The Overnight Socialite

by Bridie Clark

  "It's all my fault!" Rita buried her face in her hands, choking back a sob. The homeless man patted her back like they'd known each other for years. "I can't believe I trusted that girl. I don't know what I was thinking." She looked up at Lucy, tears of regret rolling down her cheeks. "I've ruined everything for you, just like you were afraid I would. You have every right to hate me. I am so sorry, Lucy Jo, I--I'm going back to Dayville. I won't bother you anymore."

  "I might be heading to Dayville with you. But not tonight." Rita's sincerity broke Lucy's heart. The homeless man offered up his seat, which she gratefully accepted, and then she wrapped her arms around her mother. "It's not your fault. I shouldn't have been ashamed of who I am or where I come from."

  Rita, sniffling, wiped her nose on the sleeve of her bolero jacket. "No, you shouldn't." Her voice was gentler than Lucy ever remembered it being. "I meant what I said. Lucy Jo Ellis is the classiest person I've ever met. I mean, you've spent your entire life taking care of me, even when I"--she took a jagged, tearful breath--"didn't deserve it. You've worked hard to make something of yourself. You've got real talent, not like those other girls who just flit around looking pretty and doing nothing all day. And you're a good person, Lucy Jo."

  "Maybe I used to be." The ball seemed decades away from her now. The red carpet, the auction, the kisses--had any of it really happened? Her stomach growled, bringing her back to the present. She hadn't eaten all night--or for the past three months, it seemed. "Who wants a pretzel?" she asked the little group, and three hands shot into the air. Lucy headed over to the twenty-four-hour cart, paid the exhausted vendor, and handed off the pretzels.

  "Let's go," she told her mother. She picked up the suitcase at her mother's feet.

  "You mean to the Carlyle? You said you have a room there?"

  "Nah, let's go home. Murray Hill." Maybe it was shabby, maybe the floorboards tilted too much, maybe there were occasional water bugs (a sweet nickname for cockroaches) in the bathroom--but at the moment, Lucy didn't care. She wanted to be in a place that reminded her of who she really was. Tomorrow she'd figure out what to do with the smoldering remains of her life.

  "Even better." Rita grabbed her duffle bag and slung it over her shoulder, waving goodbye to her pals. "I think you'll love what I've done with the place."

  At 6 AM the following day, Trip lifted the skinny arm that had been flung over his bare chest. The redhead it belonged to didn't stir. What the hell was her name? Trip could barely remember his own. He took in his surroundings--more boudoir than bedroom, with the gothic black curtains and burgundy walls, and littered with a shocking number of Red Bull cans. Her heavy black dress lay in a heap on the floor, like the remains of a melted witch.

  Trip sidled two inches toward the edge of the bed. Good. Now he just had to make it to the front door without waking the girl, and he'd be free. His head ached like a calving glacier; his mouth was the Sahara. Trip's left foot touched the ground first, careful not to pull the black satin sheets. He didn't know girls slept in black satin sheets. He didn't want to know. Then his left hand. Just as he was sliding his body toward the ground, he heard her snort.

  Trip froze mid-slide. The girl was quiet again. He lowered himself a few more inches, still balancing on one hand and foot. His tux lay in the corner, next to the witch puddle. Just the sight of their discarded clothes made him feel sick. He remembered how she'd shoved him backward on the bed last night, playing the tiger. Then he remembered seeing Eloise lace her arms around Max Fairchild's neck.

  "Omigod! Are you okay?" the girl asked, sitting up and pushing her red fro out of her face. The sound of Trip throwing up in one of the gift bags they'd received leaving the ball, the first thing he could grab, had woken his bedmate.

  "Sorry," he said lamely, not wasting a moment in wiggling into his pants and buttoning his dress shirt. He needed to be elsewhere immediately. To his dismay, the girl pulled herself out of bed and walked across the room toward him, draped in her satin sheet. "You can, uh, keep my bag," Trip said.

  "I don't care about that." She pressed a finger against his chest.

