Priceless

“Older. She was away at Vassar when Bebe started dating Tim, and she came back for spring break and apparently thought little Timmy should share his good fortune.” She sighed. “It all got very East Village, apparently.” She cut into her spring roll thoughtfully.

James grinned. “Whatever that means.” He refilled their glasses. Charlotte could tell she was getting a little drunk, because he was starting to look better and better.

Clara had news, too. “Do you remember Jemima Rhodes?” They all did. “Her mother lost her job when Bear Stearns collapsed, and they had to sell the beach cottage. We were all gutted.” (The beach cottage was a sixteen-bedroom mansion overlooking the ocean in East Hampton.) “I mean, where are we going for Fourth of July this summer?” She dropped her voice. “I heard they were going to rent someplace.” A pause. “On the North Fork.” The three women shuddered, delighted.

Charlotte picked at her salad, enjoying the familiar sound of pointless gossip. You could always rely on these three to know everything that was going on. Emily and Jane were the middle daughters of a large family who’d owned most of the Upper West Side since the 1920s. The UWS connection made them the token “artistic ones” at their ultraconservative Upper East Side school, and they were allowed a little leeway in terms of behavior. Clara was a slightly inbred blue blood whose family had come over on the Mayflower and made their fortune shortly thereafter. Charlotte wasn’t quite sure how they’d made the money. Button hooks? Buggy whips? Something archaic. No one in Clara’s family had worked for generations, but they did a lot of Good Works and Sat on Boards. Clara had been very successful at school and at one point rashly expressed a desire to go to MIT. No one of her class ever tried that hard, she was informed, and she dropped it. Stiff upper lip, maybe, but backbone? Not so much.

James got up to go to the bathroom and met Charlotte’s eye meaningfully. She sighed. Why not? She waited a moment, then followed him. She knocked softly on the bathroom door, and he pulled her in.

“Charlotte Williams, of all people, fancy meeting you here.” James was nuzzling at her neck, his hands reaching around behind her, starting to pull up her slip dress.

She grabbed his wrists firmly. “James.”

“Hmm, you want to play a little? I can do that.” He flipped his hands around, grabbing hers and pinning them above her head. His head dipped, aiming for her breast.

“James, no.” Her tone was clear, and he paused.

“What’s up, dearest? Don’t you want to make up for the past year? We can fuck once before the main course and again before dessert. It’ll be just like old times.”

“And that,” Charlotte said firmly, pushing him away, “is the problem.” She sighed. “You’re a sweet boy, but I’m just not feeling it. Do you know what I mean? After all, a year of French men kind of elevates your standards.”

He pouted. James was extremely good-looking and couldn’t keep track of all his women. Charlotte pushing him off wasn’t going to dent his ego for more than a second.

“So why did you follow me?”

Charlotte shrugged. “I’d finished my appetizer and had time to kill.”

James straightened his pants and washed his hands. “You’re a bit of a bitch, Charlie, my sweet.”

Charlotte nodded. “You’re not the first to say so, love.”

And with that, she walked out, leaving the door open.

Chapter THREE (#ulink_85c38620-bc71-55a1-ba8f-4d5ed65969a5)

It was incredibly loud and hot in the club. The pulsing bass lines could be physically felt in every pair of panties in the place, which might explain the glassy expressions and elevated heart rates. Drugs, of course, may have had something to do with it. Not that there were drugs there. That would be illegal.

If you’d walked down this particular side street in Alphabet City, you’d have thought someone was having a party. No lines. No signs. No ropes. Just the distant sound of very loud music. You had to call ahead to get into this club, and if they bothered to answer the phone, you’d get an arrival time, and that was it. Your driver pulled up, the door opened, and you were let in. Charlotte simply texted the club owner. Regular cell-phone calls were for regular people.

He was waiting for her with a hug at the top of the stairs, and he embraced the other girls, too.

“Charlie, it’s been an age. I think I was on the West Side Highway when you left.” He laughed. “That was two spaces ago!”

Charlotte smiled at him. Only a handful of people got to call her Charlie, and Nick was one of them. He’d been at school with her, and she’d helped him get his first club off the ground. Clubs like Nick’s tended to move: it’s not the space, it’s the mix. You had to stay one step ahead of the police, two steps ahead of the East Village hipsters, and three steps ahead of the bridge-and-tunnel crowd. Nick was a master. As soon as he found one location, he started looking for the next. A warehouse in DUMBO. An abandoned department store above Harlem. A townhouse being gutted in the West Village. His clientele were the young, the rich, and the bored. They came to him to be entertained, to see their friends, to watch the show.

