Magdalene

by Moriah Jovan

  His nostrils flared. “Cassandra—”

  “I didn’t pay the tab, so you’d best see to it.”

  “Cassandra—”

  “Good night, Mr. Hollander.”

  Mitch wanted to howl, but didn’t. As usual. “Happy early birthday, then.”

  She stopped cold and stood motionless for long seconds. Her head bowed. He watched, his heart pounding in his ears, wondering if...

  “You had me investigated,” she said quietly over her silver-mink-clad shoulder, her breath white in the cold air.

  “Of course I did,” he said, exasperated. “I’d be an idiot not to.”

  “So you know everything.”

  “Not everything I wanted to know, no.”

  “My ex-husband? My ex-father-in-law? My divorce?”

  “Yes, yes, and yes.”

  “Police reports? Criminal trial transcripts? Financial records?”

  “Those too.”

  “My client list?”

  “You didn’t sell it. Did you destroy it?”

  “I’m not that stupid.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “The people on it don’t share your opinion.”

  “I wouldn’t think so. Couldn’t get your medical records, either.”

  She waved a hand. “Well, I don’t have any cooties, if that’s what you’re wondering. I’m a professional.”

  “Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.”

  “Fine. I’ll get tested again and send you the results.”

  “Much appreciated.”

  “So knowing what you do know, why did you ask me out?”

  “You’re a brilliant woman, Ms. St. James,” he said, hope seeping back into his soul. “You know what that means.”

  “It could mean anything. Like...pity.”

  “I don’t drive two hundred miles round trip to have intimate dinners at chic restaurants with people I pity.”

  “Slumming, then.”

  “No. You’re slumming. I’m the one from the wrong side of the tracks.” He saw the corner of her mouth twitch. “And what did your people find out about me?”

  She released a resigned sigh. “That you have a PhD in metallurgical engineering from Missouri S&T. That your wife had a rare and devastating form of multiple sclerosis. That your daughters were missionaries for your church in Moscow and Hong Kong, respectively, although I can’t remember which went where. That you have one child—a boy—still at home. That I’m the first woman you’ve been interested in since your wife died last year and that she was the only woman you’ve ever had sex with. That you have lived a very boring life and that you seem perfectly happy to wallow in your boringness.”

  He laughed, feeling lighter than he had in weeks. Months. “And yet, you accepted my invitation. Why?”

  She turned almost fully then and looked at him, a smile creeping up on her. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Cassandra. Could we please go back in and finish our meals? I’m still hungry.”

  “Turn your phone off.”

  “I did.”

  “Did you get your crisis taken care of?”

  “Would it make any difference?”

  “No. I come first. Always.”

  Mina never would have made such a demand, and Cassandra’s arrogance had Mitch aching.

  He offered her his arm and said, “Likewise.”

  She sniffed. “I made a very good living knowing how to treat men.”

  Mitch chuckled. “Nice to know I’ll be in good hands then.”

  “You have no idea how good. Yet.”

  * * * * *

  Hey, Big Spender

  December 31, 2010

  “Cassie, what is your problem?”

  Hell if I knew. I’d been pacing around the house all morning, too restless to find any one thing and do it, too wound up to watch TV, too distracted to catch up on household business.

  “Go to work or something,” Clarissa snapped before stuffing popcorn in her mouth.

  I stood in the kitchen and stared at Clarissa, Olivia, and their boyfriends in the living room splashed out in front of the TV for a New Year’s Eve Woody Allen marathon.

  Something was wrong with this picture, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what.

  They’d finish the movies, nap—have sex—all afternoon and evening, then go clubbing all night long.

  My oldest and youngest were busy, too: Helene would be at the hospital for the next thirty-six hours. Paige had three performances today and two tomorrow.

  I didn’t want to go to work.

  But I didn’t want to be here, either.

  I could go to my room, but that felt too much like I’d been sent there by my disapproving offspring.

