“Yes, Anna, today. Julie, please tell them to get the cars ready,” Mrs. Von Bizmark said pointedly. At least that was better than taking a helicopter, their usual mode of Hamptons transfer, which would get them to the Castle too soon for even the heat to be on.
The Von Bizmarks had no idea how difficult it could be to actualize their last-minute whims. They didn’t care how the sausage was made, as long as it was delicious, fast, and ready when wanted. Speaking of sausage, what would they eat? The chef was at home in her native Colombia. Who would snatch all the sheets from the furniture, tuck the linens into the beds, set out towels in the bathrooms? Who would prep the grounds, distribute flowers, replace light bulbs? These tasks would require immediate sustained attention from the skeleton crew of year-round staff who lived in the Hamptons. If he started now, Phil would still be unprepared, and Anna was sure to hear about all this from him directly, as soon as he had five minutes to himself again.
“Does Phil know you’re coming?” Anna asked, hoping maybe she had given him a heads-up.
“I trust you’ll take care of that for me,” Mrs. Von Bizmark said.
“OK, I’ll just give him a . . .” Anna reached for the phone.
“Later. I have to go over everything, and I can’t keep Mr. Von Bizmark waiting.” Mrs. Von Bizmark always referred to the Mr. formally when she wanted to underline his authority. “I have a list here,” she said, opening a white leather dossier within which lay a personalized Kissy V. Bizmark notepad, and pointed her fountain pen at each item in turn.
“I want to invite the Petzers right away.”
There weren’t that many rungs above the Von Bizmarks on the New York City social ladder, but the Petzers stood—smugly—on one of them. Pippy and Charles Petzer adorned the opera hall itself, and Mrs. Petzer chaired the committee raising money to endow a position in Opal’s name and secure her a sizable pension. Mrs. Petzer claimed Mayflower heritage, a Roosevelt cousin, a library at Harvard: an untouchable elitist skeptical of all friendly overtures. So instead, Mrs. Von Bizmark had started with Charlie Petzer, artfully stalking him around town over the course of many years, slowly cultivating his acquaintance, until he’d introduced her to his wife enough times that Mrs. Petzer could no longer ignore Mrs. Von Bizmark.
“Dear Charlie, hope you and Pippy will join Peter and I in our box for the Opera Ball.”
Anna jotted this down, wordlessly correcting the I to me. “Email, letter, orchid?”
“Just an email. Keep it light. And we’re going to need to get that wine we had that one time . . . what was it? Maybe it was two years ago.” Anna recalled the conversation. Mrs. Von Bizmark had said it was the perfect “lunch” wine, which meant it had been a summer event. One large enough that they would have had to order wine rather than rely on the thousand-bottle cellar, which meant at least fifty guests. There had been three such lunches in the past eighteen months. Anna opened each file on her computer in turn, scanning catering contracts and follow-up emails.
“You know, the wine, it had that really uninspired label . . .”
Anna closed in on the answer: the wine for the third lunch was a French chardonnay.
“Vivre!” Anna said, triumphant.
“That’s it!” agreed Mrs. Von Bizmark.
“What?” Julie said.
“V-I-V-R-E,” said Mrs. Von Bizmark while Julie wrote it down. “Vivre. It means ‘live’ in French.”
Julie giggled. “In college, we used to drink this terrible wine called Vida. I’m not even sure it was really wine, more like grain alcohol . . .” Mrs. Von Bizmark’s lips pressed together, and she sighed deeply through slightly flared nostrils. Julie trailed off. “Anyway . . .”
“Julie,” Mrs. Von Bizmark said a little sternly, “order the wine, please, and call the boutiques on my list and have them send some gowns. Nothing too avant-garde, OK? Has Opal called about the lunch?”
“Not yet!” Anna said, knowing that Opal had not even been invited.
“We need to call Max about a press release!”
“Won’t the opera handle press?”
“We can’t trust them to do that. I want Max to work on the narrative of why they picked us, if you know what I mean,” Mrs. Von Bizmark said. Anna read the subtext: Max, Mrs. Von Bizmark’s longtime publicist, would have to figure out how to rewrite history so that it would not appear that the Von Bizmarks had smacked Opal from the marquee with their fat checkbooks. Max’s talent lay in making moneyed folk look beneficent, effortlessly terrific, and otherwise totally normal.
“I’ll call him, but what about invitations? Entertainment? Food?”
“Yes, of course . . .” Mrs. Von Bizmark stood and leaned over her desk to peer down the hallway. She inched her shades down her nose. Anna and Julie exchanged a puzzled glance. “I hired Sydney Bloom,” Mrs. Von Bizmark stage-whispered.
Sydney Bloom was one of the best-known party planners in New York City and therefore the world, and working with her was both a relief and a terror. On the one hand, everything about the party instantly became Bloom’s responsibility, which was great because she was exceedingly good at her job. Anna had no doubt the whole event itself would go swimmingly.
However, this shifted Anna’s role from party planning to managing the party planner, who had, the last two times she’d worked with the Von Bizmarks, padded the bill so baroquely that they had ended up spending more than double the estimate.
“Oh, OK, so—” Anna started.
“She’ll be here Monday,” Mrs. Von Bizmark interrupted as heels struck the floor at the end of the hallway.
“What about a budget? Two fifty?”
“OK! Sssshhh . . . ,” Mrs. Von Bizmark said, paddling the air for Anna to start talking about something else before Mr. Von Bizmark appeared at the office door.
“Bambi, let’s go.” Mr. Von Bizmark loomed at the open double doors of the office, scowling. A physically imposing man, made more so by a posture slightly bent forward from the waist, his barrel chest tilted aggressively, large hands frequently grasping and twitching at his sides. The very top button of his button-down shirt was undone, no tie: his casual look. “Anna,” he said, inclining his head in her direction. “Gemma,” he said to Julie.
“Julie,” Mrs. Von Bizmark corrected.
“I know!” he snapped.
Mr. Von Bizmark was hardly ever around. The Von Bizmark Organization, or VBO, took up all his time and attention, or at least so he claimed. Given the boatloads of money the company generated through its vast international holdings, which spanned a dozen sectors, it was plausible that the man just worked all the time. Still, something was definitely wrong. The Von Bizmarks looked uncertainly at one another in a way that suggested there was more to this weekend than just “getting away.”
“Your phone!” Cristina barked, suddenly popping into view and thrusting Mr. Von Bizmark’s phone at him. He slipped it into his pocket, but before he could thank her, Cristina had yapped, “So forgetful!” She waved her hand in Mr. Von Bizmark’s face and was gone.
“Bambi, let’s go!” he said sternly, and Mrs. Von Bizmark stood.
“Quick question,” Anna said, stopping them at the office door. “The upstairs hall bathroom toilet is a little wonky.” Both Von Bizmarks stared at Anna as if she were suddenly speaking in Mandarin. Wonkiness was not a feature of their lives. “You have to, you know, jiggle the handle to get it to work.” To illustrate, Anna wiggled an imaginary handle in midair.