Cinq A’ Sept

by Mj Fields

  “Had other things on my damn mind.”

  “Really? Hadn’t noticed.”

  I turn my back to him.

  “She comes in, I’ll let you know.”

  I shake my head back in forth slowly.

  “Get out of here, Bass. Seriously, you’re pissing me off.”

  I look back at him with a raised brow.

  “I agreed to this for you. Do you think I like wearing this shit?” He points at himself, at his gray suit and tie.

  I shrug. “What else are you gonna do?”

  “I was kind of feeling my restaurant management gig.” His lips tug up in the corner.

  I turn around and accuse, “You hated that place.”

  “The people, yeah. Douchebags.” He shrugs.

  “But it’s better than getting shot at,” I remind him.

  He smirks. “Fucking boring.”

  “Boring? It’s its own kind of war zone.”

  “Only when the man in charge is making everyone feel uncomfortable.”

  “Yeah.” I nod. “What a dick, huh?”

  “Dick? I wouldn’t say so. I’d say you’re being a bitch.”

  “Fuck you.” I flip him off.

  “Go, Bass, seriously. But make damn sure you make it to that fucking black tie bullshit Saturday night.”

  “You need a date?” I joke, knowing damn well not one of those assholes wants to see my face, but they like him. And that’s a mind fuck and a half. I’m good with people; he’s the asshole.

  “I got you, boo. And believe me; you’re almost all I can handle.” He rolls his eyes. “Almost.”

  Now I’m sitting in front of her building, trying to park, but there’s a damn moving truck blocking half the street’s parking.

  I drive around the block a few times, hoping to find a spot, and when I do, I slide my car in. Then I sit in the car that sticks out like a sore thumb here in Brooklyn, but blends in while in Manhattan, trying to muster up the courage to return the bracelet.

  “Fuck it.” I hop out and hit the key fob, locking the door, and look to see if traffic is coming. It’s not. I take that as a fucking win, a big, glowing green light.

  One issue I foresaw coming here was her denying me access when I buzzed her. As luck would have it, the movers whose vehicle was causing me issues with parking, have the door propped open. Another green light.

  Before stepping in, I look up to the sky, to where I imagine she’s looking down, watching me.

  Maisie planted that shit in my head.

  Whenever you’re down, look up.

  I remember scowling at her, trying to tell her to piss off with a look, because she didn’t deserve it in words. She is the best person I have ever met. However, she is a meddler.

  Intimidating looks, she laughs at, which is probably why even the baddest of asses love that woman.

  “You may not know this, Bastien, but you have a guardian angel who’s always with you.”

  “Is that so.” I’m not asking her; I’m mocking her beliefs, wanting to make her mad enough to go away. So, I just stand there and wait while I kick at the sand.

  “It’s your mother.”

  I want to tell her to shut the hell up. Tell her not to talk about her because, when I think about her, I want to cry, and big boys don’t cry, no matter how painful something is.

  “From what I know, she loved you, Bastien. I know from photos, she was beautiful. I know you look so much like her. I know that, when you get mad and your eyes go almost black, like right now, she’s what brings the light back to them.”

  I hate her. I hate her for talking about it.

  “Talk to me, Bastien,” she whispers. “It feels good—”

  “I hate you!” As soon as the words leave my lips, I look at her, waiting to be hit or thrown out. And when she doesn’t yell or strike me, I’m confused, so confused by the softness in her eyes that I say it again, “I hate you!” Still, no reaction, so I yell so loud my throat burns, “Did you hear me? I. Hate. You!”

  When she wraps her arms around me too tightly I try to push her away, I eventually stop trying and then, then I cry. For the first time since my grandmother wouldn’t wake up, I cry.

  “It wasn’t her choice to leave you, beautiful boy. She was sick, and it was her time to go. So now, now she watches to see what you’ll become. And I guarantee she is waiting to see you smile again. So, when you’re down, sweet boy, look up and know she’s with you always.”

