“That's absurd. Give me the number. I'll call them myself.” He was annoyed at their stupidity, and he was sure Carole would be too. He even knew her eating club. It was all over her CV that she had gone to Princeton.
But when he called them five minutes later, they told him the same thing. They were in fact extremely disagreeable about it, and said they didn't make mistakes like that. Carole Anne Parker had never graduated from Princeton. In fact, according to their records, when they checked further, no one by that name had ever attended the school. As he hung up the phone, a cold chill ran down his spine. And five minutes later, feeling like a monster, he called Columbia's School of Social Work. They told him the same thing. She had never attended Columbia either. When he hung up the phone, he knew he had found the fatal flaw. The woman he was falling in love with was a fraud. Whoever she was, and however well intentioned her work for the center had been, she had none of the degrees she claimed she did, and had even conned a million dollars out of his foundation, based on falsified credentials and a phony reputation. It was nearly criminal, except for the fact that she hadn't wanted the money for herself, but to help others. He had no idea what to do with the information. He needed time to think about it and digest it.
When she called him that afternoon, for the first time since he'd met her six weeks before, he didn't take her call. He couldn't just disappear out of her life, and he wanted an explanation. But first he needed time to absorb it, and two days later, he was taking her to the ballet. He made a decision that afternoon to say nothing until then, and deal with it after that. He called her late that afternoon, and said the board of trustees was having a crisis and he couldn't see her until Friday. She said she understood perfectly, and those things happened to her too. But when she hung up at her end, Carole wondered why he had sounded so chilly. In fact, he'd nearly been crying. He felt completely ripped off and disillusioned. The woman he had admired so totally since the day they met was a liar.
He spent an agonizing two days waiting to see her again, and when he picked her up on Friday for the ballet, she looked lovely. She was wearing the regulation little black cocktail dress, high heels, and a simple black fur jacket. She was beautifully dressed, and had even worn a pair of very proper pearl earrings that she said had been her mother's. He believed not a single word she said now. She had tainted everything between them with her lies about Columbia and Princeton. He no longer trusted her, and she thought he looked stiff and unhappy. She asked him if everything was all right, as the curtain went up, and he nodded. He had barely spoken to her in the cab, nor when they got to Lincoln Center. Carole thought he looked awful. She could only assume that since she'd last seen him, something terrible had happened at the foundation.
At intermission, they went to the bar to have a drink, and before they went back to their seats, she excused herself to go to the ladies' room, and just as she was about to leave him, a couple swooped down on her before Carole could avoid them. She turned her head away, as though she were trying to hide from them, which Charlie noticed instantly and cringed inside. All she said to him was that they were friends of her parents and she couldn't stand them, and then she vanished. Charlie then realized who they were, as the woman in question bore down on him, and her husband quickly followed. He knew them too, and had to admit he didn't like them either. They were unbearable social climbers.
The woman prattled on endlessly about the performance, and said she had liked the previous season's production of it better. She went on ad nauseam about the strengths and weaknesses of the dancers, and then fixed her gaze on Charlie with beady eyes, and made a cryptic comment that meant nothing to him when she first said it.
“Well, you've made quite a coup, haven't you,” she said, sounding both knowing and nasty. Charlie had no idea what she was talking about as he stared at her, wishing Carole would come back. As angry as he was at her, standing awkwardly next to her was a lot more pleasant than being trapped by this dreadful woman and her mealymouthed husband, both of whom were glued to him because of who he was. “I hear she nearly had a nervous breakdown when her husband left her. I don't know what she needed him for anyway, the Van Horns have a lot more money than he does. All he ever was was new money. The Van Horns are the oldest fortune in the country.” He had no idea why she was talking to him about the Van Horns. He knew Arthur Van Horn himself, though not well. He was one of the most conservative men he'd ever met, surely the most uptight, and definitely the most boring, and how much money they had was of absolutely no interest to Charlie.
