The Knockoff (32 page)

T
illy was out of breath when she burst into the kitchen the morning of the big
Glossy
wedding.

“Did you run here from the Upper West Side, Til?” Imogen expertly flipped over a buckwheat-and-banana pancake on the griddle.

“Just from the shop on the corner. I’m out of shape. Sue me. Have you seen the cover of the
Post
?”

“Not yet. We’ve been crazy this morning getting ready for Eve’s wedding.”

“I don’t know if there’s gonna be a wedding!” Tilly cackled, doing a brief Irish jig.

“Don’t be silly. Every reporter and socialite east of the Hudson River is going to be at the Plaza this afternoon.”

“Not if the groom is involved in a big-ass sex scandal.” Tilly plunked the Saturday
New York Post
down on the counter. Andrew’s picture was on the right side of the cover, a look of shock on his face, as though he had been ambushed coming out of his apartment.

Imogen felt the quick, joyful sensation that accompanied the promise of gossip about one’s enemies.

On the left side of the tabloid was a picture of a pretty blond woman in lingerie. The headline blared: SHIVER ME TINDERS!

“What does that even mean? Did you read it yet?”

Tilly gulped down the glass of water Imogen had placed on the counter.

“Andrew has been sexting this girl here on the cover for the past six months. Her name is Bree-Ann. From Queens. Just turned eighteen…last week. Long story short, he was sexting with an underage girl that he met on Tinder.”

Imogen opened the paper. The story was as salacious as Tilly promised.

Apparently, a source hacked Andrew’s phone, got into his Tinder account and gave it to the
Post
.

“Look at these text messages,” Imogen said, reading down the page in disbelief.

“Sexts. They call them sexts.”

“Whatever.”

>>>>I want you to punish me. I’m a bad, bad boy.<<<<

>>>>How bad are you?<<<<

>>>>SO bad you’ll need to spank me and tell me I’ve been naughty.<<<<

>>>>What else do you want me to do to you?<<<<

>>>>I want you to dress up like my mommy and put a ***** in my ****<<<<

Imogen slammed the paper closed.

“I can’t read any more.”

Tilly had tears streaming down her face. Her shoulders shook with silent laughter.

“When you dated Andrew, did he ever ask you to dress up like his mommy and put a blank in his blank?”

“He most certainly did not.” Imogen thought back for a moment. He
had
asked her to spank him once when he came home particularly drunk, but that had been the extent of their rough sex play.

“So the wedding must be off.” She reopened the newspaper.

“It doesn’t say anything about whether it’s on or off. It says no comment from Eve and Andrew.”

Imogen ran into the sitting room to grab her iPhone from where it was charging. Nothing from Eve.

As she went to dial Ashley’s number she saw that the girl was already calling her. Both disposed with pleasantries and hellos and instead blurted out at the same time:

“Did you see the newspaper?” Imogen said.

“Did you get the Google Alert?” Ashley said.

“No—Yes. I mean—Yes, I saw the story.” Imogen asked, “Have you talked to her?”

“No, she isn’t answering her phone.”

“There can’t possibly still be a wedding.”

“There can’t be! But ohhhhhhhh, it will be so embarrassing.”

For a moment Imogen felt sorry for Eve.

“Wait, I just got a text. Hold on…Wow. I mean
wow
.”

“What? What did it say?”

“It’s from Perry. Says the wedding is on. Get to the Plaza ASAP.”

Imogen heard a beep on her end of the line and looked at her own screen.

“I just got a text too.”

“From who?”

“Addison Cao. It says, ‘TELL ME EVERYTHING!’ ”

“What kind of girl walks down the aisle with a guy who was on the cover of the
New York Post
for asking a seventeen-year-old girl to spank him?” Bridgett mused as she grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter inside the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel.

A police barricade surrounded the main entrance of the Plaza, blocking off Grand Army Plaza and, ironically, the Pulitzer Fountain, to keep the scrum of photographers and reporters (the few who hadn’t been invited to the wedding) at bay. Bridgett, Imogen and a reluctant Alex managed to avoid the mess outside by slipping into a back entrance.

“Why hasn’t he been arrested yet?” Bridgett asked about Andrew, lowering her voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you think he paid off the cops?”

“I don’t think they have enough evidence yet,” Imogen said. “The girl is eighteen now and no one can prove that this is definitely Andrew’s phone.”

