Crowne of Lies

by Reiss, CD

  “Oh my God,” I said, putting my hand to my chest. “That’s… amazing.”

  My feelings deserved a better word, but I had nothing less generic to offer.

  “Cry for the work we had to do afterward. Marriage isn’t easy.”

  I was sure she was right, but Logan and I wouldn’t get to the “not easy” stage. “Did you keep writing poetry?”

  “To this day.” She put her hand on my arm and led me to the last mannequin on the right. “This one is my favorite. Do you recognize it?”

  Though the lines were familiar, I’d never seen anything like that gown before. It had a simple strapless bodice, and a floor-length skirt that flared gently below the waist and outward to the floor. What made it exceptional were the tightly-packed butterfly wings sewn into the entire thing. They were so carefully hand-painted, they looked as though they’d take off.

  “Is it my father’s?”

  “It is.” She must have seen my hands twitch. “You can touch it.”

  Gently, I raised one of the wings to see the stitching that held it in place. The single stich was so delicate, I was amazed it was enough to hold the butterfly in place. My father had worked magic.

  “I wore it for my tenth wedding anniversary party.”

  “It’s gorgeous.” I peeked under the top edge to admire the way it was finished.

  “It is.”

  “Thank you for showing it to me,” I said as if I was done looking at it, but I could have inspected Basile Papillion’s genius for hours.

  Doreen went behind the mannequin and unfastened the back to reveal the deep pink lining and a label inside, next to the one that said Papillion, where custom gowns were tagged with the owner’s name.

  NORA WARREN

  “My husband’s idea, putting my pen name there. He calls it my true identity. Our secret.” She closed the back. “Now it’s yours too. And I want you to remember it when being a Crowne feels like all you are.”

  “I—” I stopped in the middle of saying something irrelevant. I wasn’t taking Logan’s name, but her point wasn’t about what I let the world call me. It was about what I called myself.

  Why was she telling me this at all?

  Doreen Crowne couldn’t care about me. She didn’t even know me. She didn’t have to trust me with anything, and the truth was, she shouldn’t trust me as far as she could throw me. I was an interloper. A liar in their midst. Any reasonable woman would have barely acknowledged me. But Doreen wasn’t reasonable. She loved her son recklessly enough to trust his judgment over her own instincts.

  Her love was directed at Logan, but I got to warm myself by a heat I hadn’t felt since the day my mother died.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m honored to keep your secret.”

  “Good,” she said, heading for the door. “I’d better get you back before Logan starts wondering if I got you lost.”

  I guided us back to the center of the house without making a wrong turn. The instinctual part of my brain was free to work navigational magic while the rest of my mind tried to figure out a way to earn her confidence in me.

  Logan stood with his father at the edge of the overlook, hair turned angular in the wind. When he saw us, he waved. Ted came to us with arms outstretched for his wife as if she’d returned from a long journey.

  Logan put his hand on my back and watched his parents, his face relaxed and receptive in the bright sun. Nothing was hidden. Not his admiration or his love. I got it, just then. I understood what he wanted from a marriage and why I wasn’t the one to provide it.

  Ted and Doreen’s children had been loved consistently and strongly their entire lives. No interruptions, no hard stops. They’d never had cause to question it.

  Did I envy him his parents? Did a little rage bubble up when I thought of how mine were gone before they’d finished raising me?

  Yes to both. But his mother’s acceptance had taken all the heat out of it.

  Logan and I would divorce, but I would make sure that the intervening year was as painless for Doreen Crowne as possible.

  I’d do that by making her son happy.

  17

  LOGAN

  There had been a time when I spoke to my father freely, without worrying about a slip of the tongue or hurtful revelation. I realized, after my mother took my wife away and Dad guided me outside to look over the view, that those days were over.

  “You should consider getting a Cambria,” Dad said. “Good for the soul. You and Ella.”

  “I have everything I need.”

  “And a lot of things you don’t.”

  I shrugged, letting my hands drape over the railing. The concrete slab jutted over the precipice of the canyon, adding a few degrees of unfettered view.

  “What I’m trying to say is,” Dad said, “you’re giving up a lot for a business that’s only going to disappoint you. There aren’t any solutions. But getting deeper in—sacrificing your life to it—will get you into the same crises I did. And they’re not so easy to solve.”

  “Ah. I get it now.” I looked out over the ravine.

  “I’m not calling you a liar,” Dad said. “Or Ella. But I need you to know there’s more to life.”

  “It’s sudden. The marriage. I know. And… current circumstances being what they are, I understand your suspicion.”

  “We hadn’t met her.”

  “There wasn’t ever a right time, and then we just did it.”

  He nodded, looking out over the morning. I could reassure him endlessly about the business, but I knew my father. He wasn’t concerned about who ran Crowne. He was concerned with my happiness and my character.

  “She’s really great, Dad,” I said. “She’s talented, and independent, and a little unpredictable.”

  All true. Not what I was looking for in a wife, but all very real and very charming.

  “She seems lovely. I don’t doubt that.”