  "Really, I insist," Trip said, jamming his foot into his shoe while holding his puke-filled bag. A puke-filled bag of expensive, useless stuff: the perfect metaphor for his life. He grabbed the other shoe and headed for the door. "Anyway, thanks for everything"--he fumbled with the doorknob.

  "Clarissa," she said. "Aren't you even going to put on your other shoe?"

  "Right," he said, already savoring the sweeter air in the hallway. "In the elevator!" He was being a complete jerk, Trip knew, but all he could think about was getting home and putting last night behind him.

  "Jaaaaack!" Mimi Rutherford-Shaw shrieked from her dressing room in Bedford, where she'd been kitting up to go riding. The ball had interrupted their usual weekend routine; they'd had the driver take them straight from the Heritage Museum to their country house in the wee hours of the night. "Jack, come here! Look at this!"

  "What is it, Mims?" her husband called back from the bedroom, where he was still lounging in his pajamas with the Wall Street Journal . She ran to the doorway and ripped open her shirt, revealing her epic set of double Ds. That got Jack's attention, and he put down the newspaper. He squinted at her chest, first with interest and then in horror. Then he rushed over. "What the hell happened, Mims? You burn yourself?" They both gasped over the purplish welts that had popped up like foothills across her mountain range.

  Mimi, hand over mouth, picked up the swag bag she'd brought home from the Forum Ball. "It's Socialite! Cornelia's perfume! I just spritzed the stuff and this happened!" She pulled out the glass perfume bottle and held it out to her husband. "Call Dr. Stone, Jack, and tell him I need to see him immediately!"

  "Eau de Cornelia Rockman?" Jack muttered under his breath as he headed to the telephone. "You might've guessed that stuff would be toxic."

  Eloise's eyes cracked open. She saw that her dress had been neatly hung on the back of the doorframe; her shoes were tucked under the bureau. A large bottle of Evian had been left on her nightstand, and she reached for it, moaning a little.

  Eloise Carlton was not one of those people who experienced alcohol-induced amnesia, unfortunately, and as she slugged away at the Evian, her mind moved in painful, unrelenting circles through the night before. Trip, dancing. Eloise, drinking. Eloise, dancing, a demented Isadora Duncan, carried topless off the dance floor for all of New York society to behold, and deposited in a car by Max Fairchild.

  I'll move away. Paris. Marrakech. Start over fresh, travel the world, be a woman who finds herself. My own version of Eat, Pray, Love. Minus the Love. I'm in no shape for that. And the Eat will have to wait, too, until I regain the capacity to chew. Maybe my own Drink, Hurt, Sob.

  Just as she'd found the strength to sit upright, propped against pillows, the apartment doorbell rang. She jolted out from between the covers, hangover temporarily forgotten, and poked her head out into the hallway. Lucy's bedroom was empty. She hoped that her friend had enjoyed the triumph she deserved, riding on the wings of Margaux Irving's endorsement. The last she'd seen, Lucy and Wyatt were in a steamy-looking lip-lock, apparently coming clean about their feelings about each other.

  The doorbell rang again.

  Eloise knew it was Trip without cracking the door. He'd never let go of their relationship so easily. Whatever last night's waify redhead had offered him was nothing like the lifetime of devotion and companionship she could provide. A man like Trip knew quality, he knew girls like Eloise weren't disposable. She hurried into the bathroom and smeared toothpaste on her toothbrush, jamming it into her mouth as she flew back to the bedroom and scrambled for something to wear.

  "Hold on!" she yelled, pulling a sweater over her head. Whipping off her enormous pajama pants (his, of course), she threw on a pair of cuter boy shorts while yanking hairpins out of the collapsed bun she'd worn to the ball. Then she dashed into the hallway, realized the toothbrush was still in her mouth, flung it over her shoulder
into the kitchen, and opened the door. Her Tripless nightmare was finally over.

  Expecting to see her beau down on one knee, Eloise instead found an empty hallway.

  "Trip?" she called, wondering if he'd already retreated around the corner to the elevator bank. "Trip!" She yelled, even though she might rouse the whole floor on a Sunday morning.

  When Max Fairchild sheepishly poked his head around the corner instead, Eloise felt her last hopes crumble inside her. She held on to the doorframe for support.

