FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS I racked my brain for potential debs. I hardly remember my meeting with Isabel Foley, but I do know I was still muttering about boundaries when I was shown out of her office (Jack nowhere to be seen), with Isabel regretting that they had already committed to debuting their daughter in New York. In fact, I soon learned that the nouveau riche crowd (having been snubbed by haut Willow Creek Society for a century) had started taking their daughters to New York and Paris to make their debuts with the offspring of Hollywood movie people and faded rock stars.
Fortunately, Janice and I found fifteen names of people who had plenty of money sans old family names once we went through past issues of the Willow Creek Times and Texas Monthly at the Willow Creek Public Library. Armed with phone numbers, I set up appointments.
Phillip called at least once a day if not more, each call a little more strained than the last when I wouldn’t commit to a date for him to travel to Texas. Moreover, despite the sabbatical I was technically on, my office called me nearly as often.
“Allison,” I said to the managing partner’s assistant, “Deirdre in Bill Patterson’s office can help Walter with his new prenup.”
“But Walter doesn’t want Deirdre or anyone else doing it. He wants you.”
If it wasn’t Walter with a new prenup, it was someone who had gotten my name from a friend whom I had represented. For reasons that I never quite got, no one seemed to understand the word “sabbatical” and what exactly that meant. I had gotten so I cringed every time my cell phone buzzed. Diving into the new round of deb appointments in search of the elusive debs was actually a relief.
Out of the first ten names Janice and I had found in our search, we only got three families to commit to the deb ball, which gave us four girls, including Morgan. Not a great average of success, especially since we only had four more days before the traditional announcement was supposed to be made in the newspaper.
At one point, questioning my abilities, Janice went with me on one of the appointments.
“So tell me about your daughter,” she asked the wealthy and well-dressed Elizabeth Peters, leaning forward like a reporter trying to get to the bottom of who really had opened the neighborhood crack house.
“What is her grade point average?” Janice wanted to know.
Elizabeth stared.
“Would you consider your daughter smart? Or is she just your average boy-crazy girl?”
Elizabeth stiffened.
“Mrs. Peters,” I interjected politely, shooting Janice a glare, “we are here because we would like to invite your daughter Emily to be a debutante at this year’s debutante ball.”
Janice leaned forward again. “We know this is an abomination, so don’t be insulted that we’re inviting her. As hard as it is, try to think of it as doing good for the community, not as a meat market.”
We were out on the front porch, door slammed at our backs, in record time. I swear I didn’t gloat.
Though who was I to feel smug? With only forty-eight hours left before we had to submit the names to the newspaper and my mother breathing down my neck demanding to know who we had gotten, we still only had four debutantes when tradition required eight. By the time we got home, desperation rode me like a barrel rider at the rodeo.
The doorbell rang as Janice and I sat in the kitchen debating a new plan of attack. Lupe went out to answer, followed by unpleasant voices slicing through the walls, before the maid pushed through the kitchen door with a bang.
“Lupe? What in the world is going on?”
“Dat girl. India. She no nice.”
“India? India who?”
“India Blair,” she sniffed indignantly. “I see her around town when I go chopping.” (Translation: shopping.)
“Blair, as in the Blair family?” Janice asked.
“Sí.” Lupe harrumphed. “She say she hear about you debutante ball.”
“Hunter Blair’s daughter? She wants to be a deb?” Janice persisted.
“I tink so, and she out there waiting for you.”
I grimaced. Hunter Blair \Hunt-er Blair\ pn (1963) a man who 1: fell very solidly under the (very) big money category with a (hugely) cringeworthy name 2: was the older brother of my mother’s opposing counsel (aka Jack Blair)… all of which led to 3: definitely not Ridgely Wainwright-Cushing-Jameson-Lackley-Harper-Ogden Approved.
“Tell her I’m not here,” I said.
Janice didn’t say anything at first, then she sort of hmmmed. And it didn’t sound like a “send her on her way” hmmm.
“Say what you will about Hunter Blair,” Janice said, “but he has become as rich as they grow them here in Texas. More importantly, it sounds as though he has an eighteen-year-old daughter. And she’s standing in the foyer. Haven’t you heard the saying ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’?”
She had a point.
With more than a little trepidation, I followed Janice out of the kitchen. I shuddered to think what sort of child Hunter Blair could produce. I had seen pictures of him in the newspaper. Where Jack was dark and chiseled, Hunter Blair was wiry, and had nothing in common with beauty. While this could be used to a certain effect for a man, let me just say it could never, ever, work for a woman. At least not in Texas.
Though when I actually saw India Blair, it was worse than I had imagined. The girl was pretty… that is, if you go for the slutty, Britney Spears pre-shaved head, Oops, I’ve Done It Again look.
India was short, made taller by four-inch stilettos, had dark blond hair streaked with chunky highlights, and wore spandex paint-on pants, with some sort of diaphanous baby doll minidress fluttering over her hips, and a Day-Glo bra underneath.
“Oh, my God,” Janice whispered, “who let that child out of the house looking like that?”
“That would be Hunter Blair, whom you were just waxing eloquent about.”
