The party was in full swing when we slipped back in through the side door, with people chatting and mingling as they balanced drinks and plates of food from the buffet in the dining room. Peter and I hadn’t yet set a date for the wedding, but his parents had insisted on throwing us an engagement party in his hometown, particularly since we would likely get married in Ohio, where I grew up, or in New York, where we lived. Their idea of a “little” party was turning out to be good practice for a big wedding—they had a wide circle of friends, and over a hundred of them were here tonight. This didn’t even include the friends Peter and I had invited or the members of my family the Forrests had urged to make the trip west.
Fortunately, nobody seemed to have noticed our brief absence. Peter’s grandmother and my grandmother were exactly where they’d been fifteen minutes ago, seated together in the den and poring over old photo albums, each probably calculating whose family had more dominant genes, and Peter’s parents were busily introducing my parents to their friends. No mediation on my part seemed necessary, but there was too much fodder for embarrassment lurking in my childhood for me to be entirely comfortable with extended interfamily mingling.
We made our way to the rear of the house, where French doors opened out onto the deck and yard. A tent and a temporary dance floor had been spread over the grass and a band played a mix of songs from both the elder Forrests’ generation and our own. Either way, most of the “younger set,” as Susan Forrest put it, seemed to have gravitated toward the music. That might also have had something to do with the fact that the line at the bar was shorter here.
I paused at the top of the stairs leading down from the deck, scanning the crowd before locating Peter’s sandy head on the far side of the dance floor. Even after nearly a year together, my heart still did a little flip whenever I saw him across a room. Luisa and Hilary volunteered to bring me a drink, and I went to join him where he stood talking with a man and woman I didn’t know.
“Hey,” he said, leaning down to kiss me. “I’ve been looking for you. There are a couple of old friends from college I want you to meet. Rachel, this is Caroline Vail.”
The woman, an athletic-looking blonde with a kittenish face, clasped my hand in hers. “Call me Caro—everyone does. I’ve heard so much about you, I feel as if I know you already.” I was surprised she’d heard so much about me since I’d never heard a thing about her, but I smiled and said hello.
“And this is Alex Cutler.”
Alex was West Coast preppie, dressed in khakis, a navy blazer, and a button-down shirt open at the collar. His brown hair was cut short, and his blue eyes were friendly behind round, wire-rimmed glasses. “So you’re the woman who convinced Peter to cross over to the dark side,” he said.
“He means New York,” Peter said. “People out here have a hard time understanding why anyone would live anywhere else.”
Hilary appeared at my side with a wineglass in one hand and a martini glass in the other. She passed me the wine as Peter introduced her to Caro and Alex.
“You know, Hil, these two might be able to help with the article you were telling me about,” he told her. “Caro runs a public-relations agency that works with start-ups in the Bay area, and Alex is a venture capitalist in Palo Alto.”
“I’m working on a magazine piece about the newest wave of Internet companies and whether they’re for real or if it’s all just another bubble,” Hilary explained. “Some of these start-ups seem like nothing but hype.”
Caro laughed. “Well, I’m in the business of generating hype, but I like to think there’s substance behind some of it.”
“There’d better be, since I’m in the business of funding it,” said Alex.
“These two know everyone,” Peter assured Hilary. “We were all at Stanford together, and a lot of the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and their financial backers are Stanford alumni.”
“Peter and I were even frat brothers,” said Alex.
This was also the first I’d heard about Peter being in a fraternity, and it was a hard mental picture to draw—I’d never thought of him as the beer-pong type. “Were there beanies and paddling?” I asked. “Or just making pledges drink until they puked?”
“No, nothing like that,” said Peter, smiling and shaking his head. “It was just a bunch of guys hanging out. Not exactly Animal House. ”
Maybe the band caught his words, because a moment later they launched into the Isley Brothers’ version of “Shout.” The dance floor, sparsely occupied before, started to fill. And that’s when Iggie made his move.
“Hey there, homeys,” said his reedy voice from behind me. I’d greeted him earlier, but he’d arrived at the same time as a number of other guests, and I hadn’t been able to do more than say hello and hastily introduce him to Peter. Now I had the opportunity to better take in his attire, and it was interesting, to say the least. The Google guys, despite their multiple billions, had adopted a spare sartorial uniform that depended heavily on black T-shirts. Iggie, however, was staking out a more fashion-forward look, one that owed more to Versace than Banana Republic and involved a lot of purple velvet. I’d always thought velvet was a no-no in June, but maybe Iggie knew something I didn’t. And even if Iggie hadn’t been an old friend, he was still a potential client, which went a long way toward helping me overlook any questionable fashion statements.
“Hi, Iggie,” I said. “Having a good time?”
“The Igster always has a good time,” he said.
I was glad I wasn’t taking a sip of my drink, because white wine spurting out of my nose wasn’t the image I wanted Peter’s friends to take away from the evening. Peter made a choking noise that I knew was his way of trying not to laugh.
“Iggie, have you met Caroline Vail and Alex Cutler?” I asked.
“Sure. We’re like this.” He held up two fingers to indicate just how close they all were, and Caro and Alex smiled and nodded in agreement, but Iggie clearly wasn’t interested in talking to them or to Peter and me—he had a very different agenda. “Ready for that dance, Hilarita?”
When we were in college, Iggie had hit on Hilary with a single-minded perseverance that was staggering when you considered most of the time she didn’t pay him enough attention to notice he was hitting on her. But even without the imminent certainty of a billion-dollar bank account, Iggie had been sufficiently self-confident to keep trying. Now he appeared to be picking up where he’d left off, and tonight Hilary had an agenda of her own.
She drained the rest of her martini and handed me the empty glass. “Let’s do it,” she said, allowing Iggie to lead her onto the dance floor.
“‘The Igster’?” Peter said as soon as they were out of earshot. This time I was taking a sip of my drink, but I managed to swallow without incident. “Who does he think he is? Elmo?”
“That’s new since college,” I said. “He never used to refer to himself in the third-person, and definitely not as ‘the Igster.’”
“He’s famous for it out here,” said Alex, an expression of bemused tolerance on his face. “Or maybe notorious would be a better way to put it.”
“I handle public relations for Igobe,” said Caro, her own expression equally bemused. “And I’ve tried to give Iggie some tips on things like wardrobe and assigning nicknames to himself and others, but he likes to do things his way.”
“And except for the wardrobe and the nicknames, his way is usually right,” said Alex. “Which is why I put money into his company. My firm is Igobe’s biggest outside shareholder. I even helped him with his business plan back when he was just getting started.”
“So that’s how you two know him?” I asked. “Alex, you invested in his company,