2. Chapter Two
Penelope
“There’s a package here for you!”
I’m elbow-deep in the second suitcase, which is the one I packed badly, because by the time I got to it I’d stopped caring and started shoving. Everything in it is going to need to be steamed.
“Bring it in here.”
Ivory shoulders the door open with a box under one arm and stops dead.
“Oh my God.” She looks at the floor. There are four piles on it, and one of them is only shoes. “Penelope, I’ve never seen you so unorganized.”
“I am organized.”
She laughs, setting the package down. I don’t have to look at it to know what it is. Ivory pulls out her phone and says, “I need to take a picture.”
“Of what?” I scoff.
“Evidence that you’re human like the rest of us.”
I shake my head. “This is why my door was shut.”
“Smile,” she says, pointing the phone at me.
I lift a shoulder and smile shyly.
“Open your package,” she says, jumping on my bed. “I want to see what your mom got you this time.”
I open my mouth and close it. “Why don’t you open it?”
She shrugs. “Okay.” Then she leaves the room to fetch the scissors.
When she walks back in, “I know you spent your summer in Chicago, and then you went to Lake Como, but don’t give me the Instagram version.”
I grab the hangers and start putting my shirts, dresses, and coats on them. “I helped my mom with the gala. I went to my dad’s office twice. I had lunch with people who used to babysit me and are now telling me about their divorces.”
She opens the box with the scissors and sets it aside. “How were the divorces?”
I put the last dress on a hanger and say, “Thorough.”
Ivory pulls out the dress from the box and holds it up. “And Lake Como?”
I stare at the navy dress while she admires it.
“I spent two weeks there. My dad drove and refused to use GPS. We got lost outside Varenna for an hour and a half, and he wouldn’t admit it.”
“Did you love it?”
“I photographed a drainage system.”
“A what?”
“It was eleventh century. It still works.” I shake out a sweater. “I liked it. It was the first two weeks all summer where nobody scheduled me.”
She lets that one go by without comment. She grabs a hanger for the dress and hangs it in my closet.
“Okay, so mine,” she says. “Maine was fine. My mother has a boat now. Don’t ask about the boat. Then Florida for three weeks with my aunt, who has decided I’m getting married in the next four years and has started sending me pictures of venues.”
“Did you tell her about Drew Faulkner?”
She nods.
I chuckle. “Don’t marry Drew.”
She shakes her head. “Fuck, marry, kill –– Drew is a fuck. He’s not a marry.”
“He’s a good time, not a venue.”
She laughs. “Yeah.”
“How many venues did your aunt send you?”
“Nine.” She flops backward. “Nine venues. One of them was a barn.”
“Do you like barns?”
“I don’t know, that’s not the point—”
“I would love to design a venue.”
“That would be a dream. You should draw something up for me.”
“You mean you and Drew?”
Ivory picks up my shoe and starts inspecting it like she’s thinking about stealing it, which she is.
“So,” she says. “Speaking of Drew. The Hawthorne House is having a thing tonight.”
“A thing?” I question, knowing she means one of their notorious parties.
“You’re coming.”
“Am I?”
“You are, because last year you came to two parties total and you left both of them too early. One of them you left before ten.” She rolls her eyes. “Anyways, this is the first party of the year. We have to go.”
I start folding my jeans. “I’ll think about it.”
She gives me a face. “That’s a no in a nice dress.”
I take the shoe back from her. “That’s a think about it.”
My phone goes off on the dresser. I already know who it is by the ringtone, and my body automatically stands up a little straighter.
I pick up my phone and answer, “Hi, Mom.”
“Penelope, honey. You’re on for six tonight.”
I go still with a hanger in my hand. I don’t know what she means. “Six?”
“Yes, for an interview.”
“What interview?”
“The Whitmores, darling.” Amused, like I’ve done something charming. “The internship.”
The name comes back slowly. Christmas parties. A charity thing at the Peninsula when I was fifteen, where I worked the dessert table in three separate passes while adults stood around holding wine and talking about zoning.
“I thought that wasn’t until October.”
