October 19
The Present
9:05 P.M.
What’s with you?” Ellie asked impatiently. Todd had a weird look on his face but she ignored it for now; she had bigger problems than her husband’s unpredictable moods. Was he thinking about Montserrat? Or whatever floozy he was cheating on her with?
He shook his head.
“Can I have my phone back now?” she demanded.
When he didn’t respond, she grabbed it out of his hand. He walked away without saying a word to her.
She wanted to call out to him but changed her mind. Men. They were so annoying. If only she could go back in time, go back to before, she still remembered what it was like, being young, before puberty, before the catcalls and the comments and the leers and the groping hands. When she was just a kid, when she was still a person, before she became a girl. Then suddenly it all changed. She couldn’t simply wear tank tops and shorts or even sit the way she used to, spread out like a frog. Suddenly, there were all these rules to follow and she was terrible at rules. Oh, she distinctly remembered what being a teenager was like, more specifically a certain sixteenth birthday, even if she’d spent the rest of her life trying to forget. (But how could she forget the sight of blood on the floor, and the sound of screams. No. No. No. She had to forget. Damn him for texting her, for threatening to come to the party, for walking back into her life like nothing had happened.)
She’d convinced Madison-and-Lex (Todd’s clever nickname for their party planner) that they could seat everyone in two long tables in the space between the dining and the living room, right in front of the indoor marble firepit with the newly installed chimney vent. Ellie had insisted on a formal sit-down dinner, and had almost demanded everyone wear white tie. Like at Mean Celine’s husband’s fortieth, at the Metropolitan Club in New York, or another friend’s eighteenth birthday bash for their eldest son, in their twelfth-century palazzo in Venice, complete with fireworks. But she had to be real; this was the desert, and the men were already sweating through their Mr. Turk button-downs and white pants, and the women’s colorful Pucci dresses were starting to stick to their thighs. Inside was not any better; even with the air conditioners going full blast, the floor-to-ceiling doors were left completely open for stylish effect. If she had asked them to wear white tie and tails, and ball gowns, everyone would think she was throwing a costume party.
Still, it was gorgeous, and if it was a little crowded, who cared? They could squeeze. The two long tables were set with tall silver candelabras, and the skinny floral arrangements reached almost to the ceiling, the newest trend, instead of the usual fat and squat bouquets—so that you could actually talk to the person sitting across from you instead of trying to crane your neck over the centerpiece. Everything was white—from the flowers to the chairs, to the tablecloths and the napkins, crisp Italian linens embroidered with the Gulf House crest she’d paid a graphic designer to create (a rush order, she had paid a pretty penny to get them in time), and once the sun had set, you couldn’t tell the flowers were half-dead in the candlelight.
“Where do we sit?”
“Where do you want us?”
“Who goes where?”
Her friends crowded around her, gushing over the stunning table setting. “Anywhere! Anywhere!” she said, looking pointedly at Blake, who always insisted on place cards, even for small dinner parties, and had once sat Todd next to someone’s nanny, who had a place at a table with a ten-month-old baby. Blake had had a brief career as an ersatz reality television producer, and Todd as network president had rejected all his pilot pitches, so Blake doled out his revenge through his seating order. Todd refused ever to attend one of Blake’s events again.
“You should sit at the head,” said Sanjay. “You’re the birthday girl.”
“No, no, no,” said Ellie. “You sit there.” Now that the evening was in full swing, she was abashed at all the effort and expense it had taken to get to this point, and she wanted nothing more than to hide. She chose a seat in the middle of the row, between one half of the tangential couples they barely knew from the kids’ schools and an old friend from the garment trade.
All weekend long, Ellie had wanted people to notice her, for her life to incite envy and admiration, but now that the party was under way, she felt too exposed, as if she had shown too much, had revealed too much of herself, her ambition, her desires. She had orchestrated this nine-course banquet, but now her heels hurt and she wished everyone would leave so her family could run out and grab burgers and shakes at McDonald’s.
But whatever! They were sitting down to a nine-course meal, inspired by her favorite dishes from Nobu (granted a bit twenty-years-ago, but it was still her favorite restaurant). She had harangued her caterer to make sure she had the correct recipes until the poor woman almost had a nervous breakdown two days before the event.
“Oh, how fun,” said the woman on her left—one of the moms from Glenwood—as a line of white-gloved attendants walked out of the kitchen, each one bearing a plate covered with a silver dome, and stood behind the chair of each guest. “Was this your idea?”
Ellie nodded, watching as the attendants, with a dramatic flourish, leaned over and served everyone all at once, like a chorus line of backup dancers (which many of them were). Excited murmurs filled the room as the scent of white truffles filled the air. So many fucking truffles! Eighty dollars an ounce and she’d bought pounds of it! Ellie knew the price of everything (and the value of everything, ha). Another group of servers positioned themselves behind the guests once more and poured the wine. Only the best white Burgundy, a northern Chablis, chosen expressly for how hard it was to come by in the United States, and no, the servers whispered to anyone who asked, so sorry, there was no red wine to be had, no red wine at all. Never forget the Minotti couch.
Ellie looked down at her plate, pleased, but found she couldn’t take a bite. She couldn’t eat. She was too full of anxiety and excitement and worry. Why hadn’t Harry called her back? He hadn’t even texted her back! What was going on with their deal? And where was the photographer from Vanity Fair? He was missing everything! She waved Madison over. “Has anyone from the magazine arrived?”
