“Hey Nick, I need to run over to my dad’s place to pick up something that’s apparently quite urgent. Do you want to stay here or come with?”

“I’ll come along. If I stay any longer I’ll just end up buying the whole store,” Nick replied.

The two of them sped over to Colin’s father’s house on Leedon Road, a stately Georgian mansion that looked like it had been transported straight out of Bel Air, California.

“Jeez, it’s been years since I’ve been here,” Nick remarked as they entered the house through the front door. A grandfather clock ticked loudly in the circular foyer, and all the curtains in the formal living room had been closed to block out the afternoon sun. “Is anyone home?”

“My dad and stepmom are on a safari in Kenya at the moment,” Colin answered, as a Filipino maid appeared from the corridor.

“Is Aloysius here?”

“No, but there’s a package for you, Sir Colin,” the woman replied. She went into the kitchen and returned moments later with a large padded envelope that didn’t bear the markings of any courier service.

“Who dropped this off?” Colin asked.

“Sir, Mr. Pang, sir.”

He ripped open the envelope, and inside was a smaller manila envelope that was stamped PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL. There was a Post-it affixed to the front of it. Colin looked up at Nick in surprise. “This package isn’t for me—it’s for you!”

“Really?” Taking the package, Nick saw that the Post-it note read:

Please give this letter by hand to your friend Nicholas Young.

It is imperative that he receives it by tonight.

“Well this is convenient! I guess whoever sent this knows I’m crashing at your place,” Nick said as he began tearing into the sealed envelope.

“Wait! Wait! Are you sure you want to do that?” Colin said.

“Why not?”

Colin glanced suspiciously at the package. “I dunno…what if there’s anthrax or something in there?”

“I don’t think my life is as exciting as that. But here, why don’t you open it?”

“Fuck no.”

Nick laughed as he continued to open the envelope. “Has anyone told you that you have an overactive imagination?”

“Dude, I’m not the one getting mysterious packages delivered to my best friend’s house!” Colin said, taking a few steps back.

* * *

* Cantonese for “shit-eating bastard.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

28 CLUNY PARK ROAD, SINGAPORE

Nigel Barker had photographed some of the most famous and beautiful women in the world, from Iman to Taylor Swift. But he’d never had a subject fly him halfway around the world in their personal Boeing 747-81 VIP before, and he had never gotten a lymphatic drainage massage and a seaweed exfoliating body wrap in a private spa on a private jet. Naturally, when he arrived at Kitty Bing’s gracious heritage bungalow on 28 Cluny Park Road with his team of four photo assistants, there was yet another never-before-witnessed drama unfolding.

A Chinese man wearing a deconstructed black Moroccan djellaba was standing on the front driveway, screaming, “CHUAAAAAAAAAAN! Where the fuck did you put the Oscar de la Renta? If you didn’t pack it, I’m going to fucking skin you alive! CHUAAAAAAAAAN!” As he yelled, he bounced several inches off the ground, looking like a deranged Jedi.

Twenty feet from the main house, a huge tent had been set up, and Nigel could see dozens of fashion assistants in white lab coats rushing from the house to the tent with various bits of clothing, while another set of assistants within the tent were going through the rolling racks filled with hundreds of ball gowns straight from the Paris catwalks. A guy in a white denim zip-up jumpsuit came running out of the tent. “We’re still steaming it! It just arrived from New York thirty minutes ago!”

“Ka ni nah! I need the dress now, you good-for-nothing goondu!”*

Nigel approached the ranting Jedi warily. “I’m assuming this is the location for the Tattle photo shoot?”

“Wah laooooo!” The man gasped, putting his hands to his mouth. He suddenly stood ramrod straight, his face went from manic to Zen in a nanosecond, and his speech took on a pseudo-English-meets-Eurotrash accent. “Nigel Barker, it’s really you! Merde! You are even more dashing in person! How is that possible? I’m Patric, the couture consultant. I’m styling the shoot today.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Nigel replied in a real English accent.

Patric kept staring Nigel up and down. “It’s an honor to be working with you! I’ve worked with Mert and Marcus, Ines and Vinoodh, Bruce and Nan, Alexis and Tico, I’ve worked with them all! Now come with me. We’re having a minicrisis at the moment, but I think your presence will help calm things down!”

They entered the house, which was filled with more staffers rushing around frantically at full speed. “As you know, Mrs. Bing has spared no expense on this shoot. Oliver T’sien flew in the top hairstylist from New York, the top makeup artist from London, and the top set designers from Italy for this shoot. Everyone’s a top, and we’re having to compete for space with all these tops. It’s not how I usually like to work,” Patric said with an arched eyebrow. Climbing up the beautiful Arts and Crafts–style wooden staircase, he led Nigel to the door of the library.

“Brace yourself,” Patric warned as he cracked open the door slowly.

Inside, Nigel could see a woman seated in a hairdresser’s chair in front of a bank of lighted mirrors, her face streaked in tears, surrounded by half a dozen stylists.

“Kitty…Kitty…I have a little treat for you…” Patric cooed.

Kitty looked in the mirror and saw them approaching. “Nigel! Nigel Barker! Oh no, this isn’t how I wanted you to meet me for the first time. Look at my hair! Look what they’ve done! It looks terrible, doesn’t it?”

Nigel glanced at the floor quickly and saw that they had lopped off about ninety percent of her hair. Kitty now had a pixie hairstyle that actually looked incredibly chic. “Kitty, it’s a pleasure to meet you, and I think you look wonderful.”

“See? We wanted a radical change, and this is a terrific look for you. It’s very gamine,” Oliver tried to reassure her in a calm voice.

“You look like Emma Watson. Wait till we do the color,” Jo the hairstylist said.

“No, no, I’m not desirable anymore. I look like…a mother! Nigel, what do you think? Would you ever want to make love to me looking like this?” Kitty swiveled her chair around dramatically and gave him a piercing stare.

Nigel hesitated for a moment.

“Now, don’t make things awkward for Nigel! He’s a married man,” said a blond woman with a British accent.

“Hello, Charlotte, I didn’t know you’d be here,” Nigel said, giving the makeup artist a quick hug.

Patric continued to reassure her. “Kitty, by the time Jo Blackwell-Preston is done with your hair color, Charlotte Tilbury is done with your makeup, I’m done pouring you into an amazing gown, and Nigel works his magic, you will look like the very definition of MILF! All the husbands and teenage boys who see you in these photos will want to take the magazine into the bathroom with them, trust me.”