Nancy’s Theory of Style (10 page)

Nancy
’s parents were waiting at the host’s
station. They looked exactly the way they should, like nice people, people you
wouldn’t mind sitting next to on the plane or at the theatre. They looked like
people who took interesting vacations, read serious books, and never argued in
public.

Hester’s narrow, sharp features had
softened with age, and people always assumed that she had been pretty when she
was young. Her hair was a tasteful ash blonde and in heels she was as tall as
her husband. She wore a simple cream knit jacket with black piping, black slacks,
and a gold necklace and earrings.

Hester’s only flamboyance was her
handbags and now she carried a rose-colored handbag in shining patent leather
with glittering gold hardware.

Nancy
smiled at her father. Julian Carrington
was a good-looking, trim man in a navy blazer, Tattersall check shirt, and
gabardine trousers. His blondish hair had gone silver years before. He made a
point of looking at his steel chronograph, which was precise enough to mark a
daughter’s tardiness before it actually occurred.

Then he smiled and greeted
Nancy
with a kiss. “Hello,
dear. You were almost late.”

“Sorry, Daddy! Traffic was a grizzly. Hi,
Mommy.”
Nancy
gave her mother a hug and a kiss, inhaling the floral scent of L’Air du Temps,
which she’d worn since she was a student.

Hester released her daughter and looked her
up and down. “Your nail shade…very dramatic, isn’t it?”

Julian signaled to the maitre d’, who
immediately led the trio to a table by a window looking out to the city and the
Bay Bridge stretching out to Treasure Island.

Nancy
made sure to keep her fingernails out
of view, which wasn’t easy when she was holding a menu. She didn’t bother taking
out her sustainable fishing guide, which would have given her father something
to criticize.

“How is Miss Winkles?” her mother asked.

“She’s as effervescent as ever,”
Nancy
said.

After they’d ordered, Julian said, “Nanny,
your mother and I came here because we’re extremely worried about you. You left
Todd and didn’t tell us.”

“Todd tried to put the best face on the
situation,” Hester said. Her eyes lit up as the waiter brought her double martini.

Nancy
kept her voice as calm as theirs. “It’s
just a sabbatical, to get my business going.”

“Planning parties isn’t a business,”
Julian said. “It’s socializing. If you really want to go into business, you’ll
get your MBA like you should have in the first place. Or, you can go to law
school.”

“You should finish graduate school before
you have children,” Hester said. “After you have babies, you can’t do anything.
Even with Nanny.”

“What did I have to do with it?”
Nancy
asked.

“I meant the nanny.” Hester finished her
drink and said, “It would be a terrible shame if you were the first in our
family to divorce.”

“Not to mention the problems you’d cause
in my dealings with Todd and his family,” Julian said. “We’re going in on a
vacation development in
New
Zealand
, you know.”

Nancy
’s smile was tense. “Yes, you’ve told me.
Todd’s told me.” Her father’s private equity firm and Todd’s family were investing
in the development to benefit Todd and herself. “I just needed a break from
that house. That’s all.”

Her parents exchanged looks and Julian said,
“You could have saved everyone all this trouble by doing what I suggested,
buying a good house in an established neighborhood, like Bailey Whiteside. There’s
a young man with some common sense.”

“The house could have been livable if
Todd hadn’t hijacked my plans. There’s a wet bar and a huge television in my
bedroom!”

“A first house should be built with
resale in mind, and that wet bar and theater-size TV are desirable features for
most homeowners.” Julian frowned and said, “I hope that your Foam foolishness
doesn’t draw the wrong kind of attention to our family.”

Hester said, “
No
attention is always the best, Nanny. That’s why we pay the PR
firm.”

“Froth, not foam,”
Nancy
said quietly and reminded herself that
a lady did not throw a scene in a public place. She sipped her water and when
she felt calm enough she said, “Mrs. Bentley Jamieson Friendly doesn’t think Froth
is foolish. She invited me to the Saloon and hired me to coordinate the
Barbary Coast
Historical
Museum
’s
annual gala.”

Her mother’s eyes widened and then she
looked for the waiter. When she caught his attention, she lifted her fingers
slightly toward her empty glass. “Well!”

Julian looked as if he was going to say
something, reconsidered, and finally asked, “Did you see the security guards?”

“No, and I looked all around. She has
the most extraordinarily hideous fountain in the Western world.”

“Nanny, please,” her mother said.

“A party is only a party,” Julian said. “However,
it isn’t a bad connection.”

The appetizers and Hester’s second
martini arrived. She took a long drink of the cocktail before saying, “But what
about Todd? We thought you were all settled and now…” Her gray-blue eyes welled.
“What ever will happen to you now?”

“Probably Debtors Prison, scrubbing laundry,
and begging for gruel. Speaking of things English, do you know that I have a
new assistant?”

“Does he eat gruel?” Hester said
confused.

“No, he’s English. His name is Derek and
he’s fabulous.”

Julian hmmphed. “What does Todd think of
you having a male assistant?”

“One, I said he was
fabulous
, and, two, Todd’s paying Derek’s wages. Daddy, what funds
do I have that can be freed up now?”

“Haven’t you been reading your monthly
reports? I’ve managed to stave off the hemorrhaging for now, but you shouldn’t
touch a thing.”

“Is that your opinion as my trustee or
as my father?”
Nancy
said.

“Both. Since we are on the topic of
money, I hope you will study your pre-nup before making any decisions about
your marriage. When we went though it point by point with Todd, you seemed more
interested in staring out the window.”

