Page 4 of Old Money

I ’d like to say it feels different, twenty years later.

But standing in the staff lot behind the clubhouse, I still feel like an interloper.

I’m coated with a sticky film of perspiration, and my hair is already coming loose in tiny wisps.

I smooth my hair into a bun, making a mental note to buy a can of proper hairspray. Everyone here uses it; I’d forgotten.

Once I’m sure Theo is gone, I head toward the staff door.

I keep my head up, taking in the sights and sounds around me.

This is a grounding trick I learned in therapy, when I finally did go to therapy.

I rarely use it nowadays, but it was my lifeline in my early twenties—the peak panic-attack years.

Whenever I felt one coming over me, I’d stop in my tracks, look around and name three things I saw—then three things I heard, smelled, felt, etc.

Within seconds, my feet would hit firm ground again, and I’d be back in the grocery store or the park, back in my safe and mundane adult life.

The trouble with this place is it hasn’t changed a bit since I left here as a traumatized, blood-stained child.

What do I see? The hill I was standing on when I heard Caitlin screaming.

What do I hear? Kids splashing and hollering down at the pool—the one that turned from blue to hazy lavender, because of all the blood.

I’d forgotten that part, but one walk across the parking lot, and I’ve regressed all the way to eleven. So much for therapy.

I pause at the staff door, deep-breathing myself back into adulthood, and rap the brass knocker. The boom is so loud I hear it echoing inside.

“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 and loved it.

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 the worst part 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.”

He ducks into the ballroom, and I hurry behind him.

“What?” I whisper, my heart thudding though I don’t know why.

Cory stands against the wall, fumbling with his undone tie.

“He’s such a dick about this stuff,” he mutters.

“Who? Jamie?”

Cory shakes his head, annoyed, pointing his chin toward the doorway. A figure walks past, moving briskly—a brief, uniformed blur in my peripheral vision.

“Him,” Cory mouths, his blasé expression turned alert and anxious.

I recognize that look. But—no. He can’t mean him .

I step sideways, peeking through the open doorway.

“No way.”

He’s at the other end of the gallery now, nearing the back stairs. But even at this distance, and even with his back turned, I recognize Mr. Brody.

“I know,” Cory murmurs. “He’s been here since I was a kid.”

I step back, agog.

“He’s been here since I was a kid.”

“Wow,” says Cory, in a full, astonished voice. “That’s insane.”

On second thought, I think I’ll leave Cory to fiddle with his tie, and go find Jamie’s office myself. I open my mouth to tell him so, but Cory turns to me, his face shifting from incredulous to intrigued.

“Wait, what’s your name again?”

Something’s clicked.

“Alice,” I say, one foot shuffling backward—just an inch, but the sound echoes in the cavernous room.

Breathe . He doesn’t matter. He probably doesn’t even know about Caitlin .

Cory seems to smile slightly. Of course he knows. He’s from here.

“Alice what?”

Stop. Look around. What do you see? What do you hear?

But it’s too late, the room is already throbbing. The walls pulse around me, in time with my galloping heart, and even though I know it doesn’t matter if he knows my last name—it doesn’t matter if he knows exactly who I am—I need to leave, now, before he asks another question.

“I’ve got a meeting,” I manage, heading for the doorway.

I move as fast as possible, though the air already feels like thick molasses, each step a clumsy effort. I grasp the door frame, pulling myself around it and into the gallery, and as I do I dare one split-second glance back at Cory, and there it is: recognition, spreading wide across his face.

Then I turn the corner, and the world goes black.