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Authors: Bridie Clark

BOOK: the Overnight Socialite
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"Pleasure," Cornelia said, sizing up Lucy the way a cheetah sizes up a gazelle. If she recognized Lucy from that night in the rain, she didn't show it.
"So good to meet you!" Lucy said, sticking out her hand. "I love your dress."
Cornelia looked down at Lucy's hand as if she were offering her a dead pigeon. Then she leaned over and kissed Lucy twice, off the coast of each cheek.
"Shall we see what my mother wants?" Wyatt asked, seizing Lucy by the elbow and propelling her across the room.
15
Wyatt's Book Notes:
In the early twentieth century, the Norwegian zoologist Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe described a system of social dominance among flocks of poultry, known as the "pecking order." He observed that subordinate birds refused to feed until the more dominant birds had finished. Similarly, in our modern society, good manners dictate that guests wait until their host takes the first bite before starting to eat. Unfortunately, I had neglected to tell L. that bit of information
C
ornelia had to agree that Dottie's dining room had never looked more elegant, the table gently illuminated by towering silver candelabras and draped in vermilion linens. The visual feast was topped off by an heirloom china collection that was making Martin Matheson of Christie's--Fernanda's boss--drool. All in all, it was the perfect backdrop for her overdue reunion with Wyatt.
"Your mother must be up to something," Cornelia said flirtatiously as she and Wyatt found their seats next to each other. Of course, she'd switched the seat cards herself just moments before, stealing into the dining room before anybody else came in. Now that Lucy person was next to the duke of dull, Max Fairchild, and Cornelia could have Wyatt all to herself. No random interloper was going to thwart her efforts to win him back.
"You switched the cards," Wyatt said. He didn't look amused.
"What if I did?" Cornelia cooed, a bit unnerved by how easily he saw through her. "We need to talk. This is ridiculous, don't you think? People don't break up over one minor misunderstanding."
"This isn't the time or place," Wyatt said. He turned toward Esther Michaels on his right, an old family friend who'd been among those responsible for the restoration of Central Park in the 1970s. That left Cornelia with nobody to talk to but the drearily intellectual Morgan Ware, who was an ex-vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. As Morgan droned on with his doom-and-gloom economic forecast--apparently nobody had clarified that this was a dinner
party
--Cornelia felt the warmth of Wyatt's body next to hers. A thrill ran all the way down to her pewter-colored stilettos. She couldn't deny it--he was hot when he played hard to get. She crossed her leg and moved her foot so it would gently--seemingly accidentally--brush his leg. More electric current. He moved his leg away.
So he wants me to work for it,
Cornelia thought with a sly smile. She turned back to Morgan, pretending to listen.
Stranded on the table's opposite bank, Lucy looked helplessly across at Wyatt, wishing he were beside her, guiding the conversation, giving her the little verbal and facial cues they had rehearsed in preparation for this night. She felt as if she had been abandoned in a foreign country where everyone but her spoke Lockjaw.
"You look so familiar to me!" Martha Fairchild, seated on the other side of her son, declared. She tilted her head, then pushed Max back in his chair so she could have an unobstructed view of the new girl. "I feel sure we've met before, but I can't think where."
"You look familiar to me. And Max--you do, too." She'd seen him before, she was sure of it. Maybe on the party pages. That was probably it.
Max fixed his sky-blue eyes on her. "Really? I feel sure that I would remember meeting you before."
Is this hottie actually
flirting
with me?
She'd noticed Max glance her way several times during cocktail hour, and he seemed delighted to be seated next to her for dinner. Lucy didn't know which was scarier: that Max might be on to her, or that he might be into her. Wyatt had warned her about talking too much to any unattached men she might meet tonight. "They'll pretend to be interested in your life," he'd cautioned, "and before you know it you'll be giving them directions to downtown Dayville. Less is more."
"Ellis is your family name?" Martha asked, leaning past her son again. "Who are your parents, dear?"
