by Imani King
So I went to Princeton, because my father went to Princeton and because 'going to Princeton' meant something to my parents - it meant they hadn't produced a batch of feckless, spoiled offspring who would never be of any use to anyone. It was at university that I first encountered people who weren't like me. People who had clawed their way up the ladder through hard work, ambition and raw intelligence. I'm not saying my penchant for luxury and women disappeared the minute I stepped into the cloistered, ivy-shaded halls of the university but Princeton planted a seed in the shallow soil of my soul. I left four years later with a degree in economics and a burning desire to make something of myself - to achieve something - that didn't have anything to do with my parents' money.
Sure, I floundered for a few years. If you google me you can find countless photos of my exploits - stumbling out of nightclubs surrounded by beautiful women, racing supercars up and down the Pacific Coast Highway with my equally privileged friends - the usual. What you won't see is photos of all the job interviews I went to and all the strange looks and confused rejections I got when they realized I didn't just have the same name as Blake Charlton - I was Blake Charlton. Blake Charlton, firstborn son of Richard and Erica Charlton, older brother of Skylar and Andrew Charlton - immensely wealthy, tabloid fuck-up, typical spoiled rich kid. Unsurprisingly, most companies were less than enthusiastic about taking on a twenty-two year old with no concept of a work ethic and a pair of very powerful and litigious parents.
The career that's given my life some small measure of legitimacy actually fell into my lap in much the same way my money did - that is, with little to no effort on my part. It was during a dinner party at my parent's house that one of their producer friends turned to me, half-drunk on Petrus from our wine cellar, and suggested I would be perfect for the main role in a movie his studio was in the process of casting. I only went to the audition the next week because I was bored. A year and a half later I was the hottest young star in Hollywood and let me tell you, rich is one thing - famous is quite another.
"Blake?"
"Huh?" Vanessa's voice snapped me out of my memories and I looked up at her, still there in front of the mirror, applying yet another layer of lipgloss to her already-perfect pout.
"Do I look OK? Does my hair look weird? I feel gross today."
"Nessa you look fine, stop worrying," I soothed, coming up behind her and awkwardly putting my hands on her narrow, bird-like shoulders - only to have them shrugged off immediately.
"Blake, please don't talk to me like I'm a child. It's been a difficult few days. I would appreciate some sympathy."
I knew any attempts to provide comfort would bother her - lots of things bothered Nessa - and she wasn't wrong about it being a difficult time. So I stayed where I was behind her, catching her eye in the mirror and trying to think of something to say.
"Don't look at me like that, Blake. I have a career to think about and I'm only twenty-one. Do you think anyone wants a twenty-one year old actress with stretchmarks on her belly and saggy tits?"
I could sense Vanessa was about to go off on another one of her long rants so instead of reassuring her for the thousandth time that I understood her reasoning - which at the time I thought I did - I bent down and kissed her cheek silently before leaving the room.
Is surrogacy the way I thought it would happen for me? No. Had I married a woman who went from talking about motherhood as her sole ambition in life to suddenly developing an aversion to it almost as soon as the ring was on her finger? Apparently I had. We only got married in the first place because she was pregnant - a state of affairs that ended very quickly after the wedding when Vanessa informed me matter-of-factly that she had suffered a miscarriage.
What matters is a healthy child. Your own flesh and blood. I repeated the familiar mantra to myself and went down to the underground garage to tell the drivers we were almost ready to go to the restaurant. As usual, we sent a decoy Range Rover out first - to try and lure as many paparazzi away as possible - and then Vanessa rolled down her window and struck her familiar pouting pose as we drove past them, negating the use of the decoy entirely.
I was quiet the whole way, thinking about the meeting earlier at Barrington's office and the drive home with Natasha Ray. I knew she was my choice within minutes of meeting her. For some reason, though, I felt the need to give it a few days before letting Barrington or Vanessa know. Natasha was a breath of fresh air, and I was drawn to her in a way I couldn't quite articulate - or admit, I suppose - even to myself. She was also one of those people you just trust right away, and there have never been many of them in my life.
Of course, Barrington didn't approve of the surrogacy plan, nor did my publicist Lisa or anyone else on my bloated PR team, but ultimately they all knew what side their bread was buttered on. I had lunch with Lisa the next day at The Ivy and she grilled me thoroughly.
"Is Vanessa OK with all this, Blake? I mean, are you sure she's OK with it?"
Perpetually paranoid about anything that could make me look bad - or human - in the public's eyes, Lisa was very, very good at her job. Cozy with the tabloid editors and the paparazzi as well as casting agents and directors and everyone else on the Hollywood food chain, Lisa Cohen was a one-woman whirlwind of reputation management. None of this means she was a particularly pleasant person. Time spent with Lisa was solidly in the 'work' category of my activities.
"Lisa, I told you Vanessa is fine with it - it was her idea! She knows I want a baby and she wants one too. She just doesn't want to ruin her body."
Lisa eyed me skeptically - she'd been suspicious of Vanessa from the start and for some reason I found it particularly irritating that day.
