The den on the fold-out couch. Great. Camilla would probably be standing over her in the morning, pointing at the saliva crust that formed around Evelyn’s open mouth when she slept. “Will do. I just need my bag. It doesn’t seem to be here.”
Nick kicked at a neighboring bedroom door with his foot and located the duffel wedged behind the door. “Camilla has a good throwing arm, but her aim is a little off,” he said grimly, handing Evelyn the open duffel and loping toward the stairs. Evelyn shook out a shirt and began refolding her clothing slowly. When she heard Nick’s footsteps downstairs, she jammed everything into the bag. She clapped the Jack Rogers together with an unsatisfying thwack, and hurled the toothbrush down the hall so it bounced off the wall. If Nick had seen her stuff in the hallway, so had Preston, and Camilla had gone through all of it. The bloodstained period underwear that a thousand washings had made mud brown that she’d thrown in at the last minute. Her toothbrush on the germy hallway floor. All dumped in the hallway for everyone to see. What rule had she forgotten to study? What had Nancy Mitford forgotten to forewarn about American social mores in 2006? She took her bag downstairs to the small, dark den and sat on the couch as the sky outside got grayer. She kicked the bag. She knew what Nancy Mitford would’ve said: Evelyn shouldn’t have claimed the second-best room, certainly not in Nick’s house, where she was at best the fourth-ranked guest. She kicked it again.
“Fuck!” She heard Charlotte walking by the den, typing on her BlackBerry. “Why didn’t this fucking file attach?”
“Language,” Preston said from somewhere outside. Evelyn skulked into the hallway and looked out the glass doors to the backyard and pool. Camilla was indeed there, lounging in—Evelyn squinted—a fisherman’s sweater, bikini bottoms, and worn-down Top-Siders. Evelyn retreated to the den. She had to smooth over this thing with Camilla. Show her it hadn’t fazed her. She wriggled out of her caftan, leaving her bikini on, then faced the obvious question: Did Camilla have a bikini top under the sweater, or did that take away from the whole thrown-on effect? She buttoned up a thin green cardigan but it looked bizarre. She tried the bottoms with an anorak, but then she looked like a seafaring prostitute. Evelyn pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt over her bikini, and hoped that was close enough.
Everyone was in conversation when she approached the door. Evelyn looked around the kitchen for, literally, something to bring to the party. There was an open bottle of red wine in the kitchen, but Evelyn vaguely recalled a rule about not drinking red before four o’clock. She saw some dark rum on Nick’s bar cart, and grabbed it, remembering seeing ginger beer in the fridge. She poured one Dark and Stormy, tasted it, wiped away her lip marks from the glass, added a lime, and then poured a second.
She walked outside, the ice in the glasses clinking. “Anyone want a Dark and Stormy?” she asked.
“Yes!” hooted Camilla from her chair. “Please.” She waved her hand at Evelyn, who promptly felt, clutching these slippery drinks, that her own swimsuit look was entirely off. “Evelyn! I didn’t know you were coming. I love my People Like Us page. Yesterday I posted a question about Gorsuch and got an answer in, like, three minutes.”
“Amazing.” Evelyn giggled, making a mental note to find out what Gorsuch was. “How funny. You’re a Dark and Stormy girl, too? There aren’t many of us. So good, right?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Camilla said. “You guys, this is too funny.” She had the weekend Journal spread out in front of her. The shade of Nick’s body fell over the newspaper.
“Private planes story,” Nick said. “Little do you know I forwarded that story around at ten A.M.”
“Little do you know I forwarded it at nine-thirty,” said Charlotte, clonking down her BlackBerry on the wooden picnic table. “Wireless Internet, gotta love it.”
“And that’s why you’re not married, Hillary,” said Nick.
“What’s the story?” Evelyn asked.
“It’s people refurbishing planes for their personal use,” Charlotte said. “Entire passenger planes. One hedge-fund guy uses his plane to transport his horses.”
“The weirder part is the lawyer who has the 737,” Nick said. “It doesn’t add up—the lawyer kicking the tires of this plane? What kind of lawyer has a plane? On, what, one-eighty bucks a year, he’s buying a 737?”
“If it’s a plaintiffs’ lawyer, they’re making a lot more than one-eighty bucks a year—a Big Tobacco case or something?” Preston tapped a pack of cigarettes on a side table. “Basically, our Parliament dollars are paying for this guy’s ride.”
“Pres,” Charlotte said sharply, nodding her head toward Evelyn.
“Oh, shoot. Sorry, Ev. I forgot about your dad.”
Evelyn smiled wanly and sat down at the picnic table.
“What about her dad?” Nick said.
“Dale Beegan, plaintiffs’ lawyer,” Preston said.