"Rita," said Cornelia, patting the older woman's curly head. Delight flooded every cell of her size-two body. She'd hoped to get a little dirt on her nemesis, but now she sensed there was a landfill overflowing with it. "I can see you're in pain. You need someone to talk to. Why don't we go out for a drink?"
At first, Wyatt thought that the twenty-something girls across the fluorescent-lit subway car were staring at him. Then he realized that Lucy was the object of their infatuation. Of course she was. She was enviably chic, in a well-cut Libertine blazer and skinny jeans. They probably recognized her from the pages of last month's
Vogue
.
"Forgot to tell you," she said offhandedly. She hadn't noticed the girls. "Margaux Irving's office called. They'd like me to auction off the gown I'm going to wear to the Forum Ball. You know, the gown I've been working on with Doreen and Eloise. All proceeds go to the museum. Of course, I told them I'd be honored."
Wyatt felt his spirits lift. The one salve for his conscience was witnessing her growing success as a designer. "That's terrific. Just think, you'll be up there, onstage, in front of the fashion world, in the gown
you made
--"
"Alongside gowns by Ralph Rucci, Vera Wang, Ralph Lauren--" Lucy gulped, looking into his eyes with sudden panic. "Wyatt, it'll be like a battle of the peacocks up there! What the hell was I thinking?"
26
Status: URGENT
Subject: will be 20 minutes late xoooxxxoo
C
ornelia had spent an hour pulling together the sexy secret agent look. Stepping out of her Town Car into the dank morning rush-hour air of Midtown Manhattan, she turned up the collar on her trench coat and tucked the incriminating manila envelope into her Louis Vuitton tote. Inside it was more ammo on Lucy Ellis than she'd ever dreamed of having in her arsenal.
Just two days earlier, after convincing a woebegone Rita to join her for drinks at a dive bar around the corner from her "salon," she'd gotten Lucy's mother--
Lucy's mother! It still seemed too delicious to be true
--to spill everything. Dayville, Nola Sinclair, Wyatt's insane attempt to create the perfect socialite--it finally all made sense, Lucy's sudden emergence on the scene and Wyatt's unwillingness to take Cornelia back.
I was too much woman for him
, she realized now. Wyatt apparently preferred a girl who'd take his orders, say his lines, play her part, and in Lucy he'd found a flesh-and-blood blowup doll. Cornelia had assured Rita endlessly that Lucy's secrets would be kept in the vault. But the morning after the drunken girl talk, a Sunday, Cornelia's PA had done some online digging to find an incriminating photo of an unnamed cater-waiter crashing through Nola's runway--now the contents of her manila envelope. Cornelia had always had a sneaking feeling that Lucy looked familiar, and now she knew why. You had to look at the photo under a magnifying glass to identify the girl, but Cornelia had a feeling the readers of
Townhouse
would do just that.
She slid into the ripped pleather booth of Midway Diner, wrinkling her $50,000 nose at the thick smell of ketchup and fried eggs.
"I'm on a deadline," said Mallory Keeler as soon as Cornelia sat down.
"Didn't you get my text, sweetie?" Cornelia asked. "Terrible traffic from uptown."
"I came from uptown, sweetie."
"Did you? Well, I'm sorry," Cornelia said. She smiled, hoping to move the conversation back onto friendlier terrain. She still hated Mallory for humiliating her by choosing the Interloper over her at Saturday's
Townhouse
shoot. It had taken a great deal of pride-swallowing just to pick up the phone and dial Mallory's office. But this was worth it. "You look pretty, Mal. Loving that choker." The choker actually looked like something you'd buy on Canal Street for five bucks, Cornelia thought, but then, what did this dowdy editor know about style? It was still bizarre to her that Mallory was tight with Theo Galt.
"You excited about the perfume launch, Cornelia? I hear your face will be spread across a billboard in Times Square, impossible to miss."
"I know. Can you believe it? And we're giving away a bottle in all the Fashion Forum's swag bags."
