So Casey did what she knew how to do when she woke up involuntarily at three in the morning: She studied. The irony, she had learned, was that there was no point to her lovely transcript if the fancy banks thought so little of NYU Stern and shopped for students only at Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, and even less so, Columbia. In the end, she’d had to call Hugh—a man whose penis she had touched in the backseat of a taxi.
When she had been a student at Princeton, she and her friends were taught that to consider Ivy League schools as being better than non-Ivies was elitist and vulgar. You would never say a Princetonian was superior to a Queens College graduate. Going to NYU （a top ten business school, but not top five） had taught Casey what her father had insisted all along: Designer labels mattered. The very banks that had refused to recruit at Stern had come to interview twenty-year-olds at Princeton for their undergraduate analyst program. When Casey had been turned down by Kearn Davis her senior year in college, she had not understood then that it was because she had been unwilling to play along （the crazy yellow suit, the Nancy Reagan jokes, and her conceit to apply to only one bank—accurately pointed out by Ted Kim）， but at least the firm had come by to take a look. She’d had a door open where she could fail or succeed. There had been a door.
Naive. Casey had been that. She had not appreciated the blinding privilege and protections of an Ivy League degree until she went to a school without the cooling shade of its green leaves and silky tendrils. If she had gone to Columbia Law School, she might have been a first-year associate already, and perhaps a third of her loans could have been gone.
When Judith returned, she told Casey to take her lunch break. Casey went to Sabine’s office and pulled out her accounting homework, but before she started, she found the FedEx box and dropped it in her tote bag.
Isaac Gottesman opened the door of the penthouse and waited for Casey to come up.
The girl stepped off the elevator with her bare head cast downward, carrying her brown fedora in one hand and a Federal Express package in the other. Casey wore a white schoolboy blouse cinched in the waist with a wide brown belt, a short tweed necktie, wool trousers, and men’s-style oxford shoes. Her clothing was comically attention getting, but her expression was dejected.
“Hey, cheer up.”
Casey raised her head and grinned, not having expected him. The housekeeper usually let her in. Isaac looked like a tall bear—his towering frame, large open hands at his sides, the faded beige corduroys and camel-colored sweater. It was a relief to see him. Isaac liked her and wanted nothing from her. Jay Currie used to call Sabine her fairy godmother, but it was really Isaac who felt like the godparent, not by what he gave her in terms of things or experiences, but by his acceptance of her. It was a form of wealth bestowed upon you when a good person took you in like that.
But it had been a long week, and she was exhausted. She had left her job as a desk sales assistant precisely because she was too old to run errands like this. Lately, she’d been feeling that her servitude to Sabine had gone on for too long. Even if Sabine handed her the retail empire of Sabine’s for a fraction of its market value, the option she would expect in return was a binding indenture enforced by gratitude. How did you quantify that? Would she forever be delivering packages on the weekends, having meals with Sabine when she didn’t feel like it, and canceling the wishes of loved ones if Sabine didn’t approve of them? Unu would likely have a bowl of cereal tonight if he remembered to eat at all, she thought sadly.
Isaac kissed her cheek and hung up her jacket, but Casey held on to the package. She wouldn’t stay for dinner, she decided. She would hand off the package to the queen herself, then beg off.
“She’s in her bedroom,” he said, looking at her glum face.
“I’m sorry, Isaac. Hey. . .” She smiled, remembering her manners. “How are you? It’s always so nice to see you.” He smiled at her warmly, and Casey swallowed, feeling as though she might cry for no reason. There had been three people who had this effect on her just by their kind glances: Mary Ellen Currie, Jay’s mom, Ella Shim, and Isaac.
Isaac opened his arms to give her a hug, and Casey allowed herself to be tucked into his big chest.
She could feel his closely shaven chin on her forehead. He smelled wonderful, like cedar chips, musk, and orange peel. No one else smelled like that. Sabine had his aftershave custom-blended by a master perfumer in Paris. The bottles were labeled “I.A.G.” for Isaac Antonio Gottesman.
Casey pulled away first, feeling shy and tearful.