Everybody Rise (33 page)

“Sixty seconds on, thirty seconds off. Power intervals.” He dropped the phone and reached for her hand, but, when she didn't respond, withdrew his. “I ran into Camilla's sister. Someone else is coming up later today, I guess. Another friend of Camilla's.”

“Today?” she blurted, then tried to appear absorbed by the ugly knit tote for sale.

“Yeah, you knew other people were coming? I thought it was just this group.”

“I—she mentioned something about it. I just thought it was later this weekend.”

“Nope,” Scot said, and wiped his forehead, flinging tiny beads of sweat onto Evelyn, whose whole body tensed. He headed toward the bathroom. “Today. The caretaker was just taking the boat over to pick them up.”

Evelyn could see a narrow sliver of bathroom from her seat; Scot was folding his clothes and placing them, stacked, on the sink, so they wouldn't develop wrinkles during the five minutes he would spend in the shower. She heard him turn the water on, then groan as he stepped in. She couldn't pull this off with Scot here.

His BlackBerry began ringing. Evelyn slid backward against the bed, so Scot couldn't see her from the bathroom if he got out of the shower, then reached across to look at it. D
AVID
G
REENBAUM
W
ORK
, the screen read. It took her only a moment to locate the phone icon on the BlackBerry.

“Scot Tannauer's line,” she said pleasantly.

“What? I need Scot,” said the gruff voice on the other end.

“I'm so sorry, he stepped out for a moment. Maybe I can help? This is Evelyn Beegan, his girlfriend.” She practically choked on the word.

“Yeah, I need to talk to Scot.”

“Something's come up at work?”

“You could say that. I know he's up prancing around the Catskills, but tell him to call me, Greenbaum, right away.”

“The Adirondacks. It sounds serious, Mr. Greenbaum. You're sure you just need him to call you? You don't need him in the office?”

“How is he supposed to get into the office when he seems to have gone away for the weekend with his girlfriend?”

“We're not far from the city, honestly. If he leaves now, he can be in the office by tonight.”

“Good. Fine. Good. Have him come straight here.”

“He'll be there.”

A few minutes later, she heard the shower turn off. She didn't want to see Scot fresh from the shower, mussed and clean and hopeful, like a little boy. She stood with her back to the bathroom door and knocked on it. “David Greenbaum called,” she said. “He kept calling, so I picked up, in case there was an emergency.”

“What did he want?” Scot said, anxious.

“He needs you back in the city. ASAP.”

“Darn it,” Scot muttered. “I should call him.”

“No, it's okay. He said just to head back. Not to call.”

“Darn. I'm going to have to go. I'm really sorry.”

“No, it's work, and it's okay. He sounded kind of mad.”

“I should never have come.”

“It's fine. I'll go figure out when the next train is. I think there's one around four and you'll be back in the city tonight.”

“You're a lifesaver.” He peeked out from the door and kissed her shoulder, and a look of pain flashed across her face.

After she got off of the Amtrak toll-free line, she relayed to Scot that there was a 4:05 train to Albany, and he could switch there for the city, then she arranged for a taxi to wait for him at the marina and told him to wait by the dock for the caretaker to take him back to town. She went down to find the cook to let him know that they would be one fewer for dinner and was walking back from the dining building when she heard the roar of the motorboat at the main boathouse, meaning the caretaker was back with Jaime. She ducked into a clutch of trees, the undergrowth plants tickling her ankles, and heard Scot talking in English-accented Spanish.

“So it's ‘Es un placer—'”

“Placer,” someone else said, correcting Scot's pronunciation, in a voice that sounded like it had been steeped in pine trees and tobacco.

“Placer hacer negocios—”

“Negocios.”

“Con ustedes.”

“Sí. Perfecto.”

“Placer hacer negocios,” Scot repeated. “Thank you. I have to go to Mexico City in a couple of weeks for a meeting—encuentro, right?—with a … clientado?”

“Cliente,” said the rich voice. “You'll do just fine.”

“What the fuck, Scot? What is this, Spanish Immersion Day?” Evelyn heard Nick say. “Jaime, buddy.”

“Oh,” said Scot. “Oh, I just thought I would try out some of my Spanish.”

