He was sitting on the futon, staring at the TV. Among the beer cans dotted across the coffee table, there was a plain manila envelope. Evan reached for the remote to mute the TV. Then he turned to look at me, like an afterthought.
“Where were you?”
“Out with coworkers.” I hung my coat on the back of the door. I’d had the excuse ready to go for weeks. It was the first time I’d had to use it. “We got a late dinner afterward.”
The room smelled like beer. Evan shifted forward in his seat, tenting his fingertips over his mouth for a moment. Then he reached for the envelope on the coffee table and held it between his two hands.
“What is that?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.
He cleared his throat. “Michael and I finally talked about Vegas.”
He turned the envelope over, examining the other side. There was no postage, no writing or marking on it. I wondered what he was looking for.
“No one’s getting bonuses this year,” he said. “We’d all known that for a while. Some of the guys were pissed. They were counting on it. But it wouldn’t look right, not in this economy. Bad optics, you know.”
Optics. This was not the Evan I knew.
“Michael reiterated that today. No bonuses. But, he said, he wanted me to have this. As a token of his appreciation. He said he was proud of the work that I’d done on this WestCorp deal.”
He handed me the envelope, nodding at me to open it. Inside were several stacks of crisp new hundred-dollar bills wrapped in paper bands.
“How much is this?”
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
“Jesus. But Evan, what are you—you can’t keep this, can you?”
“I don’t know.”
He stood up, taking the envelope back. On his way to the bedroom, he dropped it on top of the bookshelf, like he was tossing aside a pile of junk mail. A gesture of indifference that both frightened and disgusted me. Evan couldn’t feign innocence any longer, not like before Las Vegas. He knew exactly what Michael had done—what he himself had done. They were breaking the law. And this time, he hadn’t asked my advice. He was acting like this was the most normal thing in the world. The Evan I knew was never coming back. So then what was his deal? It was so obvious he didn’t care about me anymore. Why was he still here?
Later, in bed, wide awake. “When are you leaving for Boston?” he asked.
“Oh. Uh, Wednesday afternoon.”
He was silent. I wanted to sit up, turn on the light, ask him what the hell he was thinking. But we were past that point. Whatever words we might once have said had nowhere left to land.
“Are you…” I started to say. “For Thanksgiving, are you—”
“I’m staying here. Work.”
“Right. That makes sense.”
He rolled over, away from me. Our cheap mattress bounced and sagged from the shift in weight. “Goodnight,” he said. A few minutes later, he was asleep.
* * *
Elizabeth was waiting for me at the train station. It was colder in Boston than in New York, and she wore a huge parka with a fur-lined hood. She was the small one in our family—a delicate build, a foxy face—and the parka made her look even tinier.
“This is weird,” I said, climbing into the front seat of her old silver Saab. Hot air blasted from the vents. I kicked aside the empty Dunkin’ Donuts cups rolling around in the footwell.
“What?”
“I should be the one driving. I’m your big sister.”
She laughed. “You’re a bad driver. I wouldn’t let you.”
“You got home today?”
“Yeah. The roads were terrible. It snowed last night. Can you believe that? In November.”
Elizabeth went to a small college in Maine. She had been at the top of her class in high school and would have had her pick, but she decided to forgo the most competitive schools—no Ivy League for her. She was majoring in studio art. She wrote poetry on the side, and she developed her own photographs. My parents had expressed concern about the path she seemed to be headed down, but Elizabeth kept telling them this was what she wanted to do. Eventually it sank in, and for the most part, they left her alone.
“Plus I barely slept,” she said. “I was in the studio until four in the morning. So how’s New York? No Evan this year?”
I grimaced inwardly at his name. “He couldn’t take the time.”
“Are things any better between you guys?”
“Actually, there’s this guy I sort of reconnected with. From college.”
“What?” She whipped around to look at me. “A guy? Like, romantically?”
