The Debutante Divorcee by Plum Sykes Read Free Book Online

with a wink. She turned to go and then paused, looking back over her shoulder, saying “Hunter, I’ll call you in Paris.”
    Lauren shot me a quick warning look. I looked at Hunter, but he seemed unconcerned. Sophia appeared to be living up to her reputation, but my darling husband seemed to be completely incorruptible. Tabloid couple we were not.

4
Professional Friends
    A ccording to absolutely everyone who is an authority on such matters, the invitation of invitations that fall in New York was from Alixe Carter. It arrived at terribly short notice, a few days after Lauren’s birthday, and was hand-delivered. No one mails anything anymore in New York. A mailed invitation is a sign that the hostess is ambivalent about your presence at her event; if she wanted to be sure of your getting the invitation, and a prompt response, she would have messengered it.
    The paper of the envelope was the same pale gray as the Dior salon is, and the script on the card was letter-pressed in old-fashioned white type. Though it looks plain, this is the most popular style of invitation going in New York City, even though, or perhaps because, white script is double the price of the pastel pink ink at Smythsons, which is double the price of the “standard” colors.
    I read the card.
    ----
    Alixe Carter
    invites you to a
    DIVORCE SHOWER
    for
    Lauren Blount
    Saturday, October 2nd
    Midnight
    The Penthouse, Hotel Rivington
    Gifts: For one Dress: For a date
    Bring: Eligible Man
    Prohibited: Husbands
----
    That was very Lauren, I thought. To have a “shower” thrown for her just at the moment when every thirty-two-year-old girl in New York had sworn off wedding and baby showers, due to an allergy to the phrase “dilated ten centimeters.” “Dilated” is a horrific word. They should change it. I noticed there was something else in the envelope: another engraved card, this one with gray type on a white card. It read:
    Lauren is registered at:
    Condomania, 351 Bleecker Street, Tel 212-555-9442
    Agent Provocateur, 133 Mercer Street, Tel 212-222-0229
    As usual, no one had heard a word from Lauren in days. I’d tried to call her a couple of times to thank her for her birthday party, and had always been greeted by the words ‘This. Voicemail Box. Is. Full.” You couldn’t even leave a message. And then out of the blue she’d come up with this divorce shower thing that everyone thought was hysterical.
    Although no one was quite sure exactly what it meant, that didn’t really matter. After all, no one’s quite sure about Lauren Blount’s anything. The only thing, in fact, that anyone is certain about is that Lauren’s life is beautifully arranged: she’s very rich, very young, very thin, very pretty—and very, very divorced.
     
    Professional Friends are the newest kind of acquaintance to have in New York—subconsciously, that is. In that, if you have one you are 100 percent unaware of it, it being the nature of Professional Friends to act as genuinely warm and smoochy as Real Friends. Interior designers, art consultants, financial advisers, gyrotonics masters, or party decorators, Professional Friends lurk invisibly on the payroll of the Manhattan heiress, spending her money, skimming off their 15 percent commission, and being the ultimate best buddy. Who else understands “how stressful everything is” and will understand it at half past five in the morning,the hour at which New York princesses generally start to freak out about “how stressful everything is”?
    Feared by their married counterparts, unable to trust straight men, frequently in need of a walker, the Debutante Divorcée is easy prey. Charming Milton, I soon realized, is the most professional of the Professional Friends. You’d never have a clue that he’s not a real friend. Fairly often he messengers little baskets of vitamins to all his girlfriends with a note saying he’s “worried” about them. Milton even telephones Lauren, and his other benefactresses, if