by Zoey Dean
Rose and I put on our robes and moved out to Daniel’s back deck. As Sage had predicted, he’d put a bottle of their beloved Taittinger on ice. A statuesque Bahamian woman brought a tray of crudités and sliced tropical fruits.
I thanked her, sipped the champagne, and tilted my face up to the sun. “Did you get to see Thom last night?” I asked Rose.
She shook her head. “He had another catering gig. I haven’t seen him since the Christmas Eve ball, which was just really weird. I barely got to talk to him. I mean, there he was, and there I was, but we couldn’t be together. So tragic!”
This was a little too Romeo and Juliet even for me, lover of all tragic romances. “I don’t see why not. I’m sure he would have enjoyed the company.”
“All my friends were there,” Rose protested. “It’s not so simple.”
I drank more champagne and took in the way the sun glinted in her hair, her luminous eyes, her sculpted cheekbones, and the tiny cleft in her delicate chin. She was incandescently lovely. “What’s the worst thing that could happen if you and Thom just told people you’re a couple?” I asked her. “You wouldn’t have to even say it. Just be it.”
“You must be joking.”
“Assume for a moment that I’m serious,” I said dryly.
Her eyes darted toward Daniel’s atelier, as if to make sure Sage wasn’t going to walk out onto the deck. “Well, for starters, Sage would ruin it.”
“Seriously, Rose. What is it that you think she could do? She’d bust your chops for a while. BFD.”
Rose drained the champagne and placed the flute on an end table. Then she stared out at the sea in silence. It reminded me of the first time we’d really talked at Les Anges, after Zenith’s visit and the collapse of Sage’s plan for independent prosperity. We sat in silence for a long while. The lapping waves below were the only sound. Then, still staring straight ahead, she spoke so softly, I could barely hear her.
“I remember the flight from Boston to Palm Beach after our parents died. We were in Grandma’s old plane. The flight attendant brought us ice-cream sundaes, like somehow that was going to make us feel better. I remember watching the ice cream melt.” She wrapped her arms around her slender torso. “I remember thinking that I should feel something, but I didn’t feel anything. Not scared. Not sad. Just . . . nothing. Then the pilot started the engine, and all of a sudden it was real. And then Sage . . . she put her hand in mine and said, ‘As long as we have each other, we’re not orphans.’” Rose turned to look at me. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears.
Whoa. All I could think was: Who was I to push her about this? It wasn’t like I’d had to face that kind of tragedy. It wasn’t like all I had in the world was my sister. I reached out and squeezed her hand. “I think I understand, Rose.”
“Gee. Are we bonding?” Sage stood behind us, her hands on her robed hips. Her tone was decidedly nasty.
Rose snatched her hand away from mine as if we’d been caught cheating. “You’re finished with Daniel?” she asked her sister.
“No, I came out to share in your Seventh Heaven moment.” Sage tightened her belt and took a healthy swig of champagne directly from the bottle. “What’s so touchy-feely out here?”
Rose’s eyes flashed a warning at me. She obviously wasn’t supposed to have told me quite so much about her sister.
“It’s personal,” I said.
“Ooh. A little prickly, are we?” There was nothing on Sage’s face but disdain. Where was the girl who had been so nice to me before the Christmas Eve ball? She turned to her sister. “You don’t really think she cares about you, do you?”
“Actually . . . yes, I do,” Rose told her, squaring her tanned and freckled shoulders.
“Don’t be dense, Rose,” Sage told her sister pityingly. “She just wants the money Grandma promised if we get in to Duke.”
Rose looked confused. “What are you talking about? Megan is rich.”
“She told me that her mother cut off her allowance because she pulled a Precious, and she doesn’t get her trust till she’s thirty or something.”
Actually, I hadn’t told Sage any of that. But I hadn’t done anything to dissuade her from the notion when she’d “figured it out,” either.
Rose took the revelation in stride—thank God—and didn’t back down. “That’s her, not us. If you fuck this up, we’re the ones who are going to need money.”
Sage got up so abruptly, she almost knocked over her chair. “You know what, Rose? You’re right. If I fuck this up, you can score twenty-four hundred on the SAT and still not get the money. My advice would be: Suck up to me instead of her. Because right now you can bite me.”
She took the stairs two at a time down to the beach, then stormed off.
I turned to Rose. She looked miserable.
“Relax, sweetie.” I patted her hand. “The money thing just flips her out.” I leaned forward, picked up the fruit tray, and offered it to her. “You should eat—”
“You just don’t get it, Megan.” Rose stood up. “She’s all I have.”
I watched her run down the stairs and up the beach after her sister.
The dramatic unraveling of two romantic relationships in one day is something that:
(a)happens only in movies.
(b)happens only in Palm Beach.
(c)happens only to assholes.
(d)happens only in situations of extreme misunderstanding.
(e)cannot be endured without booze.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Sage turning on her sister at the fitting should have been fodder for my editorial saga of all things Palm Beach. I should have been at my computer, pounding in my delicious word-for-word recollections. I should have felt motivated. But all I felt was sadness. Not just about Sage but about myself.
