Eligible (8 page)

Jane set down her blush container and turned to face Liz. “You think?”

Liz shrugged. “He wouldn’t be the first.”

“Aren’t you the one who encouraged me to go out with him tonight?”

“It could be that he saw
Eligible
as a lark and thought,
Why not?
I didn’t get an egomaniacal vibe when I talked to him. I just don’t totally buy his backstory.”

“I’m almost afraid to tell you this now,” Jane said, “but you know how his sister Caroline is here for a few weeks from L.A.?”

“I saw her at the Lucases’, but we hardly talked.”

“She’s his manager,” Jane said.

Liz squinted. “Meaning what?”

“I guess ever since
Eligible,
he gets approached about product endorsements or doing charity events. She handles all of that for him.”

Liz struggled not to form an expression of distaste; Caroline Bingley had on the Fourth of July revealed herself to Liz to be almost as unappealing as Fitzwilliam Darcy. As Caroline, her brother, and Darcy had been about to depart together, Caroline had first told Liz that she kept forgetting whether she was in Cleveland, Cincinnati, or Columbus, then she’d lamented the local dearth of decent sushi or yoga. Liz had considered recommending Modo Yoga, which was the studio Jane frequented, but decided instead to withhold the kindness.

Liz had by that point in the party shared Darcy’s remarks with other attendees, animated as she did so by a giddy and outraged fervor. Charlotte Lucas had laughed, Mrs. Bennet had been deeply insulted, and Jane had speculated that Darcy had known she was eavesdropping and had been joking, which Liz thought gave Darcy far too much credit.

In her bedroom, Liz said to Jane, “Maybe you and Chip can get paid to show up together at nightclubs. That would be funny.”

“You’re sending very mixed messages right now, Lizzy.”

Liz grinned. “I contain multitudes.” She added, “Sorry. Just enjoy yourself tonight, and forget I said anything.”

LIZ WAS STILL
at her desk, though actually doing work—she was reading a commencement speech delivered by Kathy de Bourgh, a famous feminist whom she hoped to interview for her pay-raise article—when Lydia entered the room and said, “Have you seen my phone?”

Liz shook her head.

“Fuck,” Lydia said. “I need to text Ham to see what time we’re meeting, but my phone is the only place I have his number.”

“Who’s Ham?”

“Ham Ryan.”

“Am I supposed to know who that is?” Liz asked.

“He owns the box we go to.”

Box,
to Liz’s annoyance, was the preferred CrossFit term for its gyms. She said, “Is he your boyfriend?”

Lydia’s expression was disdainful. Sarcastically, she said, “Are we going steady? Do you think he’ll give me his varsity jacket?”

“Excuse me for daring to make conversation with you after you came into my room.”

“There’s a spider on your wall.”

At first, Liz wondered if this was some coded insult used by millennials, but when she turned, she saw a real spider, brown and quarter-sized. She stood to grab a sandal, and when she whacked the shoe against the wall, a chip of paint flaked off.

“Gross,” Lydia said. “Tell me if you find my phone.” She hadn’t yet left the room when Liz opened a new window on her Web browser and typed in
Ham Ryan CrossFit Cincinnati.

He was handsome, of course: short light brown hair coaxed by product into a sort of glistening spikiness, as well as blue eyes and a tidy goatee. His real name was Hamilton, apparently, and he was from Seattle.

Liz cared little about either CrossFit or Lydia’s paramours (their turnover was too frequent to justify investing much attention) while finding Kathy de Bourgh’s commencement address genuinely interesting; yet somehow, she spent the next forty minutes exploring the nooks and crannies of the website for Ham Ryan’s “box,” and even came away half-tempted to try a recipe for Paleo crab cakes, if only doing so wouldn’t please her sisters.

CLOSE TO MIDNIGHT,
as Liz was shutting down her computer, she heard someone ascending the staircase to the third floor; to her surprise, it was Mary rather than Jane. On Mary’s face was an unconcealed smirk. “Look.” She passed her phone to Liz.

The small screen showed an item on a celebrity gossip website that Liz thought of as holding greater appeal for Kitty and Lydia than Mary, with a headline that read, “Flunky Hunky: Did Eligible Bachelor Almost Fail Out of Harvard Medical School?” Below was a photo of Chip Bingley in a tuxedo, clinking champagne flutes with one of the comely female finalists from his season. Liz skimmed the entry, which was only a paragraph (“Former classmates say Bingley was known more for hitting the bike trails than the books…”), then gave back the phone. “So?” she said. “He passed his boards, obviously.”

