Everybody Rise (28 page)

“It's too complicated. Do you want some water? I'm parched,” said Evelyn, trying to get Charlotte off the subject.

“Yeah.”

As Evelyn filled up two glasses from her Brita, she could hear the fast clack of computer keys from the living room. “Char, what are you doing?” she asked.

“Just checking something online,” Charlotte replied. Evelyn remembered that Charlotte had bought herself Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and learned touch-typing during a summer Evelyn spent at tennis camp, a skill that was apparently still in full effect.

Evelyn returned with the water, and Charlotte, standing over the ancient IBM, was nearly beaming. “Look, I'm so helpful that I'm setting you up now. Your account number was on the check. You just need a username. What should we use, ‘EvBeeg'?”

“Charlotte, I don't want online banking, okay? Can you back off?”

“Easy, Ev. I promise, it will save you time. Here. Just choose a username and a password.”

Evelyn set Charlotte's water glass down hard and slid it over to her, watching the water marks it left on the sideboard and not bothering to wipe them up. “Do you have to bring all your, like, workday hustle to my apartment, Charlotte? I have zero interest in this.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember at Sheffield when you refused to get a debit card? You were still writing checks at the Seven-Eleven and waiting for your mom to send cash via U.S. mail. Look. It's super easy. Here.”

If only her mother would send cash via U.S. mail, Evelyn thought, taking a tiny sip of water. It tasted tinned, and she returned to the couch, exchanging it for her wine. She knew she had to get hold of her money stuff. Maybe Charlotte could help. Maybe it wasn't as bad as she thought. All those letters from Con Ed and Time Warner Cable and her credit-card companies were sitting, silently threatening, in her silverware drawer, and she had so not wanted to face them that she had been using plastic takeout utensils lately when her Thai or her sushi was delivered, so she didn't ever have to open the drawer except to wedge more envelopes in.

Evelyn poured herself another glass of wine and stood up. “Okay. ‘Evie98,'” she said, using her Sheffield graduation year. She leaned over Charlotte's shoulder and entered her standard password, “maybefaraway,” from
Annie
.

“Good. Okay. Security questions,” Charlotte said.

Evelyn scrolled through the dropdown menu: What was the make of your first car? Who was your childhood best friend? Who is your hero? Where did you meet your spouse? The cursor stood blinking at her, needling her for an answer. She couldn't pass this test. She had never had a car, being at boarding school when other people were getting their licenses. Her childhood best friend was, more or less, her mother, but she wasn't going to put that down. And who had a hero in this era? Who did this bank think it was, trying to fit Evelyn Beegan into the neat segments that defined its mass-market customers?

“Ev?”

“This is a stupid exercise, Charlotte.”

“You're being impossible. I'll answer it for you. Hero: Brooke Astor.”

“Very funny.”

Charlotte typed in the socialite's name and began rifling through the mail on Evelyn's silver tray, but it was invitations and appeals for charity donations. “Where are your bills, Ev?”

Evelyn pulled at her hair, trying to think of the answer that would freak Charlotte out the least. “Dunno.”

“Evelyn! I'm basically being your very highly paid data-entry assistant, courtesy of Graystone Partners, at the moment, all right? Can you not be a two-year-old?”

Evelyn remembered that her checking-account statement had arrived that week and had not yet been sequestered in the drawer, and shouldn't cause too much of a reaction from Charlotte; there wasn't a huge amount in the account, but at least she didn't owe anything on it. Evelyn pulled the statement from under a Gorsuch catalogue on the hallway table and handed it over.

“You mind if I open it?” Charlotte said, already ripping it unevenly. Evelyn, not wanting to watch, turned around and took a vase of long-dead flowers to the sink, pouring out the old water, which smelled completely unorganic, bacteria and slime and acid. She squirted Caldrea over the sink to try to cover up the smell with Mandarin Vetiver.

“This isn't a credit card, Ev. I need something that you pay actual bills to.”

“Hmm? I don't know.” Charlotte could be so harsh, so firm, that Evelyn felt she had made an error in giving her an opening.

