Genuine Lies

party.
    The music had been chosen, as well as the musicians. Her burial dress had been selected—a glittery emerald evening gown she had never worn in public. Its debut was a grand one.
    Of course she’d insisted her hair be styled by Armando.
    On the day of her funeral, Eve’s public lined the streets. They crowded the entrance of the church, some weeping, some snapping pictures, necks straining as people fought for a glimpse of the mourning famous. Video cameras hummed. Wallets were stolen, and occasionally someone fainted. It was, as she would have appreciated, a production number. Only the crisscrossing spotlights were missing from this particular premiere.
    The limos arrived, ponderously disgorging their gilded cast. The rich, the famous, the glamorous, the grieving. The best designers were shown off in basic black.
    The crowd gasped and murmured as Gloria DuBarry stepped out, leaning heavily on her husband’s sturdy arm. Her Saint Laurent was accented by a heavy veil.
    There were more murmurs, and a few chuckles, asAnthony Kincade heaved himself out of a limo, his bulk sausaged obscenely into a black suit.
    Travers and Nina passed through the lines buffered by anonymity.
    Peter Jackson kept his head down, ignoring the giddy fans who called out his name. He was thinking about the woman he had spent a few sultry nights with, and how she’d looked on a rainy morning.
    A cheer went up as Rory Winthrop stepped out. Unsure how to respond, he assisted his wife from the car, then waited for Kenneth to join them on the curb.
    “Christ, it’s a circus,” Lily muttered, wondering if she should turn her back or her best side to the ubiquitous cameras.
    “Yes.” With a grim smile, Kenneth scanned the crowd, plunging and pressing against the police barricade. “And Eve’s still the ringmaster.”
    Turning from him, Lily supported her husband by slipping a hand through his arm. “Are you all right, darling?”
    He could only shake his head. He could smell his wife’s exotic perfume, sense the firmness of her guiding arm. The cold shadow of the church seemed to reach out for them with dead hands. “I feel mortal for the first time in my entire life.” Before they could climb the stairs, he spotted Victor. There was nothing he could say, no words that would even touch the grief so clear in the other man’s eyes. Rory leaned closer to his wife. “Let’s get this bloody show started.”
    Julia knew she could get through it. Knew she had to. She clung to an outer calm, but her insides churned with fear of the ritual. Was this rite to honor the dead or entertain the living? When the limo drew up to the curb, she closed her eyes quickly, tightly. But when Paul reached down for her hand, her fingers were firm and dry. She had a bad moment when she saw Victor at the entrance to the church. His gaze flicked over her, then away.
    He didn’t know, she thought, and her fingers convulsed into a fist. He didn’t know how intimately they had shared the woman they had come to bury.
    Too many people, she thought on a flare of panic. Therewere too many people, all of them too close, and pressing closer. Staring, calling out. She could smell them, the hot flesh, the hot breath, the shimmery energy that came from the combination of grief and vivid excitement.
    The trembling began again, and she started to pull back when Paul slipped an arm around her waist. He murmured something, but she couldn’t hear it over the buzzing in her ears. There was no air here. She tried to tell him that, but he was sweeping her up the steps and inside.
    Now there was music, not the ponderous moan of an organ, but the clear, sweet strains of a violin, melded with the elegant notes of a flute. The church was packed, flowers and people. Yet the thick air seemed to part, to cool. The somber garb of those who had come to Eve’s last party was offset by the jungle of blossoms. No funeral wreaths for Eve. Instead, there were oceans of camelias, mountains of roses, sweeps of magnolias heaped like snowdrifts. The scene had both glamour and beauty. At center stage, where she had spent most of her life, was the glossy blue casket.
    “How like her,” Julia murmured. The panic had fled. Even under the pall of sadness she felt a bright, beautiful admiration. “I wonder that she never tried her hand at directing.”
    “She just has.” It wasn’t very difficult to smile. Paul kept his arm around Julia’s waist as they began the long walk to the front