The Lady Upstairs

by Halley Sutton

  Chapter 25

  The anklet was overkill. I decided it as I turned back and forth in the mirror, watching the honey-gold catch the light and wink at me. I liked the way it sliced my leg in two, separating foot from calf, and I liked that it would make Carrigan think of fingers encircling my ankle, the way you only got to do with a person when you had special, intimate access to them.

  But it was trying too hard. No woman wears an anklet without an agenda. And I did not want to appear to be a woman with an agenda. I unsnapped it and set it on my bureau, glittering hard in the dying evening light.

  I’d dredged out things to warm up my apartment, to seem more like the woman Carrigan was expecting me to be: books, a vase, a few throw pillows I’d bought for cheap that morning. A framed picture of me and Lou, my favorite one: Lou’s eyes squinched tight because she was laughing, and I was giving Jackal, perpetually behind the camera, my best tousled-hair go fuck yourself glare. A woman with friends, an easy social life.

  I’d finished the first gin martini while I was still working on my face, and I told myself that was for the best anyway: it would loosen me up. I made another before Carrigan arrived, and as I slurped at the salty olive juice, I thought: Piece of cake. Only the rest of your life depends on how this goes.

  Ellen’s first night with Klein, I’d gotten her a little drunk, too. “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do,” I’d told her. “Even this,” I’d said. “It’s still early. You can leave, if you want. I can find someone else.” And it was true, I told myself. I would’ve let her go. I would’ve driven her home and never seen her again. I wouldn’t have forced her to do anything, right?

  Carrigan’s knock at the door was strong and straightforward. I nodded at Jackal, who crept up the stairs to the loft and hid behind the boxes of “books from storage” we’d set up earlier in the afternoon. A perfect direct angle to catch us in the act—so long as we stayed in the living room. So long as I actually could seduce him.

  I checked my reflection one last time, turning back and forth. When the lamp caught me in the right way, my white cotton dress was completely see-through. I’d picked one with buttons all the way down the front, and I’d pulled my hair up, stitching it in place with a handful of bobby pins. I wanted to give him the illusion of undoing me.

  I swung the door open. Carrigan was wearing a fedora, the brim pulled low over his eyes, his hands in his pockets. Incognito verging on ridiculous. He didn’t make any move to touch me, not even a friendly handshake hello. Instead, he plucked the bracelet out of his pocket and held it out to me, extending it by two fingers like he was afraid he might accidentally touch me.

  “Yours,” he said.

  I didn’t take it. “Come in. Have a drink or something.”

  “No.” His fingers clenched around the bracelet. “Take it.”

  “A drink, to thank you,” I said, “not for any other reason. Please.”

  He glared at me from under the fedora. A man trying so hard to be good.

  “Please,” I said again, my voice feather-soft. I reached for the bracelet and put my hand on his, let it rest there. “You’ve come all this way. Even friends have drinks.”

  One tug and he was through my apartment door.

  Inside, I poured us both a drink of Lou’s favorite bourbon—“It’s good,” Carrigan said, “you’ll want to sip it, like this,” and he demonstrated, as though I’d never heard of sipping—and clinked his glass in cheers. We sat together on the couch, Carrigan perched so far away from me he was nearly on the arm.

  “How’s the campaign going?” I took another sip of my drink. I curled my legs under me, propping myself up higher and inching a little bit closer to him.

  He looked at me over the rim of his glass, one eyebrow raised. I knew what that look meant. He didn’t trust I’d have any head for politics. “That’s what you wanted me to come inside for? To hear about my campaign?”

  I thought of Tana on TV, all of her opinions on politics. “No. I asked to be nice.”

  I let him lead the conversation, tilting my head as he spoke, working so hard to find him fascinating. But I had a secret weapon: every time my concentration lapsed, for even a second, I pictured Ellen’s face, and MacLeish, and the headlights pouring in through the back windshield of Klein’s car. I shivered, but I kept my attention rapt.

