Sex and Vanity

by Kevin Kwan

  I love it when you call me señorita,

  I wish I could pretend I didn’t need ya.

  Marian frowned slowly. “Wait a minute…is Cecil actually singing that he loves it when she calls him señorita?”

  Freddie grimaced a little. “Ye-aah, apparently. Wouldn’t have been my first choice for a proposal song, and I’m not sure the wiener mic was the right move either.”

  Marian chortled in agreement. “Can you see Lucie’s face? That damn umbrella on the bulgogi cart is blocking my view.”

  “Lucie’s freaking out! Her face has turned bright red.” Freddie laughed.

  “She’s mortified, isn’t she?” Marian said.

  “Sooooo mortified. I love it!”

  As if the spectacle of a hundred dancers on the steps of the Met wasn’t enough, a marching band in full regalia suddenly emerged from the Central Park entrance off Fifth Avenue, backing up the tune with its enormous brass instruments as it snaked around the dancers in front of the museum. Hundreds of tourists were now on the scene filming excitedly with their phones as the song ended and six gold-sequined dancers carried the tall yet surprisingly slight Cecil aloft and twirled him down the steps Esther Williams–style right to where Lucie was standing.

  While Cecil was still propped horizontal in the air by the dancers, he reached into the breast pocket of his bespoke Attolini suit, fished out a blue velvet box, jammed it right under Lucie’s nose with one hand, grabbed a real microphone with his other hand, and announced in his distinctive accent—a vaguely Central Texas meets Draco Malfoy meets pretentious French auctioneer accent that he claimed came naturally from having gone to high school at Aiglon—“Lucie, mon ange, innamorata mia, would you do me the greatest honor of becoming my señorita—Mrs. Cecil Pike?”

  “Goddamn it, I should have worn my Bottega boots! I can’t see a thing! What’s Lucie doing?”

  “Her hands are on her face, but she’s nodding. She looks…stunned.”

  “Ha! I’ll bet she does!” Marian said.

  The crowd roared in approval, as Cecil took a bow and announced, “I’d like to thank everyone who helped make this spectacular moment possible. The president of the Met, the chairman of the board of trustees, everyone on the board—especially my mother—the mayor, everyone at the mayor’s office, the board of the New York City Ballet, including Sarah Jessica Parker, the executive director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation, choreographer Yanira Castro, Telsey and Company for casting, Great Performances for catering, and, of course, Laurence Graff of Graff jewelers. Thank you all!”

  “Um, did he thank any of the performers or the band?” Freddie wondered out loud.

  “He’s probably too nervous. I’ll give him a pass on that,” Marian said, as they crossed the avenue toward the newly engaged couple.

  “You didn’t cry, Mama. I thought you’d be bawling your eyes out.”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly a Mr.-Darcy-getting-down-on-his-knees-in-a-muddy-field kind of moment,” Marian remarked, although she was rather moved by the whole spectacle. Who would have imagined that her Lucie would be proposed to in such a grand manner by the man that Vulture, BuzzFeed, and The Skimm had proclaimed “The Most Eligible Gentleman on the Planet.” She almost teared up at the thought. If only Reggie could have been here to witness this day—maybe now her mother-in-law and all those Churchills would finally stop judging her parenting choices.

  “Mom! Freddie! Were you here the whole time?” Lucie shrieked excitedly as she hugged her mother and brother.

  “Of course they were. I arranged everything so that they wouldn’t miss a second of our special moment,” Cecil said, beaming proudly.

  “Is your mom here too?” Lucie asked, looking around.

  “Very funny, Lucie. You know she’s at her couture fittings in Paris.”

  “Yes, how could I forget?” Lucie said apologetically.

  Breaking the awkward silence, Marian announced, “I promised Freddie his favorite apfelstrudel at Café Sabarsky. Won’t you both join us?”

  “I have another idea…why don’t we all celebrate with champagne and scones at the Carlyle? It’s Lucie’s favorite,” Cecil suggested.

  “Sure!” Marian and Freddie gamely agreed.

  The four of them strolled over to Madison Avenue together, and before long they were seated at what Cecil insisted was the “prime table” in the jewel-box-like gallery of the Carlyle Hotel.

