Leigh was feeling underdressed. The maitre'd didn't say anything to her--perhaps the restaurant didn't have an actual dress code, or perhaps she slipped by the standards; after all, she was wearing a dress she'd picked up on sale at Bloomingdale's. It wasn't like she was wearing cut-off jeans and a T-shirt. But walking into the restaurant and looking around, she felt suddenly certain that the average patron of the establishment (she was sure they didn't use words like "diner" here) probably had their dresses tailor-made. By their own private tailor. The maitre'd knew it too, and the look he gave her spoke volumes. He asked for her name, and she said, "Granville. Leigh Granville. I'm, um, with the 'Anne Merrick' party."
The maitre'd changed suddenly, like he'd had a switch flipped. "Of course, Ms. Granville," he said, his tone becoming honeyed with politeness. "Ms. Merrick is in the Lilac Room; Jacquez will take you there immediately." He snapped his fingers, and a Ricky Martin-esque waiter stepped forward with machine-like precision. He nodded to Leigh silently (she wondered if his salary got docked for speaking to the customers), and gestured. With a mental shrug, she followed.
She passed several tables of people having extremely elegant and expensive lunches; she passed senators dining on lobster and movie stars eating steaks. There was even a model or two in the mix, nibbling carefully on salads as though trying to work off the excess calories through the action of chewing. And she wondered what she was doing there.
Empirically, of course, she knew. She'd been invited by Anne. Five years of no contact at all, not since she'd moved in with Alec (and what a mistake, what a mistake that had been, the thought burst forth involuntarily. She beat it down.) She'd lost touch with a lot of her old friends when she moved in with Alec, but they'd all been so happy to see her get rid of the bastard that they'd come running to see her.
Except Anne. Nobody knew where Anne had gone... she'd just seemed to drift out of everyone's life. No forwarding address, not responding to emails, not in the phone book. No cards at Christmas, no invitations to weddings, no suspicious bodies dragged out of the Hudson River. Anne had vanished... until three days ago, when she'd called Leigh up with invitations to "catch up" at a restaurant so pricey and exclusive that Leigh was afraid of going bankrupt from even setting foot in it. And at a private room, to boot... God. Whatever Anne had been up to over five years, it had cashed in big time.
As they walked back into a long hallway with several doors, each named after a different color, Leigh mulled over the possibilities. Maybe she was one of the new 'dot-com' billionaires. Leigh never really remembered Anne as being a computer genius, but she did have a gift for marketing... perhaps she'd attached herself to some bright young man with a gift for ones and zeroes, and helped spin his product into the next 'Priceline.com'... no, wait. They were bankrupt. Well, one of the ones that was still solvent, then. Or perhaps she'd married money. No, she couldn't have. Not if she was still 'Anne Merrick'. Or maybe she kept her own name. Or maybe she was the kept woman of the Sultan of Oman, she berated herself sarcastically as they arrived at the Lilac Room. It was silly of her to try to come up with a theory before even seeing her... after all, that's what this meeting was for, wasn't it? To catch up?
She stepped through into the room, and the door closed behind her. Jacquez didn't come in. As soon as she took her first breath, she realized that the "Lilac" in the "Lilac Room" was more than just a reference to the color scheme; the air was filled with a thick, heady floral scent that reminded her of Easter mornings in her parents' backyard...
Anne was sitting at one end of a table for two, but otherwise the room was entirely empty. She looked... she looked fabulous, Leigh thought with a touch of jealousy. The two of them had always been able to turn men's heads, and Leigh had thought that she'd kept that touch fine (and the more Alec had belittled her, the prettier she'd tried to make herself, because she'd bought right into his claim that the reason he was sleeping around was because she couldn't attract a guy anymore... She beat that down.) But Anne looked as though she'd been spending days and nights at beauty salons and manicurists in order to hone her looks to a razor edge. The dress she was wearing didn't hurt either; it matched the lilac of the room perfectly, and showed enough flesh to make it seem as though she wasn't wearing much of anything at all. Leigh blushed, suddenly wanting to turn and run away.
Then Anne stood up, smiling brightly. "LEIGH!" she almost shrieked, heading over to her (and, Leigh noticed, balancing perfectly on spike heels). She enfolded Leigh in a tight hug, kissing her once on each cheek in a smear of bright red lipstick. "You look absolutely gorgeous, girl! Like you haven't aged a day in five years! You have got to tell me your secret!" And she virtually dragged Leigh to the table and into a chair.
Leigh smiled faintly, a bit lost for words. "Forget me," she said after a half-second pause. "Look at you! You look like you've just stepped off of the cover of Vogue, and you're telling me about my looks? You are too modest!"
Anne chuckled. "I'll tell you later... let's just say I've got a lot of incentive. Anyway, go ahead and have a glass of wine and tell me about what you have been doing for the past five years-- I'm just dying of curiosity!"
Leigh blushed again, this time for different reasons. She felt her cheeks tingling, and she gratefully poured herself a glass of wine. "Well, there's not really much to tell. You, um... you remember Alec?" she said, taking a sip.
"Of course," Anne said. "You know, it's not really my place to say, but he really wasn't good enough for you, Leigh."
Leigh snorted. "You can say that again. Alec turned out to be a very bad choice of boyfriend... he stole, he lied, he cheated, he pretty much ran the spectrum of country-music grievances." She sighed, and took another sip of wine. "And what was worst about it all, Anne, was that I bought into it for so long. I bought into all the crap he sold me, about how I wasn't pretty anymore, and I'd never find anyone else if I lost him, and..." she took another sip of wine. "I don't get it, Anne. I thought I was smarter than that."
