Privileged

by Zoey Dean

  “Uh—”

  “What difference does it make?” Precious exclaimed. “She’s here, she obviously belongs here. Ohmigod—I love your dress. Why didn’t my stylist show me that one?”

  Pembroke grinned at me. “I almost didn’t recognize her with her clothes on.” He guffawed at his own cleverness.

  “I could strip and remind you, but I’m sure you have a vivid imagination.” I dearly hoped this came across as playful teasing, since I felt like feeding him my fist.

  He laughed. “How about that apple martini?”

  “Something else,” I replied, and then I looked at Rose. “What are you all drinking?”

  “Flirtinis.”

  No clue what those were.

  “Fine, then,” I told Pembroke. “A flirtini.”

  “Flirtini it is.”

  He trotted off, and his place was taken by another of the twins’ friends from the night before, the one with the eye-popping implants. What was her name again? It had something to do with Sesame Street. Big Bird? Cookie Monster? Oscar the Grouch? That was it. Grouch. Suzanne de Grouchy. She stared at me with unabashed admiration. “Zac Posen, right?”

  She didn’t even attempt an apology for the night before. I played along like I was too cool to want one.

  “Of course,” I lied. I had zero recollection of who’d made my dress.

  Sage narrowed her eyes at me, and I willed myself to stay calm. “What happened to the frizzy hair and the crap clothes?”

  This one I was ready for, thanks to my former not-so-brilliant career.

  “Please, Sage. All I ever wear when I’m traveling is an Evian spritz, lip gloss, and my most comfortable clothes.” I did my best imitation of her patented hair toss. A month ago at Scoop, I’d written the photo captions for an interview with three top models. Kate Moss had explained that she never wore makeup while traveling. “It’s not like I need to impress anyone.”

  This moment shall be forever seared into my brain. Sage blinked. The superior sneer fell from her face, and she sniffed. “Well, you could have told us.”

  I smiled sweetly. “As I said, it’s not like I need to impress anyone.”

  And yet I was impressing someone. Sage and Rose. Exactly whom I had to impress. They might not like me, but there wasn’t an ounce of disdain in their eyes. By any measure, it was progress.

  “Here you go!” Pembroke was back, handing me a pink drink in a martini glass. “One flirtini.”

  “You’re a sweetheart.” Sweetheart? Who was I? I was tempted to gulp the thing down, the better to fuel my farce, but I remembered Keith cautioning me to sip, so I did, feigning great interest in the couples dancing to something by the BeeGees that no one should dance to, ever.

  “Dance?” came a voice from behind me.

  I turned to find myself staring into the impossibly blue eyes of the guy who’d handed me the towel the night before. Will Phillips. Now, instead of a full-body blush, I was wearing a red dress. It seemed fitting.

  “How can you dance to this shit, Will?” Sage asked. The orchestra had just started “Strangers in the Night.” I hesitated as couples old enough to have lost their virginity to Sinatra—no, Edith Piaf—took to the dance floor.

  “Think of it as really, really retro,” Will told Sage, then looked back at me. “So?” He held out a hand.

  “Sure.” It was momentarily hard to look away from his eyes until I reminded myself exactly who this guy was friends with and precisely what those eyes had already gazed upon. I’m working, I told myself. I had two weeks until Laurel would return and see that the girls were no closer to getting in to Duke, and then I’d be out on my ass—two weeks to learn everything I could about the rich, wretched, and repugnant of Palm Beach. I slipped my hand into his. Every minute counted.

  “Sorry about last night,” Will said as he slipped his arms around me. “That surprised me, too.”

  To believe or not to believe, that was the question. I’d muse on it later.

  “No biggie,” I said smoothly. “It was just a silly prank. So how do you know the twins?”

  “I live next door, at Barbados.” We began to move to the alleged music.

  The next-door neighbor who’d known them forever. Perfect.

  “Barbados is an island in the Caribbean,” I said teasingly.

  “Also the name of our property. People in Palm Beach can’t resist naming their houses. I think it’s in the water.”

  “So you kind of grew up with Sage and Rose?” I asked.

  “Not exactly. I’m twenty-three. I graduated from Northwestern last June.”

