"Oh, God!" Kenzie whispered, appalled. She half shut her eyes, wishing the floor would open up and swallow her whole. "I could die!"
"You could die!" wailed Zandra. "This outfit isn't even mine! It's borrowed!"
For one drawn-out, eternal moment they eyed one another like vipers, faces blazing with mutual reproach. And then, inexplicably, they both pointed at one another and burst into rich peals of helpless laughter.
"God!" Kenzie giggled. "Are you ever a sight!"
"Me!" Zandra hooted. "You should see yourself!"
"Oh, Jesus!" Kenzie looked at her for guidance. "What are we going to do?"
"Do?" asked Zandra, immediately taking charge. "What do you think we're going to do? Come on."
Taking Kenzie by the arm, she unerringly turned her in the direction of the powder room.
"Let them gawk," she said grandly, giving the bystanders a dismissive wave. "We'll show them what one ingenious Yank and one brilliant Brit can come up with, right?"
"We will?" Kenzie sounded dubious.
"Of course we will!" Zandra beamed. "I just came from the loo, and guess what?"
"It's disgustingly filthy?"
Zandra burst out in a fresh round of laughter. "In this place? For heaven's sake, no! But someone's conveniently provided blow driers at every sink, bless their little hearts, so we'll be dry and look presentable in no time. Now, chin up! The very least we can do is depart the scene of this mishap with dignity!"
Which is exactly what they did, heaping on the hauteur while they were at it.
Chapter 15
Sheldon D. Fairey was no longer up to snuff. Valiantly as he tried, he simply could not convey his customary aura of superior power and masculine command. Bilious anger and rancor twisted his insides, burned ulcerously in his gut, thanks to Robert A. Goldsmith—may the bastard rot in hell! And now, that bitterness was compounded by humiliation as he found himself cornered by Mr. Spotts. Will tonight never end?
"Yes, Dietrich," he murmured, "I'm fully aware of Burghley's traditions."
There was a plummy false richness to his voice, the kind of timbre a second-rate actor playing a chairman of the board affects, but is unable to quite pull off.
"Of course the departing head of a department gets to recommend his choice of a replacement—which, as is customary, is a prerogative you have already exercised. Also, as we both well know, with the exception of a very few isolated cases, such recommendations are usually granted."
"Then does this mean," asked Mr. Spotts, his forthright eyes drilling into Fairey's, "that I can inform Ms. Turner that her promotion has been officially confirmed?"
"Hmm, er ..." Fairey, avoiding the direct gaze, started to raise his glass to his lips, seemed startled to find it empty, frowned, and slowly lowered it. "Well, under normal circumstances I would, er . . . I would not hesitate to say yes ..."
It was as if a harsh inner light suddenly illuminated Fairey's insides, exposing some cancerous character flaw. But Mr. Spotts, a veteran when it came to displaying patience and hiding his emotions, effectively masked his alarm behind a countenance of outward serenity.
Clearing his throat uncomfortably, Fairey added: "Your recommendation has, of course, been duly noted." He smiled acidly, the bile inside him shaping his lips. "However, in this particular instance there ... there seem to be ... er ... extenuating circumstances."
What the devil? Mr. Spotts could not believe he'd heard correctly. Refusing to back down, he said, "Sheldon, what is all this nonsense? What extenuating circumstances? I do believe you'll have to be a bit more specific."
Putting off the inevitable, Fairey looked around, spied a cruising waiter, and signaled for a refill. Glasses exchanged hands and he took a shaky gulp.
"Sheldon?" Mr. Spotts reminded him quietly.
"Look, Dietrich!" Fairey snapped. His impatience ricocheted accusingly back at him. Then, endeavoring to temper his irritation: "As you are surely aware, times ... well, times change." He attempted a ghastly, twisted approximation of a smile. "Granted, it's difficult for us old-timers to adapt with changing climes, but that's life, eh?"
Having delivered that circumventive little gem, Fairey quickly poked his nose back into his glass, willing Mr. Spotts to disappear.
But Mr. Spotts had no intention of letting Sheldon D. Fairey off the hook—certainly not that easily—nor until he got to the bottom of all this evasive hemming and hawing.
"Goodness gracious, Sheldon," he said, "just listen to yourself. Why, you're as agitated as a nest of hornets. Now do stop giving me the run- around. Out with it, man—out with it!"
