Caleb looked around the coffee shop. It was a clean, well-lighted place, but he couldn't imagine Hemingway spending five minutes in it. The decor was black and white, from the checkerboard floor tiles to the sleek counter. Everything was hard, reflective surfaces, shiny as the hair of the pubescent rich girls who were gathered there. School would start in a week or so, and there they were, freshly tanned from their summer in the Hamptons or the south of France.
They wore short flared skirts over bony-kneed coltish legs, but they also wore a smart, close-fitting self-assurance, a thick coating of self-esteem, smooth and sleek as their bouncy, well-cared-for hair. They moved among the short, squat members of the waitstaff as if they owned the restaurant-which, in a way, they did. Their parents were the monied classes of the Upper East Side, the highest average income bracket of any zip code in the country. Never mind Beverly Hills 90210, with its crude new money-these people were the true aristocracy, and their daughters knew it.
Caleb looked at the little sluts and imagined their parents roaming their roomy, multimillion-dollar apartments in their tailored Armani suits and Gucci loafers, pausing to deposit checks from wealthy clients or check on their blue-chip stocks before making lunch reservations at La Giraffe or Chanterelle. They owned the grand brownstone buildings they lived in and shopped in the expensive, exclusive boutiques of Madison Avenue. The immigrants from Ecuador, Mexico, or Peru who shined their silverware and washed their sheets came and went at their pleasure.
Caleb stirred another spoonful of sugar into his coffee. He hated these girls, living in the cocoon of comfort and care available only to the very rich. He watched a couple of them talking, slouched around one table, laughing as they flipped their long, shiny hair off a shoulder, delicately fingering their tiny designer backpacks.
They were disgusting, with their inbred complacency-that aura of self-satisfaction they had swallowed with their mother's milk, confidence absorbed through the placental fluid. These girls might not know who they were yet, but they thought they did.
Caleb watched as a short, pug-faced Dominican busboy cleared the table, his face set in that deliberate expression of disinterest he had seen on so many workers. He wondered what the Dominicans and Guatemalans thought of these girls. Did they resent their financial, social, and genetic superiority, or were they just grateful to be in America, working for minimum wage while waiting on these princesses of privilege? He was always amazed at the goodwill and cheerful humor of New York restaurant workers.
One of the girls, a coltish brunette in a pink sweater, bumped his table, then, catching his eye, giggled and whispered something to her friends. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, so aware of her superiority it took his breath away. Caleb stirred his coffee and took a sip. She is clearly a bad girl, and bad girls deserve to be punished.
Caleb adjusted his stockings and straightened his wig. The disguise was a good one-no one had even glanced at him twice on the subway. He smiled as he smoothed his green tweed skirt. It was expensive and well cut-his mother would have looked good in it.