Chapter 10 25 November 2016
It was only nine forty-five when the cab pulled up in front of the Millers’ Soho loft – much earlier than they’d planned to get home, but Edward’s presence at the club had zapped the fun from the night.
She’d given Ami a stick of gum in the cab, and on their way up the stairs, she checked her sister’s breath again, despite Ami’s protests that she’d only had a few sips of wine and was completely sober.
‘So sorry for having your back.’ Hannah’s voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘You think Dad and Yoko will let you go to another Prescott party if they know you’ve been drinking? You’re fifteen.’
‘Whatever. The other Prescott parents are cool with it.’
‘And you think Dad will care because…?’
Ami scowled, Hannah scowled back, and then they fell silent as they approached the third floor.
In the living room – a long, narrow room with an exposed brick wall on the street side and tall windows overlooking West Broadway – Dad and Yoko were snuggled together on the deep navy sectional sofa that had followed them from Pittsburgh, a bowl of pretzels between them.
The sofa was too large for the space, a bit comically so, but no one really wanted to replace it.
Something that looked like an art heist documentary played on the flat screen.
‘Hi, girls.’ Yoko paused the documentary and gave them a warm smile. ‘Come join us?’
‘No, thanks.’ Ami shrugged off her coat and tossed it on the sofa cushion closest to her. ‘I’m going to listen to music in my room.’
‘Hang that up, please!’ Dad called after her, but Ami had already shimmied her way around the sofa and disappeared down the hall.
Hannah sighed, then scooped up Ami’s coat. ‘I’ll get it.’
‘How was the dinner?’ Dad asked.
‘Fine. Kind of intense.’ She opened the small hallway closet and wrestled a hanger off the rail. ‘I’m going to try Grace in a bit. I missed her call yesterday.’
Hannah stuffed her sister’s coat inside, then checked her phone. Two new messages from Oliver.
She studied them, lip sucked between her teeth.
‘I can still stay out until midnight, right?’
Dad glanced at his watch. ‘Yeah. Guess it’s still early.’
Hannah closed the closet door, coat still on. ‘Thanks. Oliver just texted me. He’s hanging at Gemma’s.’
Dad and Yoko exchanged a look. They’d received an abbreviated version of the scandal over the past few weeks, and while they certainly didn’t approve of an adolescent boudoir shoot, they’d been sympathetic to Gemma’s plight – and horrified to learn she’d been bullied out of school.
‘It’s right on the Lower East Side,’ Hannah added, sensing their hesitation. ‘I can walk there.’
‘Text us the address, please?’ Yoko asked. ‘And Gemma’s parents are there, I assume.’
‘Okay. And yes, of course they are.’
Yoko nodded, and Dad sighed, giving in. ‘Home by midnight.’
‘Thanks!’ Hannah darted over to give them each a quick kiss, and then she was out the door, pounding down the stairs.
Ami would be mad she’d gone back out without her, but maybe Ami should have been a little more grateful Hannah had kept her out of trouble tonight. And besides, Ami hadn’t been invited.
The Phipps lived in a former garment factory turned boutique, three-unit complex on Orchard Street, fifteen minutes by foot from the Millers’ building in Soho if you hustled.
In the weeks following Gemma’s exile from Prescott, Hannah had occasionally joined Oliver and Gemma after school for bubble tea or video games at Oliver’s apartment, but this would be her first time as a guest at the Phipps’.
She pressed the third button on the shiny silver panel in the vestibule.
‘Hannah Miller?’ she said into the camera’s shiny black eye.
A silent elevator whisked her up to the third floor, opening directly into a living area, a wide-open space with blue-tinted concrete floors and floor-to-ceiling windows outfitted with blackout smart blinds. The room was lit by a series of LED coves along the high walls.
‘In here!’ Oliver’s voice came from the next room and she followed it into the kitchen.
Oliver and Gemma sat at the waterfall-edge island beneath a massive multi-coloured light fixture, casting shades of pink then green then blue on the white quartzite below.
Between them were four open pints of Ben they’re entrepreneurs. The barstools are a bit of a side venture.’
‘Oh wow.’ She dug her spoon into a pint of Americone Dream.
‘Gemma helped her mom design those barstools,’ Oliver added. ‘Watch, she’ll be running Phipps Co. in a few years.’
Gemma waved her hand in the air. Long, sapphire blue nails caught the light. ‘But enough about Mark and Katerina, who are probably’ – she checked her smart watch – ‘on their third club of the night in Berlin right now. Tell us everything about the Lenox Club.’
‘Wait, they left you here alone over Thanksgiving?’ The less Dad and Yoko knew, the better.
Gemma rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not really alone. Persea comes every morning to drop off meals and check that I still have a pulse.’
‘Persea?’ Hannah asked.
