Chapter 23 11 April 2017
It was all possible, of course – everything was possible for a Beaumont – but the truth was, Bash’s father preferred to keep the deck as a private, family-only space: a deep, cushioned sofa and a few chairs clustered around a stone fire pit.
A small teak bar cart stocked with Richard’s personal supply of vintages and whiskeys.
A single weatherproof cabinet housing an antique chess set and a selection of leisure reading.
Boating, architecture, a history of the Roman Empire.
Bash and Edward were allowed unfettered access, but due to the lack of safety measures, they’d been forbidden long ago from bringing friends up to the roof. And certainly from serving alcohol.
Neither Beaumont son was much of a rule-follower.
Bash deleted his comment on The Upper Edge an hour after posting – couldn’t give Daddy or Edward, who were traipsing about the French Riviera with Richard’s latest girlfriend Sara (pronounced Sah-rah), reason to fly home early – but by sundown, the roof had already filled with Prescott’s spring break ‘leftovers’, those not currently vacationing somewhere with a perfect blend of European sun and cultural significance.
It was, in fact, a greater slice of the school population than The Upper Edge had implied, and Bruno was stationed at the club’s front door, turning freshmen and sophomores away.
(Bash had ensured the actual staff were tipped generously to keep tonight’s soirée, on an otherwise quiet Tuesday at the club, on the down low.)
‘Going up?’
Madison was beside her then, wearing a silk, floral print Ulla Johnson midi dress.
She’d draped an ivory cardigan casually around her shoulders, and a slim gold bracelet adorned her wrist. Instead of her usual heels, she’d chosen nude sandals for the occasion.
Her toenails were blush pink, completing the springtime colourstory.
‘Yes,’ Hannah said, the decision made, starting up the stairs to the Lenox Club’s second floor. ‘I’ve never been to the roof deck before. I guess I didn’t want to go up alone.’
‘Good thing you’ve got me.’ Madison hooked her arm through Hannah’s, her wide smile radiating warmth.
Hannah felt instantly chosen, special, despite herself.
Madison could be manipulative and cruel, but she was also charming and generous with her affection when she wanted to be.
And right now, Elle was away – a tour of Morocco with her parents – and so Hannah was to be Madison’s anointed one for the night.
Internally, she shrugged. After seven months at Prescott, she knew how Madison worked.
It was fine to allow yourself an evening in her good graces if you didn’t expect the same tomorrow.
Madison guided her up the stairs and down the hall, past the closed doors to the club’s ten guest rooms. They stopped at the end.
To their left was the Caraway Room, the corner suite.
To their right was a plain wooden door with a velvet cord draped across it.
On it was a small brass plaque reading No Admittance.
Madison unhooked the cord and turned the knob.
The door opened onto a second set of stairs, leading up.
She gestured for Hannah to go first. ‘This way to the roof.’
At the top of the stairs, Hannah took in forty or so Prescott students mingling in the open air.
Lanterns lined the low perimeter wall, and string lights hung from a canopy meant to provide sun shade in the day.
In the centre of the roof, Bash was hunched over the ancient fire pit, trying to make the gas work.
Yet another thing that would need to be replaced if the club ever opened the roof to members.
Along the far wall, Beatrice quietly tended bar.
Hannah took two steps onto the deck and immediately regretted her heels. The floor was flagstone, worn from years of use and slick beneath her feet. She gripped Madison’s arm, steadying herself. Now, it was clear why she’d chosen sandals for the evening.
Madison laughed. ‘This place is such a hazard.’
‘Guess I missed the memo about wearing flats,’ Hannah muttered.
Madison glanced around, eyes lighting on one of her faithful. She beckoned Ethan over. ‘Be a dear and fetch Hannah a pair of slippers. There’s a basket in the MacAllister Room.’
‘The room where—?’ Ethan started to say, but Madison cut him off.
‘Don’t bother Bash. Poor thing is fighting a losing battle with that prehistoric fire pit. Brooks or James can get you the spare key from behind reception.’
Ethan shrugged, casting a last glance at Bash, then dutifully headed towards the door.
