Revenant Rising (68 page)
Rayce pulls a long face at sight of an older beauty wielding a martini and masquerading as an ingénue. “Poor dear, so recently a firefly and now just another bug squashed on the windscreen, taillight soon to wink out.” He bows his head in mock respect, executes a quick turnabout in time to grin wolfishly at the barely contained assets of a bona fide ingénue. “Wowser! Nice, that, but one mustn’t ignore the fact her girls are adopted.”
He continues in this manner—debating haut couture versus hot couture and differentiating between pretenders and contenders as living examples unwittingly illustrate his humorous asides—until a waiter comes by offering gazpacho shots. Rayce takes two and downs them in quick succession as if they were shooters of something more potent. Then he steps up to the bar and comes away with a presumably nonalcoholic drink in a stemmed cocktail glass and Laurel could almost wonder if next he’ll hit up Colin for a powdered headache remedy as standin for another forbidden substance. Pursuing this line of reasoning is the same as expecting Colin to employ a candy cigarette as a pacifier, and that’s ridiculous. But she can’t altogether dismiss the nagging concern that the older rocker’s endlessly manic behavior is a form of compensating for a void that cannot be filled.
Rayce pauses his discourse on the sad state of American derrieres to cast a quizzical glance at her. “You’re awfully quiet there, luv.”
“She’s soaking up color for this book she’s writing,” Colin says, bringing the biggest laugh so far.
Rayce and his followers are still amused, and Laurel is still prickled when Amanda and Nate appear.
Amanda is aglow in her flattering new finery and Nate looks even more polished than he did at dinner the other night. Rayce brushes Nate aside and fixes on Amanda.
Playing the lecher every bit as broadly as he did the hunchback, Rayce twirls an imaginary moustache. “And aren’t
you
the toothsome little morsel, then?”
“You really think you should be calling anyone a morsel? Word has it you’re not much more than a mouthful yourself,” Nate deadpans.
Amanda gasps, as do a few of Rayce’s people, before Rayce bows low, pantomimes the doffing of a hat and comes up grinning. “His Assholiness is in the house!” he proclaims.
Accompanied by nervous laughter, Rayce and Nate execute the casual embrace of old friends who can take extreme verbal liberties with each other, and the display seems as programmed as did Rayce’s other impersonations. Colin must think so too, because he’s obvious about ignoring them.
Amusing little appetizers are coming thick and fast now. Laurel passes up individual seared diver scallops, single-serve pâté-stuffed wontons, deviled quail eggs with truffles, vichyssoise cordials, and those are just the ones she can identify. An usher summons Rayce to the head table and a place of honor between David and Sarjit Singh, head of Rayce’s new recording label; another usher shows Laurel and Colin to a nearby table, where they’re joined by Nate and Amanda.
Colin mutters something and reverts to his thundercloud expression for no reason that she can fathom, unless he was counting on being seated with Rayce. That’s out of the question where she’s concerned; she’ll leave the party before she’ll send the wrong signals by sitting anywhere near David—or his wife. Something Colin doesn’t have to know.
Two other couples take up the remaining places at their table. They must be well known because Amanda’s a bit wide-eyed and affords them more than a perfunctory nod. As has happened at least a half-dozen times this evening, the general assumption is that Laurel knows these personages by sight, so she resigns herself to playing along and hopes for the best.
A small handwritten menu of tonight’s fare captures her attention. She loses herself in deciding if she’ll be satisfied with just the warm duck/ roasted pear/mache salad or go for broke with an entire meal. The meal choices include filet mignon au poivre with garlic creamed potatoes and new peas, vegetarian Napoleon constructed with mascarpone and artisanal goat cheeses, and cedar-planked salmon with a horseradish crust and root vegetables. If she gets through any or all of that, she can finish up with crème brûlée and a tasting tray of chocolate truffles followed by a fruit-and-cheese selection.
The wine menu is varied as well and includes one she thinks she recognizes. She’s about to ask Nate if the Barolo she sees listed here is the same one she enjoyed at his dinner, when she registers that Nate is presently quizzing Colin about using his home gym.
“I meant to ask the same thing. How did that go? Kinks all worked out?” Laurel says to Colin.
“He’s not asking about benefits derived there,” Colin replies. “He’s only wanting to know how I reacted to seeing my former flat redone to his taste. And won’t he be sorry to hear that I didn’t freak and didn’t make a fucking cook’s tour of it—other than for the short stopover in the library before proceeding straightaway to the gym.”
“And that’s it?” Nate says.
“The Klimts are brilliant, but I can’t say I care for the decorating on the lower level.” Colin turns to say something to the celebrity on his left; no further mention is made of his visit to Nate’s showplace.
Salad is served, wine is poured, table-wide conversation is attempted and never develops beyond a tiresome exchange of banalities with a sprinkling of shoptalk thrown in. Minus the glitterati and imaginative food offerings, Laurel could be at just another stultifying bar association dinner. Amanda must feel the same way because her glow is somewhat diminished. Nate appears to be operating on autopilot, as do the other two couples. To blame Colin for casting a pall that’s dimmed the entire table is to give him too much power, but Laurel can’t come up with a better explanation at the moment.
