Casey stooped over to gather the cigarette stubs she’d been saving to throw away. There were no garbage cans on the roof, and she hated littering. She counted seven stubs. They couldn’t have all been hers. Casey got up from the bench. She couldn’t look his way.
“You’re making a mistake. This is irreversible, Casey. I won’t take you back.” Jay looked at her dark eyes. He raised his voice. “Do you get that? You can’t just leave me. I won’t forgive this. I won’t forgive you leaving me. I fucking will never forgive this.”
“I’m sorry,” she said as quietly as possible. But there had been no picture—somehow the irrational made more sense to her than his very reasonable threat.
BOOK II
Plans
1 COMPASS
THERE WAS NO OTHER CHOICE—Casey had to get a weekend job, and it was just easier for her to return to Sabine’s. So Monday through Friday, she continued on as a sales assistant at Kearn Davis. But to keep up with the increases in her Battery Park studio apartment rent, her mounting clothing purchases, and the humiliating cost of a social life in Manhattan, Casey found herself behind the counter on Thursday evenings and all day Saturday and Sunday, selling hats and hair accessories. Next month in January, she’d turn twenty-five. She was holding the same part-time job she’d had when she was eighteen. This stasis was not lost on her.
As of this month, she’d worked at Kearn Davis for two and a half years; her boss, Kevin Jennings—the relentless doubter—couldn’t say a peep if she decided to quit. She’d served her time. But where would she go? Columbia Law had refused to let her defer admission again. Not that she could see herself as a lawyer anyway. Hugh and Walter from her desk were encouraging her to become a broker, but Casey couldn’t imagine that, either. Sometimes she considered business school. Sabine was lobbying for that one. Her parents had given up on her, or she had given them up.
Nevertheless, the world had pushed forward. Tina was starting her first year at USC medical school; Virginia was finishing her master’s thesis on Sandro Botticelli while making love to as many dark-haired painters in Bologna as she had time for; Ella was eight months pregnant and put on bed rest from preeclampsia; and Delia, her closest female friend at Kearn Davis, had switched to the Events Planning Department after working as a sales assistant for nine years. As for Jay, they hadn’t spoken since she’d moved out eighteen months ago.
Since then, Casey had been living in an L-shaped studio apartment at the bottom of Manhattan, took advanced millinery classes at FIT on Tuesday nights, owed twelve thousand dollars in credit card debt, and worked two jobs. In the spring, she’d briefly dated a chatty portfolio manager seated beside her at a benefit table bought by Kearn Davis, and after they had a few dinners together, she realized that he was another Jay Currie—confident, moderate in his views, and amiable. It scared her that she had a type, because she could predict the ending. She disappeared on him thereafter, and he did not seem to mind. He was attractive, young, and rich; naturally, there were fish elsewhere. The only private concession she’d made to the future was taking the GMATs—a prerequisite for B schools.
It was the first week of December and Casey’s third Saturday back at the store, and although most of her friends there had moved on, her old boss, Judith Hast, the weekend accessories manager, was still working there.
Sabine’s was a small department store—approximately thirty thousand square feet—with only two floors for women’s clothing and a basement devoted to cosmetics and hosiery. The interior had been recently redesigned by the Japanese architect Yuka Mori. The unadorned walls were painted superwhite with a lacquer-smooth finish, and the floors were built out of restored plank wood from France and Italy. The contrast of the silky walls with the rough-hewn wood flooring had been remarked upon by noted architecture critics. The clothes for sale were displayed not much differently from the exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. It was an intimidating space for even the most self-possessed of New York shoppers.
What made Sabine’s singular for the fashionable women of New York was that Sabine Jun Gottesman was uncanny at discovering and nurturing brilliant designers who later remained loyal to her, because, unlike most department stores, she paid them on time. Sabine was also intimate with many fashion magazine editors, and her generosity with their favorite charities was renowned.
The store today was filled with anxious holiday shoppers with their lists, but there were no hat customers. In general, most women did not wear hats anymore for decorative purposes. They neither wanted the attention nor would ever yield to any wish for such things, claiming they could not pull it off. If the average woman bought a hat, it was for practical reasons （a shield against the cold or sun）， and if there was a fanciful purpose, she was private about it. Hats and accessories were not easy sales, and though Casey had been given the option of working shoes or sportswear—with their higher-volume business and fat commissions—she’d chosen this counter because it offered her a curious sense of accomplishment. For Casey had a knack for timing—being able to intuit precisely when it was all right to approach a woman trying on a hat and when not to. Also, for women accompanied by men, it was fair to say that only the very secure husbands or boyfriends approved of hats for their wives or girlfriends. Men were drawn to women in hats but were skittish about their partners looking different from the others in the crowd. Today, it was unlikely that holiday shoppers would buy hats for themselves. Casey would peddle French hairpins or plush flower brooches for her commissions.