Nancy’s Theory of Style Read online

  NANCY’S THEORY

  OF STYLE

  DRAFT

  MARTA ACOSTA

  writing as Grace Coopersmith

  Copyright @ 2010 by Marta Acosta

  Cover design by Alexia Vondrachek.

  “Escape: the Piña Colada Song” quoted with permission from Rupert Holmes.

  Please don’t add this draft to any file sharing sites or embed in your website without my permission. (Just email me if you’d like to ask. I’ll probably say yes.) I reserve the right to share my work where and when I choose. Everyone is welcome to visit my Scribd page to download a free copy and check out my other free reads. Short quotes are acceptable and feel free to quote Nancy’s fashion edicts, but ask permission for longer quotes.

  You have my permission to share the draft with your friends.

  The edited, final version of Nancy’s Theory of Style was published by Simon & Schuster/Gallery (May 2010, ISBN: 9781416598862) under Grace Coopersmith, my pen name.

  If you enjoy this draft, visit Simon & Schuster’s website, where you can buy an e-book, read a book club guide and author interview, and learn about my Casa Dracula novels.

  Buy the book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, and other fine retailers.

  Visit my Grace Coopersmith and Marta Acosta websites.

  My Casa Dracula novels are:

  Happy Hour at Casa Dracula (Book 1), ISBN 978-1416531609

  Midnight Brunch (Book 2), ISBN 978-1416520399

  The Bride of Casa Dracula (Book 3), 2008, ISBN 978-1416559634

  Haunted Honeymoon (Book 4), coming October 4, 2010, ISBN978-1416598879

  To Peggy, who is always fabulous, with love

  Delight in Disorder

  A sweet disorder in the dress

  Kindles in clothes a wantonness.

  A lawn about the shoulders thrown

  Into a fine distraction:

  An erring lace, which here and there

  Enthralls the crimson stomacher;

  A cuff neglectful, and thereby

  Ribbons to flow confusedly;

  A winning wave, deserving note,

  In the tempestuous petticoat;

  A careless shoestring, in whose tie

  I see a wild civility:

  Do more bewitch me than when art

  Is too precise in every part.

  Robert Herrick, 1648

  Chapter 1: God is in the Details

  Nancy Edith Carrington-Chambers was mistress of all she surveyed: specifically, the lively ground-breaking party on the expansive lot where her dream house would be built. Each time a guest called her name, she felt such elation that she thought it was a portent of something magical. Perhaps with every “Nancy!” an angel got its wings.

  These attractive and successful people wanted her attention because she’d done everything right.

  Nancy had been born into the right family, studied at the right schools, befriended the right people, dressed in the right clothes. She’d read the right books (in hardback editions), seen the right movies, had subscriptions to the right arts programs, traveled to the right countries, and joined the right clubs.

  Most people lived messy, disorganized lives, driven by foolish impulse, and Nancy tried not to feel disdainful. Foresight, like having perfect pitch, was a gift.

  There was never any question that Nancy would marry the right man, especially since she had the qualities that successful men valued in a girl: a slim figure, naturally blonde hair, a degree from a prestigious university, a happy disposition, and a talent for making others believe that she was listening to them. Successful men would have pursued her even if she didn’t have a substantial trust fund.

  Nancy had been a freshman when she met Todd Booth Chambers. She’d been sitting on a bench under a palm tree at a mid-quarter kegger when she noticed the brawny, laughing junior. One of her friends saw her looking and said, “Todd Chambers. Kind of cute if you like them hulky.”

  Immediately after learning that Todd was captain of varsity crew and that his parents were Lewis and Claire Chambers of Lake Oswego, Nancy had known instinctively that he was the right man for her. She’d begun planning their future together even as he engaged in a beer-soaked pile up with his frat brothers. Nancy admired manliness in men.

  But that was then. Dousing guests with German lager and wrestling with them on the lawn wouldn’t do here and now, especially since there was no lawn on the lot that had been scraped raw from a hillside. Ancient California live oaks had been ripped out (thanks to a wink-and-a-nod from Todd’s friend on the city planning commission), leaving a pristine canvas for construction, if not for a party.

