Barry didn’t even respond. He wasn’t going to waste his time listening to Frankie Weissman or Judy Whoever-she-was. He was a man who prided himself on trusting his instincts, and his instinct was you couldn’t get any classier than this Samantha Acton. Looking at her in the moonlight, he decided to move on her with the same won’t-take-no-for-an-answer mentality needed to sign an A-list movie star.

“C’mon, let’s dance.” He took Samantha’s hand. “Anyone ever tell you you’re Grace Kelly, Jackie Kennedy, and Catherine Deneuve all wrapped up in one?”

“No, anyone ever tell you that?” She rolled her lip.

“Hey, just dance with me and I’ll die a happy man.” He put his hand on her waist and pulled her toward him. Unlike Charlie, there was nothing gentlemanly about Barry. There was absolutely no way that he was ever rejected from the Ivy.

“Så drikk hverandre,” she whispered in his ear.

“What the fuck is that?”

“Old Norse for ‘Let’s drink together.’”

“Old what?”

“Norse. You know, Vikings.”

“Right. Ingmar Bergman. He makes great movies. Let’s dance.”

Barry led her to the dance floor. Watching them, Judy whispered to Frankie, “I think he’s revolting, but I would never have married Charlie either. He’s bright but he comes from nothing.”

As Stevie Wonder sang “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” Barry pulled Samantha toward him. She had no intention of not going home to Charlie that night. But as they danced, she felt a thaw from her face to her ankles. She had been so distant from herself for so long that the closer her body was to Barry, the closer she felt to her distant sensuality.

Samantha’s and Barry’s bodies remained one until they were alone on the dance floor. Long after Stevie Wonder had stopped singing, Barry held her face in his hands.

“My cherie amour, how I wish that you were mine.”

·CHAPTER ELEVEN·

Judy

When Judy’s book club read The Age of Innocence she became fascinated by the details of May Welland’s dinner party. If Judy thought she could get away with it, she would have silver candelabras adorning the center of her table just like May. She envied the formal place settings of the previous century and the attention given to family porcelains and finger bowls. Every year, just around the time of her birthday, Judy would look through James Robinson, the famed antique silver shop, and have a serious treasure set aside for Albert to present to her.

Theoretically, Judy knew that advances for women were a good thing, but secretly, she thought she might have been happier in May Welland’s century. She wasn’t particularly interested in late twentieth-century social advances like sexual liberation, although she would happily say that many of her favorite people were gay, simply because they had the best taste. Judy had no doubt that she was in favor of elitism because she was in favor of a beautifully ordered universe. Her recent interest in contemporary art was a concerted attempt to catapult herself into the twenty-first century. But in all honesty, she’d admit to friends she’d rather have a family silversmith than a washer/dryer.