  Through guilt and regret for lashing out at her, Maisie, the one person in my life who ever showed kindness or compassion, I eventually apologized. And now, now I look up.

  “Keep them green lights coming.”

  Once inside the artsy building, I look around. It doesn’t look at all like a place the polished and poised career woman Angela Petrov would live. The wall art is very colorful, bright and cheerful. It’s more Bridge … except Bridge has a name and a life outside of the Hamptons. She isn’t a twenty-four-year-old girl. She wouldn’t have caught my eye if she was. Wouldn’t have held my attention if she wasn’t intelligent and settled.

  Fuck.

  She’s not Bridge; she’s Angela.

  I look down at my phone and pull up her address.

  I know it by fucking heart. And yeah, I’m aware I’m being a pussy by wasting time. Hell, I don’t even know if she’s here.

  “Going up?”

  I look up at one of the men wearing a mover’s uniform.

  “Yeah.” I walk from the place I have been pacing and toward the open elevator.

  “What floor?”

  “Seven.”

  He hits the button.

  “Thanks, man.”

  “No problem.” He smiles.

  I step back, lean against the wall and wait.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Angela

  The day I returned home from the office, I walked in with no tears left to cry. That poor taxi driver must have thought someone had died. But one of the many things I learned while on the beach was that crying eased anxiety. Whether Jose, the driver, knew it or not, dealing with a crying woman was easier than dealing with a woman in a full-blown anxiety attack.

  When I exited the elevator that day, I walked directly to old man Thomas’s apartment and knocked on his door.

  “Whadaya want?”

  The man was the epitome of a grumpy old man. In fact, I think he was what all other grumpy old men were molded after. But I never pay mind to his rough exterior, and not because he and I have great interaction, but because of how his and Natasha’s intermingling played out.

  “I’m putting my place on the market tomorrow.”

  He scowled at me. I scowled back. We stayed this way for far too long.

  When he didn’t say anything, I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t.

  Stoned faced, I turned and walked away.

  As I put the key into my lock and turned it, he barked out, “One point five.”

  Turning the key, I replied, “Two point two five.”

  He didn’t say a word, not one, and once I shut and locked the door behind me, I literally felt the weight of the day lift off my shoulders.

  Now I’m looking around my bedroom that just has an air mattress on the wooden floor, two suitcases full of clothes, and a few dresses hanging up in the empty closet. I smile, thinking of just how much one can accomplish in just a few days when there are no distractions.

  I turn and prepare to get a little emotional when I walk across the empty floors, barefoot because I found wearing shoes and the way they sound hitting the floor, echoing, makes me feel … lonely.

  How odd is it that, as a child, when I felt sad, alone, afraid, that my mother wasn’t ever going to sober up or wake up, I would run to the woods down the road and scream out my frustrations, just to hear the echo? At that time, it made me feel like I wasn’t alone. Yet, now, now that I have lived so many years with love, laughter, and joyful noises, I yearned for in the past.

  The echo now taunts me, be
comes a reminder of what I once was, who I became, and now how afraid I am that I will be alone, jobless, and unable to protect my own daughter from feeling like she will ever be less than enough, because she is more than enough.

  My wish, my prayer for Natasha, is to always have enough.

  Enough food in her belly, enough clothes on her back, enough knowledge to make her way, enough love to warm her heart, enough to never think she needs more, and enough strength to keep moving forward regardless of what barriers she has to cross, climb over, or knock down.

  “I wish you enough,” I whisper to her empty room.

  Sitting in her window seat, I take another drink of the wine I opened way too early, not giving a damn that I did.

  Natasha and I talked the night after my blowout at work. I gave her a twisted version of what went down. She looked terrified.

  When I told her about my conversation in the hallway with old man Thomas, she didn’t even laugh, but she seemed okay.

  “I’m ready for a change.” I smiled, reassuring her that I was fine.

  She swallowed hard. “What will you do?”

  “Well …” I laughed. “I’ve always wanted to finish my degree in social work.”

  Her beautiful face lit up. “Really?”

