Sex and Vanity

by Kevin Kwan

  “Really? I couldn’t possibly see how,” Olivia interjected.

  “That Mrs. Zao could have come along on the tour,” Mercedes whispered.

  “Are you not a fan?” Charlotte said with a slight smirk.

  Paloma pursed her lips for a moment, before replying, “She is perfectly lovely. I just wouldn’t want to be on a two-hour tour with her, that’s all.”

  Mercedes waved her hand in front of her sister’s face dismissively. “Oh, Paloma, stop being so polite. We just weren’t impressed by the way Mrs. Zao bragged about her husband’s companies. Not impressed at all!”

  “Was it really bragging? She was asked the question by Mordecai, and she simply gave him an answer,” Olivia countered.

  “It was the manner in which she said it. Did she have to boast that it was the largest fleet of tankers on the planet? I mean, our family founded businesses in the Philippines that go back to the eighteen hundreds, but we never would have mentioned it quite like that. My mother would have given us a tight slap!” Mercedes said.

  “Mother could have taught that woman a thing or two about subtlety! Her style is just a bit too Hong Kong for my taste,” Paloma sniffed.

  “How do you define ‘too Hong Kong’?” Charlotte asked as she tore off a slice of the pizza and carefully removed every bit of mortadella and cheese with her knife and fork.

  Paloma pondered for a moment. “There’s a certain showy quality. The colors they choose to wear, and how they don’t mind being seen dripping in jewels at all hours of the day.”

  “You call it showy, I call it flair. I suppose I have a penchant for extravagant, eccentric style. Mrs. Zao reminds me of Anna Piaggi or the Marchesa Casati,” Olivia said.

  “Well, you should have seen the rubies she wore to go swimming yesterday. My jeweler would have had a heart attack!”

  “And that son of hers, the silent one. No doubt he’s handsome, but have you ever heard him speak? It’s quite odd,” Mercedes mused.

  “I think he’s just a little full of himself,” Charlotte commented.

  “You know, I read somewhere that beautiful men lack a conscience,” Mercedes interjected.

  “Oh, what rubbish! He’s perfectly nice to me. I just don’t think he’s one for small talk,” Olivia said.

  Lucie soaked in the ladies’ banter but said nothing. She couldn’t help but notice the Sultanah seated at the other end of the table, being fawned over by Mordecai. Even though she was wearing a blindingly colorful caftan and dripping in jewels, the Ortiz sisters didn’t seem to disapprove of her.

  * * *

  …

  After lunch, the group dispersed to pursue various pampering distractions. The Sultanah and the Ortiz sisters treated themselves to the warm goat’s milk and honey manicures being offered in the spa (with Mordecai tagging along, of course), Auden went for a dip in the waters off the villa’s private beach, and Charlotte, Olivia, and Lucie decided to take advantage of the sun beds on the lower terrace. The Balinese beds were situated at the perfect vantage point under an allée of tall umbrella pines, allowing the harsh afternoon sun to filter gently down to them while the crosswinds blew a cool sea breeze.

  Lying on her belly and staring out at the azure waters from her plush silk mattress, Charlotte let out a deep sigh. “This is absolute bliss!”

  “I’ve always found billionaires to be a miserable lot, but once in a while I think it might not be that bad to have enough cash to afford a place like this,” Olivia said with her eyes closed as she savored the sunlight on her face.

  “You know, I almost married one with a place not too different from this,” Charlotte murmured lazily.

  Lucie stared at her cousin curiously. “Really?”

  “Yes. Raphaël. His parents had a villa in Cap-Ferrat, and we spent a few heavenly weeks there the summer after I graduated from Smith.”

  “That was your hot summer romance, wasn’t it? We’ve all had at least one,” Olivia remarked.

  “What happened?” Lucie asked, having a hard time imagining Charlotte engaged in a hot summer romance with anyone.

  “My parents happened. Raphaël proposed and wanted me to move to London with him, where he was about to start a job at Rothschild’s. But Mom and Dad didn’t approve. And neither did Granny. They all thought I was much too young and he was a little too, shall we say…exotic.”

  “Where was he from?” Lucie asked.

