“Text me his name and I’ll check him out.”

“I bought you the monograph. I’m about to have dinner with the Pinaults and some fabulous people from Mexico City. Check my Insta in half an hour and you’ll see all the pictures.”

“Cecil, please enlighten me … Who exactly is George Zao?”

“George who?”

“Zao! Zao! He’s apparently taken Harry Stuyvesant Fish’s house for the summer?”

“Oh yes! Ha ha. Lucie, you’re going to love this. You know how much I can’t stand Harry, that pretentious fuck with his mandate to only rent his house to ‘the right sort of people’ who can trace their lineage back to the exact spot where their ancestors stood in Mrs. Astor’s ballroom on Fifth Avenue. So I decided to play a little trick on him. I recommended this fellow George Zao to Harry. And I must have really impressed him, because his Bordello di Cissinghurst will now play host to exactly the type of people he disapproves of. They’re the most peculiar pair I’ve ever met.”

“What do you mean by ‘peculiar’?”

“George isn’t really that bad, but wait till you meet his mother. She’s the most vulgar thing that ever walked the planet. She dresses like she’s about to lip-synch for her life on RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

Lucie could feel a chill go up her spine. It was them.

“And how do you know these people?” Lucie asked. She hadn’t seen George since that fateful night in Capri five years ago, and she could feel her stomach begin to tighten.

“Well, here’s the real laugh—they’re complete strangers! I met them at the Frick Collection, in the fountain room when I was searching for that Modigliani portrait they’re always moving around. Rosemary’s feet were sore from walking, and she was sitting on one of the stone benches rubbing some awful ointment onto her heels and stinking up the place to high heaven! But we began talking because I couldn’t help but remark on her turban—it was so full-on Liz Taylor batshit fabulous I had to say something—and she asked me if I knew of a house to rent in the Hamptons. Her son’s working in the city now for some B-list architect, and she actually wondered if Grey Gardens could be rented, if you can believe it. She’s obsessed with the film, and fascinated by the Beales and the Kennedys, of course. So I told them of an even better house, and I texted Harry immediately. I told him that the Zaos were ‘Asian royalty,’ that they were friends of my mother’s and direct descendants of the last emperor, who fled to Hong Kong. He bought it hook, line, and sinker. Can you believe how gullible he is? Thank God he’s been assigned to Norway and not some country where we actually need someone on the ground with half a brain stem. I hope Rosemary starts filling up Cissinghurst with stray cats. Hundreds of them. It’ll teach that Harry Fish a lesson! Elitist shits like him deserve to be punished.”

“But, Cecil, you’re friends with the most elitist people I know!”

“Please don’t confuse elitism with brilliant, self-made billionaires, baby. My friends have every right to be snobbish, but they aren’t. Like my father, who grew up without a proper pair of shoes in Terlingua, Texas, and worked his ass off till he dropped dead of a cerebral hemorrhage at sixty. People like Harry treated my dad with nothing but contempt, even when he could finally afford to wear John Lobbs.”

Lucie groaned, not wishing to drag herself deeper into arguing over this. “Cecil, you know I arranged for the Ortiz sisters to rent the place from Harry. I went to all that trouble helping two extremely high-maintenance parties negotiate their terms. The Ortiz sisters even wanted the water quality tested in the pipes, because apparently they can only bathe in water that’s a certain pH. I did it all without complaint, but now you’ve sabotaged my plans completely over some absurd vendetta you have against Harry. And to make matters worse, I know these Zaos, and the Ortiz sisters know them, which makes things doubly embarrassing.”

“Oh, the Zaos were part of that wacko Capri crowd?”

“Yes. They’re related to Isabel.”

“I might have guessed. Those rich Asians all seem to be related, don’t they?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were cooking up this scheme? I’m going to be your wife, Cecil. Why didn’t you at least warn me?”

Cecil went quiet for a moment as the enormity of his screwup finally began sinking in. “Baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to ruin the joke for you.”

Lucie exhaled deeply, trying to control her anger. “I really don’t understand you sometimes, Cecil. I feel very betrayed.”

“I thought you’d be happy!” Cecil sputtered.

“Yeah, real happy,” Lucie said, hanging up.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Preppie Guru Lounge

Amagansett, Long Island

The new Preppie Guru Lounge just outside Amagansett boasted a circular yoga room with floor-to-ceiling windows that afforded spectacular views of the serene wetlands leading down to Napeague Bay. The Saturday morning Master Level Puppy Yoga class that Auden led was the most popular one by far, with a two-year waiting list, as his groupies flocked from all over the world to sun salutate their carb-deprived bodies at the feet of their impossibly photogenic guru.

Lucie had been a devotee of Auden’s classes for several years now, since he had opened his first pop-up class in East Hampton four summers ago. She was used to the rigors he imposed and the way he would coax her into pushing her body further than she ever imagined, but today’s class was kicking her ass. He was putting them through the most merciless poses, and it didn’t help that it was a particularly humid morning, causing the sweat to drip off Lucie like a broken water sprinkler, and that the class was also welcoming a rowdy new batch of shelter puppies who obviously didn’t get the memo about keeping things Zen.

As Ajeet Kaur and Trevor Hall’s “Akaal” played softly in the background, Lucie struggled to hold her pungu mayurasana—one-arm wounded peacock pose—while a French bulldog puppy tried to nuzzle into her sweaty armpit. And when she began transitioning from wounded peacock into sirsa padasana—head-to-foot backbend—a corgi-Chihuahua mix started playing tug-of-war with her tank top. Get off me, you little shit! I mean, focus, breathe, om gam ganapataye namaha, Lucie chanted silently. On several occasions, as she stretched into a new pose, she noticed in her peripheral vision some hippie dude behind her who seemed to be executing each pose effortlessly. How was he tuning out these vicious beasts?

Everyone sighed in relief when Auden finally allowed them to relax into shavasana, as his voice transformed from taskmaster into his trademark laconic drawl. “And now, just ground into the earth. Feel Mother Earth’s gentle embrace. Let your body melt into the soft grass, into the nurturing rich soil, grounding deeper into the earth, deeper and deeper, sending roots into the core, connecting to the giant magical tree at the center of the universe. Feel your breath flow in through the soles of your feet all the way to your crown chakra, flooding oxygen into every cell in your body, every strand of DNA, and as you exhale, think of your breath sending precious life force back through the roots into the tree, the tree of life, Mother Gaia, the tree that connects us all. Innnnn and ouuuut, innnnn and ouuuut. Feel the life force flowing through your body, carrying you home; feel your third eye pulsating …”