by Kwan, Kevin
Charlotte was pounding on the door, screaming, “Stop it! Stop it, you two! The drone! The drone can see you! The damn drone is filming everything!”
Lucie opened her eyes and saw a drone hovering above them, a tiny point of light flashing, flashing. Flashing red.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hotel Bertolucci
Capri, Italy
Lucie sat in the bathtub, knees curled up to her chin, the shower turned on to its highest, trying to drown out her headache. Even with the full force of the water beating down on her, her head felt like it had been put into a vise that was tightening by the second. Any moment now it would explode, and nothing would be left but a big, messy splatter against the blue-and-white painted tiles. Her one contribution to this planet: a Jackson Pollock in the bathtub. And not a good one at that. Too much red, the critics would say. What a waste, her mother would say. What would her mother actually say? She couldn’t bear to even think of it.
She had fucked up, she knew it. She had tried to be someone she wasn’t. She tried to do something daring, unpredictable, and carefree, and look what happened. Isabel was right. She was far too innocent, far too much of an angel, to try playing in the deep end. How would she ever face it? The embarrassment. The utter humiliation of being caught with George Zao, of all the boys in the world. Caught and exposed like that. All her life she had been so responsible, so virtuous, so perfect, and the one time she had tried pretending to be the sophisticate, the bad girl, it had all gone up in flames.
The moment Charlotte started banging on the door at Villa Jovis, everything entered this strange liminal space where it all seemed to happen in slow motion but somehow also sped up. They scrambled to untangled from each other. George opened the door to a shrieking Charlotte, bolted out of the chamber, and started chasing after the two guys who had been controlling the drone. The guys ran into the woods, and George disappeared after them. Lucie stumbled out and began running herself, but in the opposite direction. She couldn’t face Charlotte. Not now, maybe never.
At some point, Lucie willed herself somehow to get out of the tub. The steam had helped, maybe. She threw on the plush white bathrobe and padded out into her bedroom, letting out a quick gasp when she found Charlotte sitting in her armchair.
“You left the door half open. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
Lucie caught her breath, her fists still clenched. “I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yesss!” Lucie hissed.
“Okay, okay. I just wanted to be sure, that’s all. You don’t have to be so defensive. I’m on your side, Lucie,” Charlotte said, trying to sound calm, even though she was boiling with panic.
“I’m sorry, I’m a little on edge,” Lucie said, sitting down on her bed.
“I can only imagine.” Charlotte arched her eyebrows. She sat back in the armchair, crossed her arms, and all pretense of caring gave way to the old Charlotte that Lucie had been dreading. “Oh, Lucie, my poor Lucia. What were you thinking? I don’t mean to overreact, but this is bad. This is very, very bad.”
“I know very well how bad it is. You can stop saying it.”
Charlotte got up from the armchair and began pacing the room. “I think I’m still in shock. There I was, stumbling around Villa Jovis in the dark, getting a contact high from all that pot everyone was smoking, and then I saw those two drone operators huddled over a monitor, giggling like schoolboys. I went up to them and peered into the screen, and at first I thought they were watching some sort of porno. And then, when they zoomed in on the poor girl’s face, I thought I was hallucinating. I thought, Why does that girl look so much like Lucie? And what in God’s name is she letting that guy do to her under her—”
“All right, all right, enough. Please stop!” Lucie jammed her hands up to her ears.
“I just knew that drone operator was into you, that little pervert! I could tell just by the way he always had that damn drone hovering over you at every event throughout the week! Now, if George wasn’t able to intercept them and destroy the footage, we should go to plan B: we should go straight to Isabel.”
“Come on, it’s her wedding night!” Lucie protested.
“I don’t care! Your future is at stake, Lucie, and she needs to know exactly what happened with her staff. Her people can do all the damage control—that Gillian lady looks like she could direct a covert SEAL team assassination if she had to, doesn’t she? I want her to make sure all the footage gets locked up and destroyed, along with those creeps they hired!”
Lucie’s heart sank. She couldn’t imagine the further embarrassment of having to tell Isabel about this.
“Where is George? Don’t you think we should have heard from him by now?” Charlotte fretted as she kept going from the door to the window.
“Can you please stop pacing? You’re giving me a headache!” Lucie moaned.
“Well, pardon me if I’m giving you a headache. I’m sorry I have to worry that your reputation, your future, your whole life, is in his hands right now!”
“My whole life?” Lucie stared at Charlotte dubiously.
“Do you understand the ramifications of what could happen if that footage ever went public? Let’s start with grad schools—you can forget about getting into any of the Ivys. And then you’ll never be hired by a Fortune 100 company. You’ll never get into any of the good clubs. You’ll never marry into a good family. And let’s not forget, you’ll never be president!”
“I hate to break it to you, Charlotte, but I’m not going to be president. It’s never been a goal of mine.”
“You say that now, but you never know. I mean, do you think Michelle Obama ever dreamed she would be president one day?”
“What are you talking about? Michelle Obama isn’t even running.”
“Nonsense, she’ll run after Hillary runs, and she will surely win. We will have two kickass female presidents in a row beginning in 2016, just wait and see. But you—you might have jeopardized your chances forever. And do you want to know the most terrible thing of all?”
