Gilded Age (15 page)

“I’d watch out,” he said sourly.

“Watch out for Ellie?”

“I used to hear things about her. She used to go after people’s husbands. Not just random people’s actually, her close friends’. I know someone who got involved—”

“Ellie’s like family to me,” I said, cutting him off here. I really didn’t want to hear this kind of thing about her. It made me nervous, and it seemed like he was ramping up for a confession—sounding very sour grapes.

He looked at me for a beat and then down at his plate. “Of course
I hear she’s likely to end up with Randy Leforte, of all people. Do you know him?”

“Only a little. Do you?”

“Not at all. But my mother tells me she was introduced to him at a cocktail party for some congressman, and Leforte advised her to hang on to the cameo she was wearing and never sell it as it’d appreciate a hundred percent by the time her granddaughter got it.”

“Come on. He didn’t say that.”

“Hand to God.”

“Ewww.”

Jeff raised an eyebrow. “Old Ellie could probably straighten him out.” He looked up at her then, taking her measure. “A project like that would be good for her. Give her something to do. She could tone down the bling, bring in a little sophistication, like Carla Bruni did with Sarkozy.”

I regained my breath. Here was my opening to steer things past this treacherous territory. “Have you heard the last album?” I asked.

“She calls him her drug in one of the songs,” he replied with a glinting smile. “Can you imagine?”

Julia served dessert in her living room. A group of men started a game of pool in the library next door, preferring cigars to dessert. We sat on her Fortuny covered chairs as she passed around dishes of berry cobbler with homemade honey ice cream. The walls were hung with paintings from the 1920s of industrial scenes downtown—men in steel factories, steamships under the bridges, the flats in full production. The great-grandchildren of that industry now sat cosseted and comfortable far away from the actual mechanics of Cleveland.

I enjoyed my dessert, wishing I could have more without being conspicuous when Cinco came and sat at my feet, with legs crossed and his back to me. His wife was chatting across the room with the acupuncturist.

He twirled his fork over his dessert. “This ice cream is like all the mortal sins of the world in a bowl.”

I laughed.

“Speaking of which,” he said, tilting toward me, “have you been offered drugs yet?”

“Hardly.” I laughed. “You?”

He whispered out of the side of his mouth. “You can tell if you’re in with the in crowd if they do. Only to special friends, you know.” He lolled his head back on the seat next to me and smiled. “Too bad you’re not cool enough.”

I made a face at him. “I don’t think it has anything to do with being cool.”

“Right.” He rolled his head to look at me. “You might think it doesn’t, but that’s exactly what it means.” He grinned at me, teasing.

I looked at him and laughed. “Or it could be because I’m pregnant.”

I’m not sure if I imagined it or not, but it seemed his face fell. He regained his composure quickly. He looked neither shocked nor delighted. “You’re pregnant?”

“Look at me.” I gestured to my waist. “What did you think?”

He shrugged. “I thought you’d gained a little weight.”

I was dumbstruck. “A little? I’m a whale.”

“You’re not a whale.” After a pause he said, “Still beautiful.” He said it softly to the room, not looking at me.

A stunned thrill of excitement and revulsion ran through me. Cinco still thought I was beautiful? It made my head spin in both alarm and pleasure. He wouldn’t have given me a bicycle or been worrying about my getting back into shape after being pregnant.

He got up then, unfolding his long legs and rising to join the men in the library shooting pool.

Jim took me home early, about midnight, but the party was in full swing. Gus was in the corner revving up his complicated music system to blast hip-hop songs currently popular at frat parties. As far as I could tell, Ellie hadn’t drunk a drop. Jim and I left when small groups were making their ways into different rooms of the Trenors’ house—den and library and bar—for a little illicit activity, be that cigarettes or drugs or couples meeting in secret to hook-up or have fights. At
Julia’s parties a contingent of guests left soon after dinner and another group wouldn’t leave until after breakfast was served in silver chafing dishes in the dining room.

I saw Ellie seated on a low banquette in a dimly lit corner of the Trenors’ library talking to a man whose back was to me with his arm propped against the wall, as if shielding Ellie from something. She blew me a kiss over his shoulder and mouthed “I’ll call you.” The man didn’t turn around.