  Nancy had had the contractor haul in a truckload of sand for a beachy effect. She’d rented banana trees and ordered huge urns filled with vibrant tropical flowers. White muslin screens hid the construction equipment from view and white umbrellas shaded seating areas.

  Todd had suggested hiring a videographer, but she’d vetoed that idea on the grounds that people behaved unnaturally when they were being taped or filmed.

  Nancy wished she had thought of a way to incorporate mirrors into the décor. She would have enjoyed watching herself going from friend to friend, laughing in the charming way that she’d practiced, and touching their shoulders with her graceful left hand, so that everyone could admire the trio of emerald-cut diamonds on her engagement ring and the platinum wedding band.

  A mirror would have reflected Nancy’s honey-gold honeymoon tan, her golden-honey loose curls, her blue eyes shining with health, and how lithe and carefree she looked in a simple aqua and white print frock.

  It would have shown Todd, impressive in the blue pin-striped shirt she’d picked out for him. It was unfortunate that he’d fallen asleep on the private beach in Tahiti, where they’d honeymooned. The skin on his snub nose was raw from her attempt to exfoliate away his sunburn.

  “Nancy, Nancy,” her friend and bridesmaid Lizette called. Lizette’s bleached blonde hair was growing out, revealing a thick stripe of her natural dark brown hair color along her side part. “This is so pretty. You look so pretty.”

  “So do you,” Nancy said.

  “I look like a badger,” Lizette said with a laugh. “I can’t believe you convinced me to color my hair for your wedding.”

  “You looked lovely. All the bridesmaids were stunning.”

  “Thanks to you. Your parties are always amazing.”

  Nancy smiled, accepting the truthfulness of the compliment. She’d quit her job and spent a year organizing every aspect of the wedding and reception. “I’m starting an event planning company, Froth, as soon as the house is finished.” “Froth, what an excellent name. It will be perfect like everything you do, like the house will be,” Lizette said with a roll of her eyes.

  Nancy smiled. “I wanted Maya Lin to design the house, but she’s only doing public spaces. It took me a while to recover from that blow, but once I talked to Henrik about vernacular architecture, it was kismet.”

  “Henrik?”

  “He’s Danish. It’s part of my international plan. I yearn for a French chef, a Thai masseuse, and an English assistant, quietly homosexual preferably. I’d like a Scottish housekeeper who’s terrifyingly grim, very Mrs. Danvers of ‘Rebecca,’ and obsessed with me and my exquisite undergarments.”

  “Why wouldn’t she be? How was Tahiti?”

  “So stunning that I was beside myself, like a doppelganger. We had a bungalow over the water and could see the fish through a window on the floor. The water was crystalline and something… Blue is inadequate to describe the color. It was the color of happiness. Bluepiness,” Nancy said. “I’m going to have the pool painted the same shade. It will be a beach-entry pool, so every time we wade into t
he graduated slope, we’ll remember our honeymoon.”

  “That’s what I mean. You always know the right details.” Lizette waved her hand to indicate the waiters, in white wife-beaters, sarongs, and sandals carrying platters of Tahitian-inspired food and flutes of the same Tattinger that had been served at Nancy and Todd’s wedding. “I can figure out a five-year sales projection, but I can’t organize anything more elaborate than burgers and the family’s secret potato salad. By the way, the family’s secret is bacon drippings and sweet pickles.”

  “Sales projections and parties both require precision,” Nancy said, although her own experience as a financial analyst almost made her give up the will to live. “Why don’t you have a weekend soiree at the winery? I’ll help you.” Nancy immediately began imagining romantic strings of lights on the pergola, Italian love ballads, and a Sunday brunch.

  “You would, really? I would be eternally grateful. I’ll even forgive you for destroying my hair.”

  “Then it’s a deal!”

  “Nanny!” called a familiar, but completely unexpected voice.

