Everyone Worth Knowing (41 page)

even better shot at getting the clients covered."

"Sounds good," I croaked. I couldn't wait to get out of that office

and reread every word Abby had written. How did she have

any access at all? I thought bitterly about how she must have felt

when she'd stumbled into a gold mine that first night at Bungalow

8, the night I'd met Philip. It was all starting to fall into place: she

had been everywhere lately, always appearing out of the woodwork

like a Pop-a-Weasel, ready with a nasty comment or a sneering

look.

"Okay, enough of that. Don't worry about it too much right

now. Just focus on making sure everything works for tonight. It's

going to be great, don't you think?"

I murmured "great" a few times and shuffled out of her office. I

had already begun fantasizing about confronting Abby. There were

a million possibilities, and each sounded delicious. It wasn't until I

was back at the circular table, staring at my laptop, that I realized I

couldn't do one damn thing about it. 1 couldn't tell anyone I knew,

least of all Abby.

I tried to focus. After cutting out the Page Six clipping and taping

it to the center of the office's shared circular desk, I logged on to see

if the plane that would be bringing Jay-Z from LA to New York had

actually left New York on time, which would highly increase the

odds of its arriving in LA—and then coming back again—on schedule.

So far, so good. I assigned two interns to take cars to Newark

and stake out his arrival. This was not particularly necessary, since

the Hotel Gansevoort was sending two stretch limos for them, but I

wanted someone there to visually confirm that he'd arrived and got-

ten in his car without getting distracted by anything along the way. A

quick call to Sammy—be still, my heart—confirmed that the setup

was going smoothly. My to-do list complete, I tried to block out the

thoughts of Abby's viciousness. It was late afternoon, and the only

thing left to do was, well, absolutely nothing.

18

Not only was Jay-Z's plane on time, it was a few minutes early.

He was polite and attentive. Nearly every single person who'd

RSVP'd to the event showed up, and miraculously, the people who

materialized at the door with no invite were all actually people we

would've wanted to come. Mr. Kroner spent the evening tucked

away at a table with his associates, and we made sure the little RE
SERVED

sign was displayed prominently for them and that a steady

stream of pretty girls stopped by to say hello.

Most surprising was Philip. I'd been terrified he'd do something

in a drunken state to embarrass me or the firm, but he'd kept his

nose clean in every respect and even managed not to bury it in

anyone's cleavage—at least not in front of any photographers,

which is all that really mattered. I'd tried to warn him in a hundred

different ways that, as host, he would need to be friendly to everyone,

but my fear had been totally unfounded. From the moment

he'd stepped inside the front door, he'd performed brilliantly. He'd

rotated among all the groups assembled, shaking hands and nodding

sagely with the corporate types, ordering rounds of shots for

the bankers and mini-champagnes for the models, and backslapping

the celebrities with Clintonian charm. He strolled and

smiled and carried conversations effortlessly, and I watched as men

and women alike fell in love with him. It was instantly clear why

gossip columns tracked him and why women everywhere

swooned when he turned his attention to them. His ability to chat

and joke and listen came so naturally that when he was near, people

were left feeling like the volume had been turned down on

everyone and everything except Philip Weston. They warmed to

his touch, to his presence, and I found myself buzzing right along

with everyone else. I couldn't deny that I was bizarrely drawn to

him.

The only almost-disaster came when Samantha Ronson's flight

from London was canceled and we were left with no DJ. At the

exact same time, I'd received a call from Jake Gyllenhaal's publicist,

asking if he could be placed on the VIP list for the evening.

Having just read an article on do-it-yourself DJing, I asked Jake

and the other confirmed celebs to bring their personal iPods and

DJ for an hour each after Jay-Z did his twenty-minute set. It had

been a huge success; each of the famous names had arrived with

an iPod full of personal favorites, and soon everyone in attendance

knew Jerry Seinfeld's all-time favorite dance song. Everything else

had gone perfectly. There'd been no catfights over the gift bags, no

brawls at the door, pretty much no uninvited drama to distract

from the conveyance of the message: everyone young, hip, urban,

and remotely cool is partying to celebrate BlackBerry, which must

mean that BlackBerry itself is young, hip, urban, and cool. Therefore,

you—whoever you are and wherever you're reading about

this fabulous event—must own one so that you, too, may be

young, hip, urban, and cool.

All in all, the event was a complete success. Kelly was happy,

the client was thrilled (if slightly scandalized and extremely hung

over—apparently Mr. Kroner was unaccustomed to the sort of enthusiastic

and committed drinking that had encompassed the entire

evening), and the photogs had snapped, snapped, snapped just

about every celebrity that our rotating staff of interns and coordinators

physically threw in front of them. And then there was the effect

the evening had on my love life.

