by Skye Warren
I’m not sure what I expected after sex beneath the scaffolding. Maybe that Christopher would disappear into the shadows, making me wonder if it was just a dream. Or maybe he’d say something mean about how rich girls don’t have feelings and I’d have to awkwardly flounce out of the building that I own, like that disaster of a dinner at Koi.
Instead he puts my clothing back to rights with careful determination. His expression remains grave even as his fingers brush my bare skin. Then he stands.
His shirt looks a little rumpled, his hair askew, but otherwise he doesn’t look like he just had sex. And he definitely doesn’t look like someone just came while sitting on his face.
“Come on,” he says, holding out his hand.
I narrow my eyes, untrusting. “Where are we going?”
“To my lair,” he says, his voice sardonic. “Where I’m going to have my way with you.”
When Christopher Bardot argues with me he’s attractive, but when he does this dry humor he’s downright irresistible. Somehow my cheeks are warm. “Haven’t you already done that?”
A dark gaze runs over my dress, leaving goose bumps in its wake. A heartbeat remains between my legs, an insistent throb where his cock has been. “Not nearly enough.”
“Lead the way,” I manage to say lightly, as if this is all a big joke. I have a lot of practice with that—pretending that life is a joke instead of tragic. “I’ve always wanted to see your lair.”
A light mist kisses my face when we step outside. My dress doesn’t warm me nearly as well as the jeans and T-shirt I usually wear. Cool night air slides up my legs, and I shiver in the black parking lot.
“Cold?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. The jacket that had been slung over his arm drapes over my shoulders suffusing me with the scent of earth and sex and something purely Christopher. It should probably repel me, but I find myself drawing the material tighter around me.
He takes my hand again as we cross the parking lot, and even in the black of night I can’t help feeling safe. It reminds me of sinking, sinking into the ocean. And Christopher diving in to save me. It created an unbreakable line between whatever neuron in my brain between him and safety. When I’m scared I think of him—and how he would protect me. When I’m happy I wish he were with me to experience it, too. If it were anyone else I would have called this feeling love, but I don’t understand how my heart can betray me with someone who so clearly doesn’t love me back.
We cross the slippery gravel of the library’s parking lot and a cracked street. Then we’re standing in front of a half-built building that looks like it was transplanted out of upscale downtown. Frosted windows do nothing to obscure the marble floors inside or the wide bank of elevators.
“Is this what your half of the library built?” I ask, to remind myself that he only wants to use me. For money. For sex. Sometimes those are the same things, anyways.
It doesn’t mean he has feelings for me.
“Construction has been underway since you left,” he says, in a matter-of-fact voice. “My share of the money is sitting in a bank account. What do you think I should spend it on?”
I think of the way the scaffolding seemed to tremble with the aftershocks of our orgasms. The way the building seems to breathe harder every day, struggling to stay upright. All that money to house books, because knowledge is the only thing that has a chance in hell of saving the west side. I look around at the dilapidated buildings on either side, the way they seem to slouch beside the monument to commercial success between them. “Books,” I say simply.
He gives me an enigmatic smile. “Maybe then I’ll finally learn.”
Sliding glass doors silently open as we approach. I raise my eyebrow. “You have it open.”
A nod toward a black sphere jutting from the metal frame. “Facial recognition.”
“That’s not a little big brother-ish?”
“Big brother is the government. This is a privately owned building, which means we can be as intrusive as we want. Do you have something to hide?”
“Everything,” I say. “Most of it from myself.”
He presses the button for an elevator, and the doors slide open. “After you,” he says, a wave of his arm gesturing me inside. It feels a little like a spider speaking to the fly, but I step inside the elevator and we’re both whisked higher and higher, the lighted buttons rising.
The doors open directly onto the roof, the concrete almost unearthly pristine white. Not enough rain or dirt or time has stained this place, its white floor and short walls and exposed silver pipes. This high it feels like the stars are dangling in front of me, like I can reach out and touch them with my forefinger.
“Oh my God,” I say, taking in the view of the city. “It’s lovely.” Downtown might as well be the next galaxy. And around us there are a hundred thousand pieces of debris orbiting the building. It seems impossible that we can ever get enough inertia to even leave, much less turn this place into a bustling center of commerce. It’s both beautiful and heartbreaking, a combination I’m all too familiar with.
“Yes,” he says, sounding distracted. “Lovely.”
When I glance at him he turns away from me. “Thought you might as well see what you’re fighting for.”
A lump forms in my throat. “You mean what I’m fighting against.”
I know that libraries help communities. That art can save lives. I believe in the power of them both, but looking at the wasteland that is the west side of Tanglewood it’s hard to believe that anything can help.
“Why did you decide to build here?”
“You know why. Cheap real estate. A monopoly on the market.”
Selfish reasons, but they don’t quite ring true. Not anymore. “Is that all?”
He points toward the library. From this angle the broken stained glass dome at the top looks like a gaping hole where the heart used to be. “You can see the cracks in the foundation from here. Look at the height of this side of the building. And then the other side.”
