"Oh come on, Oliver. You know Yolanda would love to meet you. She's throwing one of her famous dinners tonight. I'll see if you can come," Violet said as she continued to text at warp speed. A few moments later, she looked up at Oliver. "Guess what? Yolanda wants to invite everyone to her dinner. You, Nigel, and especially Kitty."
"No doubt she's heard about Kitty's three planes," Oliver quipped.
"Oliver T'sien, don't be like that!" Violet scolded.
Oliver approached Kitty, who was now posing languidly Madame Récamier –style in a vintage emerald-green-and-white-striped Anouska Hempel ball gown as Nigel and his team rearranged the lighting for a more dramatic evening look. "Do you think this pose works?" Kitty asked.
"It's gorgeous. So, guess what they are going to put on the cover of Tattle as a headline to your photo? 'Princess Kitty.' "
Kitty's eyes widened. "Oh my God I love it!"
"Annnnd … guess who has just invited you to dinner tonight? Yolanda Amanjiwo."
Kitty couldn't believe her ears. "This is that lady Tattle calls the Empress of Entertaining?"
"The very one," Violet said excitedly. "I sent her a pic from your photo shoot and she's absolutely bonkers to meet you. See, your photo shoot isn't even out yet, and already you're the toast of the town, Princess Kitty! Please say you'll come tonight!"
"Of course. I'll change my plans," Kitty said. She had planned a moonlight dinner cruise alone with Nigel, but this, she felt, was more important.
"Splendid! Eight o'clock sharp, white tie."
"White tie? In Singapore?" Oliver frowned.
"Oh yes. You'll see. Yolanda does things on a grand scale. She entertains like no one else I know."
-
Several hours later, Oliver, Nigel, and Kitty found themselves in Yolanda Amanjiwo's drawing room, a vast space with black travertine floors that felt more like the lobby of a resort hotel than a home. Half the room was comprised of a reflecting pool that extended outdoors into an even larger pool, and from the middle of the pool rose an immense Jeff Koons gold Balloon Dog.
Yolanda and her husband, Joey, stood at the far end of the room in front of a wide marble block that displayed a collection of ancient Apulian vases. As Kitty was led to the receiving line, she knew she had made the right choice by wearing a black off-the-shoulder vintage Givenchy gown with white satin gloves and her not overly flashy necklace of graduated diamonds ending in a teardrop canary diamond of forty carats. As she approached her hosts, flanked by her debonair escorts in their white-tie tuxedos, a butler announced in a high, nasal tone, "The Honorable Oliver T'sien, Mr. Nigel Barker, and Mrs. Jack Bing."
Yolanda was a tall, thin woman with a gravity-defying bouffant hairdo, clad in a dramatic strapless scarlet column gown that Kitty recognized to be Christian Dior couture. She had obviously chosen her plastic surgeon with meticulous care, since she possessed one of those faces that looked perfectly taut and sculpted, but not a single muscle moved when she spoke. Which was a pity, since she spoke in an exceedingly warm, rapid-fire Indonesian accent. "Oliver T'sien we meet at last I am such an admirer of your family and of course your grandfather was such a great man so revered Nigel Barker how lovely to meet you my God what a beauuuuuuutiful set of pictures you took today can I commission you to please do a portrait of my Irish setters?"
"Actually, I did take some pictures of just the two of them. I'm having them printed as a gift to you."
"Oh my goodness Joey did you hear that Nigel Barker did a portrait of Liam and Niall and we didn't even have to pay him a million bucks!" Yolanda prodded her husband frantically, who looked like he was in the midst of waking from a long coma.
"Ummm" was all the short, paunchy man said, his eyelids heavy.
"And you must be the divine Kitty Bing I have heard so much about you and my God what a divine dress it must be a classic Givenchy and that party you threw during Shanghai Fashion Week ooh la la I wish I had been there Karl Lagerfeld told me your new villa is to die for and your plane the big one has a spa in it my God what a genius idea I must visit I absolutely must!"
"Thank you. Of course you'll have to visit my spa-we call it the mile-high spa."
"Hahahehe mile-high spa you're too funny oh my goodness Kitty I know we are going to be dear dear friends."
As the Amanjiwos continued to greet the arriving guests, Kitty broke into a big smile as she spotted Wandi Meggaharto Widjawa arriving.