EIGHT
Georgiana
If Georgiana’s mother had one weakness it was for clothing. And wine. And for hitting to the alley when she played doubles. And repression. And gossip. And for buying things late at night on the computer. And once Georgiana had seen her try to take a puff on a cigar at a party, and it was like watching a blowfish try to whistle, but that was neither here nor there. The point was that her mother had an absolutely humongous collection of clothing, and whenever Georgiana was invited to a costume party she headed straight to her closet.
From the depths of her mother’s walk-in Georgiana had exhumed the following looks: “Yummy Mummy” (a white bandage dress piled with candy necklaces, a baby-bump pillow shoved down the front), “Sexy Pope” (a gold pashmina tied like a bandeau and paired with flared white trousers and a hat made from a King Arthur flour sack), and “Ruth Baby Ginsburg” (her mother actually had a lace collar for some unimaginable reason, but the pacifier came from CVS). When Georgiana heard that the theme for her high school friend Sebastian’s birthday was Oligarch Chic, she was nearly overwhelmed with the possibilities. Her mother owned more fur than the Bronx Zoo, had multiple dresses with feathers, and even had a tiara in a box. (She had tried to make Darley wear the tiara for her wedding but was unceremoniously shut down.)
Georgiana invited herself over after work on Wednesday to rummage through her choices. Her parents were home, Berta was cooking duck with jasmine rice, and her mother poured them each a glass of red wine while she supervised the pillage of her wardrobe. (Tilda offered her a straw so Georgiana might avoid tooth staining, but she preferred to slug it like a heathen.) There was a floor-length black sequined gown that would have been perfect had it not been so warm. There was a cropped white rabbit-fur jacket that was so soft she couldn’t stop petting it. There were even diamond earrings in the shape of panthers that were so wonderfully gaudy Georgiana would have made fun of them if they hadn’t been real and worth the cost of a midpriced sedan.
“Will your friend be at the party?” her mother asked nonchalantly, pulling out a white silk jumpsuit and laying it on the ottoman.
“No, it’s just people from school. Lena and Kristin and everyone.” Georgiana slithered into a leather dress and immediately started sweating. People talked a lot about white shoes after Labor Day, but leather dresses after April Fool’s Day were even less practical. She shucked it onto the floor and rummaged through the sequined dresses in back. She wore a bra and underwear, aware of being mostly naked in front of her mother. It was funny to think about how similar their bodies were, while also how different. She knew from watching her mother on the beach, watching her mother try on clothing, how she would look in forty years. They had the same frame, tall with the same slim hips, broad shoulders, the same small breasts. Her mother’s stomach was soft and wrinkled; the place where three babies had grown looked slightly puckered, while Georgiana’s was flat, any softness from drinking too much beer on weekends. Georgiana was stronger, but she knew her mother was in remarkably good shape for her age, and the fact that she was still so trim was an act of sheer will, mostly motivated by her refusal to give up a forty-year collection of clothing.
She finally settled on a low-cut gold dress, studded strappy heels, big Chanel sunglasses, and a leopard-print hat. She wanted to borrow some jewelry—there was a ring with a ruby the size of a gumdrop—but her mom had limits on her generosity.
Sebastian had everyone meet at his apartment in the East Village before the dinner so that they could ride out to Brighton Beach in a party bus. They were going to a Russian dance hall, and Georgiana had to admire her friends’ commitment to the theme. The guys were wearing shirts unbuttoned to reveal half their chests, layers of thick gold necklaces on display. The women wore all manner of fur and leather, heat be damned, but somehow Oligarch Chic had morphed into a more general nineties club look, their eyes winged with liquid liner, their hair huge, their heels five inches high.
There was a bar in the back of the bus with vodka, mixers, and big magnums of champagne, and when the driver turned on flashing colored lights Georgiana felt like she was wasted at seven p.m., the road bumping beneath them. Along with Lena and Kristin, Sebastian had invited their usual circle plus his freshman-year roommate, Curtis McCoy. Georgiana didn’t know Curtis well, but she remembered visiting his family home on Martha’s Vineyard with Lena once and realizing that they owned an entire gated compound, that the Clintons and the Obamas had spent summers in houses on their property. He was next-level rich. Curtis’s father was the CEO of a defense company and that had somehow always made her feel nervous around Curtis, like the fact that his family made Tomahawk missiles gave him an inherent dangerous power that she should steer clear of.
