Read Online Arm Candy by Jill Kargman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jill Kargman
Tags: Fiction, Contemporary Women
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news of her stroke, he was grief-stricken. Brooke put her arm around her son.
“Who knows how much time she’ll have left now,” Brooke said ominously. Offering comfort was never Brooke’s strong suit.
“Maybe you should consider proposing to Liesel sooner rather than later,” she continued. “You know Grandma’s ring is ready when you want it.”
Chase knew a vault on Madison and Sixty-second held the birthright for the hand of his intended, three D Flawless boulders for each of the boys, all collecting dust. And while it was an enormous privilege to not have to hit cheesy Zales like so many other knee-bending grooms-to-be, the silent presence of Ruthie’s Cartier-designed ice rink in Box 2736 felt like a huge burden. A rock, so to speak, that weighed heavily on his shoulders and conscience. He loved Liesel, sure, but he always secretly dreamed of a woman who had a bit more chutzpah, a bit more sass, more edge. Someone who understood him the way his grandmother Ruthie did versus the way his mother saw him. Someone who challenged him. Someone who made him feel a longing so strong it was akin to an ache. He had no idea what that would be like. But something boiling within his blue blood was dying to find out.
12
You’ve heard of the three ages of man—youth, age, and “you are looking wonderful.”
—Francis Cardinal Spellman
T he zenith of Otto and Eden’s fame came when he painted her (not her likeness but her actual body—boobs, pubes, and all) for a historic cover of Vanity Fair ’s Art Issue when Eden was thirty-five. It was her apex—of beauty, of confidence. Her shiny chocolate brown hair was waist long and flowing, and she was buck naked but for his impassioned brushstrokes on her breasts, torso, and long legs. Otto stood beside her in his jeans and paint-splattered T, running a hand through his trademark shock of prematurely gray hair. The photograph, shot by Annie Leibowitz during the peak of exorbitant canvas price tags harvested by hedge funders, became nothing short of iconic.
Inside the thick issue was a twenty-page portfolio of the world’s top artists and their muses, inspirers who ranged from children to friends to lovers to a cadre of sexy sycophants hoping to be in the presence of the next Francesco Clemente. They lolled around shirtless, doe-eyed, and languid as the old CK One ads of the early nineties, overbred and underfed, gamine and gorgeous. But of all the muses, it was Otto Clyde’s who was the most striking. Even on the page, she was charged and alive. The glimmer in Eden’s piercing mint green eyes, the arch in her thin brow, and a sexy pout on her full lips rivaling Angelina’s obsessed many a reader. Her Latin cursive tattoo down the inside of her upper arm— more certa, non vita : “death is certain, life is not”—lent her a live-in-the-moment passion that made her seem to jump off the cover and inside pages.
The magazine sold more issues from the newsstand than ever before, launching a nationwide wave of interest in Eden; she had always been famous among the intelligentsia and fashionista clan, but now it seemed the whole country wanted to know more about her, as the name Eden Clyde yielded millions of Google hits, and prices for Clyde’s portraits skyrocketed.
Eden couldn’t believe how far she’d come.
It was the height of heights. But the problem of reaching that coveted summit is of course that there is nowhere left to go . . . but down.
Not that the thought even entered their minds at first; they were still flying high. Unlike It Boy artists who came and went, Clyde had reached quasi-Picasso, godlike stature with his alluring persona and boundless talent. Photographers snapped pictures of him and Eden, holding hands or eating dinner at Da Silvano with handsome Cole. There were legendary parties in warehouses where the backdrop was cocaine, deafening mixed music, and blinding hues of fashionistas’ too-bright wardrobes. When Eden wasn’t
“Who knows how much time she’ll have left now,” Brooke said ominously. Offering comfort was never Brooke’s strong suit.
“Maybe you should consider proposing to Liesel sooner rather than later,” she continued. “You know Grandma’s ring is ready when you want it.”
Chase knew a vault on Madison and Sixty-second held the birthright for the hand of his intended, three D Flawless boulders for each of the boys, all collecting dust. And while it was an enormous privilege to not have to hit cheesy Zales like so many other knee-bending grooms-to-be, the silent presence of Ruthie’s Cartier-designed ice rink in Box 2736 felt like a huge burden. A rock, so to speak, that weighed heavily on his shoulders and conscience. He loved Liesel, sure, but he always secretly dreamed of a woman who had a bit more chutzpah, a bit more sass, more edge. Someone who understood him the way his grandmother Ruthie did versus the way his mother saw him. Someone who challenged him. Someone who made him feel a longing so strong it was akin to an ache. He had no idea what that would be like. But something boiling within his blue blood was dying to find out.
12
You’ve heard of the three ages of man—youth, age, and “you are looking wonderful.”
—Francis Cardinal Spellman
T he zenith of Otto and Eden’s fame came when he painted her (not her likeness but her actual body—boobs, pubes, and all) for a historic cover of Vanity Fair ’s Art Issue when Eden was thirty-five. It was her apex—of beauty, of confidence. Her shiny chocolate brown hair was waist long and flowing, and she was buck naked but for his impassioned brushstrokes on her breasts, torso, and long legs. Otto stood beside her in his jeans and paint-splattered T, running a hand through his trademark shock of prematurely gray hair. The photograph, shot by Annie Leibowitz during the peak of exorbitant canvas price tags harvested by hedge funders, became nothing short of iconic.
Inside the thick issue was a twenty-page portfolio of the world’s top artists and their muses, inspirers who ranged from children to friends to lovers to a cadre of sexy sycophants hoping to be in the presence of the next Francesco Clemente. They lolled around shirtless, doe-eyed, and languid as the old CK One ads of the early nineties, overbred and underfed, gamine and gorgeous. But of all the muses, it was Otto Clyde’s who was the most striking. Even on the page, she was charged and alive. The glimmer in Eden’s piercing mint green eyes, the arch in her thin brow, and a sexy pout on her full lips rivaling Angelina’s obsessed many a reader. Her Latin cursive tattoo down the inside of her upper arm— more certa, non vita : “death is certain, life is not”—lent her a live-in-the-moment passion that made her seem to jump off the cover and inside pages.
The magazine sold more issues from the newsstand than ever before, launching a nationwide wave of interest in Eden; she had always been famous among the intelligentsia and fashionista clan, but now it seemed the whole country wanted to know more about her, as the name Eden Clyde yielded millions of Google hits, and prices for Clyde’s portraits skyrocketed.
Eden couldn’t believe how far she’d come.
It was the height of heights. But the problem of reaching that coveted summit is of course that there is nowhere left to go . . . but down.
Not that the thought even entered their minds at first; they were still flying high. Unlike It Boy artists who came and went, Clyde had reached quasi-Picasso, godlike stature with his alluring persona and boundless talent. Photographers snapped pictures of him and Eden, holding hands or eating dinner at Da Silvano with handsome Cole. There were legendary parties in warehouses where the backdrop was cocaine, deafening mixed music, and blinding hues of fashionistas’ too-bright wardrobes. When Eden wasn’t
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