It wasn’t Philip. No British accent, no chiseled jaw, no I’ve-been-a-very-bad-boy grin. Much to my surprise, the face that stared back at me, the one contorted with anger and annoyance, belonged to someone else I knew well: Avery. His jaw went slack when he saw me. ‘Bette,’ he whispered.
‘Avery?’ I couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t come up with a single appropriate thing to say. I was vaguely aware that the girl was peering at us both with some sort of smug look, but it was hard to make her out in the dark. Besides, nearly her entire mouth was swollen from kissing, and lipstick was smeared across her chin and cheek. But after I studied her for fifteen seconds, I realized I knew her, too. It was Abby.
‘Bette, this is, uh, this isn’t what it … Bette, you know Abby, don’t you?’
He was noticeably perspiring and waving his hands in some sort of spastic, counterclockwise pattern, motioning to the girl while simultaneously trying to pretend she wasn’t there.
‘Bette! Great to see you again. Saw that piece about you the other day,’ she trilled. Her hand worked its way quite deliberately over Avery’s back, rubbing and kneading while I watched every movement, and she watched me watching her.
I continued to stare, still at a loss for words, realizing that Abby still assumed I was clueless about her professional identity. It was all too horrible to process, and since I couldn’t decide which one to confront first, I just stood there. Apparently, Avery took this as an indication that he should keep talking. ‘Penelope knows I’m in New York, and of course she knows I like to go out a lot, but um, I’m not sure it’d be the best thing for her to know about, uh, about this. She’s, um, she’s had a lot to adjust to with the move and everything and I think it’d be most, ah, most considerate to her if we didn’t upset her any more, you know?’ He slurred nearly every word.
Abby chose this moment to lean over and begin licking his earlobe, closing her eyes in feigned passion after looking directly at me. Avery brushed her away like a gnat and stood up, placing an arm underneath my elbow and leading me away from the table. He was approaching blackout drunk, but he still managed to move rather deftly.
I allowed myself to be led away for a second before I snapped back to reality and tore my arm from his grip. ‘You bastard!’ I hissed. I’d wanted to scream, but nothing came out.
‘Is there a problem here?’ Abby asked as she sidled up next to Avery.
I stared at her, nearly scared of my hatred. ‘Problem? No, why would you say that? No problem at all. It’s funny, though, I have this sneaking feeling that you won’t be writing tomorrow about how you threw yourself at someone else’s fiancé – someone you’ve known for more than eight years now. No, I imagine tomorrow’s little column will have no mention of you or Avery at all. Rather, it’ll be some charming little story about how I was stealing tips off the bar or doing drugs with the dancers or having group sex with the photographers, right?’
They both stared at me. Abby spoke first.
‘What are you saying, Bette? You really are making no sense.’
‘Oh, is that so? Interesting. It’s rather unfortunate for you that I know you’re Ellie Insider. You want to know why that sucks for you so much besides the fact that it’s a really stupid fucking name? Because I won’t rest until everyone else knows, too. I’ll call every reporter, editor, blogger, and assistant in this entire city and tell them who you are and how you lie. But I’ll have the most fun telling your editor the whole story. Throw the words libel and lawsuit around, just for fun. Maybe she’d be interested to hear how you nearly got kicked out of school for stealing other people’s papers? Or perhaps she’d find the story of the night you slept with not one, not two, not three, but four guys from the lacrosse team amusing? Hmm, Abby, what do you think?’
‘Bette, listen, I –’ Avery appeared not to have heard a word of what I’d said, clearly concerned only with how this would affect his own life.
‘No, Avery, you listen,’ I hissed with more venom in my voice than I’d ever heard as I turned away from Abby and toward him. ‘You have one week from today’s date to tell Penelope. Do you hear me? One week, or she hears it from me.’
‘Jesus Christ, Bette, c’mon, you have no idea what you’re saying. Hell, you have no idea what really happened. Nothing was going on.’
‘Avery, listen to me. Can you hear me? One week.’ I turned to walk away, silently praying he wouldn’t call my bluff and make me tell her. It’d be hard enough to tell my best friend that her dirtbag fiancé had abandoned her in a new city to come home for a weekend of drinking and cheating, but it would especially suck having to do so when our own relationship was still a little rocky.
