“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.