Breakfast for the ReVigor-8 guests was served in a ballroom worthy of an Edith Wharton novella, all grand chandeliers, gold leaf, and crackling with uncomfortable conversation about money and status. By the end of a generous helping of kale scramble (kale, more kale, kale congealed to look like eggs, and more kale), Suzy, of course, knew everything about everyone and was more than happy to be the mistress of introductions.
There was Wendy Lu, lover of diamond-studded toe rings, total tiger mom in the midst of a nasty divorce from her Swiss banker husband. Her best friend was Jessica Seinfeld, and she wouldn’t let you forget it. Every other sentence began with, “And then Jessica Seinfeld and I did this…,” or “You won’t believe the trouble Jessica Seinfeld and I got into in Paris last year,” or “I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I was the one who gave Jessica Seinfeld her carrot muffin recipe for her last cookbook.” She always used Jessica Seinfeld’s full name to full effect. Wendy’s parents were immigrants from a small soy farming village on the outskirts of Seoul, but now Wendy only traveled by private jet as the lead attorney for David Lynch’s Transcendental Meditation foundation. More diamonds dribbled off the fine gold chains layered on her porcelain neck.
Of course Miranda Mills, the formerly plus-sized supermodel, who was now so skinny her grey workout uniform draped off of her like a muumuu, was in attendance. She was flanked on either side by her two mommy friends, the three of them wearing identical Mexican huarache sandals they’d picked up the week before on another wellness retreat in Tulum. Visiting wellness, yoga, and boot-camp retreats could, Janey was learning, be a full-time job.
There was Cosima, whom Janey knew of from CJ. The forty-something education consultant was notorious in mommy circles because she had made a mint helping terrified parents through the byzantine admissions processes in Manhattan’s private schools. The higher Cosima’s fee, the more likely the admission for even the dullest and slowest of children. Steven, who toughed out his entire childhood in Bronx public schools, had forbidden CJ from hiring someone to get the twins into preschool. But Janey suspected she had slipped Cosima a little something on the side, since the twins’ social skills in preschool interviews had needed a little help. Cosima had one daughter born of sperm and egg donation but had never married. Copious Botox and other injectables gave her a perpetually puffy, but never old, appearance. Her eyebrows were perfectly arched—sugared, not plucked—and poised in an arc of everlasting surprise. She arrived at the table in flowing grey pants and bandeau bikini top. Suzy whispered that she had used Cosima to get two of her boys into Dalton. “And then she tried to fuck my husband. Total sex addict,” Suzy said under her breath, but not really.
Constance was a well-known television presenter who came to New York from Toronto in 2001, right before the planes struck the Twin Towers. She proved her chops as a news reporter for the local network by camping out at Ground Zero for weeks on end. Shortly afterward she was scooped up by CNN and bounced around the cable news networks before landing a gig on the Today show. A red silk turban popped against the sea of sameness, holding back Constance’s wonderful Afro. Why she was here, Janey hadn’t a clue, since she was six feet of glorious fitness. Her skin was so dewy, so glossy, and smelled so deliciously of a light almond oil that Janey had to be careful not to reach over to touch her.
At the end of the long table sat Svetla and Nadia, a pair of Russian heiresses whom Suzy called the Russkie hookers behind their backs, despite the fact that they were the wealthiest individuals at this table. Janey pegged them both to be in their late twenties. Their father had controlled 20 percent of the motherland’s natural gas until he met a suspicious end during a train ride from Minsk to St. Petersburg. According to the authorities he’d fallen from the train just as it crossed over a bridge high above a three-hundred-foot gorge. The pair of girls had identical blond hair extensions, and they were difficult to tell apart except that Nadia’s extensions were pulled into a ponytail, revealing an elaborate tattoo of the Kremlin across the majority of her upper back.
Becky was the ultra-athlete. Employee number five at Google, she’d since cashed in and made fitness her full-time job, ultramarathoning in the Alps and competing in Iron Mans in Hawaii, all on a vegan diet.
“I just eat plants. No powders, no supplements, no sugar. People don’t believe me, but I have all the energy I need. Sometimes I’ll dig them right out of the ground wherever I am,” she explained, a hunk of kale stuck between her two front teeth. Where Wendy was dripping in diamonds, Becky was dripping in wearable fitness tech, a FitWand on one wrist, an advanced heart rate tracker on her ankle, a headband that measured her body temperature, the Garmin runner watch, a scarf that quantified her daily sun exposure, and a band across her belly that, she explained, created a 3-D rendering on her phone of which muscles she twitched hardest throughout the day.
There was the owner of this giant plantation, Maizee Vanders, a fifth-generation New Yorker married to a seventh-generation New Yorker, both of whom “worked” in the hazy world of philanthropy, which seemed to involve traveling the globe to check in on their many, many homes. Maizee, who also fancied herself an interior designer, was one of those rich people who liked to cultivate an “I’m just like you” attitude by claiming she did things like shop at flea markets, mop the floors, and change dirty diapers, when you knew she had a staff of at least twenty-three people who were actually doing all of those things. She and her husband, Bryson, had two perfect tow-headed children, and the entire family was frequently photographed for Town & Country and Architectural Digest.
But when it came down to it, Janey liked Carol the best, an older woman with an odd French accent, short corkscrew curls, and crooked European teeth. Originally from Morocco, she eschewed the retreat-issued clothing and was dressed in mom jeans, a chambray button-down, and yellow Crocs. Her adoring husband bought her the trip as a present for her sixtieth birthday and she seemed quite confused about what exactly was supposed to be happening this week.
“Where are zee eggs and bacon?” she inquired when the hunky waiter, wearing little more than grey skivvies and a leather strap around his chest, handed her the plate of greens. Carol scowled at the purple cauliflower hummus. “Zis is baybee food, no?” She darted her dark eyes furtively around the room, scouting for something that didn’t come out of the ground.
Someone should have scooped Cosima’s jaw up off the floor as she ogled the waiter’s glistening chocolate-colored thighs.
“I wonder if he lives on the property,” she said, shoveling a forkful of green into her mouth.
Janey took a bite of the green mash and determined it was indeed baby food, but not the worst thing she’d ever put in her mouth.
“Could I get some Tabasco? Or Tapatio?” Janey asked. Hot sauce made anything better.
Who knew what they’d be serving for lunch? Or if they’d be eating lunch at all.