From the corner of her eye, Jules catches the woman’s piercing anthracite stare, those distinct dark brows locked and loaded, observing her intensely as though she were a painting. Her pulse races as she pivots slightly, purposefully giving the woman a better view. Careful, she reminds herself. Every move counts.
Jules has prepped hard for this moment. She studied Margaux de Laurent’s predilections, knows the woman’s style and taste as though it were her own. She carefully assembled her look tonight. Gone is the bookish journalist, and in her place emerged this other being—elegant, sexy, and suggestive. Jules’s unruly chestnut curls are blown out into beachy waves. She has shed her studious tortoiseshell glasses for contacts and is wearing a one-shoulder crimson Hervé Léger bandage dress that is glued to her body—curves that she’s spent her whole life camouflaging beneath baggy sweatshirts. The dress was sent to her with one message: This is what you’re wearing. The or else was implied. The sender doesn’t know that Jules is already one step ahead of her.
The ensemble also came with shoes—four-inch-high Anika Baum stilettos—no surprise. Because Art Basel is not about the art; it’s about the shoes. Shoes tell the whole story—who you are, what you can afford, if you are an impostor or the real deal.
Either you are a fifty-dollar-day-pass patron (a nobody) or a VIP pass carrier (a somebody who knows somebody) or, as in Jules’s case, a proprietor of the much-sought-after magenta “First Choice” VVIP pass (a contender). “Details are the deal breaker,” she was told months ago when the investigation first began. “Margaux de Laurent is considered the most important gallerist in the world. You ignore the details, you’re out of the game.” Margaux’s garnet-glossed lips curl seductively in her direction.
But Jules knows better. That look is not lust; it’s about control. The woman then places her half-finished champagne flute on a passing waiter’s tray and grabs two newly replenished glasses. She raises one flute at Jules, intimating that there is more at stake here than meets the eye. It is her party, after all, the most coveted see-and-be-seen event at Basel, and she expects Jules to act the part she assigned her…
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