Prejudice & Pride

by Lynn Messina

  “Pilfering a napkin right under our noses!” Carl says. “The tedious man didn’t even have the decency to ask if we’d mind his stealing the linens. He’s so irritating. The insipidness and yet the noise, the nothingness and yet the self-importance. No doubt, Darcy, you’re thinking how unbearable it was to have to suffer through that ridiculousness during breakfast when all one wants is a little peace and quiet to enjoy one’s paper. Trust me, I know exactly how you feel.”

  “You don’t, actually,” Darcy says as she finishes the last sip of her coffee. “I was just thinking how the morning sunlight brings out the gold flecks in Bennet Bethle’s eyes. And now, before you wish me joy—because, yes, I know how quickly your imagination will jump from admiration to love to matrimony—I must excuse myself. I have a meeting with my estate agent.”

  Although Carl is disconcerted by how easily Darcy anticipated his response, for he prides himself on being at least a little bit opaque, if not entirely impenetrable, he takes comfort in her composure and decides her comment was intended to provoke. Rather than rise to the bait, he reaches for the coffeepot.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Planning the ball is time consuming, but it doesn’t take up every minute of John’s life, and to his boss’s dismay, he continues to show up for work each morning. Meryton would much rather he stay at the Netherfield around the clock, sorting out details and drawing ineffably closer to their benefactor. He blames modern life, with its endless string of technological advances—elevators, subways, non-leech-based medicine—for making it impossible to contrive a disaster severe enough to require John taking up residence at the penthouse. In the good old days, a touch of catarrh would have kept him bedridden there for a week.

  “No, don’t sit down,” Meryton says as John pulls out his chair. He’s just returned from a late lunch with the Sheffield sisters, who have agreed to underwrite an exciting new lecture series hosted by one of their curators. “You need to bring these documents over to the Netherfield. The board is insisting Bingley sign them immediately.”

  Surprised, John takes the stack of papers from his boss and examines them. Then he glances up with a confused look. “Articles of integration for the Golden Diamond Patrons Society?”

  “Yes, it’s a new requirement for all committees,” Meryton explains. “I told the board it wasn’t necessary, but they insisted. So you need to bring those documents over right now. Since it’s already four o’clock, you shouldn’t feel like you have to rush back to the office. Stay and plan.”

  “Or,” Bennet says, smothering a smile at his boss’s blatant machination, “he could stay and scan. Emailing the documents would be much more efficient. I think the board would appreciate that.”

  Damning the intrusiveness of modern conveniences—why can’t anything be difficult anymore!—Meryton shakes his head regretfully and explains that the scanners are broken.

  “What? All of them?” John asks incredulously.

  “Every single one in the building,” Meryton says with a regretful sigh. “As you know, most of our office equipment is cheap and old. If Bennet here could convince some corporation to donate top-of-the-line equipment, we wouldn’t be in this fix.”

  “And yet somehow I think we would,” Bennet murmurs, grateful that the executive director’s estimation of their equipment is accurate. Meryton wouldn’t have hesitated to disable brand-new machines in the pursuit of his goal.

  Accepting this explanation, John slides the contract into his briefcase, pushes in his chair and leaves for the Netherfield. Bennet watches him disappear down the narrow winding stairs and returns to the grant application he’s filling out for the Shubert Foundation.

  “You shouldn’t get too comfortable either,” Meryton says.

  “Why not?” he asks, unable of seeing how he could fit into the executive director’s Machiavellian scheme.

  “Because in about forty minutes, you’re going to volunteer to bring John his phone,” he explains as he holds up the device, which he’d discreetly removed from his employee’s jacket pocket. “I need eyes and ears on the ground. Report back on how things are progressing and don’t be stingy with the details.”

  Bennet knows exactly what details his boss would like, but he has no intention of supplying them, and by the time he arrives at the Netherfield two hours later, he’s forgotten all about his boss’s directive.

  John is grateful to see him and clutches his phone as if it’s a missing limb. “Thank you. I can’t figure out how I forgot it. I really thought I’d put it in my bag.”

