by Bridie Clark
“Try again,” he said.
“An invitation to join my table at an upcoming benefit?”
Wyatt rolled his eyes. “Not even close.”
“I know! A dozen pairs of Christian Louboutin shoes.” Wasn’t that what Jessica Seinfeld gave Oprah? Lucy felt sure she’d gotten it right this time. Wyatt had spent yesterday afternoon explaining to her the rules of reciprocity in establishing “tribal ties.” He called it tit-for-tat behavior, explaining how chimps—and humans—used mutual back scratching to build alliances. Reciprocity was the glue that held social groups together. And what woman wouldn’t appreciate Louboutins as barter?
“Unless the chef is Thomas Keller, you massively overshot. The correct answer is: invite her to your weekend home in Millbrook.”
“Wyatt, I don’t have a weekend home in Millbrook!”
He halted at the front entrance of the museum, considering this fact. “Fine, then, the flowers.”
Flashing his “Friend” card at the ticket counter, he waltzed by with Lucy in tow. Then he typed something quickly into his BlackBerry and hit send before tossing it back into the pocket of his cashmere overcoat.
Cornelia—got your messages. Thanks for the wine. In midst of new project and very busy. Be well, W.
Be well? Be well? fumed Cornelia, examining her poinsettia-red thumbnail. She was lounging by the pool in Palm Beach. He might as well have written “eat shit and die.” And who sends a half-assed text message in response to a bottle of ‘82 Château Mouton Roth-schild? How rude. She laid her right hand on her taut stomach, toasty from the morning sun, and thrust her unpainted left hand toward the manicurist.
Although she’d spent the past week at her parents’ home (they were in London, making it an ideal time to visit Palm Beach), Cornelia had continued her now monthlong campaign of contrition for posing next to Theo Galt. Days after the Townhouse party, when Wyatt hadn’t returned her phone calls, she’d e-mailed him a Patrick McMullan snap of the two of them, a reminder of how good they looked together. No response. Then, before leaving for Florida, she’d pounced on Margaret as she left his building, pressing into her hand a small package for Wyatt containing the handkerchief he’d forgotten at her place the first night they’d kissed at Socialista. She hoped it would spark memories of their private after-party. Apparently, it had not. Finally, after too many unreturned calls and e-mails, she’d been reduced to raiding her father’s wine cellar. And still all she’d gotten in response was his stupid text!
“Still bumpy,” she whined, holding the nail two inches away from the manicurist’s face. The young Hispanic woman had been sent by an agency that delivered manicurists, masseuses, acupuncturists, and yoga instructors to Cornelia’s door, which kept her from having to mingle with the hoi polloi.
“I don’t see any bumps, Miss Rockman,” the woman answered. “I’ve redone the nail three times. I think it looks perfect.”
“Excuse me?” Cornelia’s nostrils flared slightly. She jumped up from the chaise longue and stretched her legs, casting a shadow over the shallow end of the pool. “I’m not paying for a mani-pedi that looks like it was done by a blind chimp.” Mentioning the chimp reminded her of her anthropologist ex-boyfriend, of course, which made her even more irritated.
“Okay, I can redo—”
“Nor do I have time to sit here watching you botch it up again!”
The manicurist sighed. “That’s fine, Miss Rockman. See you again the same time next week?”
“I suppose. But tell Esmerelda no tip. I check the petty cash, you know.” The woman began to shuffle toward the house with her heavy kit. “Just because I’m a Rockman doesn’t mean I’m an ATM!” Cornelia yelled after her. Her mother, Verena, had always warned her about people—from men to manicurists—looking to “get theirs.” Gold diggers. Parasites. Verena knew something about the profile: she’d married Cornelia’s father when she was a twenty-three-year-old Scandinavian swimsuit model and he was a sixty-two-year-old senator with a heart condition. Against all odds, Cornelia’s father was now past ninety, and Verena was a smokin’ fifty-two-year-old rumored to have men in many ports.
