Secret Society (12 page)

W
hen Lauren arrived at Phoebe's house that evening and met Phoebe's mother, Phoebe and Maia cooed over the necklace she was wearing: It was the first prototype that Sebastian Giroux's manufacturer in Red Hook had made, an onyx stone within a simple silver setting. Lauren loved it, but she was particularly excited that Phoebe and her mother liked it, too.

At Twilight, soon after the girls had ordered drinks, they were approached by a nightlife reporter, who asked them what they thought about the evening. Phoebe looked at Lauren, as if to make sure it was okay, and Lauren nodded that it was. They chatted for a few minutes about the night and the crowd. The reporter, a pretty girl in her twenties wearing a simple black dress and cat's eye glasses, motioned to her photographer,
who snapped a few shots and took their names.

“And you are a…?” the reporter asked Phoebe.

“Oh, um, I'm in—”

Lauren interrupted her. “She's an artist. Her show is going up next month at the Schrader Gallery.”

The reporter nodded, impressed. “And you?”

“Jewelry designer,” said Lauren. “This is one of my pieces.”

“Can I take a look?” Lauren lifted up her hair to offer a better view of the vintage-inspired chain and ornate clasp. The reporter stepped to Lauren's side to peer at the back of her neck. Lauren realized at that moment that her ankh tattoo was probably visible just above her collar.

“I thought so,” the reporter said quickly, before walking away. “Good luck, girls.”

 

In front of Twilight, a line stretched halfway down the block, and the doormen were relishing the fact that few were getting in. Patch had carefully hidden his camera inside his messenger bag so no one would see it. As a peace offering, Nick had emailed him, promising that he was on the VIP list and that he would have clearance to film. Patch went to the front of the line, as he had been instructed. A huge bouncer, a tall guy with a shaved head, looked at the list. “What's your name? Patch, you say?”

Patch nodded. “That's right.”

The bouncer scrutinized the list. “And it's just you?”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry—I'm not seeing it.”

“Can I look at it?”

“You're going to have to step to the back of the line.” Were they treating him this way because he wasn't wearing the right clothes? Because he didn't have an expensive haircut? He had to admit that his hair had gotten a bit scruffy, that it had been at least two months since his last cut.

“Are you joking? I'd be out here for three hours. Let me call my friend. He's the promoter. Nick Bell.”

“Yeah, sure. Everyone says they know Nick Bell.”

Patch pulled out his phone and scrolled to Nick's name. It went straight to voice mail. Patch left a short, annoyed message.

“You need to step away,” the bouncer said. “People are trying to get in.”

Patch stepped back two feet, as three women escorted by a banker type were shown past the velvet rope. His face started growing hot. He couldn't believe Nick had done this, invited him to his party (multiple times!) and then forgotten to put him on the list?

“Screw you,” Patch said to the bouncer, and walked away.

 

Phoebe and Lauren relaxed at their table, and Nick joined them, asking a waitress if she could get them set-ups for bottle service, all of which would be comped by the club. He
rolled his eyes at Phoebe as the waitress put out the bottles of vodka, mixers, ice, and glasses. Nick had told her earlier that he wasn't a believer in bottle service—he, like many others, thought it had ruined New York nightlife. It had made club owners interested only in how many bottles of premium vodka you could sell, which meant you had to pack the place with a bunch of rich guys in suits who could afford the thousand-dollar tabs. And besides, Phoebe thought, what was so special about going out if you had to mix your own drinks?

“Nice spread, Mr. Bell,” Phoebe teased him. “You never cease to amaze.”

He shrugged. “Whatever. You want something to eat? They have food here, too.”

“We're good,” Lauren said. “Phoebe's mom ordered in pizza for us. Which I totally love! I don't think my mom even knows pizza delivery exists. She would be like, ‘So I don't understand…where does it come from? Do you get it from Mario Batali?'” Lauren's shrill imitation of her mom was perfect. Phoebe had met Diana Mortimer only once, but it was dead-on.

“I can't believe I let my cell battery die,” Nick said, holding up his phone. “I am so pissed.”

Lauren handed him hers. “Use mine to check messages.”

“No, don't worry about it. I need a night off anyway. Apparently there's nothing for me to do here.”

“What do you mean?” Phoebe asked.

“It's ‘all taken care of,' as Jared keeps saying. That's not what this was supposed to be about. These nights are fun because they
are
challenging. Because you don't know how they're going to turn out.”

“So go underground again,” Phoebe said, nudging him.

“Maybe I will.”

“You might get some coverage for the party,” Lauren said.

Nick shrugged. “That's cool.” He thought about it for a second and then smiled. “Yeah, poor me. Successful club night, great crowd. Whatever. Let's get some more drinks.”

Alejandro came up behind them and covered Lauren's eyes. She giggled and allowed him to give her a kiss on the neck. Phoebe admired how she acted as if she were embarrassed but secretly loved the attention. And Phoebe had to admit that Alejandro was hot. He sat down next to Lauren, across from Phoebe and Nick.