  The phone rang and I snatched at it just because it was something to do.

  “Were you planning to come in any time today?” Susan asked.

  “It’s ten o’clock in the morning and I am not there. What do you think?” I do my best work early in the morning.

  “You need to come in today.”

  That didn’t sound good, but I didn’t want to hear some chopped-up explanation for whatever had gone wrong. “All right. Get Sheldon here.”

  I didn’t bother to change out of my sweats, the “NYU” stamped across my tits and ass brittle, cracked, half chipped off. I barely brushed my hair and went without makeup. Battered running shoes, no socks, old gloves and stocking cap, and I was out the door.

  “Ms. St. James,” Sheldon murmured as he handed me into the car.

  “Good morning, Sheldon.”

  “Happy birthday,” he said when he finally slipped into the driver’s seat.

  I stared at him. My driver was the first person today to tell me that? “Uh, thank you, Sheldon,” I said, but shook it off as he pulled away from the curb and into traffic. “Any news?”

  “All quiet.”

  “I suspect Olivia’s being followed.”

  “She was. I took care of it.”

  I met Sheldon’s significant look in the rearview mirror. “Permane—? Never mind.” He said nothing. “Did Susan tell you why she called me in?”

  At that, he smirked.

  My curiosity as to what had happened at the office deepened. I was a specialist, my department created for me and all my support staff handpicked by me. Neither I nor my employees got involved in the bank’s day-to-day business, and I had given my staff the day off.

  I knew why Susan had gone in. She had her eye on some kid in Payroll, and would use the opportunity to fiddle around a little bit, play whatever computer game she was obsessed with, then head on down to the human resources department for her lunchtime stalking ritual.

  “So,” I said briskly as I came off the elevator, pulling off my gloves and hat. To my surprise she and Melinda were smashed up together right in front of Susan’s computer, rapt. I didn’t have to be told what they were watching. “What’s the crisis?”

  Susan paused their cooking show, looked around Melinda at me, up and down, and said, “Geez, is it possible for you not to look gorgeous?”

  “Huh?”

  “You come in dressed like a bag lady and you’re still hot.”

  I laughed, unaccountably pleased, but Melinda snorted. “I hate you.”

  “Vittles?” I asked dryly, stepping behind the two Vanessa Whittaker fangirls.

  “I missed her when she was here, cooking at Chez Fricassee,” Melinda said, looking up at me. “Did you?”

  “No, I ate there. Several times. She’s a brilliant chef, but she only got her break because she was Ford’s mistress and model. It would’ve taken her years to break out like that otherwise.”

  Melinda grunted. “Doesn’t mean she’s not good at what she does.” She gave me the once-over. “Q.E.D.”

  “Touché.”

  “We all need help,” Melinda continued, looking at Susan now, lecturing. She did that a lot when she was in a reflective mood. “Don’t let anybody tell you all you need is brains and hard work,
because that’s bullshit. We get help along the way, lucky breaks, countless people who help in small ways and a few who help in big ways. That chef—” Melinda pointed to the computer. “—got a big break because of who she was sleeping with. That’s true. Being beautiful doesn’t hurt. But it didn’t give her her talent or her drive or her business sense. She had to work for what she built and now she has to work twice as hard to keep it and grow it.

  “The trick,” she went on, “is to always be giving back. To help people along their way. Sometimes that comes back to you in strange and wonderful ways. Occasionally you get it back from the person you gave it to, but mostly not. So those lucky breaks people get? No such thing as luck. That’s the groundwork you laid when you helped somebody else.”

  I nodded toward the monitor. “Makes me wonder what she did to come into Sebastian’s orbit, because you know how antisocial he is.”

  They both stared up at me then. “You don’t know?” Susan asked.

  “Know what?”

  Melinda waved a hand. “Her boyfriend, the politician.”

  “Cipriani? The hotshot who just got Senator Afton hounded out of Washington?”