Shameless, Verena would say if she knew about Cornelia’s current situation. It was not the woman’s role to woo, she would scold. Men—even rich, powerful, intelligent men—were easy to manipulate, if you knew how. Knowing how was the art of being a woman, and Cornelia’s efforts had been kindergarten-level finger painting.
But then she’d never expected Wyatt to put up such a fight! Most men would have overlooked Cornelia’s minor lapse in judgment at that stupid party, and every man she knew (except Wyatt, apparently, the one she now wanted more than ever) would’ve taken her back at the first whiff of an apology.
Cornelia arranged herself in the lounge chair again, adjusting the top of her minuscule white bikini. The view of the water, contrasted with the cool pink façade of her parents’ home and the gently swaying palm trees dotting their property, evoked such an air of prosperity and peace that there were days when Cornelia didn’t reach for her antianxiety medication more than twice. Today, unfortunately, was not one of those days.
Her marriage to Wyatt Hayes was inevitable, thought Cornelia, reaching over to take a sip of her mint-laced iced tea. That was the conclusion she’d reached last winter, resting on this same slate blue chaise, the morning after she and Wyatt were reintroduced at a cocktail party on the Morgans’ docked yacht. He’d stood at the bow, the lights of the Okeechobee Bridge dotted in the distance behind him. Cornelia was immediately riveted. Everything about Wyatt screamed aristocracy, though he wore just jeans and a white button-down rolled up to his forearms, and her immediate thought had been: “We’d look perfect together.” She’d spent the night charming his best friend, Trip Peters, and feeling Wyatt’s eyes on her. A month later (it would have happened sooner, but for all his safaris), he’d asked her to dinner at Per Se, which turned into drinks at Socialista. They’d been dating ever since.
The morning of the Townhouse party, her source at Harry Winston called to inform her that Wyatt had stopped in to do some Christmas shopping, and that before he was guided toward the tennis bracelet she’d set aside he’d cast an eye over the engagement rings. Cornelia had been pleased, but hardly surprised. It was all part of her plan. Wyatt would propose by the following spring, giving her a full year to plan a June wedding at her family’s estate in Northeast Harbor. The rehearsal dinner could be at his family’s estate in Northeast Harbor. The Hayes-Rockman wedding would net a four-page spread in Vogue, maybe more.
Their tiff was a glitch in that scheme, but one she could recover from. If Cornelia had learned one profound life lesson in her twenty-seven years, it was that she could always get what she wanted. She’d relished the high of scoring her croc Birkin, snagging her front-row seat at Marc Jacobs, and capturing not one but three tickets to the Vanity Fair Oscar party—and to win Wyatt back would be her most satisfying triumph yet.
“Isn’t it enough I’m letting the girl live in my apartment?” Eloise laid a finger on the top of Trip’s Wall Street Journal and pulled it down so that he had to look at her. They were twenty thousand feet and climbing en route back from Aspen, where they’d spent the holidays. “Now you’re asking me to spend my entire Friday with her, hunkered down at some spa?”
“You make it sound so torturous,” Trip said, folding up the newspaper and storing it neatly in his briefcase. He smiled. “Besides, don’t pretend you weren’t thrilled to move in with me.”
Eloise swatted him lightly. “I’d be even more thrilled to have my own closet.”
“You have too many clothes. Anyone ever tell you that?”
“I’m a stylist, sweetie. It comes with the territory.” She snuggled under the thick cashmere blanket, folding her legs underneath her. “Why can’t Wyatt spend the day with her? I don’t need a forced friendship. She’s his project, not mine.”
“I told you, he’s got to be in Boston on business.”
“Oh, please. W
hen’s Wyatt going to stop pretending he works?” Eloise didn’t know why she was being so difficult. She suspected it had less to do with Wyatt and this Lucy person, and more to do with Trip’s last-minute insistence that they spend the holidays skiing instead of driving to Duxbury to be with her family. She’d spent the first twenty-four hours of their trip doing damage control with her mother. Worse, she couldn’t seem to make Trip understand why it was a big deal. “It’s like he’s trying to engineer his perfect woman. He called me yesterday asking for my opinion on highlights versus lowlights!”
