When Evelyn followed Scot into his bedroom, he turned on classical music, “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” and then sat on his bed. Evelyn wasn’t going to have sex with him so early, but wanted more of that warmth she’d felt on the street. They began kissing, and she finally unbuttoned a few buttons on her shirt when it became clear that he wasn’t going to. He responded by standing up, taking off his shirt, folding it, placing it neatly on a chair, then returning and waiting for her to proceed. She gave him a hand job while he rubbed at her, and though he grunted appreciatively the whole time, she had the feeling it was just as lame for him as it was for her. Afterward, though, when she made noises about leaving, he said, simply, “Stay.” And she did. She brushed her teeth with toothpaste and her index finger, washed her face with his Irish Spring, and wore one of his T-shirts that fell to her knees to go to bed. He wrapped his big arms around her and tucked his legs in behind her, and Evelyn stiffened at first, but then, there on that unfamiliar bed, Evelyn felt protected, and ran her thumb over his nice thick forearm and fell asleep to the strains of Grieg.
The next day, an e-mail from Nick: “So, I heard you held each other. Hot.”
CHAPTER TEN
South of the Highway
Evelyn was so absorbed in Nancy Mitford that, when the Long Island Railroad train pulled into Bridgehampton, she nearly missed the two-minute window for unloading. August was high season in the Hamptons, and the train was more packed than a subway car, with girls sitting and standing in the aisles for much of the three-and-a-half-hour ride. Evelyn had gotten a seat, and with the help of her books, the ride had gone by fast. She had decided that she needed to study if she wanted to continue her People Like Us success, and she’d been reading like a fiend: old Emily Post from the 1920s, before the etiquette adviser got too mass-market; Paul Fussell’s Class; Mitford’s “The English Aristocracy,” where the aristocrat laid out “U and non-U” speech. Evelyn had just learned that the frank “die” and “rich” should be used rather than the florid “pass on” and “wealthy.” She shouldn’t say “cheers.” She was annoyed to find that monogrammed stationery was to be engraved, not printed; she’d just spent $300 on correspondence cards but they were printed, and now she’d have to reorder them. Camilla would absolutely know the difference.
Evelyn had been to the Hamptons twice before, an embarrassingly low count: once for a pool party hosted by her old boss in Westhampton, which didn’t rank. Then last weekend for a People Like Us–hosted wine tasting she’d organized in East Hampton, where Evelyn had felt worker-bee wearing her laminated name tag when Preston and Nick had dropped by to say hi. She’d signed up fifteen new members out of it, which she thought was a good result, though Jin-ho felt like the few-thousand-dollar price tag on the tasting hadn’t been worth it. Evelyn argued that just being the kind of site that hosted East Hampton wine tastings was good for the brand; you couldn’t do a strict cost-benefit analysis on all of this.
“Ev! Look alive!” Charlotte was leaning out the window of her red rental in the parking lot.
Charlotte, to Evelyn’s relief, didn’t seem to know anything about her father. Evelyn didn’t plan on telling any of her friends about those problems and regretted having broken down in front of Scot; weakness gave everyone else the advantage.
Evelyn got into the car, and Charlotte sped the short distance to Nick’s house. Nick’s place was south of the highway, though just barely, and as they drove, Evelyn saw why everyone made the south-of-the-highway, north-of-the-highway distinction in the Hamptons. One side was estates, hedges, money, privilege. The other was lacking.
Charlotte spun into the driveway and Evelyn was surprised by how attractive Nick’s house was—she knew from Preston that it had cost $900,000 and was expecting something that was glass and chrome, not a sweet weather-beaten shingled house with white trim. That Nick owned a house at twenty-six was, as he would term it, NBD. Nick must have had more money than she thought; while banking paid well, an associate’s salary wasn’t enough to fund a starter summer house, and Preston said that Nick’s parents hadn’t helped him out with the place. It made her wonder if all her friends had some secret store of money.
Inside, in the living room, it was clear that a bachelor had bought the place—there was an overstuffed couch against one wall, a bar table against another, and a dining table against a third, with everything as close to the walls as possible. The place had just the mix of money, manhood, and a latent promise of domesticity to give every Jenna and Jenny and Sara-pronounced-Sahrah that Nick brought home from clubs a feeling that she could tame the house, and tame Nick; there was a steady parade of them, Evelyn knew from Preston. None made it back a second time.
Charlotte was three steps into the house when she announced to Evelyn that she was going to squeeze in a run, as she had to work that night. Nick was in town picking up charcoal, and Scot and Preston were taking an evening Luxury Liner. “Are we supposed to just claim a random room?” Evelyn said.
“I think so. I did. Not Nick’s room, obviously, but there aren’t that many people coming this weekend, right? So we don’t have to worry about it.”
“I guess.” Evelyn took her bag upstairs to a narrow hallway that was flanked with bedrooms. Each bed was neatly made with linen-colored, linen-material linens that Nick had ordered, again showing remarkably restrained taste. The one at the end was marked as Nick’s from the gigantic wooden sleigh bed there and two oil paintings of the forest; the rest had no wall decor. Evelyn ducked into one on her right, with twin beds, nice tall windows looking out on the lawn, and its own bathroom. It was too early to share a bed with Scot—she didn’t want to deal with the comments from Preston and Nick, and the hooking up had not improved much—so the twins were a happy find.