  “Him. She pretty much saved his life when she was a little girl. It involved Hilliard, so that was how she got access to Taight. She gave a big press conference at her Thanksgiving masquerade. I was there and it was powerful. She had me in tears. Go watch it on YouTube.”

  “I will. I need to hit one of those masquerades. I hear they’re decadent.”

  Melinda smiled wickedly and stretched, her beautifully toned arms glistening dark chocolate. “It was...lovely,” she purred after a second or two.

  “Are either one of you going to cough up the reason you have summoned me?”

  “It’s in your office,” Melinda said dismissively and gestured to Susan to restart their program.

  I obeyed as if I were a flunky—

  —and stopped short. There, on my desk, a gift basket but clearly not some perfect corporate parfait of meaningless motivational bullshit. I approached it slowly, as if it were a wild animal that would pounce on me at any moment if it noticed me.

  It was a pathetic little thing, really. I’d mastered my share of crafts early in my marriage when I was a Martha Stewart acolyte, trying my best to be what I’d been brought up to be: A high-society June Cleaver, perfectly accomplished in the home arts, perfectly dressed and coifed while practicing those arts, my pretty mint shirtwaist covered by a complementary apron I had hand-embroidered. I could’ve done a better gift basket in my sleep, even after all these years.

  I untied the pink tulle. A “bouquet” of cookies on sticks, probably a couple dozen. Sugar cookies, from the looks of them, unartfully iced and decorated, with two sticking prominently up in the center, each with one word: “Happy” and “birthday.”

  Oh, my. I cleared my throat and plucked a cookie out of its fastening.

  “Shit,” I breathed after I’d taken a tentative bite. Chewy, with a delicate balance of lemon and vanilla. They might not be able to decorate, but damn, they could bake.

  Whoever “they” were.

  The cookie sticks were in a small vase. I pulled that out and set it aside to see— There, in the bottom of the basket were two paperbacks. I held one in each hand and looked between them. No, not two books. One. One in French and one in English. The one in French was old, yellowed and battered. The one in English was fresh and bright.

  Angélique, Marquise des Anges or, in English, Angélique, the Marquise of the Angels.

  I knew this story: A teenage girl obliged to marry an unattractive eccentric over a decade her senior, with whom she gradually fell in love as she learned who and how truly wonderful he was.

  I’d been required to view the movie during one of my interminable humanities classes in my interminable undergraduate years, and had written my paper on the contrast between the heroine in the story to my own history. I’d earned a C because, “No matter how well written, treacly fiction has no place in film critique. You’re lucky I didn’t fail you.”

  Why had Mitch chosen this particular story? He was a sly devil, and I couldn’t discount the possibility that, now he knew my history, he was making the same comparison I’d made. Yet...

  The French version was well loved, and a quick glance at the copyright page told me it was from an early printing, 1958, and it was old before we were born—ancient by the time Mitch had gotten his hands on it. He had written in the margins, tiny, in French. Inside the back cover, in a different hand, in English, was written, “You should be reading your scriptures, Elder!”

  That made me smile, this microscopic look into the lives of two twenty-year-old boys in a foreign country, out of their depth, and struggling to make sense of their situation.

  I put the books down, then looked back into the basket. Ah, yes, a note. I broke the seal and took out the plain white card.

  Happy birthday, Cassandra.

  I’ll pick you up at 8:00.

  (jeans—bundle up)

  I fell into my chair. Dammit, where was that box of tissues?

  Once I’d mopped up my face and taken a Benadryl for my allergies, I made sure the cookies were within reach, opened the English version of the book, tilted my chair back, propped my feet on my desk, and settled in.

  * * * * *

  When Did You Fall

  I opened my door at two minutes to eight to see him standing there relaxed, his hands in his jeans pockets, a long wool overcoat swept back behind his strong arms. His sandy hair glinted a slight red in the glow from the street lamp and his eyes seemed lighter in the reflection off the snow. He had a sly smile on his face and I wondered if he would kiss me at the stroke of midnight.

