“You must never say he’s daydreaming. He doesn’t like it. Cogitating, bitches!”
Juliana smiles. She likes Francine. People always do. The Beau Cirque staff would clamor for her attention. I remember just rolling my eyes and shaking my head at the whole thing. It was so annoying.
“We have our baby names picked out,” she says. “It’s okay if I tell them, right?”
Over her shoulder, Aaron looks aghast.
I’m not exactly pleased. I cast her a warning glance because, Igor and Monique? These people aren’t idiots!
She tilts her head questioningly, like she’s actually my wife or something. “No?”
I shake my head minutely.
She settles a hand on my arm. “That’s enough. He doesn’t want to tell.”
“We won’t use them, promise!” Barbara exclaims. She’s had too much to drink, but also, Francine has a way of pulling people in and making them feel like they’re in an enchanted bubble with her. Like that last night.
Something grinds in me.
“I’ll tell, I’ll go first,” Barbara says in her Texas drawl. “Katarina and Arthur.” She sits back happily as people praise the names. Katarina is a bigger favorite than Arthur, but Francine likes Arthur—she tells the group that it reminds her of Artie Shaw, the jazz clarinetist. If there’s one thing I learned in my summer in Vegas, it’s that most dancers have a deep knowledge of the history of music. It’s part of their training.
She turns to me, beseechingly.
No—just no. While Monique is a believable name, nobody in their right mind would name their kid Igor. It was supposed to be a funny thing just between us. “I’d like to keep them to ourselves,” I say.
She studies my eyes in the beat of silence that follows. “Okay, then,” she says softly. “Benny is an intensely private person,” she adds. “My very own oyster.” Suddenly I don’t know if this is for show, or if it’s a little bit real. All I know is that I’m feeling chaotic.
“You bring him out of his shell,” Juliana says. “I can tell.”
I lose myself in my linguini. The Brazilians are complaining about not being able to get tickets to any of the shows they wanted to see, including the big Reno Sweeney revival, and my high-achieving wife offers to snag them premium seats at a matinee. It turns out she knows the star. Of course.
“Have you seen it?” Juliana asks. “It would be fun if you and Benny could come along.”
I shove at Francine’s foot under the table. Hopefully my communication is clear: no, we will not be accompanying them.
She looks over at me and then smiles sweetly at Juliana. “I hear it’s really an amazing show.”
I shove again, just to reiterate...no. I’d stick needles into my eyeballs before I’d sit through a three-hour show and she knows it.
She smiles wickedly.
She wouldn’t.
“Benny? Have you seen it?” Juliana asks me from somewhere in the distance.
I’m boring into Francine’s eyes as the din of the restaurant seems to grow fainter. I can’t believe she’s pushing it like this. But that’s Francine, she always had to be the little rebel.
“I’m much too busy with performances and rehearsals, and Benny’s not a musical theater guy,” she says, swooping in at the last minute for the save. “He would just be sitting there crabbily multitasking in his head.”
“You need to relax more,” Juliana says.
Francine puts her hand over my wrist, beaming at me. “Tell me about it!”
My gaze lowers to where her hand rests upon mine, the point where skin meets skin like a ghost at the table.
Eight
Francine
* * *
Benny is barely settled into his plush limo seat next to me when he and Aaron start grumbling in business-speak over a melodic background of Velvet Underground, another of Benny’s moody favorites, played dutifully by his Pandora station.
“Seriously, how is a social dinner the first we hear about some pretty major objections?” Benny says as the limo slides like a sleek fish through the honking and chaotic Saturday night traffic.
Aaron grumbles back, something about his point person not having full access.
It’s so Benny to be angry about not knowing something. Benny’s one of those guys who likes to know what’s happening at every moment. If he ever had his appendix out, you know he’d demand a local anesthetic so that he could stay awake and monitor every move the doctors make, whereas I would be like, send me to La-la Land, the faster the better!
They’re analyzing the dispositions of the Brazilians and discussing the attitude of the Texans. And then Dave Matthews Band comes on.
I bite my lip and wait for him to notice.
It doesn’t take long. “What the fuck!” Benny exclaims mid-sentence. He leans in and stabs the console screen with excessive speed and force. Stab! Stab! Stab! A million thumbs-down!
It’s his old abrupt movement style, and it does something to me, just seeing it. Maybe it’s the déjà vu of it, but my heart beats a little bit faster.
“What the fuck!” he says again.
“Clearly it’s a sign,” I say. “The powers that be are angry that you’re dragging me around like this.”
He mumbles something about algorithms and returns to his conversation with Aaron, now with a furrowed forehead of annoyance above his stylish billionaire glasses.
I sit there innocently, hoping against hope that another Dave Matthews Band song comes on, because that was…exciting. Wonderful, even.
We drop Aaron off at his high-rise.
The door isn’t even closed behind him when Benny turns to me. “You think you’re pretty funny, don’t you?”
Whereas my old Benny had a voice that would once in a while drop to a deep timbre, new Benny lives there, with a voice growly and deep. The voice does something to me. What’s more, I’m highly conscious of us being alone in this small, private space. The butterflies in my stomach are doing their own fast tempo ballet, complete with fluttery arabesques.