“No, no one.” Madison had also acted as the publicist for the party, even though there wasn’t supposed to be any publicity since it was a private event. But in the interest of promoting the business, they still had to post everything on Instagram so that their customers would see how amazing Ellie’s lifestyle—her life—was. “What time were they supposed to be here?”
“Now,” said Ellie with a frown. Maybe the editor had changed her mind? It happened. She had come so close on so much good coverage—she was supposed to have a major actress on the cover of InStyle wearing a Wild & West dress, but at the last minute, they went with an actor in Ralph Lauren. Then there was the profile in the New York Times Style section, but that was killed because the writer had been an old friend and it was “against policy.” “So you can’t write about any of your old friends? What kind of bullshit is that?” she’d demanded. At a Golden Globes gifting suite last year, she had given a host of starlets wardrobes full of her clothes, with little notes to them, politely asking that if they post, they do so with the correct hashtags. But so far, only some girl no one had ever heard of, on a show no one watched, had posted a picture of herself wearing the free tank top. And the next day, all the Wild & West gift bags were listed on eBay. Bitches!
Starlets, who needed them? she huffed.
“Did you say something?” asked the mom—what was her name?—Chrissy? Kristi? Kristen? No, it was Kirsten. Kirsten, the part-time yoga teacher who was married to one of the founders of the largest video game company in the world.
“No, nothing,” said Ellie. “How is your practice?”
“Oh, it’s great,” said Kirsten, smiling because no one ever remembered what she did since her husband was the one who had the big job. “I’m going to a retreat in Baja later this month.”
“I’ll come in and take a class sometime,” Ellie promised.
“I’d love that! I only teach on Mondays at eleven,” said Kirsten.
Ellie smiled. It’s not that she hated stay-at-home moms, she despised them. No, that wasn’t true—she liked them; some of her best friends were stay-at-home moms! It was the moms who pretended to work, who pretended to have something in common with her that she hated. Sorry but no, working one hour a week at a dinky yoga studio for free perks was not the same as running a multimillion-dollar company, fuck you very much. (She should really stop swearing; one of her dearest stay-at-home mom friends had a swear jar. Maybe she should get one, although when she suggested it to her family, Todd laughed and said if they did, they’d be broke by noon.) Why had she invited this insipid faux-spiritual yoga bimbo to her birthday party? Oh, right. Her daughter Zoe was kind to Giggy, who was getting terribly bullied at school. Okay, then.
“Get a load of that one,” said Shari, on her right, as she puffed on her vape right in the middle of dinner. “Who’s that cute young thing?”
Shari had been a friend since London, Tokyo, and New York. They had been models together, and now Shari ran one of the biggest swimsuit companies in North America. If you swam, if you were ever wet, you wore one of her suits. Shari had a plane and had just closed on her fifth house, located on an island off New Zealand’s Northland, where everyone who was anyone was buying these days, for the thinking was that it would be the only country safe from the coming apocalypse.
Ellie looked to where she was pointing. Huh. It was a young, buxom girl that she didn’t recognize. There were a few guests she didn’t know by name or by face, spouses, plus-ones, but she was certain she’d never seen that girl before. The girl was laughing and biting her lip. And who was she talking to? Oh, wait, was that Todd?
Todd was laughing and doing that thing, running his fingers through his dark hair. He was flirting.
After all, the girl was pretty, and so young.
Was her husband fucking that girl?
Todd certainly wasn’t fucking her. They hadn’t had sex in what—who knew? Who could remember? If he wasn’t with his ex-wife, was he having an affair with that girl? What else could it be?
Then there was him. She glanced at her phone, at his texts from earlier in the evening. Happy birthday, girl. See you tonight. He said he would be there, that he would show up later. Almost as a threat. But would he? It had been so long. So many years. Would he even recognize her? Would she recognize him?
Why now? Why was he suddenly reappearing in her life? What did he want?
She remembered that awful night. Did he want money? Was he going to blackmail her? Was that it? They had agreed it was all an accident. It was no one’s fault. It certainly wasn’t her fault. She was just an innocent bystander. Right?
She couldn’t eat.
The waiters took away her untouched plate—all those truffles; she should ask them to set it aside for the dog, she thought, even though that spoiled little Maltese had caused her so much trouble already—when out of the corner of her eye, she saw her husband get up from his seat, leaving the cute girl behind to approach the stranger they’d noticed earlier in the backyard. She’d been honest when he’d asked about the strange man earlier. She had absolutely no idea who he was.
Who was he? He was lingering by the doorway, staring at the party. Every seat was taken and yet there he stood, alone and out of place. She began to have a terrible feeling about this.
She pushed her chair back and ran to the front of the room, right behind her husband. Todd was standing at the doorway, in front of the strange man.
“Can I help you?” he asked. “Are you sure you’re in the right place?”
Ellie walked up, and Todd swiveled, his face was getting red. “Ellie, do you know this guy?” he asked in an accusatory tone.
“No! I told you! I have no idea who he is!”
“Mrs. Todd Stinson?” the man asked.
“Yes, that’s me.”
The man handed Ellie an envelope. “You’ve been served.”