Sex and Vanity

by Kevin Kwan

  “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.”*

  “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 t
he 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.

  “Charlotte! 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.

  * “Not Our Class, Darling.”

  II

  · 2018 ·

  I

  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.”

  “I’m getting a grant wood just looking at it!” Freddie said, as the two of them burst into laughter again.

  Freddie glanced at his watch and gasped. “Oh, shit, three twenty-two p.m., we’re going to be late!”

  He grabbed his mother’s hand, and the two of them began racing through the galleries, past the Rockefeller wing, down a flight of stairs, and out the little-used exit that opened onto the street level of the museum, facing Fifth Avenue.

  “Cecil said to cross Fifth and stand on the steps outside Adolfo’s old building to get the best view. And try to look inconspicuous,” Freddie said.

  “I blend in everywhere, dear. I just look like another Asian tourist. But you shouldn’t have worn that coat,” Marian said, scrutinizing his dapper navy-and-green-striped rowing blazer.

  The two of them stood under the awning of the red-and-white stone Beaux-Arts mansion, staring in anticipation at the iconic steps of the museum, crowded like any other Saturday with visitors meeting friends, lounging in the sun, having snacks, and posing for selfies. To the casual observer, Marian and Freddie could have fit in perfectly with the rest of the crowd—they looked like two college-aged friends hanging out.

  Marian’s skin was preternaturally unlined, and between her petite frame and gamine pixie-cut hair, she retained such a youthful look and demeanor that people often assumed she was in her mid-twenties and not twice that age. When Freddie was a child, she was always mistaken for his au pair, since his more Caucasian-dominant features and dark blond curls bore little resemblance to her classically Chinese face. These days, one could see more of a resemblance to his mother in his perfect Cupid’s bow and his refined, high cheekbones, though his hair had evolved into a floppy rich chestnut mop that every girl in the 10021 zip code (and many in the 10010) found irresistible.

  “Didn’t Cecil say it would start at three thirty p.m.? It’s already three forty and nothing’s happening,” Marian observed.

  “Blair Waldorf better appear and start doing parkour on those steps or I want my money back,” Freddie quipped. “This is typical Cecil, don’t you think?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s the master of hyperbole. Everything’s always the ‘best in the world,’ the ‘most exclusive’ or ‘one of a kind’ with him. Today he said, ‘Freddie, don’t you think you’ll be the luckiest guy in the world to have me as a brother-in-law?’ ”

  “Oh, jeez, he actually said that?” Marian cackled. “What did you say back?”

  “I said, ‘Not really.’ ”

  “You did not!”

  “I sure did. I asked, ‘How exactly does that make me the luckiest guy in the world?’ And he said, ‘You’ll have access to my houses, the yacht, the plane, all my clubs, and now that we’re related, Town & Country has no choice but to put you on its “Most Eligible Bachelors” list next year. You stand to benefit the most from the Cecil Pike halo effect.’ ”

  “Ha! That’s priceless. As if you’ll ever need his help. The girls have been banging down our door since you were five!”

  “I hate to break it to you, but Cecil already wants us all to spend New Year’s Eve in Saint Barth’s.”

  “Yuck, no thank you! What are we going to do? Hang out on that obscenely large boat of his with Russian oligarchs and Beyoncé? We always spend New Year’s in East Hampton.”

  “I warned him you wouldn’t be happy. He said you would change your mind the moment you see the new villa.”

  Marian rolled her eyes.

  “Peter…Peter Submarina or something like that designed it. The guy who only designs houses for billionaires and kings, or so Cecil claims.”

  “Peter Marino, you mean. Oh, look, there’s Cecil!” Marian said excitedly.

  “Hush, Mama! Stop jumping up and down or you’ll ruin everything!”

  Cecil (Kiddie Kollege Preschool*1
/ South Elementary / Kinkaid / Aiglon / Oriel College, Oxford) could be spotted emerging from a gleaming Meteor over Fountain Blue Bentley Mulsanne*2 in a sharply tailored navy suit and pink shirt. He was what one would describe as Armie Hammer Handsome™—he had the perfect swoop of sandy-blond hair and the perfect glacier-blue eyes accentuated by his perfectly square jaw and aquiline nose, the sort of jaw and nose that on Cecil could have been crafted only by a very pricey Wilshire Corridor surgeon. Cecil held Lucie’s hand affectionately to help her out of the car, and the two of them proceeded up the steps of the museum looking like they were just having a Sunday stroll.

  But then Cecil turned abruptly and gestured toward the hot dog cart parked in front of the museum. Lucie looked confused but followed him down the steps toward the row of food vendors. Suddenly out of nowhere, Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello’s “Señorita” started booming onto the street from hidden speakers. The “random strangers” milling about the steps stood up in unison and began a complicated choreographed routine to the tune as Lucie’s jaw dropped.

  “Boo! Flash mobs are so lame. Didn’t they stop doing them around 2010?” Freddie remarked, before realizing that the spectacle was turning out to be much more than a flash mob. A troupe of street dancers emerged from a passing tour bus to join the party, throwing themselves into the air in unison from the four corners of the steps and executing improbably precarious somersaults before landing safely in the arms of the other dancers, while dozens of ballerinas in pink tutus appeared from the front entrance and began pirouetting around the plaza as if they were doing a scene from Swan Lake.

  “Jeeeesus, what did he do, hire the New York City Ballet?” Marian exclaimed.

  “And from the looks of it the Big Apple Circus as well! Check out the rooftop!” Freddie said excitedly. At the roofline of the museum’s imposing facade, a row of acrobats in gold-sequined bodysuits appeared and began shimmying down the front of the building on long silk cords. Flicking back the wispy golden-wheat hair from his forehead, Cecil grabbed a hot dog from the vendor, joined the dancers in the middle of the steps, and started singing into the bun as if it were a microphone: