The Company You Keep Read Free Page B

to the bank of metal-framed windows that looked out from her twelfth-floor apartment on East Seventieth, off Lexington. After years of renting various places around the City, she’d finally bought the condo when the real estate market hit a low a few years ago. And for the Upper East Side, it had been a bargain, all because her building was one of those white brick high rises built with good intentions but a total disregard of aesthetic appeal. Ugly didn’t come close, and no self-respecting equities analyst or art gallery owner wanted to be caught dead in something so gauche. One day, though, she figured, white brick would be the new Art Deco, and she’d be laughing all the way to the bank.
The loud wail of the cell phone started up again.
She rubbed her eyes and turned to find her BlackBerry on the nightstand. Its slim black case jiggled across the glass surface. Mimi peered closely, not at the phone number displayed on the screen but at the table, checking for dust. It was spotless. The cleaning lady she’d hired since returning home came in twice a week. She was considering having her come in three times, but even she admitted that was absurd. This obsession she’d developed to maintain spotless control would pass. Still…
The phone rang on.
Mimi sighed and finally reached over. “Yes?” she said without much interest.
“Is that any way to answer the telephone, Mary Louise?” It was her father, Conrad Lodge III. Only he would use her given names instead of her nickname. “I suppose I should thank the heavens that you even picked up—as opposed to my many emails that you’ve ignored completely.” His upper class, lockjaw manner of speaking sounded even more pronounced over the phone.
Mimi inhaled. “I didn’t answer your emails because I haven’t had time to open them.” It was a lie, but then her family was good at lying. She hadn’t actually bothered about the messages at all.
She shifted her position under the covers and stared at the wall with the photos again, zeroing in on the black-and-white shot of her mother wearing a silly party hat and holding forth a birthday cake adorned with lit candles. It had been Mimi’s ninth birthday. She’d been in third grade at Grantham Country Day School.
Mimi recalled that birthday vividly. More than anything she had wanted to get her ears pierced. Her father had refused. “Who do you think you are? An immigrant child?” he’d asked scornfully. Her mother, only recently a naturalized citizen, had bowed her head and looked away.
As she lay in bed now, Mimi felt the hole in one of her earlobes. Conrad had won the battle that birthday, but as soon as she’d left home for boarding school Mimi had made a beeline for the nearest Piercing Pagoda. Maybe one of these days she’d actually get around to wearing earrings again.
From the other end of the telephone line her father cleared his throat. “I’m delighted you’re keeping so busy during your time off from work.”
Cutting sarcasm had always been one of his strengths, Mimi thought.
“Therefore, rather than wait for you to find the time, I decided to call you instead.”
“Before you begin the lecture, I know I should come down to see the family,” Mimi cut in, anticipating his demands. Grantham, New Jersey, Mimi’s family’s hometown, was an hour’s train ride south of New York City. It was the epitome of a picture-postcard college town—Gothic university buildings and historic colonial houses. Its quaint main street—named Main Street, no less—boasted high-end jewelry shops, stock brokerages and coffee shops that catered to black-clad intellectuals and young moms with yoga mats tucked in the back of expensive jogging strollers.
“So, I promise to visit soon,” she continued, only half meaning it.
“That would be most welcome,” her father replied. “But actually, I am inquiring about something else. I’m on the organizing committee for Reunions this year. Quite an honor, really.” Reunions