  On the off chance that Nancy had been having an aural hallucination, she ignored the voice, but it trilled “Nanny!” again, like a canary in a coalmine. That is if the canary was personally responsible for sucking the oxygen out of the mine.

  Nancy reluctantly abandoned the hope that she was experiencing mental problems and turned to see her beautiful cousin Roberta gliding toward her, because Roberta was one of those women who moved so smoothly you glanced down to make sure she wasn’t levitating.

  Roberta, known as Birdie, was arm and arm with one of her grimy male companions. She swung a small glossy shopping bag in her free hand. Birdie had a child, but you wouldn’t know it from her delicate shape, encased in a boat-neck jacquard sheath dress.

  Smiling at Lizette, Nancy said, “Let’s talk tomorrow about your party,” and went to meet her cousin.

  “Birdie,” Nancy said and was going to give her cousin a kiss, but Birdie turned to intercept a drink from the smiling waiter who’d suddenly appeared.

  Birdie’s black hair was cut short so that it accentuated the clear, green eyes that photographers loved because of the way they caught the light. Her appearance of fragility, which men mistook for actual fragility, always made Nancy feel like a clumsy 12-year-old with a self-inflicted haircut and nails bitten to the quick.

  “Thank you,” Birdie said throatily to the waiter. Birdie wasn’t a snob about men, as was evident by her current escort. Turning to him she said, “Leo, go entertain yourself.”

  The hollow-eyed skeleton trembled even though he was wearing a pea-coat. He muttered an assent before heading for the nearest tray of canapés.

  Birdie handed Nancy the shopping bag and said, “I picked it up at La Maison Guerlain and it reminded me of you, not the way you are now, but the way you should be, Nanny Girl when you grow up.”

  Nancy glanced in the bag and saw an elegantly wrapped box. “Thank you, but as a grown up and a married woman, I wish you wouldn’t use that nickname.”

  Birdie laughed, a seductive ripple of sound. “You’ve only been married a month, Nanny. I wanted to lay bets on how long it will last. Mother said that was rude, but really, Nanny, you’ll be gnawing your arm off to get out of this trap. Todd Chambers, he’s as dull, lumbering, and braying as a walrus.”

  “Birdie, I know how much you enjoy getting a reaction, but I’m afraid I’m too busy to accommodate your special needs today. Everyone adores Todd.” Nancy saw Birdie’s friend Leo stuffing coconut prawns and mango skewers into his coat pockets. “Where did you dig Leo up? Literally, since he has a formaldehyde-in-the-veins aspic.”

  “Suspended in gelatin?” Birdie said with a smile. “You’re so funny, Nanny. Leo’s very special. He’s a musical genius. His father’s a fire and brimstone type from the Central Valley, so the boy’s irrevocably damaged.” Birdie said it as if it was an accomplishment. Then she looked around at the crowd. “Are these your friends?”

  “You would have met them had you come to the wedding.”

  “I promise to come to your next wedding.”

  “One is enough for me, thank you, because it was an utter dream. It’s so happy-making to see you again. I had no idea you were around.”

  “I tried to visit my parents, but you know how that goes,” Birdie said. Her parents had a beautiful place in Santa Barbara, and Nancy loved to visit them. “The lifelong parent-child relationship is unnatural in the animal world. I don’t know how you put up with yours.”

  “I adore my parents, Birdie. They are delightful people.”

  Birdie raised her neatly arched eyebrows. “Anyway, my mother mentioned that you were having a get-together with the lively young people, her words, and I brought Leo because I thought it might be amusing.”

  Birdie gazed upon the flat lot and the new development of enormous houses on the low hills, which would turn brown and dry with summer heat soon enough. “Such a dismal landscape.”

  “It takes a little vision to see what it will be,” Nancy said, trusting that Todd had been right when he said the area would be the Marin of the South Bay. “Villagio Tuscana is an extrêmement desirable community.” Nancy hoped that Birdie wouldn’t answer in French, since Nancy had missed her year abroad to stay close to Todd.

  “Sweetie, there’s nothing Tuscan about this place. You know I don’t care about these things, but is it the right time to build? Your father was going on about how he told you to buy in an established neighborhood.”

