Overnight Socialite

by Bridie Clark

  “The waiters better start checking pulses!” Theo grabbed Lucy and pulled her closer. She glanced around and saw that he was right—at every table, some of the guests were swaying a little or bobbing their heads, but overall there were few to no signs of life. They were the only ones dancing. Frankly, she’d rather be in her seat, too, enjoying her banana caramel dessert.

  “You’re not what I expected,” Theo said.

  “What’d you expect?” Uh-oh. She thought she’d been playing the part well.

  “You know—a typical Park Avenue princess, terrified of how others are judging your every move—” He grabbed her hand and pulled her even closer. “Come to Spain with me.”

  “What?” Lucy was sure she couldn’t have heard him correctly.

  “I leave tomorrow for Barcelona. Come with me!”

  Lucy stopped allowing Theo to push her around in small triangles. Barcelona on a whim, with a man she’d just met? She didn’t even have a passport. The trip to the Palm Beach wedding had been her first time on a plane, a fact she’d kept even from Wyatt. Was this really how the rich lived, Theo and Trip and all these other heedless men, picking up and going whenever and wherever they felt like it? Inviting virtual strangers along for the ride?

  “Why don’t you call me when you’re next in New York?” she asked. Theo Galt was undeniably attractive, but she wasn’t ready to be whisked away. Besides, what would Wyatt think? She glanced in his direction, and for the first time all night, found him staring directly back at her. He drew a finger quickly across his throat, the universal symbol for “cut it out.” She looked away.

  “Fair enough,” Theo said. “I’ll just have to invent a reason to be back in New York soon.”

  A few brave others had joined them on the dance floor, now, but Lucy wanted to sit more than ever. She turned her back on Wyatt and his presumptuous hand gestures. How dare he tell her what to do, when he’d abandoned her for the entire night? She wondered if she’d have to find her own ride home. Better than suffering the awkwardness of riding along next to him and Irina.

  Suddenly, from ten feet away came a thunderous crash—one of the ceiling lights came spiraling down, sending up a splash of electric sparks. “Fire!” someone screeched.

  Lucy whipped around. The young woman next to her pointed a panicked finger toward a nearby table. As flames began to lick up, smoke billowed, and the once reserved crowd immediately devolved into frantic animals, rising up, kicking back their chairs, hiking their ballgowns to their hips, and stampeding to the exits.

  When Lucy looked back, Theo was gone, snapped up in the melee. She strained to find Wyatt, but couldn’t. She moved as quickly as she could to one of the exits, jostled by the type triple-A crowd, the toxic odor of the fake-Italian piazza burning her nose. Her heel—those goddamned five-inch heels—twisted and she could feel herself start to go down, pulled into the current of moving moguls.

  “Got you,” Wyatt said, scooping her back up. He kept her in his arms, moving deftly toward the doors. Lucy looked back over his shoulder, not believing the devastation. One of the handpainted frescoed walls had collapsed onto the ground like an overdone soufflé. Rome was burning. And Wyatt was rescuing her from it all.

  20

  There will be occasions when the cook has the night off, and the couple has no plans to dine out. Thus the young lady should be schooled in the preparation of satisfying yet elegant meals that will remind her husband of his sound judgment in choosing a mate.

  —Sarah Birmingham Astor, The Navigation of Society

  Lucy! Hey, Lucy!”

  She glanced across Lexington Avenue to see Max Fairchild waving frantically to catch her attention. That’s how I know him. The memory slammed against her. Unfortunately for Max, he was wearing the same camel-colored trench coat he’d been wearing that rainy night back in December, immediately reminding Lucy of the gutless jerk who’d swiped her cab and left her standing in a puddle. When Max dashed across the street and kissed her hello, she couldn’t erase the dismay from her face quickly enough.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m fine!” she said, recovering. She wasn’t about to blow her cover. “Sorry I haven’t returned your call yet. I’ve been so busy getting everything in order for my Townhouse shoot.” Too bad he’s an ungallant cab thief, Lucy thought, because he’s very cute. He wore a moss green corduroy blazer and faded jeans, and his golden curls were unruly enough to suggest he wasn’t too vain. “How are you?”

  “Just lucky I bumped into you,” Max said. “Any chance I could take you to dinner this evening?”

  Dinner! Lucy glanced at her watch in a panic. Wyatt would be at her apartment in just twenty minutes and she had so much to do. “I’m cooking for Wyatt tonight. A little thank-you for all he’s done for me, you know, introducing me to all his friends, showing me around New York.” She held up the black and gold bag from Garnett Liquor, clinking bottles together. “Another time? May I call you tomorrow?”

  “Of course. Have a nice dinner.” Max looked so disappointed that Lucy instantly forgave him for the cab incident. He wasn’t a bad person, she could tell—just a bit of a wimp. Then, remembering the duck à l’orange she’d left in the oven, she took off down the block in a full sprint.

  “Will you please relax?” Trip said in an infuriatingly calm voice. “You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing.”

