New Money

by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

  He stared at me with a mix of pain and disappointment and stunned disbelief. As angry as I was, I still couldn’t stand it, so I looked through the windshield at a carving on a building near the hotel—an owl staring at me with menacing round eyes.

  “You know,” Tony said after what seemed like an hour, “the day I met you, I thought you were nothing like the rich people I drive around this city. But now I see you’re all the same. And by the way, Ms. Morgan … my employers sit in the back.”

  I threw open the door, slammed it behind me, and slammed it again after I slid onto the backseat. The tires screeched as Tony pulled out from between two cars, nearly grazed the one in front of us, and took off down the street. He hit a button to separate us with a soundproof sheet of glass, and I rode the rest of the way staring out the window at Manhattan and thinking that even though it was overflowing with people, it felt like the loneliest place on earth.

  Twenty-one

  I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept thinking about my argument with Alex and my fight with Tony, and I tossed and turned and ended up on the couch with the remote control. I must have dozed off eventually, because when I opened my eyes it was light outside and my cell was vibrating on the coffee table and the TV was on. I turned it down, answered the phone, and heard Jack’s voice.

  He’d told me he would call, but I’d been too rattled about Alex’s secret past and our sudden breakup to give it a second thought. Jack asked if I wanted to have breakfast—he’d discovered a restaurant in Brooklyn that featured authentic southern cuisine and had nothing but rave reviews.

  “Remember you offered me Sunday-morning grits?” he asked. “Well, let me buy some for you. It’s the least I can do after ruining your Saturday night.”

  I held my head in my free hand. It felt sore, and so did every other part of me. I thought something from home might soothe everything that had been battered, but I wasn’t itching to get romantic again. I also didn’t feel like spending a rainy morning in an apartment that was much too empty.

  “I’ll go,” I said, “as friends.”

  He didn’t answer right away and I thought I’d let him down, but he probably wouldn’t have felt that way if he knew how much I needed a friend.

  “Okay,” he said after a moment, “we can be friends.”

  *

  An hour later, I hailed a cab outside my apartment instead of calling Tony for a ride. The driver took me to Brooklyn, where he stopped on Smith Street in Carroll Gardens—a simple neighborhood with trees growing in patches of dirt between cement squares. The block was full of stores and restaurants inside old buildings that had two floors of apartments above them.

  I got out of the car and saw Jack. He was holding an umbrella over his head and standing against one of the buildings, beside a window with SEERSUCKER printed across the glass in capital letters.

  I walked toward him. He was dressed all weekend-casual chic in beige pants and a black pullover. His Cartier watch was on his wrist, and his cologne was the spicy one I liked.

  “Thanks for coming out in this weather,” I said, looking at him through the steady stream of water that poured off my umbrella.

  Jack winked. “A little rain couldn’t stand in my way.”

  He turned and opened the door into the restaurant, which smelled deliciously of bacon and biscuits and everything I was used to. I heard southern rock and looked at exposed brick walls, and then Jack and I were sitting at a table beside the window, where he had his first taste of grits while I just picked at mine.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked at the end of the meal. “Isn’t the food up to Charleston standards?”

  “It definitely is,” I said quickly. “But my manners aren’t. This is a great place, and it was thoughtful of you to invite me here. So I’m sorry for being such a drag.”

  “You’re not a drag,” he said. “And it’s okay. You must have other things on your mind.”

  I nodded, keeping my eyes on a pat of butter melting into my barely touched grits.

  Jack sipped his coffee. “I guess one of those things is Alex?”

  It was. And sulking about him right now was rude even though Jack and I were just friends. “I’m sorry for that, too,” I said as the check came. Jack reached for it, but I got there first. “This isn’t a date … so let me take care of the bill.”

  I watched him, wondering if he’d blow up and say he wasn’t a fucking gigolo. But all he did was stare at me until a smile spread across his lips and creased his dimples into his cheeks.

  “That’s not my usual policy,” he said. “But I won’t argue with you.”