“It was moved. They need someone sooner.”
Across the room, Ivory has stopped moving.
She’s not on her phone anymore. She’s watching me the way you watch a pan you think might go over, and I turn toward the window.
“I’ve already sent them your portfolio.”
The hanger is still in my hand. I put it down on the dresser very carefully, because the other option is snapping it.
“You sent them my portfolio.”
“They were delighted, Penelope. Richard called me himself. They have real reach in Chicago — if you’re smart tonight, this could turn into something significant.”
Which means she already knows what it turns into. My mother doesn’t sound hopeful. She sounds like someone telling me how a book ends.
“Six,” I say. “Tonight.”
“Mm. Did you get the package?”
I look at the dress hanging in my closet.
“Yes.”
“Good. Wear it.”
I glare at the dress.
“Mom—”
“Wear it, Penelope. You’ll do beautifully. Call me tomorrow.”
The line clicks.
I stand there for a second with the phone still at my ear, which is a thing I hate and do every single time.
Ivory doesn’t say anything as I grab the dress. We both look at it.
“You didn’t know about the interview,” she says.
“No.”
“But she knew?”
I hold up the dress. “Yeah, and she didn’t bother to tell me. That’s nothing new.”
Ivory doesn’t push it any further, which is why I tell her things. She just picks the tissue paper up off my floor and balls it and lobs it at the trash can and misses by a foot.
“So,” she says. “This interview is at six.”
I nod.
“Which is a dinner. Which means it’s over by eight-thirty, nine at the latest.” She turns around. “So, you can come to Hawthorne.”
“Ivory.”
“I’m just laying out your calendar.”
“You’re scheduling me.”
“For your health.” She picks the tissue paper back up off the floor and makes the shot this time. “Come to the party, Penelope. One party. You can leave at midnight and I won’t say a single word about it.”
I look at the dress.
“Midnight,” I say.
She stops. “Wait, really?”
“Midnight, and you don’t leave me for Drew.”
“I would never—”
“You do it all the time.”
“He’s so hot.” She sits back down on my bed, grinning. “Okay. Midnight. Deal.”
I go back to the suitcase.
The address comes through at four-forty, from a number I don’t have saved.
The Camerie, 6:00. Looking forward to it. — Oliver Whitmore
I read it twice.
The Camerie is not an office. The Camerie is white linen, with a wine list and a piano. Nobody has ever been interviewed at the Camerie.
Ivory called it two hours ago without knowing anything about it.
I put my hair up and look at the dress on the back of my chair for longer than I need to. Then I put it on. I leave my apartment on Linden Street when I know I’ll be at the Camerie fifteen minutes early.
I give my name at the front, and the hostess doesn’t check anything.
“Miss Ventura. Right this way.”
Which answers the last question I had about tonight.
The table is in the corner, and the man who stands up first is in his late fifties. Silver hair. Charcoal suit, tailored well.
“Penelope.” His hand is already out. “Richard Whitmore. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
I’ve been shaking hands like this since I was twelve. My mother taught me at the kitchen island — web to web, two pumps, don’t look at their tie.
“Thank you for making the time.”
The younger man beside him stands before I can sit. Closer to thirty than twenty. Navy suit, no tie, top button undone by exactly the amount that says he undid it on purpose. Dark hair. An expensive watch.
“Oliver Whitmore. Nice to finally put a face to the portfolio.”
“You have me at a disadvantage,” I say. “I’ve only seen the firm’s.”
He likes that. He shouldn’t — it’s the kind of line I have four or five of, and I chose this one on the walk from the door.
“Please.” Richard gestures at the chair between them. “We took the liberty with a few appetizers. I hope that’s alright.”
“Of course.”
A waiter fills my water and disappears.
I put my napkin in my lap and sit the way she taught me to sit, and I think, fine. If this is a dinner, I’m good at dinners.
For fifteen minutes, it’s an interview. Richard asks about studio, about which professors are still there, about whether the department still makes second-years do site analysis by hand.
He listens to the answers, which is rarer than it should be.