“Where do you put your savings, by the way? It's good not to have too much in a checking account, but we should transfer some money in to cover your expenses. Where are you, Vanguard? Schwab?”

“Okay. Okay.” Evelyn turned on the water to give herself a moment to think. She hadn't thought the checking account was in such bad shape, but Charlotte's reaction made it sound like there was next to nothing in it. The assumption that she had some secret savings or investment account somewhere to save her—this was another part of the world nobody had told her how to handle.

“We can even set up an automatic transfer monthly from your investment account, so we're not eating into the principal of your investments.” Charlotte looked at her expectantly.

Evelyn managed to force out some words. “Not right now. I'm good for now,” she said. Did everyone have separate investment accounts that funneled money to them monthly? How had she missed all of this?

“No biggie. So let's go back to online banking. We'll set up the recurring payments. It's, what, rent, cable, do you pay Internet separately? Cell phone. And credit cards, right? What do you have for credit cards? An AmEx, right?”

Evelyn let the water soak through a slightly soiled yellow sponge. Maybe Charlotte would know what to do. Maybe, if she was really in trouble, Charlotte would offer to lend her money. Evelyn would object unconvincingly, then accept graciously, and then she could pay the bills, or part of the bills, and everything would be fine. She wiped up the water around the vase. “Some others, too,” she said in a small voice.

“Like?”

“A Visa, and Barneys, and Scoop.”

“Scoop has a credit card, first of all? What's the APR on all of these?”

Evelyn's hands traced pretty windshield-wiper patterns with the sponge, so lightly she was spreading water drops over the counter rather than cleaning them up. “Not sure.”

“Well, I need the statements.”

“The statements.”

“The statements.”

Evelyn seized a second bottle of wine and took it over to the couch, where she plopped down and smiled. “Come sit, Char.”

“No, I don't want the session to time out.”

“Listen, grab the wine opener and we'll have another glass. Okay?”

“It won't take long.”

“Really. It's time for wine.”

Charlotte pushed herself away from the computer, then walked into the kitchen. “I don't see it,” Charlotte said.

“The wine opener? Should be in the top drawer.”

Evelyn heard a squeak of hardware, then silence. “You find it?” she said. Charlotte didn't respond. Evelyn hoisted herself out of the couch, then walked to the kitchen, where she saw, it hitting her almost in slow motion, that Charlotte had tugged open her silverware drawer. When Charlotte turned around, Evelyn saw she was holding the telltale light-blue paper from American Express. Its empty envelope was teetering on the counter's edge.

They stared at each other for a minute. “Put it down. Charlotte. Put that down,” Evelyn finally said.

They were locked in place. Neither moved. Neither spoke. A pigeon brushed against the window, clacking in terror.

“Do you know what you owe?” Charlotte said. “Do you know what you owe?”

Evelyn pressed her hands against the frame of the kitchen entry. “Put the bill down, Charlotte. You have no right to go through my stuff. No right.”

“That's neither here nor there, Evelyn. You need some help. Your credit card—and that's just one—”

“It's fine. All right, Charlotte? It's fine.”

“No, it's not. It's not fine. It's not fine.” Charlotte waved the papers. “I thought this was your rewards points, but you owe sixty-five thousand on your AmEx. Do you know what you're—no, it's okay, we'll figure this out. We'll sit down and figure out all the minimums you owe and transfer the balances—”

“I've been paying the minimums,” she said loudly, though seeing Charlotte's panic at just this bill, which was only one of several, sent a sharp knife of fear through Evelyn. This problem was huge. A loan from Charlotte wouldn't fix it. Nothing would fix it.

“No. No. You're—do you see this? You've been late on your minimums, so the APR on this is up to twenty-two percent. That means you're paying, you're paying thousands of dollars just on fees on this one alone.” Charlotte grabbed a stack of unopened bills from the drawer, new bills that Evelyn hadn't paid even the minimums on. The ripping sound as she opened them made Evelyn shudder. “Look, Barneys—and, Jesus, Visa—you can't have all these credit cards that you haven't paid off, Ev. This is going to massacre your credit rating.” Charlotte was frantically reshuffling the bills like she was hoping for a better hand.

