by Lucy Lambert
"Around $5000," Gwen answered, sitting down. It felt like someone had loaded about 5000 pounds worth of lead into her stomach, which currently tried to pull her through the tile floor.
Beatrice swallowed some of her mocha, then whistled at the number.
"Not helping," Gwen said.
"Yeah, sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to. It's just... wow. Man, that just makes me wish Janice was here, I'd..." Beatrice set her mocha down and wrung an imaginary Janice's neck. It was quite a thorough and realistic demonstration.
Gwen couldn't help smiling. "Yeah, me too. But something tells me she's already far away. And I bet she's already spent all the money, too."
"You know, I always thought she was a jerk. You really should've come and stayed at my apartment."
Gwen forestalled that argument. They'd tried to live together after first year, renting a basement apartment below a bungalow together. But they were just fundamentally incompatible as roommates. Gwen liked things tidy. Beatrice let the dishes pile up for a week. Gwen liked to get up and turn her alarm off right away. Beatrice liked to doze in bed for an extra half hour, her radio blaring. To cut the story short, they decided to save their friendship by agreeing to not live together any more.
Though, Gwen doubted that Beatrice would have tried to make off with the rent money on her.
"Maybe, but unfortunately they haven't invented time travel yet, B. What am I supposed to do in the here and now?" Gwen said.
"I wish I could loan you the money, but I just don't have it," Beatrice said. Gwen knew that she would have, but she also knew that Beatrice only did a little better in the financial department than she did. And Gwen wasn't about to put her best friend into a deep debt hole just to save herself.
"What about your mom and dad?" Beatrice said.
"The bank of mom and dad's been closed for a while," Gwen said. Her parents were nice enough to her, but they hated each other. She'd just started college when they started the divorce. Apparently, they’d just been holding it together for her. Any money they had went to lawyer fees. If she was lucky, one or the other might let her stay with them, but they both lived too far outside the city. She'd have to leave school to do that, and that wasn't an option to her. She told Beatrice as much.
"Lame," she answered. Then she perked up, slopping some mocha out onto her hand and licking it off. "But hey, if you can't fix it, you should try to forget it for a bit. I wanted to get in touch because I got a line on a big party going down tonight..."
"I don't have time to party, B. Besides, we're not freshmen anymore," Gwen said, finally taking a sip from her latte. She savored it, knowing that she wouldn't be able to afford another one for months.
"Oh, come on. It's perfect! You're not gonna get anything done today. So just come with me and get some of this stuff out of your system. Who knows, maybe there'll be some cute rich boy with too much of daddy's money and too little sense."
"B! I'm not about to..." Gwen started.
But Beatrice cut her off with a laugh. "Oh, Gwen, still so easy to bug. And take it from me, rich guys are all jerks. You're way better off figuring out a way to fix this on your own."
"I just had to make sure. Sometimes it's hard to tell if you're being serious or not," Gwen said.
This earned her an indignant look from her friend. "What? Moi, joke around too much? Why Gwendolyn Eveline..."
"That's not my middle name..."
Gwen's middle name was, in actuality, Gladys, which she had unfortunately inherited from her maternal grandmother. It was a secret she intended to take to her grave. Which just made Beatrice want to find out all the more. Beatrice always tried out a different middle name, hoping to hit the proverbial pay dirt.
"...Browning. How could you make such a claim?" Beatrice said, doing her best offended Southern belle impression. It was pretty funny, seeing as Beatrice was from Yonkers and sounded like it.
"Well now I know. And I really don't have time for a party."
"Okay, let me put it this way: you're coming, or I call Messner and give him your telephone number, your email, and a copy of that picture of you in a bikini from when we went to Daytona last summer, and I'll make sure it has a lipstick kiss on it and a note saying with love from Gwen to the handsomest pysch professor at school..." Beatrice said, letting her lips curl up in an evil smile to put cartoon villains to shame.
