The crowd was big enough to disappear into, the horde of voices smoothed to a rumble by marble echoes. Among my fellow penguins I felt very much in disguise, blending into the throng as velvet ropes channeled us from the lobby to the Hall of African Mammals.

This was the old part of the museum, dating to the days when conservationists went to other places, shot animals, brought their corpses back, and stuffed them. Which is a kind of conservation, I suppose. In the center of the huge hall a family of stuffed elephants tramped along together, massive and clueless. Set into the walls around us were dioramas—zebras, gorillas, and impalas against painted African landscapes, staring out at us with wide glass eyes, looking paralyzed with surprise, as if no one had told them that tuxedos were required.

The crowd was drifting in slow circles, moving clockwise around the elephants. True to Manhattan form, the party was just now kicking into gear two hours late, everyone grabbing their first drinks. The slow circling gave me the chance to scope things out, searching for a disguised Jen and any sign of the anti-client.

I was jumpy. The little plastic twigs of the clothing's tags were starting to poke, and I was still surprised by glimpses of a certain peroxide stranger in the glass that separated me from the Africa veldt. Every girl of Jen's height dragged my eyes after her, but unless she'd opted for plastic surgery, she wasn't any of them. Of course I flinched whenever a bald head popped up in the edges of my vision, half expecting a powerful hand to land on my shoulder and lead me away to some dark corner of the ^

museum. I moved through the party, nervous and hyper-alert, as if the pair of sleeping lions in the corner diorama were still alive.

To calm myself, I did what comes naturally to any cool hunter: I read the crowd.

The demographic of Hoi Aristoi was young and wealthy, the sort of people whose job it is to go to this sort of party. You know who they are. Their names are in bold type in gossip pages, presumably to remind them what they did last week. They were here to refine their social skills, readying themselves for the day when their trust funds would blossom into real inheritances, and they would join the boards of museums and orchestras and opera companies and go to more parties. The odd camera flash snapped, gathering fodder for the Sunday Styles section and celeb magazines' back pages. Apparently Hoi Aristoi really had aristocratic roots. Any magazine that could occupy the entire Museum of Natural History for a party was backed by people with serious social connections.

I wondered if any of the people here would ever actually read Hoi Aristoi. Would it run advice columns for the single scion? Essays on mink coat maintenance? Bargain buys for the bulimic's bathroom?

Not that the articles really mattered. Magazines are just wrapping for ads, and advertisers must have been lining up to fill the pages of Hoi Aristoi, ready to flog Hamptons real estate, deals on drug treatment centers and liposuction, a dozen labels I shall not name. And for every true aristocratic reader would come a hundred wannabes, pitiful creatures willing to buy a handbag or wristwatch advertised, hoping the rest of the lifestyle would somehow follow.

Why did this tribe annoy me so much? It's not like I'm against social hierarchies—my job depends on them. Every cool constituency from hardtop basketballers to Detroit DJs organizes itself into aristocrats and hoi polloi, insiders and nonentities. But this crowd was different. Becoming an aristoi wasn't a matter of taste, innovation, or style, but of being born into one of a select hundred or so Manhattan families. Which is why aristocrats don't really have Innovators. For their new looks they rely on designers from Paris and Rome, hired help selected by Trendsetters like Hillary Hyphen. The top of the Hoi Aristoi cool pyramid—where the Innovators should be—is chopped off, sort of like the one on the back of the one-dollar bill. (Coincidence? Discuss.)

Suddenly my step faltered, my sour mood lifting. A few yards away two rent-a-models were stationed in front of a trio of bedazzled bison. And they were giving out gift bags.

Filthy rich or bomb-throwing anarchist, everyone loves gift bags.

I grabbed one, assuring myself that it was just to look for clues about the party's sponsors. Parties in New York are always multi-corporate orgies, a mix of advertising, guest lists, and giveaways. Gift bags are the final repository of all this cross-marketing, with everyone involved throwing in an abundance of free toiletries, magazines, movie tickets, CD singles, chocolates, and minuscule bottles of liquor. The main sponsors (I don't mind naming brands, because you can't buy them in stores, for reasons that will soon become clear) were Hoi Aristoi magazine itself, a spiced rum called Noble Savage, and a new shampoo that went by the peculiar name of Poo-Sham. The big prize in the bag was a free digital camera, no bigger than an old-fashioned cigarette lighter, with the Poo-Sham logo plastered all over it.

A free digital camera as a carrier for advertising. I gave this the Nod.

Man cannot live on gift bags alone, though. I consumed the chocolate and looked around for real food.

A tray went past carrying champagne and orange juice. I grabbed a glass of the juice and gulped, only to discover it was spiked with Noble Savage… a lot of Noble Savage. I managed not to sputter, drank it down for the sugar, and immediately regretted it. An empty-stomach buzz began to take hold of my brain.

The party's edges softened around me, and I started to see imperfections in my fellow penguins' bow ties. All that individuality being expressed, according to Emily Post. Or had I gone with Vanderbilt? I couldn't remember, which seemed like a bad sign.

Perhaps my anxiety didn't have to do with Mandy's disappearance, the potential dangers of the anti-client, the pretensions of the hoi aristoi, or even the mysteries of Jen's affections. It wasn't even low blood sugar. It was much simpler than that.

I was alone at a parry.

No one likes to feel left out. Like the small herd of stuffed impalas gazing sightlessly across the room toward me, I was a social animal. And here I was standing in a tuxedo, holding a gift bag and an empty glass of orange juice, feeling alone among a bunch of people I didn't know and instinctively didn't like.

Where was Jen? I thought of calling her but didn't really have anything to report yet. It just looked like any other launch party so far.

At this point I would have settled for a glimpse of the bald guy, even NASCAR Man or Future Woman. Hiding or fleeing would be better than standing around alone. Anything to give me a purpose.

Another tray went by, carrying something that looked like food, and I followed it.

The tray led me down a short hall toward the outer-space section of the museum. The planetarium rose up before me, a huge white globe on curved legs, as awe inspiring as an alien spaceship. Yet as so often happens in museums, I was thinking about food. I plowed after the tray, not catching the white-coated caterer until he was mobbed by a small and hungry crowd.

The tray was covered with sushi experiments gone awry, tiny towers of fish eggs and multicolored tentacles, something that nonmetaphorical penguins might eat. Not exactly what I'd been hunting for, but I grabbed a pair of what looked like plain rice balls and stuffed one into my mouth. Something inside it exploded into saltiness and fishiness, a sushi booby trap. I swallowed anyway, then inhaled the second.

My mouth was so full that I couldn't scream when a certain bald-headed man stepped up next to me.