When they arrived at the dance hall, they spilled out of the bus and into the grand foyer. Georgiana suddenly felt like they were crashing a wedding, seeing the big groups of families, teenagers in suits, and middle-aged women in ruched satin dresses. A man in a starched white shirt led them to a banquet table in the center of the hall, and a swarm of waiters set about pouring them vodka and delivering massive platters of pickles and smoked fish, pancakes dotted with piles of chilled pink roe, sliced beef, and blintzes stuffed with cheese. Sebastian and his friends skipped the food and set about drinking with single-minded dedication, but Georgiana knew she’d end up a sloppy mess if she weren’t careful, so she made herself a plate of blintzes and pickles.
There must have been three hundred people in the hall, eating and drinking and mostly ignoring the two women in Jessica Rabbit cocktail gowns standing on stage and singing a duet to Miley Cyrus’s “The Climb.” As the evening progressed, more and more performers came onto the stage and groups made their way to the dance floor. The guys, now fully drunk, took selfies with the towers of empty vodka bottles stacked atop their table. Lena and Kristin wanted to dance, so Georgiana followed them out to the floor, happy she’d skipped the fur coat as she joined the sweaty crowd. It was like a bat mitzvah on steroids, like being onstage for the Super Bowl halftime show. The fact that every other partygoer was Russian and lived an hour from their part of New York set them free to dance like maniacs, to let sweat pour down their temples, to feel their careful makeup washing away.
Georgiana had to pee and left the dance floor to find a restroom, climbing a marble staircase to a beautiful lounge filled with puffy chairs and gilded mirrors. She used a paper hand towel to blot her face, and she fixed her makeup in the powder room vanity. She had long ago abandoned her hat and had her big Chanel sunglasses pushed up like a hairband. Her feet ached and she was dying of thirst, so instead of returning to the dance floor she followed the maze of carpeted halls back to the banquet table, where she saw Curtis sitting alone at the end. Slightly buzzed and feeling friendly, Georgiana grabbed her water and pulled out the chair beside him.
“Hey Curtis, having fun?” she said, smiling.
“Not particularly, no.” He frowned, glancing at her briefly before looking off over her head.
“What’s wrong?”
“The fact that you have to ask that means that it’s not worth discussing,” he said.
“What?” Georgiana asked, completely confused. Why was he being so rude to her?
“Do you not see how fucked up this whole thing is? I can’t believe I’m here.”
“How fucked up a birthday party is? No, I guess I don’t see it,” Georgiana replied, annoyed.
“You think it’s cool that a bunch of rich white kids who met at private school are dressed in costumes to ridicule an immigrant group in their own neighborhood? That seems fine to you?”
“It’s Oligarch Chic. It’s making fun of rich people. And Russians are white,” Georgiana said with a frown.
“As I said, the fact that you had to ask meant it wasn’t worth me discussing it with you. Nice sunglasses.” Curtis turned away from her and picked up his phone.
“Fuck you, Curtis. You don’t know me.”
“Of course I know you. You’re a rich real estate brat living off your trust fund, only dimly aware that an entire world exists outside the coddled one percent.”
“Oh, so you live in Zuccotti Park? You went to the School of Hard Knocks? Didn’t you go to Princeton?”
“Oh, so you don’t live off a trust fund?”
“I work for a not-for-profit providing health care for developing countries,” Georgiana said icily.
“And who pays your rent?”
“I own.”
“And your rich parents bought that apartment.”
“My grandparents left me money, not that it’s your business.”
“And how did they make that money?”
“Well, some of it they inherited—”
“So your family got rich off being rich.”
“No, my grandfather worked hard.”
“And what did he do?”
“Real estate investment.”
“Gentrification.” Curtis nodded smugly, as though this had proved his point.
“You are an ass.”
“I probably am. But at least I am self-aware enough to know it. Have fun ridiculing people who didn’t come over on the Mayflower.” And with that Curtis shoved back his chair and stalked out of the banquet hall. Georgiana’s cheeks were aflame, and to her horror she felt a tear rolling down to the corner of her mouth. She wiped it quickly and picked up a random glass from the table and filled it with vodka before taking a gulp. What a prick.
