“You do love a challenge,” Noelle agrees.
Unlike Benny, my girlfriends think that my wind chime idea is hilarious, as well as my idea for a giant portrait of myself to be hung in the living room.
“You should totally do it!” Vicky says.
“I don’t exactly have time to sit for a portrait,” I say.
“Give me a picture of yourself and I’ll have somebody at the makers studio do it,” Vicky says. “We’ll make it really big and outrageous and charge it to him! I’ll handle it. I love this kind of project!”
Noelle snorts. “We know you do, Vicky. Dog throne, anyone?”
“The whole point of this is to get me out of there, not start decorating the place.”
“Well, either way, you’ll be making him use one or two thousand dollars out of his vast wealth to commission some original art,” she says. “He gave you a green light, did he not?”
“Can you make it diamond-encrusted?” I joke. “Have me wearing a tiara in it, and there are real diamonds in the tiara?”
“How about cubic zirconia-encrusted and we say it’s diamonds?” she says.
I’m laughing now.
“I know,” Mia says, “do the fake diamond-studded portrait and have it sent to his place with a fake invoice that says it cost millions of dollars. That would be hilarious.”
“He did say go crazy, did he not?” Vicky asks me.
I can’t help but smile. Vicky loves her art projects. She scrolls through her phone and finds a photo of me from my redhead phase, which I veto, and then she finds a good bunhead one and I give it the big thumbs-up. Why not?
“New idea,” Mia says. “Francine needs to have a lavish party at his penthouse and invite all of us so that we can all observe him up close, and observe him interacting with Francine, and then we’ll all regroup and have more informed discussions about this situation.”
I find I don’t like the idea. I don’t want this complicated situation made into some kind of a gal pal parlor game…even though, why should I care?
“Fly in some blue crab and Trenton tomato pies!” Mia says, and everybody groans because she is always on a New Jersey pizza cuisine.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing what his place looks like,” Noelle says. “Is it a super dude place or did he hire a designer? Is it sentimental, full of mementos?”
“Hmmm.” I fold my arms, trying to decide. All I know is that it would feature at least a few Star Trek things.
“Now I want to know too,” Vicky says. “You have to have the party, and also, I’ll bring Smuckers over to meet him. Smuckers will totally growl at anybody he doesn’t like. Smuckers is a great judge of character.”
“Benny is allergic to dogs,” I tell her. “Or else that would be a good idea.”
Alverson picks me up at the appointed time.
It turns out that Benny lives in West Chelsea, which is one of my favorite areas to take visitors to, full of amazing museums and fun-but-pricey restaurants. It’s got the High Line, too, a magical park built on elevated tracks that went out of use.
But my eyes nearly pop out of my head when Alverson pulls up in front of the Zaha Hadid building.
There must be some mistake! The Hadid building seems too fabulous and otherworldly for somebody I know to live in.
Alverson comes around and opens the door. I get out. “You’re telling me Benny lives here?”
“Yes.” He goes to grab my suitcases.
Breathlessly I gaze up at the flowing and harmonious lines of the steel and glass structure—the place looks as if it were swirled into existence with a spatula rather than built with cranes and concrete. I pointed it out to my parents when they visited from North Dakota. In a sea of harsh lines and severe angles, the Hadid building is beautiful and sculptural, and I love that a visionary female architect created it.
All this time Benny lived here? I find it...unexpected. Impressive.
“The Hadid building!” I say to Alverson.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Stearnes was extremely proactive in securing a penthouse here.” He motions toward the lobby door. “Right this way.”
A doorman is holding open the door. I follow Alverson in. I never imagined I’d get to set foot in here.
We ride up to the top floor. Alverson knocks once at the sleek polished wood door. A dog starts barking and Alverson opens it up and deposits my luggage just inside the foyer.
“A dog?” I say just as a fluffy brown and white dog bounds in.