While most of the other diners are still chowing down on one entrée or another, Laurel leaves her lone choice of salad untouched and excuses herself to visit the ladies’ room. She really does have to pee, she’s not just seeking relief from an uncomfortable situation. And her strategy to beat the after-dinner rush pays off; just two stalls of the ornate facilities are occupied.
Supporting the wide-held belief that women only go to the ladies’ room in pairs, the other two occupants seem to know each other because they’re engaged in readily overheard conversation and laughter. Laurel tunes them out, shuts herself into a vacant stall and goes about her business. Then, over the whooshing of flushed toilets and clattering of released door latches, she hears Colin’s name mentioned along with her own, and she’s all ears.
“. . . not buying any of it.” A voice rises above the sound of running water. “He’ll never commit again, not after such a disastrous first marriage. And she’s a lawyer, for fuck sake. She’s not gonna hook up with a rock star, not even for the money. And from what I hear ,she has plenty of her own.”
“I heard that too,” the other voice says.
“And there’s the kid thing. Can you see a tough career woman like her takin’ on a whiny brat and a slowwitted rugrat? I don’t think so.”
“What about the book angle? Think that’s bogus too?”
“Most likely. I think that was just a convenient accident both sides leapt on. Him for the usual reason, her to establish a hold. Funny thing—earlier tonight I overheard him giving her grief about passing herself off as his official biographer. Maybe he’s seen through her too, and she’s so hot in the sack he just doesn’t give a shit.”
“She
is
drop-dead gorgeous,” the second voice asserts against the sound of more running water.
“That she is, and she’s no less a pro than was Aurora. But unlike Aurora, I doubt she’d consider anything long term once she figures out his legendary rock star cock’s plowed furrows across a couple of continents, with the good chance that among a certain age group, he will’ve fucked every third chick she runs into. She just doesn’t strike me as the forgive-and-forget type.”
“Gotta agree there. Comes across as too establishment, too—what’s the word I want? Too hidebound.”
“Pre-
cisely
. Hidebound. That could be why her willingness to take on the ethical risk of fucking a client seems so out of character.”
“Maybe the thinking there is that Sebastian’s powerful enough to make an ethics committee look the other way.”
“Yeah, but if he’s so god-almighty powerful wouldn’t you think he could convert legal clients into management clients on his own? You know what I’m saying? Shouldn’t her name be Lorelei? What’s up with
that
?”
The muffled roar of an electric hand dryer provides momentary relief to Laurel’s sensibilities. And when the two conjecturists are audible again, they’re already slanting their righteous opinions at another target and moving out of earshot.
Laurel doesn’t make a move until she’s sure they’re gone. At the height of the verbal drubbing she was tempted to climb up on the toilet and sneak a peek at the pair over the partition, but confrontation was never a possibility. What would have been the point? They touched on no issue she hasn’t already examined and reexamined in the small hours of several nights in a row; their only contention that cannot be wholly ignored is David’s alleged underhandedness.
When she does vacate the stall, she finds herself in the midst of enough other guests to indicate the break between entrée and dessert is underway. She scrubs her hands as though prepping for surgery and dries them with all deliberate speed. She takes her time adjusting the bodice of her dress and finger-combing stray tendrils of hair back into place. She smoothes her stockings, repositions the ankle straps of her shoes, checks the fasteners of her earrings. Thus armed, she’s thinking in terms of rejoining a fray rather than a party when she exits the ladies’ room.
Colin intercepts her within three steps of the door. “I was startin’ to think you weren’t coming back.”
If this was an actual concern, his demeanor doesn’t show it. The scowl is gone, replaced by the smile she finds so hard to resist. But now is not the time to follow natural inclinations—not with bathroom gossips watching, listening, poising to distort. She smiles back at him and accepts his guiding hand on her elbow in a manner she hopes conveys nothing extra.
Nate and Amanda are missing when they return to the table. “At my suggestion they’re workin’ the room. Quite a few famous blokes Amanda didn’t meet first time round,” Colin says and goes to work on his crème brûlée.
Laurel holds out for fruit and cheese. It arrives along with a tray of chocoLAtes just as the formal tribute portion of the evening is beginning.
At the podium set up near the head table, David taps the microphone and asks for quiet that comes sooner than might be expected from a crowd that’s been taking full advantage of an open bar and generous pourings of wine.
As expected, David profiles Rayce Vaughn in an entirely positive way, emphasizing the future rather than the past. Six or more subsequent speakers echo his careful praise, none requiring close attention. But when Colin is introduced and moves to the podium, Laurel’s focus sharpens all on its own.
Colin could be referring to himself as he extols Rayce for tenacity, determination, persistence, perseverance—forgivable redundancies considering the subject matter. He only alludes to Rayce’s addictions and self-destructive tendencies; his references to Rayce’s rehab and ongoing recovery are similarly veiled, but no one could possibly mistake his meaning or fail to hear the love and respect in his delivery.
“And now I give you the man himself, a legend in his own mind . . . Rayce Vaughn!” Colin pulls a mock-reticent Rayce from his chair, lifts one of Rayce’s arms high in the universal posture of champions and the room erupts with the noise of 250 people standing in ovation.
Rayce begins in solemn mien after the room quiets down. “I wish first to express my profound gratitude . . . for the absence of antler display here tonight. Given the testosterone level of those in attendance, I was afraid we’d have at least one clash.”
“The night’s still young,” a voice calls out to a short burst of laughter and a few rude animal noises.