Love and Chaos (31 page)

My phone is ringing. I look at it: Cornelia? What does she want?

“Hello?”

“Angie! Sweetie. Emergency! I need you. The Met Ball is tonight, and I picked up this fucking douchebag PA in France who just left me high and dry, the hairy bitch. I’ll pay you twice the usual; I just need you to organize the car and things like that. How quickly can you get here?”

I look at the time. It’s 5:00
P.M.
“I’m in Brooklyn. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

“I am so fucking sick of everyone living in Brooklyn. Make it faster!”

And click, she hangs up.

CHAPTER
39

Cornelia lives in a loft apartment in the West Village. It’s all boutiques and trees and tiny cafés, the kind of picture-perfect Manhattan neighborhood that makes you feel a mixture of longing and resentment.

She’s also going through her “downtown intellectual slum” phase, or at least that’s what her mother told my mother. (Cornelia’s mother is a Boston society doyenne who married Cornelia’s much older and very rich father, moved to New York, and had Cornelia and her brother. She moved back to Beacon Hill in Boston two years ago, about a minute after he died.)

The loft was professionally decorated, naturally, and it’s perfectly disheveled arty chic. Piles of books (that she hasn’t read) everywhere, lots of bijou Paris flea-market finds resting on $15,000 side tables, thick plush carpets and big fat sofas, you know the drill. Slightly overstuffed with things, slightly too impeccable, and all with that immaculate sparkle you only get with a full-time housekeeper.

I’m buzzed in and arrive to find the loft in a state of uproar.

“FUCK!” I can hear Cornelia screaming from her bedroom. “This is a FUCKING nightmare! Why does this shit always happen to me?”

“Hi, Cornie!” I call. “It’s me! Angie!”

I quickly kiss her makeup artist hello. His name is Keith. We bonded last year during the holiday season, when Cornie went out every single goddamn night and I was the idiot running around picking up the right shoes and trying to help her borrow the right jewelry and making sure she had spare Spanx and extra MAC Face and Body Foundation and ugh,
everything
.

But the pressure of that is nothing compared to tonight. The Met Ball is a $25,000-a-seat gala held every year to celebrate the opening of the Metropolitan Museum’s fashion exhibit at the Costume Institute. For the fashion world, it’s like the Oscars plus Christmas plus New Year’s Eve combined, and everyone who is anyone attends, from designers to
Vogue
editors to models to fashion-aware celebrities, and even sports stars, all wearing the most exquisite, glamorous dresses you’ve ever seen in your goddamn life. If you’re into fashion, the Met Ball is your mecca.

“Hi, sweetie,” Keith whispers. “We’re in for a
rough
night.”

“Angie!” screams Cornie. “Come here! Fuck!”

I run through the living room and down the tapestry-lined hallway into the pristine white-on-white master bedroom, through a walk-in closet (which, honestly, is bigger than my bedroom and would make you cry with envy) to the dressing room, where Cornie is staring at herself in the mirror while getting her hair blow-dried by Bibi, her personal hairdresser.

“Bibi, stop,” she orders, clicking her fingers. “Angie. Lauren just texted me. That bitch Olivia is wearing the same Zac that I was going to wear. Little whore. I need to speak to Zac about it. Get him on the phone.”

“Um, okay—” I walk back out to Keith. “I need Zac Posen’s number.”

“Well, only
Cornelia
has
that
.” Keith has a habit of speaking in italics. “She’s
freaking out
. She
only
got a ticket because this
Rutherford guy
is on the
board
or some shit.” He lowers his voice. “This is
way
out of her league.”

“Angie!” Cornelia is screaming. “Do you have Zac yet?”

Suddenly, I understand why she’s hysterical. Cornelia’s been swimming around the lower echelons of the socialite food chain for a couple of years. She’s rich, but not superrich. She has a car service but not a permanent driver, a hairdresser but not a stylist. She’s ambitious: she wants to be a Page Six name, have a purse named after her, open a lifestyle boutique in the Hamptons, and launch a makeup line in Japan. Tonight is her chance to climb up the society ladder. This is a job interview.

I march back into Cornelia’s dressing room and try to sound authoritative and like I’m not lying. “Can you give me his new number? I only have his old one.”

“Get with the now, Angie, he changed it, like, six months ago.” Still gazing at herself in the mirror, Cornelia hands me her cell. “Tell him if Olivia is wearing the pink then I need to know, because I have it in the yellow, and tell him to tell me if Lauren is lying to me because I will fucking cut that bitch dead tonight.”

