Crazy Rich Read online

going off to war.

  “Mommy loves you so. And Aunt Peyton is right, as usual. She’s so wise. I want you to mind the driver. Do exactly as he says. And when I return, we can get filet mignon. Yes we can!” Avery smothered the dogs with kisses until her lipstick was coated with fuzzy white hairs.

  God-damned lunatic, Peyton thought to herself as they approached their destination.

  ………………..

  Peyton prayed for the beads of sweat that were sprouting from her forehead to instantly evaporate. The meeting wasn’t going as planned at all. For starters, Avery became flustered when the board asked questions about her ex-husband and his new wife.

  “That has absolutely nothing to do with me,” she informed them, briskly. “If you want to get to the root of what happened between us, I’d suggest looking in Thailand. That’s where he was before he had his crisis. Who knows what he got into over there? He came back with his arm in a sling for heaven’s sake. A sling, can you believe it? I believe that he was kidnapped over there. Someone did something to him. Surely that isn’t anyone’s fault is it?”

  The board scribbled furiously but said nothing. Then they started in on Dr. Nussbaum. They asked if he had family in Israel, and when he told them he was of Russian descent the head of the co-op board asked if any of his friends or family were in the Communist party. Another member asked him if he knew anyone in Brighton Beach and then mumbled something about organized crime. Then the head asked how he felt about the movie “Schindler’s List.” All the while, everyone on the board consistently referred to Dr. Nussbaum as Mr. Nussbaum. He became so enraged that he had an anxiety attack and began to hyperventilate. As he was passing out from a lack of oxygen, he hit his head on the chair he’d been sitting in so hard that the chair cracked in two. Stubbornly, Dr. Nussbaum insisted that he was ok, and refused medical care. He later admitted to Peyton that he didn’t want the co-op board to think that he might sue.

  “Well, that went well, don’t you think?” Peyton asked, rubbing her throbbing temples before pouring a glass of bourbon. God-damned lunatics, she thought, her teeth firmly nestled against her tongue to prevent a slip.

  ………………..

  “It’s a shame about Avery, isn’t it?” one of Peyton’s former clients, Saffron Wales asked her over tea.

  “So you heard about that?” Peyton asked carefully. One had to be careful in matters like this. She didn’t need anyone thinking that she couldn’t get them into the building of their dreams at the snap of her fingers.

  “Oh yes, darling, everyone’s heard.”

  This could be more serious than I expected, Peyton mused.

  “It’s such a shame.”

  “Well you know, these things happen from time to time,” Peyton said.

  “Well I guess you’re right about that. Divorce is never easy. But we all thought she’d moved on. Stuart might not be winning anyone’s beauty pageants, but he’s quite successful, and such a gentle soul. He didn’t deserve what he got.”

  “Which was?”

  “Don’t tell me. You haven’t heard about Avery!”

  “I thought you were speaking of her getting rejected by the co-op board,” Peyton admitted.

  “Oh darling, heavens no! Avery has suffered from a complete breakdown. It was so unexpected.”

  “A breakdown?”

  “Oh yes. After she got rejected by the co-op board she totally lost it. She beat poor Stuart to a pulp, blamed it all on his being Jewish. She landed him in the hospital with a dislocated jaw. She begged him to take her back, and she was wearing a yarmulke. Women don’t wear yarmulkes! She said she was going to convert. Hospital security tried to admit her to the mental ward. She caused quite a scene. But the emergency wing is named after her, so what can you do?”

  “You’ve got to be mistaken, Saffron.”

  “Oh no, Peyton, I’m very well informed. I had lunch with Avery’s cousin Boots last week. Now, Avery has been completely disinherited after giving most of her money to some cult. The family staged an intervention and when she refused to get help they cut her off. So sad,” Saffron said, her voice trailing off.

  Not more than a week later, Peyton stopped by a client’s office to deliver a prospectus and was startled by a familiar voice coming from a very unfamiliar person.

  “Kin Tan Tee can provide all your worldly needs if you just surrender to him. Have you heard about the wonders of Kin Tan Tee?”

  “Avery, is that you?” Peyton asked the very unkempt and disheveled woman standing in front of the Carlyle building passing out handwritten, wrinkled religious tracts that were scribbled on what appeared to be torn scraps of a brown paper bag.

