Chapter 21 #2
“Reggie, this is my aunt Libby.”
“Look at you,” Libby told him. “I’m thinking Colin Farrell’s Black Irish oomph meets Gerard Butler’s B-movie grit, in a hot tub with Henry Cavill if he finally lives up to his potential.”
Reggie replied, “It’s an honor to meet you, and you’ve got a wonderful daughter and a terrific nephew.”
“What can I say? I do good work.”
“And I’m loving your boots,” Reggie said. “Ferragamo?”
“Get out of here. The Boot Barn in Paramus, a perfect knockoff at one-tenth the price.”
Libby’s the savviest shopper in our family, which is saying something.
Her radar for quality and end-of-season markdowns is an outgrowth of her career.
Now fifty-eight, Libby has worked as an assistant buyer in Juniors Activewear for decades, first as a prized honcho at Bloomingdale’s and Barneys, but amid, as she calls it, “the changing face of retail,” she’s become a force at , Alibaba (the of China), and Home Runway, a shopping app that handpicks designer goods to be purchased or rented, most often by stress-ridden working women awed by Libby’s prowess.
If you’ve worn stretch denim, shapewear, a sports bra, or a bathing suit that’s too nice to go in the water, at any time over the past thirty years, you’ve most likely been overseen by my aunt Libby.
Her credo is “Trust me. I won’t let you or your butt down. ”
Libby’s looks haven’t varied over the years, thanks to what she calls “blond vigilance” at a nearby salon; a perfect blunt cut (“timeless and flattering”); dieting with exceptions for double-chocolate brownies and H?agen-Dazs butter pecan; and a judicious use of Botox as administered by Jenn (“my in-house Merlin with a syringe”).
Libby’s face is elastic but with that slight sheen that my mom terms “the Park Avenue showroom-floor glaze.” Libby’s wardrobe is age-appropriate and stylish, based on her meticulous observations of celebrity fashion (“I’m going for Audrey Hepburn restraint meets middle-period Candice Bergen all-American chic with a side order of Jennifer Aniston giving someone an award”).
I’ve been asked if Jenn was named in honor of Jennifer Aniston, although Libby’s explained, “There’s an academy of Jennifers, such as Jennifer Jones, Jennifer Beals, Jennifer Garner, and JLo.
It’s from the Latin root ‘to smile warmly and promote a night crème with retinol.’ I wanted my daughter to become part of a proud self-marketing tradition. ”
“Mom,” said Jenn. “These guys need your help.”
“I’ll do whatever I can. Jenn’s filled me in on the basics, and I’m loving your organization, which strikes me as a quirky Robert Altman crossroads-of-America epic waltzing with Guy Ritchie’s Cockney, coke-snorting shoot-’em-ups but also any movie where the tough-guy leader puts together a platoon of misfits to save the world, only gay, which will make the studio or streamer nervous enough to ask for at least one relatable straight character. ”
“Me!” said Jenn.
Reggie gave a thumbs-up, adding, “But here’s the latest. We don’t have much time, because we’re waiting to hear from whoever’s kidnapped Reata Pershing, so we can exchange her for the Moirai jewels.”
Libby’s advice was always well considered and invaluable.
During my first sleepover, when I was eight, she’d told me, “At home you watch TV, but here we talk about whether SpongeBob SquarePants, Patrick the starfish, and Sandy the squirrel are in a love triangle.” Whenever I’d brought up SpongeBob’s inner life with my brother, he’d said, “First of all, he’s a cartoon character. And second of all, he’s a sponge.”
When I hit twelve, Libby had explained sex to me with a taped bootleg of the musical Spring Awakening, and while some of the mechanics (among stifled German youth in 1891) escaped me, I applauded the cuteness of a just-starting-out Jonathan Groff and the tremulous yearning of an equally fresh-faced Lea Michele, although the prescient Libby had murmured, “I love Lea but she’s already a little full of herself.
She’s not the new Barbra, not yet. No one is or ever will be. ”
In my teens, when I’d first mentioned my acting goals, Libby had me watch Stage Door from the 1930s, with a coltish Katharine Hepburn in a theatrical boardinghouse; Fame, which covers the trauma and dancing-in-the-streets uplift of a performing arts high school; and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, about a Swedish actress’s nervous breakdown.
These works riveted and upset me, but once Libby and I saw Meryl in The French Lieutenant’s Woman at a local revival house, all was well.
“I don’t know if you’re the next Meryl,” Libby had pondered.
“But I’d like to see you standing on an English jetty, gazing out to sea in a hooded cape. ”
“Here’s what I still can’t understand,” said Reggie.
“Pierre LeMote wanted the Clotho Diamond to guarantee an acceptable heir to his money and his corporate holdings. Henrik Jenstromm was after the Lachesis Ruby to get his son an Olympic medal. Stanton thinks the Atropos Emerald will make him immortal, or at least postpone his death. None of them are collecting all three jewels, which, if you believe the rumors, will let whoever owns them rule the world. So who was waiting for the Tuxes to do the big job for them, and then kidnapped Reata to get the goods hand-delivered?”
Libby stayed seated, sipping a Diet Coke through an elaborate straw designed to eliminate creases above the lips.
She began: “Let’s think about Fleming Fairmont, who’d be a great role for Kevin Spacey if Kevin was employable and not disgusting off-screen as well.
Fleming’s playing every angle but he’s not a kingpin.
He’s the sweating fixer who’ll double-cross anyone.