  “What do you doubt?”

  He laughed to himself. “Everything but you.”

  The one thing he should have doubted was me.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Listen. I’m going to go back on my word. I need you to stay partnered with Byron for a while.”

  “I was going to say…”

  Did I want to fail?

  No. I didn’t. I wanted to run Crowne as much as ever, but I didn’t want to tear up the world doing it. I’d rushed the marriage. Now I’d take my time convincing my parents I was happy.

  “I was going to say,” I restarted, “that we should keep him on. I want a little time left over in the day for Ella.”

  “Good man.” Dad put his hand on my biceps and gave me a confident squeeze, then looked over my shoulder at the house. “They’re back.”

  * * *

  As I drove Ella to her illegally occupied warehouse on Highland, we went over everything that had been said that morning, making sure we were creating a solid story. We were partners in a game, swaddled in secrets, weaving a comfortable intimacy between us, until she got to the part about the closet and a dress her father had made.

  “And the rest, I can’t tell you,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, making a turn onto Sunset. “How are we supposed to coordinate?”

  “As far as you’re concerned, she showed me a dress my father made, but the rest? Never. She swore me to secrecy.”

  “I don’t approve.”

  She laughed as if I’d nailed the punchline of a long joke.

  I turned down a side alley and parked the BMW next to her dark blue El Camino. In the daylight, I could see the cracks in the paint and the rust spots on the chrome.

  “I’m getting you a new car,” I said, getting out before she could argue. I went around to open her door, but she was already out and jingling her keys. “What kind do you want?”

  She opened the steel door. “I don’t know.”

  We entered her studio. She grabbed a box from a pile, tossed it to me, and grabbed another. She led me to th
e other side of the building and her bedroom.

  “What do you like then?”

  “I don’t know.” She opened the dresser and plucked through her underwear, flinging things into the box.

  “How do you not know?”

  The tangle of lace and cotton piled up in the box. Bra cups, balls of socks, and a single, surprising black stocking over the side. I picked it up, bridging its length between my palms. Soft. Worn at the heel. A little lace top with a little silicone to keep it on the thigh.

  “I don’t know what I’ll want after this is over,” she said, opening another drawer. “I guess I’ll have to run my father’s business.”

  “But what do you want now?”

  Picking through, she left the ripped jeans in the drawer and tossed two nicer pairs into the box.

  “Now?” She looked at the space, the paintings on the walls, the drafting table, and the unmade full-size bed. “I want Bianca out of that office and I want to be a good wife.”

  “I meant car.”

  Ella pulled the stocking away slowly, making it slide over my palms. “I don’t want a car. I want to get through this and I want it to be clean at the end.” She dropped the stocking into the box. “We’ll have separate rooms, right?”

  She could refuse to have sex with me any time, for any reason. But I had an instinctual resistance to ceding control.

  “If you want,” I said.

  “I need that.”

  One year, separate rooms. Functionally separate lives. A box full of sexy things I wanted to see her in before I shredded each one. Why was she packing it if she wasn’t going to wear it?

  “If you’re not fucking me, Ella, you’re not fucking anyone.”

  “That goes both ways.”

  I ran my fingers under my nose. Her scent was already gone, but the memory of getting inside her lingered. One year of hard-ons. Great. This was going to be tougher than I’d thought. As if reading my mind, she tossed a handful of underwear in the box and put her hands on her hips.

  “Do you want to get caught cheating on your wife?” She threw open a purple-painted armoire and picked some hangers from the pole. “How’s that gonna go down in Crowne Town?”

  The rhyme made me smile, as did the fact that she was right. I was a grown man, and cheating was an unnecessary risk for me.

  “No other women,” I said, looking her over. The warehouse’s draft had hardened her nipples enough to dent the T-shirt through her bra. I hadn’t spent enough time with her tits. Hadn’t discovered the limits of what she liked.

  “Deal.” She turned to flick through the hangers in the closet.

  It was a crime to not fuck her, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

  * * *

  Hours later, her El Camino pulled into the driveway of my house in Hancock Park, next to my black BMW. The boxes and duffel bags of clothes she’d brought took up only a corner of the rear bed.

  She yanked out a duffel, and I grabbed it before she had to bear the full burden. I slung the bag over one shoulder. She took a box by the flap, ripping it.

  “I have people to help with that.”

  “I got it.” She gathered the box in her arms. It was full of hardcovers.

  Putting my free arm under the weight, I lifted it. “One less trip.”

  She let me have the box and took another.

  My place was modest by Crowne standards, but the way she stopped and looked around made me aware of how big it was. How high the ceilings. How pristine and professionally designed.

  “Did I get lost the first time I came here?” she asked.

  “The next morning—after our first date. You wound up coming into the kitchen through the backyard.” I dropped the duffel at the foot of the stairs and slid the box onto a table. “Give me that.” I took her box and put it on top of mine. “You have choices to make.”

  “Do I?” A flirtation flicked across her lips and quickly straightened as if she’d gotten control of it.

