by Bridie Clark
Trip froze mid-slide. The girl was quiet again. He lowered himself a few more inches, still balancing on one hand and foot. His tux lay in the corner, next to the witch puddle. Just the sight of their discarded clothes made him feel sick. He remembered how she’d shoved him backward on the bed last night, playing the tiger. Then he remembered seeing Eloise lace her arms around Max Fairchild’s neck.
“Omigod! Are you okay?” the girl asked, sitting up and pushing her red fro out of her face. The sound of Trip throwing up in one of the gift bags they’d received leaving the ball, the first thing he could grab, had woken his bedmate.
“Sorry,” he said lamely, not wasting a moment in wiggling into his pants and buttoning his dress shirt. He needed to be elsewhere immediately. To his dismay, the girl pulled herself out of bed and walked across the room toward him, draped in her satin sheet. “You can, uh, keep my bag,” Trip said.
“I don’t care about that.” She pressed a finger against his chest.
“Really, I insist,” Trip said, jamming his foot into his shoe while holding his puke-filled bag. A puke-filled bag of expensive, useless stuff: the perfect metaphor for his life. He grabbed the other shoe and headed for the door. “Anyway, thanks for everything”—he fumbled with the doorknob.
“Clarissa,” she said. “Aren’t you even going to put on your other shoe?”
“Right,” he said, already savoring the sweeter air in the hallway. “In the elevator!” He was being a complete jerk, Trip knew, but all he could think about was getting home and putting last night behind him.
“Jaaaaack!” Mimi Rutherford-Shaw shrieked from her dressing room in Bedford, where she’d been kitting up to go riding. The ball had interrupted their usual weekend routine; they’d had the driver take them straight from the Heritage Museum to their country house in the wee hours of the night. “Jack, come here! Look at this!”
“What is it, Mims?” her husband called back from the bedroom, where he was still lounging in his pajamas with the Wall Street Journal . She ran to the doorway and ripped open her shirt, revealing her epic set of double Ds. That got Jack’s attention, and he put down the newspaper. He squinted at her chest, first with interest and then in horror. Then he rushed over. “What the hell happened, Mims? You burn yourself?” They both gasped over the purplish welts that had popped up like foothills across her mountain range.
Mimi, hand over mouth, picked up the swag bag she’d brought home from the Forum Ball. “It’s Socialite! Cornelia’s perfume! I just spritzed the stuff and this happened!” She pulled out the glass perfume bottle and held it out to her husband. “Call Dr. Stone, Jack, and tell him I need to see him immediately!”
“Eau de Cornelia Rockman?” Jack muttered under his breath as he headed to the telephone. “You might’ve guessed that stuff would be toxic.”
Eloise’s eyes cracked open. She saw that her dress had been neatly hung on the back of the doorframe; her shoes were tucked under the bureau. A large bottle of Evian had been left on her nightstand, and she reached for it, moaning a little.
Eloise Carlton was not one of those people who experienced alcohol-induced amnesia, unfortunately, and as she slugged away at the Evian, her mind moved in painful, unrelenting circles through the night before. Trip, dancing. Eloise, drinking. Eloise, dancing, a demented Isadora Duncan, carried topless off the dance floor for all of New York society to behold, and deposited in a car by Max Fairchild.
I’ll move away. Paris. Marrakech. Start over fresh, travel the world, be a woman who finds herself. My own version of Eat, Pray, Love. Minus the Love. I’m in no shape for that. And the Eat will have to wait, too, until I regain the capacity to chew. Maybe my own Drink, Hurt, Sob.
Just as she’d found the strength to sit upright, propped against pillows, the apartment doorbell rang. She jolted out from between the covers, hangover temporarily forgotten, and poked her head out into the hallway. Lucy’s bedroom was empty. She hoped that her friend had enjoyed the triumph she deserved, riding on the wings of Margaux Irving’s endorsement. The last she’d seen, Lucy and Wyatt were in a steamy-looking lip-lock, apparently coming clean about their feelings about each other.
