doing some mental addition about its cost. “I’m not that hungry. I’m just going to have a salad.” She eyeballs the bottle of champagne as Claire pours her a glass; a bottle of Dom Pérignon’s got to be, what, eighty dollars? A hundred? Surely they won’t expect her to share the bill for that since, after all, she didn’t order it. But just one teensy glass would really hit the spot.
A waiter materializes behind her and silently hands her a menu. It lists only three salads; the cheapest, microgreens with anchovy foam, is $18. Dismayed, Margaret scans the menu, but the only item any cheaper is a side dish of mashed potatoes for $13, which, regardless of its ludicrous price ($13 for potatoes?), she would simply look silly ordering as her main course.
“The microgreens, please,” she tells the waiter. “And that’s it.” Margaret sees him glance at her, size her up, and write her off as just another anorexic actress picking at lettuce. Margaret wants to explain to him, I don’t have an eating disorder, really; I’m just on a budget! but he’s already turned on his heel and vanished. The smell of roasting salmon from the kitchen makes Margaret’s stomach gurgle loudly—the only thing she’s eaten today is mac-n-cheese from a box—and she resists the urge to gobble down the forbidden lobster tails. Instead, she takes a dinner roll and slathers it thickly with butter.
Claire, who needs a booster seat to see over the pile of discarded oyster shells, says something no one can hear over the blaring electronica sound track. She has cropped her blond hair into a Mia Farrow pixie, exposing tiny shell-like ears hung with oversized gold chandelier earrings, which Margaret knows were purchased from the proceeds of Claire’s last solo art show; she’d sold one of her photographs—a full-sized self-portrait of herself naked except for leather chaps, titled Hairless Claire —to the pop star Bobby Masterston. Margaret tries not to stare at the earrings, or at Josephine’s Balenciaga purse or Alexis’s cashmere hoodie. She tries not to care—she knows perfectly well that she shouldn’t care, that doing so is just succumbing to an advertising-driven culture of consumption, and why should it really matter whether the dress she’s wearing has a designer label or whether the car she’s driving has leather seats, as long as she’s attired and gets where she needs to be? Isn’t that the whole point of everything she’s been writing? But the bitter realization is that Margaret does care. She cares when she’s invited over to Alexis’s new house, a gorgeous midcentury oasis with an ovoid swimming pool and views all the way to Santa Monica, whereas her own home is a sweltering studio apartment in a concrete-block building that smells of mold and cat urine. She cares when her friends go on two-week vacations at four-star yoga retreats in Bali, while she can’t even scrape up enough cash to make it across the border to Rosarito Beach. She cares about her friends’ increasingly expensive wardrobes, their automobiles, their furniture, their stereo systems, and, most of all, their enviable professional successes.
It was easy, initially, to pretend that all the people in their social group were equals. Struggling artists, writers, filmmakers, actors, everyone in their mid-twenties: creative talents with big goals and small budgets. Margaret, as the impoverished editor of her own magazine, had felt that she was among peers. But at some point their paths diverged, and as they came up against their thirties her friends had started to make real money—selling screenplays, directing films and music videos, holding art openings—whereas she was still on a yard-sale budget. It was easier, when she was with Bart, to ignore the financial gap between them: Bart was also starting to make money, lots of money, and he insisted on paying for Margaret on those occasions when she balked at $15 martinis, and on anteing up more than
A waiter materializes behind her and silently hands her a menu. It lists only three salads; the cheapest, microgreens with anchovy foam, is $18. Dismayed, Margaret scans the menu, but the only item any cheaper is a side dish of mashed potatoes for $13, which, regardless of its ludicrous price ($13 for potatoes?), she would simply look silly ordering as her main course.
“The microgreens, please,” she tells the waiter. “And that’s it.” Margaret sees him glance at her, size her up, and write her off as just another anorexic actress picking at lettuce. Margaret wants to explain to him, I don’t have an eating disorder, really; I’m just on a budget! but he’s already turned on his heel and vanished. The smell of roasting salmon from the kitchen makes Margaret’s stomach gurgle loudly—the only thing she’s eaten today is mac-n-cheese from a box—and she resists the urge to gobble down the forbidden lobster tails. Instead, she takes a dinner roll and slathers it thickly with butter.
Claire, who needs a booster seat to see over the pile of discarded oyster shells, says something no one can hear over the blaring electronica sound track. She has cropped her blond hair into a Mia Farrow pixie, exposing tiny shell-like ears hung with oversized gold chandelier earrings, which Margaret knows were purchased from the proceeds of Claire’s last solo art show; she’d sold one of her photographs—a full-sized self-portrait of herself naked except for leather chaps, titled Hairless Claire —to the pop star Bobby Masterston. Margaret tries not to stare at the earrings, or at Josephine’s Balenciaga purse or Alexis’s cashmere hoodie. She tries not to care—she knows perfectly well that she shouldn’t care, that doing so is just succumbing to an advertising-driven culture of consumption, and why should it really matter whether the dress she’s wearing has a designer label or whether the car she’s driving has leather seats, as long as she’s attired and gets where she needs to be? Isn’t that the whole point of everything she’s been writing? But the bitter realization is that Margaret does care. She cares when she’s invited over to Alexis’s new house, a gorgeous midcentury oasis with an ovoid swimming pool and views all the way to Santa Monica, whereas her own home is a sweltering studio apartment in a concrete-block building that smells of mold and cat urine. She cares when her friends go on two-week vacations at four-star yoga retreats in Bali, while she can’t even scrape up enough cash to make it across the border to Rosarito Beach. She cares about her friends’ increasingly expensive wardrobes, their automobiles, their furniture, their stereo systems, and, most of all, their enviable professional successes.
It was easy, initially, to pretend that all the people in their social group were equals. Struggling artists, writers, filmmakers, actors, everyone in their mid-twenties: creative talents with big goals and small budgets. Margaret, as the impoverished editor of her own magazine, had felt that she was among peers. But at some point their paths diverged, and as they came up against their thirties her friends had started to make real money—selling screenplays, directing films and music videos, holding art openings—whereas she was still on a yard-sale budget. It was easier, when she was with Bart, to ignore the financial gap between them: Bart was also starting to make money, lots of money, and he insisted on paying for Margaret on those occasions when she balked at $15 martinis, and on anteing up more than
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