Once the decision was made to hire Claire and Abby, wheels started turning immediately to get the young woman to America. Claire stood by and watched Kathryn and Charles Renford II say farewell to Evelyn and make their polite goodbyes to Claire. The limousine had taken them from the estate in the countryside London's main airport. Charles had some sort of gambling tournament in Athens, so arrangements were made for him to take the family's private plane, while Evelyn and Claire would fly first class to New York.

The plane had been scheduled to take off half an hour earlier, but they held it for Evelyn. The other passengers glared at Evelyn and Claire as they entered, although Evelyn didn't notice. The young girl, who didn't bring any luggage with her, sighed as she sank down into her seat.

"I just... cannot believe this. Joseph said that he'd let me fly the plane next time we went up, and now I don't even..." She shook her head and she crossed her legs, trying and failing to get comfortable. The edge of her foot tapped against the back of the seat in front of her.

"They'll let me switch to the front row if I ask, I assume?"

"I'm thinking that this is actually as 'front' as it gets," Claire said, looking around and sighing happily. The trip over had been first class, too, but this was still new to her, and she was thoroughly enjoying the added legroom and personal attention. When the stewardess came by with glasses of champagne, Claire gently took Evelyn's out of her hand. The look on Evelyn's face was priceless. Sighing, Claire softly called out to the stewardess, handing both glasses back to her.

"Actually, we won't be needing these, thank you," she said before turning to Evelyn. "Fair is fair. If you can't drink, neither should I," she said, and really, she didn't need any alcohol. The warm towels and heated slippers soon circulating through the first class section would have her dozing happily for most of this long flight. Surely Evelyn couldn't get up to any trouble in this small space?

"Did you bring a book, or some crosswords? The stewardess has a collection of magazines and newspapers," she said, adjusting her seat a little and letting a small yawn escape her. "The New Yorker is funny, I read it on the way over. Might want to check out The Times, as well. Get to know your new city a little bit," she murmured as her eyes drifted closed.

Evelyn seemed too surprised to speak when Claire took the champagne out of her hand. She blinked, but the stewardess had already left them by the time she'd found the words.

"Claire, I should clarify something. I'm not some... besotted lush who gulps down alcohol. I've been enjoying a fine glass or wine or champagne since I was sixteen."

Her tone of voice suggested that it had been decades, rather than simply two years.

"And I'm sure my father wouldn't mind you having a glass of something every now and then in moderation."

Seemingly satisfied that she'd instructed Claire well, Evelyn leaned back and smiled.

"I'll have my father write you a letter to clarify some things. In retrospect, I did rather rush off, but I was just so eager to get going. You have no idea how empty the house can feel. And what is a crossword? I was always told by my tutors that newspapers were drivel."

"A crossword is a puzzle. And newspapers may very well be drivel, biased drivel at that, but it's good to familiarize yourself with current events, don't you think? New York is a big city. Personally, I'd try to find out as much as I can about it. Research," she grinned, hoping Evelyn would be interested enough to take her up on the suggestion. Didn't girls like her live for galas and social crap? She was going to adore Manhattan. 

"What would you like to do when we get there? Explore? See the Statue of Liberty? Walk through Central Park? Go shoppingggggg?" She said, nudging her with her elbow. Actually, the only shopping Claire cared about was for a place to live. She'd seen advertisements for some nice brownstones in Brooklyn, and her retainer fee alone would cover a year's worth of rent. 

"Make a mental to-do list, let's see what you come up with, and after we recuperate from all this travel, we'll- hey where are you going?!"

"Shopping will be a first priority. I left most of my wardrobe behind and I'm looking forward to putting together a new one on my own. I'll have a few things shipped over, of course, but I'd like a fresh start."

Evelyn had removed a book from her carry on bag, but slipped it back in and picked up a newspaper.

"And I suppose it's expected for me to see all those things. We'll try to get them over quickly so we can focus on more substantial things."

She had unbuckled her seat belt and stood up, smoothing down her navy blue dress and stretching her long legs.