  “I loved my job, but it’s not what I always dreamed of doing.”

  “But you’re so good at it all.”

  We talked for several more minutes, and while reassuring her all would be fine, it also reminded me that I also deserved enough.

  After we ended our call, happy with new things to come, my bell rang.

  When I opened the door, old man Thomas was standing there, next to his real estate attorney’s son with a contract and pen in hand, just like I knew he would.

  He offered me even more money than I had asked for. In prior years. He wanted to make his home bigger, and the only way to do it was to buy me out.

  Such an eccentric man.

  I agreed to be out in two weeks.

  Because I fell in love with an area that had been shown little love and soon after the real estate in the area’s worth skyrocketed, nearly quadrupling the value, I was able to pay off the mortgage that was a hefty burden and set aside the next three and a half years tuition for Natasha’s schooling without touching my retirement. I also have the money to finish the seven courses required for a social work degree, and at Natasha’s request, to use some of the money to make a trip to Paris that wasn’t a three- or four-day business meeting where I never even had the time to visit the Eiffel Tower.

  Honestly, I would have been able to make the time to do so, but I never wanted to without her. She wasn’t aware of that, and I’m glad because I don’t think she would have gone to see it otherwise.

  As busy as I have been, there was ample time to google Bastien Josephs.

  His social media profile began when his modeling career took off at seventeen. He was everything a high-end fashion house wants in a model. He has the height, the lean muscles, the exquisite bone structure, perfect teeth, and unbelievably sexy hair.

  His shoots with female models were smoldering, sexy, and near erotic. But the photos of him and Madame Ines, the owner of the number one house, Sateen, caught my eye and held it.

  The way he looked at her was familiar, so familiar it turned my stomach. The woman was fifteen years my senior.

  When I googled her, I became numb when I saw her with Jean, just a few years before I began working at de la Porte.

  The glaring reality was that Jean and Ines had been in a relationship, and obviously so had she and Bastien.

  While internet searching, I felt like a teenage girl with ninja-like social stalking skills. I felt ridiculous, yet it didn’t stop me. It was like devouring a romance novel with a love triangle and a twist you didn’t see coming. One that made you lose sleep, and you didn’t even care, because you just needed to know what happened next.

  When I saw a picture of what appeared to be a hunk of metal, I read the article. Bastien had been in a horrible accident two years ago in France, one that almost killed him. The report said he was intoxicated, and I noticed it was on September 5th, his birthday.

  No matter how deep I dug, there were missing pieces to the puzzle, making it impossible to figure out.

  By the time the sun was rising, I closed the computer. Had it been a book, it would have received a four-star rating, not a five, because seriously … what the hell?

  What is clear is that Jean dated Ines, and she and Bastien also had something going on. He clearly hates his father and was clearly out for revenge even at a young age. I assume he got it.

  Now Bass Josephs could still be a model. But part of me believes some of what he said is true—that he wants to be a beach bum. Maybe he’s angry about the responsibilities he now carries, or that he can’t be like the Ken’s and Eric’s, who have family money and no real need to work. All they have to do is look good and attend a few events, leaving them time to fuck whoever they want, whenever they want, and do nothing else.

  The more I think about it, the more sickened I am.

  Bass could still be a model, but after experiencing him and all the madness that has ensued over the past twenty-four hours, I would say he should be an actor, because that man … gave an Oscar-worthy performance.

  Bass used Ines to hurt Jean, which I still can’t wrap my brain around the fact that the man I knew, the one who entrusted de la Porte New York to me ninety-nine percent of the time, had a son he never mentioned. But some of it makes sense. He was as emotionally unattached to human beings as anyone I have ever seen. He even admitted the that to me, which is what made what he and I shared, work.

  He loved his company, and he would never love a woman again. He stated that fact like we were discussing a business transaction. As a matter of fact, we were. Then he asked why I, a beautiful, single woman, wasn’t out finding Mr. Right. I told him I had dated and seemed to find only Mr. Wrongs. That my daughter and career were priority, and I was more than happy with that.

