Free Overseas by Beatriz Williams Page B

way too much out of this,” I said, fingering the dress. It was long and flesh-colored, with a low straight neckline and tiny glittering beads scattered widely over the gauzy skirt: the kind of dress that would drape just so, without looking as if either of us were trying too hard.
    “Honey,” she said, after a few seconds of stunned silence, “I’m flying out there tonight.”
    “No! Oh my God, Mom,
don’t
! I’m fine, absolutely fine!” Alicia had wandered over and was looking critically at the dress I’d picked out. She lifted it off the rack and held it up to me with a moue of disapproval on her face.
    “Honey, you were
mugged
!”
    “For the last time, I wasn’t mugged. It was just an… an altercation. Please don’t fly out. Save your money. Think of that retirement in Florida.”
    Alicia snickered and put the dress back on the rack. I motioned frantically at her to hand it back.
    “I don’t want to retire to Florida.”
    “Look, I’ve got to go. I’m in the middle of Barneys right now. Just don’t fly out, okay? I’m totally fine. Physically and mentally.”
    “I love you, honey.”
    “Love you. Bye.” I hung up the phone and slid it in my bag. “Don’t put it back. I’m going to try it on.”
    “For real? There’s a ton of much better stuff.”
    “I like it.”
    “All right,” she sighed, handing me back the dress. “I’m heading home to get ready, so I’ll see you there. Remember, cocktails at seven-thirty. Be late.”
    “Be late?”
    “Only the losers arrive on time.”
    W ELL, CALL ME A LOSER . I took a long bubble bath, I shaved my legs, I exfoliated and masked and moisturized and put on practically invisible new Band-Aids. I even did my toenails. But with all that, with dressing and makeup and hair, with fielding calls from various friends and acquaintances and distant relatives until at last I just turned my phone off, I still found myself pulling up to MoMA in a taxi at seven twenty-nine. I blamed it on the traffic. Park Avenue had been as swift as a motor speedway, which only happens when you’re not in a hurry.
    There were about eight people there when I walked in, all of them male and over forty. I went directly to the bar. “Champagne, please,” I said to the bartender. “Straight up.”
    He winked. “Coming right up.” He whipped out a champagne fluteand poured. “So,” he said, “what’s a gorgeous girl like you doing here so early?”
    I took the flute. “Hiding from the press,” I answered, drinking deep.
    He laughed and refilled my glass.
    I wandered over to the silent auction and glanced at the rows of lots and clipboards, ordinary objects describing the extraordinary visual evidence of the lavish world around which I’d hovered these past three years. Lunch and batting practice with Derek Jeter came with a suggested starting bid of $25,000. Lunch and an on-air segment with Brian Williams started at $35,000. I saw plenty of spa visits and weekends in Aspen; a week aboard a private 150-foot yacht, complete with captain, crew, and private chef; a stunning diamond rivière from Harry Winston; a case of 1982 Bordeaux from Sherry-Lehmann with a price tag that made my eyeballs pop out and roll onto the floor. I smiled privately at the sight of a Marquis JetCard—the starter version of a NetJets share—with a starting bid of $95,000.
    People were beginning to filter through the room, dressed with painstaking expense. An elegant blond woman in her forties, sporting an endless tangle of fat pearls around her throat, bent over the Brian Williams segment and scribbled in a bid. “Wow,” someone said, near my elbow, “you’d never know there was a recession on.”
    I looked over: a narrow-faced man, chin and hairline receding in tandem, wearing a stiff oversized tuxedo and standing a good six inches too close. “Well, it’s not official yet,” I pointed out, shifting a step backward.
    He smiled and motioned to my hands. “Can I get you another