I’d made it a few feet when I felt Avery’s arm wrap around my elbow and tighten. He yanked so hard I tripped and would have hit the ground facefirst had he not yanked me upward and pushed me onto a banquette. His face was two inches from mine, his hot, boozy breath heating my skin, and he sounded quite coherent when he whispered, ‘Bette. I will deny every fucking word you say. Who’s she going to believe? Me, the guy she’s worshipped for the last decade, or you, the friend who ditches her going-away party to hang out with some guy? Huh?’ He leaned in even closer, hovering over me with his entire body and his face contorted into a pained, threatening expression, and I briefly wondered if kneeing him in the balls would be appropriate. I wasn’t really concerned for my safety so much as disgusted by his closeness, but I didn’t have to make the decision; before I could work my knee into strike position, Avery’s entire body seemed to float backward.
‘Can I help you with something?’ Sammy asked Avery as he held him upright by the back of his shirt.
‘Dude, get the fuck off me. Who the hell are you?’ Avery spat, looking drunker and meaner than I’d ever seen him before. ‘This is none of your fucking business, you hear?’
‘I’m security, and it is my fucking business.’
‘Well, this is my friend here, and we were having a conversation, so back the fuck off.’ Avery straightened up in a failed attempt to recoup a shred of dignity.
‘Oh, really? That’s funny, because your friend looked pretty fucking unthrilled to be part of your “conversation.” Now get out.’
I watched the two of them go back and forth as I rubbed my arm, wondering who would be the first to use the word fuck three times in a single sentence.
‘Dude, chill out. No one asked for your assistance, okay? I’ve known Bette for a long fucking time now, so step aside and let us finish. Don’t you, like, have drinks to serve or something?’
For the briefest moment I thought Sammy would hit Avery, but he pulled himself together, took a deep breath, and turned to me. ‘Are you okay here?’ he asked.
I wanted to tell him everything, explain that Avery was Penelope’s future husband and tell him how I’d seen him with another girl and that other girl happened to be Abby, who happened to be Ellie Insider, and even though I always knew he was a cheating bastard, I’d never seen him so belligerent before. I wanted to throw my arms around Sammy’s neck and thank him over and over again for watching out for me and stepping in when he thought I was in trouble and ask him his advice on what to tell Penelope and how to deal with Avery.
For just a moment I thought about doing just that – screwing the party, the job, what Abby would surely write the following day, just grabbing Sammy and walking away from all of it. But of course he knew what I was thinking, could see it on my face, and he leaned over and discreetly whispered, ‘Stay cool. We’ll talk about it later, Bette.’ I was attempting to calm down when Elisa and Philip came ambling over, their arms linked.
‘What’s going on here?’ Philip asked, appearing wholly disinterested with the entire scene.
‘Philip, stay out of this, it’s nothing,’ I said, willing them both to disappear.
‘Why don’t you call your fucking goon off me, Elisa?’ Avery whined after pouring himself another drink. ‘This big meathead got himself involved where it’s none of his busin
ess. I was having a little chat with an old friend and all of a sudden he went ballistic. Does he work for you?’
Having already lost interest in the whole situation, Philip drunkenly flopped onto the couch and immersed himself in mixing a gin and tonic. Elisa, however, did not like to hear that the hired help was bothering one of her favorite party boys.
‘Who are you?’ she asked Sammy.
He looked at her and smiled as if to say, Are you kidding, you idiot? We recently traveled to a foreign country together for five full days, and now you have no idea who I am? When he was met with a blank gaze, he merely said, ‘I’m Sammy, Elisa. We’ve met a few dozen times at Bungalow 8, and we were in Istanbul together. I’m in charge of security tonight.’ His voice was strong and even, without a hint of condescension or sarcasm.
‘Mmm, that’s really interesting. So what you’re telling me is that because you work the door at Bungalow a few nights a week and serve as a boy toy to Isabelle Vandemark, you all of a sudden think you’re justified in treating one of our friends – a VIP at that – this rudely?’ It was obvious that she was tipsy and enjoying her demonstration of power in front of the whole group.
