked down the aisle with her doctor boyfriend, Andrew Rubens, reciting vows with dewy eyes and jubilantly tossed bouquets. At each white wedding, a longing for a tulle veil flickered like lightning in Eden’s brain, stealth and momentary between two of her heartbeats. Occasionally she would flip through the New York Times Weddings section and smile warmly at the “Vows” column, a story of how that week’s featured bride and groom met. And then, instead of becoming an emotional thunder crack, the dull temptation vanished. Allison was a radiant bride, showered with petals and presents, embarrassed by the spotlight but relishing her day in the sun. Eden, however, knew that was not her path. She and Otto were the hip couple with the cute growing son, the offbeat stars of their galaxy, like Brangelina but with a much better brand of fame: the kind where only cool people in the know recognize you. She didn’t need to be in the spotlight for a day; she was already basking in it all the time: red carpets, gallery openings, a sexy, grainy campaign for the Marc Jacobs Collection, fashion shoots as a guest model when an editor called for “real” people—she didn’t need to be swathed in organza and snapped in glamorized perfection. That was her job on a daily basis.

  “Look at us,” said Otto, his arm around her as the paparazzi of Europe gathered at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris for a much-hailed retrospective. “We are the toast of the Continent! You are their muse, too.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Eden said, stunned by the hordes of French press and fans, toting cameras, pads, and pens. Her hand cramped from the autographs, her eyes saw orange circles from the blitzes of light from cameras capturing her celebrated visage.

  As the Clydes’ fame and fortune increased through the years, so did Eden’s euphoric high. She had it all: her precious son, Cole, who traveled the world with his parents and aced school when he was home, a partner who worshipped her in Otto, and a career of her own: part mother, part muse. And as more and more canvases of her naked body and fierce stare sold at higher and higher and higher prices to museums on every continent, Eden knew she had not only climbed to the heights she’d once dreamed of, she’d transcended them.

  11

  When I passed forty I dropped pretense, ’cause men like women who got some sense.

  —Maya Angelou

  Meanwhile, on the same island of Manhattan but in a milieu so drastically different it may as well have been Abu Dhabi, two other lovers were at the top of their game. Chase and Liesel, both twenty-five, had been introduced at the Ball for New York Hospital, where both of their mothers served as trustees, and were instantly the toast of the diamond-paved philanthropic circles of Manhattan. The It Couple. The heads of every junior committee, the most invited guests, the boldfacers on social columns and best-dressed lists. Their evenings were filled with grand parties, opening-night theater tickets, and tête-à-tête cocktails. Their weekends featured jaunts to their families’ country homes, friends’ lavish destination weddings, and little getaways to the Wheatley in Lenox, Massachusetts, or the Mayflower in Washington, Connecticut. Not to mention dinner every night in a capital-lettered ZAGAT establishment: As any discerning eater knows, a restaurant in all-caps means TOTALLY YUMMY BUT FUCKING EXPENSIVE.

  “You look beautiful tonight, Buttercup,” Chase said, taking Liesel’s hand as she stepped from their chauffeur-driven car. He had nicknamed her that not for the gold-hued flower but for her resemblance to Robin Wright Penn.

  “Aw, thank you, sweetie,” she said, lifting her delicate wrist so he would notice the thin emerald-laced links. “Look, I’m wearing my new bracelet!”

  “You wear it well.”

  “I love it!”

  “I was thinking we should go up to Blantyre this weekend, what do you think?” Chase asked. “It was really great last time when the weather was freezing.”

  “Hmmm . . . what about the Wheatley?” Liesel asked, tilting her perfectly coiffed head in serious consideration. Ahh, decisions, decisions. “That food was so delicious. Plus remember that massage therapist who came to our room? Oh, I just love that place. It’s so cozy. But the Blantyre’s great, too. Up to you!”

  “Then the Wheatley it is,” Chase said, as if they had just settled on a strategy in a business meeting. “I’ll have Pam book it in the morning.”

  When the backdrop for time together is so romantic, lubricated with Dom, sparkling with gems, and scented with peonies delivered weekly from L’Olivier, relationship cracks take longer to emerge. In five-star hotels, anyone could feel misty eyed and hit in the ass by Cupid’s arrow. Hot meal, hot tub, hot sex.

