Magdalene

by Moriah Jovan

  “Propriety.”

  “Um. Okay?”

  “I don’t know if your mother told you. I’m LDS.” Pause. “Latter-day Saint?” Pause. “Mormon?... A bishop, actually. I observe certain...standards.”

  “And you’re dating my mother?” she squeaked. “Do you know—”

  “Yes,” he said, an edge to his voice. “I do.”

  “So you have a thing for whores?” she sneered.

  “Your mother is an extraordinary woman, but you are a spoiled br— Don’t you dare shut that door on me,” he snarled.

  Oh. My. God.

  He was livid and I was wet.

  There was an angry man under all that sanguinity, with passion to burn—and I was lame enough to chuckle at my own joke.

  “Okay,” I said, breezing out of the kitchen and snagging my coat along the way. Mitch’s big hand was splayed out on the door, holding it open against Clarissa’s attempt to slam it. “Sorry about that. Had to finish paying a couple of bills and the site wouldn’t load.”

  Mitch didn’t break his rock-hard stare at Clarissa, who stared back, wide-eyed. Hypnotized. “Good evening, Cassandra.”

  “Mitch. Thank you, Clarissa. I’ve got it.”

  I could barely contain my snickers as I stepped out and closed the door behind me, Clarissa having fled immediately.

  “Why do you put up with that?” he asked tightly.

  “Oh, don’t start,” I said. “I get it enough from Nigel.”

  “Tracey puts up with it? The same Nigel Tracey who took down two banks single-handedly because their CEOs offended him?”

  “He doesn’t have much of a choice. It would hurt Gordon’s feelings. Besides, those banks were already on the edge, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I could’ve done it on a Friday afternoon if I’d felt like going to the effort.”

  Mitch grunted as he opened the door of my car, and handed me in. “Maybe Gordon’s feelings need to be hurt,” he muttered once he’d slid in beside me and given Sheldon an address I didn’t recognize.

  “The girls need somewhere to run when Mommy’s being a big bad bitch,” I said.

  “Oh, I get it. Fun parent, mean parent, and the stepdad won’t do anything.”

  “Precisely.”

  “And the guy Mom’s dating gets to be her enforcer.”

  “Only because he’s so good at it.”

  “Would you be dating anybody who wasn’t?”

  “Absolutely not. ‘Spoiled brat.’ True, but clichéd.” He sighed and I chuckled. “I do have reservations made.”

  “Cancel ’em,” he said shortly. “You had no intention of paying anyway.”

  I did as he instructed and smirked when he realized I would have had to call in a few favors to get that particular reservation. He bit back a smile and shook his head. “Now,” I said when I turned my phone off. “I do have something planned for after dinner that’s non-negotiable.”

  He grunted. “Good thing or I would’ve taken you to the concert in spite of your inexplicable dislike of ZZ Top.”

  “No, loathing. Is that a dealbreaker?”

  “Very well could be.”

  The ride was a short one, almost a straight shot across Central Park to the Upper West Side. We pulled up in front of a beautifully maintained brownstone on a quiet, tucked-away street. The address was as chichi as mine.

  He said nothing as he handed me out—

  “Seven-thirty,” I murmured to Sheldon, who nodded.

  —and escorted me down the stairs to the servants’ entrance. He rapped on the door in what sounded like code.

  “Mitchell!” cried the old woman who’d opened the door. The smells of borscht and lamb teased my nose. That explained the accent. “Oh, you darling boy! You have been gone from me so long!”

  “Mrs. Andronnikov,” he murmured, picked up her hand and kissed the back of it. “I dream of you every night.”

  Mrs. Andronnikov looked past him at me and beamed. “Oh, and your lovely new lady friend, hello! Come in, come in!”

  Mitch ushered me in with a gentle hand on my back, and I looked around. It was a restaurant—with exactly five tables-for-two tucked into semi-private corners, all but one of them occupied. It was dark, all the better to disguise some of the gaudy Russian décor.

