The Girl From Home: A Thriller (17 page)

At first Jonathan thinks he's referring to Natasha's breasts, given that's where his eyes are fixed, but then realizes he's referring to the art.

“Yes,” Jonathan says. “Very impressive.”

“
The Kiss
,” Ferdinand says, “is of course the most famous of Klimt's works, but I believe that the
Portrait of
Adele Bloch-Bauer
is his true masterpiece
.”

Ferdinand doesn't point to indicate the work that is the
Portrait of
Adele Bloch-Bauer
, which Jonathan assumes is some type of pretentious game of one-upmanship men in this world play. Jonathan has no interest in engaging, but Natasha says, “I'm sorry, Ferdinand, which one is that?”

“Oh, my apologies. It's this one here,” he says, now pointing. “There are actually two Klimt works of the lovely Mrs. Adele Bloch-Bauer. She's the only person to have such an honor, at least in a full-length portraiture. The one to which I am referring is the first one, which was painted over three years and completed in 1907. It is the first of Klimt's so-called Gold Period. Look at how the fabric shimmers on her gown, and then contrast that with the background gold.”

Natasha nods as if she's never heard anything so fascinating. This apparently emboldens Ferdinand to continue his lecture.

“But what is most striking about the work,” he says, now looking only at Natasha, “is how Klimt depicts his subject as a thoroughly modern woman. Prior to this, females were represented in art only as sensual vessels, apart from the Virgin Mary, of course. But in this work, the artist captures her intelligence. Look at how her hands are folded. In reality, she suffered from a deformed finger, but it's concealed in this work, and yet I think that the positioning gives her a sense of power. Don't you agree, Jonathan?”

The sound of his name momentarily startles him. Jonathan has no idea what question has been asked of him, so he dodges it.

“You certainly seem knowledgeable about your Klimts,” Jonathan says.

“I should be,” Ferdinand replies, “given that I'm the chief curator of this museum.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Natasha says. “I should have made that introduction.”

“And here I thought my Kaiser Wilhelm outfit would have been enough to indicate my affiliation with the gallery,” Ferdinand says, laughing.

Jonathan has no idea why a Kaiser Wilhelm costume would cause anyone to assume that Ferdinand was with the museum, or how anyone could tell that his getup was of Kaiser Wilhelm to begin with. But Jonathan also really doesn't care. He looks nervously around the room, hoping not to see anyone who might know him, and who therefore would be aware that he has absolutely no business being here.

“And you two . . . right out of a fairy tale,” Ferdinand says, again looking directly at Natasha's chest.

A fairy tale
, Jonathan repeats in his mind. Not exactly. More like a business deal that had gone south, and all that now remained was its rescission.

O
n Christmas Eve, Jonathan goes to the Carlisle Square Mall. In high school, it was the epicenter of the social scene. The place to be and to be seen. Little has changed in the past quarter century. It's still anchored on one end by a movie theater that was the Saturday-night destination, and on the other by Macy's, which Jonathan still thinks of as Bamberger's, even though the name changed almost thirty years ago.

Walking through the mall, Jonathan passes a montage of his teenage years: the video arcade (still here!) where he spent more time than he could remember playing Frogger and, later, Tetris; the pizza place that went through various names—American Pie (long before the teen comedies co-opted that name), La Bella, Mr. Pizza—and whatever the name, you could get a slice and a Coke for a dollar, but now its current occupant, Anthony's, is running the same promotion for five bucks; the gift shop where he bought his parents a god-awful fake fish tank that is still proudly displayed on the baker's shelf in his parents' living room; and Spencer's Gifts, where he bought the Christie Brinkley poster that hung in his bedroom well into his college years.

On the store directory, Macy's refers to the lingerie department as
Intimate Apparel
. It's located on the third floor. A woman who looks to be on the far side of seventy approaches Jonathan as soon as he crosses the imaginary line that puts him in her department.

“Can I help you with something? A present for someone special, perhaps?” she asks.

