“Er … it was a little over $225k.”

“Wah, so cheap! In Hong Kong, this car would cost at least half a mil.”

“Well, you should get one then, Mrs. Zao,” Cecil remarked.

“I just might. But how can I drive such a car to garage sales? I won’t be able to get any bargains if they see me pull up in this thing!” Rosemary said.

“We really should go back in before the Peking duck gets cold,” Marian warned.

“Oh, shit!” Freddie exclaimed, as he rushed back into the dining room ahead of the others.

“Wait! We need to take some pictures of me and Lucie by her new car. George, would you do us the honor?” Cecil asked.

“Sure.” George grabbed Cecil’s phone while Cecil draped himself over the hood of the car, raising his arms and propping his head up with his hands as if he were Ferris Bueller, all the while directing Lucie. “Now, Lucie, just stand a little to your right and lean back onto me. Legs apart, like you’re a Bond girl. Twist yourself into an S shape. No, Lucie, S shape, not L.”

Lucie contorted herself against the cold metallic hood, mortified by the ridiculousness of the pose. She wondered if this was how Sports Illustrated swimsuit models must feel when they were trying to look sexy balancing on sand dunes. Did these poses just come effortlessly to someone like Viv?

“Where’s your surf buddy Viv tonight?” Lucie asked George with a wink.

“She’s in Miami.”

“Another bikini shoot?”

“Probably,” George answered.

“George, could you put it on beauty mode and raise the phone really high? That’s the best angle,” Cecil called out.

“Sure.”

“Smile, Lucie,” George called out.

“Don’t smile too much, babe, it won’t look sexy,” Cecil said as he tilted his head ever so slightly.

Lucie stopped smiling abruptly. She felt her face get hot as she tried not to look at George, more out of embarrassment for Cecil than for herself.

After the impromptu photo shoot, the three of them went back into the house, and as everyone began tucking into the aromatic crispy duck drizzled with sweet bean sauce and wrapped in delicate rice flour pancakes, Cecil looked at his plate in dismay. “My tortilla is filled with nothing but duck skin.”

“It’s not a tortilla, it’s a Chinese pancake,” Freddie said with a laugh.

“The skin is the delicacy in Peking duck,” Marian explained. “It’s air-dried for seventy-two hours and glazed with spices before it’s specially roasted to produce this perfect golden crispy skin.”

“Sorry, I can’t eat the skin of any animal, not even if it’s a delicacy,” Cecil said.

“Hiyah, have some of the noodles with duck meat, then,” Rosemary said, heaping a portion of the braised e-fu noodles with duck onto his plate. “Don’t tell me you’re just like that model lesbian friend of George’s! She won’t eat any animal skin because she thinks it’s too fattening.”

Freddie’s curiosity was piqued. “Is she a model lesbian or a lesbian who’s a model?”

“I’m not sure. Both, I think. But haven’t you met her? Viv?” Rosemary said.

“I haven’t had the pleasure,” Freddie said, glancing across the table at George and noticing that his sister was also looking at him strangely.

Cecil checked his phone and let out a gasp. “Over sixteen thousand likes on the Aston pic already. See, whenever you’re in pictures with me, our likes go through the roof!”

“I’m glad it makes you happy,” Lucie said.

Cecil cleared his throat to make another announcement. “One more surprise: I managed to get tickets to a very special screening of a new movie tomorrow night. The duke and duchess were executive producers on the film, and they are hosting an exclusive sneak preview screening at the East Hampton Cinema before the film officially premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival. A few of the actors will even be there.”

“How cool! What’s the movie called?” Lucie asked.

“Glimpses of the Moon or something like that.”

“Glimpses of the Moon—is it an adaptation of the Edith Wharton novel?” Auden asked.

“I’m not sure,” Cecil said. “I think it’s supposed to be quite groundbreaking. It’s by an avant-garde British director, but the two lead actors are Indian.”

“Indian? Really?” Lucie said curiously.

“Well, unfortunately I’m going into the city to do a live interview with Nima Elbagir on CNN International tomorrow, or I would have loved to come,” Auden said.

“Oh, what’s the interview about?” Charlotte inquired.

“I’m going to speak about the role of mindfulness in resolving global conflict.”

“Well, Rosemary, Charlotte, and I are going to have a Korean-themed spa night, but why don’t you kids all go?” Marian said.

“Sounds like a bit of a snorefest. George and I were thinking of seeing the new Tarantino,” Freddie said.

“Let’s go see this. We can see the Tarantino any night,” George said.

*

CBC Originals

and

ITV Studios

in association with

Channel Four Films

and

Canal+

presents

a Ravenswood Pictures

and

Smart Tomato

production of

Glimpses of Moonlight

a film by Olivia Lavistock

“Oh my god! Olivia Lavistock! I know her!” Lucie whispered excitedly to Cecil as the film titles flashed across the screen at the East Hampton Cinema on Main Street.

“How do you know her?” Cecil asked.

“She was at the Capri wedding! She made a doc about Dolfi’s polo team.”

“Milk Duds?” Freddie offered, passing his box to George, who passed it along to Lucie, sitting to his right. His arm casually grazed against hers, and Lucie quickly jerked her arm away.

“No thanks,” Lucie said, pausing for a moment before saying to George in a quiet voice, “I guess Viv really was just a surf buddy?”

“As I told you,” George replied.

As the movie unfolded, it soon became clear to the audience that the film was a Bollywood musical meets Italian neorealist cinema mash-up set in Tuscany in which Merle, a ravishingly pretty half-British, half-Indian girl (played by Naomi Scott) meets Devendra, a dashing young Indian prince and son of a Maharajah (played by Avan Jogia) at the wedding of their mutual friends, the fabulously wealthy Kundaris. Because Merle is not a full Indian and of a different caste, a romance between her and Devendra is strictly forbidden by his disapproving older cousin, Princess Gayatri (played by Mindy Kaling), and the two of them spend the first half of the film making eyes at each other over a decadent, weeklong wedding set in one jaw-droppingly luscious Tuscan villa after another. As the star-crossed couple struggle to resist their feelings for each other, a dance number featuring hundreds of Indian and Italian dancers in full regalia takes place in Siena’s glorious Piazza del Campo during the famous Palio horse race.

Cecil giggled into Lucie’s ear. “A dance-off between the Indians and the Italians! This is so fabulously silly, I’m loving it!”