Market Street (23 page)

“It’s ten o’clock. I’ve been in the store for two hours. Where are you?”

“At the Mark Hopkins with Aidan. The curtains are so heavy I thought it was still nighttime.”

“You have that thick, sex-coated voice. I’m guessing it was a successful reunion?”

“Better than riding a bike.” Cassie giggled. “We had a wonderful dinner and drank a bottle of champagne. Aidan was so sweet, he really missed me.”

“Of course he missed you, you’re his angel. Princess Giselle rented the penthouse apartment at the St. Regis. Ten thousand feet of postmodern white furniture, your mother would love it.”

“That’s wonderful, but I should go. Aidan might wake up any minute.”

“That’s not the news,” Alexis interrupted. “I convinced her to have a house-warming dinner party, something intimate but with the crème of San Francisco society. She’s going to buy all the ingredients from Fenton’s.”

“That is exciting.” Cassie closed the bathroom door quietly.

“Vanessa and Billy already said yes. She invited Gina Pell and Allison Speer and the sweet young publisher of
7X7
.”

“Alexis, that’s fantastic. It’ll be written up all over the city.”

“There’s one small thing.” Alexis hesitated. “Princess Giselle’s schedule is practically full. The only free night she has for the next few months is tonight.”

“She wants to have the dinner party tonight!” Cassie spluttered.

“We sent out evites last night. I’m sure everyone will say yes. Monday nights are deadly quiet. It’s such an amazing apartment—360 degrees of the city—it’s going to cement Giselle’s reputation.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I raved about what a food guru you are,” Alexis said guiltily. “Giselle wants you to pick out the ingredients.”

“I can’t leave Aidan alone in bed,” Cassie replied. “He’d never forgive me.”

“Grab a cab; you can be here in five minutes. Tell Aidan to catch up on CNN,” Alexis pleaded.

“Aidan is fast asleep. He has terrible jet lag.”

“Even better!” Alexis exclaimed. “When Carter has jet lag he sleeps for days. You could blast a foghorn in his ear and he’d never wake up. Aidan won’t know you’re gone.”

Cassie opened the bathroom door and looked at Aidan sleeping. He lay on his stomach, his arms splayed across the pillows, his chest rising and falling rhythmically.

“Maybe I could come for an hour,” Cassie hesitated.

“Giselle is all booked up after noon: hairdresser, massage, pedicure, and facial.”

Cassie glanced at the clock on the bathroom wall. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. But I can’t be gone long. If Aidan wakes up I’m going to turn into a pumpkin.”

*   *   *

The taxi
pulled in front of Fenton’s as Cassie tried to tame her hair into a ponytail. She had applied mascara and blush and rubbed Tiger lip balm on her mouth. She stepped off the escalator and found Alexis and Giselle sampling organic milk at the dairy counter.

“There you are.” Alexis kissed her on the cheek. “Giselle loves the organic milk, she says it tastes just like the milk she drank growing up in Liechtenstein. Giselle is in your hands. Remember we want the dinner to be over the top: caviar, oysters, escargot.”

Giselle followed Cassie like an obedient puppy. She accepted all of Cassie’s suggestions and filled the cart with snails, braised duck, black olives, herb cream cheese, and rounds of fresh baked bread. Every so often she stopped in front of a mirror to check her lipstick and finger the Bulgari diamond necklace around her neck.

Cassie forgot about Aidan asleep at the hotel and began to enjoy herself. She pictured Vanessa Getty and Jennifer Newsom exchanging chitchat over duck pâté and stone-ground wheat crackers. She imagined crystal salad bowls bursting with butter lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and shiitake mushrooms. She saw platters of crudités and pots of mustard and artichoke hummus. She pictured Gina Pell sipping a private label Cabernet and saying she must run home and blog about Fenton’s on
Splendora
.

“Oooh.” Alexis joined them at the cash register. “It looks like you’ve been busy. Let me snap a couple of photos of Giselle at the checkout.” She took her iPhone out of her purse. “Show those lovely white teeth. Don’t you love Giselle’s dress?” She turned to Cassie. “It’s from Zac Posen’s runway collection. Giselle wore it to the Fiske gallery opening and they’ve flown out of the store. I just had to reorder.”

Cassie watched the cashier ring up jars of caviar and bottles of port. Giselle handed him her black card and walked to the full-length mirror, making a full turn and admiring her red spandex minidress and five-inch Bottega Veneta wedges.

