The Getty Ball: Afterparty

Twelve glitzed up celebrities stuff themselves into the Merrygold limo, popping open champagne bottles even before the car starts moving. The party at their mansion is supposed to be the place to go tonight, but Tiffany and I know that we’ll be turned down at the door.

“We could go to Playboy,” Tiffany suggests, raising an eyebrow at me.

“I could. You couldn’t,” I laugh.

“Why must I be the good girl?” she says, watching another limo pull away from the front of the party.

After a whole lot of wine, an auction raising almost twenty million dollars total, close to two hours of ballroom dancing, and about a dozen-odd stories from the Zuboffs, I’m not exactly feeling the need to get totally wasted. Given my record with ****, it’s probably better that I stay away from these parties anyways.

“What if we just go back to your place?” I ask. “There’s a whole lot that happened tonight that I could tell you about.”

“People will talk if they see,” she says.

“We’ve done enough tonight to make those that do look like fools,” I say.

“For a date, I haven’t exactly been hanging off your arm,” she says with a guilty smile.

It wasn’t just the beginning of the dinner. Some time shortly before dessert, Tiffany had been asked to say a few words on the main stage, and then as soon as she got off, she was surrounded by a fresh crowd of hangers-on. She only made it back to our table an hour later.

“Let me make it up to you,” she says. “I’ll call the driver, let him know we’re heading back to mine.”

We sit in the darkness of her home theatre, Parasite playing on the big screen, the audio blasting out of the speakers. Tiffany sits next to me on the big red sofa, while our phones sit by the speakers. For the length of the movie, they’ll pick up nothing but the movie soundtrack.

“Your home is safe?” I ask, knowing that Father must have bugged her place in his paranoia.

“After you tipped me off, I asked a friend to help me sweep the place,” she says. “She found a couple bugs, but nothing in this room.”

“You have friends who can do that?” I ask, mildly surprised.

“Just one,” she laughs. “But that’s all that’s needed, right?”

“Is she famous?” I ask. “Who is she?”

“You’ve heard of her,” she nods. She pauses for a moment, glancing at the movie screen, and then says: “Any guesses?”

“Hailey,” I say instantly.

“How? What? Yes, Hailey, but…”

“Call it instinct,” I laugh. “Promise there were no tricks this time. You know, even I’m pretty surprised that she was the one.”

“You can’t tell anyone though,” Tiffany says, grabbing my arm. “That’s a secret that nobody’s supposed to know.”

“But you told me,” I say, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah but… that’s because I can actually talk to you about stuff,” she says.

“What do you mean?”

“I can actually tell you stuff,” she says. “It’s like… everyone who’s around me wants something from me, or is part of the industry, and so I have to watch what I say, think about how I should be influencing them, or at least considering my public image… It’s even that way with Hailey, even though I hate to say it. But it’s not that way with you. I can just say what I really mean when I’m with you.”

“Like the stuff about Eric Simonds,” I say.

“I’d never told anyone before I’d told you,” she says softly.

“I’m glad that you did.”

“Me too,” she says. “God, could you imagine if I’d gone to the Ball with him tonight? It would have been awful.”

“He was bad in front of other people, too?”

“No, never. That’s why it took most people by surprise, when I broke up with him. The Gala itself would have been fine. But then we would have gone to the Merrygold party, and then he would have spent the entire time making passes at Madison or other girls, and then he’d have gotten frustrated and drunk, and then he would have disappeared somewhere, or if I was really lucky, we would come home together, and then he’d try to **** himself onto me…”

“He’s a piece of shit, you know that, right?” I say, putting an arm around her.

Tiffany nods, snuggling up close to me. She’s breathing heavily, worked up.

“Why’d it take so long for me to realize that?”

“I think you knew all along. You just didn’t have anyone to tell.”

“But now I’ve got you,” she says, resting her head against my shoulder.

The action feels surprisingly intimate. She’s still in her million dollar dress and I’ve only taken off my jacket, and we’ve kicked all the staff out of this wing of the house, but that simple gesture brings us so much closer together.

“You’re the only one that dares to stand up to Father,” she says, resting a hand on my chest. “That takes bravery.”

“You did it too,” I say, my hand on her shoulder brushing up against her cheek. “It must have been tough, telling him that you were going to break up with Eric, and then pitching my plan… And, shit, he must have been on your case for leaking the STX deal to me.”

“I told him that you’d heard it from the Rothschild first,” Tiffany says, snuggling closer to me still.

“You lied to him,” I gasp.

“I… don’t know if I did,” she says. “I made myself believe that it was true. Was it a lie?”

“No,” I lie.

She’ll find it easier to convince herself of what she needs to, next time.

“You’re so naughty,” she says, her hand on my chest drifting lower, to the bottom buttons of my shirt.

“What do you mean?” I ask, tensing involuntarily.

“You would have said ‘no’ regardless of the truth,” she says, slipping a finger underneath a button.

I turn to face her, looking into the deepness of her eyes. I see the want there, the desire there.

Fuck, I want it too.

“Does the truth matter?” I say quietly, cradling her towards me, her forehead pressed against mine.

She shakes her head, ever so slightly, rocking her head against mine.

“Then what are you afraid of?” I ask, voice growing softer still.

“What if people talk?”

“How would people know?”

“But if they do?”

“Then I am a dead man anyways,” I say.

They are killing each other, up on that movie screen. Sharp knives, blood, orchestral music. Her fingers, still toying with that bottom button, slip under it and brush against skin.

“We may as well die happy then,” she says, and then she kisses me.