“Oh, right, right. She told me that, too. Do you smoke, Betsy?”
The answer was no, not anymore, but she took one anyway. Outside on the inch-thick ice covering the sidewalk, they chatted for a while about how awful American cigarettes were and how tiny the hotel rooms were in Manhattan. Simon was staying at the Morgan, where the rooms were dark, ghastly, really, but the bar was open til 4:00 a.m. Simon had his priorities. Halfway through their cigarettes, Caroline, who put all of her weight behind the colossal wooden door and just barely budged it open enough for her to slip through, came teetering out, unsteady in stilettos and shivering in a borrowed wool coat. Betsy took a drag of the cigarette with her left, gloveless hand.
“There y’all are,” Caroline said. Her eyes darted immediately to Betsy’s ring. Her ‘y’all’ had always been reserved for special occasions, and apparently this was one of them. She linked her arms around fat Simon’s waist for warmth. “I had a feeling I’d find you here.”
Was this man she was hanging on, deferring to in a way that was so unlike Caroline that she hardly recognized her, really a complete stranger? A client who paid her 15 percent commission?
“Hey, Nanook of the North,” she said, eyeing Betsy’s Army/Navy store peacoat and extra-thick black tights. “Aren’t you bundled up like an Eskimo tonight? I bet you can still feel your toes, though! I know I cannot feel mine. Last time I was here was a year ago August. People say Florida is hot, but this place was Hades.”
Betsy understood this as the dig Caroline intended. She had been in New York and not bothered to call. Betsy’s next move had to be defensive, retaliatory.
“Well I, for one, am surprised that you didn’t pull one of your mom’s furs out of storage for the occasion,” said Betsy, surprised by how angry her voice sounded. “I know how you love the scent of mothballs and Shalimar.”
Betsy noted the tiniest wince in Caroline’s face as she pretended to wipe a stray ash from her eye.
Back inside, Caroline waved Betsy into the ladies’ room, and again into a shared stall to chat about her bar crawl with Simon while she scooped bumps out of a brown vial with the tip of his hotel key. That explained the $600 worth of uneaten food on the table. She offered some to Betsy, which she declined just to prove a point of some kind. She was mad at Caroline for not calling sooner, even though the two were practically strangers now, and drugs weren’t going to change anything. Caroline shrugged off the snub and then rattled on about Miami, how South Beach was still totally happening, no matter what people were saying about it being over, about how Hurricane Andrew was, like, ages ago. They went back to the table, where the men were settling the check. All of them tossed their credit cards in a pile and asked the long-suffering waiter to choose one at random onto which he’d charge the entire bill. This was the favorite game of a certain young, moneyed population in town, and it made Betsy squirm with discomfort, recognizing that her own card would be swiftly declined under the burden of that one uneaten dinner. Betsy offered to pay for her wine, but the men batted her hand away. As if, their eyes said. They piled into cabs to ride the twelve blocks to a forgettable bar in the West Village and she agreed to one more drink with the fancy accent dickheads before calling it a night. Inside, after a single round, she got up to leave.
“Afraid you’ll miss something good on TV?” said Caroline as Betsy shoved her arms into the sleeves of her stiff coat. “Don’t worry. I’m sure Gavin’s keeping your spot on the couch warm.”
“Oh, Caroline, it’s been a pleasure,” said Betsy, tossing down a twenty-dollar bill for her watery vodka tonic, the rage creeping into her shaking hand. “It’s nice to see that some things, including your hostility, never change.”
“I don’t want your money,” Caroline said, throwing the twenty back at her.
“No, Caroline, really, you keep it. Buy a scarf. Maybe some blizzard appropriate footwear? You don’t want frostbite. You’ll need your toes back home in the land of eternal sandal season.”
Betsy bolted for the door, blood burning in her cheeks. Caroline came barreling after her.
“Betsy . . .” Caroline shouted. Betsy spun around to confront her.