Authors: Bridie Clark

the Overnight Socialite (3 page)

BOOK: the Overnight Socialite

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Beneath magnificent vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, the who's who of the fashion scene sipped cocktails and air-kissed each other hello. Lucy Jo watched Carla Bruni and Naomi Campbell gossip in one corner, Naomi stubbing out her cigarette in one of the abstract ice sculptures. There was Patrick Demarchelier, just five steps away; Gray-don Carter kissing Natalie Portman hello; Jennifer Lopez showing off pictures of her twins to Kelly Ripa; Caroline Kennedy waiting for a martini behind Ian Schrager. It was like visiting some kind of fabulous zoo, where the exotic animals were very expensively dressed.

"Stop staring," Clarissa whispered after Lucy Jo had whipped her head around to get a closer look at Sting, who was chatting with Julianne Moore at the martini bar. "And hurry up. You heard Nola--I have way too much to do right now."

Why was Clarissa cattle-prodding her through the hall? The question flew out of Lucy Jo's head when they stepped into the enormous Drill Room, the main chamber of the old Armory. It was like stepping inside a dazzling glacier that had cracked to form a hidden cave of ice. Cocktail tables, covered in virgin linens and crystal votives, dotted each side of the sleek runway. Enormous white imported peonies that looked like giant snowballs were piled up haphazardly around the runway, and art deco chandeliers hung low, casting a glittery cabaret light. All that was missing were the models, the clothes, the audience--and Lucy Jo striding down the runway, the designer modestly accepting her end-of-show accolades.

"This is amazing!" Lucy Jo was struck still with awe.

Clarissa glanced up at their surroundings. "Yeah, well, it better be. There's a lot at stake. Nola's super stressed." She grabbed Lucy Jo's down-coated elbow and hurried her along. They passed through the backstage area, where a dozen cadaverous models were wriggling into their clothes, and then through the swinging double doors of a . . .

Catering kitchen?

"Extra uniforms are back there, I think. Get ready
fast
, okay? Marco--over there--will give you your marching orders."

"Marching orders? I don't understand--"

"What's to understand?" Clarissa's eyes widened with annoyance. "You carry a tray with caviar blinis and champagne. Offer it to the guests. You're not removing a brain tumor."

Huh?
The kitchen suddenly felt as small as a coffin. Lucy Jo just blinked. "I'm here to work?"

"Of course! I told you, half the catering staff came down with some nasty virus, and they're super short-staffed. We got a few people from accounting to fill in, some interns, and you. Why are you looking at me like that?"

Lucy Jo was too stunned to speak, too embarrassed to protest. She was afraid if she tried to force words, a sob might come out instead.

Clarissa's face suddenly opened up, as she realized the extent of Lucy Jo's delusion. Then her face snapped shut again, as firmly as a Judith Leiber clutch. "Okay, well . . . see you later." Clarissa spun on a five-inch heel and shoved through the doors into the party.

"This might be a little small." Marco, the goateed head cater-waiter, eyed Lucy Jo up and down before tossing her a skimpy black patent-leather dress that she'd be lucky to squeeze over one thigh. It had an extra bunch of fabric on one shoulder, like an abscess--a sure sign that Nola had a hand in its design. "What size shoe do you wear? Hope it's seven, cuz that's all I got left." He tossed her two dominatrix boots. They looked dangerous.

Reality hit her with a sickening thud. How ridiculous she'd been to assume that she'd been invited to rub elbows! She was the hired help, nothing more. Lucy Jo put down her portfolio, and held the size-two dress against her size-ten hips. "Do you have anything bigger?" she gulped.

There was a loud crash from the back of the kitchen. "Nah, but don't sweat it," Marco called over his shoulder as he headed to do damage control. "Nobody's gonna be looking at you tonight."

Yesterday's sale of Important Watches at Sotheby's in Geneva did not disappoint the packed room in attendance, most notably when a Patek Philippe chronograph wristwatch, selling for the first time in fifty years, was purchased for a historic $1.2 million dollars by an unknown U.S. collector.