“Do you think she’ll actually walk down the aisle?” Bridgett asked as the two women glided into the hotel’s imposing lobby. Only Bridgett would wear white to someone else’s wedding, dismissing the tradition of “bridal color” as patriarchal, then promising there was nothing else in her closet save for the ivory Lanvin sheath dress. Against all instructions, Imogen wore a simple black Jason Wu gown.

If the scene inside the landmark luxury hotel was any indication, Eve was determined the show would go on.

No one had spotted the bride, but she was all anyone could talk about. Imogen and Bridgett barely wanted to chat with each other when eavesdropping on all of the other guests was so satisfying.
Glossy
girls wound their way through the room, shooting live video with their Google Glass of all the guests in their wedding finery…all available to BUY IT NOW! The whine of a string quartet floated through the air, underscored by the rustle of elegant (and brightly colored!) dresses.

Standing at the bar in the Terrace Room, Imogen surveyed this prewedding reception. She’d always found the Plaza a little bit vanilla. It was so Eve. It never moved her. Light glinted off the Charles Winston crystal chandeliers, casting shadows across the playful Renaissance frescoes painted on the ceiling. Even the decor gave a wink and a smile, as if it was in on the joke of this wedding. No expense had been spared. Rather, Andrew’s trust fund had spared no expense. The high-top tables were covered in pearl-edged linens. Gigantic lilies filled oversized crystal vases in the centers. Eve had planned for an hour of cocktails before the ceremony in order to maximize the impact of hosting the live event on the
Glossy
website. Imogen couldn’t complain about that. She’d always liked the idea of guests getting a little squishy before having to sit down to watch the vows. It felt almost British in the midst of this all-too-American wedding.

Across the room, Imogen saw Aerin Chang chatting with a group of handsome young Asian men in tuxedos. Looking gorgeous in a bias-cut navy silk gown that revealed a petite and compact figure, slashed across by a white cashmere wrap, Aerin raised a hand to wave excitedly as she caught sight of Imogen looking her way. Large gold knots adorned her tiny ears. She listened to an impassioned speech from a gentleman to her right, glancing past him and over to Imogen before politely excusing herself.

“Birdie, darling, will you go look after my husband for a bit? Make sure he doesn’t get too tipsy on his afternoon off work,” Imogen said to Bridgett as she cut across the room. Alex glanced at her warily to warn her that he didn’t want to be left for too long. She smooched the air between them. At least he’d come.

Imogen leaned in to kiss Aerin on both cheeks. “I didn’t know you’d be here,” she said carefully. She paused for a moment and then decided this was not the best venue to pump Aerin for information about the magazine deal.

“I think Eve invited half of New York.” Aerin giggled conspiratorially.

“But are the two of you friends?” She had to ask.

Aerin shook her head. “No. We have some friends in common, so I know her socially, but I definitely wouldn’t call us friends. I’m so glad to see you here though. I was about to email you anyway to see if we could have another lunch.” Aerin dropped her voice and looked around. “Do you have any inside scoop?”

On what? The sale? The wedding?

“None.” Imogen threw up her hands.

Aerin mirrored the gesture. “Me neither, but it feels like the right thing to ask here, right? I mean, I get it. It’s hard to call off a wedding. Easy to end an engagement, but once the guests have booked their plane tickets and everything is paid for, you just walk down that aisle no matter what.”

“That’s true.” Bridgett had once called off an engagement to a shipping mogul twice her age six months before her wedding and then thrown herself a wild party with two hundred of her closest friends at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc in the South of France because the down
payment for the reception was nonrefundable. The ex-fiancé obviously was not invited.

“Are you enjoying yourself so far?” Imogen asked.

Aerin smiled and sighed out the side of her mouth. “To be honest it feels good to get dressed up and talk to men I don’t work with. I’ve been enduring a wicked divorce for the past six months.”

Imogen didn’t know what to say, so she said the first thing that popped into her mind. “I’m sorry. I had no idea. Of course. I don’t know you very well. But. How can I say this? Your life looks so perfect on Instagram.”

“Everything looks better on Instagram, doesn’t it?” Aerin said. “Isn’t that what all that is for…the version of ourselves we wish we felt like all the time. I have to say, yours looks even more perfect. I look at your Instagram and I think you must be the most put-together woman in the world.”