Who was this girl I had become, who was ready to benefit from the misery of two girls still wounded by their parents’ deaths? How could I tell so many self-serving lies to so many people to get my story? At least Sage had an excuse: Her emotional growth had ended the moment that plane plunged into the ocean. But I’d had a perfectly normal upbringing— compost-heap-obsessed parents aside—and was supposed to be an adult. What was my excuse? Especially when I sometimes got the sense that I was the closest thing they had in their life to a surrogate mom.
That was what I went to sleep thinking about the night of the fitting, and it was what I was still thinking about the next morning when James called. There was some crisis at East Coast. He’d have to return to New York that afternoon. Could we meet for a drink before he went to the airport?
We met on the front patio of Le Palais D’Or—the Golden Palace—on Worth Avenue, a restaurant that went heavy on the gilt or, in my case, the guilt. I wore an outfit in which I could actually breathe: Chloe tab-waist gray pin-striped trousers and a black vest over a soft gray Imitation of Christ T-shirt. More from Marco’s suitcase. He was a transvestite with great taste. A truly great guy, a wonderful friend. And just another person I’d be using in my story.
James had already arrived. He rose to hug me, but it felt awkward. I slid into the seat across from him. He ordered us Stoli Bloody Marys, then reached across the table for my hand.
“So what’s the crisis?” I asked.
He sat back and ran his free hand through his hair. “Explain to me why it is everyone thinks they can write fiction. Another songwriter’s story came in. Worst yet. Unsalvageable. So now I’m supposed to find some other songwriter who can deliver in a week.”
“Jimmy Buffett can write,” I suggested.
“Has to be someone fresh and younger than Jesus. ” James sighed.
The waitress, a basic Palm Beach blond lollipop with expertly streaked hair, put our drinks and a basket of fresh bread on the table. James sipped his drink. I sipped mine, too, just for something to do.
“So, how do you feel about things?” he finally asked.
What? Did he, too, sense that something was off?
“Your art
icle,” he prompted. “You must have a lot of material by now. You should probably start thinking about form and bang out a first draft. You can fill in the rest of the material later, when you come home, and—”
“No,” I blurted.
He smiled. “You want to wing it? Living dangerously. You know it’s better in the long run if you outline and—”
“That’s not what I meant, James. I meant no, I’m not writing it.” I swear, I almost turned around to see who was talking. Yet with the words out of my mouth, I knew it was the right thing to do.
He actually snorted a laugh. “No. Seriously, Megan—”
“I am serious.”
“Well.” He folded his hands together and placed them on the table. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” I leaned forward.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“I like them,” I said lamely. “The twins, I mean.”
“You like them.” He stared at me as if I had grown a third eye on my cheek. “You’re not going to write about them because you like them?”
“Something like that.”
He shook his head, crossed his arms, and regarded me as if I were a stranger. “Jeez, Megan, you’re a journalist. At least I thought you were.”
“I am a journalist,” I defended myself. “You should see my notes. You should see what I went through to get what I got. When I first got here and was pumping the cook about the twins, he told me—no lie, direct quote—‘They’re damaged.’”
“Great stuff,” James acknowledged.
“No! Don’t you get it? How can I take advantage of two teenagers who lost their parents and never recovered? What kind of a person would that make me?”
The waitress came back and asked if we wanted anything else. I waved her off as James put his head in his hands.
“If your brilliant insight is that the Baker twins are scarred by the death of their parents—which isn’t exactly a shocker, by the by—find a way to write it and make it interesting. But don’t kill the biggest opportunity of your life because you feel sorry for the poor little rich girls.”
I looked into his eyes. Really looked. “I can’t teach them and write about them at the same time, James. It isn’t right.”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “I know exactly what’s going on here.”
“I wish you’d fill me in.”
“Look at you.” He gestured at me.
I looked down, then back at him.
“The hair, the makeup, the clothes,” he listed. “Megan, you’ve become their clone.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it makes perfect sense when you think about it,” he said confidently. “It’s Stockholm syndrome, where a hostage identifies with his captors. In your case, it’s Palm Beach syndrome, where the writer identifies with her subjects.”
“Just because I look different—”
“You’ve changed.” James gripped the edge of the table and leaned in, his expression intense. “The girl I knew was a real writer. She didn’t give a shit about fucking designer whatever. And she never would have let her feelings get in the way of her story.”
“I’m not, I—”
That sentence went on permanent hold, because that was when I saw Will walking down the other side of Worth Avenue.
I’m not big on the power of prayer, but I prayed for him not to see us.
But then Will stopped walking, and I saw him shield his eyes to peer across the street. Then James shielded his eyes to figure out whom I was staring at.
It didn’t take long for either of them. Will started purposefully down the sidewalk again, his body stiff and angry-looking, and James spun back to me. “You fuck him?” he practically spat.
Does mentally count?
“No.” That was the truth. I hadn’t even kissed him.
“Christ.”
“Nothing happened, James,” I insisted. “Nothing.”
He stood up. “You better get your shit together, Megan. You’re coming home soon. This fantasy will be over. Then what? You think SAT tutor on your résumé is going to wow the New York publishing world?”
We both knew the answer to that.