"You really are ruthless," Gwen said, unable to listen anymore to her diabolical scheme, smiling back. She thought that it probably was a dangerous waste of time to go so some party, but she really could use some way of getting her mind off things that wasn't sitting on her couch watching rom-coms while nursing a pint of Rocky Road.
Chapter 3
The party was at some rich guy's condo in Manhattan. Beatrice and Gwen shared a cab into the city. And by shared, Gwen meant that she chipped in a $5 she found under her bed a few minutes before getting picked up.
Not really being a party girl, her selection of clothes had been, in a word, abysmal. She'd finally settled on the obligatory little black dress every woman kept in her closet and a pair of short heels. Beatrice whistled at her when she sat down, and Gwen tried to keep the hem of her dress pulled down while her cheeks burned.
She kept apologizing and telling Beatrice she would pay her back, but Beatrice just laughed it off. "You want to pay me back? Just be my wingman. I want at least five guys to ask for my number tonight."
"Five? That's... oddly specific," Gwen said.
"Hey, don't look at me like that! Get your head out of the gutter. And yes, five. It's a numbers game, you know. Say only one guy wants my number. He does that dumb three-day wait thing and asks me out for a coffee. It doesn't go anywhere. Now say two guys get my number. It doesn't pan out with the first? Maybe the second's more interesting! But probably not. Especially with these rich guys. They think having money makes them unforgettable. I figure five's a nice number. I mean, at least one has to work out, right?"
It was interesting logic, anyway.
"Whatever happened to rich guys are all jerks?" Gwen said.
"Momma needs a new watch," Beatrice said, watching the river flash by between the girders of the bridge as they crossed, "Besides, they usually drive cool cars."
Gwen snorted at this. Leave it to Beatrice to say what jerks rich guys were in one breath and then express her desire to speed around the city in a Lamborghini in the next.
"So how'd you know about this?" Gwen asked. This wasn't just some normal frat house party.
"I got connections. Look, stop worrying about all that. Let's just go, have some expensive champagne, flirt with some boys, and get me those digits I need. I promise, tomorrow you're going to feel better about everything. Hung over, maybe, but better. Okay?"
"Okay," Gwen replied. She still wasn't sure about this whole thing, but Beatrice's optimism and charm were infectious. Besides, Gwen couldn't shake that need she'd felt earlier, lying in bed all by herself, for comfort and company.
Though now, she knew, would be the absolute worst time to try and cultivate any sort of relationship that wasn't going to enlarge her bank account.
Another possibility crossed her mind, then. Suppose something did happen tonight? Suppose she did meet some rich boy desperate for attention? It wasn't unheard of; the term sugar daddy existed after all, didn't it?
Gwen let herself entertain that fantasy only briefly. It would be an easy way out, she admitted, and a tempting one. But she wasn't that kind of girl. She intended on fixing this whole thing herself, even if it meant taking some time away from school and taking on a couple more part time jobs.
Of course, that little voice in her head kept screaming that it was all too little, too late. And that by the end of next week she'd be negotiating with her parents over a place to stay, or biting the bullet and moving in with Beatrice (because of course Beatrice would offer) even though they both knew that it would most likely be the end of their friendship.
So Gwen craned her neck to look up at the
skyscrapers crowding the Manhattan streets. The deep blue of the evening sky looked back down at her.
"Okay," Gwen said.
"Okay?" Beatrice replied, looking up from her phone, one index finger poised to stab at the screen.
"Yes, okay. I'm agreeing with you. Tonight's about fun, about forgetting all this stuff."
"That's my girl! Oh, hey, here we are. Driver, pull over, will you? Yeah, here's fine," Beatrice said.
The doorman let them in when Beatrice gave him the name of the guy hosting the party, and they found their way into a beautiful, big lobby with marble accents. It really made the building Gwen lived in seem like a tenement. It smelled nicer, too, with the faint scent of lemon in the air. And not the cheap knockoff cleaner stuff, either.
Gwen suddenly felt underdressed. A thread coming out of the strap on her right shoulder caught her eye. Way, way, underdressed.
