The worst part was carrying the toiletry bag to and from the bathroom, so all these losers could smile at her in solidarity. She wasn’t some Redbook-reading working girl who thought adding a scarf and punching up her look with some jewelry would accomplish a day-into-night transformation. She knew better. Since people at the events would know she was coming from the office, she always changed into clothes that she could plausibly have been wearing at work. She didn’t want them to think she’d actually changed in a work bathroom stall.
But at night, once she left PLU, it was like she stepped into an enchanted world. She knew the codes now; she could step up to a bar and order a Cockburn’s port and pronounce it “Coburn’s,” and get an impressed look from the bartender. She said “cottages” for Maine and “cabins” for Jackson Hole (which was just “Jackson”) and “camps” for the Adirondacks. She met Preston for Met premieres and went to dinners at the Knickerbocker Club, where she gave clever toasts celebrating the birthday boy or the newly engaged couple. She ducked into La Goulue, where the ma?tre d’ now knew her and sat her at almost the best table. She swanned into parties and laid a polite and appropriately intimate hand on hostesses’ arms. She was part of the group she used to wonder about, one of those being ushered upstairs or downstairs into restricted parts of already-restrictive clubs and restaurants, nodding respectfully when she saw the older versions of herself, who nodded back politely, for they had been young and privileged not so long ago. Evelyn was twenty-six, and for the first time in her life, she was seen. Recognized. It wasn’t that heads were turning—she wouldn’t ask that much—but just for a moment, one man would hold her gaze a little longer than he should. Or a woman’s eyes would flick over her dress with jealousy. She could now be a missed connection on Craigslist, a fragment in a song lyric, the inspiration for a girl in a musical. She was walking down grand staircases, made to feature women at their best, and looking down at a crowd looking up at her. Her mother was approving for the first time in her life. She was invited to Newport for the weekend; Newport! Stepping into history with those marble sinks, those copper fixtures, those beds with their high posts, that town that had been society’s center. The stresses of modern life—the dirty streets, the trash, the expenses—melted away into her stage set. She felt like she practically had a chorus line behind her, kicking up and shimmying as they cheered her on.
*
“Miss Evelyn, you are getting so much in the mail these days. The mailman left all this for you because he could not fit it into your box.” The weekend doorman—Randy? Andy?—handed Evelyn a bundle of letters with a large rubber band straining to hold them together. She saw right away that there were enough thick square envelopes and textured black ones, standing out from the rectangular bills, that this was an excellent invitation haul.
To open her mail, Evelyn dimmed the lights in the living room, put on Judy Holliday singing “The Party’s Over,” and poured herself a glass of wine. She placed a round silver tray on her coffee table to hold the invitations, opened her red Smythson, and took out her favorite chiseled brown Sharpie, writing down the title of each invitation, followed by its sponsor. The pages of the Smythson daily diary were starting to droop with the weight of the multiple inscriptions each week:
Dinner New York Antiques Show—MAYBE? (See if Pres going)
Chanel documentary premiere, Paris Theater, afterparty, Bergdorf’s—YES—CHR dinner before
Pediatrics dinner New York–Presbyterian—√ red Ungaro
Annual fund-raiser lunch Sloan Kettering—√ white Milly jacket
J. Mendel shopping benefit, New Yorkers Fight Lupus—NO
Ivari (Jessa Winter’s jewelry line) launch party Barneys—(maybe? Conflict w/Chanel docu)
ArtBall @ Studio Five, Chelsea—YES—CHR table—confirm Scot can go?
As usual, she separated the good stuff from the bills. She went through those as quickly as she could, edging them out of their envelopes and looking only for the monthly minimum and not the full amount due. She scrawled out checks, then shoved the bills together and deposited them at the back of her silverware drawer, where their accusatory statements belonged.
Then she could relax again. She turned up Judy Holliday with her remote control and reviewed the invitations once more. This was the best part of the whole thing, the anticipation. Getting these invitations meant that someone had sought her out and tracked down her address. Someone had wanted her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Silent Night