I’m almost thirty. In five years, I’ll be eligible to run for President of the United States. My father and his father before him have worn those shoes, and while I haven’t agreed with every policy they’ve backed, I’m honored to follow in their footsteps. Taking a turn in the Oval Office is a burden only a few Americans will ever have the privilege of experiencing.
It’s my proud destiny, my reason for living.
“Did I tell you Lydia will be working full-time on the campaign trail this time around?” My mother’s voice lilts, her face filling with life. “It only seemed fitting, given the fact that her mother will be your father’s running mate again. Lydia has some novel ideas, and we’re so excited to give her a little more influence this time around. She’s really blossomed into a beautiful young woman, the epitome of grace and refinement.”
She looks my way.
“That ship has sailed, Mother.” I clear my throat. “A very long time ago.”
Her shoulders slump, but only for a second. A First Lady can never let her guard down for too long.
“Everyone deserves a second chance, sweetheart. After you two broke up, she moved to Paris for two years. I don’t think she ever got over you.” Mother sighs loud enough for me to hear, as if I’m not already reading between the lines.
What my mother doesn’t know is that Lydia Darlington cheated on me with a greasy Parisian nightclub owner. That’s why she moved away—to be with him.
“She asked about you the other day.” My mother studies my face, searching for a reaction that might give her hope.
“Good for her.” I’ll sidestep this conversation as much as I have to. Frankly, I couldn’t pretend to care if I tried. “Anyway.”
“My goodness.” She clears her throat, tossing a look toward my brother and half expecting him to side with her. “I’m not sure what’s gotten into him today.”
“Hard telling with that one.” My brother’s gaze meets mine. “Always such a closed book.”
“You are American royalty,” my mother says. “Let that guide your every life decision, because you have no other choice.”
My brother rolls his eyes and takes a tight sip of the vodka our server just delivered. Just once, I wish he’d stand up to my parents. If they knew how hungry he was to be next, maybe they’d back off of me. But it doesn’t work that way with them. There’s a proper order to everything, as my father says. Besides, my brother’s rebellious past would make for a campaign nightmare. If anyone digs deep enough, they’ll easily find enough dirt to put a permanent stench on our family’s good name. Keeping him out of the spotlight protects our legacy.
Or so they’d like to believe.
“I know you may be harboring some difficult feelings toward Lydia.” Mother clears her throat and leans in. “But in my heart of hearts, I know you two are meant to be together. Besides, not every marriage is planted with the seed of love.”
“Sometimes they’re just business arrangements.” My brother’s mocking goes ignored.
“A Montgomery-Darlington wedding.” She grins wide, her perfect hands folded across her chest. “Can you imagine the fanfare? It’d be the wedding of the century. And that sweet Lydia would make for the most refined First Lady we’ve had since Jackie O. Your fairytale practically writes itself.”
“Didn’t JFK cheat on Jackie O?” I’ve got to hand it to my brother. He never fails to state uncomfortable truths. In my opinion, it’s exactly why he should be the next President Montgomery and not me. “Like, a lot?”
“Planted rumors.” She waves him away. “The CIA was extremely corrupt in the sixties.”
“Pretty sure it’s a proven fact,” he says.
Her face twists, her lips moving but nothing coming out. It’s rare to see First Lady Busy Montgomery flustered.
“Can we not discuss this at lunch?” she snips. “It isn’t an appropriate topic of conversation.”
I yawn, and I’m more than ready for this lunch to be over despite the fact that we’ve yet to place food orders.
“In many ways, this is a family business,” she says, reaching for her water and turning to the young girl who placed it before her. “Thank you, dear.”
The girl is clearly star struck, her hands trembling and her face flushed as she tries to avoid eye contact with us.
My brother lifts his vodka glass to his lips, hiding his smirk. He lives for this shit.
“Everything we do must be for the greater good,” she continues. “We must always think in increments. Five years. Ten years. Twenty years. Generations and lifetimes. The Montgomery legacy will live on forever, all of us immortalized in history books, our paintings hanging on the walls of the White House long after we’re gone. It’s our job to write history, and as of this moment, you are living it. Every interaction you have, every move you make, every relationship. It’s all shaping the future lives of your children. Your grandchildren. This great and wonderful country.”
My brother offers a limp clap. “Your speech writer come up with that?”
She ignores him, shifting her body my way. “I want you to talk to Lydia again. Try to work things out. You two used to be so happy together, and it would make your father and me extremely proud if you put your differences aside and put forth a little more effort. Personally, I can’t think of a finer woman to carry on the Montgomery line.”
“Poodles,” my brother mutters under his breath. “We’re goddamned purebreds.”
“I’m not interested in making anything work with Lydia.” I adjust my tie. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“It’s time to start thinking about marriage,” she says. “You’ll want to be married before you hit your own campaign trail.”
“It’s at least five years from now. Maybe even ten or twenty.” We’ll see how long I can prolong the inevitable. Either way, I loathe this conversation. Marriage isn’t on my horizon, and if it were up to me, it would never be. There’s nothing exciting about a piece of paper that binds you to someone for the rest of your life.
