“They’re starting a fund?”
“What did you think this was?”
“I thought it was Camilla Rutherford’s birthday party.”
“Yeah, there’s some chick’s party mixed in, too. Social life and business mix these days, don’t you know? The fund’s gonna be H-O-T. Their angle is that the mortgage market’s gonna implode. I guess they’re trying to sign up rich widows here or something.”
Evelyn shook her head. “There is—I want—can I just go in as your guest?”
“As my guest?” He patted his stomach.
“Please. Just tell the concierge I’m with you. I’ll be in and out in twenty minutes.”
“That’s what she said,” he said. “My date’s coming any second. No can do, Beegs.”
“I just want to—these were my friends,” Evelyn said pleadingly.
“Never thought I’d see the day when Beegan came begging,” Phil said with a guffaw. “Not on the guest list? What did you do?”
Evelyn saw someone with a purposeful stride coming from down the street and recognized Souse.
“Phil,” she said, grabbing his hand. From her pocket, she took out Camilla’s Racquet Club bracelet. “Give this to Camilla for me. Please.”
“What’s this?”
“Something that was hers that I tried to take. It’s a long story. Please, just give it to her.”
“What am I supposed to tell her?”
“Tell her—” Souse was bounding down the pavement at an alarming speed. Evelyn snapped her head from Souse to Phil, and pressed the bracelet hard into Phil’s thick hand. “Tell her that I’m sorry. Tell her that I…”
“That you what?”
“That I lost myself. Tell her that I lost myself.”
“You lost yourself?” Phil was saying, but Evelyn turned and started running, her flats slapping against her feet, running and running through the lights and through the honks and through the people. It was blue-black; the more reactive New Yorkers were already jamming their umbrellas up and out in anticipation of the first drops. Soon there would be sheets of rain that pummeled so hard it hurt. A swirling wind was picking up dirt from the street and hurling it at pedestrians’ ankles along with leaves and Orbit gum wrappers. The wind whirled up and shook the tree branches, and the oblivious tourists continued walking in circuitous paths as the New Yorkers, who knew what was coming, crowded under awnings and behind the vertical plastic sheets protecting the fruit in front of bodegas, glancing at one another and at the troubled sky to measure how much time they had. A few kept moving, dueling with the umbrellas they had bought in the subway station from the Nigerian men who sensed the rain before anyone else did, as they hurried to wherever they were going so they could hurry to the next place after that. A single heaving drop of cold water burst on Evelyn’s face, then another hit her knee. It went black, and the rain hit with a crash, slamming at her, her instantly soaked dress clinging to her legs and her shoes filling with water. She kept running. Sometimes she’d turn, when she hit a light, and several times she smacked straight into people who were running from the rain themselves, and she mumbled an apology and kept going.
Her lungs were filled with acid and she had big drops of water on her eyelashes when she stopped. She didn’t know how long she’d been running, or what part of town she was in. She leaned over, hands on her legs, catching her breath. She needed a bathroom. She needed to dry off. She looked down the dark street: a closed nail salon, an open falafel place, and a red door with a neon sign overhead. A bar. That would be fine. She opened the red door.
The heat and the chord hit her at the same time. She knew those notes. Sondheim. It was the verse of—yes, now a man’s tangy voice was singing it—Sondheim’s “The Ladies Who Lunch.” Her eyes adjusted to the room below her. It was small and wooden, as though someone had picked up an oyster house from 1700s–era Pearl Street and dropped it here in wherever she was, Midtown somewhere. Christmas lights crisscrossed the ceiling though it was July. There was a bartender and a small clutch of people gathered on stools around a piano, outfitted with a bar around it, where a man with ginger hair and glasses played.
The man who was singing was plump, swollen faced, with small hands clasped together, and wearing a worn brown sweater, the kind of man Evelyn would not have seen on the street if she passed him, but his eyes were bright and he had a gentle smile as he wended through the song. Evelyn felt she must be actually giving off steam in this roasting place, but she stayed at the top of the stairs, not wanting to go but not wanting to interrupt the singing with her presence. As she nudged the first notes of the next verse forward in her head, the music stopped.
“A customer!” the piano player shouted.
“A customer!” the Sondheim singer echoed.
She took a step backward.