“I’m getting a maid soon,” I said, inhaling a whiff of air that smelled like Marlboros and garbage. I let out a chagrined laugh to cover my embarrassment, but Tony didn’t laugh back.
“Where’s the bathroom?” he asked.
I pointed the way. Tina tightened her arm around his shoulders and he guided her down the hall while I followed them. I leaned against the doorframe, watching as he put her on the edge of the tub, opened his first-aid kit, and cleaned her knee with cotton soaked in peroxide.
Tina lifted her eyes to mine. “We don’t need an audience.”
I skulked away and headed to the kitchen, where I stuffed some trash into a plastic bag, and dumped it into a chute near the elevator. When I came back into the apartment, I heard Tony talking in the bathroom.
“Cut it out, Tina. You don’t mean that. You’re drunk.”
She let out a husky laugh. “I do so mean it. I’ve liked you all along. Don’t you like me?”
“As a friend,” he said. “I can be friends with you the way I am with Savannah.”
“Savannah doesn’t know how to be anybody’s friend. And I want to be more than that to you. It doesn’t matter that you’re married … I can be discreet, and I’d never do anything to hurt your wife and your little Marjorie. I’ve been with a lot of single guys, you know … and not one of them has been as sweet to me as you have. So I’ll share you if I have to. I don’t mind.”
My heart deflated and my temper spiked. I’d never thought she’d go this far, but all the letdowns seemed to have destroyed her pride. I rushed toward the bathroom as she rambled on while Tony spoke to her calmly, like he was trying to talk a nutcase jumper off a ledge.
“Stop it,” he was telling her when I reached the doorway. She was still sitting on the tub, and there was a cloth bandage around her ankle and a square piece of gauze taped to her knee. Her arms were locked around Tony’s neck and his hands were clamped to her wrists, gently prying her off. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Yes, I do. I also know you don’t really want me to stop,” she said as she unclasped her hands and slid one of them down to the top of his thigh, skimming the edge of his crotch.
He shoved her away so roughly that she landed in the tight space between the tub and the toilet. Then he sprang up and glared down at her, his face flushing and his fists clenched. “God damn it,” he said. “Why’d you do that?”
“Why?” she shouted back. “Because I want you, that’s why.”
“Yeah?” he said. “Well, that’s too bad. I have a wife. I love her. I don’t want you.”
I don’t want you. She’d heard those words so many times and I pitied her for having to hear them again, especially from him. I wavered between hugging her and shaking her for being so selfish and dumb, but I didn’t do anything except stand there and watch. Neither of them seemed to notice they weren’t alone until Tony rushed past me and into the living room, where he opened the front door and slammed it behind him with a bang that rattled the dirty dishes in my kitchen sink.
Tina sniffed, shuddered, and failed at trying to stand up by leaning one hand against the bathtub and the other on the toilet seat. Her foot slid against the tiles, and her hand plunged into the toilet as she fell back to the floor.
“Damn it,” she said, shaking water off her fingers.
I walked over to her and offered my hand. “Get up,” I said.
She shot me the most hateful stare and slapped my hand away. I stared down at her—at her disheveled hair and her chicken-pox scar and the streak of pink lip gloss on her chin.
“Don’t look at me that way,” she said in a hiss as she narrowed her eyes and clenched her teeth. “What do you want to say, Savannah? Do you want to tell me how disgusting I am?”
“What you just did was beyond disgusting. I never thought I’d see you stoop so low.”
She pushed herself up from the floor, hobbled toward me, and looked ready to spit in my face. “Well,” she said, “I guess now you know how it feels.”
*
After that, Tina limped to her bedroom and shut the door behind her, and I didn’t have the energy to stay awake and wonder if things between us would ever be the same. So I went to my room and slipped into a nightgown without washing my makeup off.
