Клео Коул - On What Grounds

“Here, let me show you. First you open the cardboard, then you drop the bottom of the cup in. See, it slips right in, a nice snug fit through the hole—”

Quinn looked uneasy. Embarrassed even. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Forget it. I mean, thanks, but I gotta go—”

I glanced back over my shoulder. Matt was standing there, arms folded across his chest, a smirk on his face.

“What?” I snapped to my ex.

Matt’s eyebrows rose. He lifted his hands, palms up.

Quinn gave Madame a polite nod as he passed, heading for the door.

“You two should come by about eight,” said Madame, leaning on the counter. “The auction starts at nine, but we’ll have some fabulous music and food, of course, and—”

“Matt should go,” I said. “But I can’t.”

“And why not, for heaven’s sake?” asked Madame.

Because the last thing I need right now is to be pushed into a “date” with my ex-husband, thank you very much!

“It’s Friday,” I said. “The Blend will be packed. I should be here.”

“Nonsense,” said Madame with a wave of her wrinkled hand. “It’s only a few hours. And you have reliable assistant managers. At least you told me that you have them. Let that sweet girl handle it. What’s her name? Anabelle—”

I drew in a breath, looked toward the door. Had Quinn left?

Oh, god! I realized he hadn’t. He’d stopped by the door. He’d heard Madame. His eyebrows rose and he looked about to speak. I grimaced at him—gave a few quick silent shakes of my head. Don’t say a thing!

“The Blend is my responsibility now,” I said as gently as I could to Madame. “Matt can go tonight—”

I noticed Quinn motioning me to come over to him. “Excuse me, Madame,” I said, then I turned to Matt. “Please make your mother that espresso.”

“What does he want now?” Matt asked quietly as I passed.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“More help slipping something into a hole, no doubt,” he muttered, disgusted.

I shot Matt the angriest look I could summon.

At the door, Quinn looked down at me. He seemed so tall now that we were standing so close to each other.

“I forgot to tell you something,” he said quietly. “Funny. It’s the reason I came by to see you in the first place.”

“What?” I asked.

He took my hand in his. My throat closed on me and my heart began pounding so hard, I was sure he’d think I was having an attack. But it wasn’t anything close to what I’d imagined was happening—

“Here,” he said.

I felt a small, hard object being placed into my palm.

“It’s caffeine,” he said.

I looked down. Cradled in my hand was Matt’s vial of white powder. The one Langley thought was cocaine—and Quinn thought could go either way.

“So there it is,” said Quinn, lifting his chin in the direction of Matt. “He was telling the truth.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“S’okay,” he turned. “And, uh, thanks for the coffee.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, then watched his tall, trenchcoated form exit the Blend and negotiate the traffic across Hudson. I held up the vial and found myself wondering why the man almost forgot to tell me something he’d come here in the first place to tell me—unless he didn’t want to tell me.

“It’s at the Waldorf,” said Madame.

He didn’t want to tell me, I continued to consider, but he’d told me anyway.

“What’s that?” I asked, walking back to the coffee bar.

“I said you must come, Clare. The auction tonight. It’s at the Waldorf.”

Matt looked at me, mouthed “Anabelle’s mother is staying at the Waldorf,” and smiled. I nodded, thought of Quinn, and smiled for my own reasons.

“Okay, then,” I said. “I’ll come.”

“Mumble, mumble, mumble, LOVELY AFFAIR, mumble, mumble, BUT…”

Ah, yes, I thought with a tight smile. After the compliment, always beware the BUT.

The gaunt-cheeked Vera Wanged, second wife of a Fortune 100 executive, paused after her “BUT” and smiled. A small treasure in orthodontia now gleamed at me amid the itinerant babbling and clinking glasses of the Waldorf-Astoria’s four-story grand ballroom, site of state dinners, gala weddings, and historic press statements.

Above us, luminous chandeliers hung within a gilded balcony perimeter. Below us, the plushest burgundy carpet framed a blond wood dance floor. And on the horizon surrounding us, one hundred tables of ten were adorned in white raw silk, calla lilies, and glowing tapers.

The bartender was just finishing my Black Russian when this woman cornered me. Apparently, amid this crush of overdressed society types seeking alcoholic sus tenance, she had overheard a friend of Madame’s compliment me on my recent article on U.S. coffee consumption for the Times Magazine, thus, I was deemed “worth” speaking to.

I didn’t much want to speak to her, however, but I was unwilling to excuse myself (because, frankly, given what Matt and I were about to do, I really didn’t want to leave the bar without that black Russian!) so I found myself forced into playing Madame’s mumble game.

The mumble game was a handy little party tool Madame had taught me when I was a mere twenty-something newlywed. I was attending one of my first grand social functions and my nerves were about as steely as an underdone bread pudding.

“Listen for the HOT words,” she’d said.

“What do you mean, HOT words?” I’d asked, wringing the neck of my wine spritzer to within an inch of its life (wine spritzers and Asti Spumantis were about the extent of my cocktail repertoire back then).

“The hot words are the ones you can readily understand amid the mindless chatter and cacophony of party music,” she’d said. “They contain the actual meaning.”

“Oh, yes!” I cried with the zeal of a college sophomore. “My rhetoric professor talked about that! Isn’t that Marshall McLuhan? Hot and cold words? The medium is the message—”

“I’m not talking academic analysis, dear,” Madame had said with a dismissive wave. “I’m talking social intercourse. When you hear an annoying string of mumbles, don’t bother asking the people to repeat themselves. Mumbles are pointless parsley. Empty dressing. Listen for the meat, the heat—the words you can unequivocally hear. Respond to that . And don’t be excessively nice. These people are born bitchy. Show some backbone.”

So here I was almost twenty years later, continuing to practice what Madame had preached.

“Mumble mumble WOULD HAVE USED A DIFFERENT mumble,” continued the thirty-one-year-old debutante with the unused Ivy League degree and the blinding pair of Bulgari earrings that could readily have paid for my daughter’s entire culinary education. “…LIKE THE mumble mumble AT MY MOTHER’S mumble mumble. THAT WAS A SPECTACULAR mumble. UNFORGETTABLE. NOT THAT THIS ISN’T.”

“Well,” I said, “this IS a CHARITY auction, so I guess the important thing is that we REMEMBER to be GENEROUS.”

“OH, WELL, mumble, mumble. MY HUSBAND’S COMPANY mumble, mumble FORTUNE 100 AND HIS mumble is GENEROUS WHEN IT COMES TO mumble!”

“FABULOUS!” I told her. “Because, you know, THE NEW YORK TIMES is here.”

“Oh, really?” she said with the same level of feline disinterest my Java would show toward a thick piece of bloody prime rib. “Are they?”

Yeah, sure, the entire Sunday Arts & Leisure section. Metro is holding their coats in the lobby.

“Clare!”

The call of Madame. Thank goodness. “Will you excuse me—”