In Love with a Gentleman
Read In Love with a Gentleman Online
Authors: Elisa Ellen
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2013 Elisa Ellen
Translation copyright © 2015 Terry Laster
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Previously published as
Verliebt in einen Gentleman
in Germany by the author in 2013. Translated from German by Terry Laster.
Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle
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, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477828793
ISBN-10: 1477828796
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary-Soudant
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014919889
Contents
Chapter 1
“Tell me, what do people wear to the casino?”
The peacefulness of teatime bursts like a soap bubble.
My parents look up at the same time—my mother from her knitting and my father from his sudoku. They look shocked, as if I’ve said something terrible.
My mother seems to consider what to say. Apparently, my question has caught her off guard.
“To the casino? Mmm . . .” she finally says. “Well, I think a little black dress, or whatever you call it, would be appropriate. But don’t ask me, I’ve never been to one.”
My father just shakes his head and returns to his numbers puzzle. I imagine he is thinking his daughter is out of her mind again. The best thing he can do is pretend he didn’t hear me.
My mother returns to knitting her socks, then asks mildly, “Why do you ask?”
“I’m going to the casino tomorrow,” I say. “I was just thinking about what I should wear.”
My father looks up from his puzzle again and furrows his brow. “To the casino? Are you kidding?”
“No,” I answer. “I’m going to the casino in Hohensyburg tomorrow evening. Cross your fingers I’ll get to ride in a stretch limo!”
My father puts down his pen and fixes me with a stern look. “Who are you running around with, Lea?”
“Don’t worry so much,” I say over my shoulder as I dash upstairs to my room. I don’t want to get in a discussion with him about my trip to the casino. Right now there are much more important things to do: I need an outfit. Little black dress. Hmm.
I’m home for the weekend from Münster, where I go to school. My parents live in Bielefeld; my father is a retired teacher, and my mother is a homemaker heavily involved in community work.
I throw open the doors to my closet and look inside. The closet in my childhood bedroom is cluttered with old clothes; if I’m lucky, I’ll find something that will work. I pull at a bit of black cloth peeking out from a stack of clothing. As if I’d released the one thing keeping everything packed inside, at least twenty garments fly out, landing on the floor. Great. The black dress is somewhere in the pile. I kneel down and rummage through the mountain of fabric until I find the dress. It’s a lightweight little thing with spaghetti straps. I bought it in Istanbul, where I’d spent a semester.
Did I really need this in Istanbul? Oh yeah. I think dreamily of the great nights I’d spent with my fellow international students in the city’s many discos. I sniff the dress. It still smells vaguely of an impossibly exotic perfume that I used at that time. It was called something like “The Secret of the Desert.” One of my girlfriends back then referred to it jokingly as “The Secret of the Deserted,” which was unfair. Although I liked to party, I preferred to sleep off my hangovers alone.
I take off my jeans and T-shirt and slip on my dress. Not bad. I turn in front of the full-length mirror. I haven’t put on any weight since the last time I’d worn it, at least two years ago. But seeing the straps of my white bra doesn’t work. I look through my drawer for a black strapless bra and pull on sheer black stockings. Wow. I should wear clothes like this more often. I look really good.
Now for the shoes. That’s a little more complicated. I still have the black dancing shoes I bought for a flamenco class I took in my first semester at the university. The heels are about two inches high. Reasonable. Comfortable. Elegant. But wait! Didn’t I buy high heels during my semester in England?
I find them deep in my closet and look skeptically at the heels. They are wickedly high. In England, there were a number of occasions when high heels for women and ties for men were a necessity. I’d bought these shoes, but because I was terrified of falling flat on my face, I looked like I was walking on eggshells when I wore them. I also towered over my dates, irritating both of us. Over the course of the evening, I usually ended up removing the high heels and dancing in stockings. Of course, the stockings ran in an instant. I suspect the stocking industry is in cahoots with the high heel industry.
I squeeze my feet into the black heels and stand in front of the mirror. I look amazingly chic and sexy. Maybe too much?
I snatch up the flamenco shoes and totter back downstairs to my parents. “I need some advice. Which shoes are better, the high heels or the flamenco shoes?”
My mother looks up and is so startled that a stitch drops off her knitting needle. “Darn it!” she curses as she tries to recover the stitch.
Now I look at my father.