Trip just laughed. “Trust me, Lucy is as far from Wyatt Hayes’s perfect woman as the Cubs are from winning a World Series.”
Eloise wasn’t entirely convinced. She hadn’t actually met Lucy yet—the girl was never at the apartment when Eloise went over to retrieve her mail or get more clothes. Apparently she was spending night and day at Wyatt’s, in socialite boot camp. Wyatt had been in isolation mode, too, even bailing on his mother for the holidays so they could keep up their so-called training. “I swear, this is his strangest diversion yet.”
Trip pulled a lock of her hair—now a strawberry blonde—off her face. “All I know is, he keeps hounding me to ask you to spend time with her. Just be nice to the girl. You get a massage, get your nails done, talk a little. How painful could it be?”
Eloise slumped in her seat, knowing she was acting like a petulant seven-year-old. Ever since their trip to Turks and Caicos earlier that month—which was just as beautiful as Trip had promised—she’d been in an inexplicably sour mood. “If it means that much to you, I’ll spend the day with her. But that’s it, okay?”
The opening notes of “Rich Girl” bleated from Cornelia’s BlackBerry, interrupting her stroll down Worth Avenue. Daphne Convers: Office.
“Are you sitting down?” Daphne burbled. “Because big news! Dafinco just called, and guess whom they want to develop a fragrance with?”
“Who’s Dafinco?” asked Cornelia, peering into the display window of Cartier. She needed more gold jewelry. A few bangles, or something. She pushed through the heavy red door, and the woman behind the counter immediately perked up. Cornelia loved being recognized.
“Only the biggest makeup and perfume distributor in the entire country, doll!” Daphne was saying. “And they want you to launch their next perfume, Cornelia. You! We’re talking major seven figures—”
Cornelia stopped in her tracks. That was big news. “So, like, would my name and face be on all the ads?” Cornelia held up a finger at the frothing saleslady.
“Everything and anything, doll. We’ll walk through the whole thing. Can you be in New York next week for meetings?”
“I’m in St. Barts through Tuesday. Any day after that is fine.”
“We’ll make it work! You’re the star. This is the beginning of big things for you, sweetie,” Daphne said. “They’re already putting together a couple of prototypes for you to smell. They think ‘Socialite’ should combine lilies of the valley, jasmine, and citrus with under notes of cedarwood. Classic, timeless, clean—”
“I don’t know,” Cornelia said. She motioned to see an eighteen-karat Love bracelet embedded with diamonds, and the woman whipped it out of the display case with remarkable alacrity. “I’d prefer something with a bit more mystery. More sex appeal. Lots of ooomph.”
As Daphne sycophantically agreed, Cornelia could feel her back muscles begin to unclench. Pushing her oversize sunglasses to the top of her head, she handed the saleslady her credit card and felt content for the first time since the Townhouse party.
She had a perfume deal. And if she sent Wyatt one of her garters scented with “Cornelia,” he would be man-putty in her hands.
13
Wyatt’s Book Notes:
Betta fish flare out their gill covers—opercula, the scientific term—in order to appear more imposing to their peers and impressive to potential female mates. Park Avenue princesses act curiously like male Betta fish; they spend hours and hundreds each week having their hair voluminously blown out. They wedge their feet into four-inch stilettos. All this, it would seem, is intended make them imposing to their peers and impressive to potential mates. I encouraged L. to wear her hair as full as possible and to avoid flats, so that she would flaunt an intimidating presence to her fellow socialites. I intended that she perceive these women not as friends but as rivals.
Perfume?” asked Dottie Hayes, one eyebrow raised.
“She’s quite the go-getter,” said Binkie Howe.
