It was twilight and the lighting inside the tent had that indirect glow that makes everyone look fabulous, but keeps you from being absolutely sure that what’s on your plate is cooked thoroughly. And then there were the people. I’ve been to a lot of society functions in New York City, but there’s usually an undercurrent of nouveau riche that cuts the headiness of lots of old money being in one place. But here, you could sense the trust funds in the rustle of designer clothing, hear the boarding schools in the practiced laughter. Apparently, life is a Ralph Lauren ad after all.
Tricia, being the high priestess of protocol that she is and a dutiful daughter to boot, led us straight to her parents, who were just about to leave their greeting post to go to their table.
The Vincents are the definition of a handsome couple. Tricia gets her penetrating eyes from her father, Paul, a commanding, broad-shouldered man with a jazz disc jockey’s voice and an intimidating handshake, but most of her looks come from her mother, Claire, a slim, elegant woman whom I suspect of wearing pearls to bed.
Mr. Vincent hugged us all enthusiastically, planting a large kiss on Tricia’s forehead. Mrs. Vincent was a little more restrained in her embraces, offering her cheek to each of us. It didn’t bother me but alerted Tricia to something amiss.
“Mother?” she asked with a leading lilt to the word.
“I’m fine, dear. You’re sitting with some of Davey’s chums. Go keep an eye on them. We can’t throw off Cynthia’s timetable.”
“Mother,” Tricia repeated.
Mrs. Vincent summoned up a polite smile and asked, “Did you see who came with Richard?”
All three of us turned and looked out across the guests at the same time. Richard is a tall, sculpted hottie and even in this shining crowd, he was easy to spot. We just weren’t prepared for who was on his arm.
“Rebecca?” Tricia gasped.
There was a moment I thought Tricia was wrong, that Richard was unfortunately dating a new woman who looked uncannily like the old one. But then I realized Tricia was right. It was Rebecca, just with radical changes. The platinum marcel with rose highlights had become a soft cinnamon page boy. Pearl studs had replaced the retro oversized hoops. Courtney Love had morphed into Courtney Cox.
“What’s with the extreme makeover?” Cassady muttered in my ear.
“At least she’s started wearing a bra,” I whispered back. The dresses Rebecca designs are actually quite pretty. They’re clingy and sheer and brightly colored—three potent reasons why Rebecca, who is not as svelte as she thinks she is, was often her own worst advertisement. But tonight, not only did she seem properly strapped down, she looked like she’d been working out.
“Richard’s trying to annoy us,” Mr. Vincent said with the stiff upper lip of a practiced politico. “He must be bored.”
“This couldn’t have been his idea.” Tricia looked like she was having trouble breathing and I wondered if there was a special Heimlich maneuver for someone choking on bad news.
“It’s hardly a discussion to have right here where everyone can see us.” Mrs. Vincent’s smile didn’t waver as she patted Tricia’s cheek reassuringly, then gestured to the tables. “Have a seat and we’ll talk after the meal.”
Tricia inherited her mother’s distaste for public awkwardness, so she politely followed instructions. Cassady and I trailed behind her to a table occupied by a young turk on a cell phone and a couple who were either kissing or licking pate off each other; the lanterns made it impossible to determine which. Tricia slid into her chair, eyes still fixed on Richard and Rebecca, and we stationed ourselves to her right. Our tablemates didn’t even register our presence.
“I don’t see Lisbet and Davey,” Tricia said.
“Stop staring at your other brother and look around a little,” Cassady suggested. She pointed across the tent and both Tricia and I turned to see the guests of honor huddled with Aunt Cynthia beside the bar. At first glance, I thought David and Lisbet were getting a lecture, the way their heads were bowed and they were leaning in to Aunt Cynthia as though to listen earnestly. Then I realized Aunt Cynthia was pouring into three shot glasses she grasped expertly in one hand. David and Lisbet were poised to take and toss the moment she stopped.
Aunt Cynthia is a tall, angular woman with cheekbones as sharp as her business sense. David takes after his aunt more than his father would like. He’s a little gaunt, a little loud, but his charm and his smarts keep you from staying too mad at him for too long. It remained to be seen whether his matrimonial track record would be anything like hers.
