"Er . . . yes, I suppose," Eliza said. "Can I help you?"
"My client, Chauncey Raven, is about to arrive," the woman said, and Eliza remembered where she'd seen the woman before. She was the pompous publicist who'd asked Eliza not to let Ondine Sylvester into the VIP room earlier in the summer.
"That's wonderful--we love Chauncey," Eliza said, giving her standard reply to the assistants of the famous.
"Well, yes, but I need to know where she's sitting. Those girls over there said all the front-row seats are taken."
"Oh!" Eliza exclaimed. Shit. The show was about to start in five minutes. Her headset squawked with Mitzi's grating voice "Eliza! Dollink! Code Blue! Chauncey Raven doesn't have a seat!"
The heavyset handler scowled at Eliza.
Eliza didn't know what to do. Mitzi's command to fix ///didn't really translate to anything helpful. How? Bring one seat from the second row up to the front? She scanned the room, which was filling up with guests, and settled on Mara and Megan. Surely they would understand how important it was to have Chauncey in the front row. Eliza click-clacked on her heels down the plastic-covered runway to where they were seated.
"Mar, can I talk to you for a sec?" Eliza asked, pulling on Mara's arm.
"What's going on? Anything wrong?" Mara asked.
"Chauncey Raven is coming to the show."
205
"Oh, great!" Mara had hung out with Chauncey so much at Seventh Circle, she considered her a friend.
"But there aren't any more front-row seats left. I'm so, so sorry. But do you think we could move you and your sister back to the second row? I can put you guys right there, behind the Perry twins."
Mara straightened up. "But why?" she asked, noticing the Perry twins whispering across the runway. Sugar and Poppy were smirking, checking out Megan, and Mara blushed to think of what the twins were saying about her sister's outfit. She couldn't believe Eliza was asking them to move. Mara had been in the Hamptons long enough to know that being asked to give up your seat was completely humiliating.
Chauncey Raven's publicist gripped Eliza's arm and whispered, "Chauncey is in the building! Now!"
"I'm really sorry to have to do this," Eliza said, turning away from Mara and making a begging gesture to Megan. "But we have a really important celebrity attending who forgot to RSVP, and we really need these two front-row seats. I'm totally sorry, Megan."
"No prob!" Megan said, beaming. "Who's the celeb?"
"Really, Meg, you don't have to get up," Mara pressed, even as Eliza was helping Megan out of her seat.
"It's for Chauncey Raven. Thank you, thank you, thank you," Eliza said, handing Megan her things and moving her to the second row. "Oh. Except you have to leave the goody bag."
Megan's face fell. She noted the significantly smaller goody bag on the second-row seat.
206
"Okay, keep it," Eliza said. "It's fine."
Chauncey arrived a full fifteen minutes later, with husband Daryl Wolf in tow. Since there was only one seat for the two of them, Chauncey promptly sat on her husband
's lap.
The room went pitch black, and suddenly, a booming bass line thundered from the overhead speakers, and a sultry British voice began to rap in a sexy coo. The lights went up, and the models strutted on the runway to the beat of the electroshock hip-hop song "Fuck the Pain Away."
The crowd thrilled to the nasty lyrics and the tiny little outfits. Jacqui came out in her tank top-thong and new fauxhawk, and there was an electric shiver in the air. It was all so bad . . . yet so good. Not one outfit was wearable. Not one item of clothing had any reference to the lives of any of the women sitting in the audience. But it didn't matter. The collection was a joyous celebration of sex and youth, and it would garner rave reviews in the papers. By the time the collection hit department stores, the sheer shirts would be lined, the miniskirts cut to a more modest length, and the tank top-thongs--well, they were really only for show.
Eliza put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, looking back to where Mara was sitting. But she didn't see Mara, only Chauncey Raven, who was seated sideways on her husband's lap, completely blocking Mara's view of the runway.
And that's what being a bitch will get you.
207
blood may be thicker than water, but nothing