by Amanda Brown
Eighteen
Following Titian’s birthday party, Dusi Damon had to admit that Leigh, Casa Bowes, and Cosmo were the talk of the town. That house! Those games! Door prizes! The tuna! Millions of cell phone minutes were expended regarding Leigh’s baseball cap, sequined belt, and hand-sewn Italian shirt. Was she making a fashion statement or was she just a clueless tramp? Consensus was finally reached: perhaps jeans, and not a prim designer suit, had been the correct attire for a dog’s birthday fete. Cosmo had obviously dressed his mistress and, as anyone could see, Cosmo was in a sartorial class of his own. Only a pioneer would wear a purple sombrero and matching silk pantaloons in public. Gray socks and nubucks: revolutionary. Half the Las Vegas fashionistas swore his jacket and eyeglasses were Saint Laurent. The other half swore they were Versace. Try as she might, Dusi could not refocus the spotlight on herself. It was an ugly, helpless feeling.
Following Leigh’s lead, she fired her bodyguard Giorgio. Instead of a haute couture suit, Dusi dressed in tennis clothes and a baseball cap for her luncheon the next day. She was chagrined to see Leigh show up in an apple-green Dolce & Gabbana suit, Prada shoes, and not one sequin. Cosmo wore his customary uniform, which already felt classic, like Tom Wolfe’s white suits. “Welcome to Castilio Damonia,” Dusi effused, feeling ridiculous in her ruffly panties. “I hope you don’t mind that I will be going straight from lunch to a croquet lesson.” “Obviously,” Cosmo answered dryly.
Ignoring Leigh, Dusi took Cosmo’s arm and proceeded down a long, dark foyer lined with thirty-six full coats of armor. “Castilio Da-monia is modeled on Blusterwell, the seat of the Marquess of Ashberry in County Durham. It has four ballrooms, thirty guest rooms, and fifty large fireplaces.”
“Winters must be brutal in Las Vegas.”
“I’ll tell you a little secret, Cosmo: we turn the air-conditioning to fifty-five, then light the fires.” Dusi paused to admire a stuffed horse, in full armor, at the end of the hallway. “My husband Caleb’s armor collection is one of the finest in the northern hemisphere. In fact, he’s in Normandy as we speak, negotiating for a suit worn by Ethelred the Unready. I just don’t know where we’re going to put it!”
“How about the kitchen? You can hang pasta over the spear.”
“What a splendid idea. I will consider that.”
Leigh had never been invited to Dusi’s forty-thousand-square-foot castle before. Her head was spinning. “Wow! This so reminds me of Harry Potter.”
Dusi glanced backward with disdain. “I presume that was a compliment, Leigh.”
“Signora Bowes is comparing your home with the Bodleian Library and Lacock Abbey.” Pippa was a big Harry Potter fan. “I would consider it a huge compliment.”
“In that case, thank you.” Dusi detested suits of armor. However, since they were flashy, unique, and appallingly expensive, she allowed Caleb to gallivant all over the planet augmenting his collection. “Let me show you a modest hobby of my own.”
They entered an enormous room crammed with dolls in glass cases. The place looked like a cross between a preemie ward and a midget mortuary. Dusi meandered from case to case, reciting how much she had paid for each doll and where she had bought it.
“Do you ever play with them?” Leigh asked.
“My dear girl! Would you ‘play’ with the Shroud of Turin?” Dusi stopped at a large glass case. “This doll belonged to Tsarevna Anastasia.
I bought it in Istanbul for four hundred thousand dollars. It is now worth three times that.”
The doll bore an unpleasant resemblance to Chucky. As she stared at its harsh green eyes, Pippa recalled that several years ago Thayne had gone with Dusi on a trip to Istanbul in search of a doll that had purportedly belonged to Tsarevna Anastasia. Thayne had raved for months about the doll’s green garnet eyes. After a worldwide search, she had finally managed to find herself an outstanding specimen of the gemstone and had it mounted in a brooch. Fortunately, the name was easy to remember.
Pippa leaned over the case. “Is that demantoid?”
“My God, Cosmo! How did you know?”
“Mined in the Urals. Very rare horsetail inclusions. A favorite of Faberge.” Thank you, Mama. “My previous employer had a dozen in the knob of his walking stick.”
Rattled by the condescension in Cosmo’s voice, Dusi said, “Well! Who’s ready for a drink?”
