“Hey, Casey,” Ted said, not caring in the least if she’d heard anything. He turned to Ella, gesturing that they should head out. “We can get tickets at the theater. I don’t think everyone in town is running to see this.” He pointed to the obscure ad for Farewell My Concubine in the Times.
“It’s very good, Ted.” Casey smiled at him. Ted was a triple-A, self-made jerk, but he was good-looking. He was five eleven and built like a runner—wiry, with long legs. His black hair was cut short, and the gel he dabbed on top made his hair look damp. The top button of his dress shirt was open, and the tendons of his neck framed a hard Adam’s apple. She liked the imperiousness of his expressions. If she were interested in dating assholes, he would be an ideal candidate.
“You might even enjoy it,” Casey said. “A bright guy like you—I would think you’d like cultural enrichment now and then. A good yuppie should know more than wines and resorts. Not that you need any help in the arts or leisure department,” she said, grinning. “Or in any department, for that matter.” She smiled, having managed to sound facetious and generous at once. Casey pursed her lips shut, waiting for Ted’s riposte.
He harrumphed, and Ella laughed.
“And how’s the job search going, Casey?” he said. Now he was smiling.
“Sabine said I could work accessories on Sundays starting next month, but she’s got nothing for me during the week. She replaced me when I quit after graduation. And things are slow in the accessories world,” Casey said. “You know, Ted. The economy.”
Ted smiled and lifted his chin.
“Ella’s been so good to let me stay here, but this can’t last forever. I will get a job. I hope I get a job.”
Before Ella could say anything to assure Casey that she could stay as long as she liked, Ted jumped in. “The economy will pick up. Cycles,” he said, speaking as one economics major to another, knowing she would understand his meaning.
He picked up the paper, then dropped it on his chair. He glanced at Ella, and on cue, she rose from her seat and got her purse. She paid careful attention to him—that was what he wanted from her, and it was not hard to do.
Later, after the movie and dinner, she and Ted didn’t talk about Casey, but early Monday morning, Ted phoned the Asian sales desk, where his friend Walter Chin had said they were looking for an assistant. He didn’t think Ted should send in a friend for the gig. “Low pay, high abuse,” Walter said. And the head of the desk had anger management issues.
Ted answered, “Not to worry; she’s not a close friend.”
Casey’s interview was set for the following week. He had only to bring her by.
Virginia’s father came by the club to sign for the night’s tab. He and Jane stayed for a glass of champagne and were now heading out for a grown-up dinner, leaving behind the two dozen or so recent graduates at the Tiger Bar.
“You guys don’t need chaperones anymore,” Fritzy said to Chuck Raines, a lacrosse player who was working as a corporate paralegal at Skadden, Arps. Fritzy tapped the boy on the shoulder genially with his fist, wanting to feel young again. There had been a time in college when Fritzy felt like he was of the crowd. He had been a member of the eating club Ivy, as was his father, who’d died when Fritzy was twelve, though everyone agreed that he was really nothing like his father—a handsome and chatty senator from Delaware. Fritzy and Jane Craft stood side by side next to their daughter: He wearing his J.Press blazer to conceal his perpetual shoulder stoop, and Jane, six feet tall, an inch shy of her husband, in her size twelve Belle France dress with its high lace collar. The tiny lavender floral print on the black background obscured her thickening middle. Jane’s build was more solid than Fritzy’s—his frame being slight, like that of his mother, Eugenie. The Crafts, married twenty-six years, shared the same coloring—light hair, sky blue eyes, skim-milk complexion with cheeks that flushed easily—in bold contrast to Virginia, with her black curls and olive skin. The first thing you’d notice about Virginia’s face was what she called her Mexican lashes—their remarkable length and dark color. Alone, Virginia passed for a striking white girl of the exotic variety, but beside her parents, she was markedly foreign. She’d been called Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and, once in London, black Irish. Early on, she’d learned to spit out the race of her biological parents—half Mexican, half white—then let the unlucky guesser squirm with the facts of her adoption.