  He was my age. Which begged the question: Why was he hanging out with a group of high school kids? Which led me to an obvious conclusion: He was sleeping with one of them. Where I come from, we call that criminal. And no matter where you come from, it’s just . . . icky.

  “How about you?” He pulled away just far enough so that he could look at me.

  “Yale,” I replied diffidently.

  He whistled softly. “And you’re a tutor? By choice? What’d you study?”

  “Literature.” The truth seemed safe enough. “You?”

  “Art history. My dad’s a dealer. I’m trying to decide whether to go into the business. His flagship gallery is on Worth Avenue, actually. I’m sure you know it—the Phillips Gallery.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at this guy’s totally self-important spiel. Did all these people assume their little world was the center of the universe? “This is actually my first time in Palm Beach,” I told him, trying to keep my research in mind. “I haven’t seen the island at all yet.”

  I hoped he’d take the bait I’d just floated. What better tour guide could I possibly have than Barbados Boy?

  “My dad’s showing some Corots at the gallery. Maybe you’d like to see them. I’d be happy to show you around tomorrow.”

  Oh, yeah. Hook, line, and sinker.

  “Love to.”

  I smiled over his shoulder, imagining all the inside dish I could get from him the next day. And when an old codger in a red dinner jacket bumped me closer to Will, well . . . I didn’t even mind.

  This was starting to be fun.

  Identify which part of the following sentence is incorrect:

  It’s an (a) excellent idea, in theory, to (b) masquerade as someone (c) your not when (d) trying to impress a member of the opposite sex. (e) No error

  Chapter Thirteen

  Despite the minor progress I’d made with the twins at the party—at least I was Megan again instead of Frizzy—I’d decided not to chase after them the morning after. I figured I’d go to the main mansion to get breakfast and my predictions for my afternoon with likely-statutory-rapist-slash-Baker-twins-neighbor Will Phillips.

  It turned out that I didn’t have to. The twins’ pounding on my door woke me at the almost reasonable hour of ten o’clock. They were dressed for fun in the sun. Sage had on a three-Post-it-notes-size gold bikini, while Rose wore a black tank suit cut up to the waist on the sides, making it look as if her legs were about eight feet long.

  Sage spoke first. She folded her arms, eyes narrowed. “We know who you are.”

  Busted. So much for Marco and Keith’s attempt to pass me off as one of them. It was fun while it lasted. All sixteen hours of it.

  “Okay, fine,” I began. “So I’m not really—”

  “We Googled you,” Rose interrupted me. Sage nodded. “You’re Megan Smith from Main Line Philadelphia—Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, to be exact. Your family sponsored a ball last spring to benefit the University of Pennsylvania Hospital’s transplant center. Your mother wore Chanel, and you wore Versace. We read all about it.”

  Sponsoring a benefit last spring was so far from the reality of my life that it was laughable, but the puzzle pieces rearranged themselves in my head. Smith wasn’t exactly an uncommon name, and neither was Megan. That there was another girl out there with my name who came from a super-rich family shouldn’t have been a surprise. I’d G
oogled myself once or twice. Okay, ten or twelve times. Except for a few hits on Yale-related websites, my real self was an Internet nonentity. But there were about 93,700 other Megan Smiths mentioned. And apparently, one of them was rich.

  “At least we know how you got invited to the ball,” Rose muttered.

  “And where the dress came from,” Sage added. “You should have just told us, Megan.”

  They flounced off. I took a chance and shouted after them, “Are you guys ready to study with me?”

  It’s amazing how quickly a pair of twins can shout the word no over their shoulders.

  I ended up ordering breakfast from the main house—two fresh-baked croissants, a plate of sliced fresh tropical fruit, and a carafe of Ethiopian coffee—and spent the morning out on my private deck, doing a little online research myself about Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, home of the other Megan Smith. Gladwyne was another one of those places that made Concord, New Hampshire, the town where I’d grown up, seem like a third-world country.

  It was in the midst of my Gladwyne research that a scary thought hit me. When I went to meet Will later, he’d expect to see the girl he’d danced with the night before. Only, that girl didn’t exist. I was terrible with my hair, and I had no clothes. Short of having the Mr. Keith materialize in my den, I was screwed.