Fairey gave a febrile, shuddering sigh. "Believe me, it is—no one of my choosing."
"Ah." Mr. Spotts nodded. "By that, I presume it must be the choice of either Mr. or Mrs. Goldsmith?"
"Bingo," Fairey grouched. "Advance to Go and collect two hundred dollars."
"So? Who is it?"
"It is—she is—a calamity, disaster, the plague of the Israelites, all rolled into one. She is the ... the decline of Empire, Dietrich, as far as Burghley's is concerned!" Fairey raised his glass, as if to fling it against something and watch it smash.
"Sheldon, must I squeeze the name out of you?"
Fairey eyed the glass he'd raised, then slowly lowered it as his body visibly deflated. "It's Ms. Barbara Parker, if the name rings a bell." Appraisingly, he hefted the glass once more, as if again considering its demise. His voice hissed. "Now do you understand?"
Mr. Spotts jerked involuntarily backward, as though sustaining a fatal blow, before, head reeling, he leaned toward Fairey and squinted narrowly.
"Ms. Parker?" he croaked in throaty disbelief. "Please, Sheldon. Please, tell me we are not talking about Bambi Parker!"
Fairey, again averting his gaze, wished Mr. Spotts would go away, now that he'd learned the identity of his replacement.
But Mr. Spotts did no such thing. Tall, gnarled, and stubborn as the proverbial Monterey pine, he just stood there staring. "Sheldon ..." His voice had a razor edge to it. "I asked you if you meant that Bambi Parker!"
"Of course I meant her, goddammit!" Fairey half shouted. Then he checked himself, raked an unsteady hand through his hair, and forced his voice lower. "I'm sorry to have to break it to you, Dietrich, but she, and not Ms. Turner, is your replacement."
Mr. Spotts had lost enough of his famous composure and imperturbability that Fairey could see his subtle facial muscles contort and tic. Meanwhile, he himself felt like a villanous actor holding his audience in thrall. Which was, he thought grimly, exactly what he was doing—even if he played to but an audience of one, and the script... well, the script was certainly one he'd just as soon not star in.
"There, now the cat's out of the bag, Dietrich." Something ugly had come into Fairey's voice. "Well? Did forcing the answer out of me make you any happier? Are you content now?"
Mr. Spotts, disgusted by the unfolding drama, its message, and its actor, turned away.
"Well, my friend," he observed heavily, his smile thin and humorless, "there's only one thing I can say."
"And what is that?"
"If Mr. Goldsmith was stupid enough to have made his bed—" And for obvious reasons, Mr. Spotts thought, it has to have been his doing and not the missus's; no way would Mrs. Goldsmith ever permit an estrogen- suffused fox like Bambi Parker into her henhouse. "—then it's a bed he's going to have to lie in. Not that I envy him in the short run." A sour kind of humor came into Mr. Spotts's voice. "And even less so in the long haul."
"I'm sorry, Dietrich," Fairey said hoarsely, fidgeting with fussy little movements. "I tried. Believe me, I tried. But that infernal man—"
"I know." Mr. Spotts patted his arm in understanding, then nodded and tucked his head, tortoiselike, into his stooped shoulders. Starting to walk away, he stopped in midstep, slowly turned back around, and craned his neck so that the wattle stretched tautly.
"Seems my health bailed me out just in the nick of time, eh, Sheldon?" The words ta
sted of bitter irony. "Well, best of luck with the philistines, my friend. At least fate intervened and my hands remain clean."
"Dietrich! Surely you don't believe I wanted to dirty mine!"
Mr. Spotts shook his head. "No, no," he assured him quietly, "of course not." Then, a firm believer in dispensing with bad news quickly, he sketched a wave and wandered off in search of Kenzie—who, as it turned out, had seemingly vanished into thin air.
In the ladies' room, like space-age pistolleras armed with two blow driers apiece, Zandra and Kenzie were aiming whirring blasts of heated forced air at one another's bodices and skirts.
"Well?" Zandra demanded gaily above the racket of multiple blowers. "What did I tell you? Somebody who knows women had a hand in this party! Why else would these obliging gadgets have been put here?"
"I'm just glad someone provided them," Kenzie shouted back, "and that you knew about them. Otherwise, we'd have been up . . . well, up the proverbial creek without a paddle."
