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| by Matthew Finch |
“Where is Blake?” I turned to find that Ivy had completed the quick reunion with Charlotte and was now scanning the room with her hand on her hip. “I, for one, would rather not lurk in the shadows all night.”
“I don’t know where he is,” I replied. “I didn’t come with him.” Ivy tilted her head to the side and shot a look to Travers who merely shrugged.
“What happened?” She came down to grab my arm.
“Are you ill?” She put her hand to my forehead and felt it up and down until I pushed her away.
“It is a long story, Ivy, please. Let’s just find a table.” She shrugged and together we found our table where Charlotte and I sat awkwardly across from Ivy and Travers.
“You two look like lesbians.” Ivy said bluntly.
“Agreed.” A seething voice came from over my shoulder and Ivy smirked as I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.
“Hello, Blake.” I said dryly as the chair next to me, at a table that could seat ten, skidded backwards and he dropped into it with ease, his hand wrapping around my shoulders. “But a lesbian I would love to seduce.”
“Must you sit with us?” I murmured whipping around to tumble instantly into the maze. His eyes flashed and his face lit with a smirk. He was clean shaven, no longer adorning the rugged, closely shaved stubble of the summer. Tonight, he unleashed the blade of his jawline and it was like the seductive spindle upon which I longed to prick each finger.
“You look lovely.” he whispered into my ear as he grabbed his chair and scooted up to the table. He glanced across at Ivy and his brow raised. He let out a low whistle and she blushed. “Ivy…in its most poisonous form tonight, I see. Careful, Travers.”
Travers shook his head and wrapped his arm around Ivy’s shoulders as she cleared her throat and began to scan the menu that had been folded neatly on top of our place settings. “My god, Charlotte Ross? Is that you? What have you done to your hair?”
Charlotte who had been watching the stage as Leopold took a seat comfortably at the piano, turned her head to Blake, her sharp eyes slightly glazed in thought.
“I was wondering when you would notice me, Earth Angel.” she cooed. “My hair?” She ran a hand absently through her Gatsby-esque blonde bob. “Do you like it? You know I had to do it since I’m straddling the equator these days.” She gave it another fluff before she turned lazily once again to the stage. “Speaking of straddling, who is the piano man? I’d love to ride him like a derby horse.” Ivy scoffed and raised a dainty hand to motion to a waiter passing by.
“Start us off with a few drinks, please. Whiskey Sours for the boys, I’ll have a gin martini, dry please, and Andrea, darling, what for you? Gin or Vodka?” Ivy looked up from the menu with an inquisitive gaze and I smiled at her matronly stance.
“I’ll have a cosmo, please.” I replied and she rolled her eyes with a gentle laugh.
“She’s stuck in the days of Carrie Bradshaw.” Ivy winked and wound her arm through Travers’ and they locked hands.
“Well it’s not a bad time to be stuck in.” Charlotte reached out as if to latch onto the waiter. “While you’re at it, be a gem and grab two bottles of Dom Perignon, please! Put it on Arnold Ross’ tab.”
The room began to rapidly fill. People in the most exquisite couture began to mingle around and take their seats at their predestined place settings. The room was alive with laughter and chatter that was a tremendous roar that echoed off the domed ceiling. Behind the great racket you could hear the expert melodies played out by Leopold and amplified through speakers throughout the room. Our table was filling quickly and was a constant stopping point of many of the Van der Grant’s guests who swooped down to lightly kiss the cheeks of the namesakes or shake their hands, asking how their summers had been, future plans, college details, sports, and news from England from the younger of the Van der Grant Sr. brothers. Between the inquisitive guests came faces of the familiar whose names were printed in elegant font on cards in front of the place settings around us. Soon we were almost at capacity: Charlotte, Blake, Travers, Ivy, Tommy, Amelia, and I were reminiscing on times past and drinking copiously from the generosity of Mr. Ross’ unsuspecting bank account. I kept my eyes low, trying to avoid the gaze of Tommy, who immediately became disgruntled as he sat down to the table to find Blake Van der Grant’s arm still draped comfortably over the back of my chair.
I couldn’t help but notice that Ivy, however confidently dressed, looked extremely uneasy. Her eyes darted from me to the place setting to her left for only a moment before snapping back to squint in laughter at something being said, then back to me. It was during a time of great laughter at a memory of Dalton days that she whispered something in Travers’ ear. He nodded and kissed her cheek. She stole that moment to snatch the place card and wrap her fist around it. She rose and quickly skirted the table to take a seat in one of the three chairs unoccupied. She leaned in close to me.
