Sex and Vanity(74)

Marian slapped her knee, howling with laughter.

“Lucie, if you aren’t going to eat, you should come with me. You’ve got to try this foot-soaking tub. It’s so relaxing,” Charlotte said gingerly.

Lucie got up from her barstool and marched Charlotte into the library, closing the door behind them tightly. “So thoughtful of you to suggest a relaxing soak, Charlotte. After all, I don’t think I’ll ever get to relax again once this film premieres next month at the Toronto International Film Festival.”

Charlotte sank down on the buttoned leather sofa. “I can’t believe it! I just can’t believe it!”

“Believe it. It’s all there in high definition!” Lucie seethed, as she sat in the club chair directly across from Charlotte, as though she were staging an interrogation. “How could you, Charlotte? How could you tell Olivia everything, after you made me swear never to breathe a word to anyone?”

“But I didn’t tell her!”

“What then, Olivia Lavistock is psychic?”

“I mean, I only told Olivia about the drone thing right after I’d discovered you and George at the villa. After you had both run off into the woods, I went back to the party in utter panic! I didn’t know what to do, I needed her help,” Charlotte sputtered.

“You told me you had told no one!”

“I haven’t told a soul since that night, I swear. The only person I confided in was Olivia, who I thought was my friend. How in the world was I supposed to know she would use it in her goddamn movie!”

“Well, clearly Olivia doesn’t have an ounce of imagination. She stole every bit of our story and put it in her film.”

“Oh my poor girl, I’m so sorry!”

Lucie snorted. “You always say that, but are you ever really sorry?”

Charlotte began to tear up. “I truly am! I’ll never speak to Olivia again!”

“Well, you shouldn’t have spoken to her in the first place.”

“What was she thinking?!” Charlotte moaned, shaking her head. “At least she made her characters Indian.”

Lucie rolled her eyes. “Yes, it’s a fine example of cultural appropriation.”

“What I mean is, I don’t think anyone would ever link you and George to this film.”

“Anyone except the four hundred people who attended Issie’s wedding. Just think what Mordecai von Ephrussí’s going to say when he sees the film! You know he’ll see it!”

“Ugh, that insufferable toady!”

“And that’s not the worst of it, Charlotte! George was right there!”

“Christ Almighty, I forgot he was at the screening!”

“I had to sit through that god-awful movie with George on one side of me and Cecil on the other!”

Charlotte stared at Lucie fearfully. “What did George do?”

“What he did, Charlotte, was he followed me outside when the movie was over, pushed me against a wall, and shoved his tongue down my throat!” Lucie said melodramatically.

Charlotte put her hands to her face. “Oh my God, Lucie! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I got away from him fast.”

“What is it with that boy? It’s the second time he’s tried to seduce you. He’s never gotten over you, has he?”

“He humiliated me! He clearly hasn’t gotten the message that I’m about to become Mrs. Cecil Pike,” Lucie huffed, trying to sound indignant.

“Did you tell Cecil?”

“Are you mad? Of course I didn’t.”

“Thank God! Knowing Cecil, he’d probably try to challenge George to a duel!”

Lucie didn’t respond, but she suddenly had a vision of Cecil dressed up in a crisp white fencing uniform and helmet, saber in hand. It’s not a saber, Lucie, it’s called an épée, she could hear him already correcting her, as he assumed the proper fencing stance opposite George, who stood before him in his standard black tank top and surfer shorts. Cecil waved his épée threateningly in the air with great flourish, while George, in one swift Jean-Claude Van Damme move, raised his leg and kicked Cecil in the head, knocking him out cold.

“Where is George now?” Charlotte asked, snapping Lucie out of her daydream.

“He hightailed it back to Manhattan after the movie.”

“With his tail between his legs, I should hope!”

Suddenly, all Lucie could think of was George between her legs, ravishing her with his hands, with his tongue, with his deliciously hard … Stop, stop, stop it! Why was she thinking such obscene, shameful things? Wasn’t fantasizing about another man the same as cheating on Cecil? She couldn’t do this to Cecil; she couldn’t do this to herself. She couldn’t ruin her whole life because of some inexplicable obsession with George Zao. Yes, that’s what it was. She could admit it to herself now. She was obsessed, utterly obsessed with him, and it just wasn’t right. She had been torturing herself since the day she had found out he rented Cissinghurst, and it had tormented her to the edge of insanity. It had turned her life upside down. She had lost her appetite, she felt sick and anxious all the time, she was having the most intense dreams about reenacting pagan love rituals in cliffside caverns with George. It wasn’t natural to have these kinds of dreams, to feel such things for a man whom she didn’t even like. George was the polar opposite of the kind of guys she liked. He didn’t grow up in New York. He wasn’t suave and sophisticated. He didn’t dress properly. He didn’t in any way resemble Cary Elwes in The Princess Bride. He was nothing like the husband she had always envisioned for herself. He had driven her crazy and done nothing but mess up her life and mess with her head since the moment she had first set eyes on him in the lunchroom of the Bertolucci, and the one thing she hated more than anything was messy. Her life, her image, her whole being up till this point, had been a study in perfection. She had gone to Brearley and had always been popular as Lucie Tang Churchill, the cool half-Asian girl. She had graduated from Brown with honors. She had landed her dream job with the coolest company in town, and she was about to marry a dashing, erudite gentleman whom even Esquire proclaimed “The Most Desired Dude on the Planet.” They would live in an exquisitely original town house in the West Village, summer in East Hampton, and maybe even get a place in Provence. They would both serve on the boards of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and PS1 and maybe even the Dia. They would, in precisely four and a half years, start to have beautiful, gifted children (a boy, then a girl) who would attend Saint Bernard’s and Brearley, followed by Harvard or Brown or Bard—actually, no, not Bard, Brearley girls didn’t go to Bard—and be adored by everyone, adored by Granny, adored by all the Churchills. And if all went as planned, she would see Cecil and her children’s names appear alongside hers in The Social Register, and it would be the happiest day of Cecil’s life. There was no way in hell she was going to let George ruin this magnificent life she had planned out for herself since she was eight years old. All the happiness in her future, her family’s future, her children’s future, depended on the removal of George from her life.