"I heard, I heard. And you're thinking about doing a reality show?"
Cornelia nodded her head. "It's so crazy. I don't know how all this happened, you know? One minute Patrick's snapping my photo at some parties, the next thing I know I'm, like, a
brand
."
"Ask Daphne, your publicist," Mallory deadpanned. "She probably has some idea how it happened."
The 'tude! It was such a drag when wallflower types couldn't get over their jealousy issues, but that was the story of Cornelia's life.
A waitress with a distressing number of facial piercings materialized next to their table, pad in hand. "More coffee?" she asked, and Mallory nodded. "And what'll you have?"
"Do you have espresso?"
"This look like a Starbucks?" asked the waitress, lisping around the enormous stake she'd paid to have driven through her tongue.
"I'll have half a grapefruit." It peeved Cornelia that the waitress gave no sign that she recognized her, but that would change soon. For a split second, as she pulled her own silver out of her Vuitton tote and handed the bewildered waitress her porcelain bowl (she'd never eaten in such a dive before, and wouldn't dream of trusting the dishwashers' standards of cleanliness), Cornelia wondered why being famous mattered to her as much as it did. But the thought evaporated quickly, as it had before, leaving her to the task at hand. She gave Mallory a cunning little smile and rested her elbows on the flecked linoleum table.
"So what's up?" Mallory crossed both arms. "Why did you invite me here? This doesn't seem like your type of breakfast boite."
"I didn't want to be seen," Cornelia whispered. "I really, really shouldn't be getting involved." She whipped off her oversize sunglasses. "But I want to bury the hatchet. You didn't know what you were doing at the shoot this weekend. Lucy Ellis conned you along with everyone else. So . . . I forgive you."
"Very big of you," Mallory muttered.
Cornelia chose to ignore the sarcasm. "When I heard that you were writing an expose about the fraud Lucy has perpetrated, I thought I owed you a sit-down."
"The fraud? What fraud?"
"Sorry, were you hoping to keep your expose top secret? I'm afraid the word is out."
Mallory sighed. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."
"But it's the talk of the town!" Cornelia lowered her voice, as if the diner's seedy patrons were undercover for
Town & Country
. "Mallory Keeler's riveting tell-all--it's all anybody could talk about last night."
"Come on, Cornelia, enough. I'm not planning any tell-all, and I'm not enjoying your little game. Some of us have jobs that require actual working, you know."
The audacity. Cornelia could barely speak. But then she envisioned the cover of
Townhouse
bearing Lucy's humiliating runway photo, and found her voice. "If you're not already planning to write the article, you should."
Mallory just shook her head. "You've made it clear that you don't like Lucy." Cornelia bristled, but said nothing. "But that doesn't mean you can make up vengeful stories--"
"Make up stories?" Cornelia was unable to keep her fury under lock and key any longer. "You know what, Mallory? Your dinky magazine doesn't deserve an article this big. Keep writing your little fluff pieces. I'll bring this to the
Times
." She stood up quickly and grabbed her bag. Why had she expected this pasty little nobody to grasp the injustice Lucy had committed? "I thought you were a serious journalist. Clearly I was wrong."
Mallory studied her face. Then she gestured for Cornelia to sit down again. "Okay, I'm listening. What've you got?"
That's more like it.
Cornelia settled back onto the bench, relieved. With a Cheshire cat smile, she slid the manila envelope across the table.
Thirty blocks downtown, in Parker Lewis's tranquil cream and charcoal gray master bedroom, Fernanda cracked open one eye and nearly purred with contentment. She took a moment to drink in the gentle light seeping around the edges of his window shades, the deliciousness of their entangled limbs and Parker's warm breath on the back of her neck. Her hair was in sex knots and her face was fright-eningly devoid of makeup, but for once, Fernanda didn't care.
She was engaged. Well, no, but as good as engaged. Parker, last night over dinner in front of the roaring fire, had told her that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Her relief had bordered on ecstasy. She didn't even shout out her ring preferences (a cushion-cut bordered by two sapphires, no skimping on the carats) right away.