The last time Jonathan had shopped for lingerie was when he bought Natasha a baby-doll nightie the first Valentine's Day they were together. For that, he went to Agent Provocateur on Madison Avenue and paid close to six hundred dollars for less than half a yard of fabric.

“I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for,” Jonathan says. “A nightgown that's pretty and not . . .” He wants to say
slutty
, but speaking to a woman who reminds him of his mother, he says instead, “. . . trashy.”

“Of course,” she says with a smile. “We have some very beautiful items. Do you know her size?”

“I'm not sure, exactly. She's about five-five, maybe five-six. Thin.”

“And in the chest area?”

“What?”

“You don't need to know her exact bra size, but . . . would you say she's small busted, medium, or large?”

“Medium, I guess.”

The saleswoman apparently has enough information. She excuses herself, then returns a minute later holding several hangers.

“This is a very pretty nightgown,” she says, placing a white garment in front of her torso. “It falls past the knee, which I think is a bit more romantic, and it feels silky on the skin. Very luxurious.”

Jonathan fingers the material, trying his best to erase the mental image of the septuagenarian saleswoman wearing this nightgown. It feels cheap to him. Then he flips over the tag. Sixty-five dollars and it's a hundred percent polyester. It
is
cheap.

“There's this pretty lace design across the chest,” the saleswoman says. “It also comes in red and black. I recommend the matching robe as well, because . . . this material isn't very warm. As a set, it's ninety-nine dollars.”

“Okay,” Jonathan says. “I like the white. And I'll take the robe, too.”

Jonathan slaps down his American Express black card.

The saleswoman looks at the card as if it's an exotic animal. “I've never seen one in black before.”

Jonathan is tempted to tell her that it's the highest echelon of the credit-card world, and it's offered by invitation only. Instead he says, “It's called the Centurion card. It's actually made out of titanium.”

She smiles and swipes the card at the register. Then she frowns.

“I'm sorry, sir. It's saying that your card is declined. Do you have another one?”

Jonathan feels the same sense of dread as when he was locked out of the Harper Sawyer computer system. He wants to tell the saleswoman that his overcoat cost more than eight thousand dollars goddammit, but what's the point? So he pulls out a crumple of bills, which add up to seventy-eight dollars.

“How about I'll take just the nightgown,” he says.

*  *  *

“I love it!” Jackie exclaims when she opens the Macy's box later that afternoon. She came over to Jonathan's house at his invitation, but told him she had to be back home in two hours.

“I'm sorry that it's as much a gift for me as for you,” he says. “Maybe more for me, come to think of it. But I was concerned about getting you anything that Rick would see, and so I thought you could just keep it here.”

“Thank you,” she says. “And . . . since I didn't get you anything, let me make my gift to you trying it on at least.”

Jackie bounds toward the bathroom and emerges a few moments later in all of her glory. She has an unsure look, as if maybe making a big show of herself in lingerie wasn't such a good idea after all.

“Do you like it?” she asks tentatively.

“Very much. You really are very beautiful, Jackie.”

“And you're very kind, Jonathan.”

She steps closer to him, then kisses him deeply. Under other circumstances, Jonathan would have removed the nightgown as soon as they'd gotten into bed, but since he had just given it to her as a gift, he works around it.

*  *  *

“Oh my God, Jonathan,” she pants when it's over, and she rolls off him.

“I feel exactly the same way,” Jonathan says.

The afterglow is short-lived, however. When Jackie looks at her phone, panic sets in. There are three missed calls from Rick, and one voice mail.

The message is short and to the point:
“Jackie, where the fuck are you? Call me back the second you get this message.”

She doesn't want to call Rick back ever, and certainly not from Jonathan's house. But for all she knows, he's calling to say he'll be late, which means she won't have to leave right away.

“Rick called,” she says to Jonathan, to explain why she was quickly getting out of bed. “And he's not a happy camper. I'm going to call him back from downstairs, okay?”

