Break Every Rule (2 page)

It was the opening night of the big Luc Vogel retrospective, and pretty much everyone Arno knew was there. His parents were the famous Wildenburger
art dealers, and Luc Vogel was one of their most famous clients. All of his parents' friends and enemies had turned out. A lot of kids that Arno knew were there, too, because his parents had enlisted his help in getting more of a “youthful crowd.” Suited art world types were now mixing with beautiful young people in ripped designer clothes.

The Wildenburgers had thrown a pre-opening cocktail party for business associates and friends of the artist at their Chelsea town house, so Arno had already done his requisite mingling and was feeling a little restless. In fact, he was feeling more than restless. He was feeling like stirring up some trouble. It was a big night for his parents, and they were doing their power couple routine, in spite of the fact that they'd recently (and very publicly) decided to separate. It was annoying, really.

“Your mom looks different,” David said absently. “Did she get something done?”

“Yeah, probably. Whatever,” Arno said. “Let's find Rob and turn this party up a notch.”

Arno gave a nod to the girl he'd been talking to, and he and David wandered through the lobby and up the great stone steps to the second floor mezzanine. The Luc Vogel stuff was all in the galleries up there, although nobody seemed to be bothering to look at it. Arno shrugged at David, and they moved from one huge print
to another: a crowd of naked people lying in a field, a crowd of naked people crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, a crowd of naked people lying around the Wildenburger gallery.

“Do you think these people model professionally?” David asked.

Arno gave him a look. “Does it look like they do? I don't think so, David.”

All that flesh looked very pink against the austere backgrounds, and there was something more hippy and childlike than adult and sexy about the people in the pictures. David nodded to show Arno that he got it.

“Eh, my brothers!” David and Arno turned and saw Rob coming toward them. His voice sounded even louder in the massive gallery with its soaring ceilings and monumental art.

Rob disappeared momentarily behind a gigantic, obelisk-like sculpture in the middle of the gallery, and then reappeared on the other side. He had a big smile on his face, and a blonde under each arm. Trailing behind them was a third, equally blond, girl. Arno recognized them from parties and around; they were that sleek, Upper East Side breed of girls, the kind who spent their weekends at charity balls or in East Hampton. They showed up in the society pages, too, either for being very reckless or for being very well-dressed, but
Arno was pretty sure he'd met these girls in person at least a couple of times. They all had perfect ski jump noses, and long, slightly bleached out, straightened hair. “David Grobart, Arno Wildenburger, meet Mimi, Lizzie, and Sadie. They are so wild!”

Arno kissed each girl on the cheek. David nodded at them awkwardly.

“You girls having a good time?” Arno asked.

They all nodded at once.

“I've been a Luc Vogel fan since I was, like, eleven,” Mimi said with a sigh. She had one of those little girl voices that were kind of creepy and kind of hot at once. “That's when my parents bought me #65/
The Mall
for my bedroom in Jackson Hole. I love what his work says about the human body.”

“Isn't she
del fuego
?” Rob cried.

Arno smiled rakishly. “You know, my parents represent Luc. I could, you know, introduce you to him if you want…”

“Really? That would be
such
an honor.”

“Sure.” Arno shrugged. “Should we go downstairs and mingle?”

“Yes! Let's go party,” Rob said animatedly, “and drink more champagne.”

They looked over the glass railing and down on the crowd in the lobby. The DJ had started, and the tinkling
piano had finally been replaced by Old Dirty Bastard. The crowd had swelled, and people were starting to dance. Arno felt Mimi kind of swaying next to him, like she felt like dancing, too. He'd sworn off uptown girls after this very,
very
uptown girl named Liesel had turned out to be a total nightmare of a person last fall, but he had to admit that he kind of liked the way Mimi was moving.

Mimi was the tallest of the girls, and she seemed to be in charge. She was one of these girls with a permanent tan, an impossibly thin physique, and the confidence of a thirty-year-old. Mimi Rathbone—
that
was her name. Arno remembered reading something about her in Page Six recently. He was trying to think of what it had been, but looking at her in that incredibly low-cut dress right then, he was having trouble remembering much of anything….