  I liked that he didn’t. I supposed someone who owned a multitude of buildings in Manhattan had no need to get defensive about his finances. He probably wouldn’t even be insulted if I bought him an Armani shirt.

  I hated to take Ned’s advice about anything, but maybe he’d been right when he said there was a difference between people who had money and people who didn’t and trying to mix those people wouldn’t work. Maybe it was true that it would always end in hurt feelings. And maybe I shouldn’t try anymore, because I’d had enough of those.

  “How’s the writing coming along?” Jack asked as I handed the waiter a leather folder filled with cash. “Are you still aspiring?”

  “Actually,” I said, smiling for the first time today, “I guess I can now be described as semi-accomplished. I wrote a story that’s going to be published in Femme.”

  “Kitty’s magazine,” Jack said. “Ned told me you work there.”

  “I’m Kitty’s assistant … but she promised there wasn’t any nepotism involved. She said my story really is good enough for the magazine.”

  “Well, of course it is. She wouldn’t risk her reputation.”

  I needed that. I smiled again, noticing the blond stubble growing into Jack’s cheeks and his chin. It glinted under the lights like a million golden specks.

  “You should let me take you out to celebrate,” he said.

  My smile faded. “That’s what dinner last night was for. But it didn’t work out very well.”

  He leaned into the booth and kept his eyes on me. “Then let me make it up to you. I’ll take you out tonight … any restaurant you want.”

  I thought about that. “We could go to Le Bernardin,” I said cautiously, remembering Alex’s reaction when I’d suggested the same thing.

  “That sounds good. I’ll reserve a table for seven o’clock.”

  How easy and simple and tension-free. I didn’t have to worry about fracturing fragile pride. I agreed, thinking that after last night’s catastrophe, I deserved another chance at a real celebration. Then we left the restaurant and went outside, where I escaped the weather beneath an awning and Jack stayed under his umbrella as he tried to hail a taxi in the rain that was strangely cold for August. But cabs kept passing by, splashing sooty water onto the curb and his expensive shoes.

  “You’re as bad at that as I am,” I said with a laugh when he joined me under the awning.

  He laughed, too. “I give up. And I hate the subway … so why don’t we call your driver? I’ve also got an account with his service.”

  I shivered in the damp air that was seeping into my bones. “My driver?”

  Jack nodded. “The one who picked you up from my house … what’s-his-name…”

  “Tony,” I said flatly.

  “Yeah … he’s driven me around quite a few times. Real nice guy.”

  He doesn’t think the same of you.

  I took my cell out of my purse even though I wished I could avoid Tony forever. I couldn’t, though, because he’d been assigned as my personal driver and if I requested someone else he might get in trouble or lose his job and I couldn’t do that to his family. It wasn’t Marjorie’s fault that her father hadn’t been straight with me.

  Tony arrived ten minutes later. I supposed he was in the area and getting his overtime from somebody else, and even though he’d always had other clients, I got the strangest f
eeling of being cheated on.

  His dark eyes filled with surprise when he saw Jack, but Tony forced a tight smile as he held the back door for us. Then we were inside, and Tony slammed the door so hard that I jumped in my seat. But I tried to ignore it like he was ignoring me. He didn’t say a word except to ask where we were going, and he turned up the radio while he drove and Jack and I chatted in the backseat. Then we were parked in front of Jack’s brownstone on East 70th, where Jack told Tony to charge the ride to Lucas Enterprises, kissed my cheek, and said he’d pick me up for dinner. A minute later, he was gone and the car was quiet except for the traffic report on WCBS and the storm beating down on the roof. I kept my eyes on the fogged-up window and the rain that slid down the glass, and soon the car stopped outside my building.

  “You don’t waste much time, do you?” Tony said without turning around. His eyes were in the rearview mirror, and they were stern and judgmental and disapproving.

  “It’s not like that,” I said tersely. “We’re just friends.”

  He let out a coarse laugh that annoyed me. “Sure you are.”

