She was shivering and naked on the couch, with wrinkled napkins and several smudged glasses and an empty bottle of Scotch on the chest in front of her. She had put on the Racquet Club bracelet at some point, and it had left deep red marks along her wrist. She winced as she separated her sticky self from the couch fabric, the fuzziness in her brain fighting with some physical urge that pushed her to put on her wadded-up dress, which she had to look around for, finally finding it in a sad heap on top of an old copy of Treasure Island. In her fuzz she could not find her underwear. Where was the underwear? She had a memory of Jaime pulling her hair, but pushed it away, and she sank to her knees to search with just her hands as though vision had deserted her altogether. Her hand came across her underwear, crusted into disgusting peaks, and she tried not to throw up as she put it on and felt the crust scratching against her. Her sandals, kicked to the side, were dark with the grease of her toe prints. It was all soiled, all used.
She stood up, shaking, the cold predawn light from the room’s windows sucking the color from the room and from her body. She listened for the flush of a toilet or the shuffle of his feet, something to explain where Jaime had gone, but the room was too silent; she could hear only a few chirps from birds outside and the scratching of some rat or squirrel, but there were no footsteps, no sounds of motorboats, no signs of human presence.
She quivered, trying to keep her nausea from rising up, but couldn’t, and ran to the bathroom. Here, too, a flash from last night: she had been in here giving him a blow job. Had she followed him into the bathroom? Her armpits smelled of earth and sex. The first heave came up and she remembered Jaime saying, “Are you sure I’m not taking you away from your friends?” She had kept forgetting his name and had avoided addressing him directly at all. Flash: Her sloshing “Can I cut in?” as she heaved herself from her chair when Jaime and Phoebe were dancing to “Hollaback Girl.” Flash: Evelyn clutching his knee as she had discussed the importance of charity and $25,000 donations being such a building block. Flash: She had pushed him onto the couch. She had wrapped her legs around him. Flash: She tried to unbutton his jeans with her teeth before he pushed her head up with his hand and unbuttoned his jeans himself, one-handed. Flash: Some stupid idea she had read in Cosmo at the nail salon about using hair to titillate men during blow jobs. Jaime sitting there, arms folded behind his head, as Evelyn had swirled her blond hair back and forth over his prick, and erupted in what she hoped was a sexy moan. Flash: “No teeth—don’t use your teeth.” Flash: Evelyn crawling up to him after the blow job, hair a clumpy mess, him refusing to kiss her, her trying to be light and lively, saying, “Your turn,” him saying, “Mmm, I don’t think so.” Flash: Evelyn pulling the racket bracelet along his body. They had had sex—she remembered him grunting on top of her, though not how they’d gotten there—and he hadn’t even taken off his jeans fully; she remembered them chafing against her legs. Then he had gotten up, and she’d wondered if he’d wrap her in his arms like Scot did, and instead she listened as the water ran, and there was the foom of him pulling on his shirt and then she saw the scarf coming at her. A pashmina, light pink. “I’d like to see you in just this,” said Jaime. It had settled on her face, and she did not know what to do, and then the room whirled around until she fell asleep.
Now, in the dark, kneeling in front of the toilet bowl, her eyes watered and dropped the tears straight into the bowl, and she heaved out yellow pools of the Scotch mixed with stomach acid. She was gripping the toilet seat, shaking with the cold, her stomach jetting out stream after stream of bile. Finally, stomach empty, Evelyn pushed herself up and limply threw her wrist against the light switch. In the clean mirror, she saw her clotted, oily hair, her smudged mascara and the dark purple shadows encircling her eyes, her colorless skin, the yellow puke outlining her mouth.
Moving as if through a thick custard, she turned on the cold water, cupping it against her face, but then her shoulders slumped forward and her head dropped into the sink, and the water subsumed her hair, capturing the blond strands in a rush of wet darkness, pouring down her back and arms and onto the floor, soaking her dress. Her feet stood in a puddle when she flung her head upright, red and gasping for breath. She used toilet paper to wipe the mascara from her face and clean off the counter, and flushed it all, flush after flush after flush. She’d have to get back to the main house, and get her hair washed, without anyone seeing her. Didn’t she mention to Jaime that she went to Sheffield? That she had debbed and was from an old Baltimore family and was helping out at the Bal Fran?ais? He would’ve spent the night if he had just known her better, known that she was really somebody. Hadn’t she signaled that?
Jaime hadn’t bothered to shut the front door; anyone could have seen her as she lay there naked with her slutty scarf cover-up, she thought. She heard the ruffle of bird wings beat past the window, and a faraway squawk. She mushed her hands over her eyes and looked through the gaps in her fingers as if she expected a different scene to manifest itself, but it was only the dregs of last night. A fat black fly alighted on the oozing Camembert and began to suck at its pooling fat.