by Sarah Bird
“Get a grip,” I order myself as I splash water onto my wrists from Kippie Lee’s cobalt blue vessel sink etched with dancing nymphs. But no grip arrives. The past year of living on nerves, Stoli, and speed have done me in. I dry my hands on a monogrammed guest towel and study myself in the mirror. I wish there were someone around, someone male with tons of money, to admire how sexy my navy blue eyes look when they are swimming in tears. How puffed up all the crying has made my lips, how uncontrollable sobbing has plumped my skin the way long bouts of vigorous sex do.
Instead, outside the powder room’s sculpted glass door, I hear the distant echoes of Kippie Lee having the mandatory preparty nervous breakdown, then, ominously, the staccato clacking of Chanel crocodile pumps draws closer. A shadowy form appears at the door. I don’t worry. Kippie Lee’s Southern-girl “niceness” which, at its most basic, consists of an aversion to making scenes, will protect me from anything truly dire.
Kippie Lee pounds on the door. “Blythe? Are you in there? Blythe, come out. We need to talk.”
The words “need” and “talk” in the same sentence always mean someone—lover or employee—is going to get the ax.
“Little busy in here, Kip-Kip!” Again that indomitable Kappa Alpha Theta pep.
“Blythe, I’m serious.”
Kippie Lee’s dominatrix tone tells me that I might have miscalculated. That this far west of the Mississippi sufficient pioneer-gal grit may have entered the mix that a Texas girl will make a scene. I hold my breath and pray that there is still enough of the belle in Kippie Lee that she won’t break down the door.
Kippie Lee leaves and I relax. Unfortunately, the clack returns a moment later followed by the unmistakable snick of a black AmEx card sliding between door and jamb. I am outraged. Kippie Lee is breaking in. Violating the sanctity of the powder room. This I had not expected. Resigned as a prisoner being led to the gallows, I am almost grateful that the jig is finally up. I am so deeply, deeply tired. Whatever steep descending step in The Rake’s Progress comes next, it can’t be any worse than this.
And then the cavalry arrives.
“Miss Keeply,” Graciela calls out. “They are here. Los otros.”
My minions have arrived.
“Miss Keeply, they want to know where do you want them to put the tables?”
With an irritated sigh, Kippie Lee removes her card. “I’ll be right there, Graciela.”
Before I can crater again, I give myself a stern talking-to. Have I forgotten that Chanterelle Young, born and raised and got the hell out of Abilene as soon she could, is more of a Texas gal than the whole lot of them? Grit? Try growing up in a double-wide a block off I-20 with a Dairy Queen for your country club and the boys’ JV football coach for your secret boyfriend when you were barely thirteen. Grit? I have more grit in my craw than a Rhode Island Red. The Dixes and everyone else in Zero Three might have reduced Blythe Young to baking humble pie and serving it to them on doilies, but by damn they will never force Blythe Young to eat it.
I give my nose a definitive blow, then power-flush the Kleenex down the Toto. I have had my moist moment and now it is over. I will hide out while the underlings set everything up, then if I can just hang on until the guests arrive, it will be smooth sailing from there. Kippie Lee will never make a scene in front of guests. I can safely emerge and throw the absolute best garden party for her my limited means will allow. A party good enough, at any rate, to get that one lifesaving check. In order to accomplish this mission, however, in order to step out of this locked bathroom, I must become a different person. A person with the hide of a rhino, the morals of a hyena, and the metabolism of a hummingbird.
So, once again, circumstances dictate that I reenlist my old defender to effect the necessary Jekyll/Hyde transformation. I fetch the Fendi bag and remove a thirty-two-ounce commuter cup with CODE WARRIOR printed on the side. The Warrior entered my life during the early days of Wretched’s first incarnation when I had to do the work of ten to meet the demands of my bright dot-com boys. With no one other than myself to depend on—as usual—I was forced to devise a secret formula to keep fluid, electrolyte, and psychopharmaceutical levels stable.
And now, exactly as it has been since Vicki Jo Young gave birth to me thirty-three years ago, it is Blythe Young against the world. Just a girl who never had family money or even a My Little Pony lunchbox when all the other girls in third grade had one, doing what she has to do to survive. And right now, she has to do some Code Warrior. I take all the fixin’s out of my purse and mix up my proprietary blend of Red Bull, Stoli, Ativan, just the tiniest smidge of OxyContin, and one thirty-milligram, timed-release spansule of Dexedrine. I shake, drink, sit back down on the Toto UltraMax, fasten my safety belt, and wait for the g-forces to blow my cheeks back.