Sammy peered at her, expressionless. ‘With all due respect, your friend was bothering my … was physically assaulting your coworker here. She didn’t seemed pleased with his attentions, so I encouraged him to focus them elsewhere.’
‘Sammy? Is that your name?’ she said nastily. ‘Avery Wainwright is one of our closest friends, and I know for a fact that Bette would never be uncomfortable around him. Shouldn’t you be, like, breaking up fights in the bathroom or telling all those bridge-and-tunnel kids lined up outside that they’re not welcome here?’
‘Elisa,’ I said quietly, unsure of what to say next. ‘He was just doing his job. He thought I needed help.’
‘Why are you defending him, Bette? I’ll see to it that his superiors know he initiated an incident with one of our VIPs.’ She turned to Sammy and held up an empty bottle of Grey Goose. ‘In the meantime, make yourself useful and get us another bottle.’
‘Elisa, honey, she’s defending him because she’s fucking him,’ piped up a girl’s voice from behind us. Abby. ‘At least that’s my guess. Philip, you can’t be too psyched about that, now can you? Your girlfriend’s fucking the Bungalow bouncer. Hot stuff,’ she laughed.
Philip chuckled, none too eager to engage me in a who’s-sleeping-with-whom tell-all. ‘She is not.’ He chuckled, stretching his legs out on the glass table. ‘She may not be faithful to me, but I don’t think we have to accuse her of shagging the staff. Bette, you’re not shagging the staff, are you, love?’
‘Sure she is.’ Abby giggled. ‘Hey, Elisa, why’d you never clue me in on that one? It’s so obvious – you must have known. I can’t believe I never saw it before.’
It was like getting hit over the head with a shovel. Why’d you never clue me in on that one? Everything became suddenly and horribly clear. Abby knew where I was and who I was with at all times because Elisa told her. It was that simple. End of story. The only part I didn’t quite understand was why Elisa would do that in the first place. Abby wasn’t so confusing: she was an all-around nasty, vengeful, mean-spirited girl who would sell out her own dying mother – or sleep with a friend’s fiancé – if it meant furthering her career or her reputation by an inch. But why Elisa?
Elisa, having no idea what else to do, started to giggle and sip her champagne. She glanced at me only once – long enough for me to know it was true – and then looked away before I could say a word about it. Avery had begun pleading again, and Sammy had turned to walk back to the door with a disgusted look on his face. Only Philip was either too drunk or too indifferent to really understand what was happening. He persevered.
‘Are you, babe? Are you having a romp with the bouncer?’ Philip prodded, absently playing with Abby’s hair as she watched me intently, a look of distinct pleasure on her face. It was only then I wondered if he, too, had known about Elisa and Abby’s little alliance all along. Or worse – had he been involved with them, looking for some public heterosexual confirmation himself? It was too horrific to even imagine.
‘Hmm, an interesting question, Philip,’ I said as loudly as I dared. Avery, Elisa, Philip, Abby, and Sammy all turned to look at me. ‘I think it’s interesting that you’re so fascinated with whether or not I’ve had sex with “the bouncer,” as you put it. It can’t be because you’re jealous. After all, you and I have never progressed beyond a wet and rather sloppy make-out.’
Philip looked as though he might die. Everyone else looked confused.
‘What? Oh, come on now, people, please! You all know everything about everyone, and you never even suspected that this self-proclaimed God’s gift to New York women actually prefers men? Well, believe it.’
Everyone started speaking at once.
‘Yeah, right,’ Elisa said.
‘Bette, love, why are you talking such rubbish?’ Philip asked with a calmness in his voice that didn’t match his expression.
