Poisoned Milkshake Wishes And Caliente Cab Co. Dreams

Sometimes, all you want to eat is that New York magazine cover story about the two brothers who might have been murdered by their wives--one by a poisoned milkshake, the other was stabbed in the back. Literally. (When do you ever get to use literally correctly?) Sometimes you don't, because it's going to be just like that other story about the plastic surgeon/philanthropist/banker who got murdered by his dental hygienist/secretary/stripper friend. I'm not doing the genre justice here, but you know what I mean. I told a colleague a couple weeks ago about how much I relished the cover story about New York's finest hooker and the pimp who made and loved her, and he made some comment about how he finds that stuff totally boring and not titillating at all. Yeah, I guess. The older I get, though, the more I find myself drawn to narratives of the moneyed and depraved. Being a frustrated novelist and all. Anyway. It occured to me while reading it that maybe they didn't need 4,000 words. That maybe you would get the whole story if NY magazine just ran a list of people, places, things and quotes from the article. To wit:

Stratton Mountain in Vermont
Bill's wife, Elaine
who did ballet on skis
on his desk in Florida
didn't make it to college until a couple of years after high school graduation
a fur jacket
a 7,500 square foot Saddle River home on a couple of acres of land
a souped-up Chevy Le Mans
Doriane, his high school girlfriend
moved into a one-bedroom, $295,000 co-op apartment at 200 East 74th Street
a blonde Ivy Leaguer--University of Pennsylvania, then Columbia business school--sporty-looking, striking
she became the women world's mogul champion
on track to be an analyst for Merrill Lynch
Goldman Sachs, which shipped him to Hong Kong in 1997
became the only person who signed off on checks for the co-op
To me, he was a big phoney baloney
I just want to get this over with. I think I need some Valium.
eventually borrowed $2 million under the co-op's name
Greenwich
Wives don't know.
had managed a Caliente Cab Co.
she'd gone with their three children to avoid the Asian SARS threat
a good-looking, middle aged Vermonter
shown up at the house to repair her TV
and about the tattoo he'd taken her to get
playdate for his three children
ground-up cookies and strawberry ice cream
Rohypnol
eight-pound lead statue

Right?

One of my favorite lines (and there are many) from Metropolitan happens when Chris Eigemann tries to defend his making up a story about a hated acquaintance-- more specifically, he makes up a victim of the hated acquaintance. "It's a composite," he says calmly. "You know, like New York magazine does."