  "Sorry, Eloise, I--I don't know what I was thinking, barging in on you so early. I brought some food--" Max trailed off, staring at the carpet. He was holding a grocery bag from Grace's. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Your phone was off. I tried Lucy's line, too, but she didn't pick up--"

  "Trip and I are over," Eloise blurted out. There it was. Just saying the words out loud, her knees grew shaky, and the hallway suddenly seemed pixelated. "Trip and I are over," she repeated. The spots of light grew bigger. She felt her fingers slide down the cold wall.

  Luckily, Max was there to catch her.

  32

  The highlight of last night's ball, as most will tell you, was Lucy Ellis's stunning self-made gown, which fetched a record twenty thousand dollars from Margaux Irving herself during the predinner auction. The lowlight? Well, put it this way: Nobody should be itching to try Socialite, the perfume just launched by Cornelia Rockman and our readers' vote for least-favorite swag-bag item ever.

  --Rex Newhouse, www.rexnewhouse.com

  Cornelia couldn't focus. Restless, she'd been awake since dawn, bustling around her apartment--writing half a thank-you note to the editor in Margaux's office whom she'd conned into giving her the extra ball ticket, then drifting to the bathroom to smear Creme de la Mer over her face, opening three invitations before flipping on the television and watching a few minutes of TiVo'ed Access Hollywood. There was an "is she or isn't she pregnant?" bit about one of Theo's clients, but it wasn't enough to keep her still.

  It was more than the post coitum triste she often felt after coming down from the high of a magnificent social triumph. Last night's coup was her greatest ever. Last night, she'd successfully brought her nemesis down. She'd never forget the look on Lucy's face. Last night, Cornelia's perfume had gone home in a swag bag with the world's most influential tastemakers. So why did she feel more miserable than she ever had in her life?

  Well, Fernanda, for starters. She'd been sold out by her best friend, who hadn't been the same since Parker came into her life. And then there was Wyatt. Watching her ex kiss Lucy, Cornelia had finally been knocked flat by the truth she'd spent three months furiously avoiding: there would be no reunion. She should have known when Rita had told her about the experiment that he was a lost cause--the old Wyatt, the one she'd known, cared where everyone came from and where they belonged. Watching him fawn over the girl from Missouri or Montana or wherever was the final evidence that the Old Wyatt had disappeared, and all the plotting in the world couldn't make New Wyatt look at Cornelia the way he looked at Lucy.

  Was anyone still looking at her? She flipped through Town & Country : nary a photo. And she couldn't deny that Lucy had rocked that auction with the dress she supposedly made--another lie, no doubt--and that Margaux Irving and the rest of the crowd had kept their eyes trained on her. Cornelia had spent fifteen thousand on her Ralph Rucci couture, but only auctioned it off for twelve--did that mean she devalued the dress by three thousand dollars just by wearing it?

  Fortunately, her phone rang, rescuing her from this troubling line of thought. "Bad news," Daphne said.

  Cornelia put down the magazine. A chill prickled her spine. Daphne was the queen of spin--for her to consider something bad news, it had to be downright apocalyptic. "Don't tell me my show got canceled," Cornelia said, ready to whine hard.

  "This is worse. You know those sample perfumes we put in all of last night's swag bags? The ones that went home with every single one of the ball's eight hundred and fourteen attendees? The perfume bottles that were supposed to give you exposure to the ne plus ultra of the fashion world?"

  "Of course! Spit it out--what happened?"

  She could hear Daphne take a deep breath. "I just got off the phone with Dafinco's CEO. Apparently they're already getting calls ranging from disgruntled to litigious from folks who spritzed on the perfume and broke out in a horrible purple rash. This thing is going to be all over Page Six, Cornelia, and it's going to be ugly."

  "But that's ridiculous!" Cornelia jumped up from the breakfast table. "I've worn the perfume myself. That can't be true. These people are just looking to cash in--"

  "I tried it, and it looks like someone spilled acid on my wrists. Trust me, it's true."