"Oh, for heaven's sake!" Zandra scolded cheerfully. "Feel free to use all the four-letter words you want. I doubt there's a one I haven't heard."
"You know," Kenzie confessed, "I'm awfully relieved it's you I ran into, instead of some shrill old battle-ax."
"You can say that again!" Zandra enthused. "But wasn't it dee-voon, the dramatic splash we made? Anyway, I just know we'll become the best of friends!" Now she had both blow dryers aimed at Kenzie's waist, and moved them around in slow circular motions. Glancing up, she added: "I've always been inclined to believe that the best friendships are those made under adverse circumstances. Don't you agree?"
"Mm. I've never really given it much—" Suddenly Kenzie remembered something. "Oh, God!"
"What's the matter?"
"Didn't you ... didn't you say your outfit was borrowed?"
"Yes, but don't worry. Knowing my friend, since it's been worn once it'll never see the light of day again." Zandra switched off a dryer, shelved it above the sink, and kept the one in her left hand blasting. "Now then. We haven't been properly introduced yet." She held out her right hand.
Kenzie also put one dryer away and gave Zandra's hand a firm shake. "MacKenzie Turner's the name, but to my friends I'm plain Kenzie. Also, you should be forewarned. I'm not really what I appear to be."
Zandra raised her eyebrows. "How so?"
"Well, I'm a fish out of water. I mean, I wasn't invited; I'm only accompanying my retiring boss. Otherwise, Cinderella here's just your average nine-to-five working girl."
"So? What difference does that make?"
"I don't know. I just didn't want you to get the wrong impression. I'm hardly a socialite, and this Givenchy you're aiming hot air at?" In the reduced noise resulting from only two blow dryers running, Kenzie heard a toilet flush in one of the cubicles and glanced around for eavesdroppers. "It's second-hand," she confided in a near-whisper. "Would you believe—a thirty-five-dollar thrift shop find?"
"That's all?" Zandra looked at her in amazement. "Brilliant! You must take me shopping with you!"
Kenzie stared at her. "Don't tell me you're on a stringent budget, too?"
"Stringent?" Zandra gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Nonexistent's more like it!" Then, more cheerfully: "I'm as penniless as they come. See? We've more in common than you thought. Plus, the only reason I'm here is because the friends I'm staying with were invited."
"How long are you planning to be in New York?"
"Who can tell?" Zandra thought of her hurried departure from London and knew the time to share those kinds of sordid details wasn't now—if ever. "All I know," she murmured, "is that I'll be here long enough to become a working girl like you."
"Really! Have you been out pounding the pavement yet?"
"No, but I don't need to worry about that, thank God, even though I just flew in from London today. I think I've already found a position ... or, rather, one's been found, if not created—" A grimace expressed her distaste at the word. "—especially for me."
"But you still haven't told me your name," Kenzie pointed out.
"That," Zandra gloomed, "is because it's a cross my ancestry forces me to bear."
A cubicle door opened and a sinewy woman in fluid, amaryllis-red Scassi swept to the farthest sink, well out of earshot. "Surely your name can't be all that bad," Kenzie said encouragingly, adding: "Can it?"
"Oh, no?" Zandra sighed, while down by the last sink, the woman in red was leaning into the mirror touching up Russet Moon lips. "Then why don't you try this mouthful on for size: Anna Zandra Elisabeth Theresia Charlotte von Hohenburg-Willemlohe."
Kenzie stared. "You've got to be kidding!"
"I assure you, I'm not." There was a peculiar touch of exasperation, wistfulness, and irritation in Zandra's tone which Kenzie found oddly touching. It was as if she were suddenly privy to the reality behind a lifetime's notion of romantic fairy tales—a rare insight she'd never before had cause to consider. "Do you have any idea," Zandra went on, "how many times I've wished I'd been named something normal? Something like ... oh, Jane Smith, for example?"
"Anyway." Kenzie gestured with the blow dryer. "With all those Hapsburg-sounding names of yours, I'm at a loss as to what to call you."
"Oh, but I'm not a Hapsburg, even if my name does rather sound like one," Zandra explained, keeping her convoluted lineage to a minimum in order to avoid confusion. "I mean, here and there I must have a sprinkling of distant Hapsburg relations, true, but that's only because all the ancient families of Europe are one big incestuous soup pot. But as far as my first name is concerned, I go by Zandra. It's unique, you see, and seems to best suit my personality."