“Isn’t Giselle the best?” Alexis whispered. “She uses that AmEx like a library card. Darling”—she turned to Giselle—“I’ll have Kitty deliver these goodies to the apartment. I picked out a few hostess gowns for the dinner party. I want you to choose your favorite.”

Cassie watched them glide up the escalator and exhaled a sigh of relief. She walked over to the coffee bar to grab a quick espresso before she returned to the hotel. She pictured Aidan in bed, his thick chest covered with gray hair, and felt suddenly happy. It felt good to lie next to him, to laugh with him, to feel his arms around her.

Cassie saw the girl as she stirred a sugar cube in her coffee. She was standing at the top of the stairs, clutching a magazine. She had feathery blond hair and wore a red T-shirt. The girl saw Cassie and her eyes narrowed. She waved the magazine and descended the staircase toward her.

“Hi, do you remember me?” The girl stood so close Cassie could smell her spearmint chewing gum.

Cassie recognized the big brown eyes and the smattering of freckles on her cheeks. Her stomach lurched and she spilled coffee on the marble floor. “Molly Payne. What are you doing here?”

“Oh, God,” Molly’s voice wavered. “I knew it was you.” She opened the magazine. “My roommate gets
San Francisco
magazine and she showed me the article about the opening of the emporium. I’m such a bad person. I’m going straight to hell.” She started crying.

“Please, not in front of the customers.” Cassie pulled Molly’s sleeve and led her to a table by the bookshelf.

Molly sat down and put her elbows on the table. She flipped the pages and looked plaintively at Cassie. “I didn’t know Professor Blake was married. I knew he had a daughter, I saw pictures of her in his office, but I thought he was divorced. You have to believe me, I never would have done it if I knew he was married.” She wailed like a little girl caught pocketing a tube of lip gloss at a 7-Eleven.

“Aidan told me what happened.” Cassie took a deep breath.

“I saw your photo in the article,” Molly interrupted, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “‘Cassie Blake, heiress to Fenton’s and wife of ethics professor Aidan Blake.’” She jammed her finger at the page. “I’m worse than those reality stars who sleep with their cousins. I’ll never have a happy day in my life, I’m a terrible sinner.” She put her head on the table and sobbed uncontrollably.

“Molly.” Cassie waited until the sobs subsided into hiccups. “Aidan explained that afternoon. You’d been jilted; Aidan did something nice for you. It was a terrible thing to do, but it was one time. Aidan and I are okay now. He just returned from Greece and we had a wonderful reunion.”

Molly lifted her head and looked at Cassie as if she was speaking a foreign language. “It wasn’t one time, I loved him. I knew it was wrong, the whole student/professor thing. But he was so sexy. Sort of an older lion in the jungle, beating his chest and calling my name when he came.” Molly put her hand over her mouth and stared at Cassie, horrified. “Oh, God, I didn’t mean to say that. But I thought he loved me, until he left me with an unused plane ticket and took his TA to Italy instead of me.”

Cassie felt a chill pass through her body. Her hands froze and a sharp pain shot through her spine. She looked closely at Molly and tried to keep her voice steady. “What are you talking about?”

“He invited me to this conference in Italy. It sounded so romantic. Riding the gondola in Venice, visiting Verona. I got an evening job to pay for my ticket. I bought some really cute sandals.” Molly’s shoulders started shaking. “A week before the trip he told me he didn’t think it was a good idea. He said he’d be too distracted and everyone would know we were fucking. A couple of days ago I saw pictures of him and his TA on my roommate’s Facebook page. They were sharing tongues at a café in Florence. There were dozens of photos: dancing, canoodling, drinking ouzo in Athens. He took her to Athens!” Molly wept harder. “He said Athens was his great love and he wanted to take me there because I was so important to him.”

“Are you sure it was him?” Cassie asked. Her brain felt like a pinball machine. Her palms were sweating and she had trouble getting air into her lungs.

“Of course it was him.” Molly rolled her eyes. “I’d been screwing him for three months, I knew every inch of his body. Oh, God, I’m sorry, I keep forgetting whom I’m talking to. I’ve been crying to my roommate for two days. She went to high school with the TA. Her name is Penny; she’s really sweet, and has the prettiest blond hair, like Barbie. To give her credit she didn’t know anything about me.” Molly sighed. “Penny told my roommate she found a text from his
wife,
saying she couldn’t wait till he came home. And then yesterday I saw the picture of you in the newsletter and the whole thing fell together like the worst
New York Times
crossword puzzle. You’re his wife, you’re Cassie Blake, and I am the lowest form of human life.” Molly sobbed.

