“I think,” she said absently, “that I need a little trip down to the Turkish bath this afternoon. I always used to go there to sweat out the small stuff. Maybe just give the room a light freshening and then take a few hours off. You look a little peaky. Do something frivolous.”

Lola jumped about four feet when Scarlett opened the door to the Orchid Suite.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” Scarlett asked.

“Aren’t you? Where’s Mrs. Amberson?”

“She’s gone to sweat at the Turkish bath. What’s your excuse?”

Lola looked a bit furtive and guilty.

“It’s Chip’s mom’s fiftieth birthday,” Lola said. “They’re having a weekend event in the Hamptons and a dinner in town.”

“It’s not the weekend,” Scarlett said. “And it’s not dinnertime.”

“There’s a lot to do. There’s the jitney to charter, the caterers to speak to, the party planners, the flowers, the band…”

“You know, Chip is a big boy with a high school diploma and a phone and everything,” Scarlett said. “Why do you have to take off work for that? It’s his mom.”

“He needs help,” she said. “He’s no good with that stuff.”

“Isn’t that what the party planners do? Plan parties?”

“You don’t understand,” Lola said, digging furiously around her bureau. “Have you seen my pink ear…oh, here they are.”

She put the pink studs in her ears with a rapid, stabbing motion.

“What was it last week?” Scarlett said. “Or the weekend before?”

Lola ran her hands through her hair in frustration. She was obviously a little nervous about the whole thing.

“I work in a store,” she said. “I can switch shifts. And Chip has to go to this wealth management training thing in Boston…he doesn’t have time. Just do me a favor, okay? I was never here this afternoon. I’ll owe you.”

“You already owe me.”

“So, you’re building credit.”

“It’s fine,” Scarlett said. “I won’t tell on you. I’m not…well, Marlene.”

Lola’s face blossomed into a smile.

“I’ll see you later,” she said. “I’ll try to sneak you out something good from the pastry sampling we’re going to. I’ll be back early, anyway. Marlene has a bowling party tonight at seven I have to take her to.”

Lola was gone in a moment, only the light fragrance of her perfume lingered. Finally, a few hours to write. Scarlett turned on the air conditioner, opened her computer, and…

Again, the only thing in her mind was Eric.

She hadn’t seen him since that day on the sidewalk with the laundry, but he had never once left her mind. Every day she wanted to ask Spencer about him when he got home from rehearsal, but every time she opened her mouth to speak, there was an unfamiliar queasiness.

Scarlett had never had an actual, labeled, official boyfriend. But then, almost none of her friends did. It was an intense place, Frances Perkins. No time for attachments—just fleeting making out between labs, museum visits, more labs, and endless extracurriculars. Dating was for the weak, for people who didn’t plan on doing double chem (which Scarlett didn’t), double physics (ditto), or getting into the Right School.