Lauren Weisberger 3-Book Collection: Everyone Worth Knowing, Chasing Harry Winston, Last Night at Chateau Marmont

‘Which is why it’s so crucial that you keep this under wraps. If the information gets out – if you tell anyone – she’ll know it’s me, and we’ll never get this account.’

‘I understand,’ I said solemnly.

‘It concerns New York Scoop …’

‘You mean Ellie Insider?’

Kelly looked at me. ‘Yes. As you know, that’s merely a pen name. She’s gone to great lengths to keep her identity secret so she can move around freely and talk to people without their knowing. I’m not sure if this name means anything to you, but the column is actually being written by a girl named Abigail Abrams.’

I’m not sure how, but I knew a split second before she uttered the name that it was going to be Abby’s. I’d never considered that the columnist was someone I’d known before – or even someone I’d met – but somehow, in that momentary flash, I was certain she’d utter Abby’s name. The realization hadn’t done anything to prepare me, however, and I couldn’t do anything but stare at Kelly, my hands tucked under my legs and that same breathless, suffocating feeling I’d had in fifth-grade gym class when the red rubber kickball struck my stomach and knocked the wind right out of me. How could I have been so clueless? How could I not have known? I struggled to breathe and make sense of what Kelly was saying. All the awful things that had been written – all the exaggerations and embellishments and inferences and outright lies – had come from none other than Abby, the self-proclaimed vortex of the media world. Why on earth does she hate me so much? I kept thinking with irrational repetition. Why? Why? Why? Of course we’d never liked each other; that much was obvious. But what could inspire her to try to ruin my life? What had I done?

Apparently, Kelly had interpreted my shock as cluelessness because she said, ‘Yeah, I didn’t recognize the name, either. Some nobody, I guess, which is actually very smart on their part – no one can be suspicious of someone they don’t know. The woman from Ralph Lauren is married to Abigail’s brother, and she swore me to secrecy. I got the feeling she just wanted to tell someone. Or maybe she’s testing my discretion. It doesn’t really matter. Don’t breathe a word of it to anyone, but just in case you run across that girl, you can make sure she gets the right pictures or information.’

I initially thought Kelly was telling me the columnist’s identity so I could avoid her at all costs, but this was clearly not her intention.

She continued. ‘Now you can feed her all sorts of stuff – be cool and casual and make it sound like scoop – and we’ll have an 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. I 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 gotten 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 (#ulink_e3bc613b-3ad2-5fd2-9071-eeb2535a3d0e)

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 RESERVED 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 back-slapping 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, pulling out another cigarette. I offered him one and he took it, lighting first mine and then his own.

‘I don’t know, I probably should’ve. I just figured you had no idea. I felt kind of weird not saying something at first and then too much time went by. But I remember, when everyone else was sanding and chiseling, you’d always be writing – letters, it looked like – line after line, page after page, and I always wondered how anyone could have so much to say. Who was the lucky guy?’

I’d mostly forgotten about the letter-writing; I hadn’t written one of those in years. It was easier now that I no longer heard my parents asking me what I had done for the world that day. They’d taught me how to write letters when I was old enough to put sentences on paper, and I’d instantly loved it. I wrote to congressmen, senators, CEOs, lobbyists, environmental organizations, and, occasionally, the president. Each night at dinner we’d discuss some great injustice and the following day I’d write my letter, letting someone know my outrage about capital punishment or deforestation or foreign-oil dependence or contraception for teenagers or prohibitive immigration laws. They were always chock-full of self-importance and read like the obnoxious, self-righteous missives they were, but my parents were so lavish with their approval that I couldn’t stop. They tapered off at the end of high school, but it wasn’t until some guy I was hooking up with freshman year in college picked one off my desk and made some offhand comment about how adorable it was that I was trying to save the world that I stopped entirely. It wasn’t what he said so much as the timing. My parents’ lifestyle was already less appealing. I had traded the alternative, peace-on-earth persona for a significantly more mainstream college social life pretty damn fast. Sometimes I wondered if I’d been just a little too thorough in my rejection. There was probably a happy medium somewhere, but banking and – let’s be honest – party-planning hadn’t exactly put me back on the track to selflessness.

I realized that Sammy was watching me intently as I recalled that time and said, ‘Guy? Oh, they weren’t to a boyfriend or anything like that. Guys didn’t exactly dig the dreadlock/espadrille thing I had going back then. They were just, you know, letters to … I don’t know, nothing special.’

‘Well, I always thought you were pretty cute.’

I immediately felt myself blush.

For some reason, this made me happier than if he’d announced his undying love for me, but there was no time to savor it because my cell phone bleated with a 911 text message: Doll, where R U? Need Cristal ASAP.

Why Philip couldn’t just ask one of the three dozen male model/waiters wandering around for that very reason was beyond me, but I knew I should check on things.