Horatio, her ancient butler, brought three room-temperature martinis to the library. “The bar is so far away and he’s so slow,” she apologized. Dusi didn’t apologize for the cheap gin. “Light me please, Horatio.”
“That’s a stunning holder,” Leigh said as the poor man hobbled across the room to hold a flame to his mistress’s cigarette.
“Thank you. It belonged to Lola Montez.” Dusi had spent years and another fortune collecting the cigarette holders of immortal femmes fatales. She wasn’t about to let a little lung cancer prevent her from showing them off. “It was a gift from her lover, Ludwig the First of Bavaria.”
As Leigh listened in awe to a disquisition on mad King Ludwig, Horatio brought another round of warm martinis containing both olives and twists of lemon. “He’s been with us forever,” Dusi sighed by way of a second apology. “Would you consider trading Cosmo for Horatio, Leigh?”
Pippa immediately cut in. “I’m sorry. I have an exclusive contract with Casa Bowes.” She glared at Leigh to discourage any waffling. “And I’m very happy there.” “Too bad! May I be the first to know if the situation changes?” “Absolutely,” Leigh smiled.
Pippa leaned meaningfully forward. “How are you progressing with Signora Bowes’s membership to the country club?”
Dusi needed a moment to recover. She had thought Cosmo was about to inspect the emerald pendant lost in her cleavage. “It is progressing more slowly than I had hoped.”
“And why is that?”
Dusi exhaled a long plume of smoke. “Leigh, may I be frank? Your background is not aristocratic. Nor is that of your husband. Despite your admirable qualities, you are still first-generation plutocrats.”
“So are you, if I’m not mistaken,” Pippa said.
“Who told you such a thing?” Dusi gasped. For years she had been repeating the canard that she was a descendant of Jay Gould.
“It is common knowledge.” Pippa removed the olive from her martini and placed it in a lapis lazuli ashtray. “Please continue.”
“There is incredible competition for the two open memberships. The least blunder could be fatal. Floridia Ventura was a shoo-in until someone wrote to the committee that she was seen wearing the same Badgley Mischka dress two years in a row. Tori Batterson was a sure thing until her chef reported that he had been instructed to purchase store-brand groceries.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Pippa muttered in disgust.
“It’s the truth.” Dusi looked toward the doorway. “Yes, Horatio?”
Dusi’s butler entered with an ornately framed diploma. “Madam, you requested to see this the moment it arrived.”
“Oh, that thing. Yes, yes, show it to the guests.”
“You’ve been inducted into the Frequent Bentley Society.” Leigh excitedly read the fine print. “Ten Bentleys in eight years! That’s fantastic.”
Dusi was in the habit of having a few martinis and driving into the moat surrounding their castle. “Please hang that in the hallway outside your room, Horatio,” she said, waving him off. “As I was saying, Leigh, one tiny misstep and you’re finished. I will protect you as far as humanly possible but remember, you are nothing but a tap dancer.” Dusi was gratified to see Leigh’s lips tremble. “From Buffalo!”
“May I ask how you gained entrance into the Las Vegas Country
Club?” Pippa interrupted. Via Thayne she already knew that Dusi, after hiring six private detectives, had finally found enough dirt to blackmail two philanderers on the membership committee.
“My qualifications spoke for themselves,” Dusi replied with a straight face. “I must congratulate you on
that party yesterday, Leigh. It generated a lot of positive feedback from people who were—how do I say this?—previously unenthusiastic about your pedigree.”
Horatio reentered. With white-gloved hands he presented Dusi with a little silver tray. On the tray was a little card. Dusi took the card. “Lunch is served,” she read aloud.
They repaired to the dining hall, a masterpiece of English Gothic architecture. One hundred heraldic flags hung from the rafters. In the dark corners Caleb had managed to stash another stuffed horse and a quartet of fully armored knights, their lances all pointing at the long refectory table. Horatio had lit the two candelabra closest to the end where the ladies were seated. Sixteen candles didn’t go far toward dispelling the gloom; however, Dusi considered the effect sensationally dramatic. She noticed Cosmo staring at her candlesticks.
“Are you admiring my regency silver, Cosmo?”
“No, I’m wondering whether I should allow Signora Bowes to lunch at a table lit by candles in daytime. I would never allow such a lapse at Casa Bowes.”
