Anna spoke to Mrs. Von Bizmark herself only once, in the late morning. She launched into a rambling preamble about their favorite Montauk diner, “Which had the best doughnuts, which of course I couldn’t eat more than a few bites of . . .” While she talked, Josefina placed the latest request, a prescription dandruff shampoo for Mr. Von Bizmark that the Mrs. had dubbed “his special hair wash,” in a ziplock bag, which went into a shopping bag along with the Mrs.’s satin pillow and a box of Kleenex that she swore just were not the same when purchased at the local IGA. “In any case we drove all the way out there, and it’s freezing, by the way, very cold in a different way than Aspen, where, you know, you expect it to be cold . . .”
“Please put this all in a shopping bag,” Anna mouthed to Josefina, who went to the large closet reserved for their shopping-bag collection. She pulled out an enormous Prada bag and placed everything inside it. Anna wrote out a label (TO BE PICKED UP BY CAR—VON BIZMARK), stuck this on the bag, and mouthed, “Please send this downstairs.”
“All the way . . . all the way out there, and can you believe there were no doughnuts?” Mrs. Von Bizmark loved to talk and talk when she was sad. Perhaps this doughnut disappointment had also occasioned just a half a pill too many.
Before she could launch into another lengthy aimless narrative, Anna interjected, “How about invitations for the lunch? I was thinking we should hop on that if you want to do the lunch in just six weeks.”
“Yes. Something spring, hopeful . . . green.” Anna wrote these three words down.
“Remember the font we used for the Frick cocktails? It was, like, blocky but also rounded.” Anna added these words to her list, while the Mrs. rambled on about invitations prior. “Don’t do anything like the botanical garden. I hate those garish flowers all over them. Or the Ecology Now people—their stuff is so serious.” Anna jotted these notes down. “Just . . . do it perfectly, Anna, OK?” Anna heard Mr. Von Bizmark’s annoyed voice in the background, and the Mrs. abruptly hung up.
Anna said, “Happy New Year,” into the dead phone.
A few minutes later, the Castle called back. But it was only the frightened maid. “Mrs. Von Bizmark wanted me to call you to say Happy New Year!” Which wasn’t quite the same as an actual personal call but was better than nothing. When the phone rang again from the Castle, Anna started to wonder if she’d ever get out of the office.
“Forget something?” Anna said by way of hello.
“Did you know things were this bad?” Phil complained. “She’s all over my ass.” In general, the Mrs. became impossible to please when the Von Bizmarks were not getting along.
“Well, it’s been this tense before, right?”
“Anna, I’m replacing the entire heating system. In a summer home! Summer!”
Anna felt that her job extended to fielding calls like these from overstressed employees; no one could perform under duress. “It’s OK, Phil, so you’ll replace the heating—”
“Pain in my ass, Anna!” he interrupted. “Do you know how many times I’m gonna have to talk to Marco about this?” Indeed, that would be excruciating.
“I understand—”
“And that’s not even why I’m calling!” he interrupted again. “I need you to wire Chef ten thousand dollars.” Phil said it like he was asking for a few singles to tip the valet.
“I’m sorry?”
“Florence sent the jet for her in Colombia, but you know how fishy that looks? Last-minute private jet out of Bogotá on New Year’s Eve? So she had to, you know, grease a few palms, and now we owe her.”
The Von Bizmark chef was a compact lesbian with sleeve tattoos who had some sort of magical hold on Mrs. Von Bizmark’s taste buds. Mr. Von Bizmark would eat whatever medium-rare, dry-aged, on-the-bone steak you put in front of him, but she had to have ten thousand calories of taste packed into a package of one hundred.
“Uh-huh. So now we’re reimbursing the chef for bribes to Colombian immigration officials? Something just seems a little off about this to me.”
“Listen, Anna, we do what we have to do to get the job done. You know it. I know it. And I’m not cooking, you hear? She kept eyeballing me like she expected me to put on an apron, and it was not happening!” Anna sighed. Phil could be so dramatic. “What difference does it make anyway? She got here, threw lunch together, and they loved it. It was the first time they laughed. Well, she laughed. Tomorrow morning, Chef’s making those flavorless cardboard vegan raw whatever muffin balls that the Mrs. loves. Right now, it’s the only thing that’s making her happy, and no one’s asking what it costs.”
When Anna called Marco to transfer the money, it was after five on New Year’s Eve. Not only did he answer his phone, but of course he was ready with his customary response: “Let’s go back to square one,” he said.
“I promise—you don’t want to know, Marco.”
“Now I definitely want to know.”
“Chef needed to bribe Colombian—”
“Never mind,” Marco said.
In this way, Mrs. Von Bizmark was guaranteed her favorite breakfast pastry. That critical task dispatched, Anna dismissed the ladies and raced through the rest of her work, leaving voice mails at the dry cleaners, the contractor, the artist to touch up all those hand-painted leaves and vines. Just as she’d turned out the light, the phone rang one last time. Boston area code.
“Hi, Chester.” Anna greeted the eldest and perhaps least bright Von Bizmark child, a sophomore at Harvard.
“Anna! Happy New Year!” he gushed, possibly already drunk. “Listen, me and some of my friends from the club realized we failed to make a reservation for the private dining room at the Charles. Would you pretty please call? Everyone always does what you say when you call from Mummy’s office.”
“Here’s a tip, Chester. How about you ask one of your friends to call and say that they are in Bambi Von Bizmark’s office? How would the hostess ever know they weren’t?”
“What a fantastic idea!” Chester said, truly impressed. “Thanks, Anna! Have a rager tonight.”
Anna raced through the apartment making sure all the lights were out, windows closed, air-conditioning and heating units off, and appropriate cabinets and doors locked. She wished both doormen and two porters happy New Year as she flagged a cab—a New Year’s treat to herself—to get home sooner, where Adrian would surely be preparing his delicious bolognese, their New Year’s Eve tradition.
But at the front door of their apartment, Anna paused. The rich sounds of Bill Withers drifted out along with the unusual scent of . . . eucalyptus? Lavender? Inside, the sheer cleanliness disoriented her. All her clothes, picked up and put away. Everything vacuumed and shiny. There on the kitchen counter, a bottle of prosecco tilted in ice and two brand-new flutes, of all things. Adrian, in a flattering thin black wool sweater and what appeared to be . . . tailored slacks, stood at the ready.
“Hi,” Anna murmured, gawking at their suddenly immaculate apartment. Adrian gave her a warm kiss. He took her coat, and instead of draping it over his desk chair, he put it on a hanger and into the closet.