They went to the elevator. "Get your game face on. Arch that back," Beatrice said, pressing her hands against the small of her own back for emphasis.
The doors chimed, and they stepped in. Beatrice prodded the button for the very top floor, the 40th. Even the elevator smelled nice. A small, neatly concealed vent up in one corner washed them with gently cooled air, and the tones of some old symphony, Bach or Beethoven or someone like that, lilted down to them.
"Posh," Gwen said, "Who is this guy, anyway?"
"The guy who owns the condo? Ben something. Astor? Yeah, that's it."
"And he invited you?"
"No, it was someone else. What's with the third degree? It's just a party; enjoy yourself! I know how hard that is for you, but just make the effort."
The elevator ran so smooth and silently that Gwen hadn't noticed it until the car stopped, the music muting while the doors chimed. "Do you know which apartment it is?" she said.
She didn't need to ask that question. The elevator doors opened directly into the most opulent room she'd ever personally visited. Marble everywhere, big paintings on the walls, and an enormous doorway at the far end with a bay window that gave a stunning view of the park. The sky had turned from blue to a bruised purple as evening stole away the daylight.
As soon as they stepped through the threshold, a man in a tuxedo offered them champagne. Still awestruck, Gwen took the glass without saying anything. Beside her, Beatrice started going on about how great the place was, how it probably cost more than she'd see in her whole life, that sort of thing.
This room turned out to be some sort of entrance hall, apparently. Stunning, really, seeing as Gwen knew her whole two-bedroom apartment could fit comfortably within. They followed the sounds of music coming from deeper within this modern day palace, and soon found the rest of the partygoers.
The room had to be about the size of her old high school's gymnasium, at least. Three honest-to-God crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, illuminating the entire space. It's a ballroom, Gwen realized.
Again, Gwen experienced some culture shock. Many of the men, all in tuxes or other expensive suits, crowded around a bar, while the women on the dance floor wore the latest fashions while shifting their bodies to the beats the DJ off in the corner spun out.
Definitely underdressed, she knew. Her little black dress would have served her well if Beatrice just took her out to a normal club where normal twenty-somethings went, but this place was anything but normal.
Meanwhile, Beatrice eyed the bar hungrily. Gwen didn't know if her interest lay in the alcohol, the men, or both. But suddenly she realized just how bad an idea this all was. There were probably bottles of champagne in that bar worth more than her debt to Patterson Holdings.
Gwen bit down on her lip, unable to keep her eyes from fixing on that thread on her shoulder. I should have looked more closely! she thought. An overwhelming urge to find the bathroom where she could pluck it out in private took over.
"What do you think of Mr. Handsome over at the corner?" Beatrice said, nodding towards a penguin-suited man sitting at the corner stool sipping from a martini, doing his best Bond impression, "Think he's Mr. My First Number of the Night? Come on,"
They're all so pretty, Gwen thought, her eyes glued to the women swaying on the dance floor. Perfect skin, perfect bodies, $100 (or more) hairdos. They probably all had personal trainers and dietitians and all that. The feeling of smallness, of insignificance, welling up inside her reminded her the way she felt sometimes if she looked up at the stars on clear nights, at their incomprehensible vastness and age. Her throat started closing up.
"Gwen? Let's go! Time's a-wasten'!" Beatrice said, trying to tow her along by the arm.
"I'm sorry, I just... I have to find the bathroom," Gwen said, pulling away from Beatrice's grip. She moved so hastily that she stumbled her first step, but managed to keep it from turning into a full-on fall.
Picking one of the doorways exiting the ballroom at random, she found herself in a library, the bookcases towering up towards the ceiling. Continuing on, her pulse and breathing coming more under control the farther away she got, she ended up in what she could only guess was a billiards room, judging by the green-carpeted tables occupying the space. There was another bar in the corner.
She wouldn't have noticed the man sitting at the bar if he hadn't turned around. He looked just as startled to see her as she did to see him.
"Oh, um, I'm sorry. I was just looking for the restroom," Gwen said.
