On Judith Hast’s suggestion, Casey was rearranging the displays, and she picked up a brown fedora. She removed the hat she was wearing—a small-brimmed green beaver-felt fedora trimmed with a green grosgrain band and a vintage orange-colored feather from Paris—and she modeled the brown fedora for Judith.
“Oh-la-la,” Judith said. Her accent was impressive.
“Merci,” Casey replied, then returned the hat to its pedestal.
Judith returned to cataloging the spring inventory. She was a reserved forty-seven-year-old divorced heiress, a single mother to a teenage daughter named Liesel, and she worked three days a week at Sabine’s for the thirty-three percent employee discount. She’d grown up in West Hartford, wearing clothes appropriate for the country club, gone to Trinity College, and dropped out in her junior year to marry the handsome graduating senior who ended up leaving her for her best friend’s older sister. After her divorce, Judith took her inheritance and moved to New York with her then infant daughter and stopped putting blond highlights in her hair. She lived in a sprawling Upper West Side apartment with Liesel and often invited Casey for dinners.
“Do not let me buy that hat.” Casey tried to sound severe with herself.
“If you don’t, you’ll just obsess about it. Do you want me to put it aside for you?” Judith considered Casey’s worried expression thoughtfully.
“No. But thank you.” Casey tilted the hat forward on the display to show off its brim. It was like Judith to tell her to yield to the temptation. She was a generous person, but also a wealthy person. Three hundred dollars for a hat would not affect her in the least. Even with the discount or even if the designer gave it to her at cost （sometimes milliners gave Casey things to wear to the store）， she could not afford that hat. Just that morning, she’d considered asking Sabine for an advance to help her get through the week but decided against it for fear of bringing on another lecture. Not to mention that Casey already owned a beautiful brown fedora trimmed with a wide blue ribbon. She owned easily fifty hats—twenty of her own, many she’d worn only once. No one would dispute that her consumption patterns were excessive. But sometimes Casey wanted to argue that a person like Judith owned at least two hundred hats. Judith could afford it and Casey couldn’t, yet it didn’t mean that Casey had any less desire to do so. Her heart was full of frivolous and lofty wishes.
Lately, she’d been losing sleep over her debts. Her rent was twelve hundred a month, her utilities a hundred and fifty, food and transportation four hundred dollars, and her entertainment （movies, drinks, and going out to dinners with friends, taxis at night） seven hundred dollars, and just meeting her credit card minimums took anywhere from four hundred to a thousand a month. Ever since she and Jay broke up, Casey had really been on her own. She didn’t know how to balance her budget, nor could she keep herself from buying the new pretty skirt. Twelve thousand dollars’ worth of dinners out, flowers ordered, boxes of French chocolates, gym memberships, a pair of pearl earrings from Mikimoto, clothes and shoes, tuition for her hat classes. The only people who knew about her debts were Hugh （because you could tell him anything and he didn’t judge） and Sabine, who’d prized it out of her; but even they had no idea how bad it was. Life cost so much money. The craziest thing was that though her debts terrorized her, the desire for more—to eat at the restaurant recommended by the Times, to order the second glass of wine at dinner, to give costly wedding or shower presents, to see the Ring Cycle at the Met, to order an orchid for Ella when she got pregnant—only grew stronger.
“When are you taking lunch?” Judith asked, putting down her pen.
“In a few minutes,” Casey replied. She hoped Judith wouldn’t ask her any more questions.
“You want to eat with me? Stacy from jewelry can cover us. They have way too many people for today. Anyway, I brought food.” Judith often brought large homemade salads that her housekeeper made for her in a blue Tupperware bowl, along with her own shallot dressing, made without sugar, and packets of rice cakes. Judith did not eat dairy, sugar, or meat.
“Can’t, sweetie. But thank you.” Casey left it at that.
“Are you eating with Sabine?” Judith’s voice squeaked a little.
Casey nodded, continuing to arrange the thousand-dollar Tibetan fur hats from light-to dark-colored crowns. Sabine had worked Saturdays from the time she’d opened her first storefront nearly three decades ago. Ever since Casey had returned to work, Sabine wanted her to take meal breaks in her office whenever she was there—Saturdays and even Thursday nights if Sabine was working late. Nevertheless, Sabine was a bizarre stickler about two things: taking turns buying sandwiches and never letting any of her favorite employees take extra time for lunch or breaks, especially if the meals were with Sabine herself. On these issues of fairness, she was pathologically fastidious and immovable. It was Casey’s turn to pick up the sandwiches and drinks, but she had no cash to speak of. Casey wanted to phone the credit card company to see if there was enough credit left for their lunch, but she didn’t want Judith to know.