Nancy’s Theory of Style (40 page)

“You know how much I care about you,
don’t you?”

“I feel the same way about you.” She was
sure she cared for him. Oh, yes, she certainly cared for Bailey.

“Bye,
Nancy
.”

“Bye.” She put down the phone and saw
Derek’s twilight blue eyes staring at her and she flushed hot.

“You’re going with Whiteside?”

“We’re going to the beach house and I
think he’s going to ask me to marry him.”

“Okay, that’s it,” Derek said and stood
up.

His voice was different and he looked
different -- like the man who’d made love to her.

“What’s it?” she asked.

“I’ve had it with this stupid farce. Your
douche husband paid an agency to place me here.”

She was baffled by his American accent
and his anger. “Yes, I know Todd hired you, but what are you talking about and
why are you talking like that?”

“Because this is how I talk.”

“Todd may be a douche – okay, he is a
douche, but you shouldn’t be calling him that and… Why don’t you calm down and
have a glass of water?” she said, confused. “I’ll get it for you. Sparkling
with lime.”

“I don’t need water,” he snapped. “Todd
hired me to get proof that you’re cheating on him so he could break your pre-nup,
and now you’re going off with that asshole, Whiteside. What the hell are you
thinking? Are you even thinking?”

Nancy
felt as if she’d stuck her finger in a
light socket. “Do you mean you’ve been spying on me, Derek?”

“Rick. My name’s Rick.”

She couldn’t breathe for a minute. Of
course, Todd had given in too easily to the separation. Of course, he’d
volunteered too readily to hire an assistant. Of course, Derek had been too
perfect.
Nancy
had never felt more stupid and foolish and angry and hurt in her life.

“Did you tell him that I slept with
Anthony Harper?” she said. Then an even more painful possibility came to her. “And
that’s why you had sex with me, isn’t it? It was a performance. You forced
yourself to do it because you were paid to.” She clenched her hands until her
nails cut into her palms. “Oh, god, oh, god.”

“That’s how you think, isn’t it? It’s
all about money. That’s why you go from one rich jerk to another. That’s why
you’d never consider someone like me.”

“How could I? You’re gay. You and
Prescott…”

“Eugenia’s sharper than you. She figured
it out. I’m not gay. I’m not English.
Prescott
Bottomsly? Are you kidding me? His name is Gregory, he’s my friend, and he owns
an investigation agency. He hired me because I needed the money.”

Nancy
was trying to absorb everything he was
saying. “Then why did you…when we…”

“Because I fell for your poor little
rich girl act. Yeah, you made me think you were someone else for a while. You
made me think I was someone else, too, which shows what an idiot I am. I even
broke up with a hot babe for you,” he said. “What kind of soulless woman
marries a man just to take his money?”

“I didn’t marry Todd for money!”

“I don’t care if you clean him out and I
don’t care if you clean out Whiteside, too. I don’t want to have anything to do
with either you or your scumbag husband,” he said. “Tell Eugenia that I love
her and I wish I could have said goodbye. She’s a great kid and she sure as
hell deserves better than being a member of your family.”

He walked to the doorway and said, “Have
a fabulous life, Nancy Fancy.”

Nancy
stood where she was and watched him
leave.

Everything she’d thought about him was a
lie. She’d had sex with a complete stranger. She’d let him into her home and
shared everything with him. Nancy Fancy. That was the name the burlesque dancer
had mentioned. What was her name? Melanie. She was Derek’s Mel.

Five minutes later, Froth’s lines
started ringing.
Nancy
let them ring and called her attorney. Her hand shook as she held the phone and
said, “Renee, I need to speak with you as soon as possible, but not today. Tomorrow.
Todd hired someone to spy on me.”

She felt as if she was walking through a
bog; everything was dark and murky and awful. If
Nancy
could only hold herself together
through the fundraiser, she would deal with everything tomorrow.

She went upstairs to give Miss Winkles
the extra key for the babysitter.

Miss Winkles opened the door a smidgen,
not enough for
Nancy
to see into the apartment, and scrutinized her. “Why didn’t you send up Derek,
Girl Carrington?”

“He’s no longer in my employ. Here’s the
key to give Eugenia’s babysitter, Eve, who’ll bring her from school. Eve has my
phone number if there’s an emergency.”

“Did you fire Derek?”

“He chose to leave.”

Miss Winkles rolled her eyes. “I suppose
I shouldn’t have expected a man like that to want to stay with a silly thing
like you, but he seemed to like you anyway.”

Nancy
nodded and felt tears running down her
face. “Thank you for your help, Miss Winkles. Thank you for spending so much
time with Eugenia.”

“Girl Carrington, are you all right?”

Nancy
nodded again and then said, “No, I’m
not. Bye,” and went down to her apartment. She gathered her clothes for the
evening. She was going to wear an aubergine dress that Sissy had designed for
her. She saw the large purple handbag she’d taken from her mother’s closet and upended
the contents of her purse into it.

It was just after one when
Nancy
found herself
sitting in her car at the parking lot of the warehouse, but she didn’t remember
driving. The gala started at seven and would be over at midnight. She only had
to get through eleven more hours and then she could fall apart.

Aldo stood in front of the coffee shack
and waved at her. She waved back and remembered coming here for the first time
with Derek and how it had felt to lie against his body with the cold, salty
wind whipping around them.