“Nick, how are you?” said the voice, now in an alluringly deep British accent with a tinge of American. “It's not a problem at all, Scot. I'm glad you could practice. I have no doubt you'll do very well down there. Pleasure meeting you. Good luck getting back today.”

“Thank you. Gracias. I just need to—have you seen Evelyn? I thought she was supposed to be here, but, I've got to—well.”

Evelyn checked her watch. If the train was at 4:05, Scot would have to leave immediately. She stayed within the trees.

“Can you tell her I had to go?” Scot said.

“No problem,” Nick said.

Evelyn waited, trying to slow down her breathing, until she heard the motorboat rev and a
thonk
that must be Scot's big foot getting into the boat. She smoothed her hair and stepped out from behind the trees.

She had been expecting someone quite tall, but Jaime de Cardenas was small, tan, and fit, with biceps neatly packed into each fatless arm. He looked as if he ran twelve miles several times a week, and was in the gym every other day doing weights and attracting looks from Equinox's boys and girls alike.

“I was just looking at the ducks down by the tennis court. There's the most fascinating group of—oh, hello! I don't think we've met. I'm Evelyn Beegan,” she said.

*   *   *

A game of croquet was soon assembled, after Camilla skipped out and decreed it so. Evelyn was doing rather well—not, of course, beating Camilla, but holding her own.

Camilla tapped her mallet against Jaime's. “How's your room?” she said.

“It's great,” Jaime said. “This place is amazing, CHR. I don't know why I haven't been up here in so long.”

“Did you used to come up here a lot?” Evelyn said.

“Oh, God, for high-school summers, Sachem was the be-all, end-all,” Jaime said. “All of us from St. George's would come up to see the girls of St. Paul's in their swimsuits. Remember, CHR? That one summer when you were going through that religious phase? She made us all parade to church every Sunday. She was in the choir at St. Paul's and was an awfully saucy choirgirl.”

Camilla crinkled her eyes at Jaime in a way Evelyn hadn't seen before; she seemed softer, as though the top coat of nail polish had not been put on. “You make it sound like I was a backup singer, darling. I was a soloist.”

“That's right. I remember your ‘Ave Maria.' It was worth the forced sanctity.”

This wasn't going in Evelyn's direction; Jaime had barely looked at her. She needed to establish herself, fast. “Isn't every boarding school essentially a forced churchgoing experience?” she said, shading her eyes. “At Sheffield, where I went, there was morning chapel every day. They would sort of nod at the Jews and the Muslims and pretend like it was nondenominational, but it was so clearly church.”

Jaime turned to her and let his eyes rise and fall over her body, too slowly to be casual. “Sheffield,” he repeated thoughtfully. Evelyn could feel an almost physical trail where his eyes had moved.

“Yes, Evelyn went to Sheffield from a funny town in Maryland. It must have been so foreign to you, Evelyn,” Camilla said with a flip of her hair.

“I had grown up in London, so it was awfully foreign to me, too,” Jaime said. His eyes flickered, but Evelyn couldn't read them.

“It would've been stranger for Evelyn.” Camilla smacked her mallet and sent her ball hurtling over a bump, then it gently turned and dropped through a wicket. “Perfect,” she said. “So I'm surprised, Evelyn, that you're playing getting-to-know-you with Jaime. Didn't you say you'd met him?”

Evelyn tried to look puzzled. “Did I? I don't think so.”

“I do,” Camilla said. “You said you ran into him at the Harvard Club. Maybe when you were there with your boyfriend?”

“It's possible,” Evelyn said quickly. “Nick, it's your turn, isn't it?”

“The Harvard Club? Am I that ancient looking?” Jaime said with a laugh.

“I thought it sounded odd,” Camilla said, gazing coolly at Evelyn. “Her boyfriend—”

“Do you know what I heard about the Harvard Club?” Evelyn interrupted. Her mind spun for something plausible. “When they tried to update the menu and take the old-school dishes, like beef Wellington and clams casino, off the menu, members lost their minds and threatened to quit the club en masse.”

“I believe it,” Jaime said. “I can't imagine members have the most adventurous palates.”

“That's because they're so old their food is pureed. Shazam!” Nick said.