  In a panic, I showered, washed my hair, and put on a combination of hideous Century 21 outfits numbers one and two. Then I dashed over to the main mansion—deliberately skirting the pool deck, where the twins might be—to find my fairy gaymother.

  With few preliminaries, I explained my crisis. Not the whole story, of course—Marco couldn’t know that I was actually going undercover as a journalist—but I did work in how the twins had mistaken me for another, much richer Megan Smith. He thought this was hysterical and seemed to understand the importance of not doing anything to dissuade them from the notion. For purely, um, academic reasons.

  “Not to worry, dear heart,” Marco cooed, setting cinnamon buns on a cooling rack. “It’s a stroke of good fortune. I believe I can come to your rescue. Have a bun.”

  I wolfed one down, both relieved that he thought he could help and newly guilt-ridden. Marco had been nothing but nice to me from the first moment we’d met, and I was being less than honest about my intentions in Palm Beach. This is what journalists do, I reminded myself.

  As Marco led me to his pink bungalow at the north end of the property, my remorse abated. It turned out that I wasn’t the only one who had a secret. When Marco wasn’t Chef Marco, he was Zsa Zsa Lahore, the most glamorous drag queen this side of the intercoastal. And he just happened to be my size.

  We walked though his red and black living room with a lizard-print couch—he was currently in a western phase—and into his bedroom. Unlike his general demeanor, it was aggressively masculine, all silver and chrome, with a painting over his bed of two cowboys eying each other with lust. How Brokeback.

  “My closets are your closets,” he announced, opening double doors to a walk-in nearly as large as his bedroom.

  How generous could one fairy gaymother possibly be? The walk-in was filled with rack upon rack upon rack of gorgeous designer clothes. He began pulling out possibilities. “For the gallery with Will, I’m thinking Bottega Veneta high-waisted black crepe trousers and the Fendi ivory chiffon blouse. Now let us find you more.”

  I tried to protest, but by the time he was done, he’d filled one large suitcase and a king-size garment bag, saying that I’d need these clothes for the future.

  “My advice for what you’re wearing, darling?” he offered. “Burn it.”

  Next came hair and makeup. Marco didn’t share Keith’s genius for hair, but he did teach me to use a flatiron. Next was makeup, which he had more than perfected, and then I changed into the outfit he’d suggested. It fit. I looked down at my black loafers and bit my lip in concern. Even I knew they were a nonono.

  “Oh, dear.” Marco nibbled on a perfectly manicured fingernail.

  I wore a women’s eight. He wore a women’s ten. Then he snapped his fingers. “Stretch Chanel ballet slippers, darling. Just the thing.”

  I tried them—still too big, but they stayed on because of the elastic. He promised to call Keith and have him bring over some other options. I protested one more time, but Marco was hearing none of it.

  “Dahling,” he drolled in a near-perfect Zsa Zsa Gabor accent as he coated my lashes with mascara, “you look stunning. Which car will you take?”

  I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought, which was what I told Marco. In exactly fifty minutes, I was supposed to be downtown on Worth Avenue, where Will would give me the grand tour of his father’s gallery and then take me to the Breakers for tea.

  “Take the Ferrari,” Marco advised. “The red Ferrari. It’s the most fun to drive. You can handle a stick?” He smirked at the sexual innuendo.

  “I sure can.” I laughed. My father’s pickup truck had a manual transmission.

  Marco smiled. “My advice, my dear? When given the opportunity to handle a stick, handle it.”

  The Phillips Gallery was located at the north end of Worth Avenue, and it had but a single painting in its picture window: a stone bridge in the French countryside. An even more discreet sign announced PHILLIPS GALLERY: PALM BEACH. JEAN-BAPTISTE-CAMILLE COROT, WORKS. NOVEMBER 13 TO DECEMBER 23.

  I left my car at the valet stand directly in front of the gallery and then stepped inside. So this was it. The gallery that Will’s father wanted him to run. The front room was stark white with a polished wood floor. The air-conditioning offered relief from the sun and humidity.

