Pineapple Street(61)
“Why are you asleep in here?” Darley hissed. “How much did you drink?”
“Not that much, I’m just tired,” Georgiana said defensively.
“Even Mom noticed you were wasted, and that says a lot.”
“Shit, she did?”
“She also said you look thin, but I think that was a compliment. What’s going on with you?”
For a moment she contemplated telling her sister. Or telling her part of the story. She could tell her that she’d broken it off with Brady when she found out that he was still married, but that he’d died. But the half-truth would kill her. Having Darley think she understood the loss when it was so much greater. She couldn’t. “It’s nothing, Dar. I’m just anxious about work and I took a pill and it messed me up with the wine.”
“Don’t mix pills and alcohol!” Darley scolded. “What are you, a teenager? Do I need to explain to you the dangers of drinking and drugs?”
“No, I was just so happy for Cord I got carried away. It’s fine.”
“Okay. Don’t be an idiot. Now go tell Mom you took a water pill for bloating and say good night. We have to take the kids home for bed anyway. Hatcher got gum in his hair and Poppy tried to pick it out and pulled out a clump and now Hatcher is crying about having a little bald spot.”
“Christ.” Georgiana tucked her yearbook under her arm, and they headed off into the night.
* * *
Georgiana had never spoken to the founder of her company. He was her boss’s boss, and she always figured she would have to mess something up in a pretty epic fashion to find herself in conversation with him, so it surprised her when he poked his head into the maid’s room on a Wednesday morning. She was crouched on the floor of her office sorting through the boxes of newsletters fresh from the printer when he knocked on the doorframe and startled her.
“Peter! Hi!” She quickly wondered if it was okay she had called him Peter. Should she have called him Mr. Perthman? No. That was weird. He was her boss, not her headmaster.
“Georgiana. How are you doing?”
“I’m great!” She rose to her feet with a surfeit of nervous enthusiasm.
“I had a question for you. You know, we have the benefit next month, and we’re looking to increase our pool of individual donors and family foundations.”
“Absolutely. I have already been in touch with the venue and I’m working closely with Gabrielle to arrange our guest list for the event.”
“If I recall from your résumé, you went to the Henry Street School here in Brooklyn, right?”
“Yes, I did.” Why was the founder looking at her résumé? Obviously, someone had mentioned it to him.
“I was reading the Times recently, and I saw that an alumnus of Henry Street named Curtis McCoy was doing lots of charitable giving. It seems his goals align with our work here, and so I was wondering if you could reach out to him about the benefit.”
It was the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, whereby once you noticed something new you saw it all over the place. Had Curtis McCoy always been bumping around the periphery of her life and she’d just never noticed? Because he was suddenly impossible to avoid. When Georgiana was in middle school a friend had pointed out the castle in The Little Mermaid that looked exactly like a penis, drawn in by some bored illustrator. Once she saw the thing she could never stop seeing it. It had been there the whole time, right under her nose, and she’d been completely oblivious. She felt the same way about Curtis.
“I do know Curtis,” Georgiana admitted. “Not well, but we were classmates.”
“Oh, terrific,” Peter Perthman smiled. “I’ll send you a letter to forward him. And I hope you’ll introduce me next month! You’re such an asset, Georgiana. You’ve really distinguished yourself in your short time here.” And with that he bowed his head and swept out of the maid’s room, leaving Georgiana to sink back to the floor with her boxes.
* * *
—
She forwarded the invitation to Curtis with the absolute minimum amount of eagerness. Peter (or his assistant) had crafted an elegant letter of introduction, framing the work of the organization and highlighting the recent loss of three colleagues in Pakistan. Of course, this was a country where civilians had a great deal of mistrust of America. While the letter didn’t expressly say “the drones your family made were used to kill people in thousands of strikes on northwest Pakistan so you should give us money to teach the survivors to care for themselves,” it basically did. Georgiana pulled Curtis’s personal email address off the invitation to the Russian dance hall birthday party and wrote only the briefest note at the top: “My boss asked me to send this along. Hope you are well.” An hour later Curtis replied.
If I come to this fundraiser are you going to try to kiss me?
Georgiana reeled back from her computer monitor as if splashed by cold water. She quickly shot back a reply. “This is my work email.”
An answer appeared right away. “Oh, okay. Is there a theme for this party? Is it Third World Chic?”
Georgiana snorted. What an asshole. “You don’t have to come. I’ll just tell my boss you’re too busy being a philanthropist.”