While the parties continued to churn fifteen hundred miles north, many of Manhattan’s social set had migrated down for the high-profile charity benefits of Palm Beach’s season. Binkie’s veranda, shaded against the midday sun by a grand banyan tree, was crowded with the Flagler Museum’s planning committee, an assortment of women ages twenty-five through seventy-five who, regardless of age, dressed remarkably the same.
Cornelia Rockman was the sole deviant from the unspoken dress code, wearing a body-hugging dress whose square inches were overwhelmed by the length of her coltlike thighs. She held court among the junior committee members.
“Go-getter,” Dottie repeated, eyeing her warily. “That’s one word for it, I suppose.”
Binkie leaned closer. “You know I think it’s fabulous that so many women today have careers. I myself worked tirelessly for the Junior League when I was a young bride. But to market some product with your name on it just seems so—”
“Say no more,” Dottie said, pressing her hand into the air. Where was the girl’s mother, one had to wonder? Verena Rockman was a bit flashy, but Dottie still would’ve expected some maternal intervention. Her daughter was splayed across the cover of this month’s Palm Beach Scene, for pity’s sake! Then again, Verena had been a swimsuit model herself. Maybe in birthing Cornelia she had added too much chlorine to the Rockman blood.
“So don’t kill me, Dot.” Binkie cringed. “Cornelia asked to be seated next to you today. She was so forward about it; I was caught off guard—”
“Of course,” Dottie said, immediately dreading the luncheon she’d been looking forward to all week. It irked her that Cornelia had infiltrated the board of a cause so near and dear to her heart. Dottie had served on the board of the Flagler Museum for two decades, as her mother had before her. Since her teenage years, the museum had offered a cultural escape during the social season in Palm Beach. Designed by Carrère and Hastings—the famed architects who’d also designed the New York Public Library—the Flagler made Dottie feel like she was stepping back into the Gilded Age, when her family, her in-laws, and most of their crowd had accumulated great wealth.
“Lunch is served,” announced a maid in a crisply starched uniform, and the ladies began to drift across the stone veranda to their seats.
“Sorry,” Binkie whispered, squeezing Dottie’s arm before heading off.
Dottie found her table right away, admiring the daffodil-yellow edge of the salad plates while the other ladies made their way to the table. As long as it didn’t involve saying no to forceful young women, Binkie knew how to do things correctly. She kept six china services in Palm Beach, so her weekend guests wouldn’t see the same pattern twice. The elegant calligraphy on the name cards had been penned by Binkie’s longtime assistant, Mary Sue, a wiry woman who accompanied her employer wherever she went and, if you believed the rumors, which Dottie emphatically did not, occasionally shared Binkie’s bedroom. Binkie, like many of their friends, had lived down the hall from her husband for at least twenty years. Why crowd into one bedroom when there were so many from which to choose?
“Are we seated next to each other?” Cornelia asked, giving Dottie a boisterous double kiss. “What a treat!”
“Isn’t it?” Dottie replied.
Lunch passed quickly in group conversation, as the ladies poked at field greens and Chilean sea bass and discussed the museum’s latest fund-raising efforts before diving into gossip about mutual friends. Cornelia, to Dottie’s dismay, was endlessly
persistent in tying every thread of conversation back to Wyatt. When Susannah Gray, whose family had recently purchased the Morgans’ family yacht, deliberated over which interior designer they should hire to give it a fresh look, Cornelia gushed over Tikki Morris, who’d done a stellar job on Wyatt’s apartment. When Jacqueline Griffin brought up the recent election, Cornelia enlightened the table with Wyatt’s insights on the candidates. Dessert would be lemon meringue pie? Wyatt’s favorite, Cornelia noted, fascinating nobody.
Dottie successfully ignored the efforts to start a conversation about her son until the dessert plates were cleared, and Cornelia’s feline eyes bore down on her.
“You’ve probably heard that Wyatt and I are no longer,” the young woman said rather too dramatically.
“Such a shame,” Dottie replied. “Though I’m sure a beautiful girl like you must have no shortage of interested suitors.”