“Down, Spencer,” Alverson says giving him a quick scratch behind the ears. “Don’t worry, he’s friendly.”
Spencer is a medium-sized dog who looks to be a whole mix of breeds.
“Benny has a dog?” I say. “I thought he was allergic.”
“It’s not his, or…well…” Albertson trails off here and switches gears to information about locks and building codes, and with that he leaves me standing there alone with Spencer, closing the door behind him.
Because of course Benny hasn’t come to the door to greet me. Is he even here?
And whose dog is this? Does it belong to a girlfriend? That’s the kind of thing a boyfriend does, taking the girlfriend’s dog when she’s traveling. Could that be why he told me so explicitly and insultingly to stay out of his room? But then why have me step in as wife? Why be Mr. Sexy with me?
I swallow, turning around, looking for signs of cohabitation, but who even cares? Let him be in a relationship. Let him be as jerky as he wants to be; I’m finally inside of the Hadid building.
“Come on, Spencer!” I say, heading into the main room, which is stunningly bright, not just because of the floor-to-ceiling windows, but the furnishings are bright and simple—all light woods and earth tones with the occasional pop of blue to match the blazingly bright blue sky. There’s a magnificent porch outside with seating like a posh restaurant.
Further exploration turns up a spa-like bathroom with amenities that I don’t even understand, but the jet tub will be amazing for my knee. The view is insane here, too.
Spencer is following me around. New friend alert! I rub his ears and we head into the kitchen where all things are stainless steel and wood and glass, and it’s mind-blowingly beautiful. The feel is that of serenity and simplicity, of harmonious flow; these things greatly appeal to me as a dancer.
Stepping out onto that stage alongside my fellow dancers and embodying the feelings of classical music, it’s better than flying. And I forget all the pain. It’s like transforming into emotion and energy and beauty.
So while I’d have chosen this building in a heartbeat, I’m surprised Benny would have chosen it—he always seemed all tech and hard angles and anti-social abruptness.
So unexpected!
Just for a second, I forget the bullshit he’s pulling, and I have a picture of us bonding over the beauty of this building. And he twirls me around and we’d go out on the porch and look over the High Line. And I’d reach up and touch his beautiful Benny lips, and then feverishly, he grasps my arms—abruptly and passionately like I always imagined back in the Vegas days—and we’d kiss.
I spy a bookcase. And I smile. Bingo!
I head over and excitedly scan the spines of the books for his collection of Star Trek novels, and specifically the bright orange spine of his favorite, Spock Must Die. My heart sinks when it’s not there. It’s a lot of photography books and tomes on coding and tech stuff.
No Star Trek novels. I shouldn’t feel sad about it. Why should I care?
Benny was reading Spock Must Die that summer—I remember standing out waiting for one of my dates to pick me up, and Benny was at his favorite patio table reading this dog-eared copy. I asked him about it, and he told me there are two Spocks in it, and one had to go. I teased him about reading the book version of a TV show, and he said he read it every year. He was all serious and annoyed and flustered, a bit pink at the tops of his ears. He had asterisk-style stars next to passages that meant things to him.
I think I teased him about
talking a little bit like Spock. I would sometimes do that, not because I found it laughable, but more because I found it cute, the way he’d use brainy words like “vexing,” the way he’d quantify things with weird specificity, like he was 93.5% sure the batteries on one of the adhesive lights were going to run out.
And then my date picked me up, and Benny had some judgy thing to say about the limo.
I get this rush of affection, thinking about the guy he was. People misunderstood him, but in the end, I was the biggest asshole of all to him.
“You made it,” Benny says, jolting me back to reality. He’s strolling in from the direction of the foyer, Spencer jumping at his side.
“I can’t believe you live here!” I say. “This is literally one of the coolest buildings in the city. I mean, you know, for a weird blackmailing kidnapper to live in.”
Benny shrugs, expression carefully neutral. Spencer the dog nuzzles his hand.