That night, as the party bus rumbled along the Belt, Georgiana looked around her. Of course her friends were lucky, of course they had completely unfair advantages, but she knew them and they were good people. Lena and Kristin would lie down in the street for her. They voted Democratic, they gave to Planned Parenthood, they had museum memberships. Their families sat on boards, they paid for tables at benefits, they tipped generously. Her own parents had even paid for both of Berta’s kids to go to college. Curtis McCoy was a pompous hypocrite. But their conversation still left Georgiana shaken, and in the morning when she woke, stinking of pickles and booze, she couldn’t tell how much of her hangover was physical and how much was left over from Curtis’s casual cruelty.
She couldn’t manage to shake the mood. All day Sunday she walked around in a state, feeling like she had just been delivered some terrible news, like her apartment had burned down or they had discovered avocados caused cancer. It was stupid, honestly. A billionaire jerk whose family sold bombs to the government called her a bad person. It was laughable, really.
Georgiana walked over to Pineapple Street that evening and dropped her mother’s silk dress off at the dry cleaner. The rule was that she could borrow whatever she wanted as long as she returned it clean, but Georgiana had discovered a loophole: the dry cleaner had her mother’s credit card on file and delivered to her door, so as long as she dropped the clothes off with them, it was as good as done.
Cord and Sasha were hosting family dinner at the limestone, and Georgiana momentarily thought about stopping at the wine store to pick up a bottle, but she knew her mother would bring plenty for everyone. She still had a key to the house, so she let herself in and took off her shoes by the door.
“Cord! Darley! I’m here!” she called, wandering into the kitchen. Sasha was spinning in circles, pulling a roasted chicken from the oven, sprinkling slivered almonds on a salad, emptying a pot of steaming rice into a bowl. Her mother was stationed over her Le Creuset, guarding what looked to be a leg of lamb and a ragout while Darley carefully placed fish sticks on the foiled sheet in the toaster. It was hot and busy, and Georgiana could sense the discord like an invisible force field that repelled her instantly back out of the kitchen and down the hall toward her father in the parlor. Malcolm was hiding in there as well, Poppy and Hatcher fighting over who got to be the dog in a game of Monopoly.
“Hi Daddy, hi Malcolm, hi guys.” Georgiana kissed everyone hello and flopped down on the floor next to her niece and nephew. She half-heartedly listened to her father try to teach them the rules of the game, and as she played with the fringe on the Oriental rug she let Curtis’s words run through her head: So your family got rich off being rich. Of course, it was true. Her father couldn’t be faulted for it, though. He wasn’t lazy, he wasn’t selfish; he was a real estate investor, and he helped make places for people to work and live. What was he going to do? Let old buildings go to seed? It was his job to move the city forward. He cared about his partners, he worried about them when the market turned, he worked until late at night, he was up early every morning. It was personal for him; he knew that it was within his power to make the city more beautiful, and he left his mark. It was easy to say that money was the root of all evil, but so many of the things money could buy provided dignity, health, and knowledge.
Georgiana looked at her brother-in-law playing with his children. Malcolm hadn’t inherited in the same way, but his father was an analytical chemist, he grew up in comfort, and he worked in finance now. He wasn’t saving people’s lives every day—he worked for a bank—but his knowledge and research helped keep the airline industry functional, helped smooth the mechanics of a sector that essentially connected people around the world. There was honor there. And nobody could question how hard Malcolm worked. As far as Georgiana could tell, Malcolm was always either working or spending time with Darley and the kids. He lavished his family with his love. He was maybe the nicest man Georgiana had ever met, and if he weren’t married to her sister she’d be half in love with him herself.
This was the kind of marriage Georgiana wanted one day, that both she and Darley wanted for Cord, so it killed them a little that Sasha had behaved so badly over the prenup, that she would never be a real sister, would never have the level of trust that Malcolm had earned in the Stockton family. They had started calling Sasha “the Gold Digger” or “the GD” for short after she moved into the Pineapple Street apartment. It wasn’t kind, but it seemed fair.
When Cord announced that dinner was served, Georgiana had to laugh. Nothing went together; there were tiny portions of twelve different things, the tablescape was pathetic, and everyone seemed tense and grumpy about the whole affair. Tilda looked particularly piqued. Georgiana served herself with an eye to politics, making sure to take a big helping of lamb and only a small piece of chicken, complimenting her mother loudly on the ragout. The kids each ate one fish stick and then slithered under the table before vanishing off to one of the bedrooms to play.
