And Evelyn let each name drop like a hard candy into an eager mouth: Preston Hacking, Charlotte Macmillan, Nick Geary—Preston’s best friend from middle school who was visiting from Enfield that weekend.
Barbara decided to make a night of it and hired a car to drive the teenagers and herself to Portsmouth, signing each of their faxed permission slips with a flourish and taking them to a riverside restaurant. Nick, hearing that the Saturday-night plan was to go to Portsmouth with someone’s mother, found a pot dealer he knew from Brookline and got high before the drive but charmed Barbara nevertheless. Preston did have that chocolate martini, and Evelyn remembered her mother ordering wine for the rest of them. The fact that Evelyn had managed to gather together a group from Brookline and Beacon Hill (Barbara was not as impressed with Charlotte, who wore the albatrossian pigtails that night) made Evelyn feel like she was going to explode with achievement. To suddenly have friends, and to have your mother seeing you have friends, when all your life you’d been a social fumbler—Evelyn wanted that evening outing to last for hours.
*
“I do remember that martini, actually,” Evelyn said. “I wouldn’t think Babs would slip liquor to underage students, but there you go.”
“I am quite looking forward to seeing her again,” Preston said.
“You’re getting a triple scoop of Beegan tonight. My father’s also coming.”
“Charlotte,” Preston said, “did you hear that we will see the Yeti-like Mr. Beegan tonight?”
Charlotte looked oddly pale. “I didn’t know your dad was in town, Ev.”
“He’s decided late in life to be a Sheffield alumni supporter. What can I say?” Evelyn said.
“His legal practice—” Scot began to say in his trumpetlike voice, but Charlotte quickly cut him off.
“So the old Muscovite opened with pawn to where?” she said.
Dale bustled in a few minutes later, accompanied by the assistant director of alumni affairs, whom he had never met but who was nevertheless laughing her head off at something he was saying. Especially among the silver-fish schools of New York males, all in sensibly understated gray suits, Dale stood out. Today, he wore a suit that looked like it was made of denim with a bright pink pocket square; he should have had an antique stopwatch dangling from his neck. Even at home, his look was ostentatious, and Evelyn wondered how he managed to draw attention to himself in New York, where people wearing leg warmers or Druid robes barely merited a second glance. He saw Evelyn and bade farewell to the assistant director with, evidently, one more hilarious joke.
“Well, hi, there, honey. This city of yours is as hot as Hades, isn’t it?” he said. He hit the “idn’t” particularly hard.
“Dad, you remember Charlotte and Preston? And this is Scot,” Evelyn said.
Dale, who hadn’t seen Charlotte and Preston since Evelyn’s Sheffield graduation, and who, to Evelyn’s recollection, hadn’t once asked about them, didn’t pause. He looked each of them in the eye as he shook hands. “Charlotte, you’re looking pretty as ever. Preston, thanks for looking out for my little girl in the big city. Scot, it sure is a pleasure.”
Charlotte was shifting her weight. “Nice to see you, Mr. Beegan. I’m just going to go grab some food. Does anyone want anything? No? Okay,” she said, and she darted off.
“Well,” Dale said, looking around the room. “This looks like quite an event. What’s that you’re reading there, Scot?” A white volume was sticking out of Scot’s messenger bag.
“An economic journal. An article about Nouriel Roubini,” Scot said, as Preston, behind him, feigned narcolepsy.
“What did Mr. Roubini have to say?” Dale asked.
“He thinks America’s about to go over a cliff. Housing, bank failures.”
“The prophet of doooom,” Preston said in a Scooby voice.
“Well, it would be nice to see Wall Street taken to task,” Dale said.
“Dad, let’s leave Wall Street alone, okay?” Evelyn said.
Dale looked around, then perked up. “Ah! Look, that’s Jim Weisz over there. I tried a case against him in SDNY last year. I’ll just go say hello.” He strode off as quickly as he had arrived.
“SDNY?” said Preston.
“The Southern District of New York. Federal court,” Scot explained.
“Oh, good. I was afraid it was a state school,” Preston said, pushing aside the straw in his drink to drain his glass. “Another round?”
As Preston went to get drinks, Evelyn joined Charlotte at the appetizer table; caviar was just toppling off Charlotte’s piled-up plate.
“God, isn’t this all a bit much? How much do you think this event cost?” Charlotte said.
Evelyn picked up a plate, surprised that Charlotte, who always seemed to be staying afloat with her salary, would have noticed cost.