The waiter reappeared with their champagne, and Aster held her glass out for a refill. “Cheers!” she exclaimed as she clinked glasses with Clarissa, then downed her pour in a single swig. “To the hottest place in town.”
They were at a restaurant called Badawi, which had been carved out of an old warehouse in the West Twenties and transformed into high souk glamour. It was decorated to look like a bazaar in Morocco, with hanging lanterns and brightly colored tents and couches. Aster had started out the night at SoHo House, but half the tables had been empty, the music was all from last year, and several guests looked like they’d come straight from New Jersey. After consulting Instagram and Foursquare and texting a few of her model friends, she and her entourage had arrived here.
Aster’s nights often took on this spontaneous spirit; she couldn’t predict at the beginning of the evening where she’d be at the end. It had been this way since the summer she’d spent in Europe, right after high school. She had some great stories for the memoir she’d write—well, dictate—someday: the time she and her rotating posse piled into a private plane and flew to Ibiza; the time they pooled their cash to buy a Porsche Carrera and drove to someone’s upstate chalet at 2:00 a.m.; the time she stayed in a mansion in Harlem for a week and partied like people in the Jazz Age. Once she flew a friend’s twin-prop plane around his Connecticut airfield on a dare, even though her last lesson had been years ago. She’d water-skied naked on an ice-cold lake in Maine, and mountain-biked down dangerous trails in Sedona. Recently, someone had even dared her to chop off her signature long, white-blond hair. Aster had turned to her friend Patrick, a stylist, and handed him the scissors. He’d cut it all off, leaving the front at an exaggerated, crooked angle over her left eye—Aster never knew whether that was on purpose or a drunken mistake, but the press loved the new look as much as her father hated it.
For Aster, every thrill needed to be more thrilling, every high higher, and every song louder and more danceable. A psychoanalyst might suggest that she had daddy issues or was doing this for attention—or perhaps that she was running away from something. But Aster never went to therapy. She wasn’t a sad girl who self-medicated by drinking too much and staying out too late; she was a daredevil who’d have lots of interesting stories for her grandchildren.
When the girls were growing up, Aster and Corinne’s parents had forced them to memorize poetry; the ones that made sense to Aster were by free-spirited women poets from the 1920s. She was a huge fan of Edna St. Vincent Millay, who allegedly loved to party and tended to her lush blueberry farm in upstate New York totally in the nude. My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— / it gives a lovely light! Hells yeah, Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Mr. No-Knickers Waiter reappeared with several lit sparklers and a bottle of Grey Goose L’Orange. Aster joined in everyone’s squeals of excitement as she reached for a sparkler, waving it in the air as some R&B artist crooned over the speakers.
She reached for her phone, seized with the desire to invite more people out. The first person who came to mind was her cousin Poppy. It rang once, then her cousin’s sleepy voice broke through.
“Pops!” Aster called out over the noise of the club. “What are you doing right now?”
“I’m home.” Poppy yawned. “What are you doing?”
Aster held out her champagne flute for a refill. “I’m out. Will you come? Please?”
When they were growing up, Aster prided herself on not trying too hard to be like Poppy, like her sister Corinne always did. Poppy was her friend—like a cool big sister who didn’t give Aster shit about her choices. Well, most of the time. She had given Aster a pretty harsh talking-to after Aster confessed she’d seduced her European history teacher at NYU for a better grade, then dropped out of college altogether. But Poppy pried because she cared.
“Ugh, I’m beat.” Poppy sighed through the phone. “I’m in back-to-back meetings for the rest of the decade, Briony’s been up every night this week, and I’m losing my mind planning this birthday party for Skylar. I’m such a buzzkill. But why don’t you call your sister? Maybe she’d like to come.”
Aster burst out laughing. “You were there today, Poppy. She’s probably not going to speak to me ever again.”