The doorbell rang again.
Eloise knew it was Trip without cracking the door. He’d never let go of their relationship so easily. Whatever last night’s waify redhead had offered him was nothing like the lifetime of devotion and companionship she could provide. A man like Trip knew quality, he knew girls like Eloise weren’t disposable. She hurried into the bathroom and smeared toothpaste on her toothbrush, jamming it into her mouth as she flew back to the bedroom and scrambled for something to wear.
“Hold on!” she yelled, pulling a sweater over her head. Whipping off her enormous pajama pants (his, of course), she threw on a pair of cuter boy shorts while yanking hairpins out of the collapsed bun she’d worn to the ball. Then she dashed into the hallway, realized the toothbrush was still in her mouth, flung it over her shoulder into the kitchen, and opened the door. Her Tripless nightmare was finally over.
Expecting to see her beau down on one knee, Eloise instead found an empty hallway.
“Trip?” she called, wondering if he’d already retreated around the corner to the elevator bank. “Trip!” She yelled, even though she might rouse the whole floor on a Sunday morning.
When Max Fairchild sheepishly poked his head around the corner instead, Eloise felt her last hopes crumble inside her. She held on to the doorframe for support.
“Sorry, Eloise, I—I don’t know what I was thinking, barging in on you so early. I brought some food—” Max trailed off, staring at the carpet. He was holding a grocery bag from Grace’s. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Your phone was off. I tried Lucy’s line, too, but she didn’t pick up—”
“Trip and I are over,” Eloise blurted out. There it was. Just saying the words out loud, her knees grew shaky, and the hallway suddenly seemed pixelated. “Trip and I are over,” she repeated. The spots of light grew bigger. She felt her fingers slide down the cold wall.
Luckily, Max was there to catch her.
32
The highlight of last night’s ball, as most will tell you, was Lucy Ellis’s stunning self-made gown, which fetched a record twenty thousand dollars from Margaux Irving herself during the predinner auction. The lowlight? Well, put it this way: Nobody should be itching to try Socialite, the perfume just launched by Cornelia Rockman and our readers’ vote for least-favorite swag-bag item ever.
—Rex Newhouse, www.rexnewhouse.com
Cornelia couldn’t focus. Restless, she’d been awake since dawn, bustling around her apartment—writing half a thank-you note to the editor in Margaux’s office whom she’d conned into giving her the extra ball ticket, then drifting to the bathroom to smear Crème de la Mer over her face, opening three invitations before flipping on the television and watching a few minutes of TiVo’ed Access Hollywood. There was an “is she or isn’t she pregnant?” bit about one of Theo’s clients, but it wasn’t enough to keep her still.
It was more than the post coitum triste she often felt after coming down from the high of a magnificent social triumph. Last night’s coup was her greatest ever. Last night, she’d successfully brought her nemesis down. She’d never forget the look on Lucy’s face. Last night, Cornelia’s perfume had gone home in a swag bag with the world’s most influential tastemakers. So why did she feel more miserable than she ever had in her life?
Well, Fernanda, for starters. She’d been sold out by her best friend, who hadn’t been the same since Parker came into her life. And then there was Wyatt. Watching her ex kiss Lucy, Cornelia had finally been knocked flat by the truth she’d spent three months furiously avoiding: there would be no reunion. She should have known when Rita had told her about the experiment that he was a lost cause—the old Wyatt, the one she’d known, cared where everyone came from and where they belonged. Watching him fawn over the girl from Missouri or Montana or wherever was the final evidence that the Old Wya
tt had disappeared, and all the plotting in the world couldn’t make New Wyatt look at Cornelia the way he looked at Lucy.
Was anyone still looking at her? She flipped through Town & Country : nary a photo. And she couldn’t deny that Lucy had rocked that auction with the dress she supposedly made—another lie, no doubt—and that Margaux Irving and the rest of the crowd had kept their eyes trained on her. Cornelia had spent fifteen thousand on her Ralph Rucci couture, but only auctioned it off for twelve—did that mean she devalued the dress by three thousand dollars just by wearing it?