--Hans Depardieu,
www.antiquewatchwatch.com

M
y usual," Wyatt told the bartender, an older man whose first name he should have mastered years ago. He had felt more at peace upon entering his favorite darkly lit watering hole, one of the last bastions of smoker tolerance in the city. When a cool tumbler of single-malt scotch materialized in front of him on the mahogany bar, Wyatt exhaled for the first time since leaving Cornelia.

"What happened to you, man? You look like hell!" Trip Peters clamped a hand down on Wyatt's shoulder, and Wyatt turned around to greet his friend. Trip was short, balding, thirty pounds overweight, and seemingly unaware of any of these shortcomings. "Double martini, Saul."

"Yeah, I know I do," Wyatt lamented. Actually, he looked like a mildly disheveled aristocrat getting liquored up as quickly as possible, but hell is relative.

Drinks in hand, the two men snagged a table toward the back. "I like the watch," Wyatt said, noticing the Count Trossi Patek on his friend's wrist.

"I couldn't resist," said Trip, glancing at the timepiece, his infatuation obvious. "One of the first single button chronograph wrist-watches the company made. One of the earliest with horizontal registers, too. Paid seven figures for it at the Sotheby's auction." Trip was a watch guy. Also a car guy, a plane guy, and a wine guy.

It's a law of New York City: no matter how much money you're making, you're surrounded by people making more. Trip, however, was a bit of an exception. Even when the seas of the international economy grew so rough that many financiers were puking over the railing, the SS
Trip Peters
had proved to be an ocean liner bigger, sturdier, and more secure than just about any other vessel it encountered. After using some of his considerable but not gargantuan inheritance to launch his own hedge fund at age thirty, Trip had made fuck-you money starting year one. Wyatt had to admire his friend's indefinable knack for mining gold where others dug up lead. Nobody posted higher returns, and nobody played the game better. "I didn't know he had it in him," old friends of Trip confided to each other. Trip was smart enough, they said, but c'mon--his parents had donated a baseball diamond to get him into Pepperdine.

He and Wyatt had known each other since they were kids. They'd been a grade apart (Wyatt was older) at St. Bernard's, and both families wintered in Palm Beach. From a very young age, their mothers had insisted that the boys were best friends. Three decades later, they'd shared so much history that it had become more or less true.

"So what happened to you?" Trip asked. "Where are you coming from?"

"A launch party at Doubles for a waste of paper called
Townhouse
. I left early. After breaking up with Cornelia, as a matter of fact."

"Seriously?" Trip looked surprised.

"Long overdue, I know."

"Actually, Eloise and I thought you guys were good together. You seemed--I don't know, well matched. Why'd you end it?"

"Are you serious, man?" Wyatt didn't feel like talking about the snub, even to his closest friend. "This whole socialite thing's gone to Cornelia's head. The girl preens in front of anything with a flash-bulb. She actually thinks she's got a
career
to manage. Apparently nobody's told her that landing on party pages isn't a career."

"So she's a little caught up in the scene," Trip said. "That seems pretty harmless."

"Harmless? Gertrude Vanderbilt founded the Whitney. Jackie Onassis made Grand Central shine." The muscles in Wyatt's neck had grown taut. "Cornelia's primary goal in life is to climb to the top of
Parkavenueroyalty.com
."

"What's
Parkavenueroyalty.com
?" Trip asked. He popped some peanuts into his mouth and then, checking the time, gazed at his watch with the kind of elation that would have done a new father proud. "Eloise is probably expecting me home soon."

"It's a completely inane website that
ranks
all the socialites and reports on their every move." Wyatt took a gulp of his scotch. "They rank men, too. They've got you down as the number six most eligible bachelor in Manhattan. I'm number three myself. I was number two last week, until this kid Theo--"

"Sounds like Cornelia isn't the only one obsessed with this thing," Trip remarked. "Not that the kettle is black, or anything."