"What? I was going to go see the pilot. I don't expect he'll let me fly, but I can at least go into the cabin yes?"

"No! No, no, no," Claire squeaked, grabbing Evelyn's hand and tugging her back down into the seat. "It's not permitted. Safety issues and all that. If you'd like a quick tour, though, we can ask the stewardess if she can escort you for a quick peek?" That drink was looking pretty good right now, actually. What was Evelyn, a hundred pounds? Maybe a stiff one would knock her out.

"Tell me about you, your family. Those were some interesting pictures on the library walls. The women in your family look like real spitfires," she said, hoping to occupy Evelyn's mind, but also genuinely interested. Asking about her absent mother seemed a potentially touchy subject, but maybe it would come up in conversation? The stewardess was coming back around with the cart again, this time offering small blankets and sleeping masks. When Claire looked back out the window, she saw that the sky had darkened considerably.

"Say, we'll have those champagne cocktails after all," she said, then winked at Evelyn. "Don't tell your father," she added hastily, but she was pretty sure the girl hadn't heard her. She was too busy contorting her face into a pucker after sipping at the sub-par vintage she'd been handed. 

Evelyn's eyes went wide as she was tugged back back down to her seat.

"You don't need to manhandle me, Claire. Physical violence is never the answer. And it's fine. If I need to ask for a tour I'd rather not have one."

She glared around the cabin at all the other people. This was a far cry from a private flight indeed. Still, she was slightly mollified by Claire's question.

"Yes, I have rather expansive shoes to fill to live up to the women in my family. My grandmother Kathryn, if you believe the stories, was some sort of mobster in the United States, but I'm not sure how much of that I believe. She doesn't talk about it. She came over here with my grandfather and his mother and bought their way into... well, everything you saw. My great-grandmothers, according to all the stories, were the real spitfires, but that seems more like exaggeration than reality."

Evelyn paused.

"My mother was also a very forceful personality, a great woman, but she died when I was very young. Spanish flu." 

The woman with the champagne came back; Claire's change of heart caused Ev to flash a victorious smile. The young woman sipped her champagne like a Greek goddess sipping ambrosia, then her face twisted in distaste and she couldn't hold back the cough that sprayed a thin mist of "champagne" forward over the seat in front of her.

"What the hell?!" exclaimed an angry, male voice from in front of them. 

"This is bloody awful!" exclaimed Evelyn. "This isn't champagne... this is... gutter water!"

A large man in a grey business suit stood up in the front row of seats, wiping champagne off the top of his head, then glared back at the two women. Evelyn was scraping at her tongue with a napkin and didn't seem to notice him. 

Christ on a cracker. 

"I'm sorry, Sir, we've had a little accident. I'm happy to pay for any potential dry-cleaning expense if you'll just-" Claire began hastily.

"I fly FIRST CLASS so that I can avoid being SPIT ON by mannerless brats! Never in seven YEARS of flying has anything like this happened! You'll pay for the dry-cleaning, AND the flight, you little c-"

Claire was up and out of her seat, her hand grabbing his before he could finish the word. He made an odd sound as she pressed hard into a very painful pressure point. 

"We're not going to use that kind of language, are we?" The man said nothing, but a vein was suddenly throbbing slowly on one temple. Claire pressed harder and he made a noise that shouldn't have been able to come out of a man's mouth.

"Are we?" She asked more frimly, and he shook his head furiously. Droplets of champagne flew out of his hair and onto the shoulders of his suit jacket, which Claire was pretty sure was off-the-rack.

"Please sit down, Sir, and enjoy the rest of your flight," Claire said sweetly, giving one more painful squeeze of his hand before releasing it, and sitting down herself. When she looked over, Evelyn was staring at her, open-mouthed, her crappy champagne forgotten. Claire lifted her hand and waved at the stewardess, who had remained in her own seat during the entire ordeal, completely unsure as to how to handle such a bizarre scene. 

"Can we get a couple of whisky sours instead? One for the man in the seat in front of us, too, please. He looks like he could use one."

