Closer

by Aria Hawthorne

  “We’ve been waiting for you before we let the drinks flow freely.” The unfamiliar man said from across the table.

  “Generous, but unnecessary,” Sven replied curtly.

  Inez stared at the man—a younger, blonder version of Sven. His brother. Then, she glanced over at Celeste, purring over his lap like a cat. Inez immediately recognized her; she was the same brunette in the framed photograph buried within the drawer of his guest bathroom. The one that Sven had been embracing. Now, she wore a gold cocktail dress that shimmered every time she crossed and re-crossed her slender waxed legs. Her French bob cut across her bony cheeks like arrows.

  “You’re wrong, Hans,” Celeste said. “Eliot never makes his guests wait to indulge in their vices.” Her crystal blue eyes flicked onto Inez—inspecting her hair, dress, figure, and even emerald necklace—before glancing away and pretending Inez wasn’t in front of her at all.

  “Why pray in heaven with angels when you can party in hell with the Devil?” Eliot sneered with delight while refreshing Celeste’s wine glass with the bottle resting on the side bar.

  “I’m going to make that the lead quote in my next blog post,” Celeste exclaimed with melodramatic laughter.

  “No, it should be the slogan on your next investment prospectus,” Hans chimed in.

  “Make a deal with the Devil,” Sven added.

  “There’s a reason why I’m the only one with enough balls to build the tallest building in the city.” Eliot dug his hand into a glass nut tray on the side bar and popped almonds into his mouth with a crunch. “And it’s not because I’m a saint.”

  The waiter scurried into the salon and approached Inez and Sven. “May I get you something to start with?”

  “A gin on the rocks,” Sven said without a beat. “And she will have a French Martini. Shaken. With extra Chambord.”

  Inez smiled at him. He smiled in return.

  “Sven,” Celeste cut in, her eyes glinting like ice. “You haven’t bothered to introduce us to your little friend?”

  “Inez…” Sven conceded, as if it almost pained him. “This is Hans, my younger brother and business partner in our architectural firm. And this is his fiancée, Celeste Cartwright.”

  Inez stared at Celeste, then at Hans who kissed Celeste’s wrist like he was idolizing a queen. They seemed perfectly at ease displaying their affection for each other in front of Sven.

  “Well, you clearly know each other well since you already know her favorite drink,” Celeste remarked. “I think it took you almost a year for you to remember mine.”

  “No,” Sven replied dryly. “I knew it was Chardonnay, preferably Californian. But it always gave you a headache, so it seemed best for you to drink something else.”

  “Chardonnay gives you a headache?” Hans asked, like he had just entered the room. Inez noted that his boyish face and flaxen hair made him look like a college football star.

  Celeste fingered the stem of her wine glass. “Yes, dear. It’s hard to remember everything about me, I know. Sven has an unfair advantage because he’s known me longer.”

  “Plus, he’s a genius with a photographic memory,” Hans replied, popping the final baby shrimp from the shared appetizer into his mouth with the miniature prawn fork. “The rest of us are just mere mortals quaking in his presence.”

  Inez looked at Hans, wondering how much truth was veiled beneath his sarcasm. Then, she noticed Sven and Celeste, each gazing at the other, as if everyone else had disappeared.

  “Which is exactly why Sven was the only architect able to engineer a modern-day vision of the tallest skyscraper in the country,” Eliot cut in, leaning against the rail of the side bar. He shifted his tiger eyes out the windows at the unobstructed view of the shiny metallic skyscraper rising above every other building like a glinting needle.

  “Well, it is called The Spire for a reason,” Celeste added.

  “Because MightyGarishThing.com was already taken?” Inez tossed back. She wanted Sven to stop staring at Celeste; and it worked. Instead, they both stared at her.

  “Like most native Chicagoans, Inez hates The Spire,” Sven clarified. “So if you’re trying to impress her, Watercross, you’re going to fail. Inez is rarely impressed by anything.”

  “It’s why you love me,” she sassed back, knowing Sven would simply ignore her. But not Celeste. Exactly as Inez wanted, Celeste’s vicious glare narrowed onto her.

