“I told you to take the checkbook away!” Marco screeched into her ear, willing for once not to go back to square one. Anna showed Julie the invitation proof with Mrs. Von Bizmark’s red shrieking scrawl all over it and mouthed the word Shit!
“What do we do now?” Anna asked Marco placidly. She handed Julie the slip of paper that said Please invite Richard. Make sure Opal is coming. And mouthed “to the meeting.” Julie nodded.
“Easy! All you have to do is get the check back.”
“How am I going to do that?”
“I don’t know. Tell them it’s going to bounce. Tell them we’ll wire the money from another account.” Neither of those solutions would play well with the Mrs. In the meantime, she’d have to hope for an interception. Anna could not help but feel that if she had been more on her game, somehow this wouldn’t have happened.
“Richard will be attending,” Julie reported as Anna untangled herself from the phone cord. “Opal . . . I’m not so sure. I left voice mails everywhere.”
Anna studied the calendar for the day. At one p.m., the Mrs. was supposed to have lunch at Sant Ambroeus with a few other women just like her—fighting idleness at every turn—but not true friends. This was crossed out. Dinner with another couple—business associates of Mr. Von Bizmark’s—was also obliterated with a fatal Sharpie X. Very ominous. Anna braced herself.
Like many, rich people lashed out at those closest to them in stressful times. Unlike most, rich people sat atop many layers of staff, all of whom were prepared to take it on the chin, even when not strictly speaking deserved. She hated having to stand by while a coworker got reamed, jumping in at the earliest possible moment to defuse the situation and later counseling the employee: although staff worked in the home, the job was not personal.
These sorts of abuses were unusual but not unheard of in the Von Bizmark home. Generally, Mrs. Von Bizmark was simply curt when unhappy, but in the worst times she struck out at the nearest person: Phil for allowing a single piece of trash to wash up on their private beach, Julie for forgetting her Wednesday at-home nail appointment. Even the Von Bizmark family members could be on the receiving end of a loud diatribe about tardiness, rudeness, or—in one particularly disturbing interlude—weight gain. In a fit of postpartum sleep deprivation, the Mrs. had once famously screamed at Cristina for using the wrong brand of baking soda to scrub the grout in the nursery bathroom. “This stuff is poison! Poison!” she screeched. “You’ll kill him! My Chester! Dead!” Once she’d recovered from what seemed retrospectively to have been a bout of postpartum psychosis, the Mrs. ate crow with Cristina, who stood ramrod straight, hands clasped at her waist, cheeks sucked throughout the Mrs.’s brief apology.
The one person who thus far had floated above reproach in the household—safe from verbal abuse—was Anna herself. As Anna was an overeducated, reserved, highly capable professional private assistant, Mrs. Von Bizmark had thankfully placed her in an untouchable category. In a way, Anna was the only person who couldn’t be replaced. There just weren’t that many—if any—artistic, unflappable, worldly Yale graduates in their thirties looking for private assistant work. Mrs. Von Bizmark occasionally had to exercise extraordinary self-control over her acid tongue, a skill she hadn’t needed to call upon in decades. Both of them knew that this privilege meant Anna would never look for another job.
But if things got worse in the marriage . . . irreparable. If Anna kept making mistakes . . . well, then, who could say what Mrs. Von Bizmark might do? And while money prevented the commonplace problems that troubled everyone else, even Anna’s employers could suffer in ways that funds could not mend. Anna had grown so accustomed to throwing cash at problems that she had to wonder if Phil was right. Could she do something to preserve the household? Should she?
Probably not.
“Oh, shit,” Julie said, having flipped ahead a few months in the calendar. “It’s their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary the day before the ball.”
The back doorbell rang as workers arrived to finish up their jobs. Julie routed the painter, with her assistant, to their workspace of intricate ivy detailing on the floor. The Silver Fox and his team hustled off with Cristina. Alicia and Josefina guided the dry-cleaning men with their heavy equipment. And finally, Miguel stood at the back door, thankfully no longer in a suit. He carried a slightly larger toolbox at least and a crate full of what appeared to be secondhand parts.
Anna waited for him to look her in the eye before letting him come inside. “Look, Miguel, just don’t screw me on this, OK?”
“Don’t worry about it!” he said, which made Anna feel not even a little bit better about the situation. But she let him inside anyway, and he lumbered upstairs to the most distant bathroom to fix the smallest of problems.
At her desk, Anna’s intercom buzzed from the Von Bizmark bedroom. “Good morning,” Anna said.
“Yes, what is it?” Drowsy.
“You buzzed me.”
“Why did Cristina just wake me up? A little rudely, I might add.”
“The luncheon-planning meeting is in about half an hour? Less even.”
“That’s right. Anna,” she said pointedly, instantly sharper, “why didn’t you tell me about Felix Mercurion?”
“I . . .” Anna usually had a litany of totally perfect defenses at her disposal: Yes, the jet was unfortunately delayed because our rigorous safety checks turned up a loose bolt in the emergency exit. Yes, your American Express Black Card did just get rejected because I learned only thirty seconds ago your number was hacked by an Iranian arms cartel and was being used to purchase enriched uranium.
But in this case, even her ability to spin the truth a little more favorably utterly failed Anna. “I forgot,” she finally admitted. “There has been so much to take care of.”
“Anna, please, it’s just a lunch!” Mrs. Von Bizmark snapped. Anna remained silent, her usual gambit in times of professional anxiety. “Look, Anna, you know the drill. Get the ball rolling, and I’ll be there when I can.” She still had given little clue about whether the Mercurion surprise was ultimately good or bad.
“Also, I’m reminding you that your twenty-fifth anniversary is the day before the Opera Ball.”
Mrs. Von Bizmark half laughed, half honked. “I can’t think about that now.”
Before the meeting, Anna checked in with each of the crews, assessing not only the quality of their repairs but also the carefulness with which each worker treated the space around them. She didn’t need any more problems and was pleased to find everyone—even Miguel, crouching at the toilet under Josefina’s watchful eye—wearing the disposable cloth booties Cristina had provided and, with stern finger, insisted that they wear at all times. Anna was less pleased to find the contractor in the same place as the day before: Mr. Von Bizmark’s cognac cabinet. The Silver Fox puzzled over the door, a dash of pewter hair falling across his eyes as he leaned into the cabinet, which just refused to stay closed. Cristina had been holding it shut with putty for years.
“Your housekeeper said no noise: no drills, no hammering,” said the contractor, whose business consisted of only a few very high-end clients who kept him busy in their homes all over the world.