“What?”
“Your name will no longer be in the book,” Charlotte said ominously.
“What book?”
“Ugh, don’t be dense, Lucie. There’s only one book, and that’s The Social Register. It would be a tragedy if you were struck out of the book!”
Lucie rolled her eyes. “I could give two fucks about The Social Register.”
“Language, Lucie! You might not feel like it’s important now, but just wait and see how you feel when the next edition comes out, and your mother and Freddie are listed but your name is conspicuously absent. I’ve had friends who were excised in this way, after marriage, divorce, or murder, and they all felt like they no longer existed. Like they were dead.”
Lucie lay back on the bed wearily. She wished Charlotte would just get out of her room.
“I don’t understand it, Lucie. I just don’t know how you could let this happen. In all these years you’ve never, ever put a wrong foot forward! I didn’t see this coming from even a mile away. You and George Zao? How is that even possible? I thought you detested him!”
Lucie remained silent.
Charlotte let out a deep sigh. “On some level, I can understand it. After all, he is Chinese. I mean, it’s in your blood, your recessive genes. I always wondered when it might happen for you. You’ve always been caught between two cultures. No matter how or where you’ve been brought up, you would be predisposed toward someone like him.”
Lucie felt like she had been punched in the gut. Of all the many hurtful, insensitive things Charlotte had said to her over the years, this was the worst. She should have been furious at her cousin, but instead she felt nothing but shame—a numbing shame buried deep within her that had always been there, the sort of shame only a family member could inflict that rendered her helpless, unable to defend herself. Suddenly, a chorus of voices began to crowd her head. The voices of her relatives, her neighbors, her college friends
, her classmates back at Brearley …
“You’ll never guess what Lucie was caught doing in Capri.”
“Who would have imagined that Lucie Churchill, who only dated the preppiest guys and wouldn’t even give Stavros Theodoracopulos the time of day, would end up falling for a Chinese boy from Hong Kong?”
“A Chinese boy who goes to Berkeley, of all places.”
“He wears a Speedo and Birkenstocks. Together.”
“Ewww!”
“Have you seen that mother of his? NOCD.”fn1
“I suppose it’s fine that she’s fallen for someone like him, since Lucie’s never cared about joining Piping Rock.”
“Have you fallen for him?” Suddenly Lucie realized Charlotte had been speaking to her all along. “Answer me, Lucie, so I can best help you clean up this mess.”
Lucie shook her head vehemently. “I haven’t fallen for him, Charlotte. I’m not even attracted to him! It was all a mistake! I just had a wild moment.”
Charlotte let out a deep sigh that Lucie interpreted as relief. “You’ve been such an angel all these years, something was bound to crack. Your mother always had a bit of a wild streak, which I actually found rather refreshing in our family, and I guess you’ve inherited a bit of that after all.”
There it is, Lucie thought. That backhanded compliment toward her mother all the Churchills were so good at delivering. Even after all these years, there was always this politely veiled implication that Marian Tang, the hippieish Asian girl from the Pacific Northwest, was never supposed to marry their darling Reggie. She wanted to defend her mother, but she knew she wasn’t even in a position to defend herself.
“This has nothing to do with Mom. It’s this wedding … I got caught up in everything that’s been happening on this island, that’s all.” It was the best Lucie could muster up.
“Yes, Capri is rather intoxicating, isn’t it? It lulls your inhibitions, seduces you, and makes you do crazy, impulsive things. Look at me—I never in my life thought I’d eat this many carbs in one week! Just think, what would have happened if I hadn’t come looking for you? What if I hadn’t arrived at the moment I did and saw what those boys were up to?”
“What’s there to say? You did come looking for me.” Lucie sighed.
“I don’t even dare imagine what might have happened if I had not. The footage would be streaming twenty-four-seven on TMZ already!”
“I’m not famous, Charlotte. No one would care.”
“You are a Churchill! Our ancestors were some of the earliest settlers of America and count two signers of the Declaration of Independence! Our great-great-great-grandfather practically invented Wall Street! The press loves this kind of stuff, whenever our kind are caught doing naughty things. They would label you something nasty like ‘Park Avenue Princess’ or ‘Churchill Heiress,’ and it would be all over Page Six!”
“Well, I’ve always wanted to be in Page Six,” Lucie said facetiously.
“Don’t even joke about such a thing, Lucie! Our family has survived unsullied by scandal for generations, and I’m not going to let you be the one who ruins it all! A scandal like this would give Granny a stroke! And mind you, even if we do succeed in destroying the footage forever, what are we going to do about George?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do we contain him?”
“I don’t understand. George doesn’t need any ‘containing.’”
“Oh, you don’t think he’s going to go bragging about tonight?”
“God no.”
Charlotte glared at Lucie pitifully. “I don’t think you really know what men are like. You are a big notch in his belt, and he’s going to want to broadcast it to all the other guys.”
“He’s not that kind of guy, trust me. And things have changed since your time, Charlotte. Everyone’s past is out there online, it’s really not that big a deal,” Lucie tried to say dismissively, even though, in her heart of hearts, it was a big deal.