“Agreed, Elsa. Darn it!” he says. He wrinkles his forehead. “You’re not leaving the house like that, are you? Forgive me for saying this, but you look like you belong to the oldest profession in the world.”
In my mother’s eyes, however, I see something that kind of looks like admiration.
“You look extremely seductive, Lea,” she sighs. “Oh, what I would have given to be so beautiful at your age!”
“But you were,” says my father.
“Oh, no, Wilhelm,” my mother replies. “I was such a proper little gray mouse. I wasn’t allowed to look so chic. My father would have had a seizure.”
“I’ll have one, too,” my father says. He throws down his pencil impatiently and tries to sound authoritative. “Lea, I forbid you to go anywhere in that outfit!”
I ignore him and hold up the flamenco shoes, asking my mother, “Which shoes do you like better?”
My mother tilts her head to the side, eyeing them critically. “I like both, but I’m afraid if you wear those insanely high heels, you’ll ending up breaking your neck.”
“Yes,” I say, “but the other shoes are a little too conservative, don’t you think?”
“In that outfit, you wouldn’t look conservative if you wore sneakers,” my father says grumpily.
“Yes,” says my mother, “the high heels are better. Picture perfect.”
I could have hugged her. I sometimes get the feeling she likes it when I dress up, because she wasn’t able to as a young woman.
“Just a second,” my mom says. “I have something for you.” She jumps up and leaves the room. I hear her climb up the steps to her bedroom.
What the heck? My toes are already hurting like the devil so I sit down in the chair. To relieve the pressure even more, I bring my knees up under my chin.
My father says sullenly, “Now the whole world can see under your dress.”
I angle my knees a bit and softly drum my fingers on the tabletop—I just finished polishing my nails.
My father shakes his head and continues working on his sudoku.
A minute later, my mother is back in the room with a small velvet pouch in her hands. She throws it to me. “Here. Catch!”
Something rattles inside. It falls to the floor, and I bend over to pick it up.
“I can see under your skirt again,” my father growls.
I consider the pouch curiously. What could it be? I open it up and look inside. Something sparkly catches my eye. I pour the contents into my palm. It’s a pair of heavy chandelier clip-on earrings.
“Wow,” I say, thrilled. “Where did you get these? They’re awesome!”
The earrings are like the ones actresses wear to the Oscars, except they probably wear real gems. These are definitely rhinestones—otherwise they would be worth at least a million dollars and we wouldn’t be living in a small semidetached house on the outskirts of Bielefeld.
I lift up the earrings and hold them to the light. They glitter and sparkle like a fireworks display.
“Try them on,” my mother says, out of breath from the quick hike up and down the stairs.
I position myself in front of the nearby hall mirror, carefully clipping the pendants on my earlobes. They almost touch my bare shoulders. I swing my head slightly. They tinkle and gleam in the light.
“They go great with my outfit,” I say. “Where did you get such sexy earrings?”
My father looks at my mother curiously. Apparently, he is asking himself the same question.
My mother throws my father a quick glance and turns red. “Oh, um, I got them on eBay. I thought it would be nice to have something sparkly for the opera or for a concert. When I got them, I was shocked to see how big they are. I thought they’d be smaller—and a bit more discreet.”
“Well, they are definitely not discreet,” my father remarks, looking grim. He doesn’t like it when my mother wears earrings at all, so I can understand why she wouldn’t have dared to wear them in my father’s presence.
I pirouette and look at myself in the mirror again. “Hurray! I’m really looking forward to tomorrow. Thanks, Mama.” I give her a little peck on the cheek and climb the stairs to my room again.
I pause at the landing, where I loved to perch as a child, secretly eavesdropping on the adult world after I was supposed to be in bed. Now I hear my father say, “The things you allow, Elsa. I stand by what I said: Lea looks like a hooker in that outfit.”
I lean forward, cocking my ears.
My mother replies, “What do I allow, Wilhelm? What’s so bad about Lea having a happy-go-lucky student life—especially after what she’s been through?”
My father grunts reluctantly in acknowledgment. Although I can’t see him from where I’m standing, I can imagine his facial expression. “That has nothing to do with it. I thought her past experiences would make her a more mature, reasonable person.”
“Oh, and mature, reasonable people never have any fun?” my mother retorts. “That’s ridiculous! Well, I’m glad she’s so happy and cheerful. If she were serious and withdrawn, I would be worried.”
