Mary held up one palm and with the other fist mimed cranking a silent-film camera.
“Movie!” Kitty and Lydia shouted together.
Mary held up four fingers.
“Four words,” Jane said. “You’re doing great.”
Mary paused and thought.
“For God’s sake, Mary,” Lydia said. “Get over yourself.”
Mary held up four fingers again, and Liz said, “Fourth word.”
Mary flung her hands out from her waist as if shooing away a swarm of insects. “A grass skirt?” Liz ventured. “Elvis Presley? Blue Hawaii?”
Mary shook her head and repeated the gesture.
“Going pee!” Kitty shouted. “Peeing everywhere! Shitting in your pants!”
“Exploding with diarrhea!” Lydia cried. “Pepto-Bismol! Having your period!” As Mary shook her head sternly and the two youngest sisters giggled, Liz abruptly understood the nature of the discomfort that had been thrumming within her since Caroline Bingley and Fitzwilliam Darcy had entered Charlotte’s apartment: What would have been a night of inconsequential silliness was now unfolding before the judgmental gaze of outsiders. Thus, the game resembled an audition in which Darcy and Caroline’s negative impressions of Cincinnati would either be confirmed or contradicted. But why did the duo deserve, simply by reason of their imperiousness, for everyone present to strive to win their favorable opinion? Or no, not everyone—certainly not Lydia and Kitty—and if the youngest sisters’ indifference to the outsiders humiliated Liz, it was her own humiliation that she found infuriating. Let Caroline and Darcy think badly of Cincinnati and its inhabitants! Why should she care? But, unaccountably, she did.
Mary waved one hand back and forth, as if attempting to erase the previous gestures, then held up a finger.
“First word,” Jane said.
Mary held up two fingers.
“Two syllables,” Liz said.
Mary again held up one finger.
“First syllable,” Liz said.
Mary cupped her hand around her right ear.
“Sounds like,” Jane and Liz both said.
Mary tapped her knee. “Bee’s knees,” Jane said at the same time Liz said, “I need you.” Mary was shaking her head. She patted her leg, this time higher, and Kitty said, “Thigh meat. Dark meat. Chicken breast.”
“Tits and ass!” Lydia yelled.
Thankfully, this was when the timer went off, and in a tone indicating that she felt the failure was her sisters’ rather than her own, Mary said, “Legends of the Fall.”
“What the fuck is that?” Lydia said.
“It’s a movie,” Liz said. “Actually, a book, too, but Brad Pitt was in the movie.”
“Then why didn’t you do that?” Kitty said to Mary. “It’s not like you don’t have an armpit.”
“No, that was hard,” Jane said. “Even if we’d had more time, I don’t think I could have gotten it.”
“I still don’t understand why you were pretending to have diarrhea,” Lydia said, and Mary said with impatience, “It was fall like waterfall.”
Liz avoided looking at either Darcy or Caroline as Nathan from Procter & Gamble stood and took a scrap of paper from his team’s pile. When he’d unfolded it, he made the same camera-cranking gesture Mary had.
“Movie,” Charlotte said.
Nathan raised a finger.
“One word,” Chip said.
Nathan closed his eyes, balled his hands into fists that he shook by his ears, opened his mouth, and pretended to scream.
Flatly, Darcy said, “Psycho.”
“Hey,” Nathan said. “Not bad.”
Chip chuckled. “Are you sure you’re not a ringer, Darcy?”
“Seriously?” Caroline said with delight. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Nathan said. “All hail—what’s our team name anyway?”
“The Conquistadors,” Charlotte suggested. “Booyah, Bennet sisters!”