Trading Up Read Online Free PDF

Housekeeping .
    But eventually, Janey began to notice a subtle change in Mimi’s attitude.
    Whereas before Mimi had merely been noncommittal, in the past five years her
    “nice to see you again” began to take on a tone that bordered on open dislike. Janey suspected that this was because she’d slept with many of the same men Mimi had slept with, and Mimi was jealous.
    Janey figured that she and Mimi had at least ten lovers in common, including Redmon Richardly and the screenwriter Bill Westacott. It continued to gall her that while everybody knew Mimi was a wild party girl who slept with whomever she pleased, nobody ever called Mimi a slut or looked askance at her behavior. It proved yet another truth about New York society: A rich girl could sleep with a hundred men and people would call her bohemian, while a poor girl who did the same thing was labeled a gold digger or a whore.
    But all that had changed the day Janey became a Victoria’s Secret model. It was as if, after all those long years in New York, she’d suddenly emerged in full color.
    People suddenly got her, they understood who she was and what she was doing. And then the coveted invitation to Mimi’s party had arrived.
    Exactly one month ago to the day, a heavy cream envelope had been messengered to Janey’s apartment in New York. She lived in the same walk-up building on East Sixty-seventh Street that she’d moved into ten years before, and she mused that she was lucky she was home at the time, because if she hadn’t been, there was no doorman to receive the missive, and then what would have happened?
    On the envelope was written only her name, “Miss Janey Wilcox,” with no address—implying that an address might be tacky—and even before she opened the envelope, she knew what it contained.

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    Carefully sliding her finger under the flap, so that the envelope would remain in pristine condition (these were the kinds of things she liked to save), she removed the simple ecru card inside. Written on the upper-left-hand corner in the English style, her name was written out in calligraphy, and printed below were the words:
    “Mimi Kilroy and George Paxton, at home, Friday, May twenty-seventh.” And in that moment, Janey’s deep hatred of Mimi evaporated. It was difficult to sustain hatred, especially when it was bathed in the warm light of attention and acknowledgment. And Janey had reflected that while New York could certainly be superficial, it was a glorious sort of superficial, especially if you were on the inside.
    Three years ago, at the age of thirty-nine, Mimi Kilroy had finally settled down and married George Paxton, the billionaire.
    Five years earlier, George Paxton, who supposedly hailed from outside of Boston, which could mean anywhere really, had suddenly popped up on the social scene in New York. It was practically a rule in New York society that every few years, a billionaire would appear as if from nowhere, usually in the form of a middle-aged man who had suddenly made a fortune and was in the throes of a midlife crisis. Having slaved for years to make money, he was now in the position to finally enjoy his life, and the very first thing to go was always the first wife. Such was the story of George Paxton.
    His first two years in New York followed the usual lines: He was feted and petted, and continually fixed up on blind dates, because there is nothing more exciting to society than a newly single man flush with a fortune he isn’t exactly sure how to spend. And after he’d had two years of dating the finest single women the Upper East Side could offer—women with fake breasts and no breasts, women with bodies perfected by Pilates, women with caramel-colored hair and sable coats, women who sat on boards and ran their own companies, women who were lawyers and doctors and real estate agents, women who were divorced from other rich men; and after he’d had his