Sex and Vanity(8)

“What do you mean? They don’t want to pay their fair share?”

“No, Charlotte, they’re all fighting to pick up the whole check! They screech at each other, play tug-of-war over the bill, or try to bribe the waiter not to let anyone else pay. Apparently it’s considered good manners to make a big show of it,” Lucie tried to explain.

“I’ll never understand that sort of behavior. To me, this woman crossed a line. And what do you make of that son of hers?”

“I’m not sure. He barely spoke,” Lucie said with restraint. The truth was she had an instant aversion to really attractive guys, ever since her eighth grade boyfriend, Ryan Frick—who looked like a young Jared Leto—two-timed her with Maggie Hoover, a Spence girl who was known to everyone in their generation because she could put her entire fist in her mouth.

“Well, I thought he seemed like an arrogant snot! Who is he to insist that we take their rooms? My God, this hotel is turning out to be a nightmare. First they give us the wrong rooms, and then we have to deal with these sort of people. I should have listened to Giles, my travel editor, and just shelled out the money for the Punta Tragara. This would never have happened there. Penny wise, pound foolish, as they say. Shall I call them up and see if they have any ocean-view rooms available? I don’t care what we have to pay anymore. I’ll call up Diane at the family office and sell some bonds if I have to.”

Just as Lucie was about to answer, she saw someone familiar in the distance. “Look at that man coming down those steps. Isn’t that Auden Beebe?”

Charlotte peered at the tall man in his forties with a perfectly groomed beard and shoulder-length blond hair walking through the archway of the lobby out onto the terrace. “It sure is! Auden! Auden!”

Auden Beebe (City and Country Saint Ann’s Amherstfn1) turned and approached them. “Hullo,” he said warmly, although it was clear that he recognized the ladies without quite being able to place them. As a celebrated yoga master, life coach, motivational speaker, and self-help author (his bestseller, The Preppie Guru, had been on the New York Times bestseller list for the past two years), he was accustomed to meeting thousands of people who felt that they knew him intimately.

“Auden, it’s Charlotte Barclay and Lucie Churchill. We were at your workshop at Canyon Ranch last spring? In Lenox?” Charlotte said effusively.

“Yes, of course, the cousins!” Auden said, breaking into a wide smile. “What brings you to Capri?”

“We’re here for a wedding,” Lucie answered.

“Ah. Let me guess … Dolfi De Vecchi’s?”

“Yes!” Lucie and Charlotte said in unison.

“Dolfi has been coming to my workshops for years, and Isabel more recently. I’m officiating the wedding.”

“What serendipity!” Charlotte was clearly enraptured by the trifecta of Auden’s fame, his family’s listing in The Social Register, and his resemblance to Alexander Skarsg?rd.

“Mr. Beebe, is it true you’re opening a Preppie Guru Lounge in East Hampton?” Lucie asked.

“Please call me Auden, and yes, next summer. It’s going to be a pop-up on Newtown Lane, right next door to James Perse. We’re going to start small at first and offer an Ayurvedic juice bar, qigong, puppy yoga, breath work meditation, and maybe some sound healing. See what the community responds to.”

“Excuse my ignorance, but what is puppy yoga?” Charlotte inquired.

“It’s a yoga session in a room filled with puppies. They’ll be frolicking around your mat and licking you in the face while you’re in downward dog.”

“How adorable! My family summers in East Hampton, and I’m going to be at puppy yoga every day,” Lucie said.

“Terrific! In the meantime, I’ll be leading yoga every morning down by the pool here, minus the puppies.”

Just then, two ladies in their sixties dressed in smartly tailored linen pantsuits stopped by their table on their way to the garden. One of them smiled wryly at Charlotte. “You poor things! We saw what happened in the dining room. I’m sorry you were put in that situation. What an atrocious lack of manners!”

“She’s been like that all week,” added the other lady. “She overheard us talking about how much we loved the orchids at this flower shop next to the church, and the next thing you know we came back to our suite and found it filled with orchids. Dozens of pots, compliments of Rosemary Zao! Now it looks like we’re having a wake!”

“I do hope you and your friend can get your rooms sorted out to your satisfaction,” the first lady said to Charlotte sympathetically.

“Thank you. Lucie is actually my cousin. My mother and her father were brother and sister,” Charlotte said.

“Oh, how nice,” the ladies said in unison. They nodded at Auden before walking on, and his curiosity was piqued. “May I ask what happened in the dining room that so scandalized the unflappable Ortiz sisters of Manila?”

Lucie and Charlotte hesitated for a split second, and Auden immediately picked up on it. “Apologies, I’m being too nosy.”

“No, you’re fine,” Charlotte said, before breathlessly recounting what had just transpired with Rosemary Zao in the dining room. “… she kept insisting, and she was making such a spectacle of it, we felt so uncomfortable that we had to seek refuge here.”