  His brother shrugs and assures him he doesn’t mind playing delivery boy. “It rounds out my résumé.”

  “Come in. Sit down. We’re having cocktails,” Bingley calls from across the room as she holds up a silver shaker. “You can’t have a party without a signature drink, which I know you know, so we’re experimenting. On offer now is Lucy’s entry, a kirtini, which is a martini made with crème de cassis.”

  “Which is the key ingredient of a kir,” Lucy explains from her supine position on the couch, where she’s flipping through a magazine. “Next, we’re going to add champagne for a kirtini royale. Although I expect my love of the kirtini to be absolute, I think the kirtini royale might blow it out of the water.”

  “A mother should never play favorites with her children,” Hurst says, briefly raising his wife’s legs off the cushion to settle on the couch.

  “Don’t worry, darling,” she says. “I’m entirely indiscriminate when it comes to alcohol.”

  Bingley laughs knowingly as she fills seven martini glasses with a burgundy-colored liquid and drops two raspberries in each. “Here we go. Round three: the kirtini,” she says, distributing the first two drinks to Darcy and Carl, who are sitting at a round table next to the window. Darcy is typing quickly on her computer as Carl reads his phone and occasionally looks up to ask her a question about her email. Lucy sits up to take a glass.

  To Bennet, who’s still standing on the threshold of the room, unsure whether to enter or leave, Bingley says, “I’m sure you have a parcel of excellent excuses as to why you must run off, but I’m categorically denying you permission. Until you showed up, our numbers were even and we’re in desperate need of a tiebreaker. So go find a seat and start drinking.”

  Amused, Bennet follows her order, sitting in the large leather armchair adjacent to the couch where Lucy and her husband are reclining.

  “At the risk of sounding horrendously smug, it’s as delicious as I expected,” Lucy says.

  Bingley agrees, as does John, who’s leaning against the bar as he eats his raspberry, but Carl says the drink could use a bit more vermouth. Darcy takes a quick sip and raises her left thumb in approval as her right hand continues to type. When Bennet doesn’t immediately offer an opinion, Bingley asks him what he thinks.

  “It’s good. A little on the sweet side,” he says.

  “That’s two votes for more vermouth,” Carl cries triumphantly. “Remember that for the next batch.”

  Lucy gives him a withering look and calls for kirtini royales all around.

  Bingley rinses her cocktail shaker, pops a bottle of champagne and starts to measure ingredients for the next entrant.

  “I’m sure your brother George will appreciate getting an email with so much detail,” Carl says conversationally to Darcy, who makes no reply as her fingers dash across the keyboard.

  He tries again: “You type so fast. Your fingers just fly across the keyboard.”

  Darcy tells him he’s wrong. “I actually write pretty slowly. I just delete a lot, which makes it seem fast.”

  “I suppose you get a lot practice writing letters on behalf of your initiatives,” Carl says. “Business letters are so odious. All those ‘dear sirs and madams.’”

  “Then it’s a lucky thing for the poor that writing those letters is my responsibility.”

  Unable to smother a smile, Bennet hides his amusement in his glass and hopes the exchange, which is entirely in keeping with his
opinion of each party, never ends. It’s like a deliciously satiric one-act play performed in a black-box studio in the East Village.

  “Be sure to tell your brother I hope to see him soon,” Carl says.

  “Already included, per your earlier request.”

  “It’s getting rather dark in here. Maybe I should turn on the lamp.”

  “Thank you, no. I’ll turn it on if I need it.”

  “How can you type for so long without your wrists hurting? If I type more than three sentences, I get carpal tunnel.”

  Darcy is silent.

  “Don’t forget to offer him my congratulations on graduating the conservatory,” Carl says.

  “Your congratulations will have to wait for my next email because I’ve already hit SEND,” she says.

  “That’s all right. I’ll tell him myself when I see him in September. Do you always write such long, informative letters?”

  “Long, yes. Informative, I’m not so sure.”

  “You’re too modest. People who write long letters easily always provide lots of interesting information. I know this as the recipient of many long letters.”