Evelyn's eyes flashed immediately. 

"Did I honestly just get called a brat by a man wearing a suit that looks like it was fitted in the dark by a team of left handed orangutans?"

But by the time she was finished, Claire had already grabbed the man. 

Evelyn stared in shock at the whole exchange.

"Really, Claire, I don't think you need to leap to violence so quickly. Any objective measure of the situation would have made it clear that he was incorrect. And you can have my whiskey sour, whatever that is. I barely trust this plane to provide me with adequate oxygen, never mind food or beverages."

Claire breathed in, then let it back out very slowly. She imagined she'd be doing that a lot, in the months to come.

"No offense, young lady, but there was no objectively measuring that. He escalated from zero to about a seven, and whether or not there was any bite behind his bark, I was not going to remain trapped on a plane with him for the next half a day without effectively defusing the situation completely. Please, let me do my job? When it comes to accessorizing or party planning, you can be in charge," she said, then accepted both whiskys from the stewardess with the most grateful smile she could muster. 

"Really though, you should try this. It's a complicated beverage with a perfectly tart finish." Just like you.

Evelyn looked at least a little bothered by what had happened, and it seemed like she was going to open her mouth to protest, but a look from Claire stopped her and she begrudgingly accepted the whisky. She sniffed it.

"Well, it seems wretchedly strong enough that taste shouldn't really play much of a role..."

She downed the drink like water and, upon finishing it, immediately started coughing.

"Oh God... Claire... how does..."

Evelyn flagged down the stewardess and asked for a glass of water.

"In retrospect I think I drank that too quickly."

She smiled. It had been, frankly, one of the most horrid experiences of her life to drink it. But now that it was over, she began to enjoy the warm feeling in her stomach. It was a funny sort of warmth, like being wrapped in a soft blanket from the inside-out.

"Perhaps I should have another. Yes, I think that would be good. For my nerves, of course," she said to Claire, parroting something she'd heard from her father. 

This was such a bad idea. If the man in front didn't like spit in his hair, how was he going to handle vomit? Then again, maybe the girl would just pass out, finally allowing Claire some sleep.

"I'll strike a deal with you. The water first, then you can have one more. You're feeling good now, but too much, too fast, will have you feeling terrible, and you can't exactly lie down here."

Exhaustion was seriously tugging her downwards, now. Two inter-continental flights in the span of three days was wreaking havoc with her internal clock. Not even trying to supress a yawn this time, she closed her eyes and tried to come up with a topic that would run down Evelyn's batteries.

"What are you going to study at Vassar? Do you already know what it is you'd like to do after you graduate?"

Evelyn took a deep breath.

"Well, I haven't entirely decided yet. My father wants me to study business. Economics. Take over running things for the family, he said, even though everyone knows Grandmother practically gives him a weekly allowance because of his gambling problems. I don't know, maybe he wants me to take over there? Or maybe he thinks he does more than he actually does? It wouldn't surprise me if she let him think that, because she's the cleverest person I know by far. Anyways, he's insistent on business. Economics. 'Something practical'."

She boomed the last two words in a deeper voice, eerily mimicking Charles Renford II. Then she took another deep breath and continued machine-gunning words.

"But I don't really want to study business and those things. I've always loved literature. I've probably read more books than anyone you've ever met even though I'm only 18. Maybe even two people. And I'm not trying to brag I'm just saying that I'm really interested in maybe studying literature. Maybe even writing a little on my own. Reading is one of my favorite things to do, but the other thing is dance. I'm probably one of the best dancers you've ever met too although I'm trying to get better, because there were a few girls at the dance studio I went to who were better than me and it really bothered because I would work hard but it never seemed to make a difference. But I love to dance. Ballet is mostly what I've done, but now that my father isn't going to be judging me  what I'd really like to do is explore all this new dancing that's going on. It's one of the reasons I wanted to go to New York."

Evelyn's face was flushed, and her dark blue sapphire ears were staring at Claire.

"Why aren't you married?"

Claire smirked. What a lightweight! She'd remember this for next time.