  “He was born in Paris, to an extremely wealthy and aristocratic family.”

  “So what was wrong with that?” Lucie pressed on.

  “Do you really need me to spell it out for you? They were Jewish.” Charlotte mouthed the last part.

  “Oh,” Lucie said quietly, her face clouding over. “Did your parents really object because of that?”

  Charlotte sighed. “There were many reasons, but that was certainly a factor. It remained unsaid, but I know my parents. And I think you’re old enough now, Lucie, to realize how Granny can be sometimes. She used to refer to Jews as ‘the visitors.’ I was so confused whenever she said that until I realized what she meant when I took her shopping for cosmetics at Bergdorf’s one day. She whispered to me, ‘Time to change my regimen. The visitors have all discovered La Prairie!’ ”

  “Oh dear God,” Olivia huffed contemptuously, while Lucie remained silent. Unlike her cousin, she had learned from a very early age precisely how her grandmother could be, and she preferred to block those memories out.

  “What happened to Raphaël?” Olivia inquired.

  “You know, the usual. Married some other blonde, had a bunch of kids, got divorced, got fat.”

  Olivia snorted. “They all get fat, don’t they?”

  “But when he was younger, boy, let me tell you…he was really something.”

  Olivia raised an eyebrow. “How something was he?”

  “Remember that guy in Sixteen Candles that Molly Ringwald was obsessed with?”

  “Do I? I was obsessed with him too! God, what was his name? And what ever happened to him?”*

  “I’m not sure, but Raphaël looked just like him, only handsomer.”

  “Was he a good kisser? French boys are the best kissers, I find.”

  Charlotte turned onto her back and glanced at her cousin. “Lucie, would you be a darling and go fetch us some drinks. An Arnold Palmer, maybe? I’m dying of thirst.”

  “Me too. Get them to put some vodka in mine,” Olivia said.

  Lucie rolled her eyes. “Okay, I get the hint.”

  She got up from her bed, left the terrace, and relayed the drink orders to a passing spa attendant. She wished to explore more of the grounds but wanted to avoid running into George again at all costs. Since he was probably with his mother getting a Thai massage down by the beach, Lucie thought it best to head upward. She wandered into a beautiful greenhouse constructed of stained-glass windows where a profusion of orchids was being cultivated, and then found another terrace where built-in sofas along the walls were scattered with colorful kilim pillows. Every corner of the property seemed to reveal a stunning new surprise, and she felt as though she were exploring some sort of Alice in Wonderland dreamscape. It’s all too beautiful, she thought. I don’t think I could live in a place this beautiful all year long.

  Following signs to the High Garden, she climbed the staircase behind the old villa and came to a glade of ancient tropical palms that created a lush, verdant grove. As she entered, she came upon a marble fountain gurgling next to a carved Etruscan bench. She sat down for a moment in this serene spot, enveloped in the greenery and the chorus of cicadas making their midsummer mating calls, trying to make sense of her thoughts.

  All through lunch, it felt like her mind had been doing Cirque du Soleil–size contortions over George and his mother. Why were the others being so mercilessly critical? The Ortiz sisters were such hypocrites. The
y didn’t care for Mrs. Zao’s “showy” style, but weren’t they being showy in their own way? Every time she saw the sisters, they were immaculately outfitted from head to toe, and even the Sultanah confirmed that the sisters dressed in couture. Yes, their black pearl earrings, delicate cashmere cardigans, and Chanel kitten heels looked subtler than Rosemary’s spangled chiffon caftans, but it was a look that still screamed of money, the sort of money that was far snobbier than the Zaos’. The sisters might live in Manila, but they were so interchangeable with all the women she had grown up around, the ones who populated the Upper East Side. And it was so apropos of Charlotte to align with those sisters. In a few decades, she would be just like them. She would be exactly like them all.

  At the same time, Lucie felt terribly annoyed with herself. Ever since she had been with George at Casa Malaparte, she hadn’t been able to stop obsessing over her actions. She was mortified that she had allowed herself to sob in his arms like that. She had never cried so dramatically like that in front of anyone, even her mother, and she wondered what he must think of her now.