  Eloise watched with shock as he crossed his modern, sparely decorated living room to pick up last week’s half-finished Times crossword puzzle from the coffee table. He settled into an Eames chair. He uncapped his pen. All in all, thought Eloise, he was acting as though he hadn’t just detonated an A-bomb.

  “Nothing?” she repeated. Everything in Trip’s black and gray living room seemed to have turned flaming red before her eyes. The old Eloise—the sweet girl who didn’t want to pressure her boyfriend, who didn’t want to force his hand—had officially left the building. That girl had gone dashing down the block as though there were a five-alarm fire in her boy shorts.

  “I just don’t think it really makes sense to redo my closets to accommodate your shoes, since you’ll be moving back into your place pretty soon.” Trip said the words slowly, as though dragging out his statement would make it any less incendiary. “I was just being practical—”

  She shook her head so hard she could feel her brain quiver. “When you ask your girlfriend of eight years to move in with you, Trip, it’s not exactly implied that she’ll be moving back to her place in a few months!”

  Trip looked thunderstruck. “What? I just assumed—” He caught himself. “You’re right, El, we never talked about it.” He put down the crossword and scratched the stubble on his chin. “So you want to stay here? Sell your place? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I want to know we have a future together.” She covered her face with both hands, rubbed the deep crease that had formed between her eyes. She was losing her grip on anger—she could feel it melting, and a deep sadness was filling its place.

  Trip pulled her hands down and gave her a light kiss. “Of course we do, El. You know we do. That’s never been a question, at least not for me.” There was genuine concern in his eyes, she was relieved to see.

  “So you see us getting married and having kids someday?” There, she’d asked. The big, scary question that she’d been too chicken-shit to ask for the past several years was now hanging in the air between them. She could puke.

  “Kids, sure. I mean, not right now, but maybe someday.”

  Maybe someday. Eloise forced herself to press on. “And marriage?”

  “I thought we decided marriage wasn’t us. That we’d do the Kurt Russell-Goldie Hawn thing instead.”

  Eloise struggled to contain herself. “When did we say that?”

  “I don’t know, I just thought we were on the same page.” “We’re as committed as any of the married couples we know. It’s just a piece of paper.”

  “Then what’s th
e big deal? We could just go down to City Hall and be done with it in an afternoon.”

  “You really think your mother’s going to go for that?”

  “Trust me, my mother would be thrilled to get a postcard from the drive-thru chapel in Vegas.”

  Trip held out his hand, and Eloise reluctantly took it. His cashmere sweater smelled of cigar smoke. “I didn’t know this was such a big deal to you, babe.”

  “It is,” she said, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her plaid pajama top. She realized just how badly she wanted a commitment—not to satisfy her mother or anyone else, but for her own sense of security. “It really is.”

  Trip’s face had grown noticeably paler, but he wasn’t running for the door. “Let me think, okay? It’s a lot to take in all at once.”

  Eloise nodded, burying her head in the crook of his arm. It sure as hell wasn’t unfolding like a fairy tale, but at least she’d broached the subject. Now she just had to be patient. She’d had practice.

  When the doorbell rang, Lucy yanked the casserole dish out of the oven and dashed into her bedroom to change. Why did Wyatt always have to be so terribly punctual? The escargots were my first mistake. She ran a brush through her hair and swiped on some lip gloss. That beurre blanc sauce, so simple in Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, had translated into a gluey mess, and the snails looked revoltingly gelatinous. She’d settled instead for a simple green salad, the ingredients of which she happened to have in the fridge. Then, by the time she got home from the liquor store, the smoke detector had begun to screech, and she’d opened the oven to find her duck à l’orange was charred. Net-net: at 7:45, just fifteen minutes before Wyatt was due to arrive, the “home-cooked gourmet meal” she’d promised was a blackened mess in the garbage pail. At least she hadn’t set the place on fire.

  Speaking of, they hadn’t spoken much since Howard’s sixtieth went up in flames last weekend. Nobody had been hurt, which was the important and rather miraculous thing, and Howard had been able to keep his wife from throwing herself in front of the fire engine. And now it was Tuesday, the agreed-upon night of their so-called date. Lucy wished Wyatt had never called it that. They’d had dinner together plenty of times before, though rarely just the two of them—and never for the sole purpose of enjoying each other’s company.

  “I’m coming!” she hollered, racing for the door while buttoning the front of her dress—which was one of Wyatt’s favorites, the one he’d complimented her on when she wore it to the committee luncheon for the Vanderbilt gala. Lucy opened the door to see Wyatt standing there with a gift-wrapped box in his hand. He was wearing the soft cashmere V-neck she liked—a good color on him, navy blue—and she caught the subtle scent of cologne as he walked past her into the apartment.

  Her heart was suddenly in her throat. It’s Wyatt, for God’s sake, Lucy thought. I spend a hundred hours a week with the guy. And I want to slap him during at least sixty of them.

