y
went by. One even surreptitiously snapped our picture with his phone, which London and Vienna automatically posed for. This was
not the kind of clientele one might find at the Super 8 in Croton. This place oozed glamour. I wondered what our suite would be like.
Imagined a sumptuous bed I could sink into and sleep in for real. For hours and hours and hours without dreams. I shook my head. I
had a long day ahead of me in the most exciting city in the world, and suddenly, all I wanted to do was go to bed. "Miss Simmons,
Miss Clarke, good to see you again," the bellboy-- who was way too cute to be a bellboy--greeted them as he loaded our bags onto a
cart. "I'll take this up to your suite. Is there anything else I can get for you?"
London looked at the rest of us expectantly. "Should we lunch out, or have them bring something to our room?" "Lunch? It's ten-
thirty in the morning," I pointed out. "And we have appointments to keep." "So we'll do brunch," Vienna said, sinking into a red vel-
vet chaise. She leaned back and kicked her heels off. "God, it's so good to be home." "Home? But you don't live here." Sabine said it
like a question, glancing around almost warily. Apparently, she didn't feel as comfortable here as I did. London and Vienna laughed.
So did the bellboy. "Practically," they said in unison. "You can take our things up," Noelle told the bellboy, handing him a few crisp
bills from her Louis Vuitton wallet. "We'll let you know if we need anything else." As the bellboy silently disappeared, Noelle sat
down on the chaise near Vienna's feet and slid her arms out of her coat. "I say we head up to Sarabeth's for brunch, then hit Blooming-
dale's and Dylan's. I'm definitely going to need chocolate later."
"Omigod, totally!" London squealed, perching on the edge of a round-backed love seat. "And Sarabeth's has that French toast with
the--" "You guys, we can't go out for brunch right now," I said, hovering with Sabine as the three of them got comfy. "We have an ap-
pointment to see the Regent in half an hour, then another at the studio at eleven- fifteen. I blocked out time for lunch at twelve-thirty."
"What are you, auditioning to be a cruise director? " Vienna joked, checking out a sunglassed couple as they walked by to see if they
were anyone worth seeing. "Yeah, Reed, why don't you just relax?" Noelle suggested. "This is a vacation. And besides, I went to a
wedding at the Regent last year, and they tried to pass off this crap caviar from Maine or some godawful place as something decadent.
People were spitting it out into their napkins all night." She, London, and Vienna all snickered like they were in on some inside joke,
which just made me feel uncomfortable. Sabine as well, if I was reading her closed-off body language correctly. There was no way I
was going to let Noelle completely hijack this weekend. I needed her input, definitely, but she wasn't going to tell me how to run this
whole thing "You guys, this is not a vacation," I said pointedly. "We're here to plan a fund-raiser to save Billings, remember? And I
don't care about the caviar, because I wasn't planning on serving any anyway. So get your butts in gear. We've got appointments to
keep."
Vienna and London looked at each other, and Vienna pushed herself up in her chaise, rolling her eyes. "God, Reed. You sound like
my mother," she said. But she grabbed her black cashmere coat and stood. "As long as we get to Dylan's at some point today, I'm hap-
py," London said with a shrug. "Now that you brought it up, I can't stop thinking about their cappuccino gelato. Dee-vine. " Noelle