The Debutante Divorcee (15 page)

“Really,” mused Hunter, gazing at the crystal ball he’d just hung on a branch. He seemed distracted, as though he was pondering something. “So Lauren’s the type where the more engaged a man is, the more she likes him.”

“Exactly,” I agreed.

“I don’t think she should give up on him. Engaged
is not married,” said Hunter. “Oh, Christ—I just remembered, I have to call someone.”

He left the room, and through the door I heard him mumbling, as if in some conspiracy. Obviously some work call. At seven o’clock he finally reappeared in the drawing room, where I was tying the last bow on the tree, holding a jacket in his hand, saying,

“Listen, Sylvie, something’s come up. I have to go out tonight.”

“But what about
Barbara Walters
,” I responded, disappointed. We’d planned a cozy evening in, watching TV with Japanese takeout. “Can’t you rearrange? What do you have to do so urgently on a Sunday evening?”

“My old college friend’s in town, and I’d arranged to have dinner with him ages ago. I must have forgotten to tell you.”

“Not the guy you wanted to set Lauren up with?” I asked.

“Actually, it is him,” Hunter replied. He started to pull the jacket on.

“Well, why don’t I call Lauren and we’ll all go out? It’d really cheer her up. Take her mind off Monterey—”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” said Hunter quickly.

Why was Hunter being so strange? Why didn’t he want me to go with him?

“You did say once that you wanted to introduce
Lauren and your friend. Christmas is the perfect time for dating and—”

“There’s no point. Blind dates never work. People who are meant to fall in love do it very well all by themselves.”

“But he sounds so cute. Who is he?” I asked.

“He’s only here for a few hours, I better run. See you later darling, and sorry about tonight,” said Hunter, dashing out.

That was all very rushed, I thought later, as I ate my Japanese alone in front of the television. I usually find Barbara Walters to be compelling viewing. Her choices are so bizarre (remember the year Karl Rove was Most Fascinating Person?), her questions so wonderfully polite, that you can enjoy the whole thing immensely if you pretend it’s a
Saturday Night Live
spoof. Then, the way Barbara’s hair stays the same each year is endlessly comforting. But tonight I felt distinctly uncomfortable, despite Ms. Walters’ reassuringly immobile coiffure.

My appetite disappeared. I couldn’t even seem to digest my favorite tuna sashimi. Why was Hunter suddenly refusing to introduce Lauren to his perfect college friend? He’d been so excited a few weeks ago about his mysterious buddy meeting Lauren. And why wouldn’t he tell me his name? When I thought back over the past few days, the fact was, Hunter had
been acting strangely. He’d been spending hours at a time on the Internet. There were whispered phone calls that were suddenly cut off whenever I walked into the room. He responded vaguely when I asked him what he’d been doing. Even stranger, there was no sign of the S. J. Phillips jewel. Whenever I hinted at it, he acted as though he had no idea what I was talking about. When I went around the tree that evening shaking the Christmas boxes (as I do most years), it was apparent that it wasn’t there. He
must
have picked up the necklace by this time, I thought. But where was it? And now this: standing up Barbara W. and his wife, whom he’d barely seen in the past few weeks, in favor of dinner with an anonymous college “friend.” On a Sunday! No one ever had anything important to do on a Sunday.

Just as Barbara was about to introduce her Most Fascinating Person, I forced myself to take a bite of the tuna sashimi. Not eating would only make things worse. Just then, my cell phone rang.

“Sorry, Sylvie! You must think I’m the worst, most unreliable movie star ever.”

It was Nina Chlore. Predictably, she had failed to follow up on our meeting in Paris and actually be fitted for her dresses, which were hanging in the studio waiting for her.

“Filming in Morocco took an extra two weeks, and there’s literally not a phone
anywhere
in the desert. Can
I come into the studio tomorrow for the fitting? With Sophia? We’ve been missing you
so much
!”

I almost choked on my tuna. Sophia was back in town. And my husband had just rushed out to meet a “college friend.” Maybe Christmas wasn’t going to be so warm and mushy after all.

“Sophia’s
really
sorry she can’t make it,” said Nina when she arrived, on time, the next day at the studio for the fitting. I, on the other hand, was not sorry. She was the last person I wanted to see. “I am so stressed out! I’ve been offered
seven
movies! I feel like I’m going to die,” Nina went on from behind a screen in the studio as she changed. “I’m twenty-three years old and I feel like I’m sixty-two, I’m so tired.”

A few moments later Nina appeared wearing the ruched Grace dress that we’d made up for her in oyster-colored chiffon. It drifted around her body like a breath of air: she looked soft and old-fashioned in it. She gazed at herself in the mirror and then said, “Oh, look at
this
. This is The Dress for the premiere. Can I take it with me now?”