  Across the room, Bingley laughs. “Nice try, Carl, but that won’t fly with Darcy, because she doesn’t write easily. She struggles to find le mot juste. Am I right, Darcy?”

  “We have different writing styles,” her friend says as she closes her laptop.

  Carl snorts. “I’m not sure you can call the nonsense my sister produces writing. She leaves out words, uses too many emojis and invents acronyms at will. ITBTWTS: I’m too busy to write this sentence.”

  “But I am,” Bingley says in her defense. “My ideas come so fast and so furiously that if I don’t record them as quickly as possible, they’ll slip away. The result, I’m willing to concede, is a confusing letter that’s difficult to decipher.”

  “Your humility is refreshing,” Bennet observes. “People usually get defensive when criticized.”

  Darcy shakes her head. “No, no, don’t fall for it. Bingley’s the queen of the humblebrag.”

  “Lil’ ole me?” Bingley asks, batting her eyelashes as she spoons ice into a row of empty tumblers. “However do you mean?”

  “You appear to be owning the fault, but the truth is you’re proud of your incoherent emails and texts. You think they reflect an agile mind too busy to waste time on niggling little things like details. It’s the reason you use so many acronyms. ISICSDMTP: I’m sorry I can’t slow down my thought process,” Darcy says. “You like to think of yourself as unpredictable and spontaneous. It’s like when you told Mr. Meryton that if you decided to leave the Netherfield, you’d be gone in a matter of minutes. You were complimenting yourself. And yet there’s no reason to be flattered by the idea of skipping town with important business left unfinished.”

  Bingley pours a jigger of crème de cassis into the shaker. “Unfair! You can’t possibly hold against me something I said a week ago. And anyway—I stand by it. So you can’t accuse me of adopting an affectation just to show off.”

  “You can stand by it all you want,” Darcy says, “but I know you, and your decisions are easily influenced by other people. I can totally see you on the corner of Fifth Avenue with your bags hailing a taxi to take you to Kennedy, and if a friend came up to you and said, ‘Bingley, darling, stay until next week,’ you’d drop your arm immediately.”

  “Oddly enough,” Bennet says, “your description of Bingley is more flattering than hers of herself.”

  Bingley laughs. “It’s lovely of you to interpret what my friend says as a tribute to my easygoing nature, but that’s not at all what she means. Darcy would think better of me if, standing on the curb of Fifth Avenue, bags in hand, I abruptly said no and hopped into the first available cab.”

  Bennet cocks his head. “So as far as Darcy is concerned, a rash decision stubbornly held to is no longer a rash decision?”

  “I can’t say what Darcy thinks,” Bingley says with a smile.

  Darcy observes that Bennet is asking her to justify opinions that are not actually her own. Nevertheless, she’s game and agrees to play along. “But you have to remember that the friend who tells her to stay in New York doesn’t give her a single reason for the request.”

  “So giving in to the wishes of a friend without arguing isn’t a good thing either,” Bennet says.

  “Giving in for no reason reflects badly on both of them.”

  “What about friendship and affection? Don’t they count for anything?” Bennet asks. “When you care about someone, you’re happy to give in to their request without needing to be wheedled or convinced. Forget this particular example and make it more general: If one friend asks another friend to change her plans, which weren’t very important to begin with, would you really think less of the second friend for agreeing without an argument?”

  “If we’re going to do this, then we should really do it and fill in all the blanks,” Darcy says. “Exactly how important is the request? How close are the two friends? These parameters should be established before we continue.”

  “Yes, yes,” Bingley says gleefully, brandishing the cocktail shaker. “Let’s do this properly and figure out all the particulars, starting with comparative height and size of the two parties, for that’s a hugely important factor. Honestly, Bennet, if Darcy did not tower over me, I wouldn’t pay her half as much deference. I can’t think of a more awful object than Darcy on some occasions and in some places—at Pemberley especially, and on a Sunday evening when she has nothing to do.”

  Darcy smiles, but Bennet, seeing the faint color sweep her cheeks, realizes she’s actually offended and resists the urge to laugh. Carl resents the insult on her behalf and takes his sister to task for talking so much nonsense.

