The Starter Wife Read online

  Praise for “quick-witted beach book queen”

  (The New York Times)

  GIGI LEVANGIE GRAZER

  THE STARTER WIFE

  “In The Starter Wife, with delirious aplomb, nerves of Sub Zero steel, and a mordant case of the giggles, Gigi Levangie Grazer covers a very expensive waterfront: that gated colony inhabited by the great EWs: Entertainment Weekly, Edith Wharton, and Evelyn Waugh.”

  —Bruce Wagner, author of The Chrysanthemum Palace

  “Acidic and unforgiving, Gigi Levangie Grazer’s hilariously accurate skewering of the mores—and the morons—of Hollywood left a deliciously vile taste in my mouth, and I loved it!”

  —Simon Doonan, columnist for The New York Observer and author of Nasty

  MANEATER

  “[Grazer] gets Maneater right. The reader can savor this book’s silliness while appreciating its cleverness equally well.”

  —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

  “One of those gobble-up-in-one-sitting reads, perfect for summer.”

  —New York Post

  “You’ll eat up this funny look at an obsession with a Hollywood hunk.”

  —Cosmopolitan

  “A hip, clever story that will have you laughing from the gut. Grazer does a marvelous job depicting vibrant Beverly Hills socialites while simultaneously poking fun at their shallow habits and quirky vernacular.”

  —USA Today

  “The season’s best beach read.”

  —Daily Candy

  “Deliciously cynical, from the triple-cheek-air-kiss school.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “A scathing satire of L.A. society (to use the term loosely)… . Grazer gives Clarissa just enough intelligence and spark to make her shameless antics deliciously entertaining.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Naughty but nice…. A transcendental study of post Prada/Prozac existential despair.”

  —Helen Fielding, author of Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

  “This is a very entertaining and lively book—but women aren’t really like that, right?”

  —Steve Martin, author of The Pleasure of My Company

  “Gigi Levangie Grazer’s gloriously ditzy L.A. party girls make the women of Sex and the City seem like a bunch of stuffy New York intellectuals.”

  —Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children

  “Grazer has a secret weapon: her preternatural acid powers of observation…. Her eye for detail—and her refusal ever to make Clarissa lovable, or even likable—make Maneater a hypnotic read.”

  —Amazon.com

  “Grazer … never loses sight of the hilariously self-centered, devilish core of her creation’s personality…. Clarissa is one for the ages.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Also by Gigi Levangie Grazer

  Rescue Me

  Maneater

  DOWNTOWN PRESS, published by Pocket Books 1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2005 by Last Punch Productions, Inc.

  Originally published in hardcover in 2005 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-6503-4

  ISBN-10: 0-7432-6503-3

  eISBN: 978-1-416-51719-1

  This Downtown Press trade paperback edition April 2006

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  DOWNTOWN PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected].

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book is a work of satirical fiction. The characters, conversations, and events in the novel are the product of my imagination, and no resemblance to any actual conduct of real-life persons, or to actual events, is intended. For the sake of verisimilitude, certain public figures are briefly referred to or make appearances in the novel, but their descriptions, actions, and words are wholly fictitious and are not intended to be understood as descriptions of real or actual events, or to reflect in any way upon the actual conduct or character of these public figures.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to the team: David Rosenthal, Marysue Rucci, Jennifer Rudolph-Walsh, Sylvie Rabineau, Stephanie Davis, Tara Parsons, Kerri Kolen, Victoria Meyer, Michael Selleck, Aileen Boyle, Louise Burke, Katie Finch, Lynn Goldberg, and Megan Underwood. I’d also like to thank that very nice man at FedEx. Thanks for all the support from my friends, Julie Jaffe, Leslee Newman, and Julia Sorkin. Now you can read the rest of the book. Thanks to Michael Smith for obvious reasons (you’d have to know him). Thank you to my family, my three sisters, Julie Levangie Purcell, Mimi Levangie, and Suzy Levangie Kurtz. Thank you to my mother, Phillipa Brown, who has sent me cartoons about the particular pitfalls of having raised a writer. It’s a good thing she was a good mother. Thank you to my father, Frank Levangie, who looks like Paul Newman and is momentarily single. Thank you to my two step-teenagers, Riley and Sage Grazer, and my two little boys, Thomas and Patrick, for giving me so much joy and so little tsuris.

  THE STARTER WIFE

  “SHE LOOKS TERRIBLE. Oh my God. The girl’s got skunk hair.”

  Cluck, cluck.

  “She’s falling apart … hold up, is that a smile on her face? Look at those lines! Calling Doctor Botox! Calling Nurse Restylane!”

  Cluck.

  “She used to be a size four. Call me a liar, but you could sell that butt in Brentwood Park—that back end is lot-size—”

  Cluck!

  Gracie Pollock found herself standing in a half-moon contour with The Three Blondes, her Jimmy Choo stilettos sinking into damp, pricey Bermuda grass. She listened as she sucked a syrupy liquid with just enough alcohol through a straw; just enough alcohol to ward off the mental lucidity that would entice her to run for her life.