I saw the disapproval written across Elizabeth’s face, and I changed tack. The urge to confess came so strongly, but the lie came easily, too. “Oh…um, no. Not like that. We’ve just been spending time together. Friends. I don’t know what it is.”
Elizabeth nodded, turning back to the road. She had always liked Evan, and I felt bad dumping this on her. But she was also my sister, and she knew me better than anyone did. She may not have liked what I was saying, what I was implying, but I think she understood what lay behind it.
After a long silence, she piped up again. “Hey, can you let Pepper out? Mom asked me to walk him.”
“So why don’t you walk him?”
“I’m just dropping you off. This girl from school is having a thing. Mom and Dad are at that party at the Fletchers’. I didn’t know I was going to have to pick you up.”
“Well, thanks for squeezing me in.”
“I’m just saying. I have other plans.”
“Yeah, well, so do I.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Well, I had the option to have plans. One of my boarding-school friends had started an e-mail chain suggesting that anyone in Boston for the holidays meet up at a local bar on Wednesday night. It seemed better than sitting alone in our empty house, waiting for everyone else to return. I’d been doing that too much this past summer in New York. “I’m meeting up with some Andover people at Finnegan’s.”
“Finnegan’s! Yikes. Have fun with that.”
Elizabeth dropped me off, and I found the spare key under the planter. Pepper, our black Lab, was in his crate in the mudroom off the kitchen. His tail thumped as I fiddled with the latch, then he burst out and collided with me. He nuzzled his wet snout into my palms.
“I love you, too, Pepper,” I said. “Let’s go outside, okay?”
Pepper had been my and Elizabeth’s dog. When we were younger, we alternated taking him on short, lazy walks. Suddenly I was thirteen years old again: the cold air, the sparkle of the stars overhead, the warm glow of windows in the dark, walking Pepper between homework and bed. Running through dates of battles or lines of Shakespeare or base pairs of DNA. Worrying about grades. Worrying about getting into a good college. I had never bothered to worry about what came after that. No one told me to worry. Surely another rung on the ladder awaited, and wouldn’t that next part be just like every other part? Pepper sniffed around the base of a tree. He didn’t tug at his leash the way he used to. He was an old dog, I realized, almost ten. He only had a few good years left.
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes when we got back inside. I’d been feeling strange all week. “You want a treat, Peps?” I said, brightening my voice. He wagged his tail. The clock on the microwave in the kitchen said it was just after 8:30 p.m. The group had planned to meet at Finnegan’s by eight.
My parents had taken my dad’s car to the party at the Fletchers’, which left me with my mother’s Volvo. I wondered, for a moment, whether I wanted to do this. Drink bad beer and eat greasy food with people I didn’t really care about. Maybe for once I’d be better off at home, by myself. Put on a pot of tea, curl up with a book, run a bath. Embracing instead of fleeing the solitude. I hesitated, about to switch off the ignition. Then my phone buzzed with a text from one of the lacrosse girls: Great! See you in a few! I put the car into drive and headed for the bar.
&nbs
p; * * *
I thought things at work might have improved after the gala, but the only person altered by the news was Eleanor. She floated in late every morning, smugger than ever, leaving for lunch and often not returning. But Laurie was the same as always. A heavy cloud trailed her as she passed back and forth in front of my desk.
Laurie was on the phone around ten days before Thanksgiving. It was a quiet afternoon, and if I stopped the clatter of my typing, I could just make out what she was saying to the person on the other end.
“Well, I can’t get in the middle of this. It’s not my place.”
Silence. I squinted at my computer screen in case someone walked by.
“I’m trying.” She was nearly whispering. “I’m just trying to keep this place running. What else can I do?”
Laurie hung up, sighed loudly, and walked out of her office. She flung her coat over her shoulders. “Julia, I’m leaving for the day,” she said. “If anything comes up, call my cell.” When she disappeared into the lobby, I reached for my wallet. I still had Sara Yamashita’s business card from the night of Nick’s party. I ran my finger along the edge of the thick card stock, thinking.