"Me? Well. I guess Mr. Right hasn't traipsed onto the scene yet. I haven't much thought about it one way or the other, to be honest. School, work, they just kind of took over. I date, but no one exactly screams 'marriage material'. It'll happen when it happens. Or it won't. I'm fine either way," she said, burrowing down a little lower into the blanket she'd covered herself with. The problem with a California upbringing was that she had zero tolerance for cold weather. New York was going to be an interesting venture, in that regard. When she looked over at Evelyn next, the sharpness in her eyes had dulled considerably. 'You're getting sleepyyyyy' she mentally willed at the younger woman. Everyone else on the plane was now either asleep, or close to it. 

"I love that you just said traipsed." 

She paused, then smiled.

"This is going to be fun, I think."

The girl's motor continued to run as she chatted about books incessantly for fifteen minutes or so. But in the middle of a discussion of the Romantic poets, Claire felt Evelyn's head against her shoulder and the girl was soon asleep.

*

When they started descending to land in New York, Claire woke up. Evelyn had vanished from her shoulder- and apparently from her seat. The man in front of them wasn't in his seat either.

Claire heaved herself up in a panic, only to be yanked back down by her seatbelt. Unclasping it, she surged out of the aisle and glanced towards the restroom and cockpit doors. Both were closed.

"Crap," she muttered under her breath, then grabbed the stewardess by the elbow. "Where's the girl, the one who was sitting next to me?" She asked insistently. The stewardess gave her a blank look, and Claire's heart began to hammer in her chest. The plane hadn't landed, she had to be here somewhere. Coach? Why would she venture back there, though? To see how the other half lived? Claire spared the restroom and cockpit doors another glance, then began to walk towards the curtain partition that separated the rich from the not-rich.

Claire heard voices as she approached the curtain, and she tensed as she saw the man who'd received the champagne shower emerge rubbing his hands over his face. When he saw Claire the man beamed, and she could see water in the man's eyes- the only reason she didn't grab him again as the man awkwardly hugged her.

"Bless you both. Thank you a thousand times. I... I'm sorry about my reaction earlier."

Claire, confused, just nodded as the man returned to his seat. Evelyn emerged from the curtain next; she seemed bubbly, like she was still under the influence, rather than dealing with the hangover. 

"What just happened?" asked Claire. 

"I told him why his suit was horrible. Then he seemed really angry, but explained that he didn't have money for better suits because one of his kids was sick. So I gave him a bunch of money, and now everything's aces."

Evelyn smiled as she moved past Claire and settled back into her seat.

Stunned speechless, Claire stood there a moment in the aisle, then eventually turned to head back to her seat next to Evelyn.

"That was very kind of you. That gesture... Oh look, Evelyn! It's Lady Liberty!" Claire breathed, tugging on Evelyn's sleeve and pointing out the window. They were over the harbor now, the plane coming in low. The exhaustion from the flight melted away, replaced by a little thrill. 

"We should get a cab and at least have them drive us past the points of interest... or maybe we should grab a bite? Authentic New York food... this is so exciting. Aren't you excited?" 

"I am. Although is it strange if I say that I'm less excited about where I am and more excited about being out on my own? I'm sure it's a nice city, but I feel like I could be in the worst city in the world right now and I'd still be excited."

She beamed.

"A cab sounds good. Let's see the major points, then have something substantial to eat? The food here on the plane wasn't exactly..." 

Evelyn trailed off, then changed the subject- at least somewhat.

"What is authentic New York food? Are they well known or famous for any particular dishes?"

"Smoked salmon eggs Benedict? Cheesecake? Oh Evelyn, please tell me you're not one of those people who only eat for fuel. I adore food," Claire sighed. She'd heard about some famous salad named after a hotel... hopefully it was the hotel they'd booked? 

"We're staying at that new place, the Walford? Waldorf. Just for the weekend until I get my apartment keys, and you get settled at school. I'm sure the restaurant inside it is up to the standards you're used to," she said as the plane bumped down on the tarmac. 

Finally, New York!