He drops his tone even deeper. “You think that whole thing was funny?”
“Umm, a little?” I say. “You didn’t?”
“I did not,” he bites out. “And you shouldn’t be taking these kinds of stupid risks, considering you need my signature for that tour of yours to happen. And that thing with the Broadway show? You’re pushing it.”
“What? I’m playing your wife, and as such, I wear interesting fashions and I take a large role in managing your social schedule. You’re just so impossibly grumpy—sometimes it’s good for you to be socialized with other people.”
“I’m not a dog,” he says.
“Of course not,” I say.
He’s more like a wolf—that’s what I’m thinking. I don’t know how to feel about him—I just don’t. Benny’s presence has always put me off-balance, ever since the Beau Cirque days when I was so acutely aware of him sitting there in the smoldery shadows, sexy lips pressed together in total concentration, his large, awkward hands flying over the controls, lighting the stage on fire with his robotic innovations buzzing along the cavernous ceiling.
“You are not here to manage my social schedule,” he says.
“That’s too bad,” I say. “Because I was going to see if Juliana and the gang would like to go with us to a Dave Matthews concert.”
The momentary horror that suffuses his face is priceless. “Not. Happening,” he rumbles.
It’s all I can do not to squirm with delight. Instead I put on a face of innocence and sigh dramatically. This shouldn’t be so fun but it so is. “Well, you know your wife is just so full of surprises. It would be a shame if we arranged something and got their hopes up and then cancelled. But if you don’t want a wife, you know what to do. It rhymes with gavel vapors.”
He grunts, annoyed.
“He was so grateful for how his beautiful wife saved the day that he decided to release her from this charade and get her visa stuff in order. He se
t his whole legal team on it—that’s how grateful he was.”
“Ah yes, the famous Francine Janea wishful thinking.” He grabs a beer from the posh little fridge. “Your visa problems will disappear when I decide to make them disappear.”
“He so wished he had a wife just like her, but all his money couldn’t buy such an amazing wife, so he made her be his wife by threatening the one thing she most wanted.”
He gives me a hard stare—his Wolf Benny stare. This new Benny feels a lot more dangerous than the old Benny. It’s not just the way he puts me off-balance. It’s something more—something ineffable.
“Such a sad tale,” I continue.
He holds up his ice-cold beer bottle, watching it catch the lights from the cityscape outside the window, reds and blues and flashing neon.
I go into the limo fridge and grab a fizzy black cherry water for myself and a few cans of bubbly for my friends. I stuff them in my purse. “A little something for my friends. Your better half is very generous to her gal pals. You don’t mind, right? Oh, and of course, you’re welcome for the amazing job I did playing your pretty and charming wife.”
“You want an Oscar?”
“You know what I want,” I say.
“You nearly blew it with that outfit.”
“This outfit killed,” I say. “And for the record, it is extremely stylish, and I think it’s pretty, too, don’t you agree?”
Naturally his expression is shrouded in shadows.
“Don’t you think it’s pretty?” I repeat, because I know what he thinks of it. I might be playing with fire, but I can’t stop. “What’s your favorite part of my outfit?”
He turns to me all smoldery.
My pulse races. “Do tell.”
His eyes darken.
I give him a witchy grin. I can’t stop goading him, pressing him. I feel like one of those granite-boring machines they use for mining, like I have to bore down through his rock-solid armor, down to the beating heart of nerdy Benny.
“Tell me,” I say. I want to make him say it.
There’s this beat of silence there in the back of the limo, and I’m pretty sure he’s not going to tell me his favorite part of my dress.
Then he tilts his beer bottle so that the bottom edge is pointing to the ruffle at the top edge of my bodice. Before I can make sense of what’s happening, he touches one ice-cold corner of it to the bare mound of my breast, right above the ruffle.
Heat blooms low in my belly.
He slides the cold finger of glass along the bare top of my breast toward the center of my chest, tracing along the top of the bodice.
My breath hitches.
With a smoldering gaze, he keeps on, moving on to the project of tracing the top of my the other boob, drawing a freezing and excruciatingly slow line of wickedness across my wildly heated skin.
I can barely think.
This is pure Wolf Benny and I don’t know what to say. Wolf Benny has me reeling.
“This,” he whispers.
And then the bottle is gone, and I’m secretly panting.
Still watching my eyes, he takes a long swig. A bit of foam stays behind on his upper lip. I’m focusing on it. I want to put my lips there and lick it off, maybe even suck it off. But then his tongue darts out and he licks it off himself, looking at me smugly.
“Uh…” I begin. “Well, I like the embroidered roses on the apron.”
He’s examining the beer bottle. He doesn’t seem to be even listening.
“The beautifully embroidered vines as well,” I say.
“My driver is going to drop you off at your place,” he says finally. “You’ll have the night to collect your things, and tomorrow you’re going to move into my penthouse.”
“Wait, what?” I do a highly theatrical double take. “Excuuuuuuse me?”