He’s Roy Cohn meets Gollum at Fagin’s hideout, where he supervises singing pickpockets in Oliver!
But who’s higher up the food chain? Who’s the Don Corleone, the Brian Cox conniving ogre in Succession, the Daniel Day-Lewis prairie Satan in There Will Be Blood? ”
At the mention of Daniel’s name, Libby took a moment.
Daniel was Libby’s most irrefutable crush, especially after his breakout role as a ponytailed, buckskin-loinclothed backwoodsman in The Last of the Mohicans, in which he became every intelligent woman’s lust object, a more buff Colin Firth with a blunderbuss.
Libby had pledged herself to Daniel from his frock-coated decorum in The Age of Innocence, to his Mayflower martyrdom in The Crucible and his craggily winsome Abraham Lincoln, telling me, “Daniel and I are spiritually married, and Josh understands. When Daniel rescues Madeleine Stowe in the forest or kisses Michelle Pfeiffer’s gloved hand in a drawing room, he’s thinking of me.
Even Madeleine and Michelle, as my surrogates, respect that. ”
In my virginal teens, I’d never mocked Libby and Daniel’s relationship.
Libby had also sustained a heavy-breathing fling with the younger, hard-bodied, come-and-get-it Dennis Quaid, but this was a rebound affair, after Libby and I had researched Daniel’s marriage to Arthur Miller’s daughter, or as Libby referred to her, “Whatever.”
“What we’ve got here,” Libby resumed, “is a series of thefts, a handful of international overlords, and a scrappy band of upstarts. Reggie, I’m channeling you as Clark Gable with a dash of any Brolin, and Andrew, you’re either Paul Mescal as an up-and-coming gladiator, or Chalamet wrestling with his perky Messiah status in Dune.
“But what we’re finally searching for,” she continued, as Reggie listened closely, “is a supervillain, someone with Dr. Evil?scale ambition and Citizen Kane cash reserves. Someone who’s convinced the jewels are his rightful reward, his Kennedy Center Honors medallion.
And if we’re going Lex Luthor or Darth Vader, we should be thinking about a lair. ”
“A lair?” asked Reggie.
“An island fortress. A labyrinth deep within a dormant volcano. An ice palace at the South Pole capable of interstellar travel. We don’t know how the supervillain built this mountaintop aerie or undersea city without anyone noticing, or how much it costs for heat and air-conditioning, or who keeps the place dusted and vacuumed, but when there’s that first panoramic aerial shot, as the lair fills the screen, the audience salivates, betting on whether our plucky band of ragtag heroes will sneak in through a sewage tunnel or the metal ductwork, and when the interior explosions will start and screaming, computer-generated inhabitants will be catapulted through the air. ”
“A lair…,” Reggie repeated. “Of course. With Fleming scuttling around. And a supervillain hiding in plain sight. I see where you’re going.”
“And one more thing,” said Libby, shutting her eyes and massaging her temples with her French-manicured fingertips. (“Bright nail polish is for younger women. And actresses who give interviews where they say, ‘I can’t find my character until I choose her nail color.’ ”)
Aunt Libby was having what she called “one of my summer tentpole, entertainment-has-infused-my-cortex visions.” I couldn’t breathe, awaiting her revelations, which, she’d told me, had first come over her after seeing Faye Dunaway as a fashion photographer in the thriller Eyes of Laura Mars, where Faye receives mental portents of grisly future homicides while posing models for Vogue in her studio.
“When Faye goes psychic,” Libby had said, “she widens her eyes slightly. And ever since I watched her do this, I’ve had the gift. ”
“I’m seeing a diadem.”
“Oh my God,” said Reggie. We’d never mentioned the Diadem to Libby.
“That’s the clue. It’s the only way to harness the three jewels’ combined mojo.
The diadem could unleash some ungodly creature, or shatter our reality into infinite metaverses.
Metaverses are the ultimate apocalypse, because they’re what happens when filmmakers run out of ideas.
Also, in bridal for next fall, I’m seeing a lot of diadems instead of flower crowns, which are what the Manson girls would’ve worn if they were bridesmaids. ”
Reggie stood up and said, “Andrew, we’d better get going.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see. But your aunt is everything you’ve said and more. Libby, the country and the planet are in your debt. And Jenn, you are every inch your mother’s daughter.”
“And she’s single,” said Libby. “Thank God. I never liked Brayden but I didn’t want to nag.”
“Oh, really?” said Jenn. “Then why did you keep calling him Bran Flakes and Ray-Ban?”
“It was a caring mother’s reflex,” said Libby.
“Thank you both,” said Reggie, now carrying Jenn’s pink tote.
“We’ll talk,” I told both of my relatives.
“You’ll be the innocent Luke Skywalker,” Libby told me. “Sprinkled with just enough Karate Kid, who’s the underdog for straight guys who practice martial arts moves in their ski pajamas. Karate Kid is fentanyl for middle-aged men who sob for their lost childhoods during the Toy Story movies.”
Libby concluded, forcefully: “Andrew, you must get in trouble and have Reggie rescue you, but then you’ll save the day together. Bring me back a McDonald’s promotional Big Cup.”
We high-fived and I caught up with Reggie as he hurried out the door.
I had my aunt Libby’s benediction, and from our hug I smelled like my cousin Jenn’s citrusy I’m-starting-my-new-life cologne.
A supervillain, a lair, and the Diadem. As my mom always says, “If you want something done, ask a Jewish woman. And listen to her.”