  Carrigan finished his drink, and I could see him eyeing the door. I scooched closer to him on the couch and leaned forward, grabbing the crystal tumbler from his hand with fingers tipped Size Matters red. We were so close now we were practically breathing the same air.

  “I’ll take that,” I whispered. “Thank you for your company, Mr. Carrigan.”

  He had reared back into the couch, as far from me as he could possibly get, but it still wasn’t far enough. When he answered, his voice was a little breathless, too. “I told you,” he said. “That’s my father-in-law, that’s not me.”

  I sat back and watched as little beads of sweat appeared on his brow. Twice now, he’d objected to me calling him that. “But it’s your name, too.”

  He grimaced. “Don’t remind me.”

  I wanted to push it, ask him why he’d bothered to take it if he was going to treat it like a burden—no one had made him do it. Instead, I said: “All right.” I smoothed my dress down and smiled at him shyly, a hopeful virgin on prom night. “Can I get you another drink?”

  “Why? Are you trying to get me drunk?” Carrigan scowled at me.

  For a handsome man, he sure knew how to make himself look unattractive. I forced the twitch of my lips to stay up. “No, of course not. I’m simply enjoying the pleasure of your company.” I reached out and tapped the glass again, moving my knee forward so that it nearly touched his. His eyes flicked down at our almost-touching bodies and then back to my face. “I’m hoping you’ll stay here with me a little longer. So, tell me . . .”

  I reached down and lightly stroked the flesh of his thigh through his gabardine, scratching with the tips of my nails. His knee jumped and jerked under my fingers. I moved my nails in little circles, inching north. He didn’t move—not to brush my hand away, not to lean into me. He was watching me with interest, if not desire—perhaps enjoying the feel of what I was doing, but not yet giving into it. I figured that meant I could keep going.

  “What?” His voice was scratchy—maybe with desire; maybe he was thirsty. “Tell you what?”

  I didn’t actually want him to tell me anything ever again, unless it was him pleading with me, offering any amount of money to keep the photographs of this tryst private. I leaned forward and placed little feather-light kisses on the corners of his mouth, remembering to be soft, to go slow. After a moment, his mouth opened under mine, and I smiled.

  “Does that feel nice?” I inched my fingers upward, tracing my fingers lightly, so lightly, over his lap. I put a little smoke in my voice and tried to make him think of tangled sheets. The thought of that money—fifty K, fifty K, fifty K—thrummed in me below the waist, but it didn’t have the fire I was used to. I closed my eyes, thought of Lou, the lemony smell of her hair that tickled my cheek as she kissed me.

  I stole a glance at his face as I started kneading him through his pants, not bothering to be shy now. He’d clamped his eyes shut and tipped his head back. I took it as an invitation to crawl over him, straddling him with my knees as I continued to work. Liking the feel of this man, so wealthy and powerful, splayed beneath me, at my mercy, I began fondling him in earnest.

  But it wasn’t there. I reached down to stroke him, and he was soft as a lump of clay. I unbuckled him, tried some skin-on-skin contact. Nothing. Carrigan was silent under me, the silence that I knew meant the kiss of death for men: embarrassment. Which would be anger soon, directed at himself and then at me. After a moment, he pushed me away.

  “Sorry,” he said, with a little laugh. “It’s not doing it for me tonight
, sweetheart.”

  Jackal’s footage would be a nightmare. There was enough there to show something, enough there that he wouldn’t want it to get out, but Carrigan could say, very rightly, that he’d come to his senses, stopped, went home to his loving wife before he did something he regretted forever. These photographs wouldn’t scare him enough to cough up $50K, that was for damn sure.

  Silently, I scooted off him until there was a little space between us on the couch. I tried not to picture Jackal laughing at me. Think you’re such hot shit now?

  I remembered, then, how the rest of the conversation with Ellen the first night with Klein had gone. “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do,” I’d said to her. That much was true. But hadn’t I added, after: “But there’s plenty of girls who would do it, there’s plenty of girls I could find to take your place”? And she’d looked up at me with her big eyes and that little please like me smile, and that’s when she’d said it: “Put me in, Coach.” I hadn’t even laughed.