Nick whispered to Phoebe, “He is so high.”

“What do you mean?” Phoebe always felt like she was clueless about what substances people were using. Half the time, she couldn't even tell if people were drunk; a girl in her European history class was supposedly drinking during the day, but Phoebe had never noticed a thing.

Nick continued, making it look like the two of them were sharing a private moment—which Phoebe wished they were. “Look at his eyes. Totally dilated. And see how his hand is shaking. I heard he's a cokehead.”

Phoebe felt stupid for not noticing, but more than that, she felt bad for Lauren. She figured, though, that her friend would know how to deal with it. Nick and Lauren seemed to have done most of their experimenting when they were younger, and had deemed most of it pretty extraneous to their enjoyment of Manhattan nightlife. Lauren had said a few weeks ago that it caused more problems in her life than it had solved, so these days she stuck to the occasional cocktail as her poison of choice.

Still, as Lauren and Alejandro were nuzzling each other, Phoebe wondered if her friend knew what she was getting into.

 

Later that night, Jared pulled Nick aside. “We have a problem. The envelope of cash that I had for the DJ disappeared.” He wiped his nose, which seemed to be running. Nick wondered if Jared was lying.

“You're joking. How much was it?”

“Three thousand dollars. It was for the whole night.”

“Three thousand in
cash!
Why was it in cash?”

Jared shrugged. “You know how these guys can be. It's all off the books.”

“So get the money from the club.”

“Can't do it. We had an incident last winter—someone sued the club because their fur coat was stolen, and they had to cover the deductible on their insurance. It was like ten grand. How stupid is that?”

Nick shook his head. “What should we do? Can we ask the Society for the money?”

“Who would we ask? The Administrator? She'd report us before she'd cut us a check.”

“You're right. How much did we take in at the door?”

“We took in two grand. But we need that for next week's party. With all the comps, we didn't make as much money as I would have liked. If we don't pay Carlo's buddy, we're screwed. He'll never work with us again—and he'll tell everyone in the business that we stiff people. Is there any way you could get the money from your parents?”

Nick shook his head. “I don't have access to that kind of cash. And I can't just ask them. Why is this my problem? Shouldn't you pay for half?”

“Nick, you were supposed to take care of stuff like this.”

“What are you talking about, Jared? That was never discussed.”

“You can figure something out. You have more access to resources. I know you can make it happen. We have until tomorrow at noon.” His phone buzzed. “Listen, I gotta get this. Let me know, okay?”

Nick suddenly had a headache. He had thought the whole point of being part of the Society was that he wouldn't have to worry about things like this. He couldn't ask his parents for the money, and he had certainly never stolen money from them. Well, maybe the odd twenty taken from his mother's
purse, but that wasn't a big deal, was it? And he didn't even do that anymore. He thought about where his dad kept his checkbook, in the right-hand desk drawer in his study. It would be easy for him to write a check out to cash, go and get the money, and no one would ever know. He could make up something, say it was for repairs on his Jeep or something.

He thought of the alternative. Could he walk away from this promoting gig? This was everything he had wanted, but it had been nothing but a letdown.

 

Much later, when Nick got home, he crept into his father's study. It was dark save for the streetlamps out the windows on Fifth Avenue; he flicked on a small Tiffany reading light on his father's mahogany desk. The right-hand drawer was unlocked; their employees had been with them for so long that the Bells never had a household in which theft was an issue. Nick carefully rifled around in the drawer to find two checkbooks, neatly encased in leather covers. He looked at the first one: “Georgiana and Parker Bell—Household Account #1.” That was the one he would use. Then he looked at the second one. Same bank, same type of checks: “The Bradford Trust Association—General Account.”

Nick remembered where he had seen that name: on the placard at the Colonial Club.

The Bradford Trust Association was another name for the Society.

L
auren had to admit that she may have gone a little bit overboard in the planning of her seventeenth birthday party. She had found an old supper club in the West Forties that was about to be closed, and she had been able to rent it out for a pittance. A caterer was brought in, and an event designer arranged for palm trees, vintage movie projections on the walls, black-and-white tablecloths, and hundreds of votives that would make the shabby club into a chic, retro hotspot. The night would be glimmering, glamorous, and totally not of today's New York. Lauren wanted it to be like the Stork Club or the Copacabana or El Morocco, all of which she had heard about from her grandmother—a night that harkened back to New York fifty or sixty years ago and also represented the aesthetic of her jewelry line. Even Diana had gotten in on
the planning, as she finally saw how Lauren's entrepreneurial efforts could help her get into college. Of course, Lauren didn't tell her mother that she wanted to study fashion, not business.

She did worry that tonight would be the first time Diana met Alejandro. Although they weren't officially dating—Lauren wasn't sure what they were doing—she wanted her mother to like him.

Lauren arrived early to the venue, and was pleased to see that all the female waitstaff, wearing simple black A-line dresses, were modeling her jewelry prototypes, their plunging necklines drawing attention to the bold stones and whimsical shapes of the designs. She overheard them chattering about how cute the pieces were, which thrilled her.