The Texts

E
llie leaned back against the Trenors’ green velvet library banquette and enjoyed the feeling of Selden’s company. Though he made her doubt herself sometimes, tonight his presence soothed. Here was a man who would never propose a business deal instead of true love. Here was a man who would never primp. Here was someone who saw her, even if his gaze sometimes made her squirm. It calmed her, the feeling of being known.

He’d brought her a small glass of tequila rocks,
his
favorite, she noted. He also held a glass for himself, and he’d managed to tuck a half-full bottle under his arm. He set a third glass on the table in front of them with limes, and out of his pocket came a crystal salt shaker in the shape of a hunting dog. She sipped at her drink, discreetly enjoying it out of the view of prying eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time she drank tequila. She smiled at Selden, who, in the low light, looked young and rough with his rumpled hair but bright with his burnished skin, his polished glasses.

“I should call you Selden the corrupter.”

“I like that.” He leaned in closer, picking up her wrist. “Makes me sound dangerous, yeah?”

“Yes, I believe you know how to corrupt in more ways than one.”

He took a lime and rubbed it across the inside of her wrist where the ribbon used to be. Then he sprinkled salt on it.

“You’re not going to—”

“Hush,” he said with a grin.

She stiffened for a second. If he expected her to hold a lime in her mouth for him, well, she had to draw the line somewhere. He leaned down, arching an eyebrow with irony, and she smiled at his boyishness—a body shot, so retro, so deliciously crude.

He licked the salt and warmth shot up her arm and landed as sparks in her stomach. Then he drank down his tequila quickly, without drama, and put a lime in his mouth with a wink.

“Your turn,” he said, after he’d sucked on the fruit.

She felt the age difference between them then. This hadn’t been popular when she’d been in college. She’d never done it. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“It’s part of my corruption—seduction,” he said, and pointed to a spot under his left ear.

She rolled her eyes, hefting the crystal salt shaker in her palm, considering his neck. How would she get salt on there? She wasn’t going to be caught licking the side of his neck at one of Julia’s parties.

She picked up a lime, and he raised his eyebrows, excited. But she squeezed the wedge in her glass. He frowned at that, licking juice off his fingers.

“Be right back,” he said. “Sticky.”

She’d annoyed him, she knew, not playing along. She did a shot of tequila by herself while he was gone. Selden actually made tequila look pretty good. She felt it burn down her throat and winced a little, remembering that tequila didn’t agree with her. But Selden’s outlook, the way he walked through the world, his body, those fingers, even his drink—all looked appealing to Ellie right then. His fingers, she thought again, shivering a bit.

On the small table in front of her, next to the bottle of tequila, Selden’s phone lit up and started vibrating. The ringtone sounded
familiar, but she couldn’t place it with the background noise of the party.

Prince? Ellie thought. It was too tempting; she had to see who Selden would assign to an old Prince song.

She picked up the phone. Diana Dorset’s name was on the display: text message waiting.

So maybe things weren’t as over as Ellie had thought. Men were so unknowable sometimes, she thought. Diana Dorset was a class-A bitch. Didn’t Selden see that? Though Ellie supposed there were men who liked that sort of thing, Selden thought Diana was his sexy motherfucker?

Her thumb hovered over “OK.” It was outrageous that she’d read it. But she really wanted to know where things stood between them. Was this a booty text? For a brief moment she wondered how she’d explain it if he caught her. But she was less likely to get caught if she just went ahead and read it without stalling, and so she pressed “OK.”

S—MISS U TERRIBLY 2NITE. COME SEE ME. CUM FOR ME? D OUT OF TOWN.—DI

Ellie hit “Close” and practically threw the phone back on the table and wiped her hand.

Ick. If only brain bleach were real, she’d scour that out of her brain.

She supposed it wasn’t
that
surprising. Selden liked them stylish. Selden’s mother had been chic. A charming woman, Ellie remembered her mother saying of Marianne Selden, with a light touch in every area of her life. Some found her enchanting, others thought her flighty, spacey. And that, Ellie supposed, was where the fondness for a self-sufficient woman came in. The son of a flake would choose a self-reliant lover, and being married would make Diana autonomous. But judging from that text, Diana’s independence had fallen away.