  After her fit of tears on the rooftop had subsided, she had pulled away from him quickly, embarrassed, and they had walked back to the hotel in silence, George maintaining a respectful few paces behind her. He always seemed to be behind her. When did he first see her on the piazzetta? How was he right there when she fainted? Had he been sitting behind her the whole time? He probably saved her from cracking her skull on the ground. Just like he had saved that man’s life when everyone else just stood there staring as they sucked on their Aperol spritzes. His quick heroism, tirelessly giving the man mouth-to-mouth, was what made the difference between him living and dying.

  The palm grove opened onto a hilltop garden overgrown with wild barley and poppies. From this summit, the panoramic views of Positano and the sea beyond were breathtaking to behold, but Lucie found her eyes focusing on something else: the figure of a man standing on the precipice of a crumbling stone wall. Lucie cursed herself silently. Six villas, seven terraces, and thirty acres of grounds, but of course she would run into George. Lucie’s first instinct was to turn around and head back down to the lower terrace. The last thing she wanted to do was face him again, risk speaking again.

  She was about to flee when George glanced around, his face inscrutably in half shadow. Against the deep blue sky and the intense white of the midafternoon sun, his skin glowed like alabaster. Inexplicably, she found herself walking slowly through the swaying barley toward him. He jumped down from the wall, and all of a sudden she imagined it was still yesterday, and she was still lying on the cold volcanic cobblestone of the piazzetta, George leaning over her, his mouth pressed against hers, blowing into her urgently, breathing in that warm breath of life.

  Before she knew what was happening, she felt her lips pressing against his.

  “Lucie! Lucie, are you there?”

  Charlotte emerged through the palm grove just as Lucie jolted away from George.

  “Lucie! I’ve been trying to find you for ages! Mordecai wants us down at the dock immediately. He says we have to go right now if we want to take the yacht back to Capri!”

  * His name was Michael Schoeffling, and after retiring from acting in 1991, he started a business producing handcrafted furniture (if you believe Wikipedia).

  XI

  Hotel Bertolucci

  CAPRI, ITALY

  “When did you paint these?” Auden asked.

  “Over the past two years. This one’s the most recent, it’s not really finished. I worked on it until I had to leave for Italy,” Lucie replied, pointing to an image of overlapping swaths of deep purple.

  They were sitting in the salon of the hotel. Auden leaned forward from his armchair and stared at the iPad in astonishment. When Lucie had first told him about her paintings while they were swimming in the cove at Da Luigi, he thought he’d be seeing the pleasant abstract paintings to be expected of a nineteen-year-old—the sort of faux Franz Kline pieces one could find at Restoration Hardware that would go perfectly with your new curved velvet sofa and your fiddle-leaf fig plant.

  Auden had led plenty of creativity workshops in his time and witnessed the artwork that came out of them from his artistically frustrated clients; most of it ranged from amateurishly angsty to downright awful. He would never have called himself an art expert, but the work flashing before his eyes seemed precociously accomplished. In looking at the canvases soaked in restrained monochromatic al nero di seppia tones, brushstrokes infused with a Dionysian physicality, he sensed an unresolved Lacanian tension that juxtaposed the lyrical gestures of early Helen Frankenthaler, the bold symbology of post–Los Angeles Judy Chicago, and the visceral fury of pre-Madonna Basquiat.*1

  “Lucie, I’m absolutely floored by this work. I’m so impressed.”

  “Really?” Lucie looked up at him blankly.

  “You’ve only been painting for a year?”

  “No, I’ve been doing art since I was very young, and I took art classes all through high school.”

  “Your work is…dare I say…sui generis. It’s original, sophisticated, and fresh, and more importantly, I feel that you are channeling your soul into these paintings. I can’t wait to see the real canvases. Why, I’d love to buy one of your works and hang it at the new studio in East Hampton!”

  Lucie’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I never kid about stuff like this. You already know what I think—you should be in art school and not wasting time studying semiotics or whatever at Brown. You have a true gift, and I think you could really be at the forefront of a new generation of artists. Think about it.”

  “Thank you. I will.” Lucie nodded politely, not wanting to challenge him. She didn’t want to prolong this little vernissage any longer; she just wanted to get back to her room.

