Vintage Attraction Read Free Page A

cue to turn.
    Isabelle Conway was even more remarkable in person than TV depicted. Her eyes were the color of coffee beans and lacked the vapidity attending those belonging to the sort of girl I typically flirted with. Her long hair was wound into a shimmery bittersweet chocolate–colored updo.
    â€œWell, hello there,” I said, in my best impersonation of the opening gambit of a tuxedoed Humphrey Bogart sort of character.
    She cracked up.
    I smiled.
    â€œPeter,” she said a little hesitantly. “You keep making me laugh.”
    A commotion of inquiry brought on by others of the evening’s attendees who crowded in behind us made off with her notice. While they questioned her, I waited patiently. I couldn’t help staring, recording her for posterity. She was tall yet stately, with precise shoulders that managed to appear expansive without detracting from the minimalist ethos of her proportions. She was also elaborately made up and costumed. Her face had a sheen of healthy, indolent tan, an ochre cosmetic applied to her symmetrical nose, square chin, and provocatively elevated cheekbones almost imperceptibly, as though she’d spent a long day reclining in a beach chair on an island sand. It was the hue women of my grandmother’s generation spent the summers of their youth striving to achieve. The garnet on her lips turned her mouth into that of an RKO Radio Pictures actress’s: sturdy yet delicate, alternately brash and elegant. Her outfit was a uniform belonging to a rarefied profession. It consisted of a suit top that looked like a jacket, with gold buttons running down the tautly tailored front. The long sleeves that clung to her arms concluded in identical buttons. Below was a square black skirt and matching lacquered heels.
    Finally she was able to break away from her interrogators and return to me. This time when our gazes connected, they remained. “Sorry about that, Peter. Want to start over?” She extended a small hand.
    â€œHapworth,” I returned. “Call me Hapworth.”
    â€œHave you been here long?” she asked me. “Traffic was crazy and I couldn’t get an express bus.”
    â€œYou took the bus here?”
    A large chef I’d watched entering the room now stood making imperious throat-clearing sounds behind Izzy. The chef’s coat he wore was larger than any garment that I’d ever beheld this close, as though fashioned out of an entire tablecloth. It had a bleached starkness that gave the impression of having never been used in actual service.
    She turned, and the chef looked at Izzy importunately. Distress telegraphed his face. “Sommelier,” he said in a putatively genuine French accent. “Maybe it’s time you talk to the people?” His tinted English sounded to me like the halting, self-contradictory production of an unrehearsed impressionist, whose lack of forethought reduced his channeling to that of a porcine cartoon character’s.
    â€œDo you smell that?” Izzy asked then. “The perfume?”
    I sniffed the air. “I don’t think so.”
    She inhaled a measure of staccato eighth notes. “It’s Estée Lauder.”
    An older woman turned around. “How did you know?”
    â€œHer nose has a photographic memory,” a man interjected.
    Izzy shrugged. “You work in fine dining long enough, and eventually you’ll smell everything.”
    When the chef stepped back a few feet, I followed. Immediately others descended and took our places in order to commandeer Izzy’s attention.
    â€œShe is, after all, why they paid extra for this VIP reception,” he said.
    â€œI would have guessed for these gigantic shrimp,” I teased.
    â€œI am Dominique,” the chef said then. He reached over a meaty paw. “Isabelle’s business partner.”
    â€œChef Dominique, of course,” I said. “My parents took me to Bistro Dominique once for my