As they ate, they talked about the Icelandic singer Björk, who put her Henry Street apartment on the market for nine million dollars (she and her ex, Matthew Barney, had been parking their big black yacht in the East River); her mother’s tennis partner (Frannie had hurt her wrist and there was a chance she’d have to miss a few weeks on the court, rendering Tilda bereft); and the weird tunnels that connected so many of the former Jehovah’s Witnesses’ properties in the neighborhood (the tunnels made sense when they were all part of the same organization, but what were you supposed to do when there was a whole underground lair full of laundry rooms and storage cages connecting your apartment building to a stranger’s?). When they asked Georgiana about Sebastian’s birthday party, she told them about the dance hall, about the music and the food, but she held back on mentioning anything about Curtis.
“I do wonder, though,” she mused. “The theme was Oligarch Chic. Do you think that’s offensive?”
“When I was a junior, a couple of students got called to the disciplinary committee because they had a Cinco de Mayo party with sombreros,” Cord said, cutting a bite of chicken. “I feel like it was a little much to take disciplinary action, but I wouldn’t host that party now.”
“Freshman year they had a Pimps and Hos party, and everyone dressed up in tank tops and hoop earrings, and the guys tried to give all the girls money to kiss,” Darley announced with wide eyes. “Nobody even thought about reporting it, but I am so horrified every time I think about it.”
“Did you go?” Sasha asked.
“I went, but I didn’t go in costume,” Darley said, biting her lip. “I think I wore a sweater from Brooks Brothers.”
“But, like, do you think Oligarch Chic is offensive?” Georgiana pressed.
“I think maybe it’s like if the party was Mobsters and Mob Wives or something,” Malcolm ventured. “Like, it’s not so much about offending the mafioso or the oligarchs, it’s more about perpetuating harmful stereotypes of Italian Americans or Russian Americans.”
“That makes sense,” Georgiana agreed, privately mortified that it was the one person of color in their family who had to explain ethnic stereotyping to her. The conversation veered off from there, onto The Sopranos and The Americans and then, as every conversation about film and television eventually must, to her father describing to everyone why he never thought Woody Allen was funny in the first place, like his lack of a sense of humor had meant he had intuited the director’s misdeeds through some great omniscient power rather than just not liking Annie Hall.
Georgiana was rolling her eyes with Cord when Poppy came running into the room screaming. “Hatcher is throwing up!”
Darley was off like a shot, and they all stampeded through the apartment up to Darley’s bedroom, where Hatcher was on his knees on the floor, crying pitifully over a puddle of clear vomit with a white stone glistening in the middle.
“What on earth is that?” Tilda asked.
Darley, now a mother and immune to the horrors of most bodily fluids, reached into the puddle and held the white stone to the light. “It’s a tooth.”
“A tooth?” Malcolm asked with alarm, patting Hatcher’s back. The kids were five and six and had not lost any teeth yet. “Let me see, buddy. Which one was it?” He peered into Hatcher’s open mouth. “I can’t see anything.”
“Here, take my flashlight.” Georgiana swiped the flashlight on her phone and they shined it into Hatcher’s mouth to find the spot where a tooth had been.
“None of his teeth are missing.” Malcolm frowned.
“We found it in the drawer,” Poppy whispered.
“You found what in the drawer?” Darley asked. “Which drawer?”
“We thought it was a bag of gum. In there.” Poppy pointed to a dresser drawer that was slightly ajar. Malcolm reached in and pulled out an ancient plastic baggie full of something white.
“Are these teeth?” he asked in horror.
“Oh.” Darley bit her lip with embarrassment. “Those are my baby teeth.”
“Oh my God.” Georgiana felt a laugh building deep inside her and fought to contain herself. “Your son found your thirty-year-old baby teeth in a bag and thought they were gum and ate them and then threw up. Oh my God, Dar, this is amazing.” Unable to control herself any longer, she dissolved into peals of laughter, her anxiety evaporating into the air. As she looked around at her family, Poppy and Hatcher giggling uncertainly, Malcolm and her father looking mildly disgusted, and Darley mortified, she caught Sasha’s eye. The GD looked absolutely victorious.
