So when she pulled away from the curb in a big black SUV, I waved a guilty wave, knowing I would have to pay a visit to the priest again, but also that it wouldn’t be the last time. It didn’t even bother me that I was well on my way back to Brooklyn when I realized I hadn’t come up with a reason to see her again.
Or that she hadn’t answered the final question I asked about her husband. And her used-to-be friend.
Intermission I
March
Nina’s phone buzzed in her lap, tempered by the layers of her silk charmeuse skirt, where no one would notice it. She had been sitting in Sylvia Blake’s parlor for over two hours, staring at a catered lunch with the planning committee of the Manhattan Children’s Autism Foundation. They were supposed to be finishing up the final stages of the invitation design, among a few other things. But of course, these ladies, friends she had known most of her life, were using the luncheon to tipple a few too many glasses of pinot grigio and gossip.
“Did you hear about Dennis?” Camille St. Croix was saying as she pushed a piece of lox around her plate. “Ran off with his secretary. She’s only twenty-two! Younger than his daughter.”
“I told Samantha she should have gotten that procedure after she had the baby,” Angela Crane replied. “I did it after we had our second. Alex swears everything is tighter than before I had children.”
The women all laughed in that way they did about anything more risqué than their cardigans. The irony, of course, was that they all led double lives. Nina happened to know that both Camille’s and Angela’s husbands were regulars at the Benedict House, a hundred-year-old members-only establishment on Eighty-Ninth Street that catered to the more…elusive…sexual proclivities of Upper East Side males. Just like she knew that Angela had been having a six-year affair with the maintenance man in her building, and that the female “cousin” Camille entertained every few months was actually her husband’s favorite call girl whose presence was written into the terms of their prenuptial agreement.
Nina knew these things because her grandmother had known them. Celeste de Vries was dead now, but she had taught Nina the importance of secrets. The importance of keeping them, yes, but knowing them as well.
“Ridiculous,” Nina agreed after swallowing a spoonful of consommé. She could barely get it down. “Poor Samantha.”
Usually she liked the thin broth at the Venetian—an appropriate luncheon choice for a woman expected to maintain a sample size. Lately, however, this choice or any like it had distinctly lacked…flavor.
With a covert glance to make sure her friends were more interested in Samantha’s divorce plans than her own attention, Nina swiped for the new message:
Maya: Saw this and thought of you.
Soon after, a photo appeared. A plate of spaghetti, perfectly coiled on a dinner plate, blood-red sauce dribbled over the noodles.
Nina smiled to herself as her stomach grumbled. Matthew sent pictures of food almost daily—mostly pasta—his way of making up for the fact that even in the last few weeks, he still hadn’t gotten her to eat any again.
Friendship she had begged for, and friendship he offered. His idea of friendship was… entertaining, at least. He teased her mercilessly, forced her to talk about politics and religion and basically everything you weren’t supposed to discuss in polite company, and did his best to make her blush the few times they met for coffee or lunch. And no matter how many times she chided him for it, he wouldn’t stop calling her “doll.”
Nonetheless, Nina enjoyed his company. Maybe all the more for it.
Because Matthew, it turned out, was an extraordinary friend. It wasn’t that the sexual attraction was gone. If Nina were really honest with herself, she was probably more attracted to him now than she had been when they met. But that wasn’t the only reason she liked spending time with him.
He just…listened. He asked her questions. Meaningful ones. About her family. Her life. Even her husband. And when she answered, he listened and responded thoughtfully, either with an anecdote of his own, a reflective request for her to explain something, or another question that seemed designed to probe corners of her mind that most people never bothered to explore.
He offered her a safe space to think out loud. And, to her surprise, never seemed to judge her for it.
In just a few short weeks, he had become a true friend. Maybe the best one she’d ever had.
Nina checked her tablemates again. The conversation had switched to a debate about centerpieces. Quickly, she typed back a reply. The exchange was almost instantaneous.
Nina: You’re funny. I still haven’t eaten any, you know.
Maya: Tempted?
Nina: More than you know.
She almost didn’t send the last one. Especially when the sleeve of her blouse slipped up, baring the bruise encircling her wrist. A remnant of an argument, two nights ago. Calvin had come home late from some sort of “meeting.” She didn’t know what for. She didn’t want to know.
He had stumbled into her bedroom, the one she had used separately from him since their wedding. The moment his footsteps reached her door, she had woken, knowing what was coming.
But this time…she had said no.
And that, of course, was her greatest mistake.
Not the face, not the face.
He had stayed true to his word. After all, he told her later, when she was lying on the bed, bruised in all number of places while her husband mopped the sweat off his spray-tanned face. I am a gentleman.
His thin lips, which had always reminded her of worms on a hook, curled in jest. And then he had left her to tend to her wounds. Ice her neck and wrist. Contemplate clothing that would hide the bruising for the next week until it healed.
Her phone buzzed again.
Maya: Friday? Say the word, and my kitchen is open.