“What did Penny do?” Cassie felt as though she was being strangled, like a rope was pulling at her neck.

“She packed her bag and left in the middle of the night. Didn’t even leave a note. He was in for a bit of a surprise when he woke up.” Molly started to hiccup. “I never would have fucked him if I knew he was married. I know what it’s like to be cheated on. I’m so sorry.” Molly dissolved into tears, putting her head on the table and breathing in short gasps like a puppy.

Cassie sat perfectly still. If she moved she would shatter into a million pieces. She examined her diamond and sapphire wedding ring. She looked at her phone, thinking of the hot texts Aidan had sent her. She pictured Aidan burying his mouth in her hair, whispering that she was his angel.

“You’re just part of Aidan’s harem. I’m the fool. I’ve been his wife for a decade and I never suspected anything,” Cassie said finally, gripping the edge of the table.

“What are you going to do?” Molly asked tentatively.

“Aidan’s at the Mark Hopkins, sleeping off jet lag. I couldn’t go with him to Italy because I didn’t want to miss the grand opening.” Cassie glanced around the floor. “I booked a room to celebrate his return. We ate filet mignon and drank a bottle of champagne.”

“You’re so beautiful and sophisticated, how could he cheat on you?”

“I guess I’ll do what Penny did.” Cassie continued as if she hadn’t heard her. “I’ll just leave him there. He’ll figure it out eventually.”

“If I were you, I’d grab a fork and stab myself in the heart. Then I’d go to the hotel and slice him open like a can of tuna.”

“That wouldn’t solve anything,” Cassie replied weakly. “He admitted he slept with you once, but he said you seduced him and it would never happen again. I’ve been staying with my friend while I figured out if I could trust him. I finally decided I wanted to stay married, and I was going to move home. We had a really great night. He approved of me working at the emporium; I was even going to bring Isabel to work with me. That’s his daughter.”

“I’m so sorry,” Molly said feebly.

“It’s not your fault.” Cassie tried to smile. “It’s probably happened before, and it would keep happening. Like you said, some men need to be king of the jungle. I’m glad I didn’t wait another ten years to find out.”

“At least you have this.” Molly looked around the room. “It would be so cool to own your own store.”

“If I have this.” Cassie sighed. “We haven’t been open long but sales are terrible. If it doesn’t improve we may not make it.”

“But there are a ton of women shopping,” Molly objected. Since they’d been sitting the emporium had filled up. Dozens of women weaved through the aisles, handling peaches, tasting tangerines, nibbling apple slices.

“Sampling but not buying. I had my first big sale this morning, but it’s been pretty dismal.”

“Your produce is tastier than what they sell at the co-op.” Molly wiped her eyes. “If I had money I’d shop here all the time.”

“The grand opening was a huge success. Everyone raves about the design and the merchandise.” Cassie glanced around at the women browsing. “They just don’t make it to the checkout.”

“I guess if you wear Chanel dresses and Prada shoes you don’t want to be seen strolling Union Square with a grocery bag.”

“We designed special Fenton’s bags,” Cassie protested.

“But do they still look like shopping bags? My roommate’s mother only wears Christian Dior: those wool twinsets you see on old Alfred Hitchcock movies. They did look good on Grace Kelly, I guess anything looked good on Grace Kelly,” Molly mused. “And she positively reeks of perfume. I don’t know how my roommate could stand it; she must have walked around as a kid with a clothespin on her nose. Even her car reeks. She’s got a Jaguar with fancy leather seats; it’s like driving around in a living room. I can’t imagine her picking up a carton of eggs and a loaf of bread and carrying them to the car in a grocery bag. No offense, but the women who shop here are pretty uptight. They carry themselves as if they’ve got a ruler stuck up their ass.”

“You think they’re not buying groceries because of the shopping bag?”

“Sure,” Molly said confidently. “Think of that fancy box the pendant came in; red satin with ‘Fenton’s’ written in gold cursive. That’s why women shop here. I’ve seen them walk out weighed down with Fenton’s boxes. I’m sure the clothes and shoes are great, but it’s all about packaging. I learned that in freshman marketing. My parents wanted me to be a business major.” Molly sighed. “But I wanted to study ethics. Maybe you’ll give me a job behind the counter when I graduate. I’m really good with people and I love food. I promise I wouldn’t eat all the samples if I worked here.”