“Who do we make the check out to?” Opal shouted from across the room, her checkbook already splayed across her empty place. She walked across the dining room to personally deliver her contribution to Sellers. Along the way, Opal stared down every single woman in that room and, arriving at the dais, threw her arms around Sellers: the only two black guests embracing. Some idiot started applauding, but it didn’t catch on, and thankfully she stopped. Opal and Sellers exchanged a sincere, off-mic moment, something not meant for the rest, and then Opal returned to her seat via a different route, eyeing more women with her silent instructions. Miraculously, a hundred hands reached for their checkbooks. Max was practically doing a jig in the back of the room.
“Will you take American Express?” someone shouted.
“Yes!” Julie responded. Dishes with a few pieces of grilled chicken over lentils finally streamed from the kitchen. Anna walked the room collecting checks while Julie swiped card after card through an attachment on the office iPad Anna had never seen before.
“Let’s get them moving in ten,” Bloom hiss-whispered into Anna’s ear. “I think they’re going to need a little extra time.” She chuckled ominously before disappearing out a side door as quickly and inexplicably as she had materialized.
It wasn’t like anyone ate anyway, and the room had become quite warm. The guests bubbled out into the tent, most clinging to at least one other person, everyone laughing as if caught up in a collective hallucination. A few nondrinkers hung at the periphery, vaguely bewildered by most of the women’s behavior.
Through the magic of lighting, Bloom had transformed the tent into a springtime stage while the guests were inside. She framed the white wall of flowers in dune grass and moved it from the step and repeat to the ocean side of the tent, adding swaths of white silk over and around a small hardwood platform. Three performers took the stage, accompanied by the cello-and-flute duo. As the soprano sang her first few clarion notes, two horses wandered to the side of the stage, a beautiful tableau. Almost as if they were part of the show. One of the horses, a large stallion, came ever closer, drawn no doubt by the sea wheat there.
Then the horse, all shining muscle, stepped onto the stage and started munching on the dune grass. The violinist abruptly trailed off. Someone shouted, “Security!” The other unsaddled horse soon joined her friend. The two animals crowded the performers off the stage. Bloom seized the mic. “Thank you so much for coming, but we need to get you back to the city now. You each have a number from your place setting. Number ones, please make your way to Anna and Julie, standing right over there.” And just like that, they were back on schedule.
Anna and Julie handed each woman two bottles of water from a giant cooler full of ice by the helipads, along with a paper napkin and a barf bag. By the end of the boarding procedures, it was approaching three p.m., Anna’s back was killing her, and she might have had to amputate a toe. There was one chopper of guests left and one woman left to get on it. None other than Pippy fucking Petzer.
Anna’s feet felt like chopped meat stuffed into her shoes as she ran around looking for Mrs. Petzer. She pulled up a society page picture and directed all the Coolwater staff to help her find the missing socialite. The chopper would soon leave, and then what would they do with her?
“Anna, come in.” Finally, a maid on her walkie-talkie. “She’s in the pool house.”
From steps away Anna could make out the sound of violent puking. She peeked inside the cabana and through the bathroom door saw Mrs. Petzer’s broad ass in her camel pants, marred by a three-inch-long brown stain: Pippy Petzer had pooped her pants!
“Get Kissy!” she shouted from the toilet. Anna was too shocked to argue and eager to pass this problem along. She walkie-talkied for someone to bring Mrs. Von Bizmark and told the helicopter to leave without Mrs. Petzer. After an interminable amount of time, Mrs. Von Bizmark finally appeared, looking herself like a zombie, her skin a strange green color over the loose neckline of her tangerine silk caftan. Her sunglasses hid most of her face, and over them she pressed a cool washcloth to her forehead.
“I think we need an ambulance,” Anna said, but Mrs. Von Bizmark breezed past her. The index finger in the air said, Wait.
“Yes, Pippy, darling, what is it?” she called from outside the open bathroom door, pinching her nose with her free hand.
“What took you so long?”
“Well, I am hosting a luncheon today, darling. With helicopters.” It sounded like Pippy Petzer might be throwing up a lung. “We’ll get you an ambulance, darling,” Mrs. Von Bizmark called through the open door. There were both Petzer and Von Bizmark wings at Southampton Hospital; surely they would be more than happy to save the day with some IV fluid. “We’re just going to give you a little privacy, dear,” Mrs. Von Bizmark said, then closed the bathroom door and sprayed half a bottle of lavender scent into the air.
Anna went outside to call the hospital, and the woman on the other end said, “Yeah, we see this all the time. We’ll send the paramedics. How many IV kits do you need out there?”
“Just one.” Anna peered through the french doors of the pool house at Mrs. Von Bizmark, collapsed on the wicker couch, washcloth on head, sandaled foot on the coffee table. “Actually, make it two.”
Without being asked, Anna brought Mrs. Von Bizmark a cold bottle of water from the fridge, but she did not move to accept it. Anna left it on the table in front of her.
“Is there something you want to tell me about today?” Mrs. Von Bizmark rested her head on the back of the couch. Her words were barely audible. When Anna hesitated, she kept going. “How on earth did that shrew from Dallas end up next to the Vogue reporter?”
“I . . . ,” Anna started, with nowhere to go. The question was not how it had happened, of course, but how Anna had not prevented it from happening. There was no right answer. Should she have ejected the woman from Dallas? Grabbed Lanuit by her skinny toned arm?
“Any other snafus, Anna?” Mrs. Von Bizmark said rather snittily.
Might as well face the music! “We ordered the wrong wine.”
“And no one noticed?” That was an interesting point. Had Bloom, in her seventy-two hours of setup, not seen the garish hot-pink label that in no way matched the wine on the menu, a fifty-dollars-a-bottle French white chardonnay?
“Unfortunately not. Of course, I take full responsibility.”
Mrs. Von Bizmark lifted her head a few inches and then set it back down. A hand fluttered to her washclothed forehead. Anna stopped breathing; she probably deserved to be fired. One of the luncheon guests required medical assistance because of an administrative error. “I really appreciate your work, Anna, but consider this an official warning,” Mrs. Von Bizmark said. Though this was far better than getting fired, Anna was still crestfallen. She had never in her career been reprimanded like this before. Shame washed over her. A Yale degree and she couldn’t even organize a ladies’ lunch? Do. Not. Cry, she told herself, backing out of the room.
The last helicopter waited for Anna, but on her way there she spied none other than Bloom, overseeing the deconstruction of the tent. Without actually deciding or thinking it through, she found her feet carrying her there. For what? A confrontation? “Hey,” Anna said, annoyed.