I reached for his hand. “I know you’re mad. And maybe I am crazy. But . . .”
“You’re not changing your mind,” he filled in for me.
“No. I don’t think I am.”
“Honestly, Megan? I don’t think you’ve been doing a whole hell of a lot of thinking about anything. Work. Us.” He tossed a few bills on the table. “Maybe we need to take a break until you’re back in New York. It’s kind of weird having a hostage for a girlfriend.”
I wanted to apologize, to say that he was right, that I was wrong, and that of course I would be writing my story. But I couldn’t. I didn’t.
I just watched James climb into his Volvo and drive away.
I stood watching the space where James’s car had been for several minutes, wishing I had someone to talk to. Someone to be a real friend. And then my feet started moving toward the Phillips Gallery almost without my realizing it.
Inside, Giselle was talking to a young woman wearing a tiny orange tartan skirt and to a man twice her age whose hair transplant had not fully taken.
“Hi, Megan,” Giselle greeted me after the mismatched couple had departed. “Will’s in the back. Just knock.”
I did. He called, “Come in,” without even asking who was there.
“Hi,” I said as I opened the door.
His office was windowless and small, with art books open on every available surface. I peeked at the Excel document open on his computer. It meant nothing to me. The quick glance he made in my direction before he turned his attention back to his work said I meant nothing to him, either.
“Hi,” I repeated. “Could we talk?”
He regarded me coolly. “I’m kind of busy.”
“You’re the closest thing I’ve got to a friend in this town,” I told him, meaning it. “So please, just five minutes . . .”
He closed his laptop and motioned to a folding chair. Then he folded his arms. “So?”
“So . . . I saw you before,” I acknowledged. “I mean, I know you saw me before.”
“With the guy you only knew slightly from Yale. Blossoming friendship?”
“It’s . . . complicated.” Part of me wanted to just explain everything, but how could I? He’d hate me. The twins would hate me. Everyone would hate me. I’d be totally and utterly fucked.
Will frowned and shook his head. “What is it with you, Megan? I’d really like to know. I mean, every time I feel like I’m getting to know the real you—”
“What about you?” I shot back because, okay, I was feeling defensive and more than a little battered and bruised. “One minute you’re the playboy of the Western world, the next you’re mister sensitive art guy.”
A muscle jumped in his cheek. I figured I’d hit a nerve.
“You done?” he asked.
“I don’t want to fight with you, Will.” I could hear the exasperation in my voice. “There’s nothing to fight about.”
“You’re right. There is nothing to fight about.” He stood and opened his door in one swift motion. “See you, Megan.”
Celebrities at a gala fund-raiser fill space at a rate of 0.2 per square foot. How many famous men and women would attend a soiree at a 4,000-square-foot mansion?
(a)200
(b)300
(c)500
(d)800
(e)900
Chapter Twenty-eight
You know it, I know it, you don’t even need to go to Yale to know it—F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous line from The Great Gatsby: “The rich are very different from you and me.”
Ernest Hemingway is reputed to have responded, “Yes. They have more money.”
Please. Here’s what he should have said: “Yes. They have bigger and better parties.”
I thought I’d seen extravagance at the Red and White ba
ll and the Norton Museum of Art Christmas Eve event. But compared to what was about to unfold at Les Anges, they were pin the tail on the donkey. I was fast discovering that no one outdoes Laurel Limoges.
My first clue should have been the arrival of Secret Service agents on the property two days beforehand to set up a command post and a security perimeter. I had lunch with Marco and Keith, who had just returned home from New Jersey. Marco made us white-truffle risotto—words can describe neither the dee-lish factor nor the calorie factor—and I joked, “Who are they expecting, the president?”
“Former, darling.” He refilled my wineglass. “Two of them.”
Also, he told me, the CEOs of several Fortune 100 companies, a handful of heads of state, and a dizzying array of movie, fashion, and sports stars. “So, are you quite ready for your coming-out party?”
“My what?”
“He means the fashion show,” Keith explained. “Every beautiful woman should get to model in a fabulous fashion show at least once in her life.”
I pictured the risotto applied in lumpy layers to both of my hips. “I’m so much bigger than the other models.”
“Just a trend, darling,” Keith assured me. “A few years back it was heroin chic—remember?” He shuddered. “Palm Beach matrons trying to look like strung-out teenagers. It was quite the horror show.”
Marco clinked his wineglass to mine. “Chin chin, darling. You are gorgeous and fabulous and perfect exactly as you are.”
“But . . . I have no idea how to model,” I protested.
“Shoulders back, neck long, head high,” Keith instructed me.
“And, of course, there’s the strut,” Marco added. “But everyone knows the strut.”
I blanched. “I . . . don’t know the strut.”
“America’s Next Top Model?” Marco asked. “I know a dozen drag queens who wear clothes and walk the catwalk a zillion times better.” He stood, put a hand on his hip, and proceeded to do a perfect model walk. “It’s a straight-line thing, darling,” he explained as he walked the length of the kitchen, then spun to us. “As if you’re on a tightrope. Like so.” He flounced back to us. He gestured with a flourish, meaning I should give it a try.