And love–or the illusion thereof–doesn’t appeal to me. I tasted it once, and I spit it out the second it turned bitter.
“The last unmarried president to be elected was Grover Cleveland,” she says. “It doesn’t happen anymore. It’s practically an unwritten requirement.”
Our server carries a large tray covered with plates of elegantly presented meals. My mother must’ve ordered our lunch before we arrived, because God forbid she leaves a single detail out of her control. I suppose I’d be foolish to expect her to retract her claws from the marriage issue.
“This looks wonderful. My goodness. Thank you very much.” As if a switch has been flipped, my mother smiles and turns back “on,” chatting idly with the server before turning to discuss the weather with us.
I tune her out after a while when my mind elects to replay last night instead.
I know everything there is to know about “Bronwyn.” Her legal name is Camille Buchanan. She’s twenty-four. Marital status is single. Born out of wedlock to a presently retired Tennessee schoolteacher. I know she lives on Shaw Street in Logan Circle. I know her favorite dry cleaner, coffee shop, wine bar, and lingerie store. Her roommate is Araminta Randall, youngest daughter of the Harrison Randall and Mimi Rothschild Randall. Both girls attended Georgetown and studied Theater and Performing Arts. Lastly, once per month, Camille goes home to Tennessee, spending two days with her mother before taking a red eye back to the city.
It’s not that I’ve stalked her; it’s just that when you’re a Montgomery, information is readily available.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw Camille hanging on Senator Bancroft’s arm at a charity masquerade last New Year’s Eve. She wasn’t wearing her mask, though I was. We made eye contact just past the coat check, and for a paralyzed moment, I couldn’t breathe. I’d never seen anything so stunning in all my life.
Her movements were fluid, effortless. Her smoky eyes smiled while her full lips did not. Each sequin on he
r fitted black gown flickered in tandem with the diamonds dripping from her neck and left wrist. Everything around her blurred into the background so that she could shine, and shine she did.
The senator led her by the hand to a private corner away from the crowd, and she turned to give me one last glance before disappearing out of my sight. I spent the rest of the evening searching for her in a sea of masked thousands, only to come up empty-handed and more determined than ever.
I decided then and there that I had to know her, and I knew in that moment she could only ever belong to me.
THREE
Camille
The distant click of my apartment door signals Araminta’s return for the evening. I click my pen and shut my journal after having spent the better part of the last hour chronicling last night’s evening with my mystery John.
Everything I do, every detail, every rendezvous, is logged in my books. I consider them an insurance policy in case any of my clients were to ever do anything extreme, and if something morbid were ever to happen to me, I imagine the police would search my place, find my journals, and narrow down their suspects based on the information they might find.
I’m not naïve enough to think that the very same men who adorn me in diamonds and lingerie wouldn’t put a hit on me if it meant keeping their names clean. It’s happened to women like me before, and it’ll happen again.
None of them want to be caught screwing women who look young enough to be their daughters or, in the regrettable case of Senator Bancroft, women who aren’t their wives.
In a locked suitcase under my bed rest dozens of filled journals, some of which date back to the beginning. If anyone knew these existed, I’d be a walking dead woman. Not even Araminta knows about them. It’s safer that way–for both of us.
I shove my most recent journal between my mattress and box spring and head out to the living room where Araminta steps out of the sexiest pair of patent leather Louboutins I’ve ever seen.
“Those are new.” I smirk, arms folded.
“You like?” She hands one to me for careful inspection, and I run a finger down the spiked metal heel. It’s heart-stoppingly lavish and carelessly extravagant. “They were a gift.”
“Clearly.”
Her blonde waves bounce as she carefully peels away her cashmere jacket in the most appropriate shade of autumnal plum and hangs it in our coat closet.
“I’m dying to hear about your night,” she says with a mischievous glint in her baby blue eyes. “But let me change first. I’m dying to get this thing off.”
She unzips the back of her sheath dress and exhales, hurrying to her room, and I take a moment to appreciate her bombshell beauty as one woman to another. Her hourglass curves are equal parts genetic lottery and hundreds of hours spent in waist trainers. I couldn’t look like Araminta no matter how hard I tried.
I find a spot on our linen sofa and grab a Vogue to pass the time. Flipping to a spread in the middle, an up-and-coming actress models a gold Tom Ford dress covered in Swarovski crystals: the very same one hanging in my closet right now. Growing up in Oakdale, Tennessee, I never dreamt that one day I’d be wearing these lovelies. I can only hope that someday I’ll be gracing these pages as well, forever immortalized.
Returning in head to toe designer gym clothes, Araminta saunters my way and sinks into the club chair in front of our fireplace.
“Okay,” Araminta says. “So how was it?”
Butterflies ignite in my belly as sensory memories of last night’s romp return. My mouth curls. For a second, I can’t find my words, and I need a moment.
“Whoa.” She leans forward, her ovular face scrunched. “We’re smiling. Why are we smiling?”