  I tensed up. “How can you tell? You don’t know the first thing about being a friend,” I said before I opened the door and stepped onto the sidewalk, where I got under my umbrella and leaned my head into the car. “My personal life is none of your business anymore. So do me a favor and stay out of it.”

  “Gladly,” he said, glancing at me over his shoulder. “As long as you do me a favor and don’t call during off-hours.”

  I stared at him. His face looked so different when he was angry—his eyebrows lowered and his nostrils flared. “What about your house?” I asked. “You want my business, don’t you? You need the extra money.”

  He shook his head. “Not that much.”

  I slammed the door. He sped away, and his tires splashed muddy water from a puddle onto my shoes. I shook it off and walked toward my building, trying to pretend he hadn’t hurt me as much as he’d wanted to.

  *

  The rain stopped before Jack picked me up in a cab, and I was glad I hadn’t put on a new dress and spent an hour on my hair and makeup for nothing. I appreciated that he was right on time and whatever else he could have done tonight wasn’t more important than me.

  A half hour later, we sat across from each other inside Le Bernardin, clinking champagne glasses over our amuse-bouches. I excused myself to the ladies’ room after we’d put in our dinner order, and I was touching up my makeup in the mirror when I saw the reflection of a woman walking in the door. She was tall and slender and effortlessly graceful, she had the shiniest black hair, and she started speaking with a French accent.

  “We met at the jazz club on Murray Street,” she said. “You’re Savannah, oui?”

  “Yes,” I said, admiring her pronunciation of my name. She’d accented the wrong syllable, but it sounded more interesting that way. “And you’re Angelique.”

  She nodded and leaned her bony shoulder against the wall. “You were with Jackson Lucas when we met. I just passed his table … I guess you’re still seeing him?”

  That didn’t come out catty or nosy, just friendly like she’d been at the club.

  “Actually,” I began, “we only went out once, and then … well, it didn’t work out and I was dating somebody else for a while.”

  “But Jack stole you away from him?”

  She sounded intrigued, like I was updating her about the latest episode of a salacious soap opera. “No,” I said. “He—”

  She chuckled. “You don’t have to explain. I know Jack very well … and he has ways of getting what he wants.”

  A gang of women walked into the bathroom, filling it with laughter and conversation and a burst of perfume. Angelique disappeared inside a stall and I went back to my table, where Jack and I stayed until long after he’d paid the bill. Then we caught a cab that took us to my apartment. We stood outside my door, and I noticed he’d shaved since this morning. The stubble was gone and his bronzed skin was smooth.

  “I enjoyed tonight,” I said as we lingered in the hallway and my key chain dangled from my fingers. Jack kept looking at it like he expected me to open up and let him in. But I couldn’t flit from one man to another as if neither meant anything. So when he leaned forward and tried to kiss me, I turned my head and his lips landed on my cheek.

  “Ouch,” he said. “You know how to hurt a guy.”

  “And you know how to treat a girl. I really needed somebody today, and I appreciate that you were there for me. The last thing I want to do is hurt you, Jack … which is why we should just be friends like I said before.”

  He gave me a wry smirk. “I guess that decision has nothing to do with Alex?”

  “It does,” I admitted. “I can’t get over a man overnight. I guess I haven’t become as sophisticated as I’d led myself to believe. I’ll never be one of those types.”

  “That,” he said with a laugh as he tweaked my nose, “is what I love about you.”

  *

  Tony and I didn’t say a word to each other when he picked me up for work the next morning. He held the door and turned up the radio and acted like he was my employee just as I’d requested. It felt so lonely inside the car that I rushed out of it when we reached Stone News.

  Then I was at work, where I walked past the front desk and the white wall with Femme splashed across it in purple paint. Everyone was looking at me strangely while I strolled through the lobby and down the hall leading to my desk like I was the star of a freak show.