Charlotte shook her head in dismay. She knew Lucie might not care as much as she did about such proprieties, but she still had their family to answer to. She pondered for a moment and then let out a deep sigh. “I suppose you see me as a has-been. Yes, I’m a Luddite, I’m too old-fashioned for your generation. God help me, I’ve never been on a dating app, and maybe I’m placing too much importance on protecting your virtue, your reputation, but this was what I was here to do, Lucie. It was the only reason I was invited to Capri and you know it. On that score I have totally failed our family. And your mother—your poor mother—will be blamed by Granny.”
Lucie wanted to scream—her cousin was so good at playing this particular guilt card. “Why should Mom ever find out?”
“Well, if the footage leaks, she’s bound to find out. And even if it doesn’t … don’t you always tell her everything anyway?”
“You think I’m going to tell her about this?”
“Well, the two of you are like sisters. You three have this special free-spirited intimacy that I’ve always found a little disconcerting—I remember how Freddie confessed to your mother that some girl had given him a hand job under the table at Serafina when he was in the ninth grade.”
“Charlotte, that’s Freddie! I don’t tell my mom everything like he does. If anything, I tell as little as possible these days—she worries about every single thing I do.”
“That’s not how it seems to me,” Charlotte said, turning toward the window. The moonlight on the water was astonishing. It was such a lovely view, a view that had gotten them into all this trouble in the first place. She wished she could turn back the clock and that they had never accepted the Zaos’ rooms.
“What do you want, Charlotte? Do you want me to swear never to say anything, so neither of us disappoints her?”
Charlotte turned slowly to face Lucie. “You know, that wasn’t my intention at all. But since you bring it up, I do think it would be in the best interests of everyone to take an oath of omertà and keep this incident completely to ourselves.”
“Fine with me.”
“Let’s swear that we’ll tell absolutely no one.”
“It will never leave this room,” Lucie swore.
“And we should leave Capri first thing in the morning.”
“What do you mean? We can’t leave in the morning—there’s still the post-wedding brunch on board Issie’s godfather’s yacht!”
“Lucie, I could give a rat’s ass about the brunch on a yacht right now. It’s imperative that we leave tomorrow. Don’t you see? For the sake of your reputation, our family’s reputation, we just can’t risk any hint of gossip getting out.”
“But that makes no sense! Don’t you think it will look more suspicious if we suddenly left without saying goodbye? No one but the three of us knows what happened and …”
Just then, Charlotte heard the elevator doors opening. She ran to the door and saw George coming down the hallway, looking a bit out of breath.
“What happened?” Charlotte asked anxiously.
“I caught up with them. I had to chase them all the way down to Via le Botteghe, but I got to them.”
“Oh dear, did you get into a fight?”
“We managed to negotiate. It was all very civilized. We went to the nearest ATM, I got them some cash, and they gave me the drone.”
“Where is it?”
“It’s all destroyed, the hard drive, everything. I crushed it with a rock and threw it off a cliff. That’s why it took me so long.”
“Oh, thank God. Thank God, thank God, thank God.” Charlotte sighed in relief. “How much did you have to pay them?”
“Don’t worry about it.” George peeked in at Lucie leaning by the archway to her bedroom. He was about to say something to her when Charlotte cut him off.
“George, will you please come with me for a moment to my room? There are a few things we need to discuss,” Charlotte said, suddenly taking on a no-nonsense tone.
George nodded wearily.
“Cha
rlotte! What are you doing?” Lucie asked suspiciously.
“Pack your bags, Lucie.”
“Charlotte, no!” Lucie cried out in alarm.
Charlotte ignored Lucie, closing the door firmly behind her as she marched George Zao down the hallway toward her room.
II
* * *
NEW YORK
2018
CHAPTER ONE
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Upper East Side
“Tell me what you see. Tell me why you like it,” Marian Churchill (Seattle Country Day / Lakeside / Harvard / Columbia PhD) said to her son, Freddie, as they stood in front of Balthus’s immense painting Summertime in the contemporary wing of the Met.
“I see innocence, I see subversion, I see a horny couple,” Freddie (All Souls / Saint David’s / Saint Paul’s / Princeton, Class of ’20) said.
Marian smacked her son on the arm with her rolled-up museum guide. “Be serious! You were the one who dragged me all the way here from my favorite Vermeers to see this painting.”
“The girl in the middle of the painting is actually Balthus’s reimagining of Narcissus. Just look at all the different perspectives, the hidden figures and all their various agendas. The creepy guy smoking the pipe, the sleeping girl, that mysterious couple wandering in the distance. There’s so much intrigue in the picture, you could write a whole novel about it!”
“Then you should write it! And you know what? You’re right … I think that couple is looking for someplace private to get it on,” Marian said, squinting at the figures huddled in the background. The two of them began giggling, which soon exploded into fits of uncontrollable laughter as several museum patrons cast dirty looks in their direction.
Marian, still heaving from laughter, turned away from the painting in an effort to collect herself. “Oh, look, Grant Wood! The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. I love Grant Wood.”