  Again, like we were discussing business, he asked me if I found him attractive. I remember blushing profusely and him scolding me. He encouraged me to think like a man. That way, I would never get hurt. Then asked me the question again, and my answer was yes.

  The next day, I had a NDA in my morning files. I signed it.

  There was no kissing or holding. It didn’t happen often and was never anything that would resemble a date. It was truly just sex. A mutually agreed upon physical relationship between two consenting adults. That was it. And it worked.

  Once a month, when he was in town, we both released stress.

  Still unable to sleep after being fired, I called Alfred and asked him many questions. He was able to answer exactly zero of them and reminded me of the NDA’s, plural, that I had signed. He also told me that Jean asked him to ask me to perform one more duty at his request, as his friend and trusted assistant.

  Jean wanted me to travel to France and see that his personal belongings be given to the appropriate people and his ashes be dealt with. Without a moment’s pause, I told Alfred yes. So, Monday morning, I will be flying commercial to Paris, to the home of a man I had intimate relations with on occasion, yet never truly knew.

  Alfred then told me Bass would like to offer me an insane amount of money and a three-month subcontracting position at de la Porte. This one, I did question. Unlike Jean, I have strong feelings and an undeniable attraction to Joe.

  Not Bass. Joe.

  Feelings based on not just a physical level, but an emotional one. Feelings based on the way he treated me, the things he said to me.

  Now, with the lies. All the damn lies. I’m still not sure I could go back, no matter how much money was offered.

  Standing in my empty bedroom, void of all the things that make this a home, I feel accomplished.

  I take a drink of my wine, and yes, it’s before noon.

  With the movers clearing out the boxes in the kitchen and the living room fur
niture, I walk out and see there is not much left.

  “Just a couple more trips, Mrs. Petrov.”

  I don’t correct them and tell them Ms. Instead, I say thank you, grab the bottle off the kitchen counter, and then walk back into my room.

  I slide the balcony door open and drag a suitcase out to sit on it, hoping the sounds from below fill my ears.

  I fill up my glass then set down the quarter-filled bottle when my phone rings.

  I pull it out of my pocket and hit speaker when I see Autumn’s name.

  “Good morning.” There’s a smile in her voice.

  Eyeing my glass, I ask, “Can we pretend it’s afternoon?”

  “What?” She laughs.

  “Never mind.” I sigh and take another drink.

  “I’m sorry I’m not there with you today.”

  “You’re at work. And honestly, I’m actually very good.”

  “Are the movers there?”

  “Yes, and it’s going fast.”

  “Did you do Natasha’s room yet?”

  “I had it done first.” I don’t tell her it’s because, in an odd way, I didn’t even want her things to see our little world emptied out. It’s silly. I know it is.

  “So, are you going to tell me about …?” She leaves it hanging.

  “I signed a NDA,” I tell her before taking a big gulp of wine.

  “Well, those things are flying around here like floggers in a Fifty Shades’ trailer.”

  I nearly choke on my drink, and she laughs.

  “Well, I haven’t signed a damn thing, so let me tell you—”

  “Autumn, don’t. If he hears you, you’ll be next.”

  “He left the office for the day. And besides, I wasn’t even talking about him,” she says exaggeratedly. “But let me tell you about the jackass I’m dealing with all damn day. He smiles like it hurts, passes pleasantries like a fat kid passes the cookie tray, and I’m not sure if he’s giving it or taking it from his butt buddy, but I’m pretty sure there’s something shoved so far up both their asses that they’re going to explode, and then, then you can come back.”

  “Is it that bad?” I try not to laugh.

  “I would say yes, it’s hell, but that’s because I’m biased. And if I wasn’t able to text you seven zillion times a day to get a question answered, I’d still say yes. But …” she pauses, “he whose name we cannot say is like a tyrant. An uptight, on edge, angry tyrant. But, at least he’s no longer threatening to fire everyone within a mile radius of him.”