  As Lucie strode across the lobby toward the elevator, Auden stared after her, even more intrigued than before. Seeing these paintings was like witnessing the work of a girl possessed. The girl who had just been seated before him with the perfect posture and her hair in a tight ponytail, so composed as she swiped through her artwork, did not for one second resemble someone who would be able to create those canvases. Where was the real Lucie Churchill hiding? Or better yet, why?

  Auden could not have known that even before Lucie had boarded the Murphys’ super yacht, cruised back to Capri while being held hostage to another design tour by Mordecai, crammed into a taxi with the Ortiz sisters, waded through the wall of tourists on the walk back to the hotel, and placidly sat there presenting her artwork and pretending to listen politely, her mind was somewhere else entirely, and it was playing this over and over on a constant loop:

  Did he kiss me or did I kiss him? Fuck, I think I kissed him first. Why did I kiss him? Why oh why oh why? Did it really happen? How much did Charlotte see? Why did she show up at that very moment? Where is George now? What is he thinking right now? What must he think of me now? Did he kiss me or did I kiss him?

  Returning to her room at long last, Lucie closed the door behind her, fastened the security latch, and transformed into the girl whom Auden Beebe had sensed in the paintings. As she lay on her bed with her phone, she became a girl possessed as she searched desperately for anything and everything she could find about George Zao online.

  First up was his Instagram account, which was easy to locate because he had liked Isabel’s first post from Capri. His account name was @zaoist, and Lucie immediately recognized the image that he used as his avatar—the rocks arranged in a spiral pattern was unmistakably a photo of Spiral Jetty, a sculpture created in the middle of a lake in Utah by the artist Robert Smithson. She had read all about it in her art history class last semester.

  Curiously, there wasn’t a single photo of himself or any other person on George’s account. Did he not have a single friend? Actually, that wasn’t true. He had 4,349 followers! That
was 3,000+ more than she had. How in the world did he have so many followers when he was following only 332 people? He obviously wasn’t very active on the app, since there were only eighty-eight posts. Scrolling through his feed, she saw that it consisted of perfectly composed architecture, food, and travel images. If all he did was post photos from other travel and design sites, why was he getting so many likes? Lucie started to scrutinize the images in his posts more closely:

  A chapel in Ronchamp. Okay, it’s that chapel designed by that famous architect.*2

  Char siew bao in a bamboo steamer. Yum.

  Dominique de Menil’s house in Houston. Is that an Yves Klein on the wall?

  The swimming pool at the Amangiri resort. Take me there.

  A vintage Airstream trailer in Marfa. Cool.

  Zion National Park at sunset. Wow.

  Spam sushi. Yuck.

  A copy of Learning from Las Vegas on an empty desk. What’s this book? Lucie quickly googled it: “Learning from Las Vegas created a healthy controversy upon its appearance in 1972, calling for architects to be more receptive to the tastes and values of ‘common’ people and less immodest in their erections of ‘heroic,’ self-aggrandizing monuments.” George sure is an architecture geek.

  A wooden shack in the middle of the desert. Whatever.

  A bacon cheeseburger between two doughnuts. Yuck. Why are guys into gross foods?

  A humpback whale breaching in Sydney Harbor. So cool.

  The Faraglioni rocks. Been there.

  A blue lizard. How cute. Is it that species that’s found only on that rock?

  The stairs at Casa Malaparte. Of course.

  The silhouette of a figure standing on the roof at Casa Malaparte.

  Lucie gasped as she realized it was a photo of her. She zoomed in on the image. Yes, it was definitely her, taken yesterday right before she had her meltdown on the roof. For a moment, she got annoyed. Why did he take her picture like that without her consent? What a creep! Was he one of those guys who went around taking pictures of girls when he knew they weren’t looking? As Lucie stared at the picture longer, she began to calm down. It was a beautiful shot. And with the sun against her, turning her figure into a black silhouette against the golden light, it wasn’t as if she was recognizable. It could have been anyone. She made a quick screen grab of the photo, and it dawned on her that all the perfectly composed pictures on his Instagram weren’t reposts from other accounts. Every single picture had been taken by him. George had a good eye, and she found herself grudgingly impressed.