  Cornelia stared at the innocent-looking pink bottle on her dresser. "Fine, even if it is true, it's not my fault. Their laboratory's to blame! They were the ones who got all self-righteous about no animal testing--"

  "Listen, girl, you're not getting it." Daphne had never spoken to her so bluntly. Her publicist's lack of ass kissing, more than anything, made Cornelia realize the gravity of the situation. "Nobody gives a shit that Dafinco's to blame. You're the one they'll remember. Your face is all over the ad campaign."

  "So what are you saying?"

  "It's not good. We'll issue a statement. But you should keep a low profile until all this blows over. And by low profile, I mean: talk to nobody. Do you understand?"

  Cornelia groaned. She'd envisioned Hollywood knocking on her door, but instead she'd be living like a shut-in? It wasn't fair. Nothing in her life was adding up the way it was supposed to. "What did I do to deserve this?" she wailed. Daphne didn't say anything, so Cornelia hung up. She hadn't cried since she was seven years old (she'd decided then that she would no longer give her mother the satisfaction), but she wished she remembered how. Wyatt's rejection, coupled with the blow up of her career, made her want to fling herself out her twelfth-story window. The only bright spot in her life, she realized, was the impending humiliation of Lucy Ellis, a girl Cornelia had come to hate with a fervor that scared even her.

  "Wyatt?" Lucy called softly, cracking the door to his study.

  He wasn't there, which surprised her. He'd spent every Sunday morning since she'd known him holed up in his study with the Times and his coffee. It had been one of the few times of the week she'd had to herself, back when she was Wyatt's 24/7 guinea pig socialite. But then, this wasn't a Sunday in ordinary times.

  She didn't leave right away. His study, untouched by the shmancy decorator, reminded her of all the late nights she'd spent there under critical direction, working to please him, to transform herself into the socialite he had bet she could be. All the hours of training--the elocution, etiquette, art history, jet-set geography lessons; all the evenings spent playing backgammon and eating Chinese takeout. Lucy loved the wraparound bookshelves, brimming with his vast collection of books; the smell of worn leather; the overstuffed couch; the ancient oriental rug, threadbare in the circles that revealed Wyatt's near-constant pacing.

  I came so close, she thought. Margaux wanted my dress. Wyatt wanted me. Feeling a lump in her throat, she scanned the photos Wyatt had displayed on one of the walls. There was little Wyatt on his horse . . . on his sailboat . . . on the shoulders of his aristocratically handsome late father. Wyatt with his crew team before his first Head of the Charles, arms flung around the necks of two team-mates. The display was absurdly egocentric, of course, but it also revealed Wyatt's preoccupation with his place in the world. It was almost as though he didn't know who he was without the fancy hobbies, the famous friends, the fabulous settings. She looked at the grainy baby photo of Wyatt being bounced on Nixon's knee, the shot of him playing polo in Argentina. I could help him define himself in a deeper way. For the first time since Cornelia broke the news about the Townhouse report, Lucy paused in worrying about the negative effect it might have on him. Maybe, for Wyatt, a little social embarrassment could be just the push he needed to
start living a more authentic life.

  Without really meaning to, she had made her way around his entire study. On his desk, next to his Tiffany lamp, there was a small gold frame. Lucy leaned closer. To her surprise, it contained a photograph of her, taken during their weekend in Palm Beach at his mother's house. Relaxed by the pool, she faced the camera dead-on and was laughing, and she looked like herself--not posed, not perfect, not some socialite in a pretty dress, just herself. She'd forgotten that he'd taken it. The sheer existence of the photo, let alone its intimate placement in a spot where only Wyatt would see it, for a moment took her breath away.

  Her eyes fell upon a thick stack of paper on top of Wyatt's antique desk. THE OVERNIGHT SOCIALITE was printed on the top page, along with Wyatt's name. The title pierced her with curiosity and dread. Had he written a book? Since she'd known him, he'd been hard at work on some mystery project that he never wanted to discuss. Unable to control herself, Lucy flipped to page one and read:There was nothing extraordinary about the girl under the awning--not her beauty, birth, education, or profession. In fact, I chose L. as the subject of my experiment precisely because she was so unremarkable--one of the faceless, nameless many who immigrate to New York City from the hinterland, full of unrealistic dreams.