Sixty-eight degrees in Central Park.
Patch strolled past the monument on the south side and threaded through suited men and women and nannies pushing strollers filled with wide-eyed kids trying to make sense of the cacophony. For a moment he longed to find the water, the ferry, and ride it till the island was nothing more than a piece of land without such weighty expectations.
Charlotte guided him through the maze like a native, firing out scowls to everyone who jostled close, flipping off a truck driver as he leaned on the horn before Patch could close a fist around the offending finger.
“It’s New York, kill or be killed,” Charlotte said, locking eyes with the driver and miming a decapitation with the nail of her thumb across her throat.
She nodded to a doorman, moved to head in when Patch stared up, the building so grand it leaned on him.
“Your grandmother brought you to the Plaza?” he said.
“It’s her dime. She keeps saying she can’t take it with her. You think she doesn’t know how inheritance works?”
Sammy met them at the champagne bar at six, wearing a navy tux, white shirt, and gold tie, his watch wafer-thin platinum, his cufflinks shone as he ordered three slugs of Macallan 18 then told Patch he would be claiming each back from him as an expense.
Patch frowned at Charlotte, who attempted to Scottish her Coke as Sammy nodded his approval.
“How about a mint julep? We’re reading Gatsby next semester,” Charlotte said to the bartender.
“When in Rome,” Sammy agreed.
“She’s twelve,” Patch said.
Sammy waved him off. “I took my first finger of Pappy when I was a mere—”
Patch breathed again when Mrs. Meyer crossed the grand room. Chandeliers dropped from ornate moldings before gold curtains that framed a view of Fifth Avenue and the Pulitzer Fountain. Elegant in a green dress and heels, she summoned Charlotte to go change out of her jeans and sneakers.
“Nervous?” she asked Patch.
He shrugged though she read him, reached forward and touched his arm as she left.
Sammy appraised him carefully, from the dark jacket to the cream slacks, the white shirt beneath open three buttons to skin tanned from working the yard.
“You look—”
“Like a cunt?” Patch offered, quiet into Sammy’s ear.
He watched the city through the window, thought of the evening ahead, for a moment wanting to head back to his hotel and hide away, to let Sammy do what he did and report back when it was over.
“You’re doing it for them,” Sammy said. “And for the girl.”
Patch did not know which girl he meant, but he guessed both of them. Charlotte’s future, the memory of Grace.
Patch attempted to order a Yoo-hoo from the barman, and Sammy sighed.
“Shaming me never gets old,” Sammy said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“We should take a Van Winkle Special Reserve in commemoration,” Sammy said, signaling the bartender.
Patch checked the menu and saw the price and died a little inside.