  Also, Chase was as gorge as he was loaded. Chase DuPree Lydon’s facial architecture was so refined that you could slash your wrist on his chiseled cheekbone, and his eyes were so blue you’d bet the Vineyard compound that they were colored contacts. If a New Yorker cartoonist were commissioned to create a caricature of his perfect visage, it would be the artistic equivalent of shooting a fish in a barrel: too easy. He was almost too handsome, too perfect. Not that he was ridiculous like Gaston in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, overmuscled with Leno’s chin and beefy ’roidy chest. No, his handsome beauty, innocent and cold, was like a child’s, gripping and hypnotic. When Chase walked into Waverly Inn or Da Silvano, everyone—from Graydon to Anna to countless celebs—turned to look at him. Even tourists who didn’t know who he was wondered, “Who’s that?” sensing instantly he was at least B List.

  Like JFK Junior before him, this scion of a world-renowned, prominent political family had been in the public eye since a very young age. His attractive, popular maternal grandfather, Price Hutton DuPree, had been a United States senator, ambassador to the Court of St. James, and then head of the United Nations. His mother, Brooke DuPree Lydon, had married his father, Grant Lydon, in a grand society wedding at the University Club in Haute Couture, chronicled in Vogue. Brooke was a Hitchcock blonde, picture perfect, pulled together and full of pronouncements, be they political (“I’m to the right of Mussolini and proud!”) or fashion-related (“People over ten who wear Crocs should be executed.”). Brooke had three sisters (Paige, Blair, and Lynne) and followed in her family’s tradition of curt, monosyllabic names for her three sons: Price, Pierce, and Chase. The four DuPree girls had been blond photogenic catnip for the press, waving beside their parents at the Republican convention or riding their thoroughbreds in Millbrook, and now so were Brooke’s three sons. They were constantly snapped by shutterbugs—on the beach in Massachusetts or at a polo match in the Hamptons or at a black-tie ball on New York’s benefit circuit.

  Truth be told, Chase didn’t really care for the air-kissing scene of Manhattan’s elite. He had been educated at Buckley, Groton, Princeton, and Harvard Business School, with classmates at each institution whose family names were synonymous with those on the Fortune 500. But while he had never cared about any of that crap, and even sometimes wanted to bag some of these sometimes twice-weekly rituals, Chase was dutiful. He was the model son who never got into trouble at school (whereas Price has been expelled from Andover and spent his senior year at a public school in Southampton, near the family estate). And forget about the entitled generation: Chase exhibited what his mother, Brooke, called “the work ethic of a Filipino,” laboring for his family firm till all hours, while Pierce had been “between jobs” for six years (read: does jack shit). Both of his brothers rolled in the proverbial hay with blond tits-on-sticks with head shots and their own Web sites who may have shimmied by a greased pole or two, and had names that ended in the letter i, the classy nomenclature kiss of death. But good Chase dated a shining star of Mayflower descent on par with the DuPree Lydon pedigree: Liesel van Delft. No Brandis or Candis for him.

  Yet as the years passed, the union that would have had his
forefather’s fossils cheering from their cobwebbed graves, all was not well. Though it was a sunlit, romantic courtship, by twenty-eight, Chase and Liesel were coasting on a cross between love and inertia.

  “Sweetie,” Liesel said one night as they undressed for bed. “I feel like you don’t even notice my new matching lingerie. I splurged at La Perla and you barely looked up.”

  “Oh, it’s beautiful, honey. I’m so sorry, I’m just, I have a splitting headache.”

  “I have seventeen sets of perfect matchy-matchy sexy stuff. I even went for this magenta set, and it’s like . . . I may as well be wearing my eighth-grade Calvins.”

  “Not true, Buttercup. I’m just in agony, that’s all. I need to take some Excedrin.”

  The truth was, he had hardly noticed her pinup getup. Under her cream-colored cashmere twinsets, strings of pearls, and proper pencil skirts, she always paired together a lacey confection. Part patrician kindergarten teacher and part burlesque, Liesel made an effort to rock some titillating lingerie beneath her ho-hum one-notch-above-Talbots WASPy attire. But no such luck tonight for her hope to have her longtime boyfriend crave her. Within a few minutes, after bringing him the two capsules and a drink of bottled water to wash them down, she had slipped a silk floor-length nightgown over her head and was over it.

  The next night, Liesel tried her luck again. Perhaps soon she could get a sense of what her boyfriend’s intentions were.

  “Mother says we make quite the handsome couple,” Liesel mused as the duo caught sight of themselves on the mirrored door of an elevator up to the Rainbow Room on yet another glamorous date night.