Nancy
crossed the asphalt lot and went into
the warehouse. It had been transformed like the back lot of a movie studio. Windows
of false storefronts were lighted from behind to give the illusion of entire
buildings. Wooden walkways crossed the length of the warehouse. Signs hung from
doorways announcing bars, dancehalls, whorehouses, flophouses, and gambling
parlors

GP came rushing to
Nancy
, more excited than she’d ever seen him
before. “Come check out the music hall!” The crew was adding the final touches
to a room set up as the bar, with stairs that led up to a non-existent second
floor.

“It’s wonderful,”
Nancy
told her friend.

“Wait until you see the actors. I got a
coach to work with them on dialect and to do a few scenes that I scripted from
old newspaper reports and diaries. Do you think it looks authentic?”

“Yes, it’s perfectly authentic! You’ve
done something amazing here.”

He looked away shyly. “Thank you for
trusting me.”

“I always know when something is true
and good…” she began and she couldn’t say anything else. She put her hand on
GP’s arm and squeezed it, then turned away so he wouldn’t see her eyes.

Nancy
got the managers together and
distributed headsets to key personnel. She talked to the waitstaff manager and
the lighting designer. She inspected the luxury mobile restroom trailers and
confirmed that the pirate ship would pull up to the pier on schedule.

Sloane arrived with her team and looked
at the scene with astonishment. “It’s like
Disneyland
,”
Sloane said. “It’s fantastic.”

“Thanks to GP. He pulled out all the
stops.”
Nancy
handed Sloane a folder and said, “Derek couldn’t make it, so you’ll have to
help with his assignments.”

“Is he all right? He’s not sick is he?”

Nancy
wanted to tell Sloane that his name
wasn’t Derek and that he was gone and that her heart was broken. “He’s fine. Would
you check on the music hall and make sure they’ve decanted the drinks into the
old bottles?”

 
The overhead lights were shut off and the
party lighting came on. Gas street posts flickered amber light and the taped
recording of waterfront sounds melded with the real sound and smell of the bay
beside them. The warehouse was so drafty that the wooden signs swung and
creaked in the breeze.

No matter what else was happening in her
life,
Nancy
had
been responsible for this dark wonderland. She moved away from everyone else
and stood just looking at the scene. Sun Tzu had said that many calculations
lead to victory.
Nancy
’s
feverish attention to detail would bring her success tonight.

She wished that Derek could see it, the
Derek who’d never existed.
Nancy
squished down her emotions like an eiderdown for summer storage.

She was speaking with the catering
director when the costumed actors stroll in, looking as wonderfully grimy and
unsavory as GP had promised.
Nancy
’s
phone rang. She looked at the number. It was her mother. She excused herself
and went outside to answer the call.

“Hi, Mom, how’s everything?”

“
Nancy
,
I wanted to wish you luck,” her mother slurred.

“You already did. Thanks.”

“Your father is on one of his business
trips with the new one, Caroline. She’s thirty-one. Business.”

“Mom, please…”

“I’m sorry, honey. He works so hard to
give me everything I could want. I should be more understanding.”

“Go to bed, Mom, and please don’t drink
anymore. Don’t drive, promise me, and don’t call anyone else.”

“Yes, Nanny.”

I’ll deal with it tomorrow, she told
herself. She collected her clothes for the evening and went to the trailer
reserved for event staff. She changed into the aubergine dress and put on
makeup for the evening. She left her clothes with the handbag. She set her
phone in a case that attached to her clipboard and tried to fluff her hair over
her headset.

When
Nancy
returned to the warehouse, the
white-jacketed waiters were carrying out food and arranging the old-fashioned
saucer-shaped champagne glasses.

The slouching, rough looking actors
conveyed a sense of danger, and the women, falling out of their scandalous
period dresses screamed cheap and dirty. They also screamed, and
Nancy
was going to ask
them to modulate their voices when the first group of guests, including Gigi
Barton, arrived.

Gigi was wearing a tea-stained, gathered
shirt, mustard frock-coat, and ruby-red taffeta skirt, and she looked so
spectacular that
Nancy
was momentarily distracted from her misery.

“Gigi, welcome!” she said, going forward
to exchange air kisses. She gazed at her friend and said, “Is that—”

“Yes, it’s from the Pirate Collection,”
Gigi said. “I heard this was a pirate party, so I dug this out of the vault. Let
me introduce my friends.”

The guests were checked in and
Nancy
walked them to the
music hall, which was halfway down the warehouse, between the poker parlor and
the hotel, where dinner would be served. A pianist and a girl, who pretended
convincingly to be drunk, performed “My Darling Clementine.”

The bartender plonked down glasses as
soon as they walked in and sloshed amber liquor into them. “Our finest whisky. On
the house,” he said and winked at Gigi.

“Goodness,” one of her friends said. “I
feel as if I’m really in the
Barbary Coast
.”

Nancy
took one of the glasses, wanting
something to calm her nerves. “Down the hatch,” she said and took a sip. It
took a second for the taste of raw alcohol to scorch her throat.

“Where Derek,
Nancy
?” Gigi asked. “Send him over to say
hello.”

“Derek couldn’t make it tonight.” Her
voice caught as she spoke and she blinked back tears.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, sweetie,” Gigi said
and patted
Nancy
’s
hand. “You were such a darling couple, and I liked him so much more than Todd. I’m
sure you can lure him back.”

“We weren’t…”
Nancy
began. “I’ve got to check on things,
but be sure to visit the poker parlor. All proceeds go to the society and are
tax deductible.”