  Mrs. Andronnikov, a large woman clad in what looked like a cotton house dress under a stained apron—she had house slippers on her feet—led us to our table, upon which sat an enormous crystal vase full of orange roses.

  “These are the right ones, nyet?”

  “Perfect, Mrs. Andronnikov, thank you. This is Cassandra. Cassandra, a dear friend of mine, Polina Andronnikov. Her husband was my first foreman at Bethlehem Steel, and she babied me terribly. Still does.”

  I liked this look into Mitch’s past, the kinds of connections he’d made in his life, and I smiled. I couldn’t not. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Andronnikov.”

  “Please! Call me Polina. Mitchell is not allowed, you see. He must show respect, but for you, I am Polina.”

  “Thank you. I’m Cassie.”

  I sniffed the roses before Mitch seated me, before he handed the vase off to a wraith of a busboy I hadn’t seen and gave him my address. So many questions, and the orange roses weren’t at the top of the list. I didn’t even know where to start.

  “How long has this place been here?” I asked.

  “Mmmm, ten years? I think.”

  I ran through my mental contact list to figure out who would know about this restaurant and how— And why didn’t I know about it?

  A Russian matron whose retired husband was Mitch’s first foreman back in the mid ’80s and had babied a teenage steel worker— In a brownstone on the Upper West Side, with exactly five tables—

  “My God. You funded this place.”

  He grinned and took a sip of the water already on the table.

  “Does it have a name?”

  He shrugged. “If it does, I don’t know what it is.”

  “No menu?”

  He shook his head. “You get whatever she feels like cooking for you.”

  “This is...wonderful,” I breathed, the scents making my mouth water, and the rich ambiance putting me in the mood for something I knew I wouldn’t get— How had I missed this place? “Thank you.”

  “I’m trying to impress a pretty girl.”

  I might have laughed, but his sincerity had the hint of a question, of insecurity. It was too important to laugh off. “You’re succeeding.” I paused, then blurted, “You’re very complex.”

  He slid me a look. “Most people are.” I said nothing. “Take Clarissa, for example.”

  “You don’t know Clarissa.”

  “I know enough to know that if she didn’t need you for some reason, she wouldn’t be living with you.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me something. If she wanted to go live with Gordon and Tracey, would she be welcome?”

  “Oh, yes. Gordon adores the girls and they adore him. Nigel treats them all like kittens.”

  “And would she be allowed to live her life the same way she does now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. So why does she live with you?”

  I blanked.

  “You said Helene sleeps at the hospital because she doesn’t want to be around you, but she’s a resident. She’d sleep there most of the time anyway, so she has no reason to move. Paige also has a job that requires her to work on Friday nights. I’m going to guess Olivia’s either working, out, or getting ready to go out. But Clarissa... She wasn’t dressed to go anywhere. She’s pretty, single, in college, has a driver and money. It’s Friday night. Shouldn’t she be out on a date?”

  “Uh...usually, Friday night is— Uh, she and I— We usually spend it together. Watch movies. Eat pizza and ice cream. Drink beer.”

  His eyes narrowed. “No wonder she’s upset.” Why had I told him that? “Does she hang around the house a lot when you’re home?”

  “Well,” I mused. “I
suppose so. She and I... We have a strange relationship.”

  “So she’s getting something from you that she needs other than a weekly movie-night bonding session with her mommy, or she wouldn’t stay.”

  That was too much of a stretch. “How did you get that from the entire twenty words you’ve exchanged with her?”

  “Thirteen years of counseling and interviewing people who are sometimes pretty desperate to keep themselves from me.”

  Shit.

  “Would it bother you if I have wine?” I asked abruptly, needing to talk about something else.

  “No. Why?”

  “Because I really need a drink.”

  He laughed then, and, like magic, a wine bucket appeared at my elbow and a sommelier I recognized—late of Per Se—had the bottle open and a glass poured for me before I could say a word.

  “How—” Oh, fuck it. If this old Russian frau could afford to woo the head sommelier of a glam restaurant, I wasn’t going to second-guess the wine. I took a sip, closed my eyes and let the flavor devour me.

