Page 7 of Old Money
“Fuck.”
The door swings open and a dark-haired kid—maybe seventeen—leans out. A pale green tie hangs undone around his neck.
“Yeah?” he says, by way of greeting. He looks like he’s got a trust fund and a hangover.
“I’m Alice Wiley,” I say. “I have a meeting with Jamie.”
I smile, still a little shaky. The kid just looks back, somewhere between bored and annoyed.
“Jamie Burger? The concierge?” I add.
He waves me into a cramped entry hall known as the boot room, having originally been used for riding-boot storage. One end leads to the clubhouse’s central corridor—the gallery, they call it—and the other connects to a series of narrow passageways that run behind the walls, allowing the staff to scurry around like industrious mice, fetching and carrying without being seen. In the old days, servants entered via the subbasement—more like rats. The members only converted the boot room due to the Cold War, having decided they’d quite like to keep the subbasement handy for themselves, in the event of a nuclear attack.
“I’ll take you in a sec,” the kid says, grabbing a vest off a small garment rack.
“Oh no, I can find my way,” I say.
“Nah,” the kid says, facing a tiny wall mirror and doing up his tie. “You’re not in dress code.”
Excuse me?I think. I’m dressed in an all-linen outfit, sage green shorts and a white blouse.
“The shoes,” he says, nodding toward my (new, expensive) leather sandals. “Your toes are showing.”
My face goes instantly hot, as though he’s caught me topless.
“Oh, but—sandals are allowed.”
“Not for staff.” He chuckles at his reflection. “Surprised Burger didn’t tell you that.”
“Nope, that sounds like Jamie,” I mutter, more harshly than I mean. The kid pauses and cocks an eyebrow.
“We went to school together,” I add in a friendly tone.
The kid seems to accept this non-explanation and turns back to his tie, a flash of something crossing his expression—snideness, maybe. Then he huffs into the mirror, yanking the tie loose and starting over. Normally I’d offer to help, but something tells me this kid’s gotten more than enough help in his life.
“Fuck it,” he says, dropping the tie and letting it hang undone. “Everyone’s outside anyway. C’mon.”
He turns toward the gallery exit—unbothered by the dress code now that he’s also breaking it—and waves for me to follow.
My pulse jumps to a skittish beat as we enter the gallery—which, like everything else, is just as I remember it, right down to the smell: a potent mix of carpet cleaner, burnt coffee and extinguished candles. This is the artery of the building, providing access to three private dining nooks that no one ever uses, and the beautiful, wood-hewn bar, unofficially reserved for cigar-smoking men after a day of skeet shooting or golf. The western side opens onto the club’s four palatial ballrooms, known simply as the yellow room, the green room, the blue room and the pink room.
Memories hit like waves in a rising tide, and I bat them away with small talk, asking the kid dull questions and nodding at his dull answers. His name is Cory Amos. He’s never heard of the singer. His dad golfs here. That’s who got him the doorman job.
“Do you like it?” I ask absently, my neck craning as we pass the blue room. (Eyes forward, Alice. You’re fine.)
“It’s fine,” Cory answers. “It’s whatever.”
As a rule, member kids can’t work at the club, but doorman duty is the exception. That gig is typically reserved for teenagers (boys, specifically), and it’s both a privilege and punishment.Parents use it to humble their spoiled kid after wrecking a car or setting someone’s beach house on fire. Personally, I think sticking some shitty, entitled teenager at the front door is more punishing for everyone else. But the practice continues because it’s tradition. And there’s nothing the club values more than tradition.
“Is Jamie a good boss?” I ask, recalling Cory’s sneery little chuckle.
“Burger?” Cory replies. “Uh, sure?”
There’s that look again, and this time I can read it. Not snideness, just plain old snobbery. Cory may be humbled by this public-penance job, but he’ll always feel superior to the likes of Jamie Burger. I used to feel the same way, but for different reasons.
Jamie was my childhood classmate, and Theo’s best friend. Like Susannah, he was the child of a club staffer, and a financial-aid student like me. All of us normies understood we were outsiders, and most of us knew to keep our heads down. But Jamie was the kind of kid who handled insecurity by making a loud, obnoxious joke of himself. He was always pretending to fall in gym class or walking into homeroom doing impressions nobody understood. You couldn’t even make fun of him. Kids would call him “Jamie Hotdog”—a nickname both mean and meaningless—and he’d laugh out loud, as though he got the joke andlovedit. It was bad enough putting up with him all day, and then I’d come home to find him hogging the TV with Theo. Jamie wasn’t theworstpart of my childhood, but he was certainly the most annoying part. The fact that I’m actively trying to work for him feels even stranger than trying to work for the club.
“Shit,” Cory hisses as we near the yellow room. “Hang on.”