Mortified, Dusi could only twitter, “Bravo, Cosmo! I was testing you.” Nevertheless, she kept the candles lit rather than risk Cosmo noticing her filthy chandeliers.
Discussion of the Bowes’s chances of joining the Las Vegas Country Club continued over congealing beef Wellington. In Dusi’s opinion, dinosaurs had a better chance of roaming the earth than had Leigh of getting six yes votes from the membership committee. One abstention, one tiny anonymous letter of objection, and Leigh was out. The last forty candidates had not passed muster, and they were all people of stellar merit. Ten were billionaires. “Wealth was not enough,” Dusi warned. She could not go into further detail because she had taken an oath of secrecy. “Unfortunately, Leigh, some people think Cosmo is the classiest item of furniture in your house.”
“You know how important this membership is for Moss and me,” Leigh whispered, again on the verge of tears.
“Furthermore, the club frowns on unstable couples. You two are definitely unstable.”
“My employers are sublimely happy, Madam Damon. Who gave you such poor information?”
“I have my sources. And I have eyes in my head. Moss was definitely not staring at my neckline yesterday afternoon as I left Casa Bowes.”
Pippa needed a moment to process how not ogling Dusi’s boobs made Moss’s marriage unstable. “Must everyone stare at those two bazookas you acquired in Rangoon?”
“My God, Cosmo!” Dusi nearly choked on her Yorkshire pudding. “Who told you such an outrageous lie?”
“Again, common knowledge.” Pippa folded her napkin. “Thank you for lunch, Madam Damon. I believe Signora Bowes and I have heard, and eaten, enough.” She headed for the door.
“Wait! I did say the situation was difficult, but it’s far from hopeless. Yesterday’s party was a good start. Leigh needs to follow up with a knockout punch.”
Pippa turned. To her irritation Leigh was still seated at the table, fork in hand, paralyzed. “What do you suggest? We have no more pets with upcoming birthdays.”
Leigh sprang to life. “We could celebrate Dusi’s induction into the Frequent Bentley Society.”
“An excellent idea!” Dusi agreed at once. “Leigh, you have more imagination than I thought. I’ll send a guest list tomorrow. This could clinch it for you if you do it right.” She beamed as Horatio entered with a dark, gummy mound on a silver platter. “Ah, the figgy pudding.”
Pippa’s digestive tract was spared by the entrance of a thirtysome-thing man in white pants and polo sweater. He had the tanned, even looks of an Abercrombie model now given over to full-time freeload-ing. “Pardon me,” he cried in surprise. “I didn’t know you were having company, Dusi.” He looked quizzically at Pippa, whose gender was open to question. “I’m Harlan Scott.”
“Cosmo du Piche,” she replied, limply offering her hand.
Harlan instantly concluded that Cosmo was not his type. Leigh was another story. “Good afternoon to you,” he leered.
Dusi took immediate preemptive action. “Harlan is croquet instructor at the club,” she said, rising. “And my chaperone when Caleb is out of town.” Translation: hands off. “Now if you’ll excuse us, I believe we’re late for my lesson.” Fusing herself to his forearm, Dusi marched Harlan toward the door. “Think about my offer of a trade, Leigh.”
“What was that all about?” Leigh whispered after the front door had slammed.
“That means Harlan is more than her croquet teacher.” “What trade is she talking about?”
“Me for Horatio. Don’t even think about it. Are you interested in that figgy pudding?” No way. “Then let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.” Pippa cupped her hands over her mouth. “Thank you, Horatio,” she called to the butler standing discreetly at a side table. “Everything was exquisite.”
“My pleasure, sir.” He showed them to the front door. “Good day.”
Leigh’s apricot Duesenberg was parked in the stable beside Caleb’s collection of royal horse-drawn carriages. Pippa slowly drove over the moat bridge separating Dusi’s castle from the real world. “She’s got some nerve calling Casa Bowes gaudy.”
“I think Dusi’s home is magnificent.”
“Will you stop defending her? Anyone who lives with two stuffed horses is not sane.”
“I think she has a crush on you, Cosmo.”
“That just proves my point. Please don’t encourage her.”
“I can’t believe Floridia Ventura was rejected! She’s a descendant of the first governor of Rhode Island.” Leigh’s mood deteriorated with each mile Pippa put between them and Castilio Damonia. “Maybe Dusi’s right. There’s no hope. I’m just a social-climbing ex-Rockette with an unstable marriage.”