“Are you kidding?” Abby said to me. This was a few days later, the weekend before Thanksgiving. We were at a Mexican place on the Upper East Side. She swiped a tortilla chip through the guacamole. “You should call her. Absolutely.”
“It doesn’t seem too pushy?”
“Jules. She wouldn’t have told you to call unless she actually wanted you to call. Come on! Quit that miserable job of yours. It’s what I keep telling Jake.”
“Things are still bad?”
Abby rolled her eyes. When Lehman went under, Henry Fletcher called in a favor with a friend at Barclays, which was absorbing certain Lehman assets. He ensured that his son would have a place in the new organization. But it had all been a waste. According to Abby, Jake’s grumpy dislike of the work had morphed into outright hatred.
“Poor guy,” she said. “He’s miserable. I mean, he never liked banking to begin with. The Barclays people are assholes, apparently. He wishes he’d just been laid off, like everyone else. He’s going to take the GMAT next year.”
“Wow. Has he told his parents?”
“Hah. You know what they’re like. He can’t talk to them about this stuff.”
She went quiet, staring down at the table. A week earlier, Abby’s father had finally lost his job. She delivered the news with a shrug, a what-can-you-do resignation, but there was a catch in her voice. The value of their house had plummeted by half. Her mom had started looking for work. They were pretending that everything was going to be fine. But Abby, as the youngest, had spent many years learning to decipher the language of her parents. She saw right through them.
“I’m sorry, Abby. That’s really shitty.”
“Oy vey,” she said with a sigh. Then she tried for brightness again. “Hey, could we get two more margaritas? And some more chips?” she said to our waiter as he walked past. She picked up her fork and scooped a bite of guacamole. “This stuff is seriously like crack. So wait a second: How do you know this girl again? This Sara girl?”
“She went to Yale. She was a few years ahead of us.”
“Funny. Her name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Well, actually—I met her through Adam. Recently.”
“Adam?” she raised one eyebrow. “Where was this?”
“Some party. He used to know her from the magazine. We sort of hit it off.”
The waiter arrived with a fresh basket of chips and two new drinks. After he took our order, Abby lifted her margarita toward me.
“I think this is great, Jules. Do it. Call her. To new beginnings.” We clinked our glasses, and I took a sip of my drink—the salty and sweet tang of artificial lime. The restaurant was loud and chaotic, with colorful Christmas lights strung across the mirrored walls and pocked wooden tables. Saturday night in New York City. Moments like this I felt lucky, almost happy.
After dinner, Abby headed toward the subway, and I pretended to walk back to my apartment. But I pulled out my phone and called Adam instead. He was at a dinner party that night hosted by a classmate of his from high school, a downtown party girl who lived in an enormous SoHo loft. “She’s a brat,” he’d said. “Trust fund when she turned eighteen. Never had to lift a finger.” Adam’s critical streak was something I was still learning to navigate. He was suspicious of people who had it too easy, but at the same time he seemed suspicious of people who hustled too hard for their success. That’s what I thought at the time, at least. Although later I realized I was wrong about the latter: it was jealousy, not suspicion.
I did sometimes wonder why he acted so friendly toward the people whom he claimed to dislike. I’d asked him why he was going to the dinner party if he hated this girl, and he shrugged. “She knows a lot of people. Her parties are good for networking.” He grazed his hand along the back of my head. “I’d have more fun with you, though.”
When he picked up the phone, there was a swell of sound in the room behind him, conjuring a picture in my mind: the beautiful people, the expensive clothing, the perfect decor. I felt a sharp pang of loneliness. “Hey, you just finish dinner with Abby?”
“Yeah. You’re still there?”
“They just cleared the main course. Maybe another hour or so?”
I took a cab to his apartment. The happiness of dinner with Abby had vanished, and I was in a maudlin mood. I wandered around Adam’s apartment with an enormous glass of red wine, tempted to let it slosh over the rim onto his pristine carpet. But Adam hadn’t done anything wrong; there was nothing I was allowed to be mad about. At some point I lay down on the couch and later woke to the sound of the front door opening. The glowing readout on the cable box said it was 2:00 a.m. I’d been in his apartment for more than four hours.