  “I think she likes it,” Mitch said dryly, and I felt the sommelier’s presence fade.

  “This is...” I couldn’t speak above a whisper. “...the best wine I have ever had.”

  “You can thank Mrs. Andronnikov for that,” he murmured. “Between my ignorance of wine and my ignorance of your tastes, I wasn’t sure how you’d like it.”

  “And where—!” I jumped. There was Polina at our table again, this time sliding a small service of caviar between us. She straightened and glared down at Mitch. “Where is that good-for-nothing brother of yours?”

  Mitch’s brow wrinkled. “He said he was here last month.”

  “Da,” she breathed, “and with his lovely wife. He does not deserve her, you know.”

  Another ghost of a waiter slipped between Polina and me to add a service of pickled herring surrounded by fresh pumpernickel, and a dish of crisp crackers.

  “But!” she was saying. “A month is too long! He is to paint my dining room and let me feed his children.”

  “I’ll give him a nudge.”

  She turned in a huff and disappeared around a dark corner I hadn’t seen.

  “Your brother?”

  “Sebastian,” Mitch said, as he took a cracker and spooned a bit of caviar on it. I followed his lead, and my experience with caviar told me this was some of the best. “Mrs. Andronnikov can lead him around by his nose with her food. He’s painted murals over every inch of this house—more than once. In a style he hates. If he doesn’t, she won’t feed him.”

  I looked at the wall on my right and, though it was really too dark to see, I felt a little dizzy knowing I was sitting next to what, in the art world at the moment, amounted to a fortune.

  I was completely, thoroughly charmed. “Oh, Mitch.” They were the only words I had. “This place...the wine...”

  “It was worth it,” he murmured, staring at me, heavy-lidded. He slid down in his seat a little, relaxed, stretched his long legs out under the table, just brushing mine. “The look on your face, I mean.”

  I swallowed. Was that an innuendo Bishop Hollander had just thrown at me?

  “And,” he said low, slow, never blinking, “you haven’t really started eating. I can’t wait to see how you react to that.”

  My God, the man was seducing me, and very effectively at that.

  “Mitch,” I said abruptly. “I need to know— Why doesn’t it bother you I’ve been a whore?”

  “Because it’s an honest exchange,” he answered immediately, sitting up straight again. The spell was broken. “No long fake courtship. No fake marriage. No living with a person you despise. No deceiving the other person, who may actually be in love. In my opinion, that’s a far worse sort of prostitution.”

  Our second course came. Borscht. But not just any borscht— I looked down at my spoon full of red liquid, startled by a lovely flavor I couldn’t identify.

  Mitch went on once the waiter disappeared. “I don’t like it, because prostitution comes with a big bag of its own problems, especially for people who are desperate—and you weren’t. But I also wouldn’t be here if I were interested in condemning you.” He paused as he took a bit of pickled herring, a dab of what I assumed to be mayonnaise, and laid them on a piece of pumpernickel. “I’ll admit I’m completely mystified as to why you did it, because you could’ve made your fortune back in a dozen other ways, but I’ll figure it out.”

  “You could ask me.”

  “I did. You lied to me.”

  “I did not!”

  “You said you were bored. Bzzt. Wrong answer.” I glared at him over the rim of my wine glass. “Are you going to pout now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mmmm, okay.”

  “You like bad girls. That’s what it is.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, so what?”

  “Was Mina a bad girl?”

  “Other than eloping with a guy her father hates? No.”

  “Did she want to be?”

  That drew him up short. “She liked to play at it here and there,” he admitted gruffly. Looked at his plate and smiled. “Things she thought were risqué.” Chuckled a little. “She never made it to bad. Just cute.”

  “I don’t get you,” I said flatly. “When was the last time you had sex?”

  He pursed his lips in thought. “Let’s see... Trevor’s seventeen, so...eighteen years.”

  “And your sex life wasn’t anything to write home about.”

  “How would I know? I don’t have anything else to compare it to. I did get three kids out of the deal, no divine intervention necessary.”