I gulp. I know exactly what they’re alluding to, but I shove it quickly into the recesses of my brain, where it usually sits safe and sound. Must they rehash it over and over again? They must need more time to process it than I did. I suppose that a younger person is better able to come to grips with things like that than adults—even if the younger person was the one who was most affected.
My father just grunts again and says something unintelligible. He falls quiet, and when I hear my mother’s knitting needles clicking again, I tiptoe through my door and close it softly behind me.
The next evening I am back in my shared apartment in Münster, waiting to be picked up. My roommates, Marc and Lisa, eye me as I stroll into the communal kitchen wearing my little black dress. Lisa finishes her cappuccino with a gulp, and Marc, who’s washing the dishes, splashes water out of a glass, soaking his shirt.
“Hey, gorgeous!” he says. “Where are you going? The Miss Germany pageant?”
Lisa looks a bit peeved. She’s got a secret crush on Marc. “Isn’t your dress just a bit skimpy for early September?” she asks pointedly.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I answer nonchalantly. “It definitely won’t be too skimpy for a stretch limo.”
Lisa’s jaw drops. As if on command, someone honks from the street. Marc goes to the window, looks down, and squints.
“I’ll be damned!” he exclaims. “An actual stretch limo is waiting down there! Man, I’d give anything to ride with you in one of those!”
Lisa sniffs. “I wouldn’t. Way too vulgar.” But I can see that her eyes say something entirely different.
The doorbell rings.
“Bye, everyone,” I say, waving before I run into the hallway and rush downstairs. As I pass the hallway mirror, I can see my earrings sparkle in the dim light. I’m young and feel great, overjoyed to be heading out for an exciting evening.
At the curb, a chauffeur wearing a uniform and cap holds open the door of a snow-white luxury limo. I duck my head down and slide in. Inside I find six very cheerful and, I suspect, already-tipsy students—female students, to be exact, with Tom sitting among them. Tom is a Facebook friend of mine. I’m actually not sure how we know each other—I think I may have met him at a party.
It’s Tom’s twenty-fifth birthday, and because his parents are quite rich (I think his father is an attorney or something like that), they’ve treated him to a night out at the Hohensyburg Casino with his friends. They also threw in the stretch limo. He’d announced on Facebook that he’d choose seven beautiful girls to ride with him. I’d thrown my name in the hat on a whim.
I think it’s a bit weird to surround yourself with random beautiful strangers like that, but when are you going to be twenty-five again? Let him have his fun. I sit down in the seat next to Tom and look around. The chauffeur is back behind the steering wheel and starts the engine. It purrs so quietly that it sounds like an electric car. I look up at my apartment window. Lisa and Marc are staring down at us in disbelief. Ha-ha! Life is so beautiful!
The car is packed tight with long legs, bare shoulders, and cleavage. The air reeks of heavy perfume. The other girls obviously devoted themselves to the same question—what does one wear to the casino?—with the same results. Tom’s all gussied up, too. He’s wearing an elegant tuxedo with highly polished patent leather shoes.
He holds up a bottle of sparkling wine, and a brunette girl—I think I saw her once in a lecture on English literature—passes around the champagne glasses. The cork pops out of the champagne bottle and hits the driver on the neck. He touches his neck, rubbing it where the cork hit. Everybody giggles, and the birthday boy roars with laughter.
“Sorry,” Tom says, leaning forward. “Wasn’t on purpose. Won’t happen again.”
Without turning around, the driver mutters something and calmly continues driving.
Tom fills each of our glasses.
“Drink quickly, before it spills,” says the brunette. I think her name is Carla.
“No!” a blonde beauty next to me says. “First we have to sing!”
So we all take a deep breath and sing “Happy Birthday” so loudly that the limo’s windows rattle. Tom grins happily, then clinks our glasses. We drink down the bubbly brew.
Another bottle is opened, and everyone drinks another round. Needless to say, we’re all in high spirits. The jokes fly through the air. Everyone has an anecdote about some other birthday party or a university party or a cranky professor. The landscape whizzes past us. Occasionally lights flash from houses, streetlights, or neon signs, and then it’s dark again as we drive past forests or meadows.
Suddenly, I feel a hand on my thigh. It creeps up higher, little by little. It’s Tom’s hand. I don’t want to make a scene, but I really don’t like this. I take Tom’s arm by his tuxedo sleeve, lift it up, and put his hand back on his own leg.
