Magdalene (12 page)

Mina never would have made such a demand,
and Cassandra’s arrogance had Mitch aching.

He offered her his arm and said,
“Likewise.”

She sniffed. “I made a very good living
knowing how to treat men.”

Mitch chuckled. “Nice to know I’ll be in
good hands then.”

“You have no idea how good. Yet.”

* * * * *

Hey, Big
Spender

December 31, 2010

“Cassie, what is your problem?”

Hell if I knew. I’d been pacing around the
house all morning, too restless to find any one thing and do it,
too wound up to watch TV, too distracted to catch up on household
business.

“Go to work or something,” Clarissa snapped
before stuffing popcorn in her mouth.

I stood in the kitchen and stared at
Clarissa, Olivia, and their boyfriends in the living room splashed
out in front of the TV for a New Year’s Eve Woody Allen
marathon.

Something was wrong with this picture, but I
couldn’t figure out exactly what.

They’d finish the movies, nap—have sex—all
afternoon and evening, then go clubbing all night long.

My oldest and youngest were busy, too:
Helene would be at the hospital for the next thirty-six hours.
Paige had three performances today and two tomorrow.

I didn’t want to go to work.

But I didn’t want to be here, either.

I could go to my room, but that felt too
much like I’d been sent there by my disapproving offspring.

The phone rang and I snatched at it just
because it was something to do.

“Were you planning to come in any time
today?” Susan asked.

“It’s ten o’clock in the morning and I am
not there. What do you think?” I do my best work early in the
morning.

“You need to come in today.”

That didn’t sound good, but I didn’t want to
hear some chopped-up explanation for whatever had gone wrong. “All
right. Get Sheldon here.”

I didn’t bother to change out of my sweats,
the “NYU” stamped across my tits and ass brittle, cracked, half
chipped off. I barely brushed my hair and went without makeup.
Battered running shoes, no socks, old gloves and stocking cap, and
I was out the door.

“Ms. St. James,” Sheldon murmured as he
handed me into the car.

“Good morning, Sheldon.”

“Happy birthday,” he said when he finally
slipped into the driver’s seat.

I stared at him. My
driver
was the
first person today to tell me that? “Uh, thank you, Sheldon,” I
said, but shook it off as he pulled away from the curb and into
traffic. “Any news?”

“All quiet.”

“I suspect Olivia’s being followed.”

“She
was
. I took care of it.”

I met Sheldon’s significant look in the
rearview mirror. “Permane—? Never mind.” He said nothing. “Did
Susan tell you why she called me in?”

At that, he smirked.

My curiosity as to what had happened at the
office deepened. I was a specialist, my department created for me
and all my support staff handpicked by me. Neither I nor my
employees got involved in the bank’s day-to-day business, and I had
given my staff the day off.

I knew why Susan had gone in. She had her
eye on some kid in Payroll, and would use the opportunity to fiddle
around a little bit, play whatever computer game she was obsessed
with, then head on down to the human resources department for her
lunchtime stalking ritual.

“So,” I said briskly as I came off the
elevator, pulling off my gloves and hat. To my surprise she and
Melinda were smashed up together right in front of Susan’s
computer, rapt. I didn’t have to be told what they were watching.
“What’s the crisis?”

Susan paused their cooking show, looked
around Melinda at me, up and down, and said, “Geez, is it possible
for you
not
to look gorgeous?”

“Huh?”

“You come in dressed like a bag lady and
you’re still hot.”

I laughed, unaccountably pleased, but
Melinda snorted. “I hate you.”

“
Vittles
?” I asked dryly, stepping
behind the two Vanessa Whittaker fangirls.

“I missed her when she was here, cooking at
Chez Fricassee,” Melinda said, looking up at me. “Did you?”

“No, I ate there. Several times. She’s a
brilliant chef, but she only got her break because she was Ford’s
mistress and model. It would’ve taken her years to break out like
that otherwise.”

Melinda grunted. “Doesn’t mean she’s not
good at what she does.” She gave me the once-over. “Q.E.D.”

“Touché.”

