“Five minutes,” the Prince man said, tapping his watch. “Go fast. There’s a restroom at the end of the back hallway there.”
Through a side door, Evelyn walked down an empty service hallway, one eye wet with liner, the other bare, rattled by Scot’s reaction, Camilla’s assessment that he still wasn’t good enough, and the looming fact of that donation. She saw a water fountain and stopped to cool down and breathe. When she stood up, she saw, surprisingly, Charlotte, who she didn’t think had been invited. Evelyn noticed with annoyance that Charlotte hadn’t done anything to her hair besides stick a bobby pin in it so she looked like a ten-year-old, and her boring black cocktail dress had a milk stain on it, sloppy in a new mother and inexplicable in a twenty-six-year-old single banker.
The day before, Evelyn, feeling guilty that she hadn’t spent much time with Charlotte lately, had made the mistake of e-mailing her to see if she wanted to have lunch, even offering to go to Midtown East to meet her. Predictably, Charlotte responded by explaining how busy she was and how she couldn’t even leave for coffee, much less lunch, and then asked Evelyn why she was arranging a Tuesday lunch downtown. Evelyn e-mailed back that she had decided to depart People Like Us to focus on things other than her job.
Charlotte called less than a minute later. Evelyn didn’t pick up. An e-mail arrived a few minutes after that, with a lot of caps and a lot of judgment, and the release Evelyn had been feeling since she had been fired was quickly stolen by Charlotte. She had put up with Charlotte when Charlotte was awkward and odd, and had never called her on her holier-than-thou behavior around Camilla, yet her friend couldn’t seem to extend the same leeway to her. Now Evelyn needed two minutes, just two minutes, to collect herself, and apparently she wasn’t allowed even that.
She edged behind the water fountain, but Charlotte looked down the hallway and started pounding across the linoleum toward her. “Evelyn,” she said.
“Char. I didn’t know you were coming to this. I’m surprised you got off of work.”
“Well, I handed off some of the modeling to the junior associates. I figured you’d be here, and since you didn’t return my calls—”
“Who talks on the phone anymore?”
“Or my e-mails.”
Evelyn had typed out her anger at Charlotte’s lack of support in a furious e-mail that she had never sent, opting instead to enjoy her workless weekday getting a facial and a hot-stone massage, which she thought showed not a small amount of emotional intelligence.
She drummed her hand on the water fountain. “Gosh, I barely check that account these days. I’ve actually got to dash. I’m in the runway show and I’m late.”
“You e-mailed me from that account, so obviously you were checking it.”
“Okay, girl detective. They’ve only done half my makeup. I’ll see you after, okay?”
“Can you cool your jets for one minute? I actually have to talk to you.”
“Char, I’ve got to—”
“Evelyn, I’m serious.” Charlotte checked behind her back quickly. “Listen. The job thing. We need to talk about it.”
“I am focusing my energies elsewhere,” Evelyn said.
“You should be looking for another one,” Charlotte replied.
“For your information, I got fired, Charlotte.”
“It’s a really bad idea,” Charlotte said.
“Oh, I’m sorry, getting fired is a bad idea? Alert New York magazine. You’ve got a trend piece.”
“Evelyn, you should be working.”
“Charlotte, you’ve always liked your job, okay? I just realized that maybe getting fired is a great thing. Spending time staring at an old computer isn’t really a useful way to spend my life. Think back to the classes at Sheffield where they talked about finding your passion. I’ve been basically ignoring that for the last almost five years, just jumping between things that aren’t that fulfilling.”
“Look, I like my job sometimes, but I’ve been doing basically data entry for the last three weeks, trying to figure out if the profitability trends at some random company will hold. It’s not glamorous all the time. Or, really, ever. But every week, there’s a paycheck. That’s why they call it work.”
Evelyn blew out a breath. “It’s not the same, Char. First of all, I was getting paid nothing close to what I should be getting, given how much more qualified I was than the cray-cray guy who sat next to me, and given that my health is suffering because of it, which seems like a pretty big price to pay. My stress level is up to here, my skin is disastrous, and I hadn’t been able to go to cardio sculpt in, like, a month, because of work. I’ve had essentially no time to myself or to get involved with any of the things I want to get involved in.”
“Like cardio sculpt?”
“Forget it, Char.” Evelyn’s voice was hard. “I have to get ready for this show.”