“Pretend we are talking intimately,” she whispered.
“We are talking intimately,” I replied turning to her, our faces inches from one another. She pursed her lips and took my wrist in the hand that held the place card. I felt the crisp edge of the cardstock against my skin.
“Don’t be clever,” she said curtly. She released my hand and looked around quickly before swapping out the place card with the one next to me. David Alexander Montgomery was printed on it. She looked down at the card in her hand and her brow furrowed. “I couldn’t very well sit in the middle of them both the whole night. It’s going to be awkward enough as it is having him at the same table… who the hell is Olive Gentry?” she asked holding up the card she had switched.
I shrugged taking a sip of my cosmo.
Her question was soon answered as the remaining occupants of our table arrived. “Hello, all!” My cousin had arrived and on his arm was a stunning girl with large hazel eyes that were taking everything in at once, cunningly. She smiled softly and moved with great care in a two tone Oscar De la Renta. “Arthur, darling!” Ivy rose quickly from David’s newly claimed seat and moved swiftly around the table dropping, without notice, the girl’s place card next to her.
“Ivy, don’t you look ravenous.” Arthur arched a brow as they came to a halt and looked Ivy up and down. “I was wondering why there was a line of men all the way down Park Avenue trying to get in.” He winked and Ivy turned crimson yet again. “Everyone, this is my dear friend Olive Gentry. We grew up together. She is here visiting Leo and I for a few days.
“Hello.” Her voice was wealthy and the word escaped her lips as a petal escapes a flower to brush against the grass. Her hands were wrapped tightly around my cousin’s arm and it didn’t appear that she would relinquish it anytime soon.
“Well, aren’t you the loveliest thing.” I turned in my seat and extended my hand upward.
She looked down at it for a moment and seemed to tumble the thought of taking it around in her mind for a bit; as if she thought at any moment it would transform into a serpent. She cleared her throat and smiled warmly as she shook it carefully.
“Thank you, Andrea. Arthur has spoken volumes of you. Your pictures in the magazines fall tremendously short.” I smiled and decided in an instant that I liked her. It turned out that her timid hello may not have been nerves, but that her voice was indeed not capable of much more than a gentle breeze for I found myself craning my ear towards her to catch anything she said whenever she decided to speak.
In his typical tradition of aristocratic gentility, Arthur pulled back her chair and with the same careful air in which she spoke, she dropped into her chair. It was like watching cherry blossoms fall from a tree to take human form. She smiled graciously up at him as she took her place at the table and whispered into his ear that she would ‘enjoy’ a glass of champagne. He ordered for her and a jack on the rocks for himself before he joined the conversation, and Ivy turned to the lovely Olive leaning in as her mouth formed words I could not hear.
Around the room, most tables had settled by the time the ethereal vision that was Victoria Van der Grant in a white cloaked gown took the stage and spoke something to Leopold. They shook hands and she kissed both of his cheeks. He remained at the piano after she left from him and took the microphone from the stand by the piano.
“Good evening!”
Her voice echoed across the ballroom and the conversation snuffed out in a strange staccato until there was no other voice but hers.
“Good evening and welcome! Julius and I would like to thank you all for joining us on this most anticipated of evenings. We look forward to this night each and every year and this year is no exception. I look around the room and find that I am overjoyed and my cup doth truly run over. I cannot express enough my gratitude to each and every one of you for your more than generous donations year after year to not only the Van der Grant Educational Achievement Center for Children and Families, but also the Bardens Environmental and Water Purification Ministry. Our good works would never have managed to reach such an influential scale without your perpetual kindness. So this night is a celebration of all the good work we do and to find it in ourselves to continue to give to those less fortunate! So fill your bellies and empty your wallets and most of all, enjoy this wonderful company! And… Cheers to our baby boy, coming home from such a tremendous summer internship! Welcome home, Travers!” She paused for applause and calmed it quickly with her hands. “I would like to thank also, our special guest, Leopold Gordon, for his exceptional talent in ushering us into the evening. Leopold, thank you.”
She turned to him and gestured for more applause. He rose and gave a gracious bow, smiling ear to ear.
“Enjoy!” Victoria exclaimed and everyone clapped again.