  “My bride deserves the best seat in the house! We can see absolutely everyone entering and exiting from here, and, more importantly, they can see us. Are you comfortable, Mrs. Churchill?” Cecil said as he tried to fluff up the silk pillow behind Marian with a series of needless karate chops.

  “Very comfortable, thank you. You can stop hitting the pillow, Cecil,” Marian replied.

  “Don’t you love this room and its superb stenciled walls? You know it’s all inspired by the sultan’s dining room at Topkapi Palace in Constantinople. Mongiardino at his best. You know my mother tried to get him to design the interiors of our first plane, but then he died. I’m so glad those Chinese owners knew well enough to leave the gallery alone when they bought the place…”

  Cecil paused for a split second, as if it had just dawned on him that his future mother-in-law was Chinese and his bride half Chinese, and maybe his statement could be perceived as a tad offensive. If the notion momentarily disturbed him, it was forgotten as soon as the waiter arrived and Cecil held court over the table, ordering afternoon tea with a smorgasbord of finger sandwiches, scones, and petits fours for everyone, selecting the right vintage of champagne from the wine list, and, most important, making sure everything was served on his approved china. “Please take away these dishes with the blue-and-gold pattern you use for regular guests. Talk to Stephanie—she knows where the hand-painted Limoges that have been put on reserve for me is kept.”

  “Cecil has his own set of teacups stored here,” Lucie explained to her brother.

  “Seriously? What’s wrong with the ones they have?” Freddie probed.

  “Freddie, tea always tastes much better served in Second Empire French porcelain,” Cecil began to lecture. “But more importantly, look at your sister’s ravishing lips! They’re like a hybrid between Andie MacDowell’s and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s. I simply cannot allow these precious lips to touch a teacup unless it has a rim thinner than 1.3 millimeters!”

  “What would happen if they did?” Freddie stared at his sister’s lips, wide-eyed.

  “It would simply never happen. I wouldn’t permit it! From now on, Freddie, your sister is going to be treated like the divine empress she was born to be,” Cecil declared.

  “Got that, Freddie?” Lucie said with a little giggle.

  Cecil turned to Marian. “Mrs. Churchill, you deserve a special prize for your patience today!”

  “What do you mean?” Marian asked.

  “I know you’re only being polite, but I cannot believe that you haven’t asked to see the engagement ring yet!”

  “Oh, yeah, let’s see the ring, Lucie,” Marian remembered, trying to summon up enough enthusiasm to impress her future son-in-law. Lucie shyly extended her hand across the table and caught her mother recoiling almost imperceptibly. “Oh, wow, Lucie. Oh, wow,” was all Marian could muster up.

  Freddie whistled. “Look at the size of that thing! It looks like a tumor on her finger. Where’s Dr. Pimple Popper when you need her?”

  “Very funny, Freddie,” Cecil said a little crossly. He looked up and suddenly his frown transformed into a look that a penitent might reserve for the apparition of the Virgin Mary, as a trio of exceedingly chic women entered the room with a cute young girl dressed in riding breeches.

  “Why, it’s Jackie, Martha, Alicia, and Helena! Hot damn, everyone’s here today!” Cecil sprang up from his seat to give double-cheeked air-kisses to the lad
ies, before patting little Helena on her head as if he were dribbling a basketball. “Ladies, may I present my new fiancée, Lucy Churchill? You know, her father was Reggie Churchill, and she’s the granddaughter of Consuelo Barclay Churchill.”

  “Yes, Cecil, we know. And don’t forget she’s also the daughter of one of our country’s pioneering geneticists, Dr. Marian Tang Churchill,” Jackie said graciously, giving Marian a wink.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Cecil stammered, realizing his faux pas. He hadn’t realized Marian would know this particularly glamorous set of ladies.

  “It’s hard to believe our town’s most eligible playboy is now officially off the market,” Martha wryly remarked.

  “He sure is. And here’s the proof!” Cecil grabbed Lucie’s wrist and thrust it at the ladies, who gasped in unison.

  “Stunning! Is it Verdura?” Martha asked.