Lisbet is a lithe, sloe-eyed vamp with annoyingly good legs. Her neckline plunged, as usual, its openness emphasized by an emerald necklace that commanded the eye even from the other side of the tent.
“Amazing necklace,” I noted.
“What’s amazing is, she’s wearing it. It’s a family piece of Dad’s. Richard wanted Rebecca to wear it to some premiere early on and Mother and Dad said no. I got to wear it for my debut and haven’t asked since.” Tricia looked from Lisbet to her parents. “They’re trying so hard, they’re going to hurt themselves.”
The trio did their shots, then Aunt Cynthia handed the bottle back to the bartender and strode to the platform where a jazz combo was quietly playing “Moonlight in Vermont.” Aunt Cynthia yanked at one of the tiers of her silk tornado of a dress and grabbed the microphone from the keyboard player’s stand. “Good evening and thank you all for coming.”
The combo and conversation stopped immediately. Aunt Cynthia gestured to where the Vincents were seated. “On behalf of my brother, Paul, and his lovely wife, I’d like to welcome you to this gathering. We’re going to have a lot of fun this weekend, celebrating the engagement of two fabulous young people, my nephew David and his marvelous Lisbet.”
The guests applauded and a few people whooped, Arsenio Hall’s enduring contribution to Western civilization. David and Lisbet waved to everyone while they made their way over to join Mr. and Mrs. Vincent at their table. Lisbet already had the slow blink that comes with a good buzz, and dinner hadn’t even been served.
“But before we eat, we must hear from the man himself. Paul?”
Mr. Vincent, smooth and practiced, was already making his way up to the bandstand. He took the microphone from his sister. “My sister’s generosity is legendary, but she’s outdone herself. Thank you, Cynthia.”
Aunt Cynthia flapped her hands in mock annoyance at the applause, sending her armful of gold bangles bouncing up and down, but the smile she gave Mr. Vincent seemed genuine. They were very different, but they were still brother and sister.
“This weekend, we celebrate the addition of a glowing jewel to the Vincent family crown,” Mr. Vincent continued. “David and Lisbet honor us by sharing their happiness with us. Congratulations and best wishes to them and bon appétit to us all.”
Tricia seemed surprised. “That’s actually sentimental, coming from my father.”
Mr. Vincent handed the microphone back to Aunt Cynthia. She tossed it to the startled keyboard player and stepped off the bandstand with her brother. But as he returned to his table, she made a beeline for ours.
“Incoming. Brace yourselves for impact,” Tricia warned, but Cassady and I weren’t in any danger. Tricia was the one enveloped in the silk tornado and crushed to the bony bosom. I worried for a moment that Tricia might be squeezed into the rib cage and be entrapped there forever, but after a moment, Aunt Cynthia released her and parked herself in the next chair.
“Well.” Aunt Cynthia thumped the table, her bangles jangling noisily. The impact was enough to separate the kissing couple and get the young turk off the phone, but Aunt Cynthia didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy frowning at Tricia.
“Aunt Cynthia. You remember Cassady and Molly,” Tricia said.
“Nice to see you, girls. Is my niece behaving herself?”
“A lady never tells,” Tricia answered for herself.
“Except in a deposition. Have you spoken to either of y
our brothers? I’m not sure which one of them is demonstrating the greater lack of character.”
“Whose idea was the necklace?” Tricia asked.
Aunt Cynthia flipped her hands skyward in dismissal. “I’m sure David was trying to make a point to Richard. They’ll never outgrow that. Have a nice meal and we’ll talk again later.” Aunt Cynthia arose and swirled off, leaving us staring after her, which was, I’m sure, the desired effect.
Dinner was served. The Asian-French fusion menu was elegant and delicious, the wine and champagne were superb and plentiful, and the tablemates were shrill and annoying. We were with two of David’s college buddies who, Tricia whispered from behind her napkin, she had seen drunk and naked far too often while visiting David at Brown. Brent was an investment banker who kept leaving the table to scream into his cell phone, so he didn’t really even count as a tablemate.
