“I have to go into town,” Evelyn said. She could feel Camilla glaring at her. As Camilla started to say something, Jaime’s deep voice got there first. “Great,” he said.
“Evelyn,” Camilla started to say, before Evelyn overrode it with an “Excuse me for a second,” and tossed down her croquet mallet. She ran upstairs to her bathroom and, after a quick layer of lip stain and a combing of her eyelashes, started back down. But the door to Camilla’s room was open, and lying on a dresser, just a few feet away, was Camilla’s bracelet of Racquet Club victories.
Evelyn looked right and looked left, and didn’t see or hear anyone. She took a light step forward, and paused again. She would just borrow it for the afternoon and put it right back. Friends borrowed each other’s jewelry all the time. It was just sitting there. Glinting. If Jaime noticed it on her, he might believe that she, too, had Racquet Club lineage. She looked over her shoulder again, then dashed into the room and slipped it into her pocket.
Evelyn put on the bracelet during her made-up errand in town, telling Jaime she was supposed to pick up a wooden serving bowl with silver antlers for Preston’s mother. At the counter, as she paid, she removed the bracelet from her pocket and fastened it onto her left wrist, so Jaime would see it from the driver’s seat. It felt heavy and delicious and right.
She twirled her wrist back and forth as Jaime drove around the edge of James Pond, soothing herself with the pleasing clink of the rackets. She leaned in to adjust the radio’s volume, making the bracelet hit the volume dial. “This bracelet is so clunky,” she said. “My grandfather and great-grandfather were both serious Racquet Club members, and I think these were their most treasured possessions. They barely took care of their other heirlooms—our silver was so tarnished you could barely see that it was silver—but these were always polished and in perfect condition. Men love their victories, I guess.”
He glanced over; she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“Camilla has one, too,” she said, as an insurance policy in case he’d noticed the bracelet before, “which is why we were instant friends. I’d had all the rackets for ages but had never thought of putting them into a bracelet.” She reached for the sun visor.
“It’s nice,” he said loosely, then turned into a long lane. Evelyn looked at the sign and saw Jaime had driven them to the Lake James Club, a private men’s club that, famously, only changed the rules banning tuberculars and Jews ten years ago.
“Do you mind? One of my father’s colleagues is here and needed some documents,” Jaime said.
“No, of course not,” Evelyn said. “I’ll just wait out here.”
“You’re going to sit in the car?”
She turned red—she had thought women weren’t allowed in the club at all. She hated getting these things wrong. “No, no. I’d love to come in, if that’s all right.”
He smiled. “It’s all right by me. It’s hardly a confidential business deal.”
She followed him as he hurried through the club. He greeted the guard and quickly scooped some peanuts from the bar into a tiny plastic cup, popping them into his mouth and sucking them in a way that made Evelyn’s stomach light up. They passed indoor-tennis courts and a large library covered in Oriental carpets. He peered into that, then wheeled around, put a hot hand on her shoulder, and said, “Wait here.” With the imprint of his hand feeling like a brand, Evelyn watched as he gave a folder to an older man, chatted, laughed, then shook the man’s hand and rejoined her. “Finished,” he said with a smile. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
She was following him back toward the exit when he stopped, turned, and leaned in so closely that she could see the shine on his teeth and smell his scent of sweat and metal, and her lower abdomen went into spin cycle. “Do you want to see something?” he said.
She said yes.
He loped up two sets of stairs, and pushed open a door to a dim hallway with large windows on one side. It smelled of dust, and as her eyes focused, she saw it was filled with mounted dead animals’ heads, deer and elk and foxes and bears and, at her feet, a snapping raccoon. Against the right wall were ducks, beautifully feathered and decorative and now dead. “Where are we?” she asked.
“The trophy hall,” he said. His breath tickled her neck and she held perfectly still. “Whenever a member shoots something particularly worthy, it goes into here. I shot that one.” He indicated a duck so gorgeous it looked hand-painted, with a handsome black mohawk and a lush patch of white next to its eye, its mounting plate balanced on a rickety chair.
“That one was beautiful,” he said. “Flying with its mates over Saranac. I got three of them, but this was the cleanest shot.”
She swallowed hard. “They’re defenseless,” she said.
“They’re ducks, Evelyn.”
“Isn’t this a wildlife protection area?”
“All you need is a permit.”
She tried to smile.
“Touch it,” he said.