TWO AMERICAN WOMEN sit in a limestone piazza exchanging barbed pleasantries: the newly rich Harper, affecting European glamour with a teal scarf and an arched eyebrow, and the comfortably moneyed Daphne, wearing a cropped blue-and-white Prada two-piece. Harper reclines defensively across from her companion, who is scoping her out like a lioness with a glinting smile. Harper has a job. Daphne does not. The women seem to resent each other in the subtle ways of people who insist they should be friends. They are on a day trip in Noto, a town famous for its Baroque architecture and described as "Sicily's hidden gem" in 2016 by Condé Nast Traveler, something both of them would have read-Harper probably while telling herself she was doing it ironically. Bells ring in the background. Children wander across the square. The caffè down the street sells Italy's best granita. It's the kind of evening that could convince you the things they write in magazines are true.
Paradise with the hell of other people: It's the second season of The White Lotus, the HBO series about the rich and their discontents, which has decamped from its Hawaiian setting to follow a new group of American noblesse on vacation in Sicily. As the scene between Harper and Daphne-played by Aubrey Plaza and Meghann Fahy, respectively-resets, a man from the film crew emerges to grab a white wine resting on the table between them that has started to sweat, replacing it with a pristine glass.
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