"Listen to me, Blake. I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth, OK? I haven't spent my entire life surrounded by yes-men. I know people in a way you don't."
It was irritating because it was absolutely correct. She was wrong if she thought I wasn't aware of it, though. I'm actually quite good at reading certain people. I learned the skill growing up, negotiating between my parents as their various affairs and dalliances caused alternating periods of silence and screaming matches, but I've never been good at spotting who wants something from me - mostly because everyone does.
"Lisa, Jesus, calm down." I picked at the slab of perfectly seared Wagyu beef on my plate as she grilled me. "Even if Vanessa is the evil villain you seem to think she is, she's not going to leave. Where would she go? Back to Oklahoma? She loves me, she's not going anywhere."
"Blake, you're not understanding me. Did you forget the part where you married her? She has all the cards in her hand. If she leaves she gets half of everything you have."
I bit my tongue against reminding Lisa that even if my fortune was cut in half it was still more than anyone would know how to spend in a lifetime. Besides, I knew the money wasn't the point.
Lisa continued, on a roll now.
"She can hurt you, Blake. She can hurt your reputation. She can-"
"How? How, Lisa? Have you forgotten my twenties? It was one long car crash of scandal and this is Hollywood - do you think a broken marriage would shock anyone?"
I noticed a couple of people at nearby tables glancing in my direction and realized I was starting to get a little too loud. That was the first time I ever spoke the phrase "broken marriage" aloud and although it felt like my anger was directed towards Lisa it was probably more honestly directed towards myself. I swore I wouldn't do it the way my parents did it - the way my friends' parents did it. At least mine stayed together, although they never did quite nail down the basics of treating other with love and respect. That way wasn't for me. I married Vanessa too quickly, yes, I knew that (Barrington, Lisa, my parents - no one ever tired of reminding me), but it was for the right reasons. We loved each other and she was pregnant. After almost two decades of meaningless partying and even more meaningless relationships with spoiled society girls and neurotic Hollywood brats, Vanessa appeared in front of me as vulnerable and frail as a stray
kitten, fresh off the bus from her hometown in Oklahoma. She brought out all my protective instincts from the first moment we met.
"Just be careful, Blake. You're too trusting. How do you even know she was even pregnant?"
I jerked my chair back from the table, standing up quickly and more than aware of the many pairs of eyes glued to the unfolding scene. I leaned in close to Lisa and whispered in her ear:
"We've been over this, Lisa. Drop it. I'm not kidding. Just drop it."
I headed for the bathroom and sat in a stall for a few minutes until my breathing slowed and the redness in my cheeks faded away. At that point, it didn't even bother me anymore - living my life in public, with paparazzi lurking in every bush and smartphones in everyone's pockets - it was just my life. It was just how things were and I refused to constantly check myself every waking moment.
"Blake! Blake!"
As soon as I walked out of the restaurant after lunch the hoard was on me, surrounding me as I waited for the valet to bring my car around.
"Blake! How's Vanessa? Is she good, Blake? Hey Blake! Is it true she's cheating on you? Is it true she's fucking someone else?"
Water off a duck's back. Those amateurs were going to have to do better than that. I turned and gave them a particularly smarmy smile when my car arrived, and then drove off into the late L.A. afternoon with the fuzzy blobs of multiple camera flashes still imprinted on my retinas.
I actually had my hand in my pocket, reaching for my phone before realizing that the person I intended to call was Natasha Ray. She just popped into my head as I headed out of the city, back to Three Palms and without even thinking I'd intended to call her. Of course, I didn't actually make the call. What I did do was think about her - and about our conversation - the whole way home. She was so easy to be around, so quick and funny. Does that sound like a small thing? It isn't. If I could have offered her money for more of those conversations without looking like a complete weirdo, I would have.
Vanessa was in her closet (and by closet I mean full sized bedroom full of rack after rack of clothing, shoes, bags, jewelry, make-up and all the paraphernalia that she needed to make herself presentable every day) sitting on a cream leather sofa getting a pedicure from two Korean women when I got home and went looking for her.
"Nessa - how are you? Have you eaten? Are you hungry?"
My wife looked up and gave me a dismissive little wave.
"I can't eat, Blake - I had a sandwich for lunch yesterday."
Ah, a sandwich. Sandwiches involved carbohydrates and carbohydrates were somewhere up there with tap-water on the list of things Vanessa was convinced were going to make her fat and/or dead. She was so skinny. And she was so, so dedicated to staying that skinny - I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone as dedicated to anything as Vanessa was when it came to maintaining her ability to fit into a size zero. It had happened before our marriage, when the tabloids picked up on our burgeoning relationship and started featuring her in photos. She was probably a size two at the time but she became instantly obsessed with how 'fat' she looked. I couldn't even really blame her, either, which was the worst part of it - I, too, spent way more time than was sensible in the gym.