My heart thumps a scared little sound. “Only a little bit.”
“I’ve looked out the windows here for six months. I’ve seen the whole building shudder and shiver and end up one centimeter more uneven.”
“That’s why I have a construction crew. They’re going to fix it.”
“They’re not,” he says, sounding almost sad. “Nothing can fix the building.”
“But Sutton said—”
“Sutton Mayfair would risk your goddamn neck just to get back at me. Don’t believe a damn word he says to you. You need to be in a hard hat before you’re anywhere near that building. And I don’t see why you should be near it at all.”
“You don’t own the library anymore, and you never owned me. With that attitude no wonder you aren’t with someone. Women don’t like being ordered around.”
“You seemed to like it at the poker game,” he says, his voice low.
A flush climbs my cheeks. At the poker game I felt used in a decadent, purely sexual way—but the sex we had under the scaffold was different. It felt like I was the one using Christopher’s body, controlling him, breaking him like a beautiful stallion.
God, no wonder Sutton wanted Christopher. He knew what it could be like.
“Maybe I like ordering you around.” My voice comes out low and liquid, a form of seduction I didn’t know I was capable of until I see Christopher’s eyes darken. “Does a powerful woman turn you on?”
He studies me with those inky black eyes. “Yes,” he says, but though that word reveals so much, it still feels like he’s holding even more inside. Like I’d have to pry him open to find out all his secrets. I’m a little afraid of what I’d find if I did.
“Do you think it would have been different?” I ask, a little wistful. “That kiss in the art gallery. Do you think we would have really dated if my father hadn’t written you into the will?”
He stares at me, his eyes stormy, no sense of stillness now. “Dated? You think I
would have dated you and then… what? We would have had an argument about working long hours or being jealous or whatever the fuck normal people fight about?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, a strange sense of longing tightening my throat.
It would have been nice to find out.
“We wouldn’t have dated,” he informs me, his voice rim. “I would have claimed you. And what’s more you would have claimed me. There wouldn’t have been an end. You want to know if it would be different? Day and night, that’s how different it would be.”
This way is night, dark and a little scary. He doesn’t have to spell that part out for me to recognize that truth. “Why did we let Daddy mess it up?”
“We were young. And I was stupid.”
“You aren’t young anymore.” And he’s a long way from stupid.
He gives me a private smile, as if he knows a secret. “No, not anymore.”
It sounds like a promise, those words. As if he’s going to fix what’s been broken for so long, but some things are damaged right down to their core. Some things can’t ever be put back together. The library looks up at us, its windows shattered and boarded, its walls caving in.
I burn my hand pulling a tray out of the oven. Metal heated to four hundred degrees burned right through the cute dish towel I found at a boutique that says, My safeword is takeout.
“Shit!” I suck on my thumb with a plaintive sound.
Avery gives me a completely unsympathetic snort. “I’ll do it.”
She uses an oven mitt—a plain, utilitarian blue oven mitt that seems to protect her just fine, because she manages to put the tray on the stove without almost dropping it.
“I bow to your greatness, Martha Stewart,” I say, handing her a serving spoon.
We spent the afternoon carving pumpkins. Avery made a traditional jack-o-lantern face. I applied my Smith College art school education to sculpting a penis out of a large orange fruit. And then we cleaned off the seeds, added plenty of butter and salt, and roasted them to perfection. My mouth is watering just looking at them, all browned and glistening.
When we’ve got the pumpkin seeds in a bowl, we join my mother on the sofa, where she’s got the TV queued up to the title screen of An Affair to Remember. “Ready, girls?”
“I’ve never seen this one,” Avery says.
“That’s blasphemy,” my mother says. “This is the most romantic movie.”
I go for a cluster of pumpkin seeds and pop it into my mouth. It burns my tongue. Then the salt and flavor hit me all at once. Orgasmic. “I’ve seen this a million times. And sometimes she’ll replay the scene at the end, the one where he sees her in the theater.”
Mom’s eyes get all dreamy. “And then he goes to her apartment.”
“‘I was looking up,’” I say in my best Deborah Kerr impression. Avery gives me a bemused smile. “You’ll understand in about two hours. And you’ll never look at the Empire State Building the same way. In fact it’s almost like the movie is a statement on the dangers of corporate excess.”
“Oh hush,” Mom says, pressing play. “It’s pure romance.”
The three of us gorge ourselves on butter-coated pumpkin seeds, licking our fingers to get all the salt. Cary Grant and Deborah fall in love on their cruise, even though they’re engaged to other people. Pure romance, my mother said. And it’s true. This is one of the most romantic movies ever made, except for the woman Cary Grant’s character didn’t marry. The man Deborah’s character didn’t marry. Strange, how love makes everything understandable. Even if it breaks someone else’s heart.
We reach the middle of the movie when I realize my mother’s fallen asleep, her head tilted to the side, the blueish veins visible in her eyelids. A knot in my throat, I pull up a blanket around her waist.