My friend Stoli hits the jangled synapses first, smoothing the way for her buddies Ativan and OxyContin to do their jobs. Desperation, mortification, regret, and panic melt away before the Warrior’s might, exposing the bone-deep exhaustion that lies beneath, and I nod off for the first bit of real sleep I have had in weeks.
Moments later, I wake with my heart thudding in a full-blown panic attack. The spansule has dissolved and Code Warrior’s Dexedrine shock troops have hit the beach. My jugular vein is throbbing; I am grinding my teeth and snorting like a bull about to charge. My thoughts cascade past at a frightening speed. I am hurtling through time and space on a psychic luge sled and fear I might throw up.
Perfect. I have become precisely the person I must be in order to face the cream of Austin society.
April 3, 2003
1:30 P.M.
HOLDING MY BREATH, I tiptoe out of the powder room. Over the roaring of blood pumping maniacally through my ears, I notice that the Teeter house is completely quiet. Guests have arrived, cars have been parked, and all the college boy valets are relaxing beside the circular drive. A happy twittering emanates from the backyard. I was out longer than I thought; the party is under way.
I peek out at the Teeter grounds. An acre of manicured St. Augustine unrolls perfect as a pool table beneath the artful twists of venerable live oak trees. Against the green, all I see is pink. Pink skirts. Pink jackets. Strappy pink sandals. Pink lipstick, pink nail polish. And tan. Lots of bronzer. Many trips to the spray-on-tan guy. Apparently all the wardrobe and makeup consultants got together and decided: pink and tan.
Threads of black and white and buttons of silver dart through the pastel, stitching it together into the ideal party ensemble. My minions, bless them, in their black pants and white shirts have stepped into the breach. They bustle about, tilting silver serving trays toward guests. And what guests they are, a calculated blend of Old Austin stalwarts—the women K.L. grew up brunching with at Tarry House right after church every Sunday of her life—together with a smattering of Dellionaire spouses and a shrewd court-jester sprinkling of Austin’s more presentable artists and writers.
But, ah, the jewel in the crown. I see Kippie Lee has scored the big one: Lynn Sydney Locke. Lynn Sydney swept into Austin a few years ago, dripping with money from two highly remunerative marriages, and took over the town. She is the avatar of New Austin, the one who upped the ante on Kippie Lee’s Old Austin crowd. With her arrival, the ultimate was no longer scooting up to Salado for a dress from Grace Jones. It became trips to New York for Fashion Week. With Lynn Sydney’s ascension the big name “gets” for a dinner party ceased to be Lady Bird Johnson’s great-niece and became art critics flown in from Las Vegas, any member of the Bush family or administration, and, the prize himself, Michael Dell. As for brunch at Tarry House, once Austin’s Bright Young Things began eating Roquefort sorbet and Beaujolais summer truffle risotto, well, it just came to seem sad.
Most threatening to Kippie Lee and the Austin Old Guard, however, is that Lynn Sydney is thinner, better dressed, and, worst of all, has a better house. At least that was the verdict of Architectural Digest when it celebrated the minimalist marvels of her house’s microscopically exquisite
two thousand square feet in an article entitled “The End of Austintation.” The famous architect-writer raved about the house’s “subdued palette and commitment to spareness.” Kippie Lee’s friends comforted their upstaged queen by claiming, “It looks like a cellblock. A bomb shelter. A bunker.” The writer extolled the “spatial ambiguity” of Lynn Sydney’s house, and the friends, as threatened as Kippie Lee by this challenge to the McMansion aesthetic, hissed, “She put the damn bathtub in the dining room. That’s not ambiguous, that’s mental illness!”
Kippie Lee’s Old Austin crowd whispered among themselves about how “nouveau” and “arriviste” Lynn Sydney and her ilk were. And then they did everything in their power to be as much like the chic newcomer as they possibly could.
At this very moment, in Kippie Lee’s backyard, the ladies gather around Lynn Sydney and chirp at her, frantic as baby birds in a nest begging for sustenance from the one who has the power to fly away; the one who needs them so much less than they need her. Even Lynn Sydney’s wardrobe choice speaks of that freedom: Lynn Sydney is wearing jeans.
