The Social Climber by Amanda Pellegrino

Author:Amanda Pellegrino
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Park Row Books
Published: 2022-11-01T18:55:17+00:00

PART TWO

TWELVE

“Name.”

The woman behind the boxy glass desk didn’t look at me when she asked. Instead, she stared behind me, toward the double doors that opened gracefully onto Madison Avenue, as if she was waiting for someone more important to show up.

“Eliza Bennet,” I responded, forcing from her, finally, eye contact.

“Like—”

“Yes,” I said, cutting her off. It had been seven years since I first heard that reference, and I no longer found it charming. I go by Eliza now. Not as lace-veil, silver-cross as Elizabeth the Mother of Mary, but still a tribute to that girl; to a part of my life I couldn’t forget. No matter how hard I tried.

The woman focused on her computer and while she searched for my name in their database, I scanned the sign-in sheet on top of the glass. It wasn’t unlike the one in Willits—a line of printed names beside a line of messy signatures.

“Here you go,” the woman said, handing me a paper sticker with my name printed on it. I almost affixed it to my chest before stopping myself—thank God. People like us don’t put stickers on our one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar cashmere sweaters. That’s not something people like us do, I reminded myself then. And many times after.

Ashleigh and Brittany waited for me at the entrance to the fifteenth-floor office suite, like overly enthusiastic hostesses at a bad restaurant.

“Eliza!” Brittany squealed as the elevator doors opened. I put on a smile and approached them kindly, despite wondering how long they’d been standing there and how many people had fallen victim to their misguided excitement before I showed up.

“We’re thrilled to have you join the team!” Ashleigh said, shaking my hand like she was trying to be the professional one in their relationship. A good cop/bad cop kind of thing. It was about as trustworthy as a handshake in an interrogation room.

Once I was at my desk and told to “sit tight” until my boss Hilary arrived, the room began to fill quickly. One fashionable white girl followed by another fashionable white girl in their cool ripped jeans and bodycon dresses and oversized blazers.

Lena stood out amongst the rest, like a bull in a Lilly Pulitzer store. She wore a black dress that floated over her bones-only body like she was always walking in the path of the wind or a perfectly placed invisible fan, and white sneakers. They were platform, making her usual five foot nine seem more like five foot eleven, but they were sneakers. And I bet it needled at Brittany and Ashleigh.

Lena didn’t stop to greet me as she passed my desk on the way to hers, as so many others had. Instead, she glided down the aisle of white desks like it was her wedding and she didn’t have a care in the world. I’d looked her up, obviously—I’d looked everyone up—but she was the one. Lena Cunningham. Twenty-seven. Graduate of the Yale School of Drama. Wrote an award-winning play that dramatized William Carlos Williams’s poem “The Red Wheelbarrow.

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