Her piqued interest is fully warranted. None of my other clients have sent me home wearing a satisfied smile that lasts well into the next day.
I lift a shoulder, burying my grin behind it as best I can. “I don’t know, Minty. It was just . . . different.”
“What’d he look like?”
I shake my head. “I never saw his face.”
“What?”
“He made me put on a blindfold the second I stepped in.”
Her brows meet. “That’s really weird. I mean, I knew it was going to be super-secret, and my contact mentioned the room being dark, but that’s just taking it to a whole level beyond.”
My heart flutters, remembering the way it felt to see nothing while the rest of my senses were heightened.
“Weren’t you scared?” she asks.
“It didn’t feel scary after a while,” I say. “I didn’t have that twisted feeling I get sometimes, you know?”
The two of us have learned over the years to pay attention to our intuition. That inner voice we hear when something doesn’t feel right is seldom ever wrong, and it has saved us both on separate occasions.
“Still.” Her head tilts, and she hasn’t taken her round baby blues off me for two seconds. “I can’t imagine having sex with a complete stranger and not knowing what he looked like.”
“I knew what he sounded like,” I say. “And what he felt like. I think he’s younger. He sounded handsome.”
“Psh,” she huffs. “I can make myself sound like an old lady. Doesn’t mean anything. People can change their voices.”
“He had a nice body,” I add. “He was in shape. His hands were soft. He smelled good.”
I’m listing off all the reasons I’m convinced the man who fucked me under the shield of blackness was some kind of Adonis.
“Oh, my God.” Her face falls. “What if it was really Trey?”
My heart drops.
And then she laughs.
“Don’t do that to me, Minty. God, you almost made me have a heart attack.” I grab a throw pillow and chuck it at her. “I trust you, and I know you trust your contact. For one million dollars and three months of my time, I’ll screw pretty much anyone.”
Except Trey. Naturally.
She rises, trekking to the kitchen on her tiptoes, a subtle homage to the decade of ballet lessons under her belt at her mother’s insistence.
“That’s why you’re my best friend and partner in crime,” she says, grabbing a bottle of artisanal water from the refrigerator.
“Literally.”
“You’re the only girl I know who’s not afraid of the hustle.” She takes a sip and glances out the picture window on the far wall, toward the cityscape beyond. “We’re special, Camille. You know that, right? No one else can do what we do as good as we do it.”
Araminta rests her elbows against the kitchen island. She looks tired, and I’m sure it’s because her current client has the sex drive of an insatiable sheikh. Part of me can’t help but wonder how much longer this can last for her. How much more of herself can she give away before it’s all gone?
Me? I have dreams that go well beyond the short-term accumulation of wealth and fancy clothes. This is nothing but a stepping-stone for me. Minty, on the other hand, lives and breathes for this life, living it one glamorous day at a time.
“Are you really leaving in three months?” Her gaze is fixed outside. “I just don’t understand how anyone could walk away from all this and dive headfirst into that. You know you have greater odds of winning the lottery than becoming some famous movie star?”
“We’re not going to be young and beautiful forever,” I say. “And the way I see it, we have two choices. We can stick around here, spending our nights with older men and living as human sex toys until we’re inevitably replaced by a younger, hotter generation of girls just like us . . . or we can get the hell off this crazy little rollercoaster and pursue our passions while the world is still kind to us.”
“A million dollars won’t go far out there,” she says. “You know that, right?”
“Maybe. But it’s enough to get me started.”
“Hollywood is just as corrupt as DC.” She takes another sip of her water before smiling. “But I guess at least the men are better looking.”
Ar
aminta doesn’t want me to leave. It’s been the two of us since the day we hatched out our five-year plan on the floor of our dorm room as we took shots of cheap vodka and listened to cheesy pop music designed to make young women like us feel invincible. I’d just returned from a life-changing drama class, and feeling dangerously inspired, I proposed my master plan.
We’ve come a long ways since then. And I’d like to believe that if two young women, who knew nothing about anything, could design a life like this out of thin air, my ambitions of making a name for myself aren’t that out of touch with reality.
Plus I’m too damn stubborn to ever give up on my aspirations. I dare someone to try and stop me.
Mark my words: I’m going to be unforgettable someday.
FOUR
“John”
The lock on the hotel room door beeps as I wait in the dark for Camille, and I watch from the shadows as she immediately grabs a blindfold from the console table and slips it over her face.
My heart races the way it did the first time I ever saw her.
“Good evening.” I rise, stepping toward her as soon as her vision is obscured.
“Hello, John.” Her pink lips spread wide, revealing a dazzling, perfect smile that lights up the dark. “And how are we doing on this lovely Saturday evening?”
“Better now that you’re here.” I keep my voice low and steady, as generic as possible.
It takes every ounce of strength I have to contain myself, to enjoy this and not spoil it like an impatient child on Christmas morning, ripping into their gifts in five minutes flat.
“I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to wear.” She spins slowly, showing off the curve-hugging dress she wore tonight. It hangs off her shoulders, showing off her delicate décolletage. “What do you think?”
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