I nod and back out of the room while it’s ringing.

Finally, on the eleventh ring, it goes to voice mail.

“Hello, this is Angie James calling for Mr. Posen on behalf of Cornelia Pace. She has an urgent query about a dress for the Met Ball this evening. Can you please call me back?” I leave my number and hang up.

Who am I kidding? Zac Posen is never going to call me back. He doesn’t care what Cornelia is wearing. She’s not important enough.

Then I remember. Candie Stokes dresses all the top-tier socialites. And if she doesn’t dress them, she’ll still know what they’re wearing, that’s her job. And though she’d never answer a call from me, her third personal assistant sure as hell will.

So for the second time today, I call Edward.

“Edward!”

“Angie! Sweetface! Are the flowers okay?”

“They’re perfect! So perfect! But, um … I need your help again. Can you please, please call the assistant you always speak to at Candie Stokes’s office and find out who is wearing Zac Posen to the Met tonight? I know it sounds weird, but I’m with Cornelia Pace, and…”

“Ooh! I love a socialite emergency! Of course I will! But only if you promise not to move to L.A. I wanna be BFFs!”

Tears flood my eyes. He’s so lovely. But I have to leave. The chaos of working for Cornelia is a great distraction, but I know that the minute I’m alone, thoughts of Sam will lurch back into my head and I’ll just start crying again. It happened twice on the subway over here, and I looked like a total freak. I need a fresh start.

I can’t say anything, but Edward doesn’t notice. “I’ll call you in three minutes! Stand by the phone!”

As promised, three minutes later he calls back. And the news isn’t good.

I walk back into the dressing room, where Keith is now prepping Cornelia’s skin with a lymphatic drainage massage. She’s convinced it makes her cheekbones stand out.

“Cornelia, Olivia is wearing the pink. Natalie and Anna are wearing Zac, too. And I found out what all Candie Stokes’s other clients are wearing tonight.” I hand over the list. “Voilà.”

“Oh, Angie, you are the best!” She reads the list and looks up, a note of panic in her voice. “Those bitches have taken everything. I have nothing! Oh, my GOD!”

She gets up off the chair and makes a bloodcurdling wail, then sinks to the floor, her hand clutching at her hair. “ARRRRRRRRRRRRRGHH!”

I exchange a glance with Bibi and Keith, who are their usual mute passive selves. Someone needs to take charge of this situation.

“Cornelia, calm down. We can come up with a solution,” I say. “Okay, so all the big guns are gone. Let’s call someone newer. A designer who is up-and-coming.”

“I don’t want to wear up-and-fucking-coming!” Cornelia is lying on the floor, screaming into the carpet. “I want to wear Oscar de la fucking Renta! Or Armani fucking Privé! Or Atelier fucking Versace! Or—”

“What about that guy who used to do the cutting for Vera Wang?” I interrupt her before she can insert “fuck” into every couture brand in existence. “I read in
Women’s Wear Daily
that he just started out on his own.”

“Vera and I had a fight when she wouldn’t design my dress for junior prom the way I wanted it. I fucking hate that bitch and I hate everyone who works for her,” says Cornelia, her voice muffled by the carpet.

“Okay…” I rack my brains for a second. There’s someone else, I know there’s someone else. “Wait! I know! Sarah Drake! She worked for Narciso Rodriguez, you know?”

“I love him.” Cornelia flips over. “But he has those bitch actress groupies who always wear him.”

Man, I am tired of Cornelia calling every other woman in the world a bitch. “Well, she started her own label, Drake, about six months ago. I met her intern Philly Meyer in Starbucks when I was, uh, interviewing in the Fashion District! We’re Facebook friends! I can get in touch with her in ten minutes.”

Cornelia looks up at me, her pale blue eyes shining with hope.

“Do it.”

And it works. By 6:30
P.M.
, Philly Meyer is couriering three dresses straight from Sarah Drake’s atelier on Thirty-seventh Street to Cornelia’s apartment. The dresses are on loan, for free: it’s good PR for Sarah Drake. Cornelia isn’t exactly A-list or even B-list, but anyone going to the Met Ball has fashion cachet today.

Thank God Cornelia is sample size. I guess all that coke is good for something.

She tries each dress, one by one, and parades out in front of Bibi, Keith, and me.

The first dress is called, according to the Sarah Drake–branded name tag that came with the delivery, The Bettina. It’s pale pink and strapless, making her look like an upside-down tulip, and not in a good way. It would be perfect on someone edgier, but not Cornelia. She’s too white-bread.