“She’s playing mind games with you. She needs to keep you in a state of perpetual insecurity. It’s the way she is.”
“Why would someone be that mean?”
“It’s easier than being nice.” Pippa tried to buoy Leigh’s spirits by taking her to Picasso at the Bellagio for an edible lunch. “Why don’t you personally collect checks from all those ladies who got their pictures taken with Michael Phelps yesterday? It’s the perfect opportunity to meet some club members one on one. Just be yourself. Charm them.”
“But what should I wear?” Leigh moaned.
“We’ll go shopping. Leave everything to me.”
Presuming that anyone who wore a purple sombrero and those outlandish glasses was a very important player in Las Vegas, the maftre d’ at Picasso led Pippa to a prominent table. As she followed him through a sea of curious stares, Pippa realized that she rather enjoyed playing the role of Cosmo du Piche. For once her alias did not feel alien. Cosmo exuded a confidence that had hitherto appeared to her only in fragments. His bizarre charisma actually bent others to his will. Pippa smiled: so this was what it felt like to be Thayne.
“Did Dusi really get her boobs in Rangoon?” Leigh asked after they had ordered.
“Last June.”
“How do you know all this, Cosmo?”
“It is my business to know. The better to serve and protect you.”
Leigh put her hand over Pippa’s. “I think you’re terrific. Don’t ever change a thing. Not even that mustache.”
They were discussing how to inform Moss of yet another blowout party when a comely but drunk woman, minus a shoe, sloshed to their table. Each hand was wrapped around a martini glass. Pippa vaguely remembered her from Titian’s birthday party. “Wyolene!” Leigh gasped. “How nice to see you. Please join us.”
“I jus rezeived a note,” Wyolene revealed, weaving like a reed in the breeze. “Hand delivvrd while I wz playn brij.”
Pippa and Leigh eventually pieced together the disjointed segments of Wyolene’s story. After spending three hundred thousand dollars on parties, gifts, and abject brownnosing, Wyolene had just learned that her application for membership in the Las Vegas Country Club had been denied. All Dusi could tell her was that som
eone had written a letter to the committee, alerting them to the fact that Wyolene owned a Shih Tzu named Mambo. Naming a dog after a corrupt dance raised concerns about Wyolene’s character.
“I wz blackBALLd!” Wyolene shouted, draining both martinis.
The maître d’ hurried over. “Is this woman bothering you, sir?” he asked Pippa.
“She’s had a bad shock. She’ll be all right.”
“No aright!” Wyolene staggered into the next table. One of her martini glasses fell into someone’s cream of celeriac soup. “I goin’ back to Palm Bich! Screwwww Vegaz!”
A waiter led Wyolene away. “She didn’t get in because of Mambo?” Leigh asked, barely eking out the words.
“Your dog is named Titian,” Pippa reminded her, signing the check. “Let’s get out of here before we run into any more rejects.”
Unfortunately they ran into Esmeralda at Armani, Karla at Fendi, and Bibi at Simayof, all of whom had just received hand-delivered notes similar to Wyolene’s. All three women were crushed. Not one had a clue as to why her petition to join the country club had been blackballed. Pippa couldn’t figure it out, either: these were wealthy, elegant, socially responsible ladies. Their dogs were named Rembrandt, Dwight, and Eiffel. Esmeralda had taken Dusi to Madrid to see a bullfight. Karla had given Dusi a triple-strand necklace of nine-millimeter Mikimoto pearls. Bibi had not only given Dusi a Warhol to hang in her mudroom but she had bought a stuffed pony for Caleb. Evidently none of these gestures had been enough to turn the tide. “Did anyone actually get into the club?” Pippa asked.
“Wallace and Peggy Stoutmeyer,” Bibi sobbed, handing a credit card to the cashier. She was purchasing a little pick-me-up cocktail ring for eighty thousand dollars. “He’s a damn chicken farmer. She looks like a tractor.”
“That means there’s only one space left,” Leigh said.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Bibi snapped, stalking out.
The mood in the Duesenberg was funereal as Pippa and Leigh headed home. “Under the circumstances, should we even go ahead with this Bentley ball?” Pippa asked. “Dusi’s got a great little scam going.”