"Zahn-drah," Kenzie repeated slowly, pronouncing it the way Zandra had. "Mm. Yes, I do believe it rather suits you."
Zandra gave a secretive little smile. "Promise you won't laugh, but the real reason I like it is because ever since childhood, I've always had the most maddening crush on any word beginning with the letter Z. Bizarre, don't you think? But then, what's life but a string of bizarre coincidences? I mean, look at the way we met. Or how I landed the job I've been offered—"
"Which," Kenzie reminded her, "you've neglected to specify."
"Sorry! I wasn't trying to be mysterious." She waited until the woman in red, touch-up complete, swept regally past and went out. "It's just that during the past twenty-four hours, my entire life's been turned topsy-turvy. Everything's happened so fast! But as far as I can tell, I'm going to be working at Burghley's—"
"Burghley's!" Kenzie squeaked incredulously. "You don't mean the auction house?"
"The one and only. Yes." Zandra looked concerned. "Why? Is something wrong there that I should know about?"
"Wrong?" Kenzie exclaimed, grinning. "Things couldn't be more right! Zandra, I work at Burghley's, too!"
"You don't!" Zandra's jaw dropped.
"I do!" Kenzie squealed. "Isn't this great?"
"I'll say! We'll have a grand time!"
"The best!"
"See what I mean? This proves it. Our meeting has to have been preordained." Zandra switched off the second dryer. "There," she said, shelving it alongside the other. "I think that about does you."
Kenzie felt herself with one hand. "Dry as a bone," she announced. "And you've only got this one teensy-weensy spot left." She diverted the blow dryer to the last damp stain on Zandra's overskirt. "So what's your area?" she asked, glancing up.
"My what?"
"You know—your area of expertise. Chinese ceramics? Islamic art? Mughal paintings?"
"Oh, nothing that exotic. The only thing I'm familiar with are gloomy old paintings. You know. Ancestral portraits ... landscapes with ruins ... any such cracked, varnished, gilt-framed monstrosities with impeccable provenances—"
"You mean Old Masters?" asked Kenzie faintly, not daring to believe her ears.
"Yes, I believe that's what they're officially called. Why?"
"Because," Kenzie blurted in a headlong rush, "that's my department, too! Oh, this is too mu
ch! Now I know you were right. Our running into each other—"
"—quite literally," interjected Zandra with a giggle.
"—must have been divine providence!" Kenzie finished. "There! This last spot's dry now." She unbent herself and switched off the blow dryer. The sudden silence in the powder room was almost unearthly. Pinching the skirt of her own dress, she lifted it up for inspection. "Well?" she asked. "What do you think? Am I presentable?"
"Under these unflattering fluorescents," Zandra observed, "some faint stains are bound to show. But once we're back outside, I guarantee you no one will be the wiser."
"Perhaps we can sit together during dinner?" Kenzie tossed over her shoulder at Zandra, who was right behind her.
"I'd love nothing more, but at this late point," Zandra said delicately, remembering Karl-Heinz's invitation to sit at his table—a spur-of-the- moment change which had, no doubt, played havoc with the seating arrangements, "that would probably present a social dilemma."
Kenzie shrugged philosophically. "Oh well," she said, pulling open the ladies' room door, "that's hardly a tragedy. We can catch each other afterwards."
"Yes! We'll do that!"
And off they sailed, side by side, both beaming with delight at their newly forged friendship.
But their smiles faded the instant they returned to the Blumenthal Patio.
"What the—" Kenzie began, staring around in disbelief.
For the huge room, which had been a veritable beehive of social activity when they had left for the powder room, now stood silently, accusingly empty. Only the Mozart ensemble, busily packing up sheet music and instruments, a few waiters sweeping up debris, and three men waiting in the center of the now otherwise unpopulated expanse, attested to a party ever having taken place. During their absence, everyone had evidently migrated to the Engelhard Court for dinner, everyone, that is, except for Prince Karl-Heinz, Mr. Spotts, and Hannes Hockert.
"I could die!" Kenzie murmured uneasily. "Looks like we're awfully late!"
"Better late than never," Zandra quoted blithely, and calmly taking Kenzie by the arm, propelled her forward.
Too Damn Rich Page 15