Free Isn't That Rich?: Life Among the 1 Percent by Richard Kirshenbaum, Michael Gross

relatively happy for a period in this arrangement.”
    When finances aren’t important—but sex isn’t either—another option is “the warm body,” a common choice among the older set that also has its appeal for the career woman.
    The warm body tends to be the straight man’s version of a walker: he may be dull as a month-old razor, but he provides an audience, especially to women who really want to do all the talking.
    “Having a companion is nice. I already took care of a man once before,” a Madison Avenue matron remarked, opening her Bottega Veneta wallet and plucking out her ATM card. “Dinner, a movie, a cruise, prop him up in a chair, and away we go.” She smiled. “He doesn’t say much, but I find he hangs on my every word.”
    Even younger women agree. “I just need him to change a lightbulb now and again,” said a friend.
    “Sex?” I asked.
    “Whatever.” She shrugged.
    Not every divorcée, of course, is in a financial position to while away her days with the cabana boy (or his friendly, benign father), and some must resort to mercenary tactics to avoid expulsion from the golden triangle of Park Avenue, Sagaponack, and St. Barths.
    “I wake up in a cold sweat that I’m only going to be able to afford a white brick building on Fifty-Seventh Street or a four-bedroom in the Financial District,” my wife’s friend lamented outside spin class. “Getting divorced is bad enough; the real estate downgrade is the final straw.”
    Contrary to popular misconception, just divorcing a rich man doesn’t necessarily leave one set for life. I put a call in to an old friend who has a reputation as one of New York’s toughest divorce attorneys. One of his three assistants put me through.
    “You next?”
    “Sorry to disappoint,” I joked. After brief pleasantries, he told me business was booming now that couples can almost afford to part ways, and he laid out the economics.
    “OK, let’s be clear; if the woman has the real money in the relationship, she can do whatever she likes.” That said, that’s not most women.
    “So let’s just say you’re a relatively affluent couple in the twenty- to twenty-five-million range. By the time the lawyers take their eight-figure slice and the mortgages are paid off when the residences are sold, she might end up with a six- or eight-million-dollar check. It sounds like a lot of money, but that’s it for her, unless she marries again. A conservative three percent on six million—one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year—is her clothing allowance from her former life.”
    “So then what happens?”
    “The ones with younger kids get alimony and child support. But the smart ones end up with the best sixty-year-old they can find.”
    “And if they don’t?” I asked.
    “There’s always Boca Raton,” he said.
    I was heartened to hear one last and affirming category surfacing above Fifty-Seventh Street. These are the women who, empowered by divorce, want a real relationship centered around their kids.
    A leading divorce consultant (a businesswoman who acts like a general contractor for people going through the process) had this to say: “There are those women who want a man to take care of them. Then again, there are those women who say, ‘I can do this,’ and just want a nice, normal guy who loves kids. Someone to provide their children with a moral compass.”
    “So how do people meet guys like that?” I asked. “Do they fly coach or business instead of first?”
    “If they start working again, they might meet them in the office, or at a kid’s baseball game, for example. There are healthy relationships out there,” she said. “From what I’ve seen, the women who get jobs afterward meet better men than the ladies who continue to lunch.”
    I have one successful female friend who met and married a very nice family guy who was moderately successful himself. The one prerequisite was a makeover: better shoes, a nice belt, and no dad jeans.
    I was