Everybody Rise (37 page)

“What are you doing in town?”

“We're here through the wedding. At the end of June.” Brooke was looking past Evelyn's head.

“That's fantastic. So nice of you to volunteer.”

“Thanks for the encouragement,” Brooke said.

“Hey,” Evelyn said quickly. Her unanswered messages for Camilla and Jaime were nagging at her. If she was slipping, she needed more stability. More friends. The pictures in the social pages were good, a very good start. She wasn't quite secure yet, though. She needed allies. “Have you seen much of Camilla while you've been in town?”

“Honestly, Evelyn, I'm pretty sure you know we're not exactly on the best of terms. How was the Bal? Did you have fun as Camilla's assistant or whatever that was?”

“Look,” Evelyn said softly as she stacked paper cups. “I don't really know what Camilla was doing with the Bal, but I didn't mean to—I didn't want to take your place.”

“It's fine.”

“It was kind of nuts, the way she cut you out of it. I wanted to say something at the time, but I wasn't sure what to do.”

Brooke started to walk away. “We don't really need to talk about it, okay, Evelyn? You've known Camilla for, what, two minutes? Congratulations, you get to be her new best friend.”

Evelyn walked after her, a calmness settling over her. She thought of her father, standing in his office and putting a paperweight on a stack of court documents. The secret to settlements, he had said, is to find out the essence of what's important to the other party and make sure they believe they're getting it.

“I love your ring, by the way. I didn't get a good look at it when we met,” Evelyn said. “Did Will pick it out himself?”

Brooke halted her militant walk. “He did.” She let one of the gel packs drop and didn't pick it up. “He actually got the idea for it from a ring my grandmother has that I've always loved.”

“It's so beautiful on your hand. It catches the light so well. So you have your dress already? What does it look like?”

Brooke's frozen face relaxed a bit. “Oh, it's so pretty,” she said, then paused, and Evelyn gave her an encouraging smile. “It's strapless, then fitted at the bodice, with a mermaid back and a train.”

“In ivory?”

“True white.” Brooke's voice almost trilled.

“Gorgeous. That will look great with your skin tone.”

Brooke smiled, and Evelyn, who knew from fake smiles, thought it was a real one. Evelyn inquired about the bridesmaids' dresses, and Brooke, releasing the energy packs into a big bowl, began describing their grosgrain trim. Evelyn reached out and touched Brooke's hand. She knew what Brooke wanted to hear. Of course she did. “I just wanted to say that I'm sorry about Camilla. Well, not about Camilla, but about the Bal.”

Brooke's voice was kinder now. “That's Camilla, right? I've thought about it so much, and it's just, like, she was so patently jealous that I was getting married and she wasn't. It's like, sorry I'm happy and not totally dependent on you.”

“She seemed to be a little upset by the idea that you were engaged.”

“I can't believe she said that to you.”

Evelyn stayed quiet; that was another part of negotiations, her father had said. Letting other people talk leads them to reveal more than they think they are revealing.

“I guess I can believe it, I just—I've known Camilla since we were thirteen. We were prefects together at St. Paul's. I can't believe she's running around complaining that I have the nerve to get married. You think someone is your friend, and then
poof
. She's done it to everyone else; I don't know why I was surprised when she did it to me. At St. Paul's there was basically a Camilla castoff every year. One of them was truly odd. She had to wear sports goggles over her glasses for lacrosse games. Camilla gets her shiny new toy, plays with it, and then tosses it out. Now she's running around New York whining about how I'm getting married. Couldn't she just be happy for me? Like, for once, be on my side?” Brooke waved her hand, signaling a conversational change. “I saw on Appointment Book that you did the danse d'honneur.”

“Yes,” Evelyn said, wondering what had become of the goggles girl.

“Camilla must've been furious,” Brooke said.

“She didn't seem angry,” Evelyn said.

“She was planning on being chosen. I heard she even got a dress that would coordinate with the ambassador's military ribbons,” Brooke said.

Evelyn thought back to it. Camilla's dress had had shades of red and gold, which would've matched the ambassador's lapel adornments. Her insides began to feel loose. She had taken a moment away from Camilla, which was a very dangerous thing to do. Evelyn was squeezing one of Brooke's gel packs so hard it was about to burst all over her arm.