“We all need help,” Melinda continued,
looking at Susan now, lecturing. She did that a lot when she was in
a reflective mood. “Don’t let anybody tell you all you need is
brains and hard work, because that’s bullshit. We get help along
the way, lucky breaks, countless people who help in small ways and
a few who help in big ways. That chef—” Melinda pointed to the
computer. “—got a big break because of who she was sleeping with.
That’s true. Being beautiful doesn’t hurt. But it didn’t give her
her talent or her drive or her business sense. She had to work for
what she built and now she has to work twice as hard to keep it and
grow it.

“The trick,” she went on, “is to always be
giving back. To help people along
their
way. Sometimes that
comes back to you in strange and wonderful ways. Occasionally you
get it back from the person you gave it to, but mostly not. So
those lucky breaks people get? No such thing as luck. That’s the
groundwork you laid when you helped somebody else.”

I nodded toward the monitor. “Makes me
wonder what she did to come into Sebastian’s orbit, because you
know how antisocial he is.”

They both stared up at me then. “You don’t
know?” Susan asked.

“Know what?”

Melinda waved a hand. “Her boyfriend, the
politician.”

“Cipriani? The hotshot who just got Senator
Afton hounded out of Washington?”

“Him. She pretty much saved his life when
she was a little girl. It involved Hilliard, so that was how she
got access to Taight. She gave a big press conference at her
Thanksgiving masquerade. I was there and it was
powerful
.
She had me in tears. Go watch it on YouTube.”

“I will. I need to hit one of those
masquerades. I hear they’re decadent.”

Melinda smiled wickedly and stretched, her
beautifully toned arms glistening dark chocolate. “It
was...
lovely
,” she purred after a second or two.

“Are either one of you going to cough up the
reason you have summoned me?”

“It’s in your office,” Melinda said
dismissively and gestured to Susan to restart their program.

I obeyed as if I were a flunky—

—and stopped short. There, on my desk, a
gift basket but clearly not some perfect corporate parfait of
meaningless motivational bullshit. I approached it slowly, as if it
were a wild animal that would pounce on me at any moment if it
noticed me.

It was a pathetic little thing, really. I’d
mastered my share of crafts early in my marriage when I was a
Martha Stewart acolyte, trying my best to be what I’d been brought
up to be: A high-society June Cleaver, perfectly accomplished in
the home arts, perfectly dressed and coifed while practicing those
arts, my pretty mint shirtwaist covered by a complementary apron I
had hand-embroidered. I could’ve done a better gift basket in my
sleep, even after all these years.

I untied the pink tulle. A “bouquet” of
cookies on sticks, probably a couple dozen. Sugar cookies, from the
looks of them, unartfully iced and decorated, with two sticking
prominently up in the center, each with one word: “Happy” and
“birthday.”

Oh, my. I cleared my throat and plucked a
cookie out of its fastening.

“
Shit
,” I breathed after I’d taken a
tentative bite. Chewy, with a delicate balance of lemon and
vanilla. They might not be able to decorate, but damn, they could
bake.

Whoever “they” were.

The cookie sticks were in a small vase. I
pulled that out and set it aside to see— There, in the bottom of
the basket were two paperbacks. I held one in each hand and looked
between them. No, not two books. One. One in French and one in
English. The one in French was old, yellowed and battered. The one
in English was fresh and bright.

Angélique, Marquise des Anges
or, in
English,
Angélique, the Marquise of the Angels
.

I knew this story: A teenage girl obliged to
marry an unattractive eccentric over a decade her senior, with whom
she gradually fell in love as she learned who and how truly
wonderful he was.

I’d been required to view the movie during
one of my interminable humanities classes in my interminable
undergraduate years, and had written my paper on the contrast
between the heroine in the story to my own history. I’d earned a C
because, “No matter how well written, treacly fiction has no place
in film critique. You’re lucky I didn’t fail you.”

Why had Mitch chosen this particular story?
He was a sly devil, and I couldn’t discount the possibility that,
now he knew my history, he was making the same comparison I’d made.
Yet...