  It was a fortieth birthday party for a friend. Well, not a friend, exactly, more like an acquaintance. The Wife Of … who was she the wife of, again? Anyway, seemed easy enough. An endless lawn filled with the ultimate in well-groomed wives. Rumors of a midday concert by Cyndi Lauper singing, what else—“Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Gracie thought it might even be something these gatherings rarely were: a good time. Until she pulled up in her Volvo SUV, walked along the side of the Seussian Italianate mansion (cursing her choice of footwear as she slid into the muck with each step), and saw who was there.

  Mean girls. The meanest of the mean in L.A.—every single woman who had nothing good to say about anybody was in attendance. There were no smiles; there were only sneers. Each one of these Evil Barbies could cut you with a look, lacerate you with one word, disembowel your confidence with a flick of their hair extensions.

  And somehow, she’d found herself standing with The Three Blondes. Otherwise known as The Three Meanest Bitches in Town—Don’t Even Think of Crossing Them.

  They were something out of a warped fairy tale. One was short and ferocious—Gracie thought she resembled a pig with eyebrows; one was a bit taller, with an expansive bosom (they’re hers; she bought them) and stick legs (ditto, above); the third loomed over the others, one feature larger than the next. Her man-hands coul
d easily carry a sub-Saharan continent plus her ten-year collection of Birkin bags.

  And they liked her. They liked Gracie, which didn’t please her so much as strike terror in her soul. Where had she gone wrong? she wondered as they gathered around her like the parasitic flies that hang on cattle.

  Their object of derision was the latest victim in a series of divorces that had rocked the West L.A. basin like a 6.2 earthquake.

  The freshly divorced divorcée had the nerve to walk into the party without a Westside passport and, worse, without a proper escort—a current Wife Of. She now lived in a condo on the east side of the universally recognized border of La Cienega Boulevard, and seemed to be unaware that her Westside friends had abandoned her. She had boldly, improperly, assumed that the gilded invitation sent to her before her separation still held two months later.

  “The nerve,” the tall one sniffed, and sucked down her daiquiri, the straw disappearing momentarily into the recesses of her giant, giant mouth before popping out suddenly, causing Gracie to jump back. The bruises around the rim of her oversize lips stubbornly showed through the inch-thick smear of industrial-strength MAC Lipglass; she must have had her collagen shots just that morning, Gracie thought. A violation of the coda—no shots on the day of an event.

  “She used to be The Wife Of,” the medium one oozed. “Now, she’s just another Starter Wife.”

  Cluck. Gracie heard chickens whenever she bumped into the three. She knew it had something to do with her nerves, and would probably require a pill and an afternoon of needles punctured into her forehead at Dr. Zhu’s. Luckily, she could score an emergency appointment; having sent Dr. Zhu on the requisite first-class weekend trip to Punta Mita, Gracie was at the top of the VIP list.

  “Gracie.” The short one turned on her and narrowed her steel, bullet-slug orbs. “What do you think of her?”

  “Well,” said Gracie, caught between a rock and a hard-ass. She stared at the divorcée, hesitant to add to the venal brew. Time slowed. She could hear herself breathing. “She doesn’t look the same,” was what Gracie finally declared.

  The three clucked with vigor and bobbed their blond heads, and Gracie asked, “You girls want anything?” (Translation: “Steal me away from Satan’s Brides!”) She scurried off not toward the bar but the freeway, serenaded by the sound of Cyndi and her band setting up. Cyndi screeched into the popping microphone, “Forty ROCKS!” as Gracie’s three-and-a-half-inch heels sank into a lawn that had obviously been watered several hours ago. For that, Gracie thought, my husband would have fired the gardener.

  Gracie waited for her car in the circular driveway, watching the college-student valets run and park, run and park, and wondered about the divorcée. She didn’t look the same, Gracie thought. She looked … older. She looked … not so blond. She looked … rounder, softer …

  And something else, Gracie thought. She didn’t look mean.

  She looked, Gracie thought, could it be?

  Normal.

  “Girls just wanna have fu-un!” Cyndi sang, her signature voice and song somehow dancing around the stone, pillared behemoth, ten thousand square feet of home to two children, two parents, and nine “staff.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Pollock,” said the valet with the blue blazer and the cloying expression that telegraphed he was looking for his Mrs. Robinson, as he jogged toward her. “Leaving already?”

  “Oh-oh, girls just wanna have fun!”

