Lap Of Luxury You Thought The Rich Were Miserable In Their Opulence? Roxanne Pulitzer Sets The Record Straight

“The Palm Beach Story” By Roxanne Pulitzer (Simon & Schuster, 256 pages, $22)

The rich are different from you and me, and Roxanne Pulitzer’s latest, “The Palm Beach Story,” is proof.

You, dear reader, might cool off with a trip down the Shore. They dip their aristocratic piggies in their choice of pools - “morning,” for the a.m. rays, or “afternoon,” for later in the day.

You might get mad and break a few dishes. When their tempers flare, they hurl priceless Egyptian statues, or small Renaissance sculptures, sending them rolling through the French doors, across the terrace and into the impeccably manicured garden - where, you can be assured, they will never, ever encounter any pet poop.

When you insult someone, you might call him a jerk. When Count Alessandro Monteverdi (that’s Giovanni Alessandro Ruggierio Montegna di Monteverdi to you, bucko) gets miffed, he says, “If I remember correctly, the man doesn’t know the difference between a veal marrow fork and one for lamb marrow.”

And when you have sex, it’s probably just OK. When the rich get down to it, rockets explode, skin ignites, and the very heavens heave and tingle in sympathy.

But all this aside, the rich do share some things with mere commoners. Pulitzer lets us in on this secret in her very first paragraph, when her heroine, the plain-but-proud Palm Beach doyenne Ashton Kendall settles in for some TV: “Ashton opened the magnificently carved Renaissance armoire that had held generations of her husband’s family’s heirlooms and switched on the television set it now cleverly concealed.” Get it? In this single, masterful metaphor, Pulitzer shows us that whether the face we show the world is a magnificently carved Renaissance armoire, or something cheap from Ikea, we’re all the same Sony underneath. Prick us, and we all bleed. Ruin our marriage, and we avenge.

Pulitzer’s latest surf, sand and shopping romp takes place in the ultra-exclusive Florida enclave familiar to all readers of tabloids, and everyone who remembers the William Kennedy Smith trial. It’s a romance, basically, a Harlequin in hardcover, with pricier name brands, in which a pair of outsiders - winsome photographer Megan MacDermott and rough-hewn publisher Hank Shaw - compete for the affections of consummate Palm Beachers, the dissolute playboy Spencer Merritt, and the aforementioned Ashton, who’s unhappily married to Count Giovanni Alessandro et cetera.

Are the men hunky? Are the women flawless? Is there a torrid sex scene at least every other chapter? If you doubt it for a minute, then you haven’t spent enough time with the works of Judith Krantz, Pat Booth and Jackie Collins, who’ve explored this tawdry terrain in best-seller after best-seller.

Pulitzer flings a fistful of obstacles at her star-crossed lovers. There’s the cruel, jealous Count, for one; Meg’s suspicious nature, for another; and a truly bizarre subplot involving a South American drug lord for a third. Add a passel of Deep Dark Secrets (incest, anyone?) and you’ve got 256 pages.

Ignore the plot. I did. I’m pretty sure Pulitzer did, too, because all of the book’s machinations read like excuses to move her attractive players from one glitzy locale to another.

Instead, you should enjoy this book for its dishy details. Pulitzer knows a thing or two about Palm Beach’s upper crust - you’ll remember that she married into that world, and went through one of the most lurid divorces of the early 1980s when she split from publishing heir Peter Pulitzer. As a result, she’s got the trappings and manners of this rarefied world down cold, and you can enjoy “The Palm Beach Story” in much the same way as an anthropologist might relish a case study of some remote, unusual tribe.

Pulitzer writes of a beach club so exclusive that it won’t let Donald Trump join - not even after Trump loans the club his own private beach. She tells of the society matron with a drinking problem who has a wedding dress custom-made, along with a matching flask, and of the most devoted and faithful couple in Palm Beach, who just happen to be two women.

There are Hank’s yacht, Ashton’s emeralds, Spencer’s house, all afforded the same breathless descriptions as the sex that the characters engage in. There are a Monaco boat race, a South Beach rave, a slew of society balls, all seen through the knowledgeable eyes of someone who’s been there, done that, and come out the other side.

So pay no mind to the leaden writing, the single-dimension characters, the predictable breakups and makeups, and the plot twists that aren’t twists at all. Concentrate on the clothes, the jewels, the sumptuous settings, and “The Palm Beach Story ” will go down smooth as icy Dom Perignon sipped by the side of the morning pool.

Oh, yeah, and the veal marrow fork? That’s the one on your left.