The New Viruses made the cover of Time magazine and became an instant best seller. Jack was on television almost daily talking up the new plagues with Katie, Oprah, and Charlie Rose. Practically overnight, the obscure doctor and public health advocate became a hot dinner guest at all the best tables. When Frankie had to work late, it amused her to hear that Jack had met Hillary Clinton, Steven Spielberg, and Luciano Pavarotti at a casual “potluck” supper at Adrienne Strong-Rodman’s house.

“I’m surprised Tony Blair wasn’t there,” Frankie quipped when Jack came home.

“You’re right. I think Adrienne is very good friends with Tony,” he replied without a whiff of irony.

At a Vanity Fair dinner to celebrate the 100 Most Creative Minds in America, Jack sat next to Lizzie Gomez, a twenty-six-year-old sugar heiress from Palm Beach. As far as Frankie could make out, Lizzie’s family owned most of Hawaii and the Dominican Republic, and had sold a good portion of Puerto Rico for a fortune. Lizzie shocked her mother when after just five weeks of courtship, she announced she planned to marry a forty-three-year-old Jewish doctor. The wedding was in Santo Domingo, and on the invitation he sent to Frankie, Jack scrawled “Dearest F—I hope we will always be friends—Love, Jack.”

Getting over Jack would have been easier if he hadn’t carved out a multimedia monopoly on germ warfare. His wife, after the birth of their twins, began a children’s clothing line. She hired the best designer from Bonpoint and had her monograms emblazoned on her entire line of cashmere play clothes. LG quickly became the Louis Vuitton of the toddler set and was omnipresent on the status diaper bags in Frankie’s waiting room.

On the days she visited Abraham, Frankie was usually overcome by exhaustion. At eight-thirty she got up from the kitchen to begin her bedtime ritual. But when she finally turned off the lights and got under her covers, her mind wandered till dawn, from her father’s alphabet scavenger hunt, to Mrs. Caesar having no place to leave her children, to the man on the fourth floor of her building who had died in the Trade Center. Finally, she fixed on her ossifying loneliness.

·CHAPTER FIVE·

Clarice

Clarice Santorini bought a $10,000 table for the Nutcracker family benefit every year. When she was growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, she had been a Candy Cane in a local production, and now her older daughter, Venice, was playing an angel in the New York City Ballet production of the Christmas classic.

“Fuck! I can’t get there this year!” Clarice’s husband, Barry, spit out his morning coffee when she reminded him that the benefit was that weekend.

“We’ll miss you,” she said softly.

“Why does that goddamn benefit always have to come out a week before the Golden Globe nominations and I have to be in Hollywood rat-fucking the foreign press. Shit!” Barry was getting himself worked up and began perspiring through his signature black sweatshirt.