Chatter queens

“I watched Nickelodeon all morning in my room so I wouldn't have to eat breakfast with them." Blair Waldorf told her two best friends and Constance Bil-lard School classmates, Kati Farkas and Isabel Coates. "My mother cooked him an omelet. I didn't even know she knew how to use the stove."

Blair tucked her long, dark brown hair behind her ears and swigged her mother's fine vintage scotch from the crystal tumbler in her hand. She was already on her second glass.

"What shows did you watch?" Isabel asked, removing a stray strand of hair from Blair's black cashmere cardigan.

"Who cares?" Blair said, stamping her foot. She was wearing her new black ballet flats. Very bow-tie proper preppy, which she could get away with because she could change her mind in an instant and put on her trashy, pointed, knee-high boots and that sexy metallic skirt her mother hated. Poof-rock star sex kitten. Meow.

"The point is, I was trapped in my room all morning because they were busy having a gross romantic breakfast in their matching red silk bathrobes. They didn't even take showers." Blair took another gulp of her drink. The only way to tolerate the thought of her mother sleeping with that man was to get drunk very drunk.

Luckily Blair and her friends came from the kind of families for whom drinking was as commonplace as blowing your nose. Their parents believed in the quasi-European idea that the more access kids have to alcohol, the less likely they are to abuse it. So Blair and her friends could drink whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, as long as they maintained their grades and their looks and didnt embarrass themselves or the family by puking in publie, pissing their pants, or ranting in the streets.

The same thing went for everything else, like sex or drugs as long as you kept up appearances, you were all right.

But keep your panties on. That's coming later, The man Blair was so upset about was Cyb Rose, her mother's new boyfriend. At that very moment Cyrus Rose was standing on the other side of the living room, greeting the dinner guests He looked like someone who might help you pick out shoes at Saks-bald, except for a small, bushy mus-tache, us fat stomach barely hidden in a shiny blue double-breasted suit. He jingled the change in his pocket incessantly, and when he took his jacket off, there were big, nasty sweat marks on his underarms.

He had a loud laugh and was very sweet to Blair's mother. But he wasn't Blair's father. Last year Blair's father ran off to France with another man,

No kidding. They live in a chateau and run a vineyard together. Which is actually pretty cool if you think about it.

Of course none of that was Cyrus Rose's fault, but that didn't matter to Blair. As far as Blair was concerned, Cyrus Rose was a completely annoying, fat, loser.

But tonight Blair was going to have to tolerate Cyrus Rose, because the dinner party her mother was giving was in his honor, and all the Waldorfs' family friends were there to meet him: the Bass family and their sons Chuck and Donald; Mr. Farkas and his daughter, Kati; the well-known actor Arthur Coates, his wile Titi, and their daughters, Isabel, Regina, and Camilla; Captain and Mrs. Archibald and their son Nate. The only ones still missing were Mr. and Mrs. van der Woodsen whose teenage daughter, Serena, and son, Erik, were both away at school

Blair's mother was famous for her dinner parties, and this was her first since her infamous divorce. The Waldorf penthouse had been expensively redecorated that summer in deep reds and chocolate browns, and it was full of antiques and artwork that would have impressed anyone who knew anything about art. In the center of the dining room table was an enormous silver bowl full of white orchids, pussy willows, and chestnut tree branches a modem ensemble from Takashimaya, the Fifth Avenue luxury goods store. Gold-leated place cards lay on every porcelain plate. In the kitchen, Myrtle the cook was singing Bob Marley songs to the souffle, and the sloppy Irish maid, Esther, hadn't poured scotch down anyone's dress yet, thank God.