She groaned.
But India wasn’t alone. She had two equally chastity-challenged girls standing a pace behind her.
A rich trollop with an entourage.
India glanced at Janice, then me. “You must be Carlisle Wainwright Cushing.” She looked back at Janice. “Who are you?”
Janice stiffened. “Janice Reager,” she said with not a little importance.
“Never heard of you.”
“Then you must not read the newspaper.”
India snorted. “As if.”
A pissing match between a thirty-seven-year-old journalist and a teenager. I should have known right then and there to turn tail and run all the way back to Boston and the Pilgrim People.
“So. Carlisle,” India said coolly. “You obviously know who I am.”
I don’t think I have to tell you that an eighteen-year-old (even an exceedingly advanced one) was not about to intimidate me. “I’m told you are India Blair and you want to be a debutante.”
“Exactly. So do my friends. Abby Bateman and Tiki Beeker. Don’t worry. They’ve got money. And our parents will spend it on your ball.”
The entourage preened.
“You’ve probably heard of their fathers. Grady Bateman and Armand Beeker. They’re totally rich. Not as rich as my dad, but close enough.”
Abby was dressed in a lace blouse, the proper effect ruined by the orange bra underneath, her short, tight blue-jean skirt, and the red crocodile clutch under her arm. Tiki wore a spandex cropped T-shirt, low-cut rolled-up jeans, with four-inch-high chunky heels and ankle socks with a lace ruffle around the edge.
I couldn’t imagine any of these girls dressed in the required virginal white debutante gowns.
“Well, India,” I managed, “you are sweet to come by, but—”
“But what? I know all about debutante balls,” she stated. “You’ve got to have like a bazillion of your friends and your parents’ friends sitting at massively expensive tables. Just so you know, my dad has tons of friends and tons of money and I know he’d buy at least four tables.”
My head swam with numbers. Four at twenty thousand a pop—just for one girl’s tables.
India smirked. “Plus, Abby’s and Tiki’s dads will do the same. They always do what my dad does.”
Girls with money, and lots of it. I felt light-headed.
Then I reminded myself of what kind of money it was. Cringeworthy money. We’d be a laughingstock.
Janice leaned close. “After Signor Rinaldi, the ball is already a laughingstock. I say we go for it. What do you think?”
Actually, what I thought was that I had to stop wearing my thoughts on my face.
“And for my party,” India continued, “I am going to fly everyone in my dad’s plane (a G4, thank you very much) to New York for a party at the top of the Blair Building.”
Talk about blatant displays of wealth. A very un—Willow Creek Society thing to do.
“Abby and Tiki will each do something cool too.”
“Can Abby and Tiki talk?” I asked.
India rolled her eyes, and Abby and Tiki giggled, suddenly seeming more like the teenagers they were.
“Well, this is very nice of you,” I said. The words just came out, primarily because money or no, I knew my mother would kill me if I let a Blair anywhere near the debutante ball. “Let us present your… generous offer to the committee.”
Janice stared at me in disbelief.
“Look, you need debs,” India said. “I want to be a deb. Make your decision now.”
She must have learned negotiating technique at the knee of her father, who was renowned for his ability to get what he wanted.
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
She considered for a second. “Betty Bennett. She’s, like, practically in love with me. Always trying to impress me.” She shrugged, bored. “She was slobbering all over me as usual. Hanging out at my locker. And told me that you asked her to be a debutante.”
“She said no.”
“Thank God,” India replied with a singsong snort. “Who’d want to be a deb with a loser like her?”
For the record, it did not make me feel better that I’d had much the same thought about the girl a few days earlier.
“What do you say? Are we in?”
I didn’t know how to say yes. Though I couldn’t seem to say no either. We were sinking to new lows. My mother would kill me. But I couldn’t escape the fact that we were desperate. Which meant one thing…
“Fine, you’re in.”
“All three of us?”
“Yes. All three of you.”
The Entourage nodded with cool superiority. India looked at me with the gloating smile of a victor.
“Have your father call me, and we’ll get everything arranged.”
Miss Victory’s hardened gaze wavered. “Oh, that.” She laughed, but I could tell it was strained. “Oops. My bad. He doesn’t exactly know that I’m here.”
“What?” Janice demanded.
“It’s no big deal,” she scoffed. “All you have to do is convince him to let me be a debutante.”
“What?” This time it came from me.
“My father isn’t all that crazy about social stuff,” India explained. “He says he won’t lower himself. But if anyone could convince him to let me do it, it is Carlisle Wainwright Cushing.”
“I am not going to convince anyone”—most especially Hunter Blair—“to ‘lower’ themselves to be part of a time-honored Willow Creek tradition. It is a privilege to be invited.”
India made a face. “A tradition that is going up in smoke if you don’t get your eight debutantes. Hello.”
It all came back to that.
Which is how it came to pass that I, me, Carlisle Wainwright Cushing, had the unenviable task of going head-to-head with Jack Blair’s older brother to convince the man to let his not-so-darling daughter make her debut at the Hundredth Annual Willow Creek Symphony Association Debutante Ball.