  There stood the once magnificent Avery in bare feet on a New York City sidewalk, her toenails curled over the tips of their digits like claws. Frocked in a dingy, white get-up that twisted and wrapped around her body like a reticulated python, Avery stopped handing out the tracts and began to dance a jig while clinking a set of tiny finger cymbals.

  “Avery is my former name. I am now known as Kana San Set,” Avery said with a moony smile, the corners of her mouth drooping as a result of withdrawal from bi-monthly Botox injections.

  “Kin Tan Tee’s been good to me, good to me, good to me,” she chanted to the tune of “London Bridge”.

  “Kin Tan Tee’s been good to me, hear his wonders.” Avery ended the performance with a sun salutation.

  “Avery, are you feeling ok?” Peyton asked, but she knew the answer. Avery was obviously not feeling well. She couldn’t possibly be. But there had to be a reasonable explanation for the spectacle Avery was making of herself in front of her family’s landmark contribution to the Manhattan skyline.

  “Kana San Set,” Avery replied mildly, placing her dirty, bony hand on Peyton’s.

  “Look, er Kana San Set, do you want to grab a cup of coffee, a latte, oh I know, a frappacino? We could, you know, talk about what’s going on with you.” Peyton clasped Avery’s hand in concern, attempting to make eye contact which was difficult because of Avery’s shifty glances.

  Peyton knew that she could be committing social and career suicide by appearing to chat with this seemingly homeless person. The power circles of Manhattan were dangerously small, and one word from some confused soul about Peyton’s interaction could cause irreparable harm to her stature in the community. When it came to high profile properties, Peyton was it, and there were plenty of people just waiting in the wings to knock her from her throne. But she had to take that chance. Avery had been a friend, at least as far as friends went in this microcosm of the real world, and Peyton felt inclined to do something to help Avery rather than feed the gossip mills with malicious talk. Besides, her curiosity was killing her. She could always say she was doing charity work if anyone questioned her.

  “Well,” Avery began suspiciously. “I don’t know. You may be one of them.” Avery pulled on the collar of Peyton’s military-inspired, Marc Jacobs coat. “You won’t catch me, do you understand?” Avery said, speaking into Peyton’s lapel pin.

  “One of whom?” Peyton asked innocently, slightly tugging on her coat in an effort to remove it from Avery’s grasp before she got some kind of grime, or worse some sort of homeless virus on it. “Who’s trying to catch you?”

  “Oh don’t act like you don’t know. You are one of them, aren’t you? Doppelgangers! They’re everywhere! But Kin Tan Tee will cleanse the land and rid society of their poison once and for all!” Avery began to spin in circles like a kid on a playground trying to make himself sick. Avery stopped twirling; her body began to shake and shimmy and sway until she collapsed in a compact ball on the concrete. Newspapers and debris blew around her in the cool, autumn wind. Avery slowly rose from the ground, her voice a low and guttural hum that rose from her belly, into her throat, and finally out her mouth as she stood centimeters from Peyton’s astonished face.

  “Ah-ohmmmmmmmm” Avery moaned as she rolled her head in circles. Finally she stopped and was very sedate. Peyton swo
re she saw a flicker of the old Avery in Kana San Set’s glazed eyes. “Nice try. But I can’t pollute my earth vibe with your heresy.”

  “You can’t what?” Peyton stood back, her hands on her hips as she teetered on her spiked heeled boots, mouth agape.

  But Avery, or Kana San Set did not respond. She just continued her spiel, right on the corner of 6th and Park, in plain view of the entire world. She looked through Peyton as if she didn’t exist until Peyton, overcome with shock and indignation, breezed past her and into the Carlyle Building, muttering “god-damned lunatic” under her breath.

  ....................

  6 months later…

  God damned lunatic, Peyton thought viewing the shaky, choppy footage of Avery’s death for the umpteenth time. The grotesque scene that preceded her demise was like a train wreck. Peyton couldn’t help but watch even though she knew the morbidity that was about to take place. The video played on CNN, C-Span, and MSNBC for weeks, and became viral, sucking up thousands of gigs of bandwith across the internet.

  Avery, or Kana San Set had traveled to the rainforest of the Amazon to spread the wonders of Kin Tan Tee to the indigenous people. Missionary work she called it. While there she came across a huge anaconda by the river bed. Rather than flee, Kana San Set chose to perform the sacred ritual of divine healing, a most special ceremony only performed within certain latitudes and longitudes of