The phone vibrated again, the funky groove line starting up.

She had to look. If he caught her, she’d laugh, flirtily ask him what he had to hide. If it came down to that, she hoped he was drunker than he looked.

MISS ME?

Before she’d even closed the message, another came through.

It was a picture of Diana, looking a little drunk Ellie thought, undressed except for a lacy red bra mashing her breasts together. Underneath it said:

WHAT ABOUT NOW?

Ellie smirked. Diana had aired Ellie’s dirty laundry in Ellicottville, successfully ruining things with Gryce. She’d tried to sink Ellie with Selden. Who knew what further damage Diana would try to do to Ellie? Who knew what advantages having the goods on Diana Dorset could bring her? With one eye out for Selden, she quickly forwarded the messages and the picture to her phone.

She saw the messy top of Selden’s hair from across the room as he made his way down a tightly packed hallway. She deleted the original messages—if Diana mentioned them to Selden, they’d likely chalk it up to a technological glitch. She tossed the phone back on the table and leaned back, taking a deep breath. It didn’t actually confirm that he was still sleeping with Diana—the ringtone, the text, the pictures. But it certainly looked that way. Ellie was both repulsed and sparked; she’d always been competitive.

Selden settled down next to her again with a smile. He leaned in, taking her hand, and was about to say something when Prince’s voice warbled through the air.

Selden stilled, and his eyes got wide. Then he frantically scrabbled at the table for the phone, almost knocking over the tequila. The song kept playing, winding up to its crescendo.

Ellie sniggered. Diana was certainly tenacious. Selden found the phone next to him and silenced the ringer.

“Who was that?” She was all-out laughing now, thinking of Diana’s desperation, thinking of the picture she now had custody of.

“Your mom,” Selden said peevishly, which only made Ellie laugh harder. He rumpled a hand through his hair. “God, I don’t
know how to switch that thing. I don’t know what she did to it,” he mumbled.

“Who?”

Selden sighed and leaned back. “Diana,” he admitted.

“She’s your sexy motherfucker?” Ellie teased.

“No,” Selden said quickly. “No, but she put this ringtone on here when—” And here he stopped himself, realizing he’d gone down a road he didn’t want to. “It’s annoying.”

“When you were together?” Ellie asked.

“I’d hardly call it together.”

“What would you call it?”

He looked away. “I don’t know.”

“And now?”

“Diana is …” His eyes searched the ceiling.

“Awful.” Ellie couldn’t help it.

“Troubled,” Selden corrected, and Ellie detected a kindness in his tone that confirmed there’d been something between him and Diana sexually.

“And married,” Ellie said.

“Plus that,” Selden snorted, and it made Ellie think that he’d definitely been the one who’d ended things.

“Is it over?” It was shocking and even a little exciting to her that Selden had participated in an affair. Maybe, like Ellie, he’d been counting on regular sex with no strings and gotten in over his head. Maybe that’s why he called it off.

He furrowed his brow at her. “Definitely.”

“A mistake?” she asked, wanting to hear him say it.

“I don’t go in for regret.”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t make a mistake.”

“Right,” he said, and that was good enough for Ellie.

She was pleased, satisfied that things with Diana were over for now. And if anyone could erase the memory of another woman, it was Ellie.

“It makes sense though, you have the reputation,” she teased.

“As a bookish professor who can’t change his ringtone?”

“As a Lothario.”

“Makes me sound like I should be wearing a pinkie ring.” He leaned in closer to her, relaxing now. “I much prefer ‘corrupter.’”

“Speaking of which, I shouldn’t be having this,” she said, tipping her glass toward him.

“Really? A few drinks are going to kill you?” He leaned to the side, still shielding her from the party but resting his head on the wall.

“You know I’ve had issues in this area.”

“Drinking?” He furrowed his eyebrows.

“Rehab.”

“For alcohol?”

“No.”

“Well, there you go. Moderation in all things,” Selden said, nodding to himself. “Moderation’s what’s needed.”

“Obviously I’ve found it pretty hard to be moderate. About most things, really. You?”