Evelyn smiled, ballooning with the weirdly good feeling of a lie well told, and tapped her ball with her mallet. Jaime put his mallet on the ground and turned to Nick. “I hate to break up the game, but, my friend, I have to go into town. If you want to come in with me, I could use the company.”

“Stay here.” Camilla pouted. “We can send the caretaker into town for whatever you need.”

“No, I promised to drop this off to Jack myself. I'm in the same town; I can make the delivery.”

“Well, don't take Nick, then. He promised me a game of tennis this afternoon.”

“I have to go into town,” Evelyn said. She could feel Camilla glaring at her. As Camilla started to say something, Jaime's deep voice got there first. “Great,” he said.

“Evelyn,” Camilla started to say, before Evelyn overrode it with an “Excuse me for a second,” and tossed down her croquet mallet. She ran upstairs to her bathroom and, after a quick layer of lip stain and a combing of her eyelashes, started back down. But the door to Camilla's room was open, and lying on a dresser, just a few feet away, was Camilla's bracelet of Racquet Club victories.

Evelyn looked right and looked left, and didn't see or hear anyone. She took a light step forward, and paused again. She would just borrow it for the afternoon and put it right back. Friends borrowed each other's jewelry all the time. It was just sitting there. Glinting. If Jaime noticed it on her, he might believe that she, too, had Racquet Club lineage. She looked over her shoulder again, then dashed into the room and slipped it into her pocket.

Evelyn put on the bracelet during her made-up errand in town, telling Jaime she was supposed to pick up a wooden serving bowl with silver antlers for Preston's mother. At the counter, as she paid, she removed the bracelet from her pocket and fastened it onto her left wrist, so Jaime would see it from the driver's seat. It felt heavy and delicious and right.

She twirled her wrist back and forth as Jaime drove around the edge of James Pond, soothing herself with the pleasing clink of the rackets. She leaned in to adjust the radio's volume, making the bracelet hit the volume dial. “This bracelet is so clunky,” she said. “My grandfather and great-grandfather were both serious Racquet Club members, and I think these were their most treasured possessions. They barely took care of their other heirlooms—our silver was so tarnished you could barely see that it was silver—but these were always polished and in perfect condition. Men love their victories, I guess.”

He glanced over; she couldn't tell what he was thinking.

“Camilla has one, too,” she said, as an insurance policy in case he'd noticed the bracelet before, “which is why we were instant friends. I'd had all the rackets for ages but had never thought of putting them into a bracelet.” She reached for the sun visor.

“It's nice,” he said loosely, then turned into a long lane. Evelyn looked at the sign and saw Jaime had driven them to the Lake James Club, a private men's club that, famously, only changed the rules banning tuberculars and Jews ten years ago.

“Do you mind? One of my father's colleagues is here and needed some documents,” Jaime said.

“No, of course not,” Evelyn said. “I'll just wait out here.”

“You're going to sit in the car?”

She turned red—she had thought women weren't allowed in the club at all. She hated getting these things wrong. “No, no. I'd love to come in, if that's all right.”

He smiled. “It's all right by me. It's hardly a confidential business deal.”

She followed him as he hurried through the club. He greeted the guard and quickly scooped some peanuts from the bar into a tiny plastic cup, popping them into his mouth and sucking them in a way that made Evelyn's stomach light up. They passed indoor-tennis courts and a large library covered in Oriental carpets. He peered into that, then wheeled around, put a hot hand on her shoulder, and said, “Wait here.” With the imprint of his hand feeling like a brand, Evelyn watched as he gave a folder to an older man, chatted, laughed, then shook the man's hand and rejoined her. “Finished,” he said with a smile. “That wasn't so bad, was it?”

She was following him back toward the exit when he stopped, turned, and leaned in so closely that she could see the shine on his teeth and smell his scent of sweat and metal, and her lower abdomen went into spin cycle. “Do you want to see something?” he said.

She said yes.

He loped up two sets of stairs, and pushed open a door to a dim hallway with large windows on one side. It smelled of dust, and as her eyes focused, she saw it was filled with mounted dead animals' heads, deer and elk and foxes and bears and, at her feet, a snapping raccoon. Against the right wall were ducks, beautifully feathered and decorative and now dead. “Where are we?” she asked.