Nancy
recalled the interminable meeting and
the interesting view of a fabulous neo-classic building designed by Timothy
Pflueger. “If I was getting a divorce, I’d be happy that Todd waived his right
to community property since I’ve wasted all that money trying to make the house
less horrifying, but the ugly is woven in, like bad polyester.”

“Infidelity nullifies the contract,
Nancy
, and Todd would be
entitled to half of what you have,” Julian said quietly.

“Do you asking if I’ve cheated on Todd?”
Nancy
said and
cringed back into her seat at the thought of her father bringing up her sex
life. “Daddy.”

“Julian, Nanny, please don’t discuss
these things at dinner,” Hester said as she gazed at her empty martini glass.

Julian pushed Hester’s water glass
closer to her, and said to
Nancy
,
“You don’t want to end up like Birdie. You’re not going to do any better than
Todd Chambers.”

“I worry about that little girl of Birdie’s,”
Hester said. “When she visited, the child was dressed in a costume.”

“Really? I was just thinking about Birdie,”
Nancy
said. “I
heard that a friend of hers died.”

“No surprise there,” Julian said. “She
surrounds herself with people as irresponsible as she is. She has nothing to
show for her life.”

Hester was fiddling nervously with her
wedding ring. “That’s right, Nanny. It’s very important to your father and me
that you show some maturity. Marriage isn’t always easy. Happiness takes hard work
and compromise.”

Nancy
heard the quaver in her mother’s voice
and felt awful that she was upsetting her so. “How is Birdie?”

“The same. She showed up unannounced on
Sunday morning with baguettes and a jar of Beluga. She made that poor child a
caviar sandwich for breakfast. What kind of life is that?”

“I would have adored caviar sandwiches
as a child,”
Nancy
said and tried to remember if caviar was on her fish list.

“Yes, but you used to sneak and eat the
cat food when you were little, Nanny,” Hester said. “Birdie asked about you. I
told her that you were spending a lot of time at the Chateau and she said you
should
live in the
now
. Well, with the child sitting right there,
I couldn’t tell her that that’s how she got pregnant and why she doesn’t have a
place to call home.”

“What about the
Redondo Beach
house her boyfriend gave her?”
Nancy
asked.

“His wife found out about it,” her
father said. “Take Birdie as a cautionary tale.”

When
Nancy
said goodnight to her parents and
returned to her car, she saw a ticket on her windshield.

She was still so angsty that when she got
home that she decided to reorganize her bathroom. In the small linen closet,
she found the unopened gift, a bottle of eau de parfum, that Birdie had given
to her at groundbreaking party.

Nancy
needed a new fragrance now that Junie
had stolen her signature scent. She dabbed L’Heure Bleue on her wrists, rubbed
them together, waited five minutes and sniffed. The scent was like yearning and
passion, like beeswax candles and amber, like elegance and possibility.
 
She wondered why she’d ever worn anything
else.

Nancy
felt better in the morning when Derek arrived,
perfection in a slim-fitting dark gray suit, a blue pinstriped shirt, and a
black tie with a subtle pattern.

“Good day, Mrs. Carrington-Chambers. Would
you like a cappuccino?”

“I dream of your cappuccinos.”

She followed him into the kitchen, where
he moved with efficient grace. “Did you make espresso for your former
employer?”

He tapped the espresso grounds and said,
“Indeed. He was fond of his coffee, too. I think that a taste for fine
beverages is natural to the aristocratic character.” Derek smiled at
Nancy
, and she felt a
blush rising.

When he’d finished frothing up the milk
and she was sipping her drink, she said, “I’ve never had a personal assistant
before, so if there’s anything else that is expected in your range of duties
that you think I’d like, please don’t hesitate to name it.”

He tilted his head attentively and that
smirk began to appear. “Madame, are you proposing…”

Suddenly she realized the sort of things
that a dazzling gentleman’s gentleman might have had to endure. “Oh, no, no! That’s
not what I meant at all. I would never – not that you’re not attractive,
because you’re extremely handsome…”

“You are pleasant-looking as well, Mrs.
Carrington-Chambers. Forgive my presumption.”

“Yes, of course! Anyway, I know I’m not
your type.”

“Yet one may establish a cordial
association,” he said. “I was once employed by a lady of distinction, such as
you, and we became so at ease with each other that we would often exchange embraces,
or as you call them, hugs. She said it was very reassuring and I found the
platonic physicality jolly agreeable.”

“Really?”
Nancy
’s parents didn’t hug their staff, but
they had never employed anyone as elegant as Derek.

“Indeed. May I demonstrate?”

“That would be fine,” she said and set
her cup on the counter.

Derek stepped close and put his arms
around her.
Nancy
slipped her own around his waist. He felt so different than Todd, taller and
more sinewy and his grasp around her was firm without being stifling. He smelled
just faintly of cologne that had notes of sandalwood and verbena.

“You smell delicious,” she said. “What
are you wearing?”

“Creed Green Irish
Tweed
.
You smell lovely.”

“It’s called L'Heure Bleue. It means that
marvelous time when the day has gone, but the night hasn’t come. That’s the
color of your eyes.” She nestled closer and felt his chin drop to the top of
her head. His lady employer was right; it was reassuring. If he wasn’t gay and
her assistant and if she wasn’t married and… She stepped away and said, “That
was very nice. But we better get to work.”