The Identicals(57)
Caylee is young—too young for Ramsay—and pretty in a wholesome way: long dark hair, big blue eyes, and a crooked nose that keeps her from being too beautiful. She has a tattoo of a pink ribbon on the inside of her wrist, and initially Harper thinks, Uh-oh, tattoo, but when Caylee sees Harper looking at it, she says, “I lost my mother to breast cancer three years ago.”
Harper feels herself misting up. “I just lost my father,” she says. “It’s hard.”
Caylee reaches a hand across the table and squeezes Harper’s forearm.
“You’re hired,” Harper says. She doesn’t care if Tabitha objects. Caylee is going to work at the boutique. Caylee has a fresh energy, and she looks great in all the clothes. She is bubbly and fun, she needs a job, and she can work whenever Harper schedules her to work—the more hours the better. She doesn’t have any actual retail experience, but she spent all last summer and the first part of this summer bartending at the Straight Wharf, so her people skills and customer service are on point. Also, and possibly most important, she has friends—lots of friends, many of them girls from privileged families with unlimited discretionary income. Others work in the service industry on Nantucket, making hundreds of dollars in tips per night, and they just might need a new outfit for their days off.
When Caylee takes a tour of the store and picks out her six outfits, each one cuter than the last, she says, “I promise you—my friends have no idea you carry lines like Milly and Rebecca Taylor. They think it’s just ERF, which is what our mothers wear. We have to get the word out. We have to have a party.”
They plan the party for Friday, despite Meghan saying, “I’m going on the record. Tabitha would not allow a party in here. Never mind Eleanor.”
“We need to lighten things up,” Harper says. “We need a new image.”
“We need customers,” Ainsley says. She, even more than Harper, has fallen under Caylee’s spell. Caylee is kind and solicitous, sort of like an older sister. Harper understands the attraction. Ainsley needs a friend, especially since the egging. But Harper worries that Caylee is just a little bit too old. She’s twenty-two, and her friends go to the bars at night—Cru, Nautilus, the Boarding House, the Chicken Box.
Harper has done her damnedest to keep an eye on Ainsley without seeming overbearing. There is always a glass next to Ainsley’s bed, and Harper checks at every opportunity to make sure it contains water and not vodka. She sniffs Ainsley’s bottles of Vitaminwater as well. So far so good.
Caylee posts news of the party on her Facebook page—when she announces that she has 1,100 “friends,” Harper gasps—and sends it to a Nantucket news and social website called Mahon About Town as well as to a super-hot blog called Nantucket BlACKbook.
When Harper expresses doubt—she feels like they should send out proper invitations or place an ad in the newspaper—Caylee laughs.
“Everything is social media these days,” she says. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”
They do their best to transform the space. They dim the lights on the enormous crystal chandelier. Why Tabitha insists on bright light when it’s full sunshine outside is beyond Harper; possibly it’s a concession to Eleanor’s failing eyesight. They clear the sweaters from the pedestal table in the center of the room—the food will go there—and set up a bar over by the appraisal chairs.
“Spillage,” Meghan says. “There’s a reason why no decent store in America allows food or drink. People spill. They don’t mean to, but they do. Tabitha had this carpet replaced this spring. I happen to know it cost eighteen thousand dollars.”
Harper looks down at the carpet. It’s a dull silver, the color of nickels. It matches the oyster-colored walls in its understated solemnity, but the silver, pewter, and gray palette screams old age.
“I don’t care,” Harper says.
The party is to be a happy hour from 4:00 to 5:30. Caylee, the bartender, makes a Foxy Roxie punch—vodka, champagne, mango nectar, and cranberry. (Cranberry, Harper thinks. Sure to leave a stain.)
Harper has prepared big bowls of truffled popcorn, a lavish crudités tray with three kinds of dip, and tiny avocado toasts like the ones from Lemon Press, only smaller. Harper wonders if they shouldn’t have more food, since they’re serving alcohol, but Caylee points out that no one wants to eat a lot before trying on clothes and that feeling a little buzzed always leads people to spend money.
Caylee and Ainsley’s playlist includes: Rihanna, Beyoncé, Adele, Norah Jones, Alison Krauss, Miranda Lambert, Diana Krall, Gwen Stefani—and, as the token male, Prince.
Harper plans to have Fish on a leash by the front door, hoping he will be the store’s best ambassador. There isn’t a human alive who doesn’t love a husky.
At quarter to four, Harper is so nervous that she feels dizzy, and she has to sit in the cool dark of the storeroom with her head between her knees. She hasn’t thrown a party in recent memory other than at Billy’s memorial reception—and that, of course, was an unmitigated disaster. Harper is positive no one will come. People will pass by on their way to more glamorous and fun venues, only peeking in to see Harper (wearing the Roxie because she feels obliged to, although she chose the cherry-bomb red version, which has far more sex appeal than the others), Ainsley (looking young and chaste in a white Nanette Lepore eyelet sundress), and Meghan (in a stretchy amethyst T-shirt dress that they don’t even sell at the store, but it’s now the only thing that fits her). The passersby will catch a whiff of desperation, of trying too hard, of a failing attempt to change the image of ERF, an image so indelible as to be chiseled in cold stone.