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“Older. She was away at Vassar when Bebe started dating Tim, and she came back for spring break and apparently thought little Timmy should share his good fortune.” She sighed. “It all got very East Village, apparently.” She cut into her spring roll thoughtfully.
James grinned. “Whatever that means.” He refilled their glasses. Charlotte could tell she was getting a little drunk, because he was starting to look better and better.
Clara had news, too. “Do you remember Jemima Rhodes?” They all did. “Her mother lost her job when Bear Stearns collapsed, and they had to sell the beach cottage. We were all gutted.” (The beach cottage was a sixteen-bedroom mansion overlooking the ocean in East Hampton.) “I mean, where are we going for Fourth of July this summer?” She dropped her voice. “I heard they were going to rent someplace.” A pause. “On the North Fork.” The three women shuddered, delighted.
Charlotte picked at her salad, enjoying the familiar sound of pointless gossip. You could always rely on these three to know everything that was going on. Emily and Jane were the middle daughters of a large family who’d owned most of the Upper West Side since the 1920s. The UWS connection made them the token “artistic ones” at their ultraconservative Upper East Side school, and they were allowed a little leeway in terms of behavior. Clara was a slightly inbred blue blood whose family had come over on the Mayflower and made their fortune shortly thereafter. Charlotte wasn’t quite sure how they’d made the money. Button hooks? Buggy whips? Something archaic. No one in Clara’s family had worked for generations, but they did a lot of Good Works and Sat on Boards. Clara had been very successful at school and at one point rashly expressed a desire to go to MIT. No one of her class ever tried that hard, she was informed, and she dropped it. Stiff upper lip, maybe, but backbone? Not so much.
James got up to go to the bathroom and met Charlotte’s eye meaningfully. She sighed. Why not? She waited a moment, then followed him. She knocked softly on the bathroom door, and he pulled her in.
“Charlotte Williams, of all people, fancy meeting you here.” James was nuzzling at her neck, his hands reaching around behind her, starting to pull up her slip dress.
She grabbed his wrists firmly. “James.”
“Hmm, you want to play a little? I can do that.” He flipped his hands around, grabbing hers and pinning them above her head. His head dipped, aiming for her breast.
“James, no.” Her tone was clear, and he paused.
“What’s up, dearest? Don’t you want to make up for the past year? We can fuck once before the main course and again before dessert. It’ll be just like old times.”
“And that,” Charlotte said firmly, pushing him away, “is the problem.” She sighed. “You’re a sweet boy, but I’m just not feeling it. Do you know what I mean? After all, a year of French men kind of elevates your standards.”
He pouted. James was extremely good-looking and couldn’t keep track of all his women. Charlotte pushing him off wasn’t going to dent his ego for more than a second.
“So why did you follow me?”
Charlotte shrugged. “I’d finished my appetizer and had time to kill.”
James straightened his pants and washed his hands. “You’re a bit of a bitch, Charlie, my sweet.”
Charlotte nodded. “You’re not the first to say so, love.”
And with that, she walked out, leaving the door open.
Chapter THREE (#ulink_85c38620-bc71-55a1-ba8f-4d5ed65969a5)
It was incredibly loud and hot in the club. The pulsing bass lines could be physically felt in every pair of panties in the place, which might explain the glassy expressions and elevated heart rates. Drugs, of course, may have had something to do with it. Not that there were drugs there. That would be illegal.
If you’d walked down this particular side street in Alphabet City, you’d have thought someone was having a party. No lines. No signs. No ropes. Just the distant sound of very loud music. You had to call ahead to get into this club, and if they bothered to answer the phone, you’d get an arrival time, and that was it. Your driver pulled up, the door opened, and you were let in. Charlotte simply texted the club owner. Regular cell-phone calls were for regular people.
He was waiting for her with a hug at the top of the stairs, and he embraced the other girls, too.
“Charlie, it’s been an age. I think I was on the West Side Highway when you left.” He laughed. “That was two spaces ago!”
Charlotte smiled at him. Only a handful of people got to call her Charlie, and Nick was one of them. He’d been at school with her, and she’d helped him get his first club off the ground. Clubs like Nick’s tended to move: it’s not the space, it’s the mix. You had to stay one step ahead of the police, two steps ahead of the East Village hipsters, and three steps ahead of the bridge-and-tunnel crowd. Nick was a master. As soon as he found one location, he started looking for the next. A warehouse in DUMBO. An abandoned department store above Harlem. A townhouse being gutted in the West Village. His clientele were the young, the rich, and the bored. They came to him to be entertained, to see their friends, to watch the show.
“Who’s here?” Charlotte leaned closer to hear his answer.
He took her hand and pulled her to one side. “Actually, lovely, Taylor is here. I nearly told you not to come, but then I thought enough water might have flowed under the bridge by now.”
Charlotte felt herself get colder, despite the sweaty heat of the club. “Oh.”
Nick pulled back and looked at her. “Ah, I see I was wrong.” “Is she with him?”