When Nina was snapped by a paparazzo leaving Thack’s studio carrying one of his bags, two things happened: first, the supermarket tabloid magazines went crazy calling us, trying to find out which dress Nina was wearing to her premiere. (The truth was, even I didn’t
know. Nina had ended up taking four dresses, two of which were loans to be returned immediately after the event, and two of which were gifts from us. She was so secretive she wouldn’t even tell Thack which one she was most likely to wear.) Second, every girl in New York suddenly wanted to be dressed by Thack for Alixe’s Winter Ball, which was only a couple of weeks after Christmas.

Neiman’s sold out of our dresses, and Bergdorf Goodman called and offered Thack a trunk show. If this was the result of a photo of Nina carrying one of our shopping bags, it was clear that an actual photo of Nina in the Grace dress could change Thack’s business dramatically. Designers around actresses are a sorry sight. Thack, normally so blasé, started twitching every time he opened a magazine and saw a photo of Nina. He perspired when her name was mentioned on TV. His temperature shot up to feverish levels when she appeared in another designer’s gown. The Nina Effect, as Thack called it, had hit him worse than avian flu.

T
here is nothing more chic, I swear, than a white Eres one-piece worn on the deck of a 1920s ski chalet in the French Alps. Tanning when there’s two feet of snow on the ground, the sky is electric blue, and the sun is beating down at 70 degrees has to be the most luxurious thing ever. I think it’s the white-on-white thing. It’s insanely flattering, especially when there’s a mountain of terry toweling robes and matching slippers to add to the effect.

When Hunter had announced, just a few days before Christmas, that one of his French partners had offered him his ski chalet in Megève over the holiday, I’d packed in a heartbeat. The quaintest village in the Alps, Megève makes Aspen look like the Mall of America. There are twisting cobbled streets, scrumptious patisseries, charming boutiques, and an immaculate church square. Our journey had been exhausting—we’d taken an overnight flight to Paris and an early flight the next morning to Geneva, but it was worth it when we finally arrived.

Thick with icicles, our little chalet looked like something from
Hansel and Gretel
. Inside, the drawing room was furnished with faded sofas and sheepskin rugs, and our bedroom was so romantic I wondered if we would ever leave it. The bed was made up with antique linen, and a fur coverlet was thrown across it. It was better than being in a Ralph Lauren Ski ad. Who cared that I couldn’t actually ski?

“It’s divine, Hunter,” I said, as we dropped our things in the bedroom. We’d finally arrived in mid-afternoon, and the sun was casting its last silvery rays across the pristine mountainside.

A happy smile on his face, Hunter enveloped me in his arms, saying, “Aren’t you glad we’re out of New York for Christmas?”

“Yes, I am,” I replied, excited.

Hunter had been so sweet over the last few days, and looked after me so well on our trip over, that the whole mysterious Barbara Walters episode started to seem unimportant. Now that we were here, in this beautiful spot, the concerns of the last few months dissipated. Just then there was a knock at the bedroom door. A maid appeared with two
chocolats chauds
on a tray and an envelope addressed to me. I opened it and read,

Lauren, predictably, had flaked on all three of her Christmas invitations. At the last minute she’d decided to spend the week with Camille, a beautiful, thirty-seven-year-old French countess. Camille was famously happily married to Davide de Dordogne, a banker, to whom she’d lost her virginity at seventeen in the Palace Hotel in Gstaad (“I wouldn’t consider mislaying it anywhere else,” she always says). She married him six weeks later, and her three children were now virtually adults. She ran a chic porcelain store in Paris and loved matchmaking her friends. With Camille’s help Lauren was determined to complete her Make Out Challenge on the slopes.

“I’m hoping Camille can hook me up with the Monaco son,” Lauren told her friends. “Don’t you think Andrea Casiraghi would be the perfect Number Four? I
may
even consider marrying him. One offer I can’t turn down is Princess Lauren of Monaco.”

Hunter and I drove over to Camille’s chalet early that evening—we were tired, and to be honest, fond as I was of Lauren, I didn’t much feel like socializing after our long flight. We decided to drop in briefly, and then go back and snuggle up together in that heavenly, fur-covered bed. Chalet Dordogne had been built by Davide’s family in the 1920s and was half hidden up a steep mountain lane.

Camille greeted us at the door. She was petite, and dressed in wide tweed pants and a pale blue satin blouse, which hinted at a milky décolleté. How do French women pull off that bourgeois-sexy thing so well, I thought, as I regarded her wonderful outfit. She was an oxymoron—so conservative, yet so provocative at the same time, like a modern Romy Schneider.

