Latte Trouble

piece after piece.

“They’re…marvelous. Simply spectacular. These clothes are thirty years old, yet they seem so contemporary.”

“More like forty years old, my dear. But it does not matter one whit. Elegance is timeless.”

“And your taste is impeccable. I like this black number….”

“The crepe minidress with the pleated hem ruffle? It’s Mary Quant. A lovely dress, but all wrong for this occasion. You must wear light colors to blend in with the rich and powerful….”

“Light colors?”

“If for no other reason than to demonstrate to the world that you can afford the dry cleaning bills.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“That’s the rich. Ah, let’s try this Christian Dior skirt and jacket, perhaps with this white cashmere sweater. Or would this Andre Courreges A-line shift dress be more appropriate? No, no, the hemline is much too short….”

I soon realized that much of Madame’s wardrobe mimicked the style of a highly public figure of that era, a woman known for her impeccable taste in fashion—an arguably effortless feat with all the top-tier designers of her day scrambling to dress her. Well, who could fault Madame for that? After all, what woman of Madame’s generation didn’t try to dress like Jackie O?

We decided on a Coco Chanel wool suit in a creamy beige—jacket, skirt, and coordinating blouse. The fit was pretty good. The overall ensemble elegant and flattering. Unfortunately, at five-two, the skirt’s hemline hung too far below my knees, but Madame called in her maid and the two women were soon fussing and pinning and promising to have the hemline lifted up for the event.

“When that suit was new, I would wear it with a pair of high-heeled pumps and this hat,” said Madame, holding up the hat.

Uh-oh, I thought, seeing the signature Jackie pillbox with the lacy veil. I think we’re going a little too far on the time warp. “I’ll lose the hat and go with calf-high boots,” I told her gently. “It’s a more contemporary look.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” She tapped her chin. “I suppose the white gloves are out too?”

I smiled indulgently and nodded. Then I gazed at my reflection in the floor-length mirror, amazed at the transformation. Even without the hat, I looked like a different woman—elegant, ageless, timelessly fashionable. I also appeared affluent, wildly so. In these clothes, even my personal style changed from practical to poised. I stood straighter, my movements seemed graceful. I felt nearly as confident as I looked. But there was one problem—my head. My face and hair still gave away my identity.

“Try this.” Madame handed me a hat box containing a shoulder-length, straight-styled natural hair wig in a color at least three shades darker than my own natural chestnut brown. The wig, and a pair of oversized Oleg Cassini tinted glasses, completed the ensemble.

We fumbled with my hair for a good ten minutes before we got it bundled tightly enough to place the wig on my head, but with the addition of the dark hair and bangs and the glasses, the illusion was complete.

“My god!” I cried. “I…I look just like…”

Madame smiled, patted my hand. “I know, dear.”

Thirteen

As I followed Madame out of the cab in front of Pier 18, Matteo was waiting on the sidewalk. He spied his mother, then did a double-take.

“It’s Jackie O!” he cried.

“We’re calling her Margot Gray, this evening,” Madame whispered. “You remember Margot and her husband Rexler, from Scarsdale? We saw a lot of them when you were a teenager.”

Matteo grinned. “I remember their daughter much better.”

“You are incorrigible,” his mother replied. She took her son’s arm. As darkly handsome as ever, he had abandoned the black Armani tonight for a more approachable look—a cream V-neck sweater outlined his athletic, broad-shouldered torso beneath a caramel-colored camel-hair jacket and chocolate brown pants.

“Son, tell me about this business venture of yours. Margot has been quite evasive about the subject.”

Matt’s uneasy gaze attempted to find mine through the oversized tinted tortoiseshell glasses.

“I haven’t been evasive,” I protested. “I haven’t said a word.”

“I was hoping you’d be surprised by my presentation, mother,” he said smoothly, “pleasantly surprised.” He glanced at his watch. “Maybe we’d better get to the dock. We wouldn’t want the boat to leave without us.”

We moved through a sheltered space to the dock area where signs directed us to Tad Benedict’s seminar. At the gangplank, a table was set up to greet potential investors. A blond woman in a Fen pantsuit and one of Lottie Harmon’s coffee swirl brooches on her jacket lapel took our invitations and wrote down our names and addresses.

“Margot Gray of Scarsdale,” I said in a nasal drone that I thought sounded suitably snobbish. The woman wrote down my name and fictitious address, then handed me a spiral bound prospectus. On the cover were the words “TB Investments.” Perched on the lettering was a spot of art that looked like a butterfly—or was it a moth?

“Welcome aboard the Fortune,” Clipboard Lady said in a faux-friendly tone. “When you go up the gangplank, make a right. In the main ballroom cocktails are being served.”

The Fortune was a dazzlingly white seventy-five-foot pleasure yacht transformed into a Hudson River sightseeing and party boat. The entire superstructure below the boxy pilot house was glass- enclosed, offering a panoramic view of the New York skyline. From the deck, the view was impressive. The sun had already set, and the lights of midtown Manhattan reached into the clear evening sky. I’d had to push my dark glasses down to the tip of my nose just to make it out.

The grandly named main ballroom was basically a carpeted space approximately the size of a two-car garage—a crowd circled a table of hors d’oeuvres and a well-stocked bar, where a young bartender deftly mixed adult beverages to order. I asked the man for a Long Island iced tea (for courage), which I sipped judiciously as I moved among the group.

The forty or so people were mostly in their fifties and sixties and mostly paired up. Many of the older men were displaying, on their arms, young, blond trophy wives (Tom Wolfe’s “Lemon Tarts”); a good many older women were chatting in small clusters; and two gay May/September couples had gravitated to each other. A few quite elderly investors had come, as well, including a rather imperious man in a wheelchair who seemed to take pleasure in ordering his nurse to fetch him drink after drink.

I saw no sign of Tad Benedict, but the chic, faux-smiling blond who’d signed us in appeared with her clipboard under her arm. I watched her tap Matteo on his shoulder, then crook her finger and lead him through a bulkhead door behind the bar, which was where, I presumed, the entrepreneurs with start-ups to pitch (i.e., the debutantes of this gala) were probably being prepped by Tad.

I began my snooping with a study of the people in the room. The rich, to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, are very different from us (“they have money”), and that legendary observation held true for this affluent flock. In my experience, any other social gathering of this size—even one packed with total strangers—would become somewhat lively as copious amounts of expensive liquor were being consumed. But not this bunch. Even as they imbibed, the group wondered about, leafing through Tad Benedict’s prospectus, looking a little lost.

“They’re all so quiet,” I whispered to Madame.

“Yes, my dear. Well, some people are just used to letting their money speak for them, and in my opinion, money alone has absolutely nothing to say.” She smiled, leafing through Tad’s prospectus. “Look at these obviously high-risk investment opportunities: a new restaurant, an independent film. Why do you think these people are here, Clare? Not for money. They have that. What they don’t have is excitement. They’re bored, you see. These start-ups are the kind of thing that makes them feel they are participating in the world.”