I wandered down to the bottom floor of the house and opened one of the huge plate-glass doors that gave a 180 degree view of the open Pacific and stood there for a long time, just looking out at the sea and watching the moon rise. I was so goddamned lonely, and I couldn't do a thing about it - because doing something about it would have meant admitting it to myself and that wasn't yet something I'd learned how to do.
When the two Korean ladies left, all giggles and smiles aimed in my direction, I went back upstairs to find my wife.
"How are you? Are you OK?"
"Ugh, I don't know Blake. Does this color look stupid?"
I'd been talking about the last few days in general, wondering how she was feeling about the meeting at Barrington's office, but she assumed I was asking about her pedicure. She leaned back and held her small, pale feet up for me to inspect.
"Hmm. Dark purple. It's not very summery, is it?"
I saw down beside her on the sofa and leaned in to kiss the back of her neck and slip one of my hands around her waist. She knew right away what I was up to.
"Blake, please. I'm not feeling well."
I backed off at once. I wasn't even horny. I just wanted to be close to someone - to feel another warm, human body against me.
So instead of putting futile effort into trying to get my wife to show me some affection, I had a shower and the image of Natasha Ray's sweet smile leapt back into my head. She had full lips - the kind of lips we used to call "blow-job lips" back in high-school. My earlier conclusion that I wasn't horny was apparently dead wrong, because as soon as the idea of blow-jobs had commingled with Natasha's face in my brain, I was as hard as a fucking rock. I reached down and wrapped my hand around my cock and stroked myself to an orgasm so hard I barely managed to stay on my feet.
When I was finished, I made a deal with myself to forget it had ever happened.
Chapter 3: Natasha
I spent the few days after the interview walking on eggshells. My roommates, including my best friend Rosa, could tell something was up and I badly wanted to tell them what it was, but I managed to keep my mouth shut. I wanted very much to get the job of being a surrogate for Blake and his wife and the one hundred and fifty thousand dollars that came with it, but my excitement and anticipation weren't only about that. It was about Blake himself - that conversation in the back of the town car, his big hands and the look in his eyes that seemed to speak to an emptiness of some kind that I couldn't yet fathom. He was a very compelling man and even then I wasn't quite able to resist.
So I organized the apartment, because bringing order to chaos - even minor domestic chaos - has always calmed me down. Even as a child I used to do it, emptying the shabby little dresser where my hand-me-down clothes were kept, folding each item carefully and replacing it in the correct drawer. Sometimes, if my anxiety was very high, there would even be labels - pieces of masking tape cut into neat rectangles and then labeled with a permanent marker: "T-shirts," "Underwear," "Jeans." I removed all the cans and bags of dry goods from the kitchen cabinets, wiping off the shelves and then replacing everything so it was sorted by category and all the labels were facing outwards. Next came the fridge, the same process of removing everything, scrubbing the interior until it shone and then replacing every item one by one until it felt right. By the time I was finished, the place was spotless. It helped, a little, but Blake Charlton was still there at the back of my mind, smiling his gorgeous smile and making a mockery of my attempts to distract myself.
I tried to reason with myself and eventually just gave up - so what if I had a crush? It's not like having a crush on him was even new. Technically it was years old at that point. When the phone call came, though, and I saw 'Blake Charlton' instead of 'Stanley Barrington' on my phone, it took real effort not to jump up and down like a little kid.
I took the call outside my apartment on the sidewalk so I could be sure my nosey roomies weren't listening in - I knew they were dying of curiosity as to what was going on.
"Hello?"
"Natasha?"
Natasha. Just 'Natasha' - not 'Natasha Ray." There was something almost familiar in Blake's use of my first name only and it made me smile helplessly.
"Yes, it's me." I desperately tried to keep my voice neutral, businesslike. I probably didn't succeed.
"I, uh," Blake paused, as if searching for the right thing to say. Never in my life did I ever imagine Blake Charlton being even slightly unsure of himself when talking to me. He probably has other things on his mind. You know, like his career or his gigantic bank account. "I have something I'd like to discuss with you - in person. Can we meet somewhere - have you had lunch?"
I took a deep breath before replying but couldn't fully contain the excitement in my voice:
"Sure, yes. I mean, no. I, um," I floundered an
d took another breath to calm myself, "I mean yes I can meet and no I haven't had lunch."
"Excellent. I'll have a car come pick you up right away, does that work?"
After we hung up I stood there on the sidewalk for a few moments in a daze. Then it dawned on me that the car would be there soon and I probably only had a few minutes to get ready. I rushed back inside and jumped into the shower quickly before changing into a crisp white blouse and a knee-length floral print skirt that showed off my waist and the generous curves of my hips. I also applied a little bright pink lipgloss, the color that really popped against my dark skin, and a tiny spritz of the L'Artisan perfume one of my aunts had given me for my last birthday.
"Girl, where are you going?"
It was Rosa asking the question, and I knew there was no way I was going to be able to brush her off easily.
"I have a meeting," I said, which only made her more curious.
"For real, Nat, where are you going? Do you have a date? Why didn't you tell me?"