  “Well, then…it seems that you were wrong, Eliot,” Celeste suddenly announced. “Sven’s little friend isn’t much of an architectural aficionado after all because anyone who truly understands modern architecture knows that The Spire is a fearless feat of architectural and structural brilliance.”

  “Really? A fearless feat of architectural and structural brilliance?” Inez repeated and turned to Sven, desperately controlling the urge to openly flambé Sven’s ex-whatever and her clown smile.

  “Yes.” He smiled, clearly enjoying the fact that the two women at the table seemed to be catfighting over him.

  “Hm. I had no idea,” Inez mused with fake ignorance. “Please enlighten me, Pookey.”

  Sven held her gaze, accepting her challenge. Then, he took up a cocktail napkin from the center of the table and twisted it like a spiraling coil before balancing it on the surface of the table.

  “The Spire is named after the four steel load-bearing beams, entwined in the shape of a corkscrew, narrowing in width as it runs vertically from its foundation to the very top floor. Three million tons of steel and glass evenly distributed along its center spire, not bolstering its massive weight upwards, but allowing gravity to evenly distribute each pound of steel onto the concentric circles of the interior spire, pulling its full weight down, down, down…It’s the only reason the city agreed to build it in the first place—the cost to construct The Spire was made feasible by its simplistic solution to its load-bearing design.”

  Everyone fell silent, as if the complexity and ingenuity of Sven’s design had hypnotized them, including Inez.

  “Okay, you win. I’m sufficiently impressed,” Inez conceded. It was perhaps the first honest thing she had said all night. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have the right to believe it would have been better off being built in Las Vegas.”

  “And perhaps, more fitting,” Sven agreed. “Especially since I’ve sold my soul along the way.” His voice edged lower without hinting at irony or jest, and he touched his eyepatch like it was the physical manifestation of his submission to the dark side.

  “Only half your soul…to be more precise,” Hans corrected him.

  “Why only half?” Inez challenged him.

  “Because Watercross Capital owns half of The Spire,” Eliot interjected like it was obvious. “Van der Meer & Associates owns the other half—at least, until The Spire formally opens at the end of the week and we all sell our entire equity interest to Harvey Zale.”

  “A small fortune to pay for your soul, Sven,” Hans added. “Don’t you think?”

  “We shall see,” Sven replied, his voice forlorn and moody.

  “Well, if it is only half your soul, Sven,” Inez cut in, attempting to lighten the grim expression on his face. “You can just cut off the rotting, blackened, gangrene half, and the new regenerated half will just grow back. You know, like a liver or something.”

  The table fell awkwardly silent, but Inez didn’t care. All this talk of souls and real estate deals and bank loans was boring her to tears.

  Delivering a plate full of croquetas, the waiter came her rescue. She grabbed one before he had a chance to set down the plate on the table and stuffed her face with it. He placed her syrupy French Martini in front of her and she downed half of it, realizing it didn’t matter if she spilled it on her scarlet dress because it would blend right in. Thank you, Ebony.

  Then, the waiter set down a second plate of tapas onto the table.

  “Morcilla, too?” Inez exclaimed.

  Eliot arched his eyebrow. “It looks like you appreciate a go
od tapa when you see it.” He threw back his rum and watched as she shoveled half the morcilla ringlets onto her own plate. “Sven, it’s a shame to make her starve. Unlimited food and drinks is one of the many benefits of owning a restaurant.”

  Eliot handed him the miniature menu. Sven paused and slowly pushed it over to Inez. She understood. He couldn’t read it.

  “What are those…exactly?” Celeste surveyed the black, bubbly consistency of each ringlet, as if she believed her approval mattered.

  “Fried blood sausage.” Inez devoured two of them before closing her eyes and relaxing into her seat. Yum. When she opened her eyes, it was hard to decide which she savored more—something that reminded her of her father’s cooking, or the look of revulsion that contorted Celeste’s face.

  “It’s definitely an acquired taste,” Hans said, enveloping Celeste’s hand to soothe her.