On Tuesday as she and Brady walked to the tennis courts, she told him all about her weekend—about the dance hall and Curtis’s remarks, though not about the tooth. The tooth was too disgusting to share with a man she hoped to continue to have sex with.
“So my friend Sebastian had a birthday party this weekend out in Brighton Beach and he invited this guy, Curtis McCoy.” Georgiana paused at the traffic light and Brady leaned over and took her heavy bag off her shoulder. He was always doing that—carrying her stuff or paying for her coffee—and each time it made her stomach flip happily. They didn’t say “I love you,” not even close, but she knew she loved him without a doubt, and she was starting to think he might love her too. “Curtis is this total asshole. His family lives in Wilton and has, like, horses. His father is the CEO of one of the country’s biggest defense contractors. They own half of Martha’s Vineyard and—”
“Um, George? Are you trying to make me jealous here? Telling me about the handsome billionaire you hung out with this weekend?” Brady teased.
“No!” Georgiana swatted him on the arm. “I’m trying to say that the guy basically grew up as Prince Harry wearing Nazi costumes and is acting like he’s Prince Harry married to Meghan.”
“I think I lost you there,” Brady laughed.
Georgiana didn’t feel like getting into the whole oligarch appropriation issue, so she simplified. “This guy Curtis grew up richer than anyone I know, and he was being grumpy at dinner, and when I asked him what was wrong he totally went off on me. He accused me of being a trust-fund brat who was profiting off the little guy. He made it sound like I was Marie Antoinette!”
“Your friends sound really fun,” Brady deadpanned.
“He is not my friend.” Georgiana pouted. She wasn’t sure what she’d been hoping to get out of this conversation, but reminding Brady that she was a privileged child and that her friends sucked wasn’t exactly it.
“Look, if he can’t see what an amazing person you are, then even better for me. I won’t have to worry about you running off to join him on his horse farm or his half of Martha’s Vineyard.” Brady playfully bopped Georgiana on her bum with his racket.
There was still something eating at Georgiana, something she needed Brady to understand. “I want to be an amazing person, but it’s hard, right? Even just to be a mostly good person? I mean our job is one thing. We all work in nonprofits because we want to do good in the world.”
“Not me.” Brady frowned.
“Not you what?”
“That’s not why I work in global health.”
“Okay, why do you? Why not be a corporate lawyer or investment banker?”
“I grew up this way. With my parents. Traveling to different countries, meeting people, moving around, it seems normal to me. We lived in Ecuador for three years when I was a kid, we lived in Haiti for two, we lived in India.”
“Were you homeschooled?”
“No, most of the time we went to the local school. In Ecuador my dad would put us on the back of a four-wheeler and we’d literally drive through a river to get to school. Kind of hard to get excited about taking a school bus after that.”
“That’s amazing,” Georgiana said.
“It was. I mean, there were bad parts. We got a pretty disgusting skin infection once and it took weeks for the pharmacy to get in the right antibiotics. And there were scary moments. I remember one time my mom had taken us kids to a waterfall in Haiti. I don’t remember what my dad was doing that day. We were getting ready to leave in the Jeep when two women came up the path with their kids, and they had machetes strapped to their waists. We figured they just wanted a ride—everyone hitchhikes there—but instead they wanted our clothing. They didn’t pull out the knives, they didn’t have to, but we all took off our shirts and handed them over, our backpacks, our hats and sunglasses. Mom was cool about it, acting like she was happy to be giving them a gift, but my brother and I were kind of freaked out.”
“Did it make you want to come home?”
“Not really. I mean, every kid that grew up in New York in the eighties got mugged at some point. It was probably the same.”
Georgiana laughed.
“Anyway, it just seems like a normal job to me. Plus, I like to travel. I get bored easily.” Brady shrugged.
Was he being modest? She saw how hard he worked—she’d spent more time than she’d admit reading about his role at local hospitals, looking at photos of him out in the field. When Georgiana and Brady got to the tennis courts, they changed their shoes and started to play, but all the while Brady’s words echoed in her head: “I get bored easily.”
Part of Georgiana’s job was arranging the company’s presence at the Global Health Conference in Washington. She had never traveled for work, and in the weeks leading up to D.C. she managed to work the phrase “I’m going on a business trip” into casual conversation so many times her friends began to tease her.
