“Oh, we met a few weeks ago. Viv was doing a shoot for Harper’s Bazaar out at the Point,” George answered.

“Resort-wear bikinis,” Viv added.

“Of course,” Lucie smirked.

“Um … Lucie’s an old friend,” George said to Viv.

“How nice to have old friends,” Viv said to Lucie, before turning to George. “Come home for breakfast?”

“Sure,” George replied, as he nodded goodbye to Lucie, picked up his surfboard, and walked off with the girl.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Saint Luke’s Place

Greenwich Village

Overheard in the canal room …

“You, Cecil Pike, are a visionary. This is Venice in the twenty-second century, that’s what this is! If Carlos de Beistegui were alive, he would be foaming at the mouth with jealousy!”

“A canal flowing through a West Village town house! Only you could have imagined this, Cecil! When I saw the gondola floating across your living room out to the garden, I thought for sure I was tripping on mushrooms.”

“Cecil! This is the most fabulous housewarming party I’ve ever been to. Is that Samin Nosrat cooking in the kitchen? OMG, I’m about to fangirl all over her!”

“Comme cette maison est illustre, Cecil. C’est exquis! Le summum du chic! J’emménage immédiatement.”

“Mon dieu, quell compliment venant de vous, chère comtesse. J’en suis profondément honoré!”

“I’ll tell you one thing, I haven’t seen anything this original since the Hilma show at the Guggenheim.”

“Cecil, I hope you’re not planning on raising your kids here. Because I can just picture my future nephew or niece crawling off that mezzanine with no railing and falling headfirst into the canal.”

“Freddie, that’s why I hired the gondoliers to be full-time. They will double as lifeguards.”

“A Yayoi Kusama Infinity Mirror powder room! How in the world did you pull that off, Cecil?”

“Are you Lucie? Cecil told me you’re responsible for curating all the art here. To place the Kehinde Wiley and the Lucian Freud facing each other in the library—genius, pure genius. Here, let’s follow each other on Instagram!”

“Cecil, what will it take for you to let us do a feature on the house?”

“You’re too kind, Martina. But you know how private my family is. We don’t ever let our houses be photographed.”

Overheard in the mezzanine screening room …

“Oh my god, Lucie, guess what? Martina wants to feature the house in Cabana!”

“Really? How cool.”

“I’m playing hard to get. I’ll let her feature the house, but I want to make sure she puts me on the cover!”

“If that’s what it takes to get the story, I’m sure she’ll oblige you.”

“Actually, it should be the both of us on the cover together. In this room. Sitting on the gondola.”

“Um, we can talk about that later.”

“Lucie, is that your mother over there talking to Hanya Yanagihara?”

“Yes.”

“Do me the favor of removing her, please, before she says something stupid. Do you know what I heard her say to Bruce Weber? She said, ‘Oh, I looove the photo you took of Lucie! I put it up on my fridge!’”

“I don’t see what harm there was in that, Cecil. She was only trying to pay him a compliment.”

“Lucie, that’s like saying to Michelangelo, ‘Oh, I put your little sculpture in the garden next to my plastic gnomes!’”

“Cecil, be nice.”

“I am being nice. I’m saving your mother from embarrassing herself.”

Overheard in the library …

“You know what I love about new money? They serve superb wine at their parties, because they are always trying to impress. And you know my policy: I only drink if it’s very, very expensive wine and somebody else is paying.”

“Ho ho ho! Mordecai, you’re terrible! All the same, this is a lovely d’Yquem.”

“Not as lovely as this little Vuillard. It sits so perfectly on this broken easel.”

“But why is the easel broken?”

“Well, Robert broke it, of course. You know how he is. Every room he’s done must look like it’s not done, as if it had been abandoned half a century ago by some consumptive aristocrats who could no longer afford firewood.”

“Don’t tell me the coffee stains on this Oushak aren’t real?”

“Oh, Robert has the best coffee spiller anywhere. Diego, an absolute genius. Makes every stain look like it’s been there for generations. He’s particularly good at faking dog stains on old chintz. You know, so it looks like your Rhodesian ridgeback has drooled all over that chaise longue for years and years.”

“Hmm … I didn’t realize Robert had a hand in all this. I thought Axel did it.”

“Axel did the kitchens, the spa, and the glorious canal room; Francois did the screening room and the bedrooms; and Robert did the drawing room and the library.”

“Cecil had three of the most expensive designers in the world on retainer?”

“Four, including yours truly. I helped with everything from the Cycladic period, of course.”

“Well, I hope you made out like a bandit. Cheers to you, Mordecai!”

“And cheers to Lucie Churchill, that lucky girl. I knew from the moment I laid eyes on her in Capri she’d make a terrific match, although it turns out I failed to bet on the winning horse.”

“Oooh. Pray tell?”

Overheard in the kitchen …

“Cecil, tell me, where are the appliances? Your kitchen looks like a Zen rock garden.”

“Marian, first of all this is the show kitchen, not the real kitchen in the basement where the real cooking is done. Everything here is centered on the principles of wabi-sabi, about a oneness with things. See this black river rock from Wajima? You just wave your hand over the diagonal slit in the rock, and voilà!”

“Sweet Jesus, what’s that coming out of the floor? Is that the dishwasher?”

“No, it’s a truffle vault. Axel put the dishwashers in the china room.”

“Holy moly! Wait till Charlotte sees this! Can I please bring her over when she’s here?”

“God help us—Charlotte is coming back to New York?”

“She’s back for a visit next month, didn’t you know?”

“Marian, please don’t tell me she’s staying with you in East Hampton.”

“Of course she is.”

“Well, I shall make myself very scarce.”

“Mom, does Charlotte really have to stay with us? You know how Cecil gets around her. When we were in London he broke out in hives the day she tried to take us to some hot new restaurant in Maida Vale.”

“Was it really Charlotte that caused his hives, or was he having an allergic reaction to something he ate?”

“Well, I do get a migraine whenever I’m forced to go outside of Zone 1, but I think it’s safe to say I have a Charlotte Barclay allergy. It’s not as bad as my allergy to South African wines, but it’s an allergy nonetheless.”