  “Thanks for having me.” He wiped his hands on his trousers. So he was nervous, too. That was his tell.

  “Thanks for coming!” she chirped. “Wine?”

  He nodded with great enthusiasm. “Red, if you have it.” He took a seat on Eloise’s Brunschwig & Fils club chair as she went into the kitchen to pour. “Dinner smells delicious. Must admit, I’m famished. I spent the entire day working; it was five before I looked up at the clock. I skipped lunch and everything.”

  Lucy grabbed the wine and two glasses and glanced doubtfully at the sorry-looking dish she’d pulled from the oven. She had ended up throwing together a main course of . . . Hamburger Helper. Terrible. She loved the stuff herself, and she’d picked up a box along with some ground beef to have on hand for the rare nights she didn’t have a dinner engagement and could cook at home. But in no way would it satisfy Wyatt’s refined palette. At least she had the salad, plus some chocolate-dipped strawberries for dessert. Still, it wasn’t much of a thank-you gesture.

  “What are you working on?” she asked, leading him over to the small dining room table, where she’d already put out the salad. Wyatt always complained about waiting for a first course.

  “Oh, you know—” Wyatt trailed off. He never wanted to talk about his work. Maybe he thought it’d be too far over her head, or maybe he just liked to leave it behind at the end of the day.

  “I want to read your stuff someday.” Lucy pulled out the cork and poured.

  “Sure. Of course. Though it’s pretty dull.” He took a large sip of his wine. “This is good. You pick it out yourself?”

  She nodded proudly. His twenty-hour wine tutorial hadn’t been wasted. “Speaking of work, I called Mallory’s office yesterday and told her I’d do the Townhouse spread. And even better, when I told her I was an aspiring designer, she told me I should bring some of my own dresses to wear! Can you believe it?”

  Wyatt’s face lit up. “That’s great news! Of course I can believe it. I’ve seen your sketches—they’re terrific.” He took a bite of his salad. “Now you just need to find your own original vision, that’s all.”

  She set down her wineglass. “What do you mean?” She had plenty of vision.

  “Oh, just—think of the sidewalk artists we pass on our way into the Met. Some of them can replicate the masters with great accuracy. It would take a trained eye to tell a real Rembrandt from the one we saw on the curb. It takes talent to imitate so flawlessly. But it takes genius to create the original.”

  Lucy pushed her plate away. “My work is original, Wyatt. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He seemed surprised by her reaction. “Don’t be offended. I’m just saying—and you have to admit it’s true—each page of that sketchbook you showed me was heavily influenced by another designer’s vision.”

  “So what? You’re saying it’s wrong to find inspiration in other people’s work?”

  “I’m sorry I said anything. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Why would I be upset? You’ve just called me a rip-off artist.” But even as she said the words, Lucy had the feeling he was absolutely right. She’d taught herself by studying the greats—Dior, Lagerfeld, Valentino—but had she ever designed something that was uniquely her? What would something uniquely her even look like?

  “Just because you haven’t done something doesn’t mean you can’t or you won’t. I believe you have it in you. Don’t forget, I’m an equity holder in Lucy Ellis Designs.”

  She breathed again. It was one thing to take Wyatt’s criticism of her posture or her hair, another entirely when her work—her passion—was under his microscope. “I guess I’ll have to figure it all out before the Townhouse shoot.”

  “You’ll need some money to get everything made. Just tell me how much.”

  “I—no, I mean, I’ll figure it out. I’ve taken enough from you already. And I mean, jeez, you saved my life on Saturday night!”

  He brushed it off with a wave of his hand. “Got me away from Irina. God, she was a bore. Quite the sprinter, though.”

  Lucy cleared their plates and fetched the main course from the kitchen. This was the moment she’d been dreading. She watched him take his first bite of Helper. Wyatt immediately sank back in his chair, eyes closed, and Lucy could feel her stomach drop to street level. What had she been thinking? Who served a packaged meal to a gourmet like Wyatt?

  “I can’t believe it.” He opened his eyes, but still looked dumbstruck. “You’ve matched her recipe perfectly! Did she teach you how to make this?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Boeuf à la Margaret! It was my all-time favorite dish as a child. I used to beg Margaret to make it every single night, and it’s just as good as I remember. You weren’t kidding when you said you could cook.”

  Was he serious? From the way he was gulping down forkfuls of Helper, it seemed that he was.

  “Well, I made plenty,” Lucy said, beaming. No need to give away Margaret’s secrets. Watching Wyatt gobble down his dinner, she saw what he must
have been like as a little boy.

  “Theo Galt hasn’t been in touch, has he?” he asked between forkfuls.

  “Oh, he called yesterday. To make sure I’d survived, you know.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Very nice. Where was he when it counted?”

  “He says he got caught up in the swarm of people, and when he went back to look for me, I was gone.”

  Wyatt snorted. “I almost forgot. Open your gift.” He picked up the box from the floor next to him and slid it across the table at her.