Waiters took to the freshly cleared pathways between tables carrying salads. It was at this moment that Ivy immediately straightened and her eyes flitted to the empty seat next to me. I, too, looked at the lonely chair and then began to scan the room. It was hard to see everyone. In a room that had been prepared for 350 guests, most of the seats were taken. However, I found him rather quickly at a table of other familiar faces. Andrew, Carrington, Tori, the Beaumonts, Terrance, Kent, Pamela, and Warren were all seated together not far from us. It was at this table that I saw a somber looking David sitting next to his cousin and a bottle of whiskey sitting in front of him. He waved away the salad.
I took my phone from my clutch and wrote to Ivy.
He’s here, far right, at Andrew and Tori’s table. It was only a matter of seconds before Ivy snatched her phone from the table. She cleared her throat and gave Travers a loving pat on the cheek before she looked greedily around the room. I saw instantly when she spotted him and pity consumed her. When the waiter dropped the salad in front of her, she whispered in his ear, no doubt for another martini.
The salads were cleared away and were replaced by plates with one-bite bruschetta appetizers topped with salmon and cream cheese, olives, garlic, caviar, and goat cheese while the waiters took our entree orders. Blake was contemplating the menu after I had ordered the rack of lamb.
“Barden is looking rather brooding this evening.”
I smelled the Polo cologne as he leaned in and whispered in my ear, that I closed off to him, shrugging my shoulder upward to brush him away.
Tommy indeed seemed in the foulest of moods. He twirled the silver olive stick around and around before he bit one off the end and chewed it aggressively while Amelia chattered into his ear running her finger up and down her menu.
“Well if he is upset, it’s your fault!” I hissed turning to look at him full force since his arrival.
He smirked and sat back in his seat. He reached out to twirl my earlobe and the pearl bob in it with his long finger.
“Isn’t it always?” He sighed and his hand dropped from my ear to his third whiskey sour. I rolled my eyes as he took a hard swallow.
“Oh, come now. Don’t nail yourself to the cross, Blake. You just had to go and run your mouth to him that we were having a bad day and the next thing I know, poor Tommy is in my living room with flowers and candles! That is on you! Of all the people you could have confided in!”
His face was unreadable, the smirk unwavering as his eyes locked with mine. The maze was clear and the walls dripped with sheer malice.
“I was simply proving a theory.” He shrugged and twirled the glass in his hands before taking another sip and licking his lips sumptuously. “You know it thrills me so to be right, but Tommy and his sore behind is not particularly a concern of mine.”
“He is supposed to be your friend!”
“Oh honestly, Andrea, the rules of bros before hoes only applies to the lowest common denominator of human being. Ignorant frat boys who hail from the most despicable form of new money with beer foam crusted around their peach fuzz grins. Those rules hardly apply to us. We take what we want in the way of true gentlemen.”
“Did you just call me a hoe, Blake Van der Grant? If you two are such defenders of aristocracy, why don’t the both of you take to Park Avenue with your dueling pistols and do us all a favor and finish one another off?”
I turned in my seat and grabbed Arthur by the arm to strike up a more meaningful conversation. I felt his hand on my shoulder and I whipped around viciously.
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore, Blake.” The maze darkened, the last drop of clever joy and ‘gentlemanly’ victory slid down the walls to pool at his feet, in its wake leaving the emerald walls dark, a barricade.
Leopold left the stage and Arthur waved to him, motioning to the empty seat next to me. He moved with great ease through the comings and goings of food and drinks.
“So how’d I do?”
“You play elevator music phenomenally, old sport!” Blake rose from his chair as Leo approached. Leo laughed in his belly and extended his hand as he fell into an aggressive manly embrace.
“Dapper Dan!” Leo exclaimed. “You look well. Look at this jawline, my god. Look, am I bleeding?” Leo craned his neck back and Blake laughed shaking his head. “Should we take the stage again? Piano is wide open!”
Blake shook his head.
“I doubt my aunt would react so impassively to a performance at this party. Can we get the man a drink?” He grabbed a waiter by the arm and slid a bourbon from a tray that was not intended for us and passed it to Leo.
“You are the epitome of a gentleman.” Leo clapped Blake on the arm and gave him a toast. “My god, look at my little Olive jar! Get over here and give me a kiss!”
Olive blushed and laughed softly as Leo rounded the table to scoop her up in an affectionate hug and kiss her right on the mouth.
“Did I do you proud, Artie?” he asked dropping into his chair much like a cartoon character.
“Your talents are wasted on such nonsense as a charity gala. I don’t know why you agreed to it,” Arthur said smugly and took a small bite of his bruschetta. “No offense, Van der Grants.”
“None taken,” they said in unison.
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RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 19, 2017
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