Wyatt glared at his friend. "She checks it constantly. I look once in a while to satisfy a morbid curiosity."

"Whatever you say."

"All those girls are just the same. I'm telling you, Peters, of all the wildlife I've observed--and my fieldwork has taken me to every continent--the most bizarre creatures on the planet are socialites on the Upper East Side."

Outside, winter lightning split the sky.

"Many critics say my work--and particularly this collection--pushes the collective discourse about fashion in a revolutionary new direction. They say I don't play by the rules. That I don't aim for mere beauty--that I aim at something far less pedestrian. Perhaps this is so."

--Nola Sinclair as quoted by
The Daily Fashion

C
hampagne?" Lucy Jo asked a Posh Spice doppelganger in current-season couture. The woman accepted the flute and continued her conversation without pausing for a comma, never mind a thank-you.

At first Lucy Jo had been shocked by how invisible she felt. Considering that she looked like an overweight Jetson in her ridiculous outfit, she felt it was bizarre to walk around the crowded room and have guests notice only the marinated sea scallops or risotto balls on her tray. It wasn't the triumphant night she had dreamed about, that was for sure. Hustling back and forth to the kitchen whenever her tray felt light, bussing empty glasses and used napkins from guests--working instead of networking. But she was somehow managing to smile despite the raw ache of her disappointment. When she had changed into her catering costume, she'd even tucked a few business cards in her Wonderbra, refusing to give up hope. And at least she could soak up the scene.

And what a scene it was. The models--all looking recently exhumed from their crypts, clad in Nola's inky palette and sporting androgynous buzz cuts--charged down the runway to the primal beat of a bass drum. Edge before beauty--that was Nola's style. Her dresses looked like geometric configurations created by Mondrian on acid. One model looked as if she had a badly deformed left hip, but it was just the strange lines of her suit. It was the type of fashion that critics ate up and real women hated, thought Lucy Jo, and she agreed with the real women (or the unenlightened masses, if you were on the critics' side).

The audience watched with rapt attention. Lucy Jo could feel the undeniable electricity in the air. Some jotted notes; some just followed the models with their eyes as though they were watching a slow match at Wimbledon. The phalanx of photographers at the end of the runway flashed so many shots that the room seemed to dance in a Studio 54-esque strobe light.

Lucy Jo rebalanced her tray and pushed a damp lock of hair off her forehead.
One day I'll be in Nola's shoes
, she thought. Figuratively speaking--those S&M-inspired platforms looked as crippling as the boots into which Lucy had been forced to wedge her feet.

A model in a long charcoal-gray dress paused for effect at the end of the runway, its glassy surface reflecting her image. Lucy Jo's breath caught in her throat. That dress had been her baby at the workshop--the only remotely "pretty" piece in the collection, it had struck her as both a fluke and a gift. Tonight Nola had strung full rounds of bullets around the ferocious-looking model's neck, but the dress was still pretty. Lucy Jo had made the pattern with painstaking precision, staying late for days to get it just right. And now the brightest stars of the fashion universe were admiring it.

"Are you doing your job or watching the show?" Clarissa was suddenly at Lucy Jo's elbow. Before Lucy Jo could defend herself, the room exploded into thunderous applause and the two girls looked up to see the last model exit the runway. A beat later, a single spotlight illuminated a beaming Nola Sinclair.

"Oh God," she heard Clarissa pant next to her. "
Champagne
. She asked me to get it for her, but she asked me to do ten other things at the same time--"

Nola held up both hands to stop the applause. It wasn't exactly typical for a designer to make a postshow speech--but Nola, thought Lucy Jo, liked to grab as much attention as she could. "Thank you. Thank you all for coming tonight to toast the season and my collection." Nola took a step or two out on the runway, smiling into the darkness around her.

"She's going to kill me," Clarissa hissed.

And so began the worst two minutes of Lucy Jo's life. It started with a shove from Clarissa, along with an order: "Champagne. Nola.
Now
!"

BOOK: the Overnight Socialite

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