“Yeah, you’re adulting superhard, George. Cool,” Lena laughed. Lena traveled for work all the time with her boss and even kept a little bag of toiletries under her bathroom sink that she could just throw into her carry-on.
Georgiana had actually been working overtime to pull together the company booth. She had shipped signage to the convention center, she had reserved the space, she had sent updated literature to the printer, and had even made huge, glossy blowups from new photos of their work in the field, only one of them featuring Brady’s face. (She privately wondered how weird it would be if she stole the sign and kept it in her apartment.)
Because they were a not-for-profit, the entire conference had to be planned with an eye toward savings and so everyone attending, from the lowliest newbie (Georgiana) to the CEO, had to partner up with a colleague to share a hotel room. Georgiana would be sharing with Meg from the grant-writing team. Meg was only a few years older than she was, but an incredibly intense person who kept an industrial-size jar of Advil next to her computer and ostentatiously took three every afternoon because of the overwhelming stress of her deadlines. Meg wore slacks, flats, and button-downs every day, her fluffy blond hair pulled into a no-nonsense ponytail. She didn’t wear makeup, she rarely smiled, and she carried herself as though she might one day run for president but could be thwarted with a single typo or verbal trip. To Georgiana she seemed like the love child of Tracy Flick and Ann Taylor.
Brady was going to D.C. as well, and Georgiana had elaborate and nerdy daydreams about them racing up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, laughing, and taking selfies at the top with the Mall spread out behind them. In reality, she wasn’t sure she’d see much of him, never mind humongous Lincoln. She would be stuck at the booth the entire time, handing out pamphlets and directing people to their panels, while Brady was attending speeches on leadership technique, policy challenges in different regions, and best practices learned from other sectors. Brady was even giving a talk one day, part of a small panel on overcoming language barriers in medical care. It was sexy stuff, really.
The weekend before the conference Brady came over after their run and saw her carefully packed suitcase sitting on the floor. “You literally packed a full four days before the trip?” he asked, laughing.
“It’s my first business trip!” she said defensively, feeling embarrassed.
“Are you going to write that on your name tag for the conference, or just tell everyone you meet?”
“Oh, I was assuming they would have some kind of ceremony for me, was I wrong?” Georgiana pulled off her sweaty T-shirt and swatted him with it. “Or maybe a cake at the booth that said ‘Baby’s first conference’?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s in the budget. A cake could run you at least fifteen bucks, and we’re watching every cent.” Brady caught the sweaty shirt from Georgiana’s hands and tossed it at the hamper.
“I can’t believe people have to share rooms. It’s so weird. I wish you and I could share a room.” Georgiana pulled Brady’s shirt up over his head.
“Well, I’m sharing with Pete, and he might leave after his panel, so there is a chance I’ll have my room to myself the second night. You could ditch your slumber party with Meg and join me. Unless you guys had big plans to give each other pedicures and do face masks.”
“I don’t think robots have toes,” Georgiana joked. “This will be so fun! A cute meetup in DC! I love it.” She kissed him and they didn’t bother spraying the sweat off before climbing into her bed. Love was often gross, really.
When she arrived at the convention center on Tuesday, dragging her perfectly packed suitcase behind her, she was relieved to see that her new posters had survived shipping and the booth was put together just as her binder had promised. She worked alone, building the plastic displays and filling them with trifold pamphlets, arranging books on the tables, and tacking the blowups to the cork board. She honestly had no idea what she was doing, but the guy who had the job before her had made her a detailed instruction manual, and she followed it faithfully and hoped for the best. When she finished, she felt sticky and disgusting from the train and the exertion, so she headed to the hotel to change and find the rest of the team.
Meg from grant writing was already in the room when she got there, unpacking her rolling bag and hanging her suits and blouses in the small closet.
“Hey, roomie,” Georgiana trilled, plonking down on the bed by the window.
“I’ve only taken half the hangers so that you’ll have plenty of space for your stuff.” Meg glanced up briefly from her unpacking. “Also, I like to shower at night so you can have the bathroom in the morning, or we can decide who will go first.”
“Oh, great. I actually got super sweaty down at the booth, so I was going to grab a shower before dinner. Do you know if people are going out?”
“Gail and I are going to meet with some counterparts from Peace Works, but I’m sure someone will be in the hotel bar later.” Meg frowned as she dusted the top of a tasseled loafer before placing it carefully on the closet floor.