“Are you crazy? No, love, she’s long gone. He’s with Stacy Star tonight. And her girlfriend. And her girlfriend’s girlfriend.” He coughed. “Celebrities, what can I say?” Charlotte raised her eyebrows, but Nick just shook his head. “Ignore him, sweetheart. You were always too good for him, anyway.”
Charlotte sighed. During her first year at Yale, she’d fallen deeply in love with Taylor Augustine. He was a couple of years ahead of her, studying European literature, and was totally gorgeous. He considered himself a beat poet for the twenty-first century, and he mumbled a lot. He and Charlotte hung out in bed most of the time, reading poetry and smoking weed. Then, suddenly, he decided that was too bourgeois and dumped her for a fiery political science major who thought shaving her underarms was bowing to the Man.
Charlotte had been devastated. It was literally the first time she couldn’t have something she wanted, and she hadn’t handled it very well. Not well at all. Drunk and furious, she’d torched the political science building.
Luckily, her father was able to step in and offer to rebuild those parts of the building that hadn’t burned to the ground, and he and the Yale board had agreed that Charlotte should spend her sophomore year elsewhere. Europe might be far enough, they thought, and the Sorbonne acquired a new student and an updated computer system.
And now here she was, back less than a day, and already she’d run into him. Sometimes life was just a bitch.
AS SHE WALKED into the main part of the club, she saw that things hadn’t changed much while she’d been away. Anyone who was young, gorgeous, rich, or horny was there, and most of Nick’s guests were all four. Beautiful girls and boys danced essentially naked on podiums all around the club, and everyone pretended not to look at them while at the same time hoping they were being looked at themselves. Same same. She turned to Nick, who was following her in, presumably to make sure she didn’t set fire to his club.
“I see you’re still working the ugly beat.”
He shrugged. “What can I do? The beautiful are drawn to me—why else would you be here?” He looked around, his experienced eyes seeing everything, despite the candlelight and heavy smoke. “There. He’s in that corner.”
Charlotte took a moment to make him out, but then her heart stopped. Taylor. Still gorgeous, although now he seemed to be working a gangsta look, which is hard when you’re from Connecticut and your father is the president of a major bank. The closest he ever got to the threat of violence was hiding from the townies in New Haven. Loose pants, slumped posture, lots of bling, and three girls dressed as sluts from the future on either side. Bottle of Courvoisier on the table. Bottle of Cristal, presumably for the sluts.
Nick squeezed her arm. “Are you going to cause trouble, or are you cool?”
“I’m cool.”
“Don’t light any fires, promise?
” “That was more than a year ago.”
“Do you even have matches?”
“No, you idiot. Besides, look around. The place is full of candles and drunks. About six hundred people are in danger of burning the place down. If the fire marshal comes in … ”
He quickly put his hand over her mouth. “Don’t ever, ever say those two words in my presence again.” He raised his finger. “I mean it, it’s bad luck. Don’t make me block your number.”
She laughed and watched him melt into the crowd. In the far corner, as far from Taylor as possible, her dinner posse had set up camp, and James was apparently trying to persuade two pole dancers to let him join them onstage. They really weren’t interested, but they were drunk enough to let him try.
Emily and Jane waved her over. She sighed inwardly and headed in their direction. In many ways, these clubs were where she lived or, at least, where the public face of Charlotte Williams lived. Before she’d discovered her inner bitch and realized that people found her entertaining when she was naughty, she’d found clubs scary. And they still made her feel anxious inside, but she guessed everyone felt that way when the world was looking at them. Not that any of her crowd would ever admit it.
“Did you see Taylor?” Jane looked worried.
Charlotte nodded. “It’s OK. It’s been a long time.”
“Did you see who he’s with?” Emily looked excited.
Charlotte nodded again. “Stacy Star.”
Zeb was beside himself. “I have all her albums. She’s outrageous. She worked the runway for Gaultier, and it was beyond fabulous. She’s awesome.”
Charlotte looked at him. “You’re babbling, Zeb. Calm down.”
He was quivering like a greyhound. “I can’t. She’s awesome. I love her.”
Charlotte frowned, indicating to a passing waitress that she needed service. The waitress ignored her. “Zeb, I went to preschool with her. Her real name is Stacy Fishbein.”
Zeb refused to be put off. “Well, good for her that she changed it, then. I’d change mine if I could.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“My parents. They think Zebediah is a cool name for a faggot. Fucking hippies. They’re so accepting, it’s really annoying.”
The waitress came over, finally. Charlotte smiled up at her.
“Did Nick make you wear that, or are those your own clothes?”
The waitress was wearing a peekaboo bra, with glitter on her nipples and short-shorts. She narrowed her eyes. “You’re a friend of Nick’s?”
“I’m a very good friend of Nick’s. You must be new, or you’d know me by sight and would already have brought me a Grey Goose and grapefruit, which is what I always have. I never pay, and neither does anyone with me.”
The waitress started to laugh. “You’re joking, right?”
The rest of the table went quiet. The waitress looked nervous. She looked over at Nick, who was watching her. He raised his eyebrows and made a gesture with his hand that made it clear she was to give Charlotte anything she wanted.