For Lauren's own outfit, Sebastian Giroux had designed a dress for her that he said was “very Audrey Hepburn in
Sabrina,
after she returns from Paris.” A take on the Givenchy classic, it was a cream organdie pouf dress, embroidered with black and white flowers on the skirt and bustier. For jewelry, Lauren wore the signature piece of the collection, a rough cut emerald Swarovski crystal on a silver chain.

As guests started arriving, Lauren worried that it was all too much, that she had gone too far—with the party, the jewelry, the retro dress.

It wasn't until Alejandro arrived that she felt better. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and then whispered in her ear,
“You look beautiful—like a forties movie star.”

She smiled, as she felt her pulse quicken. It was exactly the effect she had been going for, and he was the first to notice.

Guests started spilling in, as the Lester Lanin Orchestra—the band renowned for playing everything from presidential inaugural balls to deb parties—played old-fashioned standards. At first, Lauren was concerned people might not be into the older music, but her friends were getting into the spirit of the night, seemingly relieved that they didn't have to attend yet another party with thumping house music.

When Sebastian Giroux arrived, photographers swarmed around him, taking pictures of him with Lauren, with her mother, with other socialites. Diana had extended the invitation to at least fifty of her friends, and Lauren sensed that the whole thing was as much for her mother as it was for her. Diana had even gotten Lauren's little sister, Allison, out of boarding school for the weekend so that she could attend the party. Lauren was fine with it all: After everything her mother had been through, she wanted her to be happy.

 

Phoebe felt a bit glum that Friday night at Lauren's party. She had been working on her gallery show for weeks, becoming completely immersed in it. She had even passed on Lauren's invitation to get their hair done together. Phoebe's series needed something more; she still had four more canvases to complete, and she had run out of ideas. The Egyptian thing
combined with media images could take her only so far, and her November deadline was less than two weeks away. When she got to the party, she grabbed a drink and made her way through the crowd.

Near the dance floor, she ran into Patch, who was filming. She knew that he and Nick had recently had a fight, but Nick had spoken of him fondly, so she didn't think there was anything wrong with talking to him.

“Hey,” she said. “I need to ask you something. Can you turn the camera off?”

He looked at her warily and then carefully put down his camera. “Sure, what?”

“I need your help. I'm wondering if we could, sort of, I guess, collaborate.”

“What do you mean?”

“I need something…” She faltered for a moment, not wanting to admit that her work wasn't going well. “I'm doing a collage-type series of works. Incorporating images, appropriating stuff from all over. But I need something more. I know you have all this amazing footage. Like, do you think you would be able to let me use some of your stills—you could pick them, of course—and I would give you credit in the installation?”

Patch leaned against a ballroom chair. “Sure, I guess so.” He paused. “Yeah, I think I like that idea. Maybe email me what you have already, so I can get an idea of what you're looking for.”

“Do you want, um, compensation? Maybe I can pay you if a piece is sold, something like that?”

Patch shook his head. “Don't worry about it. I mean, I don't think Andy Warhol paid for the newspaper photographs that he made into paintings, did he?”

Phoebe laughed. “I'm hardly Andy Warhol.”

“Same difference,” Patch said, giving her a playful nudge. “Maybe someday you will be.”

 

“This must be Alejandro!” Diana Mortimer was squealing, much to Lauren's embarrassment, and Patch was capturing it all. Patch could see that Lauren's mom had planned this all along, that she knew exactly who Alejandro was but was pretending to be oblivious, not to know that he was the notorious son of an Argentinean financier, that he had already been in the gossip columns several times for his antics, that he was frequently photographed at parties. There was a look on Lauren's face as if she were worried that her mother wouldn't approve, but it was clear that her mother did more than approve: She encouraged it. Alejandro kissed Mrs. Mortimer on both cheeks as if the two were old friends.

Alejandro then motioned to Lauren to come with him to the dance floor, as Patch followed them with his camera. The two swayed arm in arm to “The Girl from Ipanema,” which got everyone else dancing. As the song continued, it started morphing into a pop version, and a curtain on a raised
platform behind the band opened to reveal a gorgeous dark-haired woman in a red velvet dress. It was the up-and-coming Brazilian bossa nova singer, Isabel Mendes. She was singing the lyrics to the song, as the band played a faster tempo and a synthesizer was added to the mix. A roar went up from the crowd as people realized who she was; that week, her single had reached number six on the pop charts, and her first music video had recently debuted on the web.

“I didn't know about this!” Lauren said, laughing. Patch moved in closer to catch their dialogue.

“It's my surprise for you. Her parents are friends of my family. She flew up from Brazil this morning.” He paused. “I asked your mother if it was okay,” he said, almost as if concerned it might not be. “I hope you like it?”

Lauren didn't say anything. She leaned forward and kissed him.

Around them, cameras flashed, more champagne was poured, and Patch was there to document it all.