“And I thought you were allergic to dogs,” I say.
“People grow out of things,” he says.
“You grew out of your allergy?” I ask.
“People grow out of things,” he says again, more tersely this time. If his words had hands, they’d be shoving me away. Why force me to be his wife just to shove me away?
“Okay, fine. However...” I gesture at the bookcase, grinning. “Where is it?” I ask. “Because I know it’s here somewhere. Because yeah, you can say that people change, but some things don’t change.”
“What’s here somewhere?” Benny asks.
“I’m looking for it on the bookcase and I did not see it...but maybe you have a different bookcase where you keep your most hallowed books.”
He furrows his brow.
I cross my arms. Spock Must Die?
“Are you talking about the Star Trek book?” he asks.
I give him a look. “I don’t literally think Spock must die.”
“You think I still keep those books around?” he asks.
“Don’t tell me you got rid of them! Even your precious taped-up paperback? With all your little margin notes and stars and things?”
“Why would I have that?” he says.
“Because you read it every freaking year because you love it so much!” I say. “You told me you read it every year and you planned to continue doing so for the rest of your life.”
“Sticking to every decision you made as a kid isn’t exactly a recipe for a successful life,” he says.
This makes me so sad. Stupidly sad. I loved that he did the whole yearly reread. I loved that he told me about it. It meant so much to me. I felt like he was showing me another side of himself, letting me into a place he shut other people out of. “S-so you didn’t even keep Spock Must Die?”
He shrugs. “It’s just a ratty paperback.”
“Oh,” I say.
Is it stupid and childish to expect Benny to still read “Spock Must Die?
And why do I care?
“I’m running a massive corporation and inventing things that ten-X the efficiency of machines,” he says. “I hardly have the time to sit around reading a book I already read.”
I can feel my face heating with emotion. “I don’t know what’s worse,” I say with a casualness I don’t feel, “the fact that you no longer have the book that you used to so love or the fact that you just used the term ten-X unironically.”
“We can’t live in the past,” he says.
“Are you suggesting that I’m living in the past?” I demand.
He gazes into the distance, as though carefully composing his answer. He seems to have a slight case of the sniffles, and his eyes look irritated, like he’s been rubbing them. “I’m suggesting that I’m not,” he says.
“Okay, well, good for you,” I bite out. “So do I get my tour? When am I to see my servant wife quarters?”
He leads me down a hall I hadn’t explored, past one interesting-looking room after another. The place really is as magnificent from the inside as the outside. And Benny lives here! God, he’s objectively handsome, and he lives in this building, and he’s all angry and closed off. No wonder women go after him, I think with an unpleasant twist in my gut.
We turn down the hall, passing by a doorway that opens into a large bright space with gleaming hardwood floors. We’re a few steps down when the explosiveness of what we just passed registers in my mind.
“Hold up.” I stop, processing a moment, and then I spin around and start back in the other direction.
“Where are you going?” Benny says. “Your room is this way.”
Like he can stop me.
I head into the huge workout space, gliding across the expansive gleaming hardwood floor that screams up to a massive window overlooking West Chelsea. Benny seems to be using the space as a weightlifting and boxing area; there’s a heavy bag hanging at the center of the empty part of the room, as well as benches and a few mats strewn about.
My mind boggles at the extravagance of such a vast, nearly empty space in a private residence.
And piled up at the far interior end, opposite the window, is a mountain of boxes. You can’t even tell how far back the space goes, that’s how tightly piled up the boxes are. It’s floor-to-ceiling boxes opposite floor-to-ceiling windows, and we’re talking twenty-foot-high ceilings here!
“What’s up with all of those boxes?” I ask. “Do you not have storage in this building?”
“That is my storage, and this is my space for boxing and weight training,” he says, directing my attention back to the bright window side of the large room.
“This seems like a lot of wasted space,” I say, looking back at the boxes. What in the world could possibly be inside of them?