Fortunately, her phone rang, rescuing her from this troubling line of thought. “Bad news,” Daphne said.
Cornelia put down the magazine. A chill prickled her spine. Daphne was the queen of spin—for her to consider something bad news, it had to be downright apocalyptic. “Don’t tell me my show got canceled,” Cornelia said, ready to whine hard.
“This is worse. You know those sample perfumes we put in all of last night’s swag bags? The ones that went home with every single one of the ball’s eight hundred and fourteen attendees? The perfume bottles that were supposed to give you exposure to the ne plus ultra of the fashion world?”
“Of course! Spit it out—what happened?”
She could hear Daphne take a deep breath. “I just got off the phone with Dafinco’s CEO. Apparently they’re already getting calls ranging from disgruntled to litigious from folks who spritzed on the perfume and broke out in a horrible purple rash. This thing is going to be all over Page Six, Cornelia, and it’s going to be ugly.”
“But that’s ridiculous!” Cornelia jumped up from the breakfast table. “I’ve worn the perfume myself. That can’t be true. These people are just looking to cash in—”
“I tried it, and it looks like someone spilled acid on my wrists. Trust me, it’s true.”
Cornelia stared at the innocent-looking pink bottle on her dresser. “Fine, even if it is true, it’s not my fault. Their laboratory’s to blame! They were the ones who got all self-righteous about no animal testing—”
“Listen, girl, you’re not getting it.” Daphne had never spoken to her so bluntly. Her publicist’s lack of ass kissing, more than anything, made Cornelia realize the gravity of the situation. “Nobody gives a shit that Dafinco’s to blame. You’re the one they’ll remember. Your face is all over the ad campaign.”
“So what are you saying?”
“It’s not good. We’ll issue a statement. But you should keep a low profile until all this blows over. And by low profile, I mean: talk to nobody. Do you understand?”
Cornelia groaned. She’d envisioned Hollywood knocking on her door, but instead she’d be living like a shut-in? It wasn’t fair. Nothing in her life was adding up the way it was supposed to. “What did I do to deserve this?” she wailed. Daphne didn’t say anything, so Cornelia hung up. She hadn’t cried since she was seven years old (she’d decided then that she would no longer give her mother the satisfaction), but she wished she remembered how. Wyatt’s rejection, coupled with the blow up of her career, made her want to fling herself out her twelfth-story window. The only bright spot in her life, she realized, was the impending humiliation of Lucy Ellis, a girl Cornelia had come to hate with a fervor that scared even her.
“Wyatt?” Lucy called softly, cracking the door to his study.
He wasn’t there, which surprised her. He’d spent every Sunday morning since she’d known him holed up in his study with the Times and his coffee. It had been one of the few times of the week she’d had to herself, back when she was Wyatt’s 24/7 guinea pig socialite. But then, this wasn’t a Sunday in ordinary times.
She didn’t leave right away. His study, untouched by the shmancy decorator, reminded her of all the late nights she’d spent there under critical direction, working to please him, to transform herself into the socialite he had bet she could be. All the hours of training—the elocution, etiquette, art history, jet-set geography lessons; all the evenings spent playing backgammon and eating Chinese takeout. Lucy loved the wraparound bookshelves, brimming with his vast collection of books; the smell of worn leather; the overstuffed couch; the ancient oriental rug, threadbare in the circles that revealed Wyatt’s near-constant pacing.
I came so close, she thought. Margaux wanted my dress. Wyatt wanted me. Feeling a lump in her throat, she scanned the photos Wyatt had displayed on one of the walls. There was little Wyatt on his horse . . . on his sailboat . . . on the shoulders of his aristocratically handsome late father. Wyatt with his crew team before his first Head of the Charles, arms flung around the necks of two team-mates. The display was absurdly egocentric, of course, but it also revealed Wyatt’s preoccupation with his place in the world. It was almost as though he didn’t know who he was without the fancy hobbies, the famous friends, the fabulous settings. She looked at the grainy baby photo of Wyatt being bounced on Nixon’s knee, the shot of him playing polo in Argentina. I could help him define himself in a deeper way. For the first time since Cornelia broke the news about the Townhouse report, Lucy paused in worrying about the negative effect it might have on him. Maybe, for Wyatt, a little social embarrassment could be just the push he needed to start living a more authentic life.