  I wanted to ask what was wrong, but I feared I was imagining things and Kitty’s office was empty, so I couldn’t get the scoop from her. I tried to ignore the stares as I settled into my chair and logged on to my computer, where I found an e-mail from Kitty that had been sent last night, inviting me to another Stone News black-tie banquet. This one was on Friday night at The Plaza, and she suggested I bring Jack. I ran into him today, she wrote. He’s got it bad for you.

  “Bitch,” said someone behind me in a flat voice, like that was my name. Bitch Morgan.

  I spun around in my chair and there was Caroline in a drab suit with her chest heaving and her fists clenched. She wasn’t wearing her glasses, and the thick kohl around her eyes made her look like a deranged raccoon, ready to sink its pointy teeth into my throat.

  “Caroline,” I said, clueless as to what was making her breathe so heavily that I could hear it from a few feet away. I was under the impression we’d reached a mutual tolerance. “What’s the matter?”

  Her mouth scrunched into a bluish-white line. “Like you don’t know,” she said, coming closer and speaking in a low growl. “I won’t tell a soul—that’s what you promised. Was it so I’d keep my guard down while you plotted against me?”

  I hadn’t told anyone. I’d kept my word. I just stared at her with my mouth half-open.

  “If you wanted to hurt me,” Caroline went on, “you could’ve told my mother directly. You didn’t need to broadcast it all over the Internet. We’ve had our fill of that with Dad.”

  I gulped, thinking of the Senator. “I didn’t do anything on the Internet. What are you—”

  “You posted my personal business on Femme’s social media sites. Kitty deleted the posts when she found them this morning, but it was too late. Caroline Stone is Out in Manhattan is such a catchy caption that it’s been picked up by just about every celebrity gossip blog in town, especially the ones that like to crucify people for keeping their private lives quiet. The only one who didn’t glom on to the story was Fabian Spader, and that’s just because he’s in my family’s back pocket. Tell me … how’d you happen to snap a picture of me and my girlfriend holding hands at the High Line? Did you hire a private investigator with my father’s money to follow us around, or were you hiding in the bushes?”

  My ears were buzzing. “I swear, Caroline … I’d never do that to you.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Because we’ve been such good friends?”

  I shook my head.
“I wouldn’t do it to anyone.”

  “Well,” she said, folding her arms, “we both know that’s a fucking lie, because you’re the only one who updates those sites … and other than Kitty, nobody else has the password.”

  The password was jessamine … The state flower of South Carolina, Ainsley had said—which was probably why it had been so easy for her to remember. I knew she’d figured out Caroline, but I’d convinced myself that she had no reason to spread the dirt around.

  “I didn’t do it,” was all I could say.

  Caroline glared at me. “Then who was it … my sister-in-law?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Sites get hacked all the time. It could’ve been anybody. Considering all the enemies that Edward had—”

  She scoffed. “I’m not interested in a conspiracy theory. I doubt my father’s enemies would waste time on something so small.”

  “It isn’t small to you,” I said.

  “And that’s why you did it. Bravo, Savannah. My mother won’t return my calls, and she probably never will. I guess you thought you hadn’t taken enough from me.”

  I tried to tell her that wasn’t true, but she just held up her hand and stormed off, paying little attention to Kitty as she passed by and gave her a pat on the shoulder.

  “It wasn’t me,” I told Kitty the second she stepped into my cubicle.

  “I know,” she said, leaning against the calendar on my wall like she was exhausted even though it was only a few minutes after nine. “But Caroline doesn’t … and I doubt either of us will be able to convince her otherwise, since all the evidence is against you.”

  Not all of it. “Well, even though I had nothing to do with this … I’m sorry.”

  Her red hair was twisted into a side bun; she fiddled with it, pulling out bobby pins and sticking them back. “It isn’t really all that shocking. Ned knew, and I never pushed him on the subject, but I suspected. Virginia, however, clearly didn’t … and she doesn’t take kindly to being kept in the dark or having her family business in the press.” She sighed and stared at a sprinkler in the ceiling. “What a day so far. I’ve got two meetings this morning and a doctor’s appointment at noon … he’s going to do some tests to make sure I’m okay for another round of IVF.”