“If you cut off your finger, would you want him to be the one to stitch it on?”

“The fact that he wasn’t first in his class doesn’t mean he’s incompetent.”

Mary raised her eyebrows dubiously. “I knew there was something fishy about a graduate of Harvard Medical School ending up in an ER in Cincinnati. It was probably the only job he could get.”

This seemed a rather presumptuous judgment from someone who herself had never been employed. “Don’t show that to anyone,” Liz said. “Even if it’s true, it’s irrelevant.”

AT FIVE-THIRTY IN
the morning, Liz awoke to the rustling of Jane slipping into the twin bed across from hers.

“Yikes,” Liz mumbled. “I guess it was a successful date.”

“Oh, Lizzy,” Jane said. “Chip’s amazing.”

AFTER DINNER AT
Orchids, Jane and Chip had moved on to Bakersfield for drinks. (Liz didn’t learn any of this until the afternoon, because Jane not only slept through their morning run but also skipped the eleven
A.M
. service at Knox Presbyterian Church that Mary and Mrs. Bennet attended every Sunday, Liz and Jane attended when in town, and all other Bennets eschewed except at Christmas.) Following drinks (“Did you actually drink or were you fostering a hospitable uterus again?” Liz asked, and Jane said she’d had one glass of wine at dinner and another at the bar), Jane and Chip had returned to his apartment in Oakley, where they’d taken the opportunity to discover that they were a couple truly compatible in all ways. “Do you think I’m slutty?” Jane asked.

“You’re thirty-nine years old,” Liz said. “You should do what you want. Was it weird with his sister there?”

Jane shook her head. “The room she’s staying in is at the opposite end of the apartment.” Jane was still lying in bed as she relayed these facts, and Liz sat on the other twin bed. “It wasn’t awkward with Chip at all, and neither of us was drunk,” Jane added. “I really like him. I just—I felt a way I hadn’t for so long. And it barely had to do with how good-looking he is. He
is
good-looking, but I was just so comfortable with him. He’s genuinely nice and not self-centered. I really don’t think he’s an aspiring actor. He told me the
Eligible
producers got in touch recently asking him to be on a reunion show, and he said no.”

“Then I stand corrected.”

“He also was mortified you’d overheard him and Darcy talking at the Lucases’. He wanted me to tell you how sorry he is, and how he doesn’t share Darcy’s view of Cincinnati at all.”

Liz smiled. “At least when it comes to the women here, I’d say that’s obvious.”

“Really, though.” Jane’s expression was serious. “Chip says Darcy can be kind of brusque, but he’s a really good person and a world-class surgeon.”

“With a world-class ego, apparently. Just to warn you, Mom’s downstairs practically salivating. She knows you were out late.”

“You didn’t tell her how late, did you?”

“No, but I can’t promise she wasn’t looking out the window when Chip dropped you off.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Jane said. “Because think how much trouble I’d have gotten in back in high school for coming home from a date at five in the morning. But I just had to wait twenty years, and now Mom’s probably thrilled.”

“I’VE GOT A
question that you need not repeat to any of your sisters,” Mr. Bennet said. He and Liz sat in an exam room at the orthopedist’s office, waiting for the removal of the cast on his arm, a duty Jane had told Liz she didn’t think she could sit through. “I’m afraid I’ll throw up,” Jane had said, and Liz had said, “Because of the saw?” Jane had shook her head and said, “Because of the smell.”

“This business about Mary being homosexual,” Mr. Bennet continued. “Do you think there’s anything to it?”

Surprised, Liz said, “Why?”

“Your mother wouldn’t like it, of course. But what’s the old saying about people going about their business as long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses?”

“Wow, Dad,” Liz said. “Have you become a Democrat?”

Her father shuddered. “Scarcely. But where
does
Mary go on Tuesday nights?”

“You could ask her. Where she goes, I mean, not if she’s gay. Well, you could ask her that, too, although I don’t know if I would.” Liz had concluded some years earlier that Mary wasn’t interesting enough to be gay. All the gay people Liz knew in New York, both men and women, were a little more something than average—a little more thoughtful or stylish or funny—though perhaps, Liz reflected, it was New York itself rather than gayness that accounted for their extra appeal.