“You know what?” Scarlett said, as they got to the elevator. “I’ll take the stairs. It’ll look more…convincing. See you down there.”
Lola threw her a look over Marlene’s head that might have meant, “I’m sorry” or “Please don’t sweat too much in my dress” or both.
The Mercedes was waiting silently outside the hotel. Chip, Number Ninety-eight himself, was sitting in the backseat. He had a copy of The Wall Street Journal on his lap, which Scarlett found hilarious. Chip had never struck her as a reader. In fact, when she called up a mental picture of how he spent his free time (which she sometimes did), she always pictured him playing with an Etch-A-Sketch and not quite getting how it worked. She was never sure why, but it seemed to fit.
It was hard for Scarlett to tell if Chip was actually handsome, or if his pricey haircuts, regulation rich boy tan, lacrosse body, and sublime dental work caused the illusion of handsomeness. He had golden-reddish hair, much like Marlene, really huge eye-brows (which Spencer suspected he got waxed into shape), and big pouty lips.
Lola managed to lean in first and gave him a little kiss before Marlene squeezed into the car. She loved Chip. Sometimes she seemed to love him more than Lola did.
“There might not be enough room back here for all four of us,” Chip said, nodding a greeting at Scarlett. “Someone should ride up front.”
He didn’t say, “You should ride up front.” Not directly. But it was understood, since Lola and Marlene were already in the back. As she got in, she glanced up and saw Mrs. Amberson looking down at them curiously from her perch on the not-a-balcony. She raised her cigarette. Scarlett gave a half-hearted wave and got into the car.
“We’re making a stop first,” Chip called up to the driver. “Rockefeller Center.”
The car glided into action at his command.
“You will never believe this,” Chip said to Lola. “My parents are sending me to this class called Steering Wealth in a few weeks. It’s for people who, you know, are going to inherit stuff and have to know how to do stuff with it. Hedge funds and stuff. I have to go all the way to Boston to sit around in some hotel for three days.”
Lola tutted in sympathy. Scarlett made a fake crying face. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the driver crack a small smile.
“You have to come up with me.”
“Boston?” Lola said. “I have work…”
“You have to. We’ll stay with my friend Greg and go sailing.”
“Chip, seriously. I can’t take off three whole days. I’m running out of excuses.”
“I’ll be fun,” Chip said. “And I’m not going to make it if you don’t come. You’ll like Boston. You have to get used to coming up there anyway when I move in the fall.”
Chip hadn’t gotten into Harvard. All they knew was that he was going to school “in the Boston area.” She and Spencer had a lot of very amusing theories on what this actually meant, several of which involved crayons.
“I guess you’re right,” Lola said. She didn’t say it with much conviction.
“Can I come?” Marlene asked.
“You want to go in my place?” Chip asked her.
Marlene laughed like she had never, ever in her life heard anything as deliciously entertaining as that. It was appalling.
The driver took the car along Central Park South, past the big hotels. Or, as some may have put it, the real hotels.
“Is the corner of Sixth okay?” Chip said. “Can you just walk down? We kind of have to get moving.”
“It’s fine,” Scarlett said. “It’s just a few blocks.”
The car came to a graceful stop between two horse-drawn carriages at the park entrance.
“When you get home,” Lola said in a low voice, “just say that we met up on the street and you walked Marlene the rest of the way home, okay? I really owe you.”
She adjusted Marlene’s wonky, slightly crispy curls and gave her a hug. Once the car slid away, Marlene’s smile was replaced with a look of barely contained rage.
“Why did you do that?” she snapped.
“Do what?” Scarlett replied.
“The car! I wanted to go down to the building! They would have taken us if you didn’t say something!”
Now Scarlett saw the error of her ways. Marlene wanted her friends to see her get out of the chauffeur-driven car.
“They had to go,” Scarlett said. “You wouldn’t want Chip and Lola to be late, would you?”