Without Reservations_ The Travels of an Independent Woman - Alice Steinbach [58]
My attempts to find out what I should wear proved futile. “Oh, dress any way you want,” Jean said. I asked what she was wearing. “I’m not sure yet. I’ll see what strikes me at seven-thirty on Saturday night. Ring the buzzer marked Robert and Olivia Morgan.”
My English friends were more specific with their advice. Dress up. Arrive at least a half-hour late. Take a gift. The last two suggestions were easy. I would take flowers and arrive at nine—after eating a light supper, of course. There was no way I could hold out until ten to eat dinner.
But their suggestion to “dress up” still didn’t solve the dilemma of what to wear. For some reason I wanted to look good. Really good. My guess was I had something to prove: that I could fit into this group of people described by Jean as “high rollers.” Fit in for one night, anyway.
At precisely nine o’clock, wearing the black silk dress bought in Paris and carrying an armful of pale yellow roses, I rang the buzzer to the Morgans’ apartment. A butler opened the door. Inside, I could see the party was in full swing. “Allow me to take your flowers, madam,” said the butler, who then whisked them away, never to be seen again. So much for arriving late and bearing a gift, I thought.
I stood there, surrounded by a roomful of strangers engaged in animated conversation, wondering what to do next. A waiter passed by with a silver tray of tulip-shaped glasses filled with champagne. He seemed to have no intention of stopping, so I hailed him as I would a taxi, and took one. Then, just as I started to make my move toward a cluster of guests, I heard a booming laugh erupt behind me. I knew immediately it was Jean and turned around to say hello. Her appearance stunned me.
Jean looked like a movie star; a large movie star but a movie star nonetheless. She looked the way I imagined Geena Davis might look if she put on twenty pounds. Slowly I took in Jean’s appearance. The woman who didn’t know what she was going to wear was dressed in a draped red chiffon gown held up by two ribbons of red silk. Her dark hair was swept back into a French braid and her lips rouged the exact red of her dress. The perfection of all this—and her pretense about throwing herself together at the last moment—would have put me off were it not for one thing: her earrings.
“Remember these?” she asked, putting her hands up to the dopey-looking silver earrings she’d bought at the Freud Museum. They looked totally out of place with her getup. “These are to remind me that I don’t really belong here. That I’m just an analyst sponging off some very rich friends.” We both laughed, a conspiratorial laugh that suggested our awareness of being outsiders at this soiree.
“C’mon, love, let me take you around,” Jean said, taking my hand and pulling me through the crowd. Each time she stopped to introduce me she would add on after my name, without pausing, “a reporter from America.” Her need to identify me by what I did didn’t bother me; everybody at the party had an identification added onto their names. Gerald, a commodities trader … Fiona, a theater producer … Russell, a land developer … James and Terry, the horse breeders.… I found myself thinking of Naohiro, of how pleasant it would be to have him sitting next to me. But would he even enjoy a party like this? I wondered.
It was a warm night, but a breeze coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows made the temperature in the spacious drawing room seem almost pleasant. Jean suggested we work our way over to one of the open windows, where a man and woman stood talking. Seeing the two of them, I instantly thought of The Great Gatsby. He was wearing a white dinner jacket that accentuated his dark hair and slanted eyes. She was also dark-haired and wearing white—a simple silk dress, its only adornment a strand of pearls. They were talking face-to-face near a Steinway piano, holding each other’s hands in a friendly yet