Though the jeans are True Religion, and her top is a vintage Pucci from Decades in LA, amid all the carefully chosen designer pink, Lynn Sydney’s outfit is a statement whose dismissive meaning the ladies cannot mistake. Still, with the arrival of the closest thing Austin has to a celebrity-socialite the party seems launched, and I take one of the very few full breaths I have been able to suck in since the divorce.
The breathing part of my program ends abruptly, however, when I see Lynn Sydney answer a call on her cell. She turns her back on the princesses of Old Austin and speaks to the unseen caller with a noticeable increase in animation. A second later, she is waving hurried good-byes. With the departure of its most glittering guest, Kippie Lee’s party falters.
This is not good.
I retreat to the kitchen, where party machinery is in high gear. Amid the aubergine La Cornue range, the double Miele dishwashers, the assorted Sub-Zeros, my staff is a domino blur of white and black as they nip about loading up trays with all manner of Discontinued and Clearance food items that I have previously tucked into cunning sachets of phyllo dough.
“Hey, Blythe, what are you doing back here?” In her hasty escape, Lynn Sydney has cut right through the kitchen.
“Just, you know…” I wave vaguely toward the kitchen.
Lynn Sydney takes my equivocation for polite reticence and shakes her head with sympathetic understanding. “Tell me about it.” She holds up her cell. “That’s why I told Siobhan”—she names her children’s Irish nanny—“to call and rescue me. I can talk about backsplashes for just so long, then I have to escape. Is that a Posen?”
Lynn Sydney examines the jacket’s lilac organza lining, nodding approvingly as she feels the hidden stitching. “Did you get Zac to custom fit this?”
I nod modestly.
“God. Major score, bitch. Who did you blow?”
Before I can answer her attention is diverted. “Are those Sam’s taquitos?” Lynn Sydney helps herself to a double handful. “God, I would kill for a DP.”
I hand her one from the refrigerator, and through a mouthful of Dr Pepper–moistened taquito, Lynn Sydney says, “Your ex-husband hit on me the other day.”
“Why does that not surprise me?”
“He’s kind of cute, but so not my type.”
So not your price range. Lynn Sydney is through with family money controlled by terrifying mothers-in-law. Her current suitors are all self-made gazillionaires.
Her phone rings and Lynn Sydney checks the number. “This one’s for real.” She purrs, “Hey, boo,” into the phone before mouthing to me, “Call. Okay?” as she rushes away.
When I turn back to the party, I behold a massively unsettling sight: Kippie Lee and her henchbitches, no doubt miffed by Lynn Sydney’s departure, are conducting a little consumer research in the middle of the parklike grounds. They are quizzing one of the minions, Juniper, and poking suspiciously at the hors d’oeuvres polka-dotting her silver tray. I suck my breath back in.
Oh Jesus.
It gets worse: Now they are sniffing my “pâté.”
Shit.
Now, now! they are rubbing it between their fingers. My “secret ingredient” is not going to stand up to that kind of pointy-nosed scrutiny.
It’s your own fault, I want to scream at K.L. I might have been able to make real pâté if I’d had a decent advance. Kippie Lee and Philandering Asshole left me absolutely no choice but to go with the only extender I could afford—Crisco. They should thank me, all those bony society babes. At least their husbands should. Not a single one of them couldn’t do with a little lard in the can.
Damn.
Now Kippie and company are subjecting my “polenta” to laboratory analysis. Even from this distance, I can make out eyebrows struggling to fire Botox-frozen nerves into expressions of doubt and puzzlement.
Oh God. They’ve started in on my mousse en bombe.
Enough! I want to scream. So mistakes—prenup, prenup, prenup—were made? So corners were cut? So the polenta I am serving may or may not be Cream of Wheat enlivened with the magic of sunny yellow popcorn seasoning? So the mousse en bombe that my staff is unmolding at this very moment might be more familiar with brown Whip ’N’ Chill than thirty-dollar-a-pound Belgian chocolate? So the watercress sandwiches may or may not contain St. Augustine clippings? So the Copper River salmon gravlax is really catfish freshened a bit with the most artful injections of Red Dye Number 2? Who in this crowd of the sucked and tucked can possibly object to a bit of freshening? Who?
When Kippie Lee spits out a bite of watercress sandwich, I see my hostess emerging as a leading candidate. Unless decisive emergency action is taken, all will be lost. I regret the necessity that is being forced upon me, but necessity it is.