“Ah,
bon soir.
Mwah. Mwah. Mwah. Mwah,” she said, clutching my shoulders and kissing me twice on each cheek. She then repeated the exercise with Hunter. “Welcome.”

The drawing room had a high, arched ceiling with an ornate galleried balcony leading to the bedrooms. The house was bulging with guests and children who were gathering around the fireplace for pre-dinner drinks. Just as we arrived, Camille’s husband, Davide, appeared. Neatly dressed in a white shirt, moleskin pants, and loafers, he was the very picture of the suave European banker on vacation—BlackBerry on hand at all times.

“
Vin chaud
?” he asked.

“Mmm!
Merci,
” said Hunter.

Davide poured a couple of glasses, and we all lounged on sofas by the fire.

“Lauren brought that
amie
Marci with her, which is no good at all,” said Camille, with a little frown.

“Why?” I asked, sipping my wine. It was warming and delicious.

“Marci isn’t a good influence. She just wants to
party, like a teenager. I have told Lauren, she’s been through enough. She must make an executive decision to marry a rich man. None of her friends want to see her suffer.”

“Lauren would hardly suffer if she didn’t marry a rich man,” Hunter remarked.

“No one suffers
more
than a rich woman with a man who isn’t—”

“—Sylvie! Hunter!” came a voice from above us.

We all looked up: Marci was leaning over the balcony from the gallery upstairs, waving madly. She looked completely amazing but completely inappropriate in an orange velvet Lela Rose cocktail dress with a huge silk ruffle at the neck. “We’re having the best time. Absolutely no one from New York’s here,” she said. “They’re all in Antigua, poor tragic things.”

Just then Lauren strolled in, trailed by a tall, good-looking teenage boy. He was in ski pants, with the straps pushed nonchalantly off his shoulders. His matted blonde hair grew straight into his eyes, half-covering his face, which added to his cool allure. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old.

“Have you met Henri?” said Lauren, with a wink. She was wearing faded corduroy pants and a huge cashmere sweater. She seemed extraordinarily relaxed, compared with the last time I’d seen her. “Ooh! Glühwein! Mmmm. Henri’s going to introduce me to all the cute underage guys out here.”

“
Non
! I forbid it!” objected Camille.

“
Maman
,” huffed Henri. He poured a
vin chaud
for Lauren and one for himself, and stretched lazily into an armchair. From there he glared possessively at Lauren while chewing his blonde forelock.

“Sylvie, why don’t you come up and see my new ski outfits,” said Marci from the balcony.

“Sure,” I said. “Will you be OK without me for five minutes, Hunter?”

“I’ll survive, but
only
five minutes,” he replied sweetly.

I followed Marci upstairs. When we were in the bedroom she said, “What are you guys going to do for Hunter’s birthday?”

Hunter’s birthday! It was on Christmas Eve, and I had completely forgotten about it. I felt terrible. I had vaguely planned to do a surprise party back in New York, but with the last-minute Megève trip it had completely slipped my mind.

“Well, maybe I could do a surprise party out here,” I said. “Our chalet’s perfect for a fun cocktail.”

“It would be so cute. We’ll help you,” said Marci. “We’ve got three days till the twenty-fourth, which is enough time. It’s going to be
amazing
. I’ve met so many new people here already.”

I was worried about Marci. Her mood was relentlessly upbeat, but it seemed forced. Surely she must be missing Christopher?

“Don’t you love the off-vanilla of the ski jacket?” said Marci, showing off a piece of the gorgeous ski gear
that she had bought at Jet Set in St. Moritz. Marci squished the jacket with her fingers. “Isn’t the down filling so…mmm…goodgey. Look, it has this little red star on the collar, which is
very
Jet Set, and the matching pants have another red star right on the sexy part of your butt—”

“Are you OK, Marci? Have you seen Christopher?”

“I am sure I saw that gorgeous Swedish Princess Victoria at Jet Set. It’s the only place in the world that makes chic ski stuff. There isn’t anywhere else you can get chinchilla snowboots,” continued Marci, holding up a cloud-colored fur boot. “Aren’t they
to die
?”

“Marci, what is happening with you and Christopher?” I said, serious.

“Sylvie, you are so sweet to be concerned, but actually, everything is…proceeding.”

“What do you mean, proceeding?” I asked.

“I’ve changed my mind, about becoming a divorcée. It’s seeing all those pictures of movie stars shrinking into a swizzle stick when they’ve become single again. It’s really put me off. I’m trying to gain weight now, can you imagine? Christopher’s saying he wants to come back. So we’re in…negotiations. Sophia’s organizing the whole thing. She’s been so sweet, talking to him and so on.”