  I was greeted by a young woman in a very fitted black suit, with a de rigueur Palm Beach tan and blunt-cut shoulder-length blond hair. “Welcome to the Phillips Gallery. I’m Giselle Keenan,” she said to me. Then she turned her head and regarded me again. “I hope you don’t mind my asking, but . . . who did your color? The streaks are wonderful.”

  “Um, Keith,” I told her, his last name escaping me for a moment.

  “The Keith?” Giselle uttered the name with hushed reverence. “I’ve tried and tried to book him. How did you do it?”

  “I’m staying at Les Anges—”

  “With the Baker twins? We were all on the Hearts and Hopes ball committee last season. Tell them Giselle said hi, okay? I loved their Vanity Fair thing.”

  “Sure,” I told her, filing away some mental notes. “And I’m actually here to see Will Phillips? He’s expecting me. I’m Megan.”

  “Right away.” She pushed a few buttons on her phone system. As she did, a well-dressed guy with shaggy hair and the ruddy complexion of someone who spent lots of time on boats, or golf courses, or both, entered the gallery. He smiled at me in the way that I had seen so many guys smile at my sister. My first instinct was to turn to see if he was smiling at some really hot girl standing behind me. Apparently, the Cinderella effect had lasted after the ball.

  Just as my golfing sailor took a couple of steps in my direction, Will materialized. “Megan? Welcome to the gallery.”

  He wore a blue sport coat, an open-collar light blue shirt, khaki pants, and maroon loafers with no socks. I would soon learn that variations on this outfit were Palm Beach’s unofficial male uniform. My sailor offered me a little nod of recognition and a good-natured look of regret. Then he turned and walked out.

  “Have you had a chance to look around yet?” Will asked.

  “Not much. But this room is gorgeous.”

  “I grew up with it. I don’t even see it anymore,” Will confessed.

  I wanted Will to be comfortable enough around me to be himself—what better poster boy for an article about Palm Beach could there be?—but it was hard to squelch my desire to kick him in the shins for being so spoiled.

  “Want to take the two-cent tour and then a walk on the avenue?”

  “Sounds good,” I answered him.

  Will mostly talked, and I mostly listened, as he showed me through the two expansive white room
s of the gallery. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of Corot’s work and life, and he took me through the artist’s three distinct periods, then turned to me. “Let’s go.”

  We walked out into the dazzling early-afternoon sunshine and turned right on the sidewalk, passing one designer shop after another. Ferragamo. Gucci. Hermès. Tiffany. There was nary a Gap nor a Starbucks in sight. The pedestrian traffic was light, and the day was warm. The only real action was in front of a restaurant named Ta-boo, where a team of valets was efficiently parking a substantial lineup of Bentleys, Mercedeses, and Rolls-Royces.

  I noticed a speed-limit sign that was posted with a minimum as well as a maximum. Why would you possibly have a minimum speed requirement?

  “What’s up with those signs?” I asked.

  “They don’t have those in Philadelphia?” He looked puzzled. “It’s to keep the tourists from slowing down to gawk. People around here like their privacy.”

  “Who said I’m from Philadelphia?”

  “Sage.”

  Well, okay. This could work to my advantage. For research purposes, it couldn’t hurt for Will to also think I was the other Megan.

  “So I’ve never been to Philly,” Will said. “Tell me about where you grew up.”

  Thanks to my Internet research that very morning, this wasn’t hard. I told him where I liked to eat (Tre Scalini), where I liked to shop (the Smak Parlour), and where I liked to go on vacation (Gstaad, for the skiing, and Brussels, for the shopping). I was having so much fun inventing myself that I barely noticed we had done the full circle of Worth Avenue and were standing in front of the gallery again.

  Will looked at his watch. “I have to get back to work.”

  Wait, what about the Breakers? “Thanks for the tour.” I touched his arm. “Maybe we could get together another time.”

  This was my shameless way of saying: Ask me out for cocktails, pretty boy. Who knew what I could get out of him after two or three drinks?

  “Yeah, maybe. Take care, Megan.” I couldn’t help but think he looked a little confused as he stepped backward into the gallery.