“White wine is great,” I said. “On the rocks. Makes it last longer. My New York doctor’s a woman who recommends one glass of that and a warm bubble bath every night.”
“A Texan already. Ice in everything. If you need a rec for an OBGYN here, we all use Gretchen Liesel. She also cleans up our mistakes.” Jenny winked. “Anyway, she’s here somewhere unless she got an emergency call.”
Jenny leaned in toward the bartender, showing that her small perfect breasts didn’t need a bra to prop them up. He didn’t care. I caught a glimpse of a Steinbeck novel propped up on the Jack Daniel’s. I was busily reworking my preconceived views of Texas. Abortions. Wink. Classic literature, but of course.
“José, one white and two reds, please,” Jenny commanded. I cringed at the Hispanic dig, until I saw that his name tag actually read “José.” Relax.
“Let’s sit over here and get acquainted.” She handed me my glass of wine and pulled us deeper into the mosquito jungle, toward a concrete bench set beside a koi pond. I breathed as shallowly as possible.
“First, we have a little bet going,” Mary Ann said. “A pair of Mephistos ride on this. How long did it take for Letty to tell you she is descended from the Robert E. Lees? In seconds, not minutes, because we know she couldn’t hold out that long.”
“I’d say thirty.” I swallowed a deep sip and wondered if a second glass of this elixir would hurt. I’d need it to get through the next two hours.
“Shit,” Jenny said. “I guessed ten. Mary Ann said twenty-five.”
“It was right after she mentioned that her husband was ‘the fourth,’ ” I added rashly, sucked in.
“Ah, yes. Dirty Harry.” Jenny grinned.
She dumped the remains of her glass into a spiky plant that drank it like a greedy alcoholic.
“Lookie over there. It’s little Misty Rich. The other new girl.” Jenny lowered her voice. “In a white dress and red fuck-me shoes.” But by the time I turned my head, Misty Rich-whoever she was-had slipped out of sight.
“Misty’s a freakin’ weird one,” Mary Ann informed me. “Pure trash. You can’t dress it up. She’s been here three months. Long enough for Caroline to become quite taken with her. Word is, she’s already invited Misty in.” She leaned closer. “We think Misty is into recreational drugs. We saw some scars. Caroline does love to find things to fix.”
“Mary Ann, you’re cut off,” Jenny decreed.
A low-pitched chime made all three of us turn back toward the house. Jenny pulled her friend up, gripping her arm a little harder than seemed necessary.
“Summoned by the royal gong,” Mary Ann said sarcastically. At the same moment, an elegant woman with coiffed silver-blond hair appeared at the opening of the atrium. It was impossible to tell if she had overheard anything. My two companions faded behind me like sullen little girls.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding my guest of honor.”
Caroline Warwick shaped thin lips into a smile, gliding toward me in ice-blue linen. I imagined the air chilling as she moved through it. Her grip was firm and dry on my hand, her voice Southern, but a violin, not a banjo. More Deep South.
I couldn’t determine her age. Fifties? Sixty? Caroline had an ageless sex appeal that reminded me of Lauren Bacall, appearing both youthful and old, her skin near-flawless, her movements controlled, graceful, almost sensual.
“I hope this invitation wasn’t an imposition, Emily. I’m sure you’re not quite settled yet.” Ema-lae. My name falling from her tongue was like a caress. So why was I certain my hostess didn’t give a flip if this was an imposition?
I smiled. “Not at all.” I caught the flash of something white out of the corner of my eye. The newcomer stood several feet behind and to the left of Caroline, a nymph in a frothy shift and fire-engine-red stiletto heels. Short, casually spiked dark hair, a heart-shaped face. A small dollar sign encrusted with diamonds hung off the silver chain around her neck-a little irony with her last name that I’d bet was intended.
Misty Rich straddled the line between Peter Pan fairy and punker. She was instantly my favorite person within a radius of 11,000 square feet.
She raised her wineglass coyly at me, brushing her hand against a green frond, familiar, as if we were already playing a game.
3
After two hours of a maverick card tournament that involved drinking, dice, musical partners, and trivia questions, my eyes blinked in slow motion. My mid-trimester bedtime clock had set itself at 9 p.m. and the alarm had buzzed about twenty minutes ago.
I was pretty sure I could fall asleep sitting up in this chair, in spite of the din of voices and laughter that rose with each bottle of Prosecco consumed. At Caroline’s wish, we’d “removed” ourselves to a game room set up with eight card tables of four chairs each. The buffet that ran along the wall was heaped with chocolate truffles, raspberries, and ice buckets chilling about a thousand dollars’ worth of fizz.
I’d played Bunko before, but this oddball Southern version required more than tossing the dice and luck. Good for me, since luck had never been my thing. But I was good at facts. Ever since winning the sixth-grade geography bee by knowing that the smallest country is Vatican City (what good Catholic girl doesn’t know that?), I’d realized the power of storing loose pieces of information.
To the delight of my multiple partners, including a frail old woman named Gert who called me Ruby all night, I was able to rack up bonus points by knowing that Audrey Hepburn won an Oscar for her debut role in Roman Holiday, that Van Gogh sold exactly one painting in his lifetime, and that the collective noun for a group of crows is a murder.
An hour and a half in, I gave up trying to remember too many names that ended in i or y or ie. I’d learned through rapid partner swapping that not everyone was a “regular” and that permanent admission into this club required Caroline’s approval, a “donor’s fee,” and maybe the selling of a teeny bit of one’s soul. Caroline didn’t play. Instead, she wandered from group to group, with her mouth drawn up like a coin purse. The purpose of a hostess is to make everyone relax, but her arrival had the opposite effect. Everyone swigged whatever she was drinking.
Caroline slipped past my table just as Marcy on my right began to yell into the most blinged-out, bejeweled phone I’d ever seen. “Really? Seriously? You’re bothering me with that right now? I have no idea where the frickin’ weed whacker is. We have a service, for Christ’s sake.”
She tossed the phone into a Louis Vuitton bag that could hold a horse’s head and scooped up her cards. “My husband just called to ask what I’ve done with the weed whacker because it isn’t hanging on the hook in the garage. He doesn’t want to use it. God forbid that he’d ever touch a tool. We pay someone $200 a week for that. He just wants to know where I put it. Jezus. Our son probably sold it on eBay. More power to him.”
Jenny’s boobs bounced stiffly as she tossed a round of sixes. “Last week, Rick called me at my best friend’s fortieth birthday lunch at Le Cinq to tell me the dog crapped a loose one all over the upstairs rug. I’m in Paris eating things I can’t pronounce and he wants to know what he should do. He runs a multimillion-dollar business.”
The owner of the Louis Vuitton purse smirked. “What did you tell him?”
“To be sure that when I walked in the door, it was like it never happened. Jesus, call the professionals.” Jenny nudged me. “What do you think, Emily? I thought New Yorkers had lots of opinions.”