“You’re to stay out of here. Come on,” he says, beckoning me back to the hall.
“There’s the ballet class I teach with my friend Kelsey,” I say, “and we’re constantly fighting for a practice space at the arts center. Like Hunger Games–level battles for an hour of studio time. If we could move aside your bench and some of these boxes—”
“You are not to touch those boxes,” he says pointedly. “You are not to be in here whatsoever.”
“But I’m your wife now. This is our shared space, and you’re so excited to make accommodations for me.”
“But you’re excited to go on your European tour, and you don’t want to do anything to threaten that,” he says. “So you won’t set foot in here ever again.”
I stiffen. “Are you suggesting to me that if I set foot in here, you won’t sign off on my papers?”
“No, I’m stating it outright.” He comes to me, stands in front of me—so close I can feel the annoyance radiating off of him.
My core goes hot. All I can think of is us in that limo, and the cool edge of his bottle, the harsh heat in his eyes.
“Got it?”
I take a step backwards toward the window. “What if I want to lift weights?” I ask. “And I don’t even touch anything and you don’t even know I was here?”
His gaze locks on to mine. My skin buzzes with aliveness. “I’ll know,” he says.
I suck in a tiny breath. “Have you become a Bluebeard re-enactor? Because you’re doing a great job of it. You know that’s what they call you, right? Billionaire Bluebeard?”
His eyes gleam. I wish I could read his expression. Does he find all this amusing, or is being serious? He stretches his arm out toward the door, pointing the way back to the hallway.
“What if I just want to stretch?”
He takes a step closer. I move backwards and hit the window, cool against my sizzling skin. He says, “Any wife employee of mine who goes in there will be punished.”
My breath hitches. My mind scrambles. Punished?
“Understand?” he rumbles.
There are a lot of words for the wild montage of X-rated images now racing through my mind.
“Understand” is not one of them.
“Uhhh…” I say.
He comes in a bit c
loser. I can barely breathe. “And I guarantee you, I’ll know.” Again he points at the door. “Now.”
I whisper a faint “Aye, aye, Bluebeard” and head toward the door and out into the hall. He closes it behind us and leads me onward.
“Wow, you really don’t want me to know what you’re keeping in those boxes, do you?” I say, trying to sound normal and not mystified and strangely excited.
“You heard the rules,” he grumbles.
“Whatever could be in those boxes…” I say in a singsong way. “Probably not dismembered body parts. You’d need to refrigerate or ideally freeze that sort of thing. Maybe strange dolls? Maybe it’s blow-up dolls made to look like that Swiss Miss cartoon girl from the hot chocolate. Hundreds of them, all in their own boxes.”
He stops and turns, gazes down at me, eyes glinting in the low light of the hallway.
I grin, excited and a tiny bit light-headed. “Late at night he creeps into the room and opens one of the boxes,” I say. “He extracts the lucky doll, and in the darkness above the city lights, they begin to cavort, dancing wildly across the floor, man and doll.”
“Are you almost done?” he asks.
“Dude, you have a massive room full of secret boxes. I’ll never be done,” I say. “You know what would guarantee I never look in your secret boxes? Your signature. On a certain set of papers.”
“Let’s go.” He turns and leads me onward. What’s in the boxes? Maybe it’s robotics stuff. But then why the secrecy?
I grit my teeth as we pass a large corner bedroom that is clearly his. “Your forbidden bedroom, I presume?”
He keeps on walking. He passes one door. He passes another.
“Off-limits to my kind?” I continue.
He keeps on.
“The forbidden bedroom where I’m not supposed to go and pester you,” I say.
Punished. Was he being funny? I can’t even tell! It’s just like Benny to be funny in a way where you’re not sure if he’s being funny.
“How will I restrain myself from bounding into your bedroom if I don’t know which room it is?”
“It was my bedroom.” Finally we reach the end of the hall. “This one’s yours.”
Just Not That Into Billionaires Page 9