“Sophia?” I hoped Marci didn’t sense my lack of enthusiasm.

“Yes. She told me to get these. Look.”

With that Marci popped a pair of huge, Jackie O style sunglasses on her nose. They looked even bigger than Nicole Richie’s eyewear, if that’s possible.

“From the Hermès store down in the Place de l’Église. They’re the only polarized Jackie sunglasses
in the world.
You can ski in them. You can see three miles in them. Four hundred and fifty euros! But you feel
so good
skiing in them. I won’t regret these. No.”

“Four hundred and fifty euros is a lot for a pair of sunglasses.”

“I’m worth it.” Suddenly Marci took the Hermès shades off and looked at me with a mischievous smile. “Listen, don’t tell a soul this, but Sophia told me something.”

I looked at Marci, my eyebrows raised.

“She’s having an affair,” she said.

“Sophia’s
always
having an affair,” I remarked, blasé.

“With a married man.” Marci put the glasses back on and turned back to the mirror, admiring herself. “Hasn’t she got the best taste?”

Who cared that I couldn’t ski, I said again to myself as I regarded the Alps from the deck of the chalet the next morning. They really
do
look as fresh and clear as the pale blue mountains on an Evian bottle. I couldn’t wait to be up there in the clear air.

“You’re going to love it,” said Hélène, the ski instructor Hunter had hired to teach me. She was twenty-three years old, with dark hair and intensely freckled skin. She’d appeared at 9
A.M.
that morning to pick me up, wearing a bright yellow instructor’s jacket, and a headscarf printed with strawberries.

“I’m excited,” I said.

We’d arranged to meet Hunter, who’d left very early that morning to ski a black run, at a mountainside restaurant, La P’tite Ravine, at midday for lunch.

Three hours later, a burning pain shooting into my foot, and with my right ankle wedged at a sharp right angle to my calf, I couldn’t have been more desperate to get off the slopes. Why people called skiing a vacation I could no longer fathom: this wasn’t a vacation, it was like being the guy who almost died in
Touching the Void
, I thought miserably as I tried to move. Two toddlers shot past me on mini-skis. How were they doing that, and why were they smiling? Didn’t they know they were about to die? God, being married is a nightmare, I thought, feeling the agony sear up into my ankle. Suddenly, just because you’re married, you have to join in a husband’s life-threatening pursuits, like skiing, while they do not have to join in on your life-enhancing ones, like Pilates classes.

“We must go up,” said Hélène. “Your husband is expecting us, and there’s no way to find him now.”

“I can’t,” I wailed miserably. Maybe I had fractured my ankle.

“Then we have to go back down in the car,” said Hélène.

“I just…can we just stay here and…” I burst into tears.

Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder. I twisted my stiff neck to find myself looking up into a man’s mirrored sunglasses. They belonged to Pierre, Sophia’s ex-boyfriend from Paris.

“Pierre,” I groaned.

“Oh my God, are you all right?” he asked, concerned.

“She won’t get up,” said Hélène, with a frustrated sigh.

“Are you in pain?”

“Yes, and I promised to meet Hunter at P’tite Ravine. I can’t even move.”

“Here,” he said, gently pulling me up with Hélène’s help. I managed to stand, shakily.

“You should go home. I’ll go find Hunter.”

“Really?” I said gratefully.

Pierre nodded. Why Sophia had let this one go for a married man I knew not.

“You must come to Hunter’s surprise birthday party at the chalet,” I said, regaining my composure a little. “It’s on the twenty-fourth.”

“I’d love to,” said Pierre. “Now, you should be going.”

Melania Trump wouldn’t get on at all well, clothes-wise, in Megève. There are only two nights of the year when one is allowed to dress up—Christmas and New Year’s. The rest of the time, the dress code is strictly informal, or smart-casual at the dressiest. The most important accessory at a Megève party, I soon realized, is a cell phone with a camera. As the drawing room filled up with guests the night of Hunter’s birthday, all they did between sips of champagne or bites of
raclette
was compare pictures of each other mid-ski jump. By ten o’clock the chalet was packed, and Hunter seemed to be having a great time. There was only one person missing: Marci. She hadn’t appeared, and endless people she’d invited were showing up asking for her. Where was she?

I spotted Camille, her seventeen-year-old daughter, Eugenie, her son Henri, and Lauren sprawled on the sheepskin rugs picking at bowls of
flocon de Megève
by the fire. Maybe they would know where Marci had got to. Hunter and I went over and joined them.

“There’s an eighties moon-boot revival going on,” Camille was saying. She was sporting a giant pair of fluffy white boots. They looked like enormous marshmallows on her feet.