My lashes were stuck together when I opened my eyes the next morning. Somebody was thumping on the front door and sunlight streamed through my windows, and for a moment I forgot about that ugly scene in my bathroom last night. Then I remembered, and I wanted to shove my head under one of my pillows and keep it there for the rest of the day. But I couldn’t, because whoever was knocking just wouldn’t stop and it was clear that Tina wasn’t going to hop out of bed on her good leg to answer it.
I dragged myself off my mattress, rubbing my eyes as I walked across the apartment in my bare feet. I was still rubbing when I opened the door and saw a blurry image of a man with chestnut hair, dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt.
“It’s twelve thirty,” he said in a Charleston accent.
No wonder it was so sunny. I blinked and crossed my arms around myself, realizing that he was Sawyer Brandt and yesterday’s makeup was probably smudged all over my face and I was standing there in a flimsy gown without a bra underneath. I reached over to the chair where I’d flung my blazer after work one night last week, picked it up, and wriggled into it.
“Mr. Brandt,” I said, my voice raspy as I buttoned the jacket across my chest.
His eyes held a mix of scorn and horror when they moved above my head and scanned the apartment. “Where’s my daughter?” he asked, brushing past me.
I shut the door. “What are you doing here?”
He was walking around the living room, examining cigarette butts and old newspapers like they were part of a crime scene. “I haven’t heard from Tina in days,” he said. “Late last night she left me a voice mail, but she was crying so hard I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I was out of my mind with worry, so I got on the first flight I could find.”
“Oh,” I said with a jittery laugh, hoping to cover for her even though she hated me. “You shouldn’t have flown all the way up here just because of that … she gets so dramatic when she’s had a drink or two.”
His eyes had been on the empty pizza box that still hadn’t moved from the love seat, but he shifted them to me. “What was that? Did you say she was drinking?”
I hadn’t been awake long enough for my mind to work right. “No, sir … I just meant you shouldn’t have been worried. Everything’s fine. If Tina hasn’t called you, it’s only because she’s been so busy with her job.”
I thought that was a valid explanation, but he didn’t seem to agree. He squinted and took a step toward me. “What job are you referring to, Savannah?”
He couldn’t be more proud, Tina had said. Was he so worked up that he’d forgotten everything? “You know … at the homeless shelter. She loves it there.”
“The homeless shelter?” he said in a tone that would’ve been appropriate if I’d said she was working as a masseuse who gave happy endings. “Tina’s supposed to be here on vacation. She kept extending it until I insisted she come home, and then she stopped calling. And I suppose you’re going to tell me you’re not behind that?”
I swallowed. She’d been lying to me all along, pretending Mr. Brandt approved of her being on her own and working at the shelter. But I knew why. She’d just been trying to keep everyone happy.
“No, Mr. Brandt,” I said.
A door creaked open. “Daddy?” Tina called from down the hall.
He yelled back at her to come out, she told him she couldn’t walk, and he shot me a furious glare, as if all of this had to be my fault. Then he dashed down the hall and I followed after him, watching Tina as she leaned against her bedroom door in her blue satin robe, trying to wave away the cloud of cigarette smoke behind her.
Mr. Brandt looked at her battered leg. “Tina Mae … I don’t know what happened, and right now I
don’t want to know. I just want you to pack your bags because we’re leaving.”
I couldn’t believe how easily she nodded. He put his arm around her and she leaned against him as she limped into her room, and I had to speak up. She’d come too far to go back now.
“Tina,” I said, “you can’t leave. What about your job?”
“My daughter,” Mr. Brandt said, looking at me over his shoulder, “already has a job in Mount Pleasant where she belongs. You might not care about her risking her life around a bunch of worthless junkies and degenerates, but I do.”
“They aren’t like that, Daddy,” Tina said.
He ignored her and turned toward me. “Speaking of filth … you’ve made me realize that all the money in the world can’t change white trash. This is an impressive address, but I guess somebody like you doesn’t know how to treat fine things. You’ve brought the place right down to your level. But you won’t do the same to my daughter, Savannah. I’ve put up with your influencing Tina for far too long, and this is where it ends.”