Nina stared at the last message for a long time. Matthew was a busy man. The fact that he even made it to the city during the week for the occasional coffee or lunch was impressive. Days would pass when, beyond the random culinary photograph, she wouldn’t hear from him at all. And then, just when she considered giving in and calling just to hear his voice, something like this would pop up. Something more than twenty minutes in a safe, public space full of other people. And, just like now, she’d be paralyzed by the implications.
“Nina? Nina!”
Nina started and looked up. “Hmm?”
Sylvia, the chair of the committee, tapped her perfectly manicured nails on the white linen tabletop. “I asked if you would be willing to hire your florist for the event. Whoever are you chatting with over there so intently?”
Nina fingered her phone, drifting her thumb over the name on the screen. “No one important.”
“I doubt that, N.”
Nina fought the urge to lean away as Caitlyn Calvert, her once-best friend, leaned close to examine the message chain. Nina didn’t move. If she closed the screen, it would look like she was hiding something.
“It’s from someone named Maya,” Caitlyn announced. “Who is Maya?”
Nina paused. She should have been prepared for this. The fact was, she didn’t know a Maya. Neither did any of the other women at this table, women who knew just about every name in their extremely limited social circles.
But that was the reason for the pseudonym, wasn’t it? Maya was a safe name. A name no one would suspect. Although the texts and phone calls she traded with Matthew had been relatively harmless—well, as harmless as they could ever be when he was calling her names like “doll” and “sweetheart,” or using that absurdly deep voice of his to make her stomach twist into knots—there was always going to be the possibility of…more.
Or maybe, Nina thought to herself, that was just wishful thinking. She had been to enough therapists to know when she was supplementing. Projecting her desires onto others’ actions. Wishing they meant more than they actually did to make up for the absence of real intimacy.
After all, she’d been doing it her enti
re life.
“She’s a new acquaintance,” Nina said. “A friend of Eric’s wife. You remember Jane.”
“Ohhh.”
The hum of disapproval was universal, as it always was when Jane Lee Lefferts de Vries came up. The fact that Eric, the most eligible (and for ten years, missing) bachelor in their milieu had up and married an outspoken, pink-haired, half-Korean nobody within six months of returning to New York would be gossip fodder for years to come. It didn’t help that in doing so, he’d tossed away Caitlyn’s affections. In the eyes of these women, Jane’s existence was a complete affront to their way of life.
“Is it true she elbowed her way onto the Met Gala committee of all things?” Caitlyn sneered.
“Celeste sat on it for years before she died,” Sylvia pointed out.
“I think it’s positively ghoulish,” Caitlyn rattled on. “Celeste de Vries hasn’t even been gone for six months, and that little hussy is taking over her life? Who does she think she is?”
Nina brushed her thumb over the now dark screen of her phone, trying and failing to ignore the ache in her chest whenever anyone mentioned Grandmother. Celeste de Vries had been neither warm nor kind. Ruthless. Calculating. These were more apt descriptors. Ones that Nina came to know intimately. Her upbringing had been full of sharp-tongued critique instead of hugs and kisses.
But she couldn’t say her grandmother hadn’t cared. Perhaps she was the only one who ever had.
In the end, too, Celeste herself had welcomed Eric’s unorthodox wife fully into the family. No one else had said a word, but Nina had seen the grand society wedding for what it was: Grandmother’s stamp of approval. Compared to the spectacle of Jane and Eric’s wedding, Nina’s own small ceremony was practically a servant’s affair.
She could have been bitter. But in the end, Nina had become quite fond of her cousin-in-law. It wasn’t difficult. Jane was candid, funny, and warm—everything Nina secretly wished she could be. More than that, Jane was unabashedly herself, no matter what. Something no one at this particular table could ever claim.
Nina opened her mouth to say so, but found that every beady eye was focused on her. Waiting for her to parrot their snide righteousness back to them or suffer the consequences.
Nina sighed. In moments like these, it was just easier to play the part. “Eric is chairman now. It seemed polite to step aside.”
“And now she’s pestering you for more?” Caitlyn cast a knowing look at the rest of the committee. “Forcing you to play nice with her sad friends too? Pathetic. There’s nothing worse than poor relations, is there, girls?”
Another hum, this one of assent, circulated the table. Nina frowned, biting back a retort about how Caitlyn had risen from humble origins in New Jersey herself, a scholarship student at Nina’s private school. Had she forgotten about the year she had lived with Nina and her mother? When her parents had been deemed unfit by the state?
It was how the two of them had originally become close. How many times had Nina given the girl her clothes? Her jewelry? Helped her mimic her own hair and makeup, even when they were older and Caitlyn no longer needed the gestures, only wanted them out of camaraderie and friendship?
Or so Nina had thought.
“Well, go on, then,” Caitlyn snickered. “Put poor ‘Maya’ out of her misery.”
Nina blinked. “I’m sorry?”
Caitlyn rolled her big blue eyes and tossed a honeyed lock of hair from her shoulder. She’d started lightening it again, Nina noticed. Looking more blonde than brunette these days.
“N, honestly. It’s one thing for Eric to expect you to be nice to his wife, but it’s unrealistic to expect you to do the same for all her random little friends. The Upper East Side is members-only, darling. Better cut her loose sooner than later.”