Taking a break, I slinked outside under my usual pretense of

wanting a cigarette. I found Sammy reading from another tattered

paperback, Richard Russo's
Empire Falls.

"Having fun?" he asked, lighting my cigarette. I'd cupped my

hands around his lighter to protect the flame from the wind and felt

a flutter in my chest when our skin touched. Was it lust, love, or just

early-onset lung cancer? At that moment, it didn't seem to matter.

"Shockingly, yes." I laughed, suddenly feeling that all was right

and good. "If you'd told me a few months ago that I'd be planning

a party at Bungalow 8 with Jay-Z as the entertainment, I would've

thought you were crazy. I hated banking. I'd sort of forgotten what

it was like to
want
to do something well."

He smiled. "You obviously do this well. Everyone's talking

about you."

"Talking about me? I'm not sure I like the sound of that."

He turned to check a few girls' names against the list and

let them enter. "No, no, all good stuff. Just that you've got this whole

thing figured out and that you know how to put it all together. I

can't remember the last time we had a party here that went this

smoothly."

"Really?" Part of me knew that this whole conversation was utterly

ridiculous—we were, after all, talking about event-planning—

but it was still really nice to hear.

"Sure. The question is, do you like it?"

"Well,
like
is a strong word for just about anything, don't you

think?" He laughed and I had to physically bury my hands in my

coat pockets to keep from grabbing his face. "It's a far cry from the

Peace Corps, for sure, but it's okay for now."

His face clouded over almost immediately. "Yeah" was about

all he could manage.

"So, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?" I blurted out, not

realizing that it might sound like I was asking him out when all I

really wanted to do was change the subject. "Going anywhere with

your girlfriend?" I added casually to show him I knew the situation.

He gave me another uncomfortable look, followed by some

obvious squirming, sending the message loud and clear: I had

overstepped my bounds.

"I, uh, I didn't mean anything by—"

"No, no worries," he cut in, leaning backward against the door

as though he felt dizzy. "It's just that, well, it's kind of complicated.

Long story. Anyway, I'm actually going home this weekend. My old

man's not doing so well, and it's been a couple months since I

made it up there."

"Where's home?"

He looked at me curiously, as though he were trying to read

my face, and then said quietly, "Poughkeepsie."

Had he said that he was born and raised in Laos, he could not

have shocked me more. Was he toying with me? Kidding? Had he

found out that I was from Poughkeepsie and going home this

weekend and thought this was funny somehow? A quick check of

his face—smiling sweetly as he watched me process this—indicated

no.

"Poughkeepsie, New York?" was about all I could manage.

"The one and only."

"That's crazy. I'm from there—"

"Yeah, I know. I just didn't ever know if you knew. I remember

you," he said softly, looking out across Twenty-seventh Street

at, as far as I could tell, absolutely nothing.

And, of course, it all came back then. Not that there were so

many clues, but there had always been the sense that he was familiar.

The time we'd stood right here and he'd joked that one of

the girls who'd just gone inside needed a lesson in hippie chic

since her flowing caftan was all wrong, and that she should head

upstate to be schooled by the pros. That day in Starbucks when

he'd brushed his hand up the back of his head and I'd sworn I'd

seen that before. The very first night at Penelope's engagement

party, when he wouldn't let me in and I couldn't shake the feeling

that he was staring at me, almost waiting for me to say something.

It was all so obvious now. Samuel Stevens, the guy in high school

who was too gorgeous for his own good. The guy everyone assumed

was gay because he was big and beautiful and didn't play a

sport, but who instead kept mostly to himself while working at a

few well-known local restaurants. The guy who came across as

conceited and arrogant when we were teenagers and too young to

realize that he was intensely shy, a loner, someone who didn't feel

quite right with any one group of kids. The guy who'd sat at the

table diagonally across from me in shop class, always focused on

the wooden serving trays or gumball machines we were learning to

make, never flirting or spacing or sleeping or whispering with his

tablemates. The guy every girl should have loved but actually

hated because he was somehow beyond her, already looking

ahead, past the idiocy of high school and social hierarchies and

seemingly unaware that anyone else existed. I did a quick calculation

and realized that I hadn't seen him in nearly twelve years. I

was a freshman and he a senior when we had that one shop class

together before he graduated and vanished altogether.

"Mr. Mertz's shop class, 1991, right?"

He nodded.

"Ohmigod, why didn't you say anything before now?" I asked,