Oliver comes in easily and asks what put me into architecture in the first place, and I tell him the truth — I was eight, in a parking garage, and I looked up.
He laughs. Richard says something about his own first building. I’m finding it nice talking to people who do this for a living and don’t need any of it explained.
Then Richard looks at his watch and produces a sigh.
“Oh — would you look at that.” He’s already reaching into his jacket for his phone.
“I’ve completely lost track. I’ve got another meeting across town.
” He looks between the two of us, apologetic in the way a man is apologetic when he’s never had to be.
“I’m terribly sorry, Penelope. I hate to cut the evening short.
This was nice. Your parents should be proud. ”
“Please, don’t worry about it.”
Oliver doesn’t look up from the bread.
Richard shakes my hand again, rests his palm on Oliver’s shoulder for less than a second, and goes. He greets two people by name on his way out. Neither of them was expecting it and both of them are delighted.
When I look back, Oliver is unfolding his napkin again.
“I suppose we should order before they think we’ve both left.”
I know what this is now. I’ve known since Richard reached for his phone, and possibly since the hostess said my name before I finished giving it.
But I’m here, and the food is coming, and my mother will ask me tomorrow how it went. So I put my napkin in my lap and do what I’ve been doing at tables like this one since I was old enough to sit at them.
Oliver is easy to talk to, which I’d expected.
We disagree about historic preservation — he thinks a city should protect everything it can, and I say if you landmark everything you end up living in a museum.
He’s good at being disagreed with. He asks the second question instead of the first. He’s been to Florence twice, and I tell him Lake Como got to me first and Florence never had a fair shot.
He’s charming in the way people become after ten years of business dinners. Charming because it’s always worked.
Then, somewhere between my salmon and his filet, he says, “When you move back to Chicago—”
I set my fork down. “I haven’t decided I’m moving back.”
He looks at me. “I think you will.”
There’s no challenge in it. He isn’t needling me. Something in my chest pulls tight, because he’s not the first person to say it to me.
“The office is expanding over the next few years,” he says. “It’s a good place to build a career.”
“A career.”
“And a life.”
The two words sit down on the table between us, next to the bread, like they arrived together. I pick my fork back up.
Dessert appears without either of us ordering it. Chocolate mousse. My favorite, set down in front of me like a coincidence.
“I hope that’s alright,” Oliver says.
“Yes.”
Of course it is. My mother knows exactly what I’d order.
Oliver reaches into the leather portfolio beside his chair and slides a cream folder across the linen.
“We don’t usually do this.”
The Whitmore Design Group logo is embossed on the front.
I open it. My name is already printed across the top of the first page.
Every line is filled in. Dates. Hours. A stipend with a comma in it.
One blank. There was never an interview.
There was a dinner, and an offer that was finished before I got dressed.
“You’re going to do great,” Oliver says.
“I appreciate that.”
“And?”
I close the folder.
“I’d like some time to think about it.”
Surprise goes across his face, and he smooths it off fast, but it was there.
“Really?”
“I don’t make decisions this size over dessert.”
A corner of his mouth goes up. “I respect that.”
I finish the mousse. All of it, slowly, because it’s very good and because leaving it would say something I’m not interested in saying.
Then I stand and slide the folder under my arm.
“Thank you for dinner.”
“My pleasure.” And as I turn, he says, “I hope you decide to work with us.”
I look back.
“I think you’d fit what we’re planning.”
Fit what we’re planning. He thinks he has me figured out. He’s telling me my outline matches.
“I’m still working out where I fit.”
I turn and walk out. Outside, the air is cooler than an August evening has any business being.
I get in my car and set the folder face down on the passenger seat.
I don’t open it again, and then I sit with both hands on the wheel and don’t start the engine.
This is everything I’m supposed to want.
Prestigious, competitive, connected, and finished before I walked through the door. It should feel like winning.
My phone lights up in the console.
Ivory: Get your ass to Hawthorne!
I look at the folder on the seat.
Then I look down at the dress my mother picked, that fits me perfectly, that I’m still wearing.
Me: On my way.