“Where were you?” I said, rubbing my eyes.
Adam sank onto the couch, slung his arm around me. “Sorry. It went later than I thought. I called. Your phone must be on vibrate.”
I rested my head on his chest. He smelled like bourbon and a sugary dessert. The faint scent of tobacco, which I had gradually grown to like. I ran my hand over his shirt, down to his belt buckle, and turned my head to kiss his neck. My addiction was kicking in despite my bad mood, despite the beginnings of a red-wine headache. I pulled him toward me. We had sex on the couch, my dress hiked up and his pants tugged down, fast and hard and mechanical. But something seemed different in Adam. He hadn’t needed this the way I had. He was going through the motions, sating my hunger without needing to sate his.
Afterward I told him what Abby and I had talked about over dinner.
“I think I’m going to call Sara. You know, Sara Yamashita, from the party. I’m going to ask her to lunch.”
“You are?”
“She told me to keep in touch.”
“Sara’s a lot of talk. I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”
“But it’s worth a shot, right? It can’t hurt.”
Adam reached for my hand. “Trust me, babe. I know Sara better than you do. It might not be such a great idea. All I’m saying is don’t rush into it. You want to be deliberate about your next move, right?”
“I guess.” I glanced again at the cable box—it was almost 3:00 a.m. I started gathering my things, the scarf and boots and coat I’d scattered around the apartment like an animal marking its territory. “I should get going.” Adam sat back on the couch, taking a beat too long before he stood up to walk me to the door. I wondered how much longer we were going to have to do this—saying good-bye in the middle of the night, sneaking back to our own lives. I was already getting sick of it. In the cab ride home, I checked my phone. There were no missed calls or texts from Adam, despite what he’d said—nothing, from anyone, all night. I was annoyed all over again.
When had I lost the power to control my own moods? I felt so porous that fall, so absorbent of whatever the people around me were doing. There was nothin
g to keep me tied to the earth. I scudded in whatever direction the wind decided to blow. My mistake was that I kept interpreting it as a good thing, confusing that lightness for spontaneity.
* * *
“Julia! Hey!”
Someone waved at me from the sidewalk outside the entrance to the bar. It was Camilla, a girl from the lacrosse team. We had lived in the same dorm for my three years of boarding school. She had arrived at school with glasses and curly hair and prissy sweater sets. But after a few months around the older girls, she’d learned the ways of experience—hair straighteners, tight jeans, push-up bras, contact lenses. She started sneaking boys back to her room in the middle of the night. She was legendary by senior year. Camilla stubbed out her cigarette as I approached and gave me a hug.
“Oh, my God, I am so glad you came. It’s fucking freezing. How can you stand this place?”
“Yeah, sorry. Not exactly sunshine and palm trees. When’d you get home?”
“I flew in on Sunday. I decided to make a week of it.” Camilla had gone to USC and was working as an assistant to some big-shot movie agent in Los Angeles. She had a tan, and her hair smelled like coconut oil. I was vividly aware of how different her life was from mine. “Let’s go inside,” she said, tugging my hand.
I followed Camilla toward the corner of the bar where the other lacrosse girls were standing. Most of them worked in consulting or in finance or as paralegals. A few of the finance girls joked blackly about how much time they had left—the bosses were just waiting for the holidays to pass before they brought down the ax. There were one or two outliers who, like Camilla and me, had found low-paying assistant jobs in more “creative” industries. “That sounds…interesting,” one girl said after I told her about my job at the Fletcher Foundation. She was an analyst at Goldman Sachs, and we quickly ran out of things to talk about. I was about to use my empty glass as an excuse to leave when I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Julia?” he said. The dark wavy hair; the aquiline nose. His voice.
“Rob,” I said. “Wow. Hi.”
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