  Nancy had asked Todd the same question. “Location is more important than the market, Birdie, the timing is right to buy this choice lot and hire the contractor we want. We’re going to be very happy here.”

  “Oh, that naive American dream that a house can bring happiness and fulfillment.”

  Nancy smiled pleasantly. “Birdie, I know you don’t mean it, so I try not to take your little jabs personally.”

  “Always exhibiting such self-control, Nanny, always the good little girl.”

  “Speaking of which…” Nancy was about to ask where Birdie’s daughter was when Birdie tilted her neat head on her elegant neck, as if she’d heard a distant martini shaker.

  “Well, I’ve got to dash. Leo’s got a gig in Santa Cruz. Why don’t you come with us? It’s never too late to begin to live an authentic life.”

  Nancy laughed and said, “Run from bliss to chaos? Thank you, but, no.”

  “Consider it an open offer. Ciao, Nanny.”

  “Bye, bye, Birdie.” Nancy watched to make sure that Birdie actually took Leo with her and saw them get into a dusty new burgundy Cadillac sedan that was missing license plates.

  Nancy could relax now that Birdie had left. She turned to look at her laughing, happy friends and caught Todd’s eye across the lot. He smiled and raised his glass to her. She blew a kiss to him.

  Everyone was having fun, except for one gangly young man half-hidden behind the vermillion and emerald fronds of a potted banana tree. Nancy picked up two flutes of champagne from a passing waiter and went to the man.

  Her pal, GP, which stood for Geek Prince, gave her a grateful smile. His long face, Eurasian features, and bleached hair would have worked on someone with confidence. He twitched his shoulders in his beautiful sooty black suit.

  “GP, how are you?” Nancy asked and handed him the drink.

  “Hey, Nancy,” he said as he stepped in to give her a kiss and then changed his mind and patted her back awkwardly. “Thanks for inviting me.”

  “I’m ecstatic that you came,” she said, happy that Todd had let her invite the classmate who’d lived down the hall from Nancy frosh year. She’d been charmed by his awkward sincerity and his fascination with her invaluable observations about life.

  She slipped her arm through his and said, “Who dressed you?”

  “I have a personal shopper. Is it wrong? It’s Armani. I heard you mention Armani once.”

  “You always listen so well. The suit is exq
uisite, but it’s not who you are. We should always live an authentic life,” she said paraphrasing Birdie, even though Nancy believed most people should run screaming from their authentic selves.

  “It’s not comfortable,” he admitted with another twitch.

  “It’s not comfortable, because you keep fidgeting. I know it seems counterintuitive, but I really think you should embrace your inner nerd to be chic,” she said. “I’ll go shopping with you and give you a reverse-makeover. It’ll be noodles of fun, a lasagna of laughs. How’s business school?”

  “Even worse than summer camp. I hate it.”

  “Everyone does. Except Todd, because he’s so competitive. Why don’t you drop out and get a PhD, so I can call you Doc?”

  “In what? All I ever liked was history, but I don’t want to be a prof. I want to do something that has a positive meaning, something that improves lives. Like the way you’ve hired all these people to work on this party.”

  “GP, I shall give your career path some pondering. Now come and mingle. I know I’ve taught you how.”

  He smiled. “Like a hundred times. All I have to do is ask questions and people will think I’m fascinating.”

  “You’re my best student,” she said and pulled him over to Lizette’s husband, Bill.

  “Bill, you remember GP, don’t you? He’s wild about vineyard history.” Then addressing, GP, she said, “Bill’s doing all sorts of mad experiments in ebology at his family’s Paleolithic vineyard.”

  “It’s enology and our vineyard only goes back to the 1870s,” Bill said and to GP he added, “Nancy always looks bored when I talk about grape genomics and flavor chemistry.”

  “I categorically deny that! I’m passionately interested in the minutia of your whatever. However, I must go check in with the caterer about canapés.”

  As Nancy walked away she heard GP say, “Grape genomics?” How’s that applicable to winemaking?”