“I'm surprised she's still talking to you after that,” Brooke was saying.

“I think…” Evelyn began to make up some excuse to explain what had happened, but she stopped herself, perceiving that if she wanted Brooke's alliance, her best bet was to be frank that she, too, could be on the outs with Camilla. She began to laugh. “I've e-mailed her about eight times since then and I haven't heard a thing.”

Brooke stared at her, alarmed, then started laughing, too. “Well, she was supposed to be a bridesmaid in my wedding.”

The two started guffawing, Evelyn's eyes watering as she gasped for breath. “A coordinating dress for the danse d'honneur!” she shrieked. “She's going to have me shot!”

“She hasn't even sent her RSVP card yet!”

They were clasping each other's arms now, both bent over with laughter. “Don't you ever want to just tell her…” Brooke stood up, serious now.

“That she doesn't have total control over the social scene?” Evelyn said.

“Maybe it would be good for her to hear it. Everyone is always so scared of her.”

“I think it would be good for her to hear it.”

The two women looked at one another, nudging each other toward the edge of a cliff.

“That photo of you on Appointment Book must've given her a heart attack,” Brooke said after a pause.

The laughter had felt so good that Evelyn wanted it back. “Like, how do you even know what the ambassador's ribbon colors are going to be?” she asked. They both started laughing again, and a whistle blew. Evelyn looked back; it was fifteen minutes to race time. “I've got to get to my station,” she said. “Brooke, it was really good to see you. Maybe we'll run into each other again. Cancer or something else.”

“Maybe so,” said Brooke.

The giddy feeling evaporated as soon as Evelyn walked to her water station. By the time she met Scot for dinner that night at Le Bilboquet, a couple of blocks from Camilla's apartment, she was frantic and distracted, wondering if she'd said too much to Brooke. She tipped her chair back and forth as she waited for him, reading the menu over and over, Cajun chicken and endives aux Roquefort, Cajun chicken and endives aux Roquefort.…

“Hi,” Scot said when he arrived. He was more nervous than usual and was practically hopping.

“Hi.” She kissed him, counting out five seconds, then pulling away.

Sitting, he pulled at his napkin, tenting it into an odd shape before she reached over, shook it out, and placed it in his lap.

The waiter came to take their orders, and Evelyn saw that Scot had brought the napkin back up to the table and was twisting it into a rope. When the waiter left, she asked him about his day, but he didn't respond, just twisted the napkin into a rope in the other direction. Scot excused himself and walked toward the bathroom. When he returned, he was scratching his hairline, then tugging, hard, at tufts. He sat up straight and looked at Evelyn. Scot, despite his layers of social awkwardness, had been an excellent debate-team member in college, and Evelyn knew that when he had anything important to say, he practiced it carefully ahead of time and sounded fluid and confident, an effect he could never mimic in casual conversation.

“I need to talk to you about something, and it's been mounting,” he said. “The timing isn't perfect on this, but timing is often imperfect.”

She stayed very still, her hand spread out on the table. “Yes.”

“I had heard something. I'm not a big believer in rumors, but I just need to hear from you that it's not true.”

Evelyn's fingers gathered in a fist.

“It's about Jaime, at Lake James,” he said.

Evelyn's breath was short, but she knew she could not show it, and she tried to keep her chest from rising. “Jaime?” she said, inflecting her voice to suggest she was trying to place the name.

Scot pressed on the tines of his salad fork, and it flipped up and tumbled over. “I heard some things that I don't believe, but I wanted to ask you directly about them.”

“What could you have heard?” Her laugh, meant to sound lighthearted, was shrill.

“It's an ugly rumor, I'm sure. I'm sure it's not true, but what I heard was that something happened between you and Jaime. After I left Lake James.”

Breathe in through the nose, breathe out through the mouth. “I don't know how to respond to that. It's patently absurd,” she said. “When exactly would something have happened? And just after you left? Of course not. Of course not.”

“I didn't think you would,” he said, almost shyly.

“You know me better than that,” she said. “Don't you?”