  “But you—a celibate Mormon bishop—are dating a woman who made her money on her back and now goes around the country browbeating CEOs.”

  Heaving an exasperated sigh, he said, “Jesus didn’t hang out with the Pharisees, Cassandra. The people he hung out with were considered the fringes of society, the sick, the poor, the working class, the Romans, the tax collectors, the prostitutes.” He raised an eyebrow. “And he loved them all.”

  “You’re not Jesus.”

  “Not even close. Like tonight. I should never have popped off at Clarissa like that.”

  I looked at him, sitting there all suave and debonair, his wavy dark-blond hair a little mussed and looking more gold against his navy suit, his blue eyes sharp and intense.

  “Do you hang out with the sick and the poor?”

  “Yes. It’s my job. Actually, it’s one of the reasons I don’t ask to be released. I get the inside information on who needs what.”

  “But it’s limited to your ward, so they’re more like friends, right?” I said snidely. “No personal investment there.”

  “No. Every person who lives in my ward boundary is my responsibility, whether they’re members of the Church or not, and I take that responsibility very seriously. I see a need, I meet it or get it met somehow.”

  “I have a need.”

  His nostrils flared, his eyes darkened, and his lids lowered, but he only murmured, “I know.”

  “Jesus hung out with Mary Magdalene,” I said snidely, but only to take the edge off my arousal. “Maybe he liked bad girls, too.”

  “Magdalene wasn’t a prostitute,” he replied, then took a bite. I knew that, but awaited his explanation while he chewed. “There was the woman taken in adultery—”

  “Cast the first stone, blah blah blah.”

  “Right. And then there was Magdalene. Not the same woman. And,” he continued, “I have reason to believe he really loved Magdalene.”

  I blinked.

  “Yes,” he said dryly. “Like that.”

  “But—”

  “Give me a reason why a Jewish man in a Jewish culture wouldn’t have been raised to be completely, thoroughly, totally, normally Jewish from being circumcised to attaining Bar Mitzvah to getting married.”

  “Is that what your church believes?”

  “No. We speculate. But confirmed bachelorhood w
ithin an ancient Jewish society built on strict tradition doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Maybe he was gay and she was his BFF.”

  He barked a surprised laugh. “Well, okay then.” He paused. “Look, it’s not as if that idea hasn’t been thoroughly explored by half the scholars in the world over the last fifty years. I’m far from unique in believing it.”

  “You’re a Christian who believes it. That’s the bizarre part.”

  He sighed.

  I was as tired of the heavy conversation as he, and only too grateful when the entrée was served: lamb. Exquisitely spiced, not an insipid mint jelly in sight.

  The awkward silence between us was unbearable. It must have been to him, too, because when I looked up at him and chirped, “So tell me about Paris,” he was only too happy to comply.

  After a truly delightful hour of anecdotes—mostly involving Sebastian and his unconventional brand of rebellion involving art galleries and museums and the stock exchange—we wrapped up dinner with a salad and sorbet.

  Mitch endured Polina’s scoldings for not having brought me to her sooner for approval (she approved), and I found my face between two puffy old hands, both my cheeks being bussed heartily and with no small amount of moisture.

  I returned the favor. Without the moisture.

  “Where now?” Mitch asked as he handed me into the car.

  “Fifty-fifth and Ninth.”

  I knew by his expression that he suspected what I had planned. Once inside the Ailey building, I led him to the will-call window, and then allowed him to escort me into the theater.

  “Now it’s my turn to thank you,” he murmured as he settled himself beside me. “I haven’t been here in a while.”

  “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a modern dance fan,” I murmured, but he only smiled.

  The performance was exquisite as usual, and though I had always been proud of Paige’s talent and ability, I’d never attended one of her performances with someone who seemed to understand and appreciate it as much as I did. In fact, I usually attended alone. Gordon and Nigel made sincere-but-standard proud-dad noises, while her sisters only upped the stakes in their competition for pats on the head.

  Were it possible for me to watch Helene and Olivia at work—Clarissa at school—and applaud for them, I’d do so.