“Should I stop the movie?” Avery whispers.
I shake my head, but it’s not really an answer. Part of me wants to shake her, to demand she stay awake long enough to watch her favorite few minutes of her favorite movie. She’s been sleeping more and more, sleeping in late, taking naps.
The nurse told me it would happen.
Frieda also told me to consider a hospice facility, because this is one of many signs that my mother is dying. Her lack of appetite. The bruises that appear on her body even when she didn’t fall down. The way she sometimes wakes up without knowing where she is.
A hospice isn’t going to make that better. No, I should be the one who reminds her gently where she is. I should be the one who coaxes my mother to eat, who sits in vigil beside her while she sleeps.
I take her hand in mine, feeling how terribly cold it is. Unnaturally cold. That’s another sign from the nurse. Fevers and drops in temperature that come and go. How long? I asked her, but the nurse, so full of information, hadn’t wanted to answer that. It could be anywhere from a week to six months. Then you don’t really know. That’s what I wanted to scream at her. Instead I just thanked her with tears in my eyes, stupid, useless tears.
Avery hits the pause button on the remote and comes to kneel in front of us. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “Is there anything I can do?”
“She’ll probably sleep for a couple hours,” I say, shaking my head.
A small smile. “I mean for you.”
That makes me laugh, a watery, strangled sound. “I don’t know.”
Avery takes my other hand, holding it as gently as I’m holding my mother’s hand. We remain linked like that, a chain of solidarity against an enemy that none of us can fight. And maybe that is what I need. Someone to sit here, quiet and still, not asking for anything.
Dark falls around the house, taking away the purple glow. “You should get home,” I murmur, my voice rusty as if I’ve been crying, but I haven’t been, not tonight. It’s like my body feels it the same way, even the times when I can hold in the tears.
“I can stay in a guest room,” Avery says, her hazel eyes troubled.
“Is Gabriel home?” I’m asking about more than his travel arrangements. I’m asking about whether he still feels distant to her. If she needs a place to stay as much as I need her to be here.
She bites her lip. “He had to extend his China trip.”
“Oh. Then by all means, stay in the guest room. We can watch the grand finale tomorrow morning over French toast, which is maybe the only thing that tastes better than roasted pumpkin seeds.”
“Do you think…”
I squeeze her hand gently. “Do I think what?”
“Do you think he would do that?” A glance toward the black TV screen. “You know, find someone else while he’s traveling. Fall in love with her while I’m so far away.”
“Oh God. Oh, honey, no. I shouldn’t have let you see that movie.”
“No, of course you should. It’s her favorite movie.” She glances at my mother’s face, her expression softening. “She deserves to watch whatever she wants to watch.”
“Gabriel Miller would never cheat on you.”
“Right,” she says, but she doesn’t sound sure.
“And if he did, I would cut off his balls and feed them to—”
“He probably isn’t cheating. I just wish he’d come home.”
The hint of doubt in her eyes makes me furious. Not the kind of furious where I want to yell at someone or stomp around. The kind of furious that’s cold and empty. Helpless. That’s what it makes me feel. Which is exactly what my mother’s cancer makes me feel.
Helpless.
The word stays with me through the rest of the long night, through dreams of kings and goblins. I wake restless, as if something has been uncovered—but I don’t know what. I spend the day giving my mother a manicure, a mud mask. A whole spa day in the comfort of her own bathroom. Only after dinner, when I put her to bed, when she drifts to sleep, do I get in my leased BMW and drive to the library.
My tools are neatly stashed in the trunk. The place that I park is right next to the side door, which has a lock. I normally step inside and get to work, my
mind already spinning with ideas of new things to try with the wall. Except tonight I’m more interested in what’s outside the library.
It’s not only being in this building, Harper. It’s the whole damn west side. We want to revitalize it, but it hasn’t happened yet. That means it’s full of crime and violence. It’s fucking dangerous.
There are cracks in the sidewalk, pieces of the curb missing. Large potholes in the street. Those things didn’t really stand out against the backdrop of a building blasted to pieces, but of course this damage must have been here before Christopher and Sutton ever purchased the land.
Behind the library there’s an uneven parking lot that ends with a chain-link fence around the construction happening on the Bardot Tower. They aren’t stuck in an infinite cycle of evaluation like the library, because they tore down whatever poor building stood there. I hate Christopher for his efficient dismantling of the past. And I envy him, too.
Low animal sounds slow my step. It sounds almost like the growl of a rabid dog in the alleyway up ahead. The hair on the back of my neck rises. I should turn around and go inside the library. No, if I were really concerned with safety, I’d get back in my car and drive home. Do you have a death wish? Christopher asked me the question the first day we met, when he found me on the railing of the yacht smoking a joint. Maybe I do have a death wish, or at least morbid curiosity, because I keep creeping forward. Brick is cool against my palms as I lean close to peek around the wall.
There isn’t a wild animal, at least not in the usual sense. Instead there’s a man with his back against the library, his head thrown back, his hands grasping the hair of a girl at his feet.
