Alexander always went to galas late. His manager at Ashworth & Harris LP, who loved giving him advice on how to rise through the ranks, insisted that arriving precisely forty-five minutes after the stated commencement time created the optimal intersection of fashionable lateness and tactical advantage. Reasoning was that the first glass of champagne would by then have begun to dissolve the carapace of professional reserve. However, given that he was still recovering from his nightly bender, he didn’t feel like he was missing out on much.

His habit was beginning to affect his work. His numbers were dreadful and this was his last chance to redeem himself before the end of the fiscal year. “Don’t make us go back to only hiring Deerfield boys!” was the exhortation. Alexander’s mission at this event was to ingratiate Miss Ottessa Pembroke, of the Pembroke fortune that did not exist fifty years ago. The woman who had given eight figures to three separate performing arts centers but couldn’t sit through a single act of La bohème without checking her phone would be in attendance, and closing her as a client would not only save his job, but also surely catapult him out of junior associatehood.

Ashworth & Harris was competing for her favor with just one firm: Raymond & Company, down in FiDi. Alexander knew that they’d been buttering her up for weeks. The only way he could triumph was to charm her so absolutely that she forgot about her other suitors. Not long after entering the venue at 1 East 60th Street, he spied her from across the room. But before he could steel himself and pursue his objective, a waiter materialized from behind one of the ice sculptures weeping into the tablecloth below it. “Wine, sir?”

He knew better than anyone that he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a glass of wine. But this was not the time to teetotal; he needed the courage to approach Miss Pembroke and imitate a well-adjusted individual. He strolled across the ballroom to greet her with a white wine in hand, moving at a rate of about four-and-a-half steps per gulp as the surrounding tables emanated their own spheres of murmured pretension. On this occasion, he had done his research and planning well in advance. The strategy was to appeal to her pathological need to be seen as more sophisticated than the new money crowd. Miss Ottessa Pembroke considers herself a purveyor of fine things and people, and it certainly was not Alexander’s place to disabuse her of this notion.

“I haven’t had drinks this nice since that excellent gala you hosted last spring for the uh Regenerative Urban Trees—”

“Regenerative Urban Topiaries Foundation,” she corrected, exactly as expected, draining her glass to emphasize the point. Alexander signaled a faraway waiter with the practiced subtlety one might expect from a man who has tried every cocktail that could ever be made.

“Of course, of course,” he continued, “Though I must say, the true genius of these affairs isn’t in the cause, but in the, um, magnificent circularity of it all.” Neither of them knew what that meant, but it didn’t matter. “Kinda like that delightful Escher print in the lobby of that complex you just bought on 49th and Third…”

Just as her eyes lit up at the casual reference to property she’d never mentioned to him, just as he began to feel the warmth and boldness of a buzz coursing through his veins, the waiter arrived with a second round. Showtime.

Alexander glanced alluredly at the flute of Krug that was catching the light juuuuust right in his hands. He knew that if he surrendered and let the one glass become a pair of glasses, then the evening’s eschatology was essentially foretold. He also knew that he didn’t care.

Pellucid stems stood between them, refracting chandeliered light in prismatic arrays while Ottessa's index finger, adorned with a hereditary garnet, traced the rim of her glass. They danced from topic (“I completely agree, Ottessa, Per Se is no longer a serious restaurant”) to topic (“honestly, I think you could start an après-ski empire”), and at some point (when they finished their second? second-plus-oneth? glass), they began to discuss the art of those lately emptied vessels.

“But surely, Alexander,” her voice carried the timbre of Versailles before the fall, “one wouldn't dream of serving a Barolo in anything but the proper glass. The divergent rim, you understand, it’s quite essential for the proper—”

She glanced nowhere in particular, letting the word gestate: “—volatilization.”

“Ottessa, your prescriptivism betrays a certain bourgeois sensibility! Didn’t the Romans drink out of crude clay jars? After adding water, no less? And was their pleasure not, perhaps, more authentic for its very artlessness?” The inanity of the dialogue was starting to make him feel sick, and his discipline, encumbered by ethanol, was rapidly faltering.

There, amid the clink of crystal, his annoyance and contempt and shame began to rise. The humiliation of enabling her court-holding, of playing along and listening to how she gave a few million to the philharmonic last year but only after sharing her thoughts with the conductor during intermission, something about his interpretation of Mahler being derivative and sophomoric and how she’d heard better at her private school orchestra back in Europe and he knew back in Europe meant Switzerland because with her type it’s always Switzerland or Vienna where they store their spoils in numbered accounts and their children in boarding schools that cost more than a house and now she’s gesturing with her champagne flute like a conductor herself plus her niece’s watercolors show more promise than anything at MoMA this century and you have to nod and smile and die and wonder if it’s a blessing to be born in a universe where your money can buy anything except for someone, anyone to genuinely enjoy your company—

He was startled out of his contemplation by a question from Miss Pembroke: “What’s your favorite wine?”

There was a brief caesura as Alexander considered what to say next.

“The Tears of Christ,” he said, voice trailing, eyes gazing into the crystalline depths of the glassware.
Furrowbrowed bewilderment. “I'm sorry?”
“You might know it better as Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio.”
“Oh yes! I remember now that you mention it. So Italian wine is your favorite?”
“Hardly,” he sighed. “I've always had a soft spot for Chât Chev.”
“Shot Shev?”
“Château Cheval Blanc.”
The last of any diffidence remaining in the heiress had sublimated into irritation. Her lips curved into a burgundy moue. Choosing forbearance over friction, she continued: “That's quite special, isn't it? There’s no sense in spoiling yourself everyday. What’s your go-to?”
“I suppose that would be good old Twobuck.”
“Twobuck?”
“Yes, Twobuck,” he said, giving her no help.
“Twobuck?”
He could do this all day. “Yes.”
“Who makes that?”
Pityingly now, as one explains colors to the blind: “Charles Shaw, Trader Joe's famous Two—”
“Two-Buck Chuck!” Ottessa’s face contorted with incredulity.
“Yes. Charles Shaw. That's what they called it in California.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Hmm. Perhaps we should talk about things you're more familiar with. What’s your favorite kind of Franzia?”
Enormous was her pause. “Which firm are you with again?”
“Raymond & Company, ma’am. It was nice meeting you.”

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Pub: 31 Dec 2024 23:01 UTC

Edit: 01 Jan 2025 23:40 UTC

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