When Samantha was a sophomore she transferred from Spence to Emma Willard, a girls’ prep school in Troy, New York. Although she referred to the school as “my mother’s nunnery,” she snuck out regularly to frat parties at the nearby Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which she never mentioned had the same surname as her grandfather. Samantha had her first affair with a college senior that year. His name was Raymond Verrazano, like the bridge, and he drove a red Mustang. Samantha couldn’t remember much about him now except that he had very large hands. He also was obsessed with her feet, which she subsequently learned to use to give him great pleasure.

By the time she was nineteen, Samantha had great confidence that her life would be very different from her mother’s. She dropped out of Vassar College after one year to become a cabaret singer. She had a few gigs in Palm Beach and one night at The Blue Note in New York. But after eight months of a bohemian lifestyle, Samantha realized she had the yearning of an artist without much of the talent. She could attract a crowd more successfully by standing still than by actually performing.

Samantha returned to Poughkeepsie the next year, and graduated magna cum laude with a major in art history. Twenty years later, she was entrenched on the boards of the Whitney Museum and the Central Park Conservancy. As she approached her fortieth birthday, Samantha feared that her life was merging into a version of her mother’s. But while Doddie took it all very seriously, Samantha’s secret was holding her life at a distance with a touch of stylish disdain.

Since Judy, monsoonlike, had destroyed her tranquillity, Samantha decided to go back upstairs to her room. As she entered the elevator, she immediately felt the eyes of every man on her. She certainly wasn’t interested in attracting some other woman’s dreary husband, but all the attention put her back into a fairly relaxed frame of mind. Samantha needed to know that she excelled in something, and if it was that she had the elusive key to men’s sexuality, she would hold on to that A+ status.

“Getting out please.” She flashed a grin at the gentleman by the front of the elevator.

“My pleasure.” He immediately stepped aside.

“Someone named Judy Tremont called here and said we’re having drinks with her tonight.” Charlie looked up from the Faulkner he was reading when she walked into the room.

“Oh God!” Samantha threw herself in a chair. “I meant to take the phone off before she could reach us.”

“Well, we’re not going.”

“She accosted me. She has the persistence of a rabid terrier. She’s a friend of your friend, what’s-her-name.” Samantha was getting irritated with herself.

“That’s not helpful, darling.”

“She’s a friend of Frankie Weissman’s,” she said quickly.

“She couldn’t be,” he said, sloughing her off.

“What does that mean?” Samantha found Charlie’s social analysis was based on ridiculous things like comparative SAT scores.