Merry Christmas everybody! May your parties be as glamorous as R. Wiltshire Vibe’s (and not as evil):

Palm trees grew everywhere, arecas, palmettos, Chinese fan-palms, ranging from squat greenhouse specimens in wicker-covered pots to twelve-foot foyer varieties to stately coconut and date trees rooted somewhere far below and soaring to these ballroom altitudes through openings expressly made for them in the intervening floors and ceilings, creating a sort of jungle where exotic forms of life glided, stalked, and occasionally slithered, demi-mondaines with darkened eyelids, men with shoulder-length hair, circus artistes, soubrettes in drastically non-demure costumes offering trays of Perrier Jouët, society ladies with orange Tiffany orchid brooches vivid as flames at their bosoms, Wall-Street renegades who congregated near the gigantic bathrooms, where it was said R. Wiltshire had installed ticket-tape machines in every water closet.

Against the Day, p. 348.

All costumes here were sadly pretty demure, but this Perrier Jouët is nice stuff. Very fresh and elegant. See you all in 2024! Exciting stuff ahead!