Page 115 of Old Money

“Believe me,” she said. “I wish we could all do it your way. But bullshit’s just one of the rules. You can’t trust liars, but—you also can’t trust people who don’t know how.”

Chapter Fifty

Itoss an empty can of hair spray into the bin, wincing as it clangs against the others.

“Come on,” I say and wave over the next waiter—a new one I don’t recognize. “Shut your eyes.”

The server dutifully covers his face with his hands. I crack open a fresh can of Aqua Net and spray down his wavy blond hair, pressing it back into place. I’ve converted the library’s oak bar into a grooming station, stocked with combs and safety pins, and enough aerosol product to fuel a chemical-weapons program.

“You’re good,” I cough, turning away from the acrid mist. “Don’t forget to blot.”

He gives a stiff thumbs-up and wheels around, speeding toward the lobby.

“Donotrun,” I bark. “Next!”

Jamie wasn’t kidding. He really did need me for the rehearsal dinner. In fact, I’ve been on touch-up duty all week. Thanks to the swelling heat wave and the hordes of early-bird wedding guests, club attendance has effectively tripled, and the staff have been sweat-stained and overwhelmed all day, every day. I’ve been posted up in the boot room with blotting papers and stacks of fresh undershirts, shoving Gatorade at teenagers like a JV soccer coach. Jamie’s hired virtually every kid in town witha valid license, along with a dozen temp servers, scavenged from local catering companies. Jamie himself has been a passing blur, zooming around the clubhouse to put out fires and fill in gaps: uncorking at dinner, fetching cars from the lot and plunging the powder-room toilet every ninety minutes or so. I’ve barely seen him all week, but when I have, he’s been holding a plunger.

“Okay, gang.” He strides in from the lobby, hands pressed together. “Halfway through salads, and we’re all still standing.”

Tonight, it’s a whole other level of chaos—the edgy, silent kind, where everyone’s sweating before they step foot out into the buggy heat. The rehearsal guests are outside under the tent, and the clubhouse is echoing with hurried footsteps and ominous, distant bangs from the kitchen. It sounds a bit like a haunted house, complete with the occasional sob as another server comes back from an encounter with Liv Yates. The wedding coordinator declared all staff be “camera ready”: no wrinkles, no frizz and, please, no blemishes. But it’s clearly Liv Yates who’s enforcing the order.

“She’s already made two of them cry over hair issues,” I tell Jamie once the servers leave—quickly touching a hand to my own head, ensuring my French twist is still tidy. “And this thing about the handkerchiefs being floppy?”

“I know,” he says. “And the tie knots—I know.”

On top of the grooming rules, everyone’s decked out in wedding-weekend attire. I’m only here for hair spray duty, and even I had to borrow a blazer to throw over my regular work top and skirt. The floor staff are dressed in freshly tailored suits, accented with lavender-gray handkerchiefs, and silk ties, dyed in the club’s signature green and tied in Patrick’s signature knot—that fussy four-in-hand.

“I spent the first hour redoing everyone’s,” I say. “God, evenyoursis lopsided.”

Jamie tugs it absently, then checks the lobby exit. I glance at the staff door—both clear.

“I think we have a window,” he says. “They’re starting speeches.”

My heart jumps to a staccato beat. It’s not panic or trepidation this time. This time, I’m champing at the bit.

“You put your bag in the office?” Jamie murmurs.

“Bottom-left drawer of your desk.” I nod. “You stashed the rest of the booze downstairs?”

“This morning,” he replies with a nervous smile. “The perks of sleeping at work.”

Jamie decamped to one of the upstairs guest rooms earlier this week, citing the mayhem at the clubhouse (not to mention all the wedding deliveries). When the liquor arrived yesterday—

including a whopping fifty cases of gin—Jamie took receipt himself. As usual, he set aside a quarter of them in the subbasement, where the backup booze was kept. Then, in the wee hours of this morning, he sequestered another two quarters. It was a party crisis waiting to happen.

“For real, we’re going to need that gin soon,” he adds. “We did something like three hundred martinis at cocktails—the parents are tanked.”

I pause, catching his eye.

“Which parents? His?”

“Hers, mostly. Her dad is—” He glances toward the window, shaking his head. “I think they’re nervous.”

A blistering sadness comes over me, imagining the sweet, bewildered Joyces out there in the WASP nest. But thinking of them makes me think of Susannah. And I can’t think about her right now.

“Brody’s out there?”

“Oh yeah. Hasn’t left his post since appetizers. The way Liv Yates is on everyone—”