Madison walked to a chair near the bar cart and stared at its occupant until she got up and scurried to the opposite end of the roof.
There were no other empty seats, so Hannah perched on the wall.
She was at an awkward angle, slightly behind Madison, but Madison left her chair positioned as it was, so that Hannah had to crane forward to talk to her.
‘He’s sulking,’ Beatrice said from behind the bar cart, tilting her chin to Bash. He’d succeeded in lighting the fire pit and was now sitting on the deep sofa, his back to them, sipping a whiskey neat and staring into the flames.
‘Is he really failing seminar?’ Hannah asked.
‘Not yet, but he will be if he keeps this up. Throwing parties when he should be writing. Harris gave him a tome of notes, and he hasn’t touched his draft since.’
Madison flapped one slender hand in the air. ‘Revisions aren’t due until Monday. There’s plenty of time.’
Beatrice laughed. ‘Maybe for you. I tried to talk him out of all this’ – she motioned around the roof – ‘but he was dead set on tonight.’
‘Wouldn’t you be?’ Madison asked. ‘Richard took Edward to the Riviera and left Bash behind.’
‘To work on his paper,’ Beatrice replied. ‘So he can graduate?’
Madison shook her head, red hair tumbling around her shoulders. ‘You know it’s never that simple with Richard. Speaking of…’ She leaned forward, peering at the beverage selection. ‘I’ll have the Sancerre rosé.’
Beatrice selected a glass from beneath the cart and poured. ‘Hannah?’
‘No thanks.’ Her parents would be waiting up, and besides, she felt a little unsteady up here on the roof.
As Beatrice and Madison continued their analysis of Bash’s precarious position in the senior class, Hannah slipped her phone from her bag.
Three more texts from Grace, all about the housing questionnaire they were supposed to be filling out together.
They’d both gotten into UPenn, as expected, but while Grace had immediately accepted her spot and paid the deposit, Hannah was no more decided than she had been a few weeks ago. Because she’d also gotten into NYU.
Just then, Ethan reappeared, a pair of luxe spa slippers in hand. The LC monogram had been embroidered across the toes in gold thread. ‘My lady.’
Hannah switched off her phone. Gratefully, she kicked off her heels and slid them on. ‘That’s so much better. Thank you.’
Ethan nodded, sinking down on the wall beside her. Conspiratorially, he looked between Madison, Hannah and Beatrice. ‘I found something in Bash’s room.’
‘Bash’s room?’ Hannah asked. The Beaumonts owned a vast penthouse several blocks north, on East 81st Street; they didn’t live at the club.
‘When Richard travels, Bash likes to stay in the MacAllister Room,’ Beatrice explained. ‘Chef Bernard feeds him, and it’s better than banging around that whole penthouse by himself.’
‘Of course,’ Hannah said, although a week alone in a fabulous Upper East Side penthouse didn’t sound half bad.
‘Anyway,’ Madison cut in. ‘Don’t leave us hanging, Ethan. What did you find?’
He leaned in and dropped his voice. ‘There’s an oil portrait on a stand beside the bed. I looked beneath the cover. It’s a nude… of Elle.’
Madison stiffened, and Hannah glanced at Beatrice, gauging her reaction. Their conversation from a few weeks ago was still fresh in her mind: You asked about Bash, and it’s not exactly a secret. He’s in love with Elle. Obviously.
Beatrice’s face gave nothing away. A pair of juniors stepped up to the bar cart, and she turned to pour two glasses of white. When they’d gone, Beatrice shrugged. ‘Over winter break, Elle and I posed for an accomplished oil painter, Verna Reese. She’s a friend of my mother’s.’
‘Okay…’ Ethan said, not so patiently anticipating the rest of the story.
‘Okay, what? I know you have no interest in the female form, but Verna’s nudes are beautiful. Mine’s in my bedroom. I suppose Elle gave hers to Bash.’
Madison stood, chair skidding back on the flagstone. ‘Excuse me.’
Hannah and the others watched as she walked briskly over to the fire pit, then flung herself onto the sofa, beside Bash. Ethan stood and took Madison’s chair, leaving Hannah on the wall alone once again.