By the time Georgiana got out of the shower Meg was gone, so she threw on jeans and an embroidered blouse and brought her book, a biography of Roger Federer, down to the bar. She ordered a vodka soda and a turkey club and alternately read and people watched as she ate. It seemed like most of the guests in the hotel were here for the conference too. There were a lot of white women in saris, a fashion choice that was rampant at her office, everyone coming back from India with reams of silk that they wore around New York with clogs, their hair either gray or tinted with henna. Georgiana’s own mother would sooner wear a bathrobe to the Colony Club than a sari and clogs.
By nine she had finished her sandwich and drink and didn’t particularly feel like hanging around by herself in a hotel bar, so she went back to her room, changed into her pajamas, and read in bed until Meg came home at ten and bored her to death talking about all the really excellent contacts she had made at dinner. If this was business travel, Georgiana didn’t see what the fuss was about.
The next day at the booth passed in a blur, Georgiana feeling much like an airline hostess as she repeated the same lines over and over, a fixed smile on her face as her feet ached from standing on a thin layer of carpeting barely cushioning the concrete floor below. The conference center even felt like an airport. There was no sense of time, people rushed to and fro like ants, sipping bottles of water and wearing lanyards with laminated cards around their necks. But unlike an airport there were no bars, and Georgiana would have killed for a shot of vodka to dull the tedium.
She didn’t see Brady all day, but at five he sent her a text:
Pete gone. Room 643 at 10p?
She texted back a thumbs-up and her feet hurt a little less. In the room that evening, Meg dressed for dinner, swapping her blouse and slacks for a nearly identical set. Georgiana was looking at her phone, trying to decide where to go get food before meeting Brady, when Meg swore loudly.
“SHIT! I’m getting a pimple! Really professional.” She was peering into the mirror over the dresser, scowling at her chin.
“Oh, I have some cover-up if you want it,” Georgiana offered, reaching for the makeup bag by her bed.
Meg turned to her, looking guiltily intrigued, as though Georgiana had offered her bath salts. “Can you do it for me?” she asked.
How Meg had made it to the age of thirty without ever covering up a pimple Georgiana did not know, but she obligingly pulled out her concealer and dabbed it on the pink spot, blending it carefully with her index finger. “There you go, all set.”
“Wow, you can’t even see it,” Meg marveled, admiring her reflection.
“There’s a reason makeup is big business.”
“Well, this was only because it’s a professional dinner,” Meg snorted. “I’m not about to go rubbing chemicals all over my face regularly.” She slipped on her sensible shoes and was out the door.
Georgiana took a piece of hotel stationery and scribbled a note: “Staying with a college friend, don’t worry about me!” and left it on Meg’s bed. It was much easier to lie on paper. She put some chemicals on her face, changed into a long, flowing green dress, and strolled to a bookstore café where she passed a pleasant two hours drinking wine and eating artichoke pasta with her book before heading back to the hotel to meet Brady.
In the morning Brady woke at seven to catch an early train back to the city. Georgiana had to disassemble the booth and ship everything home, so she returned to her own hotel room to change into jeans and sneakers. When she quietly tapped on the door, she found that Meg was up, packing her suitcase and drinking coffee from a paper cup.
“Where were you last night?” she asked, folding a suit jacket in half and tucking one padded shoulder into the other before stacking it in her bag.
“Oh, I stayed with a college friend,” Georgiana said breezily, taking out her earrings and slipping them into her makeup case.
“Just be careful, Georgiana,” Meg said, looking at her for the first time. She held her gaze and they were silent for a moment. Did Meg think she’d been out hooking up with some random person? Or was it somehow against company policy to visit a friend in your off-hours on a trip?
“With what?” Georgiana asked frowning.
“With Brady,” Meg said. “He’s married.”
Georgiana felt the shock as though she had been slapped. “Okay,” Georgiana whispered, breaking her gaze and pulling her sneakers out from under the bed.
“Are you all set with the booth? I’m going to try to make it back to the office for the World Bank call this afternoon, but are you all by yourself today?” Meg asked.
“Yeah, but it’s easy. I have the binder,” Georgiana trailed off, her mind still spinning.
“Okay, I’ll see you at the office, then.” Meg nodded and pulled her wheelie bag out the door, leaving Georgiana stunned and alone.