Air from a vent in the ceiling was blowing down my neck, but that wasn’t what had given me a cold shiver. It wasn’t even what Mr. Brandt had said. It was that Tina had been standing beside him all along, listening to every word, and she didn’t protect me like she had against schoolyard bullies and vicious cliques. She didn’t say a thing.
Nineteen
I kneeled on the kitchen floor, polishing the wood to a glossy shine. It was dinnertime, but I wasn’t hungry even though I’d been working all day. Everything sparkled and was neat and dust free, and I’d taken five trips to the garbage chute down the hall.
I couldn’t find the sense in hiring a maid. Besides, I needed something to keep my mind off the memory of Tina limping out of the apartment with her father and her designer luggage. So I kept polishing while listening to a teaser for a breaking news report on NY1. All I heard was “Edward Stone,” “investigation,” and “shocking turn of events.”
I raced to the living room, where I stood in front of the TV, biting my nails and waiting for commercials to end. Then I listened to an anchorman saying, “New evidence indicates that the late media giant Edward Stone of the Stone News Corporation might have concealed information about a possible link between global conglomerate Amicus Worldwide and cancer at Lake Kolenya because he was romantically linked to New York senator Carys Bowman Caldwell. Caldwell—the wife of Amicus’s COO, Jonathan Caldwell, and a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources—read a statement for the press at her home in Westchester this afternoon, denying these allegations.”
The screen changed from an anchor behind a desk to a woman outside a sprawling house surrounded by reporters who shoved microphones into her face. She was slim and pretty and had caramel-colored hair and she looked vaguely familiar, but I didn’t figure out who she was until I heard her voice and realized that Senator Carys Bowman Caldwell was the woman who’d sat beside me at the New York Public Library gala and told me what a great guy my father was.
“These allegations are false,” she said with a plastic politician’s smile. “My dealings with Edward Stone were merely professional, and I have never been unfaithful to my husband. If Mr. Stone violated his ethical principles by not investigating Amicus Worldwide—which has denied any connection between its plant in Putnam County and a cancer outbreak in the Lake Kolenya area—it was of his choosing and completely unrelated to me.”
I dropped onto the couch, where I sat with my hand over my mouth as the anchorman came on the screen and said, “Despite Senator Caldwell’s denials, there’s mounting evidence that she was romantically involved with Edward Stone—who, at the time, was married to socialite Virginia Barlow Stone. Our sources believe that Stone did not ask his corporation to investigate the Lake Kolenya story as a favor to Caldwell during her reelection year. This twist in the Stone News controversy brings additional questions about Edward Stone’s untimely death in a car accident last month, which has been blamed on a drunk driver who has not yet been found.”
The TV cut to a commercial, and I switched to a home-shopping channel because I had to avoid hearing the Senator’s lies on a continuous loop. I kept thinking about the night we met, when she said I looked like Edward, when she could barely tear her eyes away from my face, when it seemed so important to her that I believed only good things about him.
There had to have been something between them, but now that her career was at stake she obviously had no problem smearing his name along with everyone else. But maybe he deserved it, because loyalty stopped being admirable when it resulted in suffering and death. Or maybe he’d been fooled—maybe Senator Caldwell had convinced him that Amicus wasn’t responsible. And I supposed Mercedes Rawlings Stark had been wrong when she said Mom was the only woman special enough to make Edward stray from his wife.
I tugged at my hair to stop the flood of scenarios filling my brain. The idea that Edward had been killed by a heartbroken husband or mother was still plausible, but so was the possibility that Senator Caldwell had used him and strung him along and gotten rid of him because he’d somehow become a liability. He could have threatened to tell the truth about Amicus, or maybe he never even knew the truth. Senator Caldwell’s husband might have found out about the affair, or she might have eliminated Edward herself to protect her marriage and her career.