“Who’s here?” Charlotte leaned closer to hear his answer.

He took her hand and pulled her to one side. “Actually, lovely, Taylor is here. I nearly told you not to come, but then I thought enough water might have flowed under the bridge by now.”

Charlotte felt herself get colder, despite the sweaty heat of the club. “Oh.”

Nick pulled back and looked at her. “Ah, I see I was wrong.” “Is she with him?”

“Are you crazy? No, love, she’s long gone. He’s with Stacy Star tonight. And her girlfriend. And her girlfriend’s girlfriend.” He coughed. “Celebrities, what can I say?” Charlotte raised her eyebrows, but Nick just shook his head. “Ignore him, sweetheart. You were always too good for him, anyway.”

Charlotte sighed. During her first year at Yale, she’d fallen deeply in love with Taylor Augustine. He was a couple of years ahead of her, studying European literature, and was totally gorgeous. He considered himself a beat poet for the twenty-first century, and he mumbled a lot. He and Charlotte hung out in bed most of the time, reading poetry and smoking weed. Then, suddenly, he decided that was too bourgeois and dumped her for a fiery political science major who thought shaving her underarms was bowing to the Man.

Charlotte had been devastated. It was literally the first time she couldn’t have something she wanted, and she hadn’t handled it very well. Not well at all. Drunk and furious, she’d torched the political science building.

Luckily, her father was able to step in and offer to rebuild those parts of the building that hadn’t burned to the ground, and he and the Yale board had agreed that Charlotte should spend her sophomore year elsewhere. Europe might be far enough, they thought, and the Sorbonne acquired a new student and an updated computer system.

And now here she was, back less than a day, and already she’d run into him. Sometimes life was just a bitch.

AS SHE WALKED into the main part of the club, she saw that things hadn’t changed much while she’d been away. Anyone who was young, gorgeous, rich, or horny was there, and most of Nick’s guests were all four. Beautiful girls and boys danced essentially naked on podiums all around the club, and everyone pretended not to look at them while at the same time hoping they were being looked at themselves. Same same. She turned to Nick, who was following her in, presumably to make sure she didn’t set fire to his club.

“I see you’re still working the ugly beat.”

He shrugged. “What can I do? The beautiful are drawn to me—why else would you be here?” He looked around, his experienced eyes seeing everything, despite the candlelight and heavy smoke. “There. He’s in that corner.”

Charlotte took a moment to make him out, but then her heart stopped. Taylor. Still gorgeous, although now he seemed to be working a gangsta look, which is hard when you’re from Connecticut and your father is the president of a major bank. The closest he ever got to the threat of violence was hiding from the townies in New Haven. Loose pants, slumped posture, lots of bling, and three girls dressed as sluts from the future on either side. Bottle of Courvoisier on the table. Bottle of Cristal, presumably for the sluts.

Nick squeezed her arm. “Are you going to cause trouble, or are you cool?”

“I’m cool.”

“Don’t light any fires, promise?

” “That was more than a year ago.”

“Do you even have matches?”

“No, you idiot. Besides, look around. The place is full of candles and drunks. About six hundred people are in danger of burning the place down. If the fire marshal comes in … ”

He quickly put his hand over her mouth. “Don’t ever, ever say those two words in my presence again.” He raised his finger. “I mean it, it’s bad luck. Don’t make me block your number.”

She laughed and watched him melt into the crowd. In the far corner, as far from Taylor as possible, her dinner posse had set up camp, and James was apparently trying to persuade two pole dancers to let him join them onstage. They really weren’t interested, but they were drunk enough to let him try.

Emily and Jane waved her over. She sighed inwardly and headed in their direction. In many ways, these clubs were where she lived or, at least, where the public face of Charlotte Williams lived. Before she’d discovered her inner bitch and realized that people found her entertaining when she was naughty, she’d found clubs scary. And they still made her feel anxious inside, but she guessed everyone felt that way when the world was looking at them. Not that any of her crowd would ever admit it.

“Did you see Taylor?” Jane looked worried.

Charlotte nodded. “It’s OK. It’s been a long time.”

“Did you see who he’s with?” Emily looked excited.

Charlotte nodded again. “Stacy Star.”

Zeb was beside himself. “I have all her albums. She’s outrageous. She worked the runway for Gaultier, and it was beyond fabulous. She’s awesome.”