  “A taste for blood,” Eliot mused and rudely reached through them to stab a full ringlet for himself. Like a brisk siren, his cell phone rang from inside his interior suit coat pocket. He pulled it out and scanned the screen. “Right on time. Harvey Zale—” he announced before calling into the receiver with obnoxious flare. “Just the man we were talking about.”

  Eliot strode away from the table and into the privacy of the corridor.

  Celeste took the distraction as an opportunity to shift the conversation back onto Inez.

  “I’m surprised to see she’s wearing your mother’s necklace, Sven. I didn’t think you were the committed type.”

  Inez watched them trade embittered glances.

  “I suppose I’ve just been waiting for the right woman,” Sven replied, cold and calculating.

  “Ah, I see.” Celeste tittered. “And how did you two meet…exactly?” Celeste posed the question like an interrogation.

  Inez glanced over at Sven. She had bothered to set physical ground rules, but neither one of them had thought to hammer out the fake details of their fake relationship. His steady unwavering eye gazed back at her. Clearly, he was thinking the same thing.

  “At the Art Institute,” she finally replied, as if it was the most natural answer in the world.

  “Yes,” Sven encouraged her and raised his glass of gin to his lips—a signal that he was as interested in hearing how they met as Celeste was.

  “In the Impressionism rooms.” Inez sat up straighter in her seat and slipped off her bolero coat because she knew it accentuated her figure and cleavage and because from the very first moment they had sat down, she had noted that Celeste had none. Bitch.

  “It seems that Sven appreciates Monet as much as I do. He’s even promised to take me to Giverny this month to celebrate our anniversary.”

  Inez lifted her martini glass and gulped it down.

  “Your anniversary?” Celeste repeated. “How long could you possibly have known each other?”

  Inez gazed into Sven’s eyes, wondering if he was going to come to her rescue. But he seemed more amused than alarmed, and it inflated her confidence.

  “It feels like a lifetime.” She sighed, feeling the relaxing effects of her martini spreading slowly down her neck and shoulders.

  “So you just bumped into each other at the Art Institute?” Hans interjected.

  “Well, I’m always there for work,” Inez clarified. “I’m an assistant curator at the museum.”

  “At the Art Institute?” Celeste insisted, skeptically.

  “Of course.” She shrugged off Celeste’s surprise like she was a total idiot and sipped again from her martini, wishing she could down the whole thing without having to pump and dump later that night.

  Celeste narrowed her eyes. It wasn’t the answer she expected. Neither did Sven.

  “Which department?” Celeste grilled her.

  “Nineteenth century European paintings.”

  “That’s a prestigious position, and you’re a little…young.”

  Inez held her glare of skepticism. “Maybe Sven isn’t the only genius at this table.”

  Sven hand squeezed Inez’s hand under the table. Stop.

  Inez turned and smiled at him, sweetly. No fucking way.

  “Celeste is an art critic for The Chicago Tribune,” Sven clarified.

  Inez peered at him, completely unfazed. “Really? I thought all the major newspapers went bankrupt eons ago, especially something as old-fashioned as The Tribune. I mean, it’s almost as uncool as Facebook.”

  Sven peered at her with reprimanding silence. Apparently, now, she had just crossed the line. Who knew Sven liked Facebook?

  “I just mean…you know,” Inez said with a malicious smirk. “I’m a millennial. Not many things hold our interest.”

  “Well, tell us…what does hold your interest,” Celeste dared her with a final laser shot from her robotic blue eyes.

  Inez popped the final morcilla ringlet into her mouth and chewed politely while gazing back at Sven and making it absolutely fucking clear that she was not going to be thrown under the bus by his wicked witch ex-girlfriend.

  “In terms of art? The new opening of the Klimt exhibit at the MOMA in New York City. In the field of technology? They just 3-D printed a new nose for a patient in Boston and performed the surgical transplant over the weekend. Finance? The volatility in the stock market is unparalleled because there’s so much oil being produced from fracking in South Dakota that it’s driving the world’s oil market into a tailspin. Science? There’s a Swiss company that’s developing a new submarine to take private citizens down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench for the affordable rate of one million dollars—one way. Or how ’bout mindless Hollywood pop culture? I’ve heard that Lo and Law just wore the same vintage Versace dress to the Golden Globes and JLo won. Go Latina power.”