"My family's from Chicago. You might know my father, Raymond Ellis." Lucy repeated verbatim what Wyatt had told her to say. He knew nobody would recognize the name, but he also knew nobody would admit that. It was enough, Wyatt suggested, that Lucy convey the distinct impression that Raymond Ellis was a person that every person
should
know.
"Of course," Martha said. "How is he?"
"Oh, same as ever," Lucy said with feigned affection. Maybe Wyatt was on to something. "And where are you guys from?" Oops.
You guys
was Lucy-Jo-speak. But the Fairchilds didn't seem to notice.
"On the Fairchild side, New York. But my mother was an Edgell." Lucy detected the pride in Martha's voice. It must mean something to be an Edgell. Maybe some of these superrich folks had something to prove after all. "Most of my family is still in Boston, although there's a subset living in Paris."
"Paris, how wonderful!" Lucy had long dreamed of visiting the fashion mecca. "Have you ever been over to visit them?"
"Of course. Many times."
"Is the city as beautiful as it looks in movies? I'm dying to go."
"Paris?" Martha asked, seemingly confused by the question. "You've never been?"
Stupid
. Lucy felt her stomach drop. "Um, of course I've been to Paris. But not since I was a little girl, I'm afraid, and I barely remember it." Martha seemed to accept the answer, and she drifted into conversation with Lars van Sever as their first course was placed in front of them.
"Is that, um, raw fish?" Lucy whispered to Max, staring grimly at her plate. It looked as if it had been cut from the belly of some unidentifiable creature and rushed directly to the dining room without benefit of a saucepan. It glistened in the candlelight.
"Yeah. Tuna tartare." He smiled. "Not your thing?"
"I've never had it," Lucy admitted. "I don't do raw. Not after my friend Doreen got such violent food poisoning from the sushi place on her corner that she lost thirty pounds."
"Thirty pounds?" Max repeated incredulously.
"More, actually. That was just the first time."
"She got food poisoning more than once? Same place? Why'd she keep going back?"
"Oh, Doreen. She wanted to lose ninety pounds in time for her sister's wedding."
"You're joking." Max ventured a smile. "I mean, she didn't really do that."
"She did!"
He seemed at a loss for words, but then he nodded. "I can see why you'd hesitate." As for Martha, she'd tuned in late and was gazing down at her plate with what looked like a brand-new, Lucy-supplied perspective on raw fish. "Here's some bread," said Max to Lucy. "I think you're safe with that."
"I should at least try a bite, don't you think? I don't want to insult our host." Lucy bravely stuck her fork into the quivering tower of pink flesh. She brought it to her lips, held her breath, and slid a few of the slimy chunks to the back of her mouth.
The fish seemed to return to life in her mouth. She struggled to swallow, but her throat wouldn't allow it. It fought the fish with loud, guttural sounds.
"Are you choking?" Max jumped up from his seat and pulled Lucy out of hers, quickly locking his arms around her rib cage for the Heimlich. "Stay calm!" he shouted. But now Lucy
was
actually choking a bit, thanks to his rescue efforts, and after two hoists from Max, two fish chunks came flying out of her mouth, across the beautifully set table, before landing squarely on the decolletage of Cornelia Rockman.
Lucy wished there was a runway she could fall into. The room was silent as a mortuary as all eyes turned from Lucy to Cornelia.
"You're okay now," said Max, proud of himself.
"Am I?" She glanced at Wyatt, who seemed to be avoiding her eyes, disclaiming ownership, and then looked apologetically toward the head of the table. Dottie was doing a poor job at hiding her horror. "I am so, so sorry, Dottie--Mrs. Hayes. Dottie. And Cornelia! Here, let me get that off you--" She rushed around the table, napkin outstretched, but Cornelia held up both hands to ward her off.
"That couldn't have been more disgusting," Cornelia hissed, and Lucy, not sure what else to do, slunk back to her seat.
When she sat down, Max laid a hand on her shoulder. "You tried. I'm witness to the fact that you really tried to eat that fish."
