“Oh, just that he doesn’t need reasons to take me on holiday.”
Flossie groans. “What are you going to tell us next? That he whisked you off to Lapland for Christmas, and that’s the reason you sleep with him? Because he flew you Club Europe to meet the real Father Christmas? It’s just all so terribly pedestrian.”
“Simon only flies first.” Minty adjusts her ring and purses her lips. She’s near to a retort—Alice can tell—but Eloise stops her.
“It’s a lovely ring,” she says. “And Lapland is gorgeous in December. So,” she continues, trying to diffuse whatever tension remains, “who’s going to Tilly’s shoot the first weekend in September?”
“I suppose I am,” Flossie says. “Though the Cotswolds can be so tedious.”
Eloise shifts her chair so she’s facing Alice. “You’d love a shoot. They’re fun.”
Alice smiles. “Is Tilly the name of the model?”
There’s a brief moment when the women do their best to be polite, but it fades quickly, and just as quickly they dissolve into laughter. Alice feels her nostrils flare. Looking down, she sees herself, distorted, in the reflection of her knife.
“That’s positively adorable,” Henny says. Leaning forward and speaking softly, she explains, “No, darling, it’s not a fashion shoot. It’s a proper shoot.”
She pantomimes holding a rifle, and Flossie about falls from her chair to the floor.
On the other side of the table she can see Eloise shift in her seat, uncomfortable, wanting to save her again. Alice prays that she doesn’t. She prays that Eloise just lets them laugh.
“It makes perfect sense that she’d think it’s about models,” Eloise says. “Alice is a big player in Los Angeles.” She smiles. “She works at one of the most important big data companies out there. Last year Forbes ranked them as one of the most innovative firms to watch in the United States.”
“Oh?” Henny lifts an eyebrow.
“Yes,” Alice says. “I do.”
Minty tucks her blond hair behind her ears and tops off her glass. “I went to Los Angeles once. Dreadful place unless you like the beach, which I find to be absolutely awful. All that water.” She takes a sip and smiles at Alice. “I hear plenty of people find it positively lovely, though.”
“Well, I—”
Eloise interrupts her. “Hopefully she won’t be there for too much longer, though.” She winks at Alice.
“Oh?” Minty says. “Considering a move?”
Again, Eloise answers for her. “We’re hoping she’ll agree to come to London. Ollie knows of a new job in town that’s absolutely perfect for her.”
Alice stares at her sister. This morning, when Eloise first told her about Ollie’s proposal, Alice—with as much grace as she could muster—quickly declined the offer. Eloise had stared at her, confused, as if Alice had suddenly sprouted a second head.
“But why?” she’d asked.
“Because I like Los Angeles. Because I’m just starting to thrive there,” Alice had responded.
“Will you at least consider it?”
“Sure.” Alice blinked, and counted two breaths. “There, I considered it.”
“Alice.”
“Look, I like where I’m at, all right? So … thanks, but no thanks.”
She knew it was pointless. For starters, she could never explain her relationship with Jonathan to her sister. The real problem, though, ran much deeper than that: Eloise couldn’t comprehend Alice’s life, which bore such little resemblance to her own.
Minty tucks an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “How thrilling! What’s the job?”
“Some film thing,” Alice mumbles.
“Oh come on, Alice.” Eloise pours herself some more prosecco. “It’s not just some film thing. It’s a distributive analytics job for a new production company that one of Ollie’s classmates from Sherborne has started. Xavier Wolfson’s his name. Using data from old box office receipts to decide which foreign markets might respond best to his films, and then going out and selling them to those distributors. I bet you’d get to travel to the most fascinating places.”
Henny adds, “Side note: I know Xavier Wolfson and he is fucking fit.”
“Anyway, it would be perfect for Alice, what with her experience in big data. Also, she’s worked in film before. In Mexico City. And she studied it at UCLA. Her thesis on misogyny in Latin American cinema almost won the undergraduate prize for her major. She’s brilliant.”
Flossie reaches across the table for the bottle of prosecco and knocks over a glass of water, which no one moves to clean up. She refills her coupe and sips a scrim of foam off the top.
“I like my current job,” Alice says. She wishes she could crawl beneath the table. Find some crack in the floor and disappear.
“Crunching numbers in front of a screen all day? Alice. Come on. In any event, here’s to my sister—” Eloise raises her glass. “And the possibilities that might await her.”
The women clink their glasses, and Alice excuses herself from the table.
In the restaurant’s bathroom she checks to make sure she’s alone before she splashes cool water on her face and dries her hands on a cotton towel. What the fuck does Eloise know? she thinks. So maybe working in big data isn’t the life she’d always imagined for herself, but look where it’s led her: to Jonathan, to something approximating love, to the possibility of escaping the entrapping loneliness that’s defined her life since she left Mexico City. Her sister thinks that she’s saving her, that she’s rescuing Alice from a life that she deems unworthy. She’s reminded of the dress Eloise sent her years ago, for her junior prom, and how furious she’d become upon opening the package, and trying on the dress, and seeing how perfectly it had fit her. She remembers wanting to throw both her fists through the mirror; instead, she cut the gown’s thin, expensive straps and sent it back to New Haven in the same box.
“It’s the same fucking thing,” Alice says to herself, and her voice echoes. Eloise the Angel, Eloise the Divine, Eloise the Saint, sweeping in to save a life that doesn’t need saving. Sweeping in to remind Alice just how much more capable she’s always been.
She wonders how long she can stay here before they start to notice that she’s gone. Alas, she’s hardly shut off the faucet before Eloise comes in and locks the door behind her.
“Alice—”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Do what? Talk about how nice it was for Ollie to think of you for this job?” Eloise leans against the sink. “Alice, you’re good at film. You like working with film. You should at least talk to Xavier about the job.” She adds, “It’s like you’re punishing yourself for what happened in Mexico by chaining yourself to some awful job that you could give two shits about.”
“I happen to like what I’ve got going in L.A.,” Alice says. “You made me look like a goddamned idiot out there.”
“I’m sorry if I don’t believe you.” Eloise looks down at her fingernails. “Alice, why can’t you accept that I’m just trying to look out for you? That I’m just trying to help?”