“I can’t exactly have my wife living across town in some piece-of-shit apartment building,” he says.
“I can’t stay at your place!”
“You can and will,” he says.
“I have six a.m. yoga and then class and rehearsals. We’re literally rehearsing seven hours a day. And I have Pilates afterwards.”
“The day after tomorrow, then,” he says.
“I have just as much stuff that day, too!” I protest.
He shrugs. “Alverson can drive you to those things.”
“Seriously,” I say. “After I did this amazing thing for you?”
“It’s a start.” He takes a swig and sets his beer in the cup holder.
“Are you trying to punish me or something?”
His gaze changes—just a bit—like something flaring deep inside of him, some emotion that I can’t read. “You’re working for me, Francine. I’m not in the habit of providing my employees with rationales or explanations. If you want your travel documents at the end of this term that you have agreed to, you will follow the rules as I set them.”
I can barely breathe. “Me living with you.”
“That’s right.”
“And what exactly do you have in mind here? Because if you think you’re gonna seduce me—”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but no. You’ll have your own bedroom,” he says. “And that’s non-negotiable, so don’t get any big ideas.”
“Oh my god, you think that’s where my mind went?”
“I mean it.” He puts on an uber-serious expression. “You are specifically to stay out of my bedroom. You are not to pester me or go near me unless I require your services for public appearances.”
“I’m not to pester you?”
“That’s right.”
Is he messing with me? “Are you forgetting you’re making me do this idiotic charade?”
His expression is stony and distant. “We clear?”
“On the fact that you are an unbelievable jackass? Crystal,” I say.
“Alverson will give you his direct number. You’ll text him tomorrow morning when you’re all packed up, and he’ll come and get you.”
“I’m an athlete in training!” I say.
“And?”
“So in the middle of the most grueling series of rehearsals of my life, as I prepare for the most important tour of my life, while desperately trying to not put extra stress on my hurt knee, you have decided that I’m to be ripped from my comfortable home where I have all of my friends and support system and move in with you as some kind of an employee?”
“That’s about right,” he says.
I sit back heart pounding. I’ve never felt so powerless. I hate it. “Well,” I begin, “I’m assuming it’s alright with you if I bring my wind chime collection?”
He glowers anew.
Benny hates wind chimes. There was one in the palm tree in the courtyard of our building that drove him crazy. He’d drag chairs over and climb up there to tie things around it, but the groundskeeper would always get rid of his wind chime-muting fixes.
“Because I’ve become an avid wind chime collector,” I add.
“You may not bring wind chimes,” he says.
“Even if it’s one of your wife’s passions?”
“No wind chimes.”
“Fine,” I say. “But surely you won’t object if I use your money to commission a massively expensive portrait of myself to hang in a prominent place in the living room? Because that’s another thing that I must have. In addition to other things that I’ll soon think of. A gown, possibly.”
He pulls out a credit card. “Go crazy,” he says.
Nine
Francine
* * *
News of my impending forced cohabitation with Benny travels quickly around 341 West 45th and beyond, through our far-flung friend group.
My girlfriends stop by one after another to theorize about this strange turn of events. Even Vicky has dropped by; she’s staked out the comfortable corner chair while Smuckers makes the rounds of people’s laps.
Lizzie speculates that wealth has made Benny power-mad, and that I’m his new shiny
toy. Jada thinks maybe he’s turned embittered from years of females rejecting him when he was in his nerd phase.
“So messed up!” I say. “Shouldn’t he be happy with all of his success?”
“Maybe he really has been in love with you all these years,” Kelsey says, because clearly she still hasn’t let go of that idea. “And it crushed him that you didn’t even care you were married.”
Scenes from last night flash through my mind like a montage of film clips, and it’s safe to say that him sliding the cold edge of his beer bottle over the hot mounds of my breasts as he gazed into my eyes is the headline feature. It’s up on the marquee of my mind in giant letters surrounded by blazing lights.
It’s a side of Benny that I wouldn’t have imagined—a sort of dommy side that’s all about being in control. Technically hot, yes. Okay, it was very hot. But so unlike the Benny I knew and adored.
I wish he would let me apologize for how idiotic I acted. I want to tell him how truly ashamed I am about having made those unwelcome advances and then blowing town the next morning after he was so kind to let me sleep in his bed while he took the couch. “Nobody cares,” he’d said. But that’s not true—I care.
But then he goes and acts so jerky. Maybe he doesn’t care.
“Whatever he was before, the man he is today just wants to push me around,” I say. “It’s all about a powerplay with him. And I promise you, he’s acting like the opposite of somebody who is in love with me.”
“Like the schoolyard bully who pulls a girl’s pigtails?” Kelsey says. “Is he being mean in that way, possibly?”
I give her a dismissive wave. Because, no.
“So sucks,” Noelle says, collapsing into the seat next to me.
“It’s fine. I’ll handle it. You know me, I’m all about resilience.” I raise a finger up in the air. “‘Instead of wallowing, we Pinoys pick ourselves up with a smile and keep going.’ That’s what my mom always says.” Mom loves to talk up the determination of our peeps.
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