  Was it only a month ago I’d thought him ordinary?

  “Come in for a minute,” I said with an unintentional huskiness to my voice. I stepped aside, but his smile change from sly to amused and he said,

  “Thank you, but no. Not coming in.”

  It took me a second or two to figure that out, then said, “You think I’m going to seduce you.”

  “Attempt to.”

  I smirked.

  “Appearance of impropriety and all that.”

  “Ah, okay.”

  Chuckling, I went to find my coat, then shoved it into his hands when I stepped out onto the stoop and locked my door. He assisted me into it as I had expected him to.

  “Did you get my test results?” I asked as he handed me into the car he’d hired for the night. I slid over a proper distance so that he wouldn’t be too tempted.

  “Yes, I did, thank you,” he said with a chuckle. “And I turned off my phone.” Once he was comfortable and we were on our way, he looked at my lap, grasped one of my hands, and wrapped my fingers up with his. “Did you have a good birthday?”

  “Only because of you.”

  Oh, my God. I hadn’t really said that, had I? I had. His frown told me I had. “What does that mean?” he rumbled.

  “Uh...”

  “Are you telling me that your family didn’t do anything for you?”

  “Uh...”

  “And your daughters all live at home, right?”

  I looked past him out the window, seeing nothing. “New Year’s Eve is...New Year’s Eve. It’s special to them. It’s always been difficult.”

  “Even when you were a kid?”

  “Um...” I cleared my throat. “No. My parents— They made sure to put me first. Then...”

  “Then...?”

  “Then I got married,” I said flatly, hoping he would back off. He knew what had happened—at least, what was in the public record as having happened.

  His jaw clenched then and he looked away as if to hide it. His hand closed a little tighter on mine, and I wondered— “Do you ever get angry? Really angry?”

  He looked at me sharply and his expression melted into a smile immediately. “Not much, no,” he said. “I’m pretty easygoing.”

  Liar.

  I didn’t
say it, though. He’d deny it and I really didn’t want to spend my evening trying to get him to admit something probably very few people knew about him.

  “That book you sent me,” I said. “I like it so far. Thank you.”

  “How far in did you get?”

  “Angélique’s marriage.” I launched into the oddity of his having chosen that particular book to send me and why, and, because I couldn’t keep my fucking mouth shut, I said, “Did you send that to me because of my marriage?”

  He started. “No. I— It’s my favorite book. It...helped me get through a rough time in my life. I didn’t see any connection in it. I wanted to— Um...”

  I closed my other hand over the knot that his and mine already made. “It’s okay,” I murmured. “It wouldn’t have bothered me if you had. I was curious, is all. Big coincidence.”

  He stared at me for a second, his expression somber. “Tell me about it.”

  I took a deep breath and sighed, then shifted to make myself more comfortable. I knew what he was asking and I didn’t pretend otherwise. “Gordon was twenty-five. I was fifteen and madly in love with this dashing older man. He saw me as a well-behaved little girl...a pretty life-sized doll who could walk and talk. He didn’t object when his father and my father set up the deal. I sure as hell wasn’t going to object.” I stopped, thought back. It was humiliating, thinking how I’d doodled Gordon’s name on my notebooks, being so very...fifteen about it. But fifteen was fifteen and not forty-six, and was to be expected. I was far more forgiving of, say, my twenty-four-year-old assistant’s crush on the kid in Payroll than I was of my fifteen-year-old self.

  “We had three years of an entirely chaste and fairy princess courtship. I thought Gordon refused to kiss me because I was underage, which only proved to me that he was honorable. We got married a week after I turned eighteen. My father didn’t figure out until my wedding day why Gordon’s father was so eager to get us married off.” I laughed. “Hell, Gordon didn’t even know.”

  “When’d he come out?”

  The warmth of Mitch’s big hand seeped into my cold ones. “When he got out of prison. Before he went into treatment.”