Then there was Jake Boone, a documentary filmmaker who kept trying to explain his vision of “wordless cinema du monde,” which sounded suspiciously like silent movies. And his Portuguese girlfriend and camera assistant, Lara Del Guidice, who kept interrupting Jake every time he approached making a point. Usually, she wanted to expound on some obscure cinematic theory that baffled even him. I began to understand the appeal of silent movies for Jake: He clearly had a very noisy home life.
I could tell Cassady had already decided she didn’t like him at all because she kept asking him questions, just as he was about to put food in his mouth. Between Lara and Cassady, the guy was going to starve to death. Unless pretension can sustain life by itself.
“Then, your ‘wordless’ cinema,” Cassady prompted, just as Jake got a dumpling all the way to his lips, “emphasizes image over story.”
The fork hovered in front of Jake’s mouth for another split second, but the temptation to talk overrode his hunger. He put the fork down and began to pontificate. “The image is the story.” He was momentarily distracted as Lara picked up the fork, ate the dumpling, then started drawing on the tablecloth with the fork. “That allows the story to transcend image and makes words irrelevant,” Jake pressed on. “Words are weighed down by their emotional connotation and distort the true expression of ideas, which is found in the silent image.”
Lara fed him a dumpling and took over. “Jake’s vision for cinema recharges film with its mythic power by stripping away the verbal. Words, unlike images, have no existence beyond their immediate function in film. Their relationship is syntagmatic and not paradigmatic.”
I’ve often wondered if people who are full of hot air are aware of it and just don’t care. Maybe they just can’t help themselves.
“Any form of communication that relies on words is inferior,” Jake informed me when Tricia explained what I did for a living.
“So this conversation is useless,” I said, as pleasantly as possible.
“It will suffice, but it will not transcend.”
I was considering showing him how my middle finger could communicate and transcend, all without words, but I didn’t want to help him make his point. “You’d prefer that I draw people a picture?” I tried to imagine the pictographs that might answer some of the letters I get, particularly the ones about love triangles gone bad. On the other hand, there’d be a great after-market in the modern art world. Hang that over your sofa, baby.
Jake shook his shaggy head with great disdain. “I want people to escape the tyranny of the word by rejecting their media-dominated lives and embracing the purity of noneditorialized experience.”
“For a guy with no faith in words, you sure talk a lot,” Cassady pointed out.
“Words can be a beginning. Foreplay. But for the union of thoughts and passions to truly illuminate, it has to live in a space beyond words. Not everyone’s equipped to dispense with words, but we’re moving there. Now, it’s cell phones with cameras. Soon, it’ll be motion-capture gloves and 3-D visors so we can make art on the move. In the streets. Without words.” Jake leaned over, trying to get closer to Cassady, apparently operating under the delusion that he was winning her over.
His moment was derailed by the semigrand appearance of a brunette beauty with her breasts barely corralled within a neckline that made Cassady’s look tame. As she leaned over to kiss Jake, all I could think was, Avalanche!
Lara, surprisingly, did not interrupt as the woman and Jake exchanged a disconcertingly sloppy kiss. She simply moved her hand, holding the fork, under the table.
“I didn’t realize tongue was on the menu,” Cassady said, not as quietly as she might have.
What tender piece of meat Lara speared with the fork I can only imagine, but Jake sat up rather abruptly, nearly knocking his new visitor over as he wrenched his mouth away from hers.
“Hello, Veronica,” Tricia called with forced brightness.
“Hello, Tricia!” Veronica cooed. She leaned over again and for a terrible moment, I thought she was going to chew on Tricia for a while, but Tricia turned her cheek so all Veronica kissed was air.
Lara placed the fork back on the table and Jake wiped his mouth with his napkin while Tricia made gracious introductions. Veronica Innes was an actress who had done a short film with Jake last year—an “experimental deconstruction of the musical experience” that Jake said led him to develop his wordless cinema theory. Didn’t say much for the songwriting, I thought. Or for Veronica’s singing. Now, she was Lisbet’s understudy off-Broadway My concern for the quality of the play increased immensely.