She glanced across the table fearfully, but Wyatt kept his eyes on his tartare. Only Trip and Eloise flashed her their sympathetic smiles.
"Binkie," Dottie asked, when the two women retreated for a moment to her bedroom to smooth their hair and share a secret cigarette, just before the main course was to be served. "What on earth is a Singapore sling?"
As the roast pheasant plates were cleared away, Wyatt monitored Lucy as she talked with Morgan Ware and nodded in profound interest as he held forth on why young ladies as lovely as herself should consider inflation-indexed or municipal bonds for their portfolio. Seeing as she couldn't get in much trouble with Ware, who never let anyone get a word in edgewise, Wyatt slipped down the long hallway that led to his old bedroom. Going into the room still decorated with his adolescent collection of poisonous stuffed frogs, a taxidermied rhesus monkey with glowing red eyes, and a genuine Native American talking stick that his father had brought back from Alaska after buying oil leases from the Eskimos, Wyatt sat down on the king-size bed where he had slept his first eighteen years and lit a cigarette--the first of the evening. He might smoke illegally in public places, but he dare not light up in front of his mother.
He exhaled and sighed. This Lucy-training was hard work. And, on a night like this, nerve-racking. Not only had he introduced his protegee to the creme de la creme of society, but he'd inadvertently inflicted Cornelia upon her, which was like introducing a bunny rabbit to a fox. They'd been lucky to escape with only the regurgitated tuna.
Overall, Lucy had acquitted herself well. Even his mother had been impressed, Wyatt suspected. That clod Max Fairchild had mooned over her; Morgan Ware had practically offered her a government-guaranteed loan.
Of course, Wyatt still had work to do. When Lucy got nervous she moved too fast, used her hands to talk, and ate actual food off her plate. And she laughed too easily. Max Fairchild had never said anything remotely clever or funny in his life, as far as Wyatt knew, and yet Lucy had been in stitches for the better part of dinner. He would have to remind her to curb her friendliness in social situations.
Still, he thought, as he blew smoke toward the moose head above his bed, she had what it took. Which meant he'd have what he needed for his book. He extinguished his cigarette on an old Snapple cap he'd kept in the top drawer since boarding school, then pulled out the ziplock bag he'd remembered to bring and dumped in the butt and the ashes.
His book.
Contrary to what his mother might think, that was what he cared about.
"Remember Camp Wokonoba?"
"Of course." Fernanda grinned. As a girl she'd lived for camp. She and Cornelia had first bonded there, despite their age difference. "We snuck out of our cabin every single night--"
"Do you remember the little trick we played on that heifer Penelope?"
Fernanda tapped a finger to her lips, trying to pull up the memory. They'd terrorized a lot of girls that summer. "We gave her a mullet while she was sleeping?"
"No, no, no. Remember you stuck your apple pie a la mode under Penelope before she plopped down in the mess hall?"
"Ah, right." Fernanda grinned. "A classic."
Cornelia squeezed her arm. "Look--Dottie's serving creme brulee for dessert."
"Delicious." Fernanda glanced across the dining room. Lucy must have gone to the powder room, leaving her chair open for attack. Fernanda hustled wordlessly toward her brother and took a seat, first swiping a large blob of brulee off the plate. "Having fun, Max? You seem rather taken with your dinner partner." Carefully, silently, she deposited the eggy custard on the chair behind her. Fernanda felt the familiar rush she got whenever Cornelia pushed her into mischief.
"Oh, hi there!" Lucy had returned, smiling widely. "You're Max's sister, right?"
Fernanda stood. "Sorry, sorry, I stole your seat!" she said with false cheeriness, guiding Lucy to sit down without looking. "Fernanda, right. Nice to meet you."
Heading back to her seat, Fernanda flashed Cornelia a triumphant smirk. Dottie had wedged her in between two female guests, instead of one of the eligible men, which made Fernanda feel slightly better about destroying one of her Scalamandre-upholstered dining room chairs.

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