This guy seemed different, somehow. Sure, he wore a tux just like the rest of them, and his well-defined and handsome face with its high cheekbones and strong jaw spoke to good breeding, but Gwen couldn't quite figure it out. He looked around her age, early to mid twenties, but who could be sure?
"See that door there beside the bar?" he gestured.
She did. "Thanks."
Gwen pushed the door open, then locked it behind her. She closed her eyes, leaning back against the paneling. She went up to the sink, meaning to splash her face with some cold water, but stopped. It would definitely ruin her makeup. If she could hardly show her face now, how could she if she washed everything off?
So she settled for just resting for a few moments, looking herself in the eyes in the mirror, trying to find some semblance of self-confidence.
Back out in the billiards room, the handsome man watched her from his seat at the bar. Gwen couldn't quite bring herself to go back out to the party yet, so she stood nervously beside the billiards table closest to the door into that huge library.
"Not the partying type?" he said.
"Not really. You aren't either, I guess?"
He left his drink at the bar when he came over and leaned against the billiards table, his hands in his pockets. This close, she saw her earlier assessment was right: he was a handsome man. And here, too, she saw the difference she'd noted earlier. A reserve rested behind his eyes, something other people might even call a cold aloofness.
"Not really my scene," he replied.
"So then why are you here?" Gwen said, sounding meaner than she intended.
"I could ask the same question of you."
Not really wanting to get into her problems with a stranger, she left it at, "I came with a friend. I've been dealing with some stuff, and she thought coming might cheer me up a bit."
He nodded as though he understood perfectly what she meant. Though Gwen doubted this man even knew what money troubles meant, aside from his portfolio dipping a few points or something. She couldn't quite figure him out. Was this emotional distance she felt coming from him some sort of deep confidence or self-assurance?
"So she invited you, and you came. Social pressure, it gets to the best of us," he said.
"If you say so," Gwen replied.
They lapsed into quiet. Except it wasn't what Gwen expected. Usually, lulls in conversation between strangers made for awkward moments. But this wasn't awkward; it felt more like one of those comfortable silences shared between people who already knew each other well, who didn't need to fill the air with pointless asides about the weat
her just to say something.
Much like any other point during this day, Gwen felt out of her depth. How could she feel this way about him? She didn't even know his name.
"I'm Gwen," she said. Not knowing what else to do, she offered her hand.
He regarded it for a moment, a small smile playing across his lips. Was it a mocking expression, genuine amusement, or something else? Gwen just couldn't read him. But finally, he took it. His palm felt warm and dry against hers, and Gwen realized that hers was probably clammy and wet, owing to her nerves. Her skin prickled.
"Aiden," he said, releasing his grip on her.
It was a nice name, she admitted. And fitting, somehow, like it really belonged to him.
Aiden let his eyes rove over the billiards room. Leaned up against the table like that, he looked perfectly comfortable and at home, and yet, at the same time, somehow disconnected.
The whole image intrigued Gwen to no end. For the first time that day, she actually went a solid ten seconds without thinking about how to come up with the cash to avoid her impending eviction.
"Would you like a drink?" Aiden said, ending the silence again. Gwen couldn't tell from his tone of voice or body language whether he was just being polite, or genuinely wanted to sit down at that bar.
Gwen was used to being able to tell if a guy actually was interested in her or not, so this whole unable to tell thing didn't sit well.
But then her cell started buzzing in her clutch. "Excuse me," she said, turning away from Aiden and digging out her phone. It was a text from Beatrice, telling her to get her butt back to the party to fulfill her wingman obligations.
"Sorry, but duty calls," Gwen said. She felt a strange mixture of relief and disappointment at making the decision to not accept Aiden's invitation. "Nice to meet you, though."
"Wait," Aiden said.
She stopped at the door into the library, looking back over her shoulder at him.
Aiden walked up to her and, without any warning, plucked the thread from her dress's strap.
"Hey!" Gwen started, knowing that just tugging the thread out would just ruin the whole thing.