A shout from an unidentified floater came out over my headphones that P. Diddy had just arrived unannounced, having come from an earlier party somewhere nearby. Normally, this arrival would have been cause for celebration; however, considering that tonight an entourage of one hundred people joined him, it was a disaster. Apparently, he was extremely unhappy that he’d been kept waiting so long at the door, but since Sammy had been inside, the second-in-command security guy hadn’t wanted to make any decisions. Did we tell him he couldn’t come in because we were already too crowded? Tell him he could choose ten friends and have the VIP table of his choice, but the rest of his group had to leave? Figure out how to toss out a hundred current partiers to accommodate his crew? And who, exactly, was going to be the lucky chosen conveyer of this news? No one was exactly jumping at the chance.
Before we could get squared away on the Diddy disaster, one of the interns called me with the news that high-profile boy-band guests were in the process of being arrested for buying drugs in the bathroom – the very same bathroom where one of New York’s finest had briefly stopped at the end of his shift doing crowd control outside. The disturbing part of this information was obviously not the incident itself but the fact that, according to the intern, it was currently being captured by no fewer than five paparazzi – pictures that would, of course, overshadow in the tabs all the good stuff we’d hoped to promote.
The third call came from Leo. He informed me that somehow – and no one knew how – the production company had miscalculated during their ordering and had just run out of champagne.
‘It’s impossible. They knew how many people would be here. They knew our main concern over liquor and beer was champagne. Bunnies drink it. Girls drink it. Bankers drink it. The only way to keep girls somewhere late is to give them champagne. It’s only twelve-thirty! What are we going to do?’ I was screaming over the decibel-crushing sound of an Ashlee Simpson song.
‘I know, Bette, I’m on it. I sent a few of the bartenders out in search of as many cases as they can find, but it’s not going to be easy at this time of night. They can buy a few bottles at liquor stores, but I don’t know where they’re going to find mass quantities now,’ Leo said.
‘Bette, I need to know what you want me to do with, uh, with our waiting VIP,’ the panicked floater at the door called over the headphones. ‘He’s getting restless.’
‘Bette, are you there?’ My earpiece crackled and Kelly’s voice came booming through. She’d grabbed someone’s headset again and was beginning to piece together what was happening. The usual nice boss lady was gone and she’d been replaced by a demonic monster. ‘Are you aware that we have kids here getting arrested on drug charges? People do not get ARRESTED at our parties, do you hear me?’
She cut out for a moment, but then came through loud and clear. ‘Bette! Can you hear me? I need you at this door pronto! Everything’s falling apart, and you’re nowhere. Where the hell are you?’
I watched as Elisa removed her headpiece – out of some deliberate sabotage or just plain wastedness, I couldn’t tell – and flopped down next to Philip, where she began to vie with Abby for his attention. Why fight when you can drink? I was just working up the energy to deal with all the problems I cared so little about when I heard one final comment.
‘Hey, mate? Yeah, you right there.’ Philip, who was now cradling Abby under one arm and Elisa under the other, was calling out to Sammy. Avery sat babbling incoherently at his side.
‘Yeah, man?’ Sammy asked, still not quite sure Philip was addressing him.
‘Be a good chap and bring us a bottle of something. Girls, what will we have? Bubbly? Or would you prefer some vodka drinks?’
Sammy looked like he’d been slapped. ‘I’m not your waiter.’
Apparently Philip found this hysterical because he convulsed with laughter. ‘Just get us a drink, will you, mate? I’m less interested in the details of how it happens.’
I didn’t wait to see if Sammy would hit him or ignore him or retrieve the bottle of vodka. I wasn’t thinking about much besides how comfortable a bed would be right then and how little I cared if P. Diddy brought one guest or a hundred or even showed up at all. It occurred to me that I’d been spending nearly every minute of every day and night with some of the worst people I’d ever met, and I had nothing to show for it but a shoebox full of clippings that humiliated not only me but also everyone I loved. As I stood there watching a photographer snap away at a mugging Philip and listened to even more problems ring out over the earpiece as though they were huge international crises, I thought of Will and Penelope and the book-club girls and my parents and, of course, Sammy. And again, with a sense of calm I hadn’t felt in many months, I simply removed my headset, placed it on the table, and said quietly to Elisa, ‘I’m finished.’
Lauren Weisberger 5-Book Collection: The Devil Wears Prada, Revenge Wears Prada, Everyone Worth Know Page 78