*
It was July 13, and Evelyn walked out that Friday having showered, which was something, though she didn’t have the energy to dry her hair or even put it back in a ponytail. She wore Delman ballet flats that were worn through at the soles, and had underdressed for the weather, assuming the city was still as hot as it had been the last time she’d gone out. Now it was cold, almost autumnal, despite its being the middle of July, and she ducked her head to block the wind as she hurried down Third Avenue.
She turned right on Sixty-second, walking west to where the better town houses started. The skies were dark enough, with rain looming, that she could see inside the town houses clearly, stone-cold gray on the outside and inside the light, the parties, the drinks, the laughter, the figure in a suit moving purposefully from one frame of a window to the next, the tiny head of a child in an upstairs bedroom confiding in a doll. Her destination was the Colony Club on the corner of Park, and she stood across the street from it under some scaffolding that felt providential in its ability to cover her up.
The wind sliced past her, and Evelyn stepped behind a pole as she saw a leg, two legs, in camel stilettos, and a white coat, and the flipping backward of the long sandy hair. Camilla emerged from a taxi and said something to Nick, who was jogging after her. Then the heavy gait of Scot, following them out of the cab. Evelyn pulled back into the shadows, but they did not look her way. After giving them enough time to get out of the lobby, Evelyn walked across the street and entered the club.
“Excuse me,” she said to the concierge, who was sitting at his desk with the little board behind him and the different-colored pins that showed which member was on which floor, the guide to his world, the guide to the world Evelyn had once hoped to master herself. “The party tonight, for Camilla Rutherford’s birthday?”
“Yes, you are on the list? Your name, please?”
“No, I’m not,” Evelyn said. She didn’t think that they were going to welcome her back into the fold. She didn’t even know if it was a fold she wanted to be welcomed back into. She just wanted to explain.
“Miss, if you’re not on the list—”
“Just let me in for a minute, please.”
“I’m sorry, miss, but it’s a closed guest list, so I’m afraid I can’t let you up.”
“But I know all these people. They’re my friends. Were my friends.”
“If you’d like to call Miss Rutherford and have her add you to the list, I’d be happy to wait.”
A woman in a pink suit wearing a necklace of large amber jewels, her osteoporosis so advanced that the jewels seemed to be pulling her neck to the ground, pushed past Evelyn. “Hello, where is Mrs. Hudson?” she demanded, and the concierge turned to look at the name board. “She hasn’t arrived yet, Mrs. Bagley,” he said.
“I can’t call her,” Evelyn said. “I mean, I can call her, but she wouldn’t pick up. Things went really, really wrong between us. Have you ever had that? Where things just go off the rails, and you kind of know it’s happening, but you don’t really know how to fix it, and you just get more and more involved?” She realized she’d barely spoken to anyone in days.
He gave her a sympathetic look, but then inclined his head toward the exit. “Miss, if you will, I’m afraid nonmembers and nonguests are not allowed to linger.”
The woman in pink returned. “I couldn’t find her anywhere,” she said, looking angrily at Evelyn. “There’s something wrong; maybe it’s tomorrow, but I can’t come tomorrow, it’s Saturday, and she knows I never dine out on Saturday. Have you seen her?”
Evelyn, uneasy, didn’t answer. The woman listed back outside.
“Please,” said the concierge, gesturing toward the door, giving no indication that anything unusual had just happened.
Evelyn’s hand went into her pocket, and she started to say, “Could you just—” but the concierge was answering a phone call. Evelyn stepped back outside, freezing from the Colony’s air-conditioning, and felt the wind picking up.
She smelled him before she saw him, sharp perfumed chemical notes, resin and the scent of black, and then Phil Giamatti said, “Beegs, what-what?”
“Phil,” she said weakly. The lacquered banker whom she’d last seen at Sheffield-Enfield, back before any of this had happened.
“You going in? It’s cold out here,” Phil said, slapping her on the shoulder.
“What are you doing here?”
“They want my firm to invest in the fund. Along with my excellent party skills.”
“What fund?”
“Nick Geary’s. And some dude who worked with Greenbaum at Morgan.”
“Scot? Tannauer?” Evelyn said.
“Think so.”
“You know Nick and Scot?”
“I bring the money, honey.” He rubbed his thumb against his index finger. “My former boss at Bear signed up as an investor, and he thought I should get in early, too.”