“Sure. Whatever you want. I'll leave if you want to stay here and have some privacy.”

“No. I need to have some time to think, anyway.” She's suddenly feeling much more self-conscious wearing only the lingerie, so she grabs Jonathan's shirt from off the floor and throws it over her shoulders.

“Do you mind if I borrow it?”

“I only mind that you look so much better in it than I do,” he says.

As Jackie makes her way downstairs, she runs through various excuses to explain why she was not immediately available when Rick called. She sits on the sofa in the den and takes a moment to compose herself. Then she calls Rick's cell.

“Where the hell are you?” is the first thing her husband says, without so much as a hello.

Nice to talk to you too, asshole.

“I'm at the gym.”

“You always answer your phone when you're at the gym.”

This is true. She keeps her phone beside her when she works out because she knows she'd get this precise reaction from Rick if she didn't.

“I'm in the locker room,” Jackie says. “I took a long shower and spent some time in the steam room. I can't bring my phone in either place, so I'm sorry I wasn't there to pick up the instant you called.”

“Oh,” he says. “Uh, I'll be home by five.”

I hope you never come home
.

“Okay. Thanks for the news flash. Was there anything else?”

“No . . . I just didn't know where the hell you were.”

As if you care. Go back to screwing Brittney.

“Well, now you do. Thanks for your concern,” she says, and hangs up.

*  *  *

Jackie's clothes are in the downstairs bathroom, from when she changed into the nightgown. She reverses the process from before, putting her clothes on and leaving the nightgown on the hook behind the door. Then she goes back upstairs, where she finds Jonathan sitting on the bed, a bare leg sticking out of his bathrobe.

“Rick was looking for me,” she says, sighing. “He was pissed that for once I wasn't there at his beck and call.” She shakes her head, wondering whether she should say what's on her mind, and then before she's actually decided, she hears herself speaking the words.

“He's going to find out about us. Sooner rather than later, probably. He'll hire a private detective or put some type of tracker on my car. And when he does find out . . .”

She can't even say the words.
He'll murder us both
.

“Is that your way of saying you want to stop?” Jonathan asks.

The words feel like an actual blow to Jackie. A sharp pain at first, and a duller ache as it recedes.
Stop?
That's not what she meant at all.

“No,” she says with a small shake of her head. “I never want to stop, Jonathan. What I want is for us to live happily ever after.”

She's finally said it. Laid it all out for Jonathan. He must think she's insane. They've known each other for a few weeks, and he has a beautiful young wife in New York City and a powerful job in finance, and she's . . . stuck in East Carlisle married to a sociopath.

She fully expects him to pull back. To tell her that this was just a fling for him. Soon he'll have to return to his real life, so maybe now isn't such a bad time to end things. Before either of them gets in too deep.

But instead Jonathan leans closer to her and places his hand on top of hers. “That's what I want too, Jackie,” he says softly. “I know it sounds crazy, but I've been unhappy for a long time, and with you . . . I feel like I've always wanted to feel.”

“I know. I know,” she says softly.

“So, let's just be together. Life's too short not to be happy.”

“I . . . I can't,” Jackie says.

“Of course you can.”

“No, I really can't. Don't you think if it was that easy I would have left Rick long ago?”

“It is that easy, Jackie. It's what I'm going to do.”

He didn't understand. For her it wasn't a choice. It was a matter of survival.

“As awful as my life is now, it'd be a thousand times worse if I tried to divorce Rick. For me and for my kids.”

“How can that be? People get divorced all the time. It's hard, but then we can be together. If that's what you want—like you said—then that's the only way.”

“Rick will never let us be together.”

“He doesn't have any choice in the matter. It's what we want that counts.”

“No, you don't understand. Rick is a vindictive son of a bitch. Two years ago, I told him I wanted a divorce. He laughed in my face.” She chokes up, but wills herself to finish. “He said that I'd either be his wife or I'd be dead.”