He exhaled a huge breath through his heavy lips. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Ev. I shouldn't have asked. I just—I was worried. Can you understand that?”

She pressed her wrist against the table to stop her hand from shaking and clasped her fingers around his. “Scot. I'm here with you. Please. Let's enjoy our dinner and forget about all of this, okay?” She squeezed his hand, but she couldn't tell if he was squeezing back or pulling away.

“Okay,” he said. After a few moments, he started to talk about some banking thing he and Nick were thinking about working on, involving credit-default swaps and the CDO bubble, but Evelyn's head felt filled with cotton balls and she couldn't follow. She couldn't seem to bring her heart rate down during dinner or all through the night, even when she was supposed to be sleeping.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

10:15 Adirondack

There was just one train to Lake James on Fridays, the 10:15 Adirondack. Evelyn brought her duffel and, wanting to ingratiate herself with Camilla, two grocery bags packed with party supplies for the Fruit Stripe: cellophane bags, special-ordered from an online party supply store; bulk candy in yellow, green, and red, for which she'd had to make a trip to the Lower East Side; packs upon packs of Fruit Stripe gum. She also had her gear for the Fruit Stripe, which this year, Souse had decided, would be rowing, something Evelyn was actually decent at. She had called Camilla three times in the last day to see if there was anything else needed, but Camilla hadn't called back.

Evelyn hadn't slept at all after seeing Scot, and barely slept the next night, and was so tired that everything struck her as funny and terrible at once. When the conductor came through the train car, Evelyn started cry-laughing because she thought he looked like a robot, close to peeling off his face to reveal his alien visage. Visage, visage, she thought as the train scooted north and the Hudson widened, and the ground looked like it was lifting off and mixing with the sky. Her phone rang, the blocked number again, and she stuffed it into her duffel pocket, where her fingers ran against Camilla's racket bracelet. What was she doing? What had she done? The phone rang again, and this time it was the number for the AmEx collection agency. Why were they after her? Her gut began gurgling and panging as her heartbeat quickened and her throat felt tight and scratchy. Her breath was coming too fast yet never fast enough, and by the time the panic reached her brain she had lost any control over it. She sat in her train seat with widened eyes and shallow breath, reviewing everything she was trying to control. Her father, the case, Camilla, Preston, the calls from Barneys and AmEx—they were among so many bills, bills she hadn't even opened and didn't know the contents of. The rent, the $25,000 donation, Scot finding out about Jaime, how did Scot know about Jaime? Who else knew about Jaime? She tried to close her eyes at one point, but the sleep she found was too brief and dotted with unsettling dreams that left bare wisps when they were over. Wisps of failure, of reaching, of falling, and she woke up sweating, with an acid mouth, when she heard the conductor say, “Lake James, coming up.”

“All passengers for Lake James,” he repeated. Evelyn sat fixed in her seat, wondering what would happen if she stayed on the train north into Canada. But the conductor picked the punch card from her seat as the train slowed to a stop. “Your destination,” he said, and cheerfully tugged her duffel to the aisle.

As Evelyn walked into the station house, she felt her phone buzz, and her heart shot up and then down. Of course everything was fine, and she was just being insane. She had handled things perfectly with Scot. She just needed some sleep, that was all. Just a little sleep. With a smile and a shake of her head, for the benefit of the station attendant reading
Buckmasters
magazine, she pulled the phone out of her bag, but there was no text, no new voice mail. She must have just jostled it.

She placed her duffel on a clean spot of floor and carefully sat on it. She waited for ten minutes, twenty, and then got up to pretend to examine a stack of brochures about various train destinations.

“Boston?” the man said abruptly.

“Excuse me?”

“The brochure you're looking at. Good city.”

Evelyn looked down, and, indeed, she was holding a bent brochure,
Boston—the City on a Hill
, with a picture of a quiet-looking city at night, gentle yellow lights illuminating a brick church. It reminded her of her senior year at Sheffield, when she and Charlotte would visit Preston at Tufts, eating in Back Bay restaurants and getting served wine because Preston brought cigars to dinners and thus looked like he was about forty when he was nineteen and never got carded. She, they, were happy then. “It is a good city,” she said.