VERY IMPORTANT—BUZZ ME WHEN YOU ARE HERE.
WE ARE BEING HONORED AT THE NEW YORK OPERA BALL!!!!!!!
So much to plan!
You won’t believe what happened!
“Mr. Von Bizmark’s office, this is—”
“Florence! What is going on?” Anna said. “Are they here?”
“She specifically told me not to call you. ‘There’s no reason to bother her,’ she said,” Florence reported primly.
“But . . . but . . . ,” Anna sputtered. “Not even a text?”
“Anna!” Mrs. Von Bizmark stood at the door to the office, her tone 60 percent concerned, 40 percent “you’re fired.” Anna hung up on Florence. The notes fanned out in Anna’s right hand; her beat-up nylon purse hung open from the left. Her goofy woolen hat with the braided earflaps sat slightly crooked on her head. Mrs. Von Bizmark wore head-to-toe chocolate cashmere. Her impeccably highlighted hair curved robustly just under her shoulders. If she could still move her eyebrows, they would have creased in agitation, but her face remained seamless, pliant. Lasered, injected, and tweaked, she looked about two decades younger than reality, which would make her and Anna about the same age.
Bambi Von Bizmark was known to staff as “Mrs. Von Bizmark.” Only her husband called her “Bambi.” To friends and press, on her social stationery, and at the opera, she was always “Kissy V. Bizmark.” Although few others knew this, the V. for “Von” stood also for her maiden name, Verhuvenvel, a mass of v’s that defied penmanship. Though Anna called her “Mrs. Von Bizmark” to her face, with employees, colleagues, and vendors she was “the Mrs.” and in writing simply “KVB.” The building staff referred to her as “KGB” only behind her back for her exactingness and seemingly random visitations to various storage facilities in the basement. Peter Von Bizmark, her husband, was “Mr. Von Bizmark,” or “PVB,” to all except cable news networks, who tended to use his name in its momentous entirety. Only Mrs. Von Bizmark and Avi, their personal lawyer, thought of him as a “Peter.”
“Hello, Mrs. Von Bizmark. I must admit I’m rather surprised to see you,” Anna said.
“In my own home?” Mrs. Von Bizmark replied, instantly indignant.
Cristina, the severe Polish housekeeper in a gray maid’s uniform, poked her head around the pocket doors of the office. “Morning, Anna!” She hurried by, exhorting the two Salvadorean maids to follow her upstairs to the residential wing. These three were known to everyone in the building as “the ladies,” and how they had come to be here on a day Anna knew they had off was confounding. Florence must have called everyone but her. Anna burned with annoyance—so much for double avocado.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
“Fabulous, why would you ask?” Mrs. Von Bizmark and her circle were always, always fabulous, and to imply otherwise was ever-so-slightly offensive.
“Well, you’re home five days early.”
Mrs. Von Bizmark turned to the two-foot-high stack of new glossy magazines on the central island and absentmindedly dropped them one by one into the pewter trash can as she talked, gazing at each one for a few seconds before letting it fall. “Oh, yes, well . . . the snow was mediocre . . .” She held up a New York magazine—a close-up of the extremely liberal mayor of New York with the headline, “The City’s Socialist Revolution.” “Yuckapoo,” she said, letting it fall. “Anyway, the kids and Peter were just so bored. They were all complaining, so I said why don’t we just go home, then? The kids thought that was a great idea, of course.” She paused, forced a chuckle, but her hands stopped. “And so did Peter . . . ,” she added. Her shoulders slumped as she let out a sigh.
Uh-oh. The Von Bizmarks were not getting along. Which happened every so often—the Mrs. puffing up with dissatisfaction, the Mr. disappearing into work. And while it had always righted itself, the Von Bizmark marriage functioned as the cornerstone of an enormous enterprise that included staff, property, vendors—practically a whole economy unto itself. If the house divided, that economy would radically shrink. In other words, they could all be out of work.
“But wait . . . ,” Anna said. “Why were the foyer doors closed if you are here?”
“I need to talk to you about that,” Mrs. Von Bizmark said. “Mr. Von Bizmark has some security . . .” She waved her hand in the air, as if she might find the word there. Although she was perfectly coiffed and styled after a vacation of not just skiing but spa services and shopping, Anna could tell Mrs. Von Bizmark was out of sorts. “Issues,” she finally said.
Anna’s employers frequently spoke in code. Valued most highly were those employees who could intuit meaning from the fewest, vaguest words, those who knew when to ask questions and those who knew when to let it lie. Furthermore, to have “security issues” in the Von Bizmarks’ hyperexclusive Park Avenue co-op fell somewhere on the spectrum between extremely unlikely and completely impossible.
“And what about the ball?” Anna always tried to turn things toward the positive for her employers.
“Exactly!” Mrs. Von Bizmark said, moving to her desk in its elevated nook surrounded by built-in shelves lined with extraordinarily expensive bulbs Anna had had to order weeks in advance from Germany. All the while she nattered on, happy to have a flattering subject. “So we were at the Smythesons’—you know, Guy and Libba—they have this outrageous place out there, looks like somewhere Dracula might live or something. Anyway, they always have this big party where we get to see everyone, and it just so happened that it was Richard’s last night in town. Anyway, when he sees me, he beelines over, snubbing Prince Valdobianno, who you know is a tremendous opera buff, and he finally takes both my hands in his and says, ‘Just who I’ve been looking for, the belle of my ball.’”
Internally, Anna rolled her eyes. A very public budget shortfall had turned Richard Gross, the opera’s executive director, into a rabidly obsequious fundraising machine. Meanwhile, a scathing New York Times article had pondered whether opera had run its course as an art form. Richard knew the answer to this lay in a blockbuster season, starting with the opening-night gala: he had been saying this in emails, phone calls, and letters to the entire board of trustees for at least three months.
“Richard got the board to vote”—Mrs. Von Bizmark bubbled over with delight—“on Christmas Eve morning and”—practically panting with eagerness—“they’re going to honor Mr. Von Bizmark and me!” Effectively, this meant the Von Bizmarks were now on the hook to give or raise from their friends millions of additional dollars for the opera, a huge coup for Richard. In return, he would elevate the Von Bizmarks before their cohort of the richest, most well-connected people in North America; it was like the Von Bizmarks got to be king and queen of the prom, only this was not high school but New York City.
The Mrs. burst with such girlish glee at the prospect it was hard not to be a little happy for her. If philanthropy were Mrs. Von Bizmark’s “career,” then this would be the highlight of her curriculum vitae. Various institutions honored the Von Bizmarks all the time, but despite its financial woes, the New York City Opera was the most prestigious by a league. For the Mrs., it was the ultimate social credential, the jewel in her crown for which she had fought long and hard in the Park Avenue trenches. “That’s the real reason we came back from Aspen early.”