Hannah leaned forward, but it was impossible to hear what they were saying. To effectively eavesdrop, something that certainly wasn’t beneath her, she’d need to get closer.
‘What are you doing?’ Beatrice hissed, watching Hannah stand and begin to cross the deck.
Hannah ignored her, and, slippers padding silently against the flagstone, she walked to the sofa where Bash and Madison were sitting. The sofa was angled to face the fire, and she crouched down behind it, unseen.
‘The painting means nothing,’ Madison was saying, her voice a low hiss. ‘She’s taunting you.’
‘It’s not like that.’ Bash’s voice was thick with whiskey. The night was still young, but this clearly wasn’t his first. ‘What Elle and I have—’
‘Is meaningless,’ Madison cut in. ‘In a few months, Elle will be at Harvard. She’s going places, while you, my dear, are headed back to Prescott this fall.’
‘That’s a lie,’ Bash snarled. ‘You’ve been spending too much time on The Upper Edge.’
Hannah eased herself into a seated position on the flagstone, back to the sofa. From the bar cart, Beatrice narrowed her eyes, and Ethan leaned so far forward, trying desperately to listen, he looked like he was about to tumble out of his chair.
‘I don’t get my information from vapid gossip accounts. I have it on good authority from Harris that your first draft was the laziest, most derivative garbage he’d seen in Prescott history.’
Hannah frowned. Had Mr Harris really discussed another student’s paper with Madison?
She was an expert in getting what she wanted, in and outside Prescott walls, but it still seemed unlikely.
And when Hannah thought about it, Madison’s words were nothing more than a twist on what Beatrice had shared with them only moments ago.
A crueller version, to be sure, but that was Madison’s way.
When they’d been talking to Beatrice, Madison had defended Bash, but now here she was, tearing him down.
‘Forget Elle,’ Madison was saying. ‘She has her sights set higher than you.’
Hannah mulled Madison’s words over. Perhaps it was very simple.
Beneath all their sniping and power games, Madison loved her best friend.
When she believed Theo had been cheating, she’d encouraged Elle to break up with him.
Now, sensing something romantic brewing between Bash and Elle, she was trying to put a stop to a union of which she didn’t approve, before it got started.
‘I have things under control,’ Bash snapped. ‘With Harris, and with Elle.’
‘Maybe with Harris,’ Madison quipped. ‘I suppose everyone has their price. But don’t delude yourself – Elle is a queen, and she’ll never touch the wares half of Prescott has sampled. You’re not her type.’
Bash stood abruptly, and the sofa back slammed into Hannah’s head. She clasped a hand to her mouth to stifle a surprised yelp as Bash stalked away from Madison and the fire pit. Silently, Hannah stood and brushed off her dress, hoping she’d escaped their notice.
She needn’t have worried. At that moment, everyone’s eyes were trained on the street-facing side of the deck, where Tyler Marsden stood on the narrow lip of the wall, arms extended, walking it like a tightrope.
Hannah’s hand flew back to her mouth. They were two storeys above East 73rd Street, below them nothing but hard concrete.
She’d assumed Bash had made a sudden exit from the Madison tête-à-tête because he’d felt angry and attacked, and while surely that was true, she now recognised the real reason for his hasty departure.
‘Get the fuck down from there, Tyler!’
Tyler looked at Bash, startled. ‘It’s all good. We’re just having some fun.’
Bash’s voice was low, deadly serious. ‘I said get down. Now.’
Tyler shrugged and hopped off the wall. ‘Chill, okay. I’m an athlete. I have excellent balance.’
‘Go fuck your balance,’ Bash hissed. ‘We’re not insured for guest use on the roof. If you take a header, it’s my ass on the line. Now get out.’
‘What?’ Tyler looked taken aback.
‘Everyone!’ Bash screamed, his face turning red in the lantern light. ‘Get the fuck off my roof, now!’
For a moment, everyone was silent, frozen. Bash’s words hung in the air.
Hannah sucked in a sharp breath. Then, almost in unison, the entire party rose and hurried to the door.