the Overnight Socialite

Mallory Keeler, Editor in Chief
Invites you to celebrate the launch of
Townhouse
The Magazine
December 2nd
7 PM
Doubles
783 Fifth Avenue
Dress to be photographed

W
yatt, sweetie, please! I can't breathe if you're mad at me!" Wyatt Hayes IV lit his Dunhill, struggling to keep the expression on his face placid. The girl in front of him--stunning, lithe as an island cat, eight years his junior--looked to be in almost as much discomfort as she deserved. And true enough, as the party music throbbed and the extravagant crowd milled around them, she did appear to be moments away from hyperventilation.

Her name was Cornelia Rockman. Dark blonde hair, green eyes fringed with dark lashes, the most adorable nose money could buy. Maybe you've heard of her. If you'd been dragged to the launch party for
Townhouse
, as Wyatt had, you couldn't miss her photograph. She beamed smugly from the new magazine's inaugural cover, which was on display around the posh private club--and the city, for that matter--in poster-size blow-ups, like a portrait of a Renaissance patron saint. Which goes to show how deceptive looks can be.

"I'm sorry, Wy! I said I was sorry." Cornelia dropped her voice to a low whisper. "I barely even know Theo. Daphne--my publicist--just told me to stand next to him for a few photos. I've got to boost my image a little if I want that Badgley Mischka campaign. It's not enough to show up to parties wearing pretty dresses!"

Boost her image? Her goddamn image was already plastered all over Manhattan, the anorexic little . . .

Wyatt took his time exhaling. He pulled down on the lapel of his festive velvet blazer. With every passing second of silence, Cornelia's chiseled face grew more contorted with anxiety. Wyatt studied the burning tip of his cigarette. (Only he could get away with indoor smoking, which is why he maintained the habit.)

"Please say something!" she pleaded.

What was there to say? He could no longer look the other way as his girlfriend devolved into a lowbrow celebutante. If Cornelia wanted to degrade herself for publicity, popping up next to other men on the red carpet like a human whack-the-weasel game, he certainly wouldn't be waiting on the sidelines.

"No big deal, Corn," Wyatt finally answered, using a nickname she loathed. He was sick of watching Cornelia's eyes flit around the room; she was so worried that other people were noticing the tension between them. Her need for approval exhausted him. "I've got an early start tomorrow. I'm going to call it a night."

"Call it a night? But you just got back from Zimbabwe, I haven't gotten to see you yet--"

"Tanzania," he corrected.

"Tanzania! I
meant
Tanzania! What about tomorrow?" She lowered her chin to give him her most kittenish look. "I could come over--"

"I don't think so," he said. He kissed her dewy cheek in the most perfunctory way, and walked away, ignoring the throng of supercharged socialites and social wannabes who nodded or waved for his attention as he slipped by.

If the economy was tanking, if the nation was at war, if the world was teetering on the brink of devastation, you'd never know it from the women at Doubles, Wyatt thought. The club was a teeming garden of cocktail dresses that night: red Valentinos, green Pradas, pink and gold Oscar de la Rentas, and on the more exotic flowers, a smattering of Cavallis in swirling blue and purple. Bright Young Things waiting to be plucked, so to speak, by a man like Wyatt Hayes IV. They'd arrived decked out in their great-grandmother's jewelry, hoping their presence at the right party would be documented on
Parkavenueroyalty.com
the next day--or even better, in the pages of
Townhouse
, the much hyped new magazine. These were beautiful girls. Not just stylish--sexy, too. But tonight, Wyatt just shrugged past them.

Striding into the gilded foyer, past the incongruous five-foot jar of jelly beans, Wyatt could still see the shocked, nearly tearful expression he'd left on Cornelia's face. Good. At least there was that.

Upstairs and outside, the air was thick with imminent rain. Standing under the gold awning, hunched in his raincoat against the cold, Wyatt could hear his pulse in his ears. If he were a different kind of man, a barroom brawl would be just the thing right now. He felt like shoving someone. He felt like throwing all his weight behind a punch.