“Amay-zing!” sing Bibi and Keith. Jeez. So not true.

“No. A bit garden-y,” I say. Cornelia nods obediently and takes the dress off. She trusts my opinion? That’s a surprise.

The second dress is called The Shadow. It’s black, sleeveless, and divinely dramatic with a high neck, but her shoulders aren’t broad enough to carry it off, so it just sort of hangs down from her face, making her look like a bat-nun hybrid.

“Ohmygod!” chorus Bibi and Keith.

“No good for photos,” I say. “Drowns your body.”

Again, Cornelia nods and obeys.

The third dress is called The Angel. And it’s just right. It’s an ivory column dress, extremely fitted with angular, slightly futuristic details, and elongates Cornelia’s figure perfectly, giving her an elegance and class that, between you and me, she sure as hell doesn’t possess in real life. She looks like Grace Kelly, if Grace Kelly was in
Blade Runner.

“Wow! Like, wow!” Bibi and Keith are orgasmic with joy.

“That’s stunning,” I say. “Shoes?”

“I want to wear the Louboutins,” Cornie says, looking at me slightly pleadingly, like I have to give her permission. I glance down: they’re burnished gold and absolutely beautiful.

“Fine. Bag?”

Cornelia promptly opens drawers containing over fifty evening bags. But none of them work. They’re all the wrong color, too big, too last season, too shiny, too tacky …

“I can run to Christian Louboutin,” I say. “Give me ten minutes—”

“Your clutch!” Cornelia interrupts. “The gold clutch I saw you with in the Minetta Tavern. Where is that?”

“Next to my coat…” I say, confused. “You want to borrow my clutch?”

“Yes. It’s perfect! It’s a talking point! It’s all soft and bunchy; it’ll be perfect next to the angularity of the dress! And because it’s not a big label, I’ll look effortlessly eclectic and unassuming, like those bitches who always end up on the best-dressed lists … not like I’ve just thrown money at the whole thing, because that’s so tacky, you know?” Cornelia does her best imploring face. “Please, Angie? Please?”

“Um, okay, sure.” I grab my clutch and empty the contents into my coat pockets. “It’s yours for the night. Now, we have thirty minutes until the car gets here. Keith, work your magic. Bibi, fix the hair. Cornelia, can I get you a Red Bull?”

“You’re acting weird,” Cornelia says a few minutes later, as she’s having foundation painstakingly brushed into her pores.

“I am?” I say. I’m crouched on the floor next to her, rearranging the two rejected dresses in tissue paper so they can be returned crease-free. “How?”

“Maybe not weird. But you’re … I don’t know. Different. Confident. Kind of take-charge. I mean, you were confident before, but not like this.… Before, I was never sure if you’d do something I asked you to do, or just walk away.”

“Ha,” I say. Without any mirth whatsoever.

“I guess you should never underestimate the life-altering power of a little scandal, huh?” Cornelia raises an eyebrow at me knowingly, then glances at her phone as she gets a text. “Oh, for fuck’s sake … It’s Roger. Some family crisis. He’s going to have to meet me there.”

“Family problem?”

“His son.” My heart stops for a second. Sam? “He’s going for some big job at a bank. Roger wants to have a drink with the chairman, to try to win him the job.”

That’s pretty obnoxious. And she definitely can’t mean Sam. So maybe he does have a brother.

“How old is his son?”

“Twenty-five, twenty-six, I don’t know. His name is Pete,” she says, then lowers her voice. “Rog actually has
two
sons, but the other isn’t talking to him.”

Sam! My Sam! I mean, not my Sam, but, oh never mind.

“No kidding. Why?”

“I don’t know. Something to do with the ex-wife. She was a fucking hippie, apparently. Always taking the boys to South America or Africa or whatever to do volunteer work. So pretentious. Just throw a fund-raiser, you know?”

“Right on…” I say, staring into space. So Sam is the product of a genuinely philanthropic mother and an overachieving, overbearing father. Huh. “Is, uh, the other kid a banker, too?”

“Nah. He’s traveling the world, finding himself, or something ridiculous like that. I think he wanted to be a doctor, but Rog wanted him to go into finance or law, something normal, you know? So they had some big fight.”

Who the fuck wouldn’t want their kid to be a doctor?

Suddenly, I remember something Cornelia said before she started talking about Sam’s father. Something that didn’t make sense.