(continued)

CeCe nursed a pink-orange Bellini and cooed to her date, who waved and introduced himself as John. A happy man with a broad smile, he seemed the only person there who was genuinely happy to meet me. I also noted that he had strangely small shoulders, and a remarkably large head.

   "We miss you, Franny! Where've you been hiding?" CeCe asked, sloshing her Bellini about its flute and playing with her hair.

   Frances's legs bounced beneath the table as she stared up at the big picture of Dizzy Gillespie hanging on the wall across from her. "Here and there. Reading a lot, studying ..."

   "Well you should come out more! We have all kinds of fun ..."

   CeCe then commenced to astonish me with a demonstration of a memory that, if not perfectly photographic, was frighteningly close:

   "Ungaro's party for his new thongs on the third! Cavalli's party for his new store on the sixth! Then the Met party at the Temple of Dendur on the 21st, and then the screening of John's new movie last night! And it's gonna be at Cannes!"
   "Cannes is fabulous," said Sophie knowingly.

   "Totally, babe," said Thorne, admiring Sophie's legs and access to the entertainment world.

   "Yeah! Cannes!" Phoebe exclaimed.

   Big Larry looked up from his Blueberry. "Cannes?" he said, suddenly interested in the table conversation.

   CeCe beamed and put her arm around John's little shoulders as she said it again, not only to make sure everyone knew, but also because she loved saying it. The word got her excited.

   "Cannes!"

   Feeling left out, Lauren Schuyler provided the final chorus of the Cannes choir in an attempt to keep pace with Thorne and Sophie.

   "Cannes ..."

   Some sociologists believe that call and response is not a feature of modern societies, but they are wrong. Like fading verses of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," the echoes of Cannes rippled across the table. You could film 90 minutes of rhesus monkeys playing Nerf football, and as long as you got the damn thing screened at Cannes people would want to know you for having done it. John basked in the attention of the Cannes-obsessed table for several minutes before excusing himself to go to the bathroom. He pushed back his chair and hopped down to the floor, where he buttoned his tiny blazer and straightened his tiny khakis. And under the many bright lights of Cipriani's tremendous crystal chandelier, I realized all at once why his head had seemed so big, and his shoulders so small. He was a midget.

   Frances's jaw dropped as she joined me in the revelation, but John, straining to place his napkin back on his plate, didn't seem to notice. Pushing his chair back in, he turned his back and marched off to the bathroom like Frodo Baggins off to defeat Sauron. The only sound at the table was Big Larry, who was back to clicking away on his Lehman-issued Blueberry. The rest of us sat silently, watching the top of John's big midget head bob and weave its way through the tables and chairs of the restaurant. Poor, beautiful, brilliant CeCe, who wanted only to date a star, no matter how small. She watched like a proud mother as he bobbed and weaved among the legs of waiters and carts of dishes, and breathed a sigh of relief when finally he had made it.

   "Robert Redford is really short too, you know," said CeCe, sounding more apologetic than defensive.

   Yet CeCe wasn't sleeping with Robert Redford. She was sleeping with a midget. She was not a Robert Redford fucker. She was something else, something unplaceable. But what?

   "Midgetfucker."

A girl with 1,500 ways to say "fuck you," CeCe worked as a publicist for Carolina Herrera, but carried herself as if she guarded the Holy Grail   Yes, that was it. The word hopped out of Frances's mouth just as it came into mine, truthful and precise. Later that night, she would tell me that the moment she said it, she appreciated what a harsh place the world must be for Tourette's sufferers. CeCe looked confused, then craned her neck in my direction. For the moment it seemed as though Sophie and I alone had heard the outburst. I watched CeCe's face to see if she would decipher the word from the garbled tape of memory. In a few seconds she had forgotten what had confused her in the first place, and went back to thinking of herself as dating a petite Redford.