  I didn’t bother to button my dress as I moved to the kitchen to refresh our drinks. I could hear him behind me, moving restlessly on the couch, putting himself back together. I didn’t bother to tell him that it was all right, because it wasn’t. I added a few ice cubes to the glass of nice-but-not-top-shelf bourbon and thought of what to say.

  Baby, it happens to all men. It’s not a big deal. We can still have a good time, if you know what I mean. But what sort of good time could we have now that that was worth fifty large?

  When I turned around, refilled tumblers in hand, Carrigan was already standing, halfway to the door. Not meeting my eyes.

  “Don’t go,” I cried out, the words coming out more strangled and frantic than I’d meant to sound. Carrigan frowned at me, his shirt half untucked, the pleats of his pants crumpled from the couch.

  I had to keep him there, somehow. I had to give him enough time to relax, recover. If he left, I’d never see him again, I was sure of that. I’d be too embarrassing, a moment he’d want to forget—there’d be no other chance. I was starting to panic and trying not to show it. I could think of Jackal above me, packing up his camera equipment. This time, it had been me that fucked it.

  Carrigan cleared his throat and I slid a hand down my skirt and pinched my outer thigh through the fabric, on the side where Carrigan couldn’t see, working up tears. I waited until I had a really good burn going, my eyes wide to fill better, and then I let the tears spill.

  “Please don’t leave,” I choked out. “You’re the first man I’ve . . . the first man since . . .” I turned my head to the side, letting the little tendrils of hair that had pulled out during our tumble spill across my face. I caught my hands in the tendrils, twisting little snakes out of the locks and watched, through my curtain of hair, as he shifted from foot to foot and debated what to do. But it was a start. He wasn’t leaving. Carrigan took one step forward, and I jumped like I was surprised when I felt his hand on my shoulder.

  “Your ex? The one you’re scared of.” His voice was full of a self-righteous anger. A man determined to feel like a hero while cheating on his wife.

  I nodded jerkily, still not meeting his eyes. I bit at the corners of my lips to plump them, and before long, Carrigan’s arms were around me, whispering soft nothings into the hair at my temples, his lips brushing my skin. I shivered, not because I wanted him.

  Above us, I could see Jackal poke his head up from behind the box, moving slowly, frowning down at us. I didn’t have to be close to read his expression which was, You bullshitter. But one signal from me and he’d hurtle down the stairs. I thought of the first time Jackal and I had slept together—I had been so grateful, in an odd way, that I’d never had to try with him, never had to do anything other than want him. That the very fact of my wanting him was a turn-on, that I didn’t have to play the game of waiting for him to come to me. It was so easy. It all used to be so easy.

  To my unpleasant surprise, my nose started to burn and real tears began to run. I’d loved this job, once. But I was so goddamn tired of pretending all the time—pretending to want someone I couldn’t stand, pretending to want less than I really did. And anytime I shut my eyes, tried to get a break from all that pretending, I was greeted by a ticker tape of images: a rigoring body abandoned to yipping canyon coyotes, fuchsia feathers tickling the night air, scratchy hotel duvets covered in beheaded birds-of-paradise. There was no outrunning it, not ever. I turned my face into Carrigan’s shoulder and let myself sob in earnest for a moment.

  Carrigan pulled back and cupped my face in between his hands. “Don’t cry,” he said, his eyes soft. He leaned in and kissed my forehead, my nose, my mouth again, sweet sipping kisses that left me cold. The tears continued to flow, and I could feel him start to harden against my hip. I resisted the urge to bite down on his tongue, draw blood. I knew this man. A trauma junkie. The man who wants to know all about your broken pieces without ever asking about what made you strong.

  I let him propel us back to the couch, didn’t argue when he started to tenderly undress me from the top down. I feigned little sounds of appreciation every so often, but Carrigan was lost in his own world, a world in which he was healing a broken woman with his magic cock. But none of that mattered if it got me what I wanted. That thought brought a vigor back to my kisses.

