The LeBaron Secret by Stephen; Birmingham Page A

Club will drop her, too, for during the divorce and murder trial the scandal of her adulterous behavior will have made headlines in all the papers. E x-DEB BEDDED DOWN BROTHER-IN-LAW! S OCIALITE SEDUCED HUBBY’S TWIN! And so she will end up all alone, hovering somewhere at the brink of middle age, friendless and clubless in an affluent country-club suburb of married couples, while he …
    She will consider moving to the city, as others in her situation have done, and where they find the situation exactly the same. And where they find each other. And so they travel together, take cruises together, these lonely, untethered, aging women, looking in vain for husbands. They have their faces lifted, they color their hair. In the end, they may marry their hairdresser, and let his boyfriend move in with them.
    But still. But still. Perhaps she will have an affair with Peeper, and not let Eric find out. But where would be the fun—where would be the sweet taste of revenge—in that?
    â€œHi, honey.” His voice from the next bedroom interrupts her lubricious reverie and its dispiriting aftermath, and the ivory-handled hairbrush slides from her lap and lands on the white carpet with a soft plop.
    â€œDarling, you’re late! People are due here any minute.”
    â€œSorry—got tied up on the phone.”
    â€œWell, hurry and get yourself guapo . I’ll see you downstairs.”
    His head appears in her dressing-room door. He is tying his tie. “I forget,” he says. “Did we invite Melissa tonight?”
    â€œDarling, you know we agreed not to. We agreed that even if she is your sister, an extra single woman is a drag”—telling him exactly what she has been telling herself.
    â€œOh, yeah.”
    â€œHerb Caen wants to write this party up. We don’t want it to be a drag.” Privately, she is thinking that she cannot stand Melissa. She is also thinking: He didn’t use to forget who we invited to our parties.
    She rises now, in front of her mirror, adjusts the thin shoulder straps of her new Dior, and smooths the front of the dress. There is a slight feeling of wetness between her legs, but there is no time to change now, and besides, this is the dress she told Herb she would be wearing. She mists her hair and earlobes with a few more dashes of L’Air du Temps, and prepares to go downstairs and be the delightful, gracious, beautiful, and always popular Peninsula hostess that Herb Caen will tell his thousands of Chronicle readers that she is.
    Half an hour later, the Eric LeBarons’ cocktail party is in full swing.
    â€œDarling, you look gorgeous!”
    â€œDarling, so do you!”
    â€œâ€¦ And then we go to Acapulco for two weeks, and from there we fly directly to Cancun …”
    â€œHow old is Ann, anyway? Thirty-eight? Thirty-nine?”
    â€œI love your hair.”
    â€œThere’s a new little man at Magnin’s, who …”
    â€œAnd so I said to her, ‘If you’re going to do this in a tent …’”
    â€œWho’s that man standing by the piano, talking to Molly Tobin?”
    â€œMy dear, I’ve no idea!”
    â€œHe looks slightly—windblown, don’t you think?”
    â€œYes, a little too blow-dried.”
    â€œâ€¦ The minute you get to Las Brisas, you should call …”
    â€œAlix, darling, how cute of you to have your two little girls helping to pass things!”
    â€œSeriously, I think it’s important for them to learn how to run a cocktail party.”
    â€œIs that her own hair, or a wig?”
    â€œHer! Why, that little tramp has been down on everything except the Titanic! ”
    â€œI love it!”
    â€œAnd so I said to my product manager, ‘You can’t just put that red horse up there on the roof and have it sitting there, flapping its wings. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t say anything.’”
    â€œThis is what Alix calls