Evelyn looked at the ugly, unkempt sight of Charlotte, hysterical and judgmental over these papers, promising to help and instead making Evelyn feel worse. Charlotte's nose was oily and porous, her hair erupting out of her ponytail. The pressure in Evelyn's stomach was starting to rise, but she wouldn't allow Charlotte to see she'd affected her. “A credit card gives you credit.” Evelyn spoke slowly, enunciating each word. “I am going to ask you to leave.”

“No, Evelyn. Four thousand dollars from Gucci? Nine hundred from Saks?”

“Get out of my stuff.”

“Ev, your parents—they can help—”

“You seem to have read all about my father, so you know that in fact they can't. Please put those papers back now, Charlotte. Now.” Evelyn crossed to her and tore the envelopes from her hand, stuffing them back in the drawer and closing it with some difficulty against the bulging stack at the back. Charlotte opened her mouth but closed it, and took a step back, almost tripping on the threshold at the kitchen's edge. Evelyn didn't move, keeping her eyes trained on the drawer, as if constant vigil could keep the contents from filtering into her life. She eventually heard Charlotte pick up her things and then heard the door shut, but she stayed, watching, shaking with the effort it took to keep everything contained.

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

People Like Us

“This is a bad joke,” Evelyn said in a clipped tone to the wall, which was dark wood and covered with framed sports jerseys. Jin-ho had called in a favor with his front-office friend at the Rangers, and that had somehow, hideously, resulted in this People Like Us–sponsored Rangers-Devils game at a Midtown East bar on a Saturday afternoon in April. The beautiful, restrained People Like Us font and logo—a stylized fleur-de-lis that Evelyn had helped pick, meant to evoke a connection to European aristocracy—was now displayed on posterboards above two hockey helmets.

Evelyn sighed as loudly as she could, though she was too far away from the other people there—the busty girls Jin-ho had hired from some event-marketing firm, and the staff setting up chairs and pitchers of beer—for anyone to notice.

Evelyn turned toward the dirty glass door, where chilly air was coming in from outside, and dialed Camilla.

“You're psychic,” Camilla said by way of greeting. “We're just about to go to lunch at—where is this place? I don't know, somewhere in Chinatown, where we'll eat soup dumplings and get totally drunk on cheap wine. Come join us. No, the snakeskin, please,” she said to someone at the other end of the line.

“I'm at, get this, a sports bar in Midtown East. It's the worst.”

“Whatever for?”

“People Like Us is having a membership event here.”

“Yawn. Phoebe says this is the best Chinese food in town. A total dive. Then we're going to find a Chinese herbalist that will keep us forever young. I told you about the fleece flower root, right? Do I want a pair of green snakeskin pumps?”

“It's so dreary, Camilla.”

“These are a really pretty shade of green.”

“No. This PLU event. I'm seriously about to lose it.”

“Then get out of there. Come join. We'll get that foot-acupuncture thing afterward. It's the first not-freezing day in about a century.”

“I can't. I'm supposed to be doing recruitment at this event, but it is so massively wrong for PLU, I can't even tell you.”

A girl from the event-planning firm, who was wearing a shrunken T-shirt that proclaimed P
EOPLE
L
IKE
U
S
! in magenta cursive over her large breasts, grabbed Evelyn by the elbow. “Excuse me. People Like Us, right?”

“I'm on the phone,” Evelyn replied.

“We need you to help with some collateral.”

“I'll work on it once I'm off the phone.”

“We need you to work on it now; the guests are arriving in ten minutes.”

“Hold on.” Evelyn spoke back into the phone: “Milla? Sorry, some girl in a baby tee is pestering me for something. I'll call you when I'm leaving, okay? Maybe we can meet at Bar Sixty-eight?”

“I'll probably be napping, but call.”

“Thanks for the compliment on my T-shirt,” the woman said in a sickly sweet voice as Evelyn pressed end.

“Anytime,” Evelyn said in a matching tone. “What was it you wanted?”

“I was told you were going to help with some of the marketing flyers.”

“People Like Us doesn't have marketing flyers. That's part of the point.”

“There are flyers, and your bosses wanted them distributed in person to the guests.”