  “I know what you’re doing, Bingley,” Darcy says. “You hate arguments and want this one to end, so you’re being ridiculous.”

  Emptying the ice from the tumblers, her friend readily agrees. “Arguments are too much like disputes. If you and Bennet could put yours on hold until I’m out of the room, I’d be very grateful. Then you can say whatever you like about me and each other.”

  “I’m happy to let it lie,” Bennet says, “and I’m sure Darcy has more letters to write.”

  Thankful for the change in subject, Bingley pours a sample of the kirtini royale into each glass and asks for John’s help in distributing round four.

  Despite its potential—for what drink or situation has ever not been made better by the addition of champagne?—Lucy’s newest contrivance falls flat. Carl immediately dismisses it as undrinkable swill, and Lucy, who’d assumed her capacity for sweets to be infinite, complains that it makes her teeth hurt.

  “Excellent,” Bingley cheers, pouring the remaining royale mixture down the sink. “We’ve finally managed to eliminate a contender. Now all we have to do is whittle down the other three. Since we didn’t have a clear winner, I suggest we start again from the top.”

  This plan is generally held to be sound, and John slips behind the bar to scoop more ice. Bennet, with his parcel of excellent excuses as to why he has to run off, decides to stay for his brother’s sake. The oldest Bethle sibling is certainly capable of holding his own—and no doubt has—among the snarky Bingston brothers, but Bennet sees no reason why he should have to. He leans back in his comfortable chair and catches the magazine Lucy throws at him, not in an attempt to share reading material but because that’s how she disposes of publications when she’s done perusing them: She tosses them into the air or across the room.

  The magazine is the current issue of Rolling Stone, and Bennet is happy to flip through its pages while listening to Carl and Hurst dissect an acquaintance they’d run into that morning in Bergdorf. Their catalog of observations, at once minute and epic, is a duet of dislike sung in perfect harmony, and Bennet feels sympathy for the absent young man who had the terrible misfortune to shop for jeans that day.

  As he scans headlines and Bingley presents drinks for their consid
eration, he can’t help noticing how frequently Darcy’s eyes are fixed on him. He knows it’s not because she likes him—he’s hardly an object of admiration for so impressive a woman—and yet it seems even stranger that she would stare at him out of dislike. No, the only thing he can imagine is there’s be something more wrong and inexcusable about him, by her standards, of course, than about anyone else in the room. The assumption doesn’t bother him. He likes her too little to worry about her approval.

  After listening to Hurst discuss the prospects of an Italian programmer he’d met for lunch—sadly, very unlikely the man would get second-round funding for his app—Carl asks his brother about his friend in Brooklyn who makes small-batch Scotch.

  “Small-batch whiskey,” Hurst immediately corrects. “You can’t call it Scotch if it’s made outside of Scotland.”

  While Lucy protests her husband’s nitpickery and Hurst defends the importance of nomenclature by listing inferior products that thankfully cannot call themselves champagne (“I’m looking at you, prosecco”), Darcy wanders over to Bennet’s chair and glances at the positive review of Coldplay’s latest release. Noting the effusive praise of the headline, she asks if it makes Bennet inclined to download the album immediately.

  Bennet’s lips twitch, but he doesn’t say anything, and Darcy, unused to being ignored, repeats the question.

  “Sorry,” he says easily. “I was just trying to figure out the safe response. Clearly, you want me to say yes, so you can scorn my populist taste in music, and, obviously, I’d rather not give you the opening. So the answer is no, I don’t want to buy Coldplay’s new album. Now, judge me if you dare.”

  “I absolutely do not dare,” she says with a surprisingly easy laugh.

  Having expected to offend her with his honesty, Bennet is taken aback by her affable reply. What he doesn’t know, however, is that he has a way of combining friendliness and archness that makes it difficult for anyone to take offense, and Darcy, who finds her interest rarely piqued, is thoroughly intrigued by him. She genuinely believes that were it not for the many disadvantages of his situation—personal as well as professional—she would be in danger of falling for him.