  Carrigan curled one hand around my ear, stroking the folds, pushing his face into my hair, everywhere at once. I tilted my head into his hand, thinking about Jackal hearing us upstairs, wondering, vaguely, if it turned him on the way it had for me to watch him with that girl, that nothing, on his desk. I closed my eyes and Carrigan kissed me and I was thinking, then, only Finish it, finish it, finish it.

  “Touch me, touch me, please,” I gasped and he did, his face buried in my neck and moving slow, so slow, until he wasn’t anymore. Lou’s face peeked out at me from the picture over his shoulder, the tendons on her neck bulging as she gasped for breath, laughing hard. Jackal might have run out of battery for all the show that we were giving him. I made sure my head was never in the way. I made sure he couldn’t miss the shot.

  Afterward, still caged between his arms on the couch, listening to his ragged breathing as he came down, I reached up and kissed his throat. I didn’t say anything to him, and he mistook my silence for being moved by the moment. He stroked my face once, then moved off of me, wiping himself off on one of my throw pillows. Carrigan started tucking himself back into his clothes, one sympathetic kiss absentmindedly shotgunned into the side of my head to show it was more than an afternoon fuck that got carried away. Already making his excuses about how he needed to get going, how he’d be missed at the office already.

  I wasn’t listening. I was still lying there, staring at Lou’s face. I wondered if I would ever tell Lou about this. I wondered if I would have performed differently if it had been her behind the camera.

  Carrigan leaned in to give me a proper kiss again before he left, hustling out of my apartment so quickly it was like he knew there were cameras inside. He made some lame see you soon attempt, but he thought he’d never see me again. I knew better.

  I hoped Jackal had gotten shots of Carrigan holding me, too—in some ways, that was worse than the sex pictures. Those might be worth more than $50K.

  I heard Jackal creaking his way in tentative steps down the stairs.

  “You got all that?” I asked without turning to look at him. Still staring at Lou’s face. God, you’re funny. I could hear her voice from the night of that photograph, bourbon roses in her cheeks. You’re killing me.

  “You’re gonna be rich,” he said.

  Chapter 26

  I was more tired than I’d remembered ever being after a mark, a case—whatever the fuck Lou wanted to call them. Jackal had asked if I’d wanted him to stay, asked if I wanted to review the footage right away. He’d been gentler than normal—didn’t try to touch me, didn’t snap at me—and I wasn’t
sure if that was for my sake or for the money. I’m delicate cargo now, I’d thought before telling him to go. I didn’t kiss him goodbye.

  When Jackal left, I turned out the lights so I could slither around in the dark for a little while, adjusting to the feel of another man’s hands on my body, the smell of him still on me. God, it had been so long.

  I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water—found myself reaching for something stronger. But I still had work to do that night.

  I was going to get the money from Carrigan—I knew that much. How much was still up for debate. But with the election so close and still undecided, he’d pay anything to keep this scandal quiet. Even with what I’d pay Jackal, it would still be enough to cover my debt and what I owed the police.

  But I couldn’t stop thinking of what MacLeish had said and what I knew to be true, deep in my bones: the Lady owned me now, forever. The Lady hadn’t been the one to take down Carrigan—that had been all me. My plan, my work, my seduction. Me. And yet she’d still be the one reaping the cash from it. Taking the money and telling me it still wasn’t enough. She and Lou would always be a little coven of two. Because of what I’d done. Because of what we’d done.

  I pulled the phone bill from my purse where I’d stashed it and smoothed over the crinkled sheet as best I could. The majority of the calls were ads, wrong numbers, people who thought we really could help them with their staffing needs. It was likely Jackal or Lou or even I had made calls to different people, one-offs, checking restaurant openings or other things that might be of use in our line of work. But Lou and the Lady would’ve talked frequently, a few times a week at least—daily, for all I knew. I ignored the pang of jealousy that stirred in me.

  * * *

  First, I got rid of any number from out of state—I couldn’t imagine that the Lady wasn’t local, or at least close to Los Angeles. She had too much knowledge of the city. That took care of most of the numbers.