   John returned from the bathroom, climbed awkwardly onto his chair, and grabbed CeCe's thigh, which caused her to giggle. John may have been a small man but he seemed to be in possession of a giant libido. Still oblivious to being in the presence of a midget, Big Larry dropped an antacid tablet into his already sparkling water and took a big swig as he loosened his Armani tie. Phoebe reached into her purse, tossed a pill into her mouth, and washed it down with a gulp of Big Larry's antacid water.

   With that, a waiter in a white tuxedo danced over to take our order. Phoebe rushed to go first.

   "I can't have any sugar or carbohydrates so I'm going to have the chef's salad without potatoes or croutons," she said, with the matter-of-fact urgency of a woman accustomed to the indulgence of her culinary whims.

   "The croutons and the potatoes. They are together in the salad," the waiter replied helplessly, turning his palms up. Then he adjusted his piqué bow tie and made a proclamation graver than anything uttered by an Italian since Mussolini. "We no can take them apart!"

   Undeterred, Phoebe slurringly attempted to compose a meal entirely bereft of at least two major nutritional building blocks.

   "So then I'm gonna have the clam soup? Does the clam soup have carbs?"

   She was saddened to hear that the clam soup was filled with as much pasta as clam.

   "Does all pasta have carbs?" she asked the table.

   "Any pasta is going to have carbs, Pheebs," CeCe informed her sternly.

   CeCe stared at Phoebe. Phoebe stared at CeCe. They had been through this pantomime before, and in a single voice placed their order.

   "We'll just have the endive and avocado salad."

   "I'll have the salmon with white wine and leeks," Big Larry said, looking up from his Blueberry again.

   Frances asked for more bread and ordered risotto.

   The waiter scribbled down the order, and Big Larry seized upon the ensuing silence to discuss himself.

   "I just worked on a very big financing for a group of Vietnamese fish farms over at Lehman. These guys raise salmon in buildings! Can you imagine a salmon living in a building? Great deal, though. The bonds traded up all afternoon, and I won't say how much, but ..."

   Sophie looked sadistically at Phoebe before ordering a large plate of spaghetti and one-upping Big Larry.

   "My father is doing a movie in Vietnam with Russell Crowe right now," she said, lazily slurping on her third drink. "It's going to be like Apocalypse Now, only more apocalyptic, and with more of the now ..."

   "Really?" said Thorne excitedly.

   "Really," Sophie coldly replied.

   "Does he need any more young dudes to play soldiers?" asked Thorne, who had always believed that if given the chance he could be a movie star.

   "I think he's got all the young dudes he needs," said Sophie.

   "Maybe he could use, like, a young associate producer?" suggested Thorne, hopefully.

   "No, he's all set," said Sophie, a bit surprised.

   "Well then, do you think he could just use someone with serious muscles?" said Roger, flexing a bit. Sophie broke out laughing.

   "Why would you want to leave Wall Street?" she asked a few moments later, after sipping her newly delivered Bellini. "You're the quin­tessential J. S. Spenser banker. It's perfect for you."

   Thorne nodded in knowing agreement, but looked bleak and bare as he leaned over to Sophie and unburdened his soul.

   "It's true, babe," he said. "But sometimes I don't know. Deep down, I just feel like I need to be out there, you know, interacting with celebrities."

   Sophie looked into Thorne's eyes for some sign that he was joking. Roger took her stare as a sign of true connection, and began to pitch her on the project that he knew could make him a star.

   "I've got this idea for a movie called Jugsaw, about the ghost of this chainsaw killer who comes back from the dead, and cuts off babes' jugs. I mean, I think it could be a real franchise. T-shirts, coffee mugs, babes. Dig?"
   Sophie flashed a mischievous smile and told Thorne that she thought she could help him. The two then disappeared into one another the way people do over dinner. Sophie didn't even notice when John the midget took her Bellini and drained it in a single gulp. I looked around the table to see that we had three bottles of sauvignon blanc and at least 15 empty Bellini glasses. Even with my diminished mathematical abilities I realized that if none of the girls offered to pay, and they probably wouldn't, I would soon be out several hundred dollars. The worst part was that there was nothing to be done about it.