  “What a compliment, Martha. No, it is an original Cecil Pike! The cabochon emerald is forty-nine carats and belonged to the Nizam of Hyderabad. The accent rubies are from my mother, bought from the Patiño auction many years ago, and then I had Laurence Graff personally select these twelve brilliant-cut diamonds to go around the band. All D flawless, of course.”

  “It looks like something one of the infantas might have worn in a Velázquez,” Alicia, an art historian, observed.

  “You know, that’s precisely what I was going for! I was channeling the Duchess of Alba when I designed the piece, if you really want to know,” Cecil said, his eyes misting a little.

  “You did good, Cecil! I’m sure Cayetana would have approved!” Jackie declared.*3

  After the ladies had been escorted into the adjacent dining room where the more discreet crowd liked to be seated, Cecil sank contentedly into his antique kilim embroidered chair. “Between those ladies, everyone who’s anyone will know the news before the sun sets on the island. Which reminds me…” He fished his phone out from his jacket pocket and began scrolling through his Instagram. “Holy Moira Rose! It’s trending! The proposal video is trending! 27,084 likes already! Cornelia Guest just liked it! Prince Joachim of Lichtenberg just re-grammed it! Oh, excuse me, I must show this to the ladies. Lucie, come. Quickly, Lucie!” Cecil leaped out of his seat, dragging Lucie along with him.

  “Well, I guess Cecil is part of the family now,” Marian said with a shrug.

  Freddie gave his mother a look. “Yeah. I think we’re gonna have to stop using those coffee mugs from Zabar’s.”

  “SOCIAL GRACES”

  by Geoffrey Madison Columbus

  If you were anywhere near the Upper East Side yesterday, you might be forgiven for thinking that some hotshot director was filming a movie on location at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There were ballerinas and daredevil acrobats, there were Broadway dancers, there was a marching band. However, this was no film that brought Fifth Avenue traffic to a standstill but Cecil Pike in the midst of a Marvel-budget-sized wedding proposal to Lucie Churchill. Cecil, no stranger to this column, is the dashing charmer who has been proclaimed the biggest catch in the universe by every magazine, blog and social media outlet that matters. He’s the GQ-handsome bon vivant and heir to the ginormous Pike billions, first gushed in the oil fields of Central Texas and then multiplied exponentially thanks to the genius of his force-of-nature mamacita, Renée Mouton Pike, one of the world’s leading investors, who never misses a brilliant start-up opportunity or a chic party anywhere in the universe, thanks to her private India Mahdavi–designed Boeing 757. The less socially attentive might recognize Cecil from his cameo appearances on Antiques Roadshow, where he schools the experts with his encyclopedic knowledge of 16th- to 18th-century European antiquities. This, after all, is a guy who goes deep-sea diving in search of Spanish shipwrecks and has a classics degree from Oxford. Pike mère et fils are esthetes extraordinaire, having restored Buckley House in London to its former glory with the help of Jacques Garcia at the whispered cost of more than half a billion (pounds, not dollars!), and are said to be doing the same to an ancient fort in northern Rajasthan. The lucky lass Lucie, a rising art consultant who’s on the speed-dial of every wannabe Mugrabi these days, is the exotically beautiful daughter of Dr. Marian Tang and the late Reginald Churchill, a true blue-blooded New Yorker descended from generations of Churchills, Barclays and other Knickerbocker Club types. We haven’t seen such a classy union of old money and new money in a while, and this will be one beautiful power couple to put on your radar, not to mention a power wedding. You heard it here first: the nuptials are rumored to be taking place this autumn at a little dive in the Persian Gulf called the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

  *1 A preschool in Odessa, Texas.

  *2 Yes, that’s really what they call the body paint combination at Bentley. I personally prefer the “Silver Tempest over Damson,” but I figured no one would know what the hell that meant.