“Uh, I’ll get you your drink right away. Sorry.” She turned to go.
“Show me your tits.” James was being insolent, but Charlotte let it go. New staff need to be taught a lesson sometimes.
The waitress turned back. She was actually very pretty. “No. Fuck off.”
Pretty and feisty. That was hot, and James became more interested.
“No, really, take off your bra, and let me touch your tits. In fact, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll let me see it all. Otherwise, Charlotte will tell Nick you’re out of here.”
Charlotte sighed. This was too much. “No, I won’t, James. Get a grip. Go get us our drinks, OK?” The waitress hurried away.
James was annoyed. “I want the waitress, Charlotte.”
Charlotte shrugged. “Well, why not go about it the usual way, James? Talk to her for ten minutes, and tell her she’s pretty. It usually works for you, right? Of course, now you’ve got your asshole behavior to overcome, so it might take you half an hour.”
She was watching Taylor. He hadn’t seen her yet. Time to make a move.
She stood up, tousling her hair and smoothing her dress. “Come on, James, come dance with me.” She felt hollow inside, but she couldn’t let anyone see it.
James was sulking. He shook his head.
Charlotte smiled at him. “Come on. We’ll make it so hot the waitress won’t be able to help herself, and she’ll go down on you on the dance floor.”
James smiled. He really was a very simple creature. He stood up, elegant and tall, and took her hand.
The dance floor had been full not a moment before, but somehow it had had one of those sudden shifts, where half the people wander off for a drink. Everyone could see Charlotte and James as they walked on, and since most of the club knew who they were, there was lots of whispering.
Charlotte began to dance sinuously. She knew she looked good, and dancing always turned her on. She and James had actually done this many times before; it was how they’d hooked up. There was something about their chemistry that turned dancing into foreplay. She could feel Taylor watching her now and touched herself, shimmying the silk of her dress over her body until her nipples became hard, clearly visible through the thin fabric. James was moving very close to her, their hips pressed against each other, swinging and moving in time. James took her long hair in one hand and wound it around his wrist, pulling her head back so he could start licking her neck. His other hand curved around her breast, squeezing it and pulling on the already hard nipple until she felt herself growing aroused. The dance floor was clear now, and even the pole dancers were watching. Charlotte suddenly twisted away from James and turned her back on him, making him grab her hips and pull her against him, closing his eyes. Charlotte saw the waitress watching and beckoned her over.
“He’s all yours, love. Enjoy.” She kissed the girl on the mouth, just for fun, and wandered over to Taylor’s table.
Taylor watched her approach, his face hard to read. Stacy Star was an easier book.
“Charlotte Williams, the last time I saw you, you were playing with Legos. You grew up so nicely! My girlfriend wants to eat you all up, don’t you, honey?”
Honey nodded, sucking her finger. “You’re pretty.”
Charlotte smiled at her kindly. “You’re a moron. You should all go away now. I want to talk to Taylor. Go lick each other in the bathroom.”
Stacy started to get pissed off but then shrugged. “Why not? Come on, ladies, I need a touch-up, if you know what I mean.” She giggled, then quickly bent over and snorted two lines of coke that had been hidden behind her drink. Rubbing some on her gums, she stood and swayed a little, pulling the other girls with her.
Charlotte sat down, sweeping the rest of the coke onto the floor with the back of her hand. Taylor started to protest but didn’t bother. Coke was cheap.
“What’s up, Charlotte? Long time no see, baby.”
“It’s only been a year, Taylor. What happened to Phillipa?”
He shrugged. “She started dating a commodities trader with a house in the Bahamas.”
“So now you’re seeing Stacy Fishbein?”
“She doesn’t use that name anymore. I want to work in the music business, you know. She knows people. She’s a hot commodity right now, and she likes me. Why not?” Charlotte said nothing. Taylor lit a cigarette, another new habit. “I graduated, sweetness, and not all of us have Daddy to buy us out of trouble. I have to work, have to get a career going.”
“Really? I would have thought that was optional.”
He shook his head. “No, I want to work.”
She was surprised. He really didn’t need to. His family was almost as wealthy as hers. She looked at him again. Blond hair to his shoulders, stubble, a face like a model, he still made her ache inside.
And yet. It passed. She felt the attraction suddenly ebbing and thanked whatever higher power had decided to set her free.
As if he could read her mind, Taylor spoke again. “You still make me hot, Charlotte. Come home with us. Stacy throws a mean party, if you know what I mean. I know you like it. We used to ball all night, remember?”
“I remember. But no thanks, Taylor. It’s not worth re-lighting that fire, if you’ll pardon the phrase.”
His smile faded as she walked away. But hers just grew bigger and bigger.
Chapter FOUR (#ulink_a88e0672-b7b8-5ebf-a82e-110181c5f195)
Her father had waited up for her, of course. She dropped her house keys on the hall table and paused, listening.
“The lovely girl, the lovely day … “
She smiled. Her father had a great voice, a secret she kept for him, and singing together was one of their private pleasures. This was a song he’d made up for her as a little girl.