The French version was well loved, and a
quick glance at the copyright page told me it was from an early
printing, 1958, and it was old before we were born—ancient by the
time Mitch had gotten his hands on it. He had written in the
margins, tiny, in French. Inside the back cover, in a different
hand, in English, was written, “You should be reading your
scriptures, Elder!”

That made me smile, this microscopic look
into the lives of two twenty-year-old boys in a foreign country,
out of their depth, and struggling to make sense of their
situation.

I put the books down, then looked back into
the basket. Ah, yes, a note. I broke the seal and took out the
plain white card.

Happy birthday, Cassandra.
I’ll pick you up at 8:00.
(jeans—bundle up)

I fell into my chair. Dammit, where
was
that box of tissues?

Once I’d mopped up my face and taken a
Benadryl for my allergies, I made sure the cookies were within
reach, opened the English version of the book, tilted my chair
back, propped my feet on my desk, and settled in.

* * * * *

When Did You
Fall

I opened my door at two minutes to eight to
see him standing there relaxed, his hands in his jeans pockets, a
long wool overcoat swept back behind his strong arms. His sandy
hair glinted a slight red in the glow from the street lamp and his
eyes seemed lighter in the reflection off the snow. He had a sly
smile on his face and I wondered if he would kiss me at the stroke
of midnight.

Was it only a month ago I’d thought him
ordinary?

“Come in for a minute,” I said with an
unintentional huskiness to my voice. I stepped aside, but his smile
change from sly to amused and he said,

“Thank you, but no. Not coming in.”

It took me a second or two to figure that
out, then said, “You think I’m going to seduce you.”

“Attempt to.”

I smirked.

“Appearance of impropriety and all
that.”

“Ah, okay.”

Chuckling, I went to find my coat, then
shoved it into his hands when I stepped out onto the stoop and
locked my door. He assisted me into it as I had expected him
to.

“Did you get my test results?” I asked as he
handed me into the car he’d hired for the night. I slid over a
proper distance so that he wouldn’t be
too
tempted.

“Yes, I did, thank you,” he said with a
chuckle. “And I turned off my phone.” Once he was comfortable and
we were on our way, he looked at my lap, grasped one of my hands,
and wrapped my fingers up with his. “Did you have a good
birthday?”

“Only because of you.”

Oh, my God. I hadn’t really said that, had
I? I had. His frown told me I had. “What does that mean?” he
rumbled.

“Uh...”

“Are you telling me that your family didn’t
do anything for you?”

“Uh...”

“And your daughters all live at home,
right?”

I looked past him out the window, seeing
nothing. “New Year’s Eve is...New Year’s Eve. It’s special to them.
It’s always been difficult.”

“Even when you were a kid?”

“Um...” I cleared my throat. “No. My
parents— They made sure to put me first. Then...”

“Then...?”

“Then I got married,” I said flatly, hoping
he would back off. He knew what had happened—at least, what was in
the public record as having happened.

His jaw clenched then and he looked away as
if to hide it. His hand closed a little tighter on mine, and I
wondered— “Do you ever get angry? Really angry?”

He looked at me sharply and his expression
melted into a smile immediately. “Not much, no,” he said. “I’m
pretty easygoing.”

Liar.

I didn’t say it, though. He’d deny it and I
really didn’t want to spend my evening trying to get him to admit
something probably very few people knew about him.

“That book you sent me,” I said. “I like it
so far. Thank you.”

“How far in did you get?”

“Angélique’s marriage.” I launched into the
oddity of his having chosen that particular book to send me and
why, and, because I couldn’t keep my fucking mouth shut, I said,
“Did you send that to me because of
my
marriage?”

He started. “No. I— It’s my favorite book.
It...helped me get through a rough time in my life. I didn’t see
any connection in it. I wanted to— Um...”

I closed my other hand over the knot that
his and mine already made. “It’s okay,” I murmured. “It wouldn’t
have bothered me if you had. I was curious, is all. Big
coincidence.”

He stared at me for a second, his expression
somber. “Tell me about it.”