  *3 That would be the late María del Rosario Cayetana Paloma Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Fernanda Teresa Francisca de Paula Lourdes Antonia Josefa Fausta Rita Castor Dorotea Santa Esperanza Fitz-James Stuart, Silva, Falcó y Gurtubay, the Most Excellent Eighteenth Duchess of Alba. As the world’s most titled aristocrat, she was five times a duchess, eighteen times a marchioness, eighteen times a countess, fourteen times a Spanish grandee, once a viscountess, and the twenty-ninth Lady of Moguer. She also took part in a bullfight in Seville. Olé!

  II

  821 Fifth Avenue

  UPPER EAST SIDE

  Even in the thin air inhabited by Manhattan’s stratospherically high-end property agents—where no one bats an eyelash at a $35 million listing—821 Fifth Avenue was considered hallowed ground. It was built in 1918 to the most exacting standards of luxury, and each apartment in the twenty-one-story building occupied an entire floor, creating sumptuous mansions in the sky. But it wasn’t the size of these residences that made the building so renowned; rather, it was the plain fact that 821 was considered to be one of the top five most exclusive buildings in Manhattan. Two ambassadors, one retired Supreme Court justice, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and even a deposed European monarch were politely turned down from purchasing by its notoriously difficult co-op board.

  Much of this was due to the fact that a majority of its apartments were still held by the original families who had owned since 1918, and few units ever changed hands. To paraphrase the Patek Philippe slogan, it could be said that one never actually owned an apartment in 821—one merely looked after it for the next generation. So the building remained, well into the twenty-first century, a bastion of privacy for some of the East Coast’s most rarefied and discreetly influential families, among them Lucie’s grandmother, Mrs. John L. Churchill, or as she was known to everyone in her exclusive circle, Consuelo Barclay Churchill (privately tutored / Miss Porter’s / Institut Villa Pierrefeu).

  Consuelo’s pedigree was unimpeachable. Born a Barclay, one of America’s landed gentry families whose storied history went back to the Virginia land grants of King James I, she was on her maternal side the last surviving granddaughter of the Industrial Age tycoon who built the Northeast Atlantic railroads. Her marriage to John L. Churchill, scion to a Gilded Age fortune and president of Churchill Brothers Averill & Co., one of the oldest private banks in the United States, cemented her pole position within New York’s Old Guard, but she had neither the interest nor inclination to follow in the footsteps of Bunny, Jayne, or Brooke and become a society doyenne. Intensely private and cosseted since birth, she never felt the need to make much of an effort. While she once presided over the Fifth Avenue residence, an estate in Southampton, and an hôtel particulier on Paris’s Right Bank, these days she preferred to spend most of the year at her “winter home” in Hobe Sound, Florida, coming to New York only during the fall ballet season.

  Tonight, however, Consuelo had made the exception of traveling to the city and opening up the apartment for her granddaughter’s engagement party, which is how Lucie found herself st
anding in the middle of her grandmother’s drawing room in a pretty Zimmermann white eyelet dress, receiving the relatives and friends on her father’s side who had gathered from all over the country on a beautiful late-spring evening and who, truth be told, were mystified by how Lucie had pulled off the feat of becoming engaged to a man they had all read so much about.

  “So how did you meet him again?” Teddy Barclay (Rippowam / Phillips Exeter / Harvard) asked his cousin pointedly as he grabbed another pig in a blanket from the istoriato Italian Renaissance platter being held by a uniformed maid.

  “We met in Rome five years ago, Teddy. Charlotte and I were touring the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, and Cecil came walking down the hallway with the owner of the palazzo and saw that we were admiring a particularly beautiful painting of Saint Sebastian. So he started telling us about it—even educating the prince about his own art collection. He’s incredibly knowledgeable about Italian art.”

  Teddy twitched his nose, unimpressed. “So what precisely does Cecil do these days?”

  “Cecil’s the busiest man I know. He’s got dozens of projects. He’s funding about thirty start-ups, he’s on the International Council of the Louvre, he started a nonprofit that restores frescoes in Naples, and he’s—”

  “None of those sound like real jobs to me,” Teddy remarked, as he chewed openmouthed on a pig in a blanket.

  “Teddy, give it a rest,” his wife, Annafred (Rippowam / Deerfield / Benenden / Saint Catharine’s, Cambridge), cut in.

  “But this was only my third piggy!” Teddy protested.