It was too much to think about. I turned up the TV to drown out the voices in my head, went back to the kitchen, got down on my hands and knees, and polished the floor until someone said my name. Then I gasped and spun around, landing on my rear end. Alex was standing in the doorway, holding a bag from a restaurant down the street and explaining that he’d unexpectedly gotten the night off.
“What’s going on?” he said. “I kept knocking, but there was no answer … and when I tried the doorknob, it was unlocked. Why’s your TV turned up so loud?”
“It keeps me company,” I said, thinking I must have forgotten to lock the door after my last trip to the garbage chute. “It gets too quiet in here.”
He glanced around. “Where’s Tina?”
I stood up, wiping my hands on my shorts. “She went home. Didn’t Tony tell you what happened last night?”
He shook his head, and I wasn’t sure why I’d even asked. The majority of men would most likely gossip and brag after being propositioned so boldly by a gorgeous girl. They’d probably snicker and joke and say the cruelest things about how needy and desperate she was. But Tony was such a nice guy that I was sure he’d take the whole thing to his grave.
Alex put the bag on the counter and walked toward me. He was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, and he smelled like Jamie used to—fresh and clean and minty. I stared at him for a long moment before I took a step forward, pressed my face against his chest, and wrapped my arms around his back. I was glad he didn’t ask what was wrong or why I was clinging to him so tightly. He just smoothed my hair as I closed my eyes and felt his warmth seeping through his shirt. I’d tell him the whole story later—but for now, this was everything I needed.
*
Tony held the car door open when I walked toward it on Monday morning. He looked at anything but me—a UPS truck, a professional dog walker with eight leashes wrapped around her wrist, the limestone on my building. I wasn’t sure if he was embarrassed or angry or worried that I was holding a grudge because he’d shoved my best friend onto a bathroom floor. But I wasn’t, and I wanted both of us to forget all of it.
“Tina went back to Charleston,” I said.
He looked at me. “I’m sorry, Savannah. I shouldn’t have yelled at her, and I shouldn’t have pushed her. I swear I’ve never done something like that to a woman before last night. It was just that she—”
“It’s okay. You don’t need to explain. And we never have to talk about it again.”
He nodded and we both got into the car. Soon I was at Stone News, and I checked my cell while I walked toward the kitchen, hoping for a text or a voice mail from Tin
a telling me she wanted to salvage our nineteen years of friendship, but there was only a message from Alex saying: Have a good day.
I smiled over that and sighed about Tina when I stuck my phone in my pocket and walked into the kitchen. Coffee was brewing on the counter, and The New York Times was on a table beside a box of doughnuts. Ainsley was there, too, holding her head in her hands as she sat in a chair and bent her neck above the newspaper.
“Good morning,” I said, pouring a cup of coffee.
“No … it isn’t,” she replied.
I whirled around, wondering if Ainsley had been replaced by a bad-tempered look-alike. “What’s wrong? You’re not your usual chipper self.”
She didn’t answer; she just kept her head down and her attention on the paper. I stared at her until a tear dripped from her eye and splashed onto the front page.
I walked toward her and rested my hand on her shoulder. “What happened?”
She looked at me with bloodshot eyes before grabbing a napkin to dry her cheeks. “Bad weekend,” was all she said. Then she pushed her chair back and stormed off.
“That seems to be going around,” I muttered when I left the kitchen and headed for my desk, where Kitty stopped by a few minutes later.
“I’m sure you’ve heard the latest,” she said, and I nodded as I sat in my chair. “Virginia’s devastated. She hadn’t known about Senator Caldwell, and she can’t stand that it’s all over the news. She’s a private person … she doesn’t like when her dirty laundry is aired. But who does?”
“Nobody,” I said, thinking that two affairs were bad enough, but it had to be so much worse when the whole world knew about them. “I hate to say it, but … I feel bad for her.”
“I have to admit I do, too,” Kitty said, and then moved on to business, asking if I’d finished a project she’d given me last week.
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