Rob put his arm around the waist of the girl with the high ponytail—her name was Lizzie—and headed for the stairs, and Arno kept his hand near the small of Mimi's back as they followed. David was left to figure out how best to negotiate Sadie. Arno wasn't sure why he thought Sadie was best for David, but she did seem like the least likely to bite. Maybe because of her cutesy Betty Page bangs? As they came down into the lobby, people turned their heads to look. Arno reflected, for a
moment, what good backup guys Rob and David made. They were both as tall and dark-haired as he was, and he could tell by the way people were staring that they looked frighteningly good with the uptown girls on their arms.

They moved into the crowd and started dancing. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, Arno thought, giving himself a little inward thumbs-up. Even David was admirably trying to dance, if you could call his shuffle that. Mimi had her arms draped around Arno's waist, and she was dancing pretty close to him. As a rule, Arno was never surprised when girls were into him, but girls like Mimi, as a rule, never went with guys who were actually still in high school. He was a little bit surprised in spite of himself. He kept dancing with her until someone got up to make a speech, shushing the DJ and the crowd in the process.

It was his father, Alec Wildenburger. He was standing on a raised part of the floor, and behind him you could see the outdoor sculpture garden through big, glass windows, looking magical in the glow of the orange street lights. In his hands were a champagne glass and a knife, which he was tapping together.

“I hope the bright young things will excuse me for a few moments so that an old, dull fellow can say some words about one of the masters…,” he began in his
signature urbane drawl. “One of the masters, who, I might add, has kept my wife and me quite well fed for over a decade, and one of the masters who, it seems, characteristically, is hiding this evening…”

Arno looked at Rob, who was silently making the international gesture for “Let's Party” with his fists in the air. “This is fucking boring,” Arno whispered, though perhaps not as quietly as he could have.

“Come out, Luc Vogel…,” Alec Wildenburger was saying. “Come out, come out wherever you are!”

“I think I saw where they are keeping the champagne,” Rob hissed. He was definitely being a little noisier than was socially acceptable. “Let's go get a bottle for all and start our own party!”

Arno shrugged at Mimi. “You coming with?”

She whipped her hair over her shoulder, and smiled knowingly. “I'll go just about anywhere with you, Arno Wildenburger,” she said.

Arno smiled to himself again—she was so into him that she'd forgotten all about meeting the brilliant Luc Vogel.

Mickey Pardo got to the MoMA party just as Alec Wildenburger was finishing his speech, which was perfect timing as far as Mickey was concerned. Mickey's dad was Ricardo Pardo, the sculptor, and he was represented by the Wildenburgers, so Mickey had heard these speeches before. They sucked.

Mickey was squat and firey, just like his father, so he was instantly recognizable to the crowd of art-world insiders. They nodded at him with affectionate distaste. As Mr. Wildenburger disappeared into the crowd, the music came back on and people started dancing and talking and yelling. It actually looked like kind of a cool scene. Mickey growled sweetly at Philippa Frady, who was his girlfriend again that week.

She shook her head and looked at him sternly. Then he remembered that he had promised her there would be no outlandish behavior that night. Also, no yelling. He tried to give her a smile devoid of mischievousness, and she sighed and kissed him on the forehead.
Mickey and Philippa had been together (on and off) for a long time.

They had finally agreed last fall that they should just be friends, at least until they went to college, or reached some slightly more advanced stage of adulthood. Their relationship could get a little intense sometimes, and besides, their parents were very invested in breaking them up. But then they managed to be back on just in time for Valentine's Day.

“Do you see Jonathan or anybody?” Mickey asked. He adjusted his powder blue tuxedo jacket, which he was wearing over dickies cutoffs.

Philippa shook her head.

“Damn,” Mickey said. “You'd think Arno would be at his own parents' party, right?”

“Oh, he's here,” Philippa said. “He and Rob are probably just scamming on freshmen girls somewhere.”