“I love your work!” Veronica gushed when Tricia identified me.
I resisted sneering at Jake and thanked her. “I’m afraid I haven’t seen yours.”
“Sure you have.” Holding her arms parallel to each other, Veronica framed her bust. “Victoria’s Secret. Mainly the underwire styles.”
“Wise choice,” Cassady nodded.
“Play your assets where you find them, girlfriend,” Veronica said. “It’s a waste, otherwise.”
“A very generous outlook,” Cassady replied.
“Veronica’s a generous girl,” Jake leered.
Lara reached for something and I was ready to hand her the fork myself, but she grabbed the digital camcorder off the table instead, aiming it at Jake and Veronica. “How interesting when ancient, dried-up paths cross again. Let me take a picture of old friends.”
Veronica didn’t appreciate being characterized as an “old” anything, it was clear, but she still kicked on the smile for the camera. She leaned in and I wasn’t sure if she was going to kiss Jake, Lara, or the camera, but I knew I didn’t want to see it.
This pivotal moment in cinematic history was interrupted by Aunt Cynthia announcing that we should adjourn to the great room for dessert and digestifs. Tricia, Cassady, and I almost scaled over the backs of our chairs in search of more entertaining company.
The great room, despite its elegant decor, could be pressed into service as a town hall in the event of a civic disaster. The outside wall was a series of floor-to-ceiling French doors that provided a heart-stopping look at the ocean without completely distracting you from the crystal chandelier that glowed overhead or the Monet above the fireplace.
The combo moved inside with us and shifted to the dance section of their playlist. A few new arrivals drifted in, mainly guys who looked to be buddies of David’s who had underestimated the time it would take to drive down from the city and had missed dinner. That swelled the ranks of guests to about fifty, with even more people expected to join in over the course of the weekend.
Glasses of champagne were distributed to all in preparation for toasts by Mr. Vincent and others, but the glasses quickly were supplemented by entire bottles, all bearing the label of the upstate vineyard Aunt Cynthia had acquired as a parting gift from ex-husband number two.
“Richard and Davey must have found the cellar keys,” Tricia said.
“Your aunt doesn’t seem to mind,” I pointed out, watching Aunt Cynthia work the room and encourage people to partake.
“She belie
ves being sober after dinner is a breach of etiquette.”
“Who are we to insult the hostess?” Cassady asked, snatching a bottle from the tray of a passing waitress.
So it was left to Lisbet to come up with the memorable breach of etiquette. While the postdinner partying had been proceeding along at a civilized pace, the champagne had pushed the fast-forward button. Lisbet had now slid a champagne flute down the front of her dress, which was quite easy to do, given that the dress didn’t really have a neckline so much as it had an open pathway to her sternum. There were so many women at this party on the verge of flashing their breasts, it was like being at a David Letterman taping.
Somewhere under the few pieces of fabric that did attempt to keep Lisbet clothed, there was apparently sufficient underwiring to press her breasts together firmly enough to keep the glass in place. It was this marvel of engineering, perhaps previously modeled in an ad by Veronica, which had caught the full attention of quite a few men and several women in the center of the room. Then Lisbet started charging the glass with the bottle that dangled from her hand and challenging each to figure out the best way to drink from the glass while spilling the least champagne.
“Oh, look,” Cassady hissed. “Dinner and a show.”
Richard and Rebecca stood next to Tricia’s parents, Rebecca with an unmistakable pucker of disapproval on her face. Could she be seriously trying to reform? Had losing Richard shaken her up sufficiently to make her want to change? Why else would she be sneering at Lisbet and cozying up to her mother-in-law, whispering quietly into her ear? Six months ago, she would have been encouraging men to line up for their shot, passing out numbers and offering tips for success.
For the moment, Jake was the only one taking a shot. He and Lisbet were grinding against each other with NC-17 fervor and both had seemed to forget the objective was to empty the champagne glass. I hoped for an objection from Lara, but she was filming the whole thing, occasionally calling out in Portuguese either instructions or curses, I couldn’t be sure which.
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