“I’m not,” Imogen admitted, more to herself than to Aerin Chang.

“I had”—the young woman paused—“a feeling…we should talk soon. There’s something I really need to tell you.”
I am sure there is
, Imogen thought.

Imogen politely kissed the woman on the cheek one more time and excused herself to sit next to Alex for the ceremony, picking up bits and pieces of conversation along the way, all of it speculating about whether Eve would walk down the aisle or not.

The chatter continued right up until the lights flashed and a bell dinged, indicating that guests should take their seats. The show was about to begin. Imogen’s husband put an affectionate hand on her thigh. Bridgett lazily texted Rashid #SEXYSELFIE. Imogen scanned the rows of white lacquered chairs before the lights dimmed. The slimmer half of the
Glossy
staff was scattered about the room, all clutching the arms of equally picture-perfect dates, some boyfriends, some obviously gay besties who wouldn’t miss the opportunity to get a front-row seat to the biggest scandal of the year. Andrew’s terrible mother sat in the front row, her face frozen in an over-Botoxed look of perpetual concern. There were a smattering of lower-level fashion designers mixed in with a dash of socialites old and young.

Imogen felt a whirring above her head. Looking up, she dug her
nails into Alex’s arm. He glanced upward and whispered, “We’re under attack.” Then he added, “They’re drone cameras.”

“They’re what?”

“Drone video cameras,” Alex repeated.

All eyes turned upward. Guests pointed and yelped in disbelief tinged with fear.

“Like what the army uses?” Imogen asked her husband with suspicion.

“Exactly,” her unflappable husband replied, obviously impressed. He pulled out his own phone to take a picture. “Do you think I can take video in here?” Alex wasn’t even bothering to whisper anymore. No one was.

“I think it’s mandatory at an event like this,” Imogen replied. She added reluctantly: “Don’t forget to tag at-Glossy.”

But of course Eve wouldn’t let a little sex scandal or the whir of robotic photographers steal her wedding thunder. Today was all about her. This was being live-streamed to the world, and damn it, she was the star.

Someone flipped a switch and the room plunged into darkness. Confused, the drones stayed in place as a spotlight hit the mahogany doors at the start of the aisle. Except it wasn’t an aisle, not in the traditional sense. No, Eve would walk down a bright red carpet. Pachelbel’s Canon played as Eve appeared, basking in the lamp’s glow and the attention of an entire room. For a moment, even Imogen sucked in her breath at how beautiful Eve looked there in the spotlight, her shoulders and décolletage shimmering, her hair pulled into the perfect side chignon and the dress sweeping down over her narrow hips, the train trailing ever so slightly out the door.

As the lights came back up and Eve confidently took her first step down the aisle, the room erupted in chaos. Drones buzzed busily overhead. Phones replaced faces, held aloft to capture the moment to be posted on Twitter, Facebook, Keek and Instagram, all hashtagged, as decreed in the program, #GlossyWedding. Through it all, Eve remained laser-focused on the front of the room with a smile that appeared painted across her face with a bold red lipstick.

Sweat poured visibly down the sides of Andrew’s neck as Eve
advanced. He looked more like he had when he and Imogen dated. His face, puffy and shiny, no doubt from the liquid courage it took for him to face the next few hours, was frozen in a look of terror. Imogen imagined the riot act Eve had read him that morning. She was surprised actually that
he
hadn’t fled, but the pull of his public life and the embarrassment he would face leaving town was too much for his fragile ego.
What a plonker
, she thought. His face twitched as he stood there; Imogen recognized it as a sure giveaway that Andrew had indulged in another of his old vices, cocaine, probably just before the ceremony. He shuddered as Eve approached.

Eve was halfway down the aisle when the music stopped, midnote.
This is it
, Imogen thought.
This is where she leaves him. This is where she walks out
. And for a moment, she had a new respect for Eve, even if she had choreographed a very public exit.

But no.

Pop music began blaring from hidden speakers.
What was this song?
It was familiar, but Imogen couldn’t quite place it. From seats lining the aisle,
Glossy
staffers, all in bright pink dresses (and frightfully skinny), rose and formed a circle around Eve. There they stood, feet hip-width apart, swinging their hips left and then right and crossing their arms in front of their chests just as the chorus swelled: “Looking so crazy in love’s/Got me looking, got me looking so crazy in love.”