"I'm holding you hostage," he murmured, stirring behind her. "I'm thinking homemade blueberry pancakes, maybe a snowy walk with Mr. Fursnickety, and then we light a big fire and spend the rest of the day curled up right here."
"I have no say in the matter?" she teased, but it was music to her ears. She dreaded calling in sick again, especially since her boss at Christie's had just come through with that raise, but there was no real debate inside Fernanda's head.
"If you want," said Parker, "you can have banana pancakes. But otherwise, no, you have no say."
Fernanda rolled over to kiss his neck. "What about work for you? You don't need to go in?"
"Work can wait for a day," he said, sitting up. "Work's not what's really important, is it?" He kissed her forehead, and then swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Now, stay right there. Breakfast is coming to you this morning."
Just one more thing to love about Parker, thought Fernanda, cozying back down under the covers. He was so senior--not to mention successful--at the bank that he no longer had to put in face time or deal with a boss breathing down his neck. He could afford to be laissez-faire. Not like the junior investment banker she'd dated who was one step away from wearing diapers on the job to avoid time-wasting bathroom breaks. Parker seemed to have a grip on the whole life-work balance thing.
That he was twenty years older seemed only a selling point to Fernanda, as was the fact that he wasn't what you'd call "conventionally handsome." Although she found him adorable, to the rest of the world Parker was undeniably squatty, hairy, and bow-legged. His face had character, as her mother put it, but the character was comic: slightly bulbous nose, toothy grin, eyes set a bit too close together. Fernanda was the looker of the pair, which worked just fine for her. It meant she wasn't as painfully aware of the lines and creases that her dermatologist couldn't erase. Parker managed to make her feel hot and young.
"You're spoiling me, Park," she called after him, propping herself up on her elbows. "What did I do to deserve the royal treatment?"
"Like you really have to ask?" he yelled back from the kitchen.
She felt such a rush of joy that her chest almost ached. Sternly, Fernanda reminded herself not to get carried away. She wasn't married yet. There could be complications. After all, traces of the ex-wife were everywhere. She'd found an old tube of mascara in the bathroom cabinet, and even a few stray tampons in one of the drawers. The ex's name was still on half the mail Parker received.
It was hard not to get a teensy bit excited, though. She'd met his friends, and they seemed to like her. He'd charmed her mother, which hadn't been difficult, and made an effort to get to know Max. She'd helped him make his cozy new Tribeca pad feel like a home (while secretly plotting their triumphant return to uptown life, where they really belonged).
Even before last night's conversation, the temptation to call St. James's--anonymously, of course--to check if they had any Saturdays available for weddings next fall had proved too strong. She'd held herself back from trying on bridal dresses at Vera Wang, but only just. If he proposed, she could have all the details of their wedding planned in under a week, right down to the
Fernanda & Parker
typeface on the matchboxes. She pulled herself out of bed, traipsing naked across the room to retrieve her BlackBerry from her bag. The only thing separating her from a perfect day was this phone call to her boss, so it was better to get it done with early--preferably while she could still leave her feeble excuse on a voice mail.
Five missed calls. Four from Cornelia--her friend had a habit of calling incessantly until Fernanda answered--and one from her mother. But first, her boss. Thankfully, she got his voice mail. "Martin, this is Fernanda. I'm afraid I'm not feeling well again, and I don't think I can make it to work." Her voice was still gravelly with sleep, which conveniently made her sound ravaged by bad sinuses. "I'll be checking e-mail, you know, between naps and a doctor's appointment. See you tomorrow."
"Breakfast is served," Parker said, appearing in the doorway with a rattan tray loaded with food. Pancakes, a small pitcher of OJ, and steaming hot coffee--Fernanda's mouth watered. No wonder she'd gained five pounds since they'd met. Normally she'd throw herself on the Jill Pettijohn cleanse immediately, but Parker said he liked her better with some meat on her bones--and Fernanda actually believed him.