All seven pairs of eyes around the table watched and waited for Nina to do the dirty deed. And so, though she didn’t want to, Nina found herself tapping out a terse reply to Matthew’s request.
“‘Sorry, I have plans,’” Caitlyn read as Nina typed. “Poor thing. Of course you do. Just not with her. Ever. Am I right?” She tittered with the other women. “So oblivious. Ooh, she’s already writing back! What is she, staring at her phone? How desperate.”
Miserably, Nina watched the three moving dots in the corner of the screen while Matthew wrote his response. Please, she begged silently, though she didn’t know for what. Please don’t believe me? Please ask me again? Please send me another picture tomorrow when I’m not around all these hateful women?
And then, like she knew it would, his message appeared while Caitlyn continued spying:
Nina: Sorry, I have plans. Thanks for the offer, though.
Maya: Any time, doll.
“Doll?” Caitlyn’s chirping voice was suddenly covered in a layer of doubt. “She calls you doll?”
Nina swallowed thickly. “She’s, um, from the Bronx.” It was the best excuse she could think of.
Another round of knowing murmurs rounded the table. The Bronx only solidified this group’s larger assumptions about a friend of Eric’s uncouth new wife. For this set, any borough but Manhattan was completely unacceptable. It was why the few who couldn’t claim to be true island natives did whatever they could to mask the fact. Below Fourteenth Street was a descent into madness, and above 110th didn’t exist. Nina might as well have told them “Maya” grew up in a landfill.
Good lord, had she been like this before? So horrifically classist? So willing to look down her hyper-straight nose at anyone outside her social set? Had she always been this miserable?
She was beginning to think the answers were all yes.
“I’ll take care of the florist,” Nina said as she dropped her phone back into her purse, away from prying eyes. “Is that everything today?”
Her consommé had grown cold and looked like a vital fluid. Nina’s stomach turned. She craved a large bowl of the pasta Matthew had shown her. It would be the perfect antidote to this group’s poison.
The others quieted immediately, clearly taken aback by Nina’s sudden change of tone. This was breaking protocol. Nina was supposed to chime in. Add a few salacious tidbits about “Maya,” this woman they had never known but would take such pleasure in berating behind her back. She was supposed to laugh and giggle and taunt until they all bored with it and finally turned back to planning the next boring event full of the appropriately boring members of their set.
Maya was a made-up person, but Nina was suddenly quite protective of her.
“N?”
She turned to find Caitlyn watching her intently.
“Are you all right?” she asked in a low voice, only between them. “You seem a bit…distracted.”
It was a nice way to say, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Nina masked a smirk. Matthew’s sardonic candor—and profanity—was seeping into her thoughts.
“I’m fine,” she replied, grasping for an excuse. “It’s just…” She leaned closer, praying Caitlyn would remember at least something of their former friendship. “Calvin arrived on Monday. I should get home before he does. It’s—he wants me home.”
That unfortunately, wasn’t a lie. It was the truth she had been ignoring all day while dread built in the pit of her stomach. Calvin would likely be leaving again on another trip soon, but until then, Nina sensed she would have to deal with his…tastes…more than she would ordinarily.
Recognition flooded Caitlyn’s features. “Oh. And Olivia…”
“Still in Boston.”
“How long until he leaves again?”
“Next week. Maybe this weekend.”
Caitlyn gave a curt nod. “Good. You can handle it, then.”
Nina’s shoulders sank with relief when Caitlyn didn’t say anything more or expand upon the conversation to the group. Very few people understood the true nature of the Gardners’ marriage, but Caitlyn was one of them. Or had been. Nina had no reason to believe Caitlyn had betrayed that particular confidence. And she
needed to make sure their relationship stayed that way.
“Yes, you should be going. You have a lot to do.” Caitlyn turned to the other committee members, whose noses were all back in their wineglasses. “Ladies, our beloved N needs to get home to greet her husband. You know how it is, when they manage to tear themselves away. Priorities, priorities.”
Another round of amenable remarks like “Of course, Nina, dearest” and “Oh, certainly” circulated the table as Nina stood. They understood this obligation, at least. Nina would have wagered each of their marriages had their own shameful dimensions too.
“Thank you, darlings. I’ll see you next week.”
She pasted on the brightest smile she could as the others responded in kind. Glass painted facades, all of them. As expensive and fragile as crystal. A mere pebble would shatter them all.
The saddest thing? She was no different. Nothing but a beautiful glass veneer threaded with cracks.
Act II
ENSEMBLE
Chapter Eleven
“Zola. Zola.”
My assistant probably said my name ten times before I finally snapped away from my computer screen. The sudden movement made the pigeons on the windowsill disperse in a burst of wings. “Are you all right?” Tiana stood in the doorway of my closet-sized office, holding a manila file and eyeing me with something close to pity. “Do you need a cup of coffee or something?”
“What? No, I’m fine. Just focused, that’s all. I have to get this motion done by four, or else we’ll miss the judge.” I checked my watch. “Derek should be here soon.”
“The Kominsky case isn’t going to trial until next week.” Tiana tipped her head. “You’ve been ‘focused’ a lot lately.”
The Other Man (Rose Gold Book 1) Page 12