“Undoubtedly,” the editor said. “You, in particular, cannot go home again. But at least now you have heated floors. I’m terribly sorry, but you’ll have to excuse me. I need to tell Tommy that under no circumstances is he to bring back the cargo short. I shall circulate diverting people your way. Please give my best to Richard. We dated for three weeks in the very early eighties. He had fine calves.”

She left me with this disturbing mental image as she swept off to save us from the tyranny of many-pocketed shorts. But she did not fail me: I was approached by a variety of people over the next hour and a half, each of whom chatted at me for fifteen minutes until someone new drifted in to change the subject. I got the impression that I was being handled, while the real muckety-mucks circled to Nick. But plenty of the guests wanted something from me, too: Tommy showed me a trench coat and floated the idea of naming it after me, if I wore it first; the actor gave me business cards for three restaurants he owned in Tribeca and told me they had open tables that night; the very blond, very tan wife of the mayor boasted that she’d designed all the tablescapes at this event, despite the fact that there were no tables present. Amid the barrage, I caught my gaze drifting out the window and down to the bustling New York sidewalks. I had walked those streets while most of these folks lived in the clouds. And even now, I was not, as a person, interesting to them; I was, as a duchess, interesting to their Instagrams, or their pocketbooks. It had been silly to think that the New York I would be showing Nick would be the New York I had experienced. We would not sprint to catch the subway, or duck into the Met to look at Madame X, or spend all day wandering the park, or even go sit up on the new High Line and people-watch. My days of making those kinds of memories were over.

We’d better get our damn bagels.

*  *  *

My boobs made the front page of the next day’s New York Post, alongside a photo of us arriving at the Plaza and some inside shots by the official event photographer. The headline: BEX MAKES THE BREAST OF IT.

At least the writer had complimented my composure, which was a welcome boost heading into a busy day. Nick had a solo trip to Washington, DC, where his brief morning meeting with the president to discuss mental health initiatives was our justification for detouring to the States in the first place. Originally, Marj had made this a day off for me, but two weeks before we left, Bea suggested that I do some unaccompanied duchessing to individualize me a bit, and Marj had agreed.