Without really meaning to, she had made her way around his entire study. On his desk, next to his Tiffany lamp, there was a small gold frame. Lucy leaned closer. To her surprise, it contained a photograph of her, taken during their weekend in Palm Beach at his mother’s house. Relaxed by the pool, she faced the camera dead-on and was laughing, and she looked like herself—not posed, not perfect, not some socialite in a pretty dress, just herself. She’d forgotten that he’d taken it. The sheer existence of the photo, let alone its intimate placement in a spot where only Wyatt would see it, for a moment took her breath away.
Her eyes fell upon a thick stack of paper on top of Wyatt’s antique desk. THE OVERNIGHT SOCIALITE was printed on the top page, along with Wyatt’s name. The title pierced her with curiosity and dread. Had he written a book? Since she’d known him, he’d been hard at work on some mystery project that he never wanted to discuss. Unable to control herself, Lucy flipped to page one and read:There was nothing extraordinary about the girl under the awning—not her beauty, birth, education, or profession. In fact, I chose L. as the subject of my experiment precisely because she was so unremarkable—one of the faceless, nameless many who immigrate to New York City from the hinterland, full of unrealistic dreams.
Lucy felt her heart drop. She skimmed down the page—which was now shaking, along with her hand. It couldn’t be real.
Just when I think progress is finally being made, L. blindsides me with an uncouth comment or action, or surprises me with her lack of basic cultural literacy. Last night, she asked if Edith Piaf was a kind of rice.
Lucy flipped frantically through the rest of his manuscript, but tears blurred her vision. There could be no explanation other than the obvious: Wyatt was planning to publish a book about their experiment. Long before Cornelia even heard of Rita Ellis, Wyatt himself was planning to expose her as a fraud to the entire world. She had never felt more betrayed. She was nothing more than a trained dog to him, a girl he’d plucked from obscurity and passed off as a woman with class. No, worse—a trained dog wasn’t humiliated in public. Wyatt didn’t love her—it was right there in black and white, impossible to deny—he found nothing about her “remarkable” or “extraordinary.” The whole thing was just academic for him. Just a topic for a book. He had set her on a path to a humiliation that would deny her humanity and annihilate her ambitions. He obviously cared nothing about her feelings. He was worse than Cornelia—at least Cornelia had never pretended to be Lucy’s friend.
“Lucy!” She hadn’t heard the advance of his footsteps, and looked up to find Wyatt—unshaven, in an old sweater—standing in the doorway. He smiled. “You’re here! I’ve been everywhere—Eloise’s, the Carlyle—” He stopped short when he saw his manuscript, and her face. Lucy wiped away tears with the back of her ha
nd, grabbed the pile of papers, and charged toward the door. Wyatt stepped back in alarm. “What were you doing in here?”
She flung the manuscript at his head. Pages cascaded over his shoulders.
“I can explain—” he began in the timeworn words of men who’ve screwed up big time.
“How dare you?” She ran to him, raising herself on her toes to come just inches from his face. Her entire body shook with anger. He looked petrified, scared speechless. “You should make sense of your own warped life, and leave mine alone!” Lucy hurled her way to the elevator bank, stabbing the down button. She heard Wyatt behind her, calling her name. The door opened and she rushed into it as he appeared in the landing. “Maybe I didn’t grow up gagging on silver spoons, but I know right from wrong. I would never, ever stoop this low.” Then the elevator doors shut on his stammering, bewildered face.
As it dropped nine floors to the lobby, Lucy fought the urge to crumple on the floor in tears. She’d endured Wyatt’s constant criticism for months, and for what? So he could use her like this—destroying not only her dreams but her trust?