The Bedroom Blog

How to Interview With a Condom Heiress

Welcome to Chloe Madison's Bedroom Blog. Now let's get started.

By Alessandra Torre

I've never blogged. I've never even kept a diary. Until now, the only one who knew my secrets was my loyal goldfish, Dolly, and she wasn't telling. But given the fact that everything in my perfect life has crashed around my heels in the last two months, it's out with the old and in with the new. So here! A blog. I, Chloe Madison, from this day forth solemnly swear to record every dirty detail of the next year. Good or bad, awkward or steamy — it's going down in digital copy for anyone who dares to infinite scroll.

This morning, I stepped from the taxi, my eyes climbing the brownstone in front of me, counting the stories out of habit. Five. Double-checking the address on my phone, I hit the bell, my eyes tracing over the decorative B that was carved into the heavy door. I was anxious and shivering on a rich woman's doorstep while my best friends, Cammie and Benta, were lying on a beach, their Thanksgiving vacations stretched into a three-week affair of sunshine and relaxation.

Last month's SEC ruling put an end to a hundred such possibilities for me. That's when the yearlong investigation of my parents finally came to a close, and the easy wealth I've enjoyed my whole, pampered life ended faster than a Taylor Swift relationship.

From there, the disappointments piled up fast. There was the tearful meeting in the bursar's office, where I found out my fall tuition — my last semester of undergrad — hadn't been paid, and I was promptly booted. Then the eviction notice from my landlord, the moment I realized rent hadn't been paid for my apartment either. Within a week, I was couch surfing, drowning in debt, and I didn't even have the diploma to show for it.  So while Cammie and Benta were toasting their futures with mojitos in the sunshine, I was alone in New York, praying that this interview would go well.

The door swung open, and I was face to face with her: Nicole Brantley. She was instantly recognizable, but she looked younger and softer in person. Skinnier.

"Yes?" she asked, her bright blue eyes skipping over me, darting from my heels to my handbag, both from last season. "Can I help you?"

In case you're out of the socialite scene, here's the deal with Nicole Brantley. Sole heir to the man who invented the latex condom. Every time a Trojan horse gets pulled out of a pocket? Cha-ching, Nicole Brantley. At sixteen, she played a blonde bimbo on a Party of Five knock-off and has humped the Lifetime movie circuit ever since. My mother met her at a charity golf luncheon last year, and they stayed in touch. Mom says that "Nicole was a doll" and "would be a pleasure to work for." Mom hasn't been the best judge of characters in the past but I'm past the point of pickiness. I need money, something that Nicole Brantley has plenty of.

"I'm Chloe Madison. My mother said you were looking for a nanny? I have an interview scheduled for noon."

Right now? Typing that? I realize how pathetic I sounded. My mother? But, remarkably, the woman's face curved into a smile, the Madison name still having some pull in the lowly area of hired help. 

"Oh yes, thank god!" She ushered me into the house through the front doors.  "This week has been adisaster. Come inside and let me track down Clarke." She turned on her heels — hot blue Louboutins, definitely from this season — clicking a rapid path through the foyer. I stepped into the warm space and shed my coat, folding it over my arm.

I've been in New York for four years. Enough time to realize the mansions of my Florida youth don't exist on Manhattan's streets. Pools and guest homes, tennis courts and country clubs — those niceties are in the Hamptons or Westchester. In the City, wealth is spoken through garages, Central Park views, and square footage. The Brantleys had all three. I spied a housekeeper, clad in the white and black uniform that a sliver of the upper-class demands. Saw the Picasso and Kandinsky in the hall. Noticed the views of the park that dominated the room we moved into, a fire crackling in the corner, a man stepping away from the window, phone to his ear. And that was the moment every feminine bone in my body came to full attention.