  Inez paused and slurped down the last bit of her wonderful French Martini. When she sighed and looked up, she saw Sven peering at her.

  “Mariana Trench, really?” he asked. “Sounds like something we should look into.”

  “Deepest darkest place in the world’s ocean,” Inez confirmed.

  He took her hand into his own, publicly and proudly, like he was sharing in her victory. “Why waste so much time building the tallest building in the country when you can pay only one million dollars to travel to the bottom of the earth?”

  “My sentiments exactly,” she replied, unexpectedly savoring the possessiveness of his hand, especially as Celeste’s saccharin smile turned downwards with consternation, as if seeing them hold hands gave her as much displeasure as weight gain.

  “Well, kids… I hope you haven’t been having too much fun without me.” Eliot’s booming voice rattled the expansive glass windows as he swaggered back into the lounge. “That was Harvey Zale. He wants reassurance that our deal is still in play.”

  Sven’s expression darkened again and he released her hand. Inez was starting to really despise this guy, Eliot Watercross.

  “Which deal exactly?” Sven challenged him. “To sell The Spire to Harvey Zale in exchange for cash? Or in exchange for his contracts to build the Li Long Towers in Shanghai?”

  “Come on, Sven,” Hans pressed him. “It wouldn’t be much fun if you just cashed out now without signing on to construct the tallest towers in the world.”

  “Not much fun for me? Or for both of you because you need me to design them?” Sven swept his hand across the nickel surface of the table like he desired to wipe away his own reflection.

  “A design for which you’d be compensated.” Eliot popped an almond into his mouth. “Handsomely.”

  “You make it sound like making billions from selling The Spire isn’t enough?” Inez asserted. It was none of her business, but she couldn’t contain herself. Her boiling hatred for The Devil spurred her sassiness.

  Eliot’s laughter thundered across the lounge as he stretched his long arm out across the silver edge of the bar, revealing his flashy gold watch accentuating his flashier pinky ring.

  “I’m an ambitious man, my dear. I don’t want to own the
tallest building in the city. Or even own the tallest building in the country. I want to own the tallest buildings in the world. And I expect your boyfriend to help me.”

  “What if I prefer to simply retain my equity ownership in The Spire?” Sven flung back.

  “That’s understandable.” Eliot shrugged. “The Spire is the pinnacle of your career. You probably want to permanently hang it on your balance sheet like a trophy. Unfortunately, your equity ownership in The Spire represents a minority interest, and decisions about its sale are decided by a majority vote. And I own the majority.” He popped several more almonds into his mouth and smiled slyly with a conspicuous crunch.

  Sven’s jaw flinched. “So you’re saying that I’m trapped.”

  “You make it sound like a prison sentence, Sven,” Hans cut in. “We’re talking about spearheading one of the most prestigious design projects in a decade. Maybe even a century.”

  Sven glared at his brother, as though he were the enemy. “Except you don’t have a building without an architect who is willing and capable of designing it.”

  “Our firm is called Van der Meer & Associates for a reason, Sven,” Hans asserted. “I spent three years working on The Spire alongside you.”

  “You worked under my direction,” Sven seethed. “But it was always my design. My lead.”

  “Not during the time you took off after your injury and disappeared for months.” Hans shot back. “Then it became my project. My lead.”

  Preparing for battle, Sven rose from the cushioned bench, asserting his commanding height and aggressive authority.

  The room fell silent. He touched his eyepatch and peered over at Celeste, then gazed back at Hans. “You mean the injury caused by your betrayal?”

  Hans’ chair screeched as he pushed it backwards and rose to challenge Sven. “I took from you what you took for granted.”

  Inez watched each brother stare down the other, as if they were on the verge of throwing punches.

  “Sven, please—” Celeste petitioned him with her sing-song voice. “You came up with the perfect architectural solution for The Spire. I have no doubt you’ll be able to do it again for the Li Long Towers.”