“God. It’s like a pack of hyenas. They don’t have use for the weak. Have you gone up to see him?”
“No, it’s still the no-visitors period. Even once he can have visitors, the best I can swing is one afternoon. Things are insane at Graystone. My boss is convinced the market’s going to tank soon—the underlying economics right now are a disaster—so we’re trying to wrap up a bunch of acquisitions. I’m only here, in Bibville, because I had to meet with a toy company in Annapolis this morning and don’t have to be back in the city until tonight. And Preston needs, I don’t know. Needs someone, something more. An afternoon of me dropping in for coffee isn’t going to help that much. I’m still going to go up when I can, but I feel like he needs a real friend there. And you know Pres. He’s never going to ask for help. I only know he’s in rehab because he wasn’t responding to my e-mails or calls after he told me about the accident, and finally I lost it—the island of the disappearing friends—and called Mrs. Hacking, and she gave me his number at this facility. It’s some swanky place in Marblehead. I swear I wouldn’t have known that it was a rehab place except Mrs. Hacking gave me the number for the main line, and the receptionist answered it, ‘Seaview House, offering specialized addiction treatment since 1987, how can I help you?’”
“Since 1987, huh?” Evelyn kicked Charlotte’s leg.
“I have a really specific memory. I remember thinking it must’ve started because all the traders were drinking themselves to death up there then. Plus ?a change, plus c’est la même chose.”
“Vraiment.” Evelyn smiled sadly. “How long’s he there for?”
“I think another month or so inpatient, then there’s some extended outpatient treatment. I wish you two hadn’t had your breakdowns simultaneously.”
Evelyn lifted her head. “I’m sorry.”
“Eh.” Charlotte shrugged. “I moved to Brooklyn in September. How’s that for change?”
“To get away from my haunting memory?”
Charlotte laughed. “Sort of, actually. Manhattan was getting ridiculous. Sex and the City tour buses overtaking Bleecker and condos left and right. Poor Jane Jacobs. Brooklyn’s great. Lots of creative types. Do you want the updates on the rest of your crew?”
Evelyn took a deep breath. “Hit me.”
“Nick and Scot’s hedge fund is alive and well. Nick’s greasing the palms for money, Scot’s doing all the work. They’re betting against subprime CDOs.”
“Nick is betting against Wall Street?”
Charlotte laughed. “If it makes him money, right? I saw the prospectus. Nick has access to all these rich kids with money to throw around, and then Scot is doing the actual work. I’ve got to say, it seems like Scot got in at just the right time. Alan Greenspan said last month he thought housing was actually a bubble. I think it’s going to make them a ton.”
“Doesn’t it ever stop?”
“On Wall Street? Not until it does, right? Anyway, if there is a crash, Scot and Nick are positioned to kill it.”
Evelyn flicked a bit of crust out into the water of the bay. “Is he dating anyone?”
“Scot? Yeah, Nick set him up with this girl Geordie. She went to Princeton, a few years younger than us. She works in publishing. I think it’s pretty serious.”
“She’s nice to him?”
Charlotte nodded. That hurt particularly badly; Evelyn did want Scot to be happy, and she knew they weren’t right together, but she still missed him. After all her misplaced bets, it was Scot who was going to be a big winner, after all.
“What about Camilla?” Evelyn asked quietly. She still occasionally gave in to the impulse to Google Camilla and saw that there had been new additions to Camilla’s social roster. She was dating someone from the Vanity Fair 100, a list of tech and media types, the founder of a voice-recognition start-up that Yahoo was rumored to be acquiring for a few hundred million.
“I see her here and there. She’s gotten really into a couple of arts organizations, one with glass-blowing or something, and another with graffiti artists. It’s pretty funny, actually. She’s at downtown parties constantly now, and the last time I saw her she was saying she was going to move to the Meatpacking District.”
Evelyn bit an almond sliver in half. They had all moved on so quickly, after she had done so much work to care about and get to know the first—and what she thought was the ultimate—elite circle. Charlotte was describing a Camilla-hosted party on the Soho House rooftop for the emerging artist Tayeb Idrissi, who took posts from something called Twitter and made them into word maps. As Charlotte began detailing Tayeb’s installation at Storm King, Evelyn felt the almond’s ragged edge against her tongue and felt, suddenly, that she couldn’t hear it anymore.