‘She’s our housekeeper and chef,’ Gemma said. ‘She’s twenty-four, she’s chill.’
‘And don’t forget occasional DJ at Katerina’s house parties,’ Oliver added. ‘Gemma’s mom is deeply into EDM.’
‘Right.’ Hannah’s head swam. Gemma’s parents were currently clubbing in Berlin, and Gemma was home alone, in the occasional care of their twenty-four-year-old housekeeper who was also a DJ. Gemma’s life was almost as alien to her as Madison’s.
‘Yeah, Persea’s the best,’ Gemma said. ‘She kept me sane during PhotoGate.’
‘We’re calling it PhotoGate now?’ Oliver asked.
‘I’ve moved from the crying to laughing stage.’ A wry grin spread across Gemma’s face.
‘About that.’ Hannah tapped her spoon against her lips, deciding. ‘Theo was there tonight, at the club. He seemed to really want me to believe in his innocence.’
Gemma dug her spoon into the pint in front of her and raised her spoon to her lips. ‘I have no hard feelings towards Theo Fitzgerald,’ she said around a bite of Phish Food.
‘Really?’ Hannah’s brows shot up. Until tonight, Gemma had wanted to talk about anything other than the photos when they’d hung out, and she couldn’t blame her. But it felt important to know if she could trust Theo. And Gemma had been the one to bring up PhotoGate, after all.
‘Really. Staying out of the whole shitstorm was probably the best thing he could have done for me. If he’d made a huge show of declaring his innocence to all of Prescott, things would have just gotten messier.
People would have started sniffing around, asking questions about who I had been with, if not Theo. ’
‘So it wasn’t Theo then?’ Hannah asked point-blank.
Gemma rolled her eyes. ‘Of course it wasn’t Theo. As far as I know, that boy was in love with Elle until PhotoGate torpedoed my entire life and ended their relationship. Theo was collateral damage.’
The next logical question was on the tip of Hannah’s tongue. If not Theo, then who had Gemma been posing for? But if Gemma wanted Hannah and Oliver to know, surely she would have told them by now, and something in Gemma’s eyes told her to stand down.
‘Speaking of Theo,’ Oliver said, interrupting Hannah’s thoughts. ‘More Lenox Club, please. What was tonight’s password? Was Grace Olyphant there?’
Gemma laughed. ‘Pretty sure Grace Olyphant lives in LA with her parents.’
‘Sure, but she’s a Vanderbilt. The whole family has held memberships for decades.’
Hannah licked her spoon. ‘No celebs, at least that I saw. And no password either, but the door is unmarked and there’s a strict no-devices policy. Get this – if you don’t belong to the club, a member has to sign a paper vouching for you.’
‘Vouching for you?’ Gemma squealed. ‘What happens if you, like, break a ten-thousand-dollar ornate lamp?’
Hannah shrugged. ‘I guess someone’s membership could be revoked.’
Oliver lifted the back of his hand to his forehead and tipped his head to the ceiling. ‘Quelle tragédie. Quelle horreur!’
‘So what did happen?’ Gemma asked, eyes flashing. ‘Anyone get kicked out?’
‘No, but…’ Hannah trailed off. As usual, she felt caught between worlds, playing one group of friends off against the other. She hesitated. Either she’d have to choose, once and for all, or she’d need to get comfortable with playing both sides.
‘But…?’ Oliver prompted.
‘But Edward Beaumont was there. Bash’s brother?’
‘Ugh,’ Oliver said. ‘We’re well acquainted.’
‘Meaning?’ Hannah asked.
‘When Edward was at Prescott,’ Oliver said, ‘he made a giant fucking production of looking down his long, pointy nose at me. He was worse than Bash, which is saying something.’
‘I can see it,’ Hannah said. ‘He was awful tonight. He got wine drunk. Like, thoroughly shitfaced… and made a sloppy play for Madison.’
Gemma jammed her spoon into the ice cream and folded her arms across her chest.
‘Amazing. Tell me everything.’ Oliver leaned in. The LED lights above switched colours, turning Oliver’s curly blond hair, and the white quartzite below, Barbie pink.
‘It was so cringe. He was trying to get her to go to one of the hotel rooms upstairs, and she shut him down, hard.’
Oliver grinned. ‘I’m sure he took that in his stride.’
‘Yeah, not so much. He said something about already having his pick of “Prescott pussy”. It was beyond gross. He makes Bash look like a saint.’
Silently, Gemma slid off her barstool and walked across the kitchen to the sub-zero, dual-zone wine fridge set into a black oak cabinet. A moment later she was back, holding a bottle of pink champagne.
She plunked the sleek, matte white bottle on the island, then produced three tulip glasses from a vertical cabinet drawer. ‘The night is young. Let’s drink, bitches.’
They were the first words Gemma Phipps had spoken since Hannah mentioned the name Edward Beaumont.