Cornelia had been contrite, but that was only because he'd gotten angry. Her remorse didn't erase the fact that she'd slipped away from Wyatt a moment before being photographed by Patrick McMullan and the pack, only to pop up next to Theo Galt, the hotshot son of private equity billionaire Howard Galt. Not that Wyatt wanted to mug for the camera himself--he avoided it whenever possible. He just didn't appreciate his girlfriend seizing a photo op with another man.

Striding past the typically esoteric Christmas display in the Barneys storefront, Wyatt tried chalking up the slight to Cornelia's addiction to attention, to be expected in a woman desperate to be the reigning hen in the chicken coop that was the Upper East Side. He had no real attachment to Cornelia, he reminded himself, even though he had been seeing her regularly for many months. True, she'd won the approval of Wyatt's mother, the queen of hauteur, and that was not a hurdle many of his ex-girlfriends had cleared. (Not that Mrs. Hayes had particularly warm feelings for Cornelia. She simply knew her parents from Palm Beach and felt comfortable that a Rockman heiress wouldn't be after her son's fortune.)

True, Cornelia was a knockout--the tawny hair, the flawless skin, the pouty lips, the size-two body. In appearance and carriage, she was a thoroughbred, and Wyatt relished how good they looked together. They were the alpha couple in any room. At least, that's how he'd always seen it. Obviously she felt otherwise.

He'd even made a stop at Harry Winston that afternoon to pick out an early Christmas present: a classic diamond tennis bracelet, set in platinum. It would go back tomorrow.

Wyatt Hayes IV wasn't feeling heartbroken. What he felt was worse than heartbreak. Though he'd never stoop to admit it, even to himself in the darkest hours of the night, Wyatt felt
humiliated
.

In all his thirty-seven years, he'd always been the bigger, better deal, the sleekest lion in the pride, the kind of man that any woman--whether she was a socialite, heiress, It girl, model, actress, or some hyphenate hybrid--would ditch her date for. Indeed, it had happened countless times, some young woman locking in on him across a crowded room despite the man at her elbow. Women, for as long as he could remember, had been primed to look him in the eye, listen to him, and take him seriously.

And why wouldn't they? He was tall, aristocratically handsome, tops at tennis and squash, a member of the best clubs, the proud descendant of
Mayflower
bluebloods, cutthroat robber barons, and more than one dead president. He was also--as someone outside his own social set might put it--massively loaded.

But most important, he was a respected scholar, a Harvard man . . . a thinker! Maybe his career had more or less stalled for the past five years, but he'd always have those three prestigious letters--Ph.D.--anchoring his good name. Hadn't
Quest
referred to Wyatt as "the world-renowned biological anthropologist and New York's most eligible bachelor"? They most certainly had--he had the clipping to prove it.

So what if he was going a little gray at the temples? He was Wyatt Hayes; aging shouldn't matter.

But now he couldn't help but worry. Since when did his girlfriend trade up for photo ops? Cornelia hadn't even attempted to coax him into a shot. She'd been too eager to share the frame with twenty- something Theo, with his slicked-back hair and gleaming, bonded smile. It was a terrifying shift in the natural order. Wyatt knew a lot about the natural order; he'd spent his adult life studying it. The young lioness knew when to move over from the aging head of the pack to the up-and-coming male. Had Cornelia just done the same?

The game was changing; he couldn't deny it. Take Southampton, studded with McMansions, brand-new Bentleys, and various arrivistes waving their wealth like nautical flags--the place felt utterly transformed since his youth. Uproars in the economy had separated the bulls from the steers, and the bulls that survived were hardier, fiercer, tougher to ignore. The socialites were far worse. Unlike their predecessors--well-bred, civic-minded young ladies--the current "socials" were self-serving, calculating, press-hungry parasites. Their sense of responsibility had disappeared along with the Botoxed wrinkles on their foreheads--replaced with a hunger for fame. Vanished was any notion of contributing to the public good, of using one's position of privilege for something loftier than buying shoes or selling handbags. The new socialite grabbed as much spotlight as she could. She took, and took, and took. And now, with her picture plastered on
Townhouse
, Cornelia was the poster girl for a world gone wrong.

Wyatt stared through the window of the Hermes store, bitterness etched across his face. He wished life could be as it once was.

Maybe his friend Trip was around. Wyatt needed a drink, or several.

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