  “We’re not sleeping in the same room.”

  “Yeah.” She tried to get control of a smile, but wound up biting her lips.

  “So, my bride, let me show you option one.” I led her through the foyer, then the kitchen, and out to my backyard.

  Eight-foot hedges surrounded the space, with a grass patch between the patio and pool, a built-in barbecue and wet bar, and at the rear edge of the property, a two-bedroom guesthouse.

  “You can use a code or a key,” I said, punching in my numbers to open the front door. I let her in first. “It’s got furniture already, but you can replace it if you want.”

  She didn’t hesitate to look around the kitchen, peek past the shower curtains, open closets, or sit on the bed. She bounced on it and ran her hand over the texture of the duvet. How long would it take for me to not think of fucking her whenever she sat on a bed?

  “Do you ever have guests stay here?” She leaned back.

  “Friends from college, when they’re in town. Spillover family, but now that we have Crownquarters, they’ll stay there.”

  I sat next to her as if I was at the end of a semester on Not Touching Ella 101 and this was the final. Multiple choice.

  You’re sitting next to Ella on a bed. She’s half reclined. The afternoon light makes her skin glow and reflects in the irises of her brown eyes, making them sparkle with what could be either adventure or danger.

  Do you:

  A – Put your hand on her knee

  B – Kiss her without warning

  C – Say something suggestive and gauge her reaction

  D – Keep your mouth clean and your hands to yourself

  “It’s nice,” she said, then sprang up as if it were her final too, and she chose D. “I like the kitchen.” She left for the center room and I followed. She stayed on the other side of the island, talking fast. “The warehouse is a commercial space, so I’m not allowed to have a stove, so this would be really cool.”

  “Good, so—”

  “What’s through this door?”

  I opened it and swept my hand in her direction. “After you.”

  She went into the unfinished three-car garage with its high wood-beamed ceiling and clean white walls. The floor was new concrete, and the lighting was soft and indirect.

  “Wow,” she said, pleasing me more deeply than I expected.

  “You can use this for a studio,” I said.

  Her attention snapped from the ceiling to me. “For?”

  “Whatever you want. Clothes. Art.”

  “The Collective is finished for me. I’m out.”

  “What about your own thing?”

  She sucked in her cheeks and crossed her arms. Somehow, I’d stepped in a pile of shit I should have smelled a mile away.

  “I have a studio.”

  “In a condemned building you have no lease for.”

  “It’ll be there longer than this marriage.”

  “If it doesn’t fall on your head first.”

  We regarded each other across the space I’d built a year ago for no purpose whatsoever, and wanted for her as if I’d known she was coming all that time.

  “What’s option two?” she asked.

  “The main house.” Instead of going back the way we came, I unlatched the barn door and swung it out, hoping the way the light streamed into the space might sell it. “This way.”

  Hands in the front pockets of her ripped jeans, she followed me, taking one last look back at the open garage.

  “Was it always supposed to be an artist’s studio?” she asked.

  “I had no plans for it. Or maybe I subconsciously knew you were coming.”

  We entered the house through the kitchen entrance. If she thought the guest kitchen was nice, she made no indication that the main one was any better at three times the size.

  We climbed the stairs, where four doors stood around a main hall. Ella’s eye caught a drawing I’d bought at auction.

  “Christo,” she said, reminding me of the artist’s name
. “You have good taste.”

  “Coming from you.”

  “Coming from me, what?”

  “It means a lot.” I stepped toward her. Not close enough to touch, but my body didn’t want hers standing in an opposite corner.

  “Don’t let it go to your head.” She came another step closer. Still not near enough to reach. “So, where’s your room?”

  “The double doors.” I tilted my head toward the master suite.

  “And where’s mine?”

  “Behind you.”

  She spun around and pushed her way in, standing at the foot of the bed with her hands on her hips. The walls were drenched with light from the glass doors that led to a balcony. All things considered, she was just as fuckable here as the guesthouse.

  “What do you think?” she asked, then looked at me. “Which one?”

  “Well.” I crossed my arms and rocked on the balls of my feet. “We’re not fucking. But this room connects, and if you’re here? Late at night, I might need more distance between us.”

  The mischief flashed again and disappeared just as quickly. “Just you? Why am I the willpower in this arrangement?”

  “Do you want to test mine?”

  With a flick of her eyebrows, I knew that for a moment, she did. But she went to the window and pushed the curtains open a couple of inches. The backyard, the pool, and the guesthouse were below us. Was she doing what I was? Calculating the distance between us? How many steps. How many nights.

  “But if family visits?” she asked. “What’s our story going to be?”

  “You’re using the studio. They can get a hotel.”

  “You want me out there then?”

  When did I cross the room to stand over her, looking out the window to where we were imagining her sleeping?

  My body wasn’t my own when she was near. My mind hadn’t been in control since day one. Staying away from her would be that much harder on day one hundred, and impossible on day three hundred.

  “It’s safer,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder as if I needed to do that to transmit my earnestness.