  YOU CAN’T AVOID THEM. Don’t even try. They’re everywhere. Polished hair, polished nails, tucked, sucked, blown, bleached, waxed, Martin Katzed, and decked. Early morning? They’re piloting their Navigators with the backseat DVDs blasting Finding Nemo in the car-pool lane at the Brentwood School, or crouching in a toddler circle at Mommy and Me at Bright Child comparing diamond ring settings.Ten-ish? They’re IMing their Realtors searching for the illusory two-acre flat before twisting their limbs into erotic poses at Hot Tub Tony’s class at Maha Yoga; after a bout of ujjayi breathing, they’re hoisting soy green tea blendeds at Coffee Bean on San Vicente. At lunch, they’re raking a carbless chicken-pecan salad with sterling forks at Barney Greengrass or draining Chardonnay decanters at the Ivy. Post-perc aperitif, you’ll spy them trolling a Tuleh or Valentino trunk show on the second floor of Neiman’s, assisted by a fluttering personal shopper. In late afternoon, the devotional worship at the Church of the Holy Mother of Upkeep: hair blown stick straight at Chris McMillan, nails French manicured at Jessica’s on Sunset Plaza, Botox injected by dermos Arnie or Harold (after trying to decipher, say, Jennifer Aniston’s name on the blacked-out patient sign-in board). Perhaps later they’ll have their auras read by Lola the Chiropractor on West Pico, or while away the late afternoon firing a nanny because the baby called her “Mommy” and then complaining about the ensuing trauma to the tennis coach who has taught them everything but the serve. Evening? Unearth them at a Cedars Sinai fund-raiser at the Beverly Hilton, swaying to the pop stylings of Miss Natalie Cole, or posing for a picture for Angeleno Magazine in the matron-chic Chanel suits their husbands loathe (they paid too much for the new breasts to keep those puppies imprisoned in tweed). Another night, they’ll be attending the Holmby Hills version of the Oprah Book Club, hosted by a gaggle of blond doppelgängers eager to appear knowledgeable about something other than who the go-to girl is this week at Louis Vuitton.

  And sometimes they even put their children to bed.

  In the morning, the cycle begins again.

  Among the numerous subcultures found in Los Angeles—the Sunset Strip Euros, the La Cañada skatepunks, the Hollywood Hills posers, the Encino Valley girls (yes, they still exist), the Echo Park graffitos, the Montebello gangsters, the Zuma surf rats, the West Hollywood buff boys, the Palisades breeders, the Santa Monica socialists, the Pasadena neocons, the Armenians, Mexicans, Vietnamese, El Salvadorans, Filipinos, Koreans, Russians, Hasids—there exists one civilization specific to its geographic origin, one which does not exist anywhere else.

  The Wife Of.

  The Wife Of could be married to the suit who runs the World Bank or the impotent action movie star, the elderly real estate magnate or the philandering studio chief. Powerful men may run the world, but the “Wives Of” run the powerful men.

  At least, until their worst fear happens—the divorce that turns a Wife Of into a mere Starter Wife.

  ENTER GRACIE POLLOCK. At every breakfast, lunch, dinner, party, school, or charity event for close to ten years, she’d been introduced as the “wife of …” In the beginning, this dubious title riled her. In one fell swoop, the wife of negated not only Gracie’s existence prior to marriage, but her own contributions to the world (however feeble they may appear to, say, Doctors Without Borders). In the beginning, she would fight back by wielding her maiden name like a discus, throwing it out at whomever she met. But the hard truth was “Gracie Peters” would draw blank stares. After a stretch, she attempted to clarify, tacking her husband’s last name onto hers. Gracie became a thing unwieldy and confusing: the three-named woman.

  And the blank stares persisted.

  Finally, after several years of valiant resistance against the social mores, Gracie was beaten; she became so inculcated into the Wife Of culture that, like a dog who rolls onto his back at the first whiff of confrontation, she succumbed completely. The facts were cold and brutal: The Wife Of could get an eight o’clock reservation at Spago on a Friday night; The Wife Of could line jump at Disneyland; The Wife Of got 20 percent off at any of the designer boutiques on Rodeo Drive; The Wife Of got her kid into the school of her choice.

  The Wife Of attained admission to The Club.

  The Wife Of existed.

  In the post—“Gracie Peters” epoch, if Gracie were to have met you, at a political luncheon, a school fair, or restaurant opening, she would have automatically, graciously, casually, introduced herself as the “Wife of …”

  But there was nothing casual about her decision.

  WIFE NUMBER ONE

  The former soap sta
r married to an Oscar-winning producer was looking forward to an annual Oscar party. There was only one glitch: She had gained fifteen pounds in the last year. “Baby weight,” she sighed to her stylist as she struggled into a Narciso Rodriguez floor-length gown. “You have no idea how hard it is to lose.”

  Her bouncing baby girl was almost nine months old.

  She had been born to a surrogate.

  1

  MARRIED, WITH ONION RINGS

  CELLULITE MASSAGE is not for the faint of heart. Which is what Gracie Pollock was thinking as her thighs were pounded by the grunting Russian woman who left her bruised, swollen, and otherwise disfigured every other Monday at three o’clock for the last five years. Gracie’s calendar was filled with benign-sounding yet brutal “treatments”: Tuesdays were hair (blow-dry, cut, and highlights, if needed),Wednesdays were waxing or plucking,Thursdays belonged to dermabrasion or acid peels or any variety of activities involving needles and the hope of Insta-Youth, Fridays were off days, save for the second blow-dry of the week, when Gracie would compare her week of treatments to her friends’ week of treatments over lunch at The Ivy.

  You want irony? For the privilege of emerging from a session with Svetlana looking like she’d been locked in a freak dance with Mike Tyson, Gracie would write a check out to “Cash” for $250 and hand it over with shaking hands.