“Nah, Arno doesn't date freshmen anymore,” Mickey said as they moved through the crowd. “Bad for his rep, apparently. Hey, why's everybody staring at us?”

“Because last week we were broken up. We're confusing their simple minds.”

“Oh, right.”

They moved toward the center of the lobby, Mickey craning his neck for at least
one
of his guys. “Oh, shit,” he said suddenly, grabbing Philippa by the arm.

“What?”

“My dad,” Mickey yelped, pulling Philippa in the opposite direction and into a nook off the main lobby.

“You haven't told them we're back on yet, have you?”

“No, shhh, that's just going to cause a lot of yelling,” Mickey said. He turned to see where they'd ended up. “Oh, sweet. Buffet.”

“Mickey, this makes me
really
mad,” Philippa said. She was petite and pale and gorgeous, and when she got mad she seemed to be radiating pure heat from the core of her being. Mickey thought she was adorable when she got like this.

“C'mon,” he pleaded. Then he turned and started heaping his plate with shrimp.

“Mickey, how could you do this! I had, like, the biggest, suckiest confession session with my parents, and now your parents are going to find out from my parents, and I'm going to look totally stupid!”

“Phil, you never look stupid,” Mickey said earnestly.

“Besides, it's dishonest,” Philippa went on. “My therapist and I were just talking about how the problem with our relationship is that it has a culture of dishonesty, and she's so
dead on.
Everything is based on total delusion between us!”

“It is not!” Mickey yelled. Everyone else at the buffet table looked at them. The waiters cleared their throats.
“Besides, my therapist says we temper each others' worst qualities.”

“Oh, that is such
bullsh
—,” Philippa started to say.

“Excuse me—,” someone said. They whipped their heads around. A girl with layered brown hair was standing next to them. She was holding a plate, and looked about twenty-five. In a voice slightly louder than everyone else's, and slow, like she was talking to the feeble-minded, she said: “Sorry to interrupt, but are you Mickey Pardo, son of the sculptor Ricardo Pardo?”

“Who are you?” Philippa asked coldly.

“Justine Gray,
New York
magazine,” she said, wiping her hand on her jeans and extending her hand. “I'm a writer, and I'm here doing some last-minute research for our annual ‘Hottest Private School Boy' issue. I was actually hoping I could talk to you.”

Philippa held up a perfectly manicured hand, but Mickey was ready for some fun. He knew this issue. It came out every year, and Jonathan always read and talked about it obsessively.

“I'm hot,” Mickey said. “I go to private school.”

“Mickey,” Philippa said. Mickey ignored her.

“This is my girlfriend, Philippa. She's hot, too. We're what you call a hot couple.”

“
Mickey
—”

“See, the thing is, our parents don't want us to see
each other. But we can't be kept apart. That's how hot we are. We're practically about to burn this house down. We're Romeo and freaking Juliet. I mean, we've been going out since freshman year, and it's never been easy. But that's what makes it so worth it. It shouldn't
matter
whether my parents know we're back together. Right?
Right!?
”

“Uh-huh,” the Gray girl said, politely pretending to take notes on a pad of paper.

“What else do you want to know about me?” Mickey asked, popping a shrimp in his mouth.

“
Mickey
,” Philippa hissed, dragging him across the room. “Can I talk to you over here, please?” When they were a safe distance from the reporter person, she said, “You
do not,
I repeat
do not
tell my personal shit to random strangers. Is this what going out with you is always going to be like?!”

“
Phil
—”

“I'd hate to think my parents were right about something,” she said pointedly. “Good-bye, Mickey.”

Mickey watched Philippa walk back across the fabulous lobby, and then turned sheepishly back to the writer. Luckily, she was now engrossed in a cell phone conversation, and staring at the ceiling as she talked. Mickey darted into the adjoining nook.

He found himself in a small room that had been set
up like a lounge, with couches and ashtrays. There was only one dude, sitting and chomping a cigar, and Mickey sat down heavily beside him.

“What's your problem?” The man asked, not unkindly. He was on the smallish side and had downy blond hair, even though he was definitely at least forty.