1. Black & White
Black I recognize those names, too, but that’s because I know the people because they're my friends, and they make the clothes with their hands.
My style is what you'd call boho chic. Good natural fibers, a little cashmere—who doesn't love cashmere, but the cost, right? I dress for myself—for comfort, but also to feel good, and feeling good, for me, means color.
Bright, loud, happy colors.
When my mother decreed that tonight's dinner would be black and white—because every night has a theme, God help me, every single night—I followed it in my own way.
A black maxi skirt, gorgeous, embroidered all over with tiny black flowers.
A white peasant blouse that shows a sliver of midriff, just risqué enough to irritate the right people.
And then all the color goes into the jewelry: necklaces, bangles, earrings, the little anklets that tinkle when I move.
I'd be barefoot if I could. Instead, I've got moccasins on, because New York in December is a cold I'd forgotten existed.
San Francisco gets cold, but not like this.
I stick out like a sore thumb.
The peasant blouse, the happy skirt, the silver I bought from someone who knew someone because I was supporting a local artist.
"Look, data centers are the key." Olivia sets down her fork and addresses the table like it's a shareholder call. "People can sit around and complain about it all they want, but they're coming, and everyone just needs to deal."
She's the COO now, which would mean more if she'd earned it. She dabbles. She's a nepo baby with a title. Dad has what Xavier has—the real thing—so he sits on the board with Xavier's parents, who are carbon copies of mine and just as committed to tonight's let's-be-boring-to-death theme.
“I don’t think people feel that way about their community’s resources being drained by a data center making money for tech companies that they don’t benefit from,” Xavier murmurs.
Xavier is the CEO, obviously. He's the man.
He's also, I'll admit, sharper than Olivia and better than her at the actual work.
His company and theirs combined, and now nobody can agree on the name—I think they've rebranded it twice since the merger.
Hale, Beaumont, some mashup of the two. Whatever it is this week.
“That’s just people afraid of progress,” Olivia counters. “Everyone benefits from technology.”
Kayden, Xavier’s younger brother, nods enthusiastically. “What she said.”
Kayden also works for the company. His wife, Alia, is obviously on so much Xanax that it's genuinely sad to witness.
They have a toddler who spends most of her time with the nanny.
I suspect Kayden spends a fair amount of time with the nanny, too, but who am I to comment on the inner workings of anyone's marriage.
I have no ground to stand on. I haven't been in a long-term relationship since the secret one I had with my sister's almost-fiancé.
Since then, it's been affairs—good ones, fun ones. A little good food, a little good company, a little horizontal mambo, and then you move on. Everything else, all my passion, goes into the work. I love my life. I'm twenty-eight years old, and there's nothing in it I'd trade.
Except this. The annual Beaumont obligation is served whenever Grandma decides to cash in her chips.
It's been over a year. I haven't set foot here since last Thanksgiving, which was so unpleasant I swore I'd sooner slit my wrists than come back.
Then Grandma had her stroke, and I came running.
Stayed in a hotel, went straight to the hospital, saw her, and managed to dodge everyone in the family except Xavier—whom I couldn't dodge, and who used the opportunity to lecture me on being a better Beaumont, on how I shouldn't hide when I come to see my own grandmother.
Whatever that's supposed to mean. He's indoctrinated.
He's all in on the empire. He's welcome to it.
So here we are: his parents, my parents, his brother, the brother's sedated wife.
My sister. My sister's boyfriend. Grandma at the head of it all, looking around the table, giddy with joy to have everyone in one room, blissfully unaware that I'm three seconds from picking up a fork and stabbing myself with it.
And then there's Aunt Colleen. My mother's younger sister.
Alcoholic, technically married, with two kids we never see.
Her husband is in France with a mistress; the kids don't like the mistress, so they go anywhere that isn't where she is—or, for that matter, where their mother is.
Colleen is alone most of the time. I've never understood why her husband doesn't just divorce her—this is not a family that needs to stay married; they all have their own money—but presumably something else is going on.
She is the unhappiest person I've ever watched be unhappy, and she's doing it in four million dollars' worth of Cartier, Chanel, Bulgari, and Van Cleef & Arpels.
She's the case in point for the meme, “Money Doesn't Buy Happiness.”
That is true. Money buys freedom. And freedom, I'll be the first to say, is a very large part of happiness. I have it. I earned it. My work started selling three years ago, and I still get a little giddy thinking about it.
Nobody here knows. Nobody here cares. Even if they knew, they'd look at me and ask how much I sold a painting for, and then ask how anyone could possibly live on that—as if not everyone needs an eight-bedroom, thirteen-bathroom apartment to call it a life.
"So what are you doing these days, Indigo?" This is from Xavier's mother.
In my head, she's a witch with a sharp hooked nose, except she's blonde, naturally, and lean the way she's always been—without GLP-1. A blonde crow. She picks at something on her plate that doesn't need picking at.
Her name is Morgan, I kid you not. Just add the La Fey, and it’s a complete fairy-tale picture.