From amid the chaos in the kitchen, I spy my secret weapon. “Sergio!”
Sergio hastens to my side and whispers, “Jes.”
I stole Sergio from Antoinette of Antoinette’s Let Them Eat Cake the instant I saw how Sergio’s velvety Venezuelan lashes and gigolo-white teeth tended to mesmerize even the most rabidly sniffing and poking of society matrons. Thank God, Sergio is in the country illegally, and his employment options are limited. Those lashes and teeth are all that now stand between me and utter ruin.
Sergio, ah, my sweet Sergio, he knows what his master’s business is and he is eager to be about it. I grab the American Spirit cigarette he is smoking, suck it down to the filter, and toss the butt into the in-door ice dispenser of the Sub-Zero.
“Here.” I yank a tray of phyllo surprises away from Olga, a double-jointed modern dance major with classical ballet training from somewhere in the former Soviet Republic. Olga is highly effective with male clients, but a dead loss to me at this estro-fest. With one snap of the wrist, I pop all the ersatz hors d’oeuvres into the trash, shove the tray into Sergio’s capable hands, and then I utter the words that are the equivalent of turning the keys to begin a nuclear launch sequence: “Kir Royales.”
Sergio nods knowingly. Swiftly, he sets up the souvenir champagne flutes etched with the words MAZEL TOV, STUIE that I pilfered from the last of my high-end bar mitzvahs. I dive into the Sub-Zero, where I’ve stowed an arsenal of champagne bottles carefully salvaged from glamorous events back in the day—Cristal, Veuve Clicquot, Dom Pérignon. The glittering names overwhelm me with nostalgia for the lost paradise of the Internet bubble. Back then, I served the Dom. Magnums, fountains, sprinkler systems of the Dom. I push aside the gilded memories of my boy geniuses and pull out the bottles which I refilled earlier with an amusing little Sauterne from the handy eighteen-liter box. A quick glance to make sure no nosy parkers are about, then I palm an Alka-Seltzer into each bottle for precisely the right amount of methodoise effervescence.
“Jew wan me to pour?” Sergio asks.
When the memento bottles have ceased foaming, I nod. “Yes, pour.”
Sergio works quickly, filling the g
lasses, a tiny strainer deftly employed to sieve away telltale flecks of the plop-plop, fizz-fizz. Speed is of the essence. The vintage must be only barely thawed if taste buds are to remain properly numbed. When the glasses are all topped up to MAZEL TOV level, Sergio glances at me. No words are needed. I peek to the left, to the right. The coast is clear. I nod.
In place of the prohibitively expensive crème de cassis liqueur I would have been sloshing about in cushier times, today I am pouring a more modestly priced decoction of one part Welch’s grape jelly diluted with two parts grain alcohol, then misted with a tincture of the secret ingredient that Sergio—dear, loyal, brave Sergio—smuggled across the border at Piedras Negras in his boot for me: Rohypnol.
“Date rape drug” is such an ugly term. And so far from my intent. All I seek is a bit of fuzziness, not the full nonconsensual coma. Besides, I have worked out a precise formula using myself as the guinea pig. I’d spent many a night—though I can’t recall exactly how many—experimenting to determine the safest, smallest dosage possible. After all, that boot heel only holds so much. All I want is to make sure my clients have a good time. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.
And once Sergio fans out with his most Royale of Kirs, I can guarantee a good time will be had by all. Kippie Lee’s ladies’ luncheon will be remembered or, more precisely, forgotten, as the event of the season. Everyone will agree it was a smashing affair because, in the grand tradition of all the absolutely best times of anyone’s life, no one will be able to recall a single thing about it. Kippie Lee will have her triumph over Philandering Asshole. A few less-than-perfect party details such as the whiskers on the “salmon” will fade away, and a happy hostess will write the check I need so desperately. The kiss of the Roofie is now all that stands between me and redemption.
Sergio flips open the compartment in his boot heel and hands me the vial. I swiftly set about crowning each Kir. Using an eye-dropper, I meticulously titrate a dose into each glass large enough to blur a few less-than-perfect details but small enough to maintain check-writing consciousness. When each flute has been fortified, I pass Sergio the first tray and entrust him with the vital mission: “Get one of these down our hostess’s throat. Stat.”
