Chapter 13

The disorientation that came with waking up in an unfamiliar bed was not unfamiliar to Connie Carlyle. In the twilight of half-sleep with a sweet, postcoital langour slowing her thoughts, she imagined she was back in the Loft and the weight rising from the bed was Colin. Then, twenty years of memory settled in around her thoughts like rubble after an earthquake. Colin was long dead and, while Connie was back in the loft again, it wasn’t really the Loft. When Colin had lived here, it was configured for one person to have hundreds of guests. No matter what room you woke up in, it was Colin’s room. His son had divided half the space to keep his friends close and give each a bit of privacy.

Plus, there was no hot tub. The loft would never be the Loft without a hot tub. Still, what Nick had built here had the air of the first, best days of Colin’s occupancy. It was full of beautiful, creative young people again. Connie wasn’t young anymore, but she felt younger than she had in a long time just by being here. The man who’d just gotten up from the bed helped considerably.

“Connie...” he whispered.

“I’m awake,” she rolled on her back. “Are you going?”

“I need to. I wasn’t planning to stay past midnight. I’ll be back later this morning.” He stood at the foot of the bed. “I’ve got some kittens to deliver.”

Connie levered herself up on her elbows. “Kittens?”

Ed laughed. “The kid’s an easy touch. He agreed to adopt three kittens from the shelter my hospital runs.”

Connie parsed that statement while leaning out of the bed to gather her clothes. “You ... work in an animal hospital now?”

Ed tapped his forehead with three fingertips in a gesture of forgetfulness. “Sorry. We talked so much last night, I forgot we never got to now. I ... am the chief administrator of Brownfield Mills Animal Hospital and Shelter Services - the kind of job I used to wonder how the hell anybody wound up doing before I started wondering how the hell anybody ever worked as a reporter once they grew up.”

Connie collected her dress from the floor and shook it out before wriggling back into it. “I’m the figurehead at a modeling agency with my name on it. My partners have been pushing me out of day-to-day operations because I have no business sense.”

“That’s terrible,” said Ed. “You want me to go kick their asses?”

Connie laughed and rose, turning her back. As Ed zipped her up, she ended on a sigh. “No. They’re not wrong. I went into managing models because I was a model, not because I was a manager. I hired Gary and Anthony to do all the things I didn’t want to do. I just wish they’d talked to me about it before they started doing so many of the things I did want to do.”

“Have you thought about going back into acting?” Ed hugged her.

“Hollywood isn’t kind to women my age.” Connie relaxed into the hug. “Hell, it’s not kind to anybody, but I don’t need to spend my time pretending to be somebody’s mother. I already feel like I’m doing that half the time with Cyrene.”

Ed sat in the chair at the foot of the bed. “I heard you had a daughter, but she’s been pretty much out of the public eye. She’d be...”

“Eighteen on Wednesday. I’m flying out to LA tonight to be there.” Connie sat on the arm of Ed’s chair and touched his shoulder. “I’ll be back next weekend. Do you want my number?”

Ed stroked the back of her hand. “Do you have to ask? We never did get to talk about what you wanted to talk about last night.”

“I didn’t really want to talk about it last night.” Connie finally spotted her second shoe. It was halfway under the bed and her dress really wasn’t made for crawling. She pointed it to Ed. “Could you get that, please?”

Ever the gentleman, Ed retrieved it and offered it to her. “Do you want to talk about it now? I have a little bit of time and I’m probably as primed to forgive some past indiscretions as I’ll ever be.”

Connie both did and didn’t want to tell Ed what she’d almost told him last night. She wanted the closure, but he would look at her differently once he knew. She rose and kissed him, sweetly and gently in case it was the last time. “Last night was something I should have done twenty years ago and didn’t. Even though it’s long past the time when it could have made a difference, it still felt right.”

“You ... wanted to steal me from Anna?” Ed looked poleaxed.

She went and sat on the edge of the bed, putting some distance between them. “I was Colin and Lauren’s lover for almost seven years - nearly my whole adult life until he died. I went away and came back. Lauren went away and came back. But, it felt permanent, like a marriage with three people in it.”

Ed asked, “And you wanted that with me and Anna?”

“I didn’t pull your wife out of that hot tub and keep her in my apartment for two weeks out of some noble, higher intention, Eddie. I did it because I wanted her. I didn’t know you were in the picture until later. By the time I met you, I knew things weren’t going to happen between me and Anna and I had no idea how to even talk about what I wanted. So, I didn’t say anything.” She met his eyes. “I didn’t want to steal you from Anna. I wanted to keep both of you. But, I did try to steal Anna from you before I knew you.”

Ed interlaced his fingers and ran both hands slowly over his head. His eyes never left her, but Connie had no idea what he was thinking until he spoke. “We had to get out of New York, me and Anna.”

“So did I. I needed to get away from the chaos Colin left behind and find some stability so badly, I ran all the way to LA and married Bruce Porter after turning him down for years,” Connie shook her head. “I wouldn’t have had Cyrene, but I probably would have been better off in Greenwood Lake with you and Anna and Nick.”

“Brownfield Mills,” Ed corrected her. Then, he asked, “What do you think happened with Anna and Colin?”

Connie shrugged. “It didn’t bother me that they slept together. Colin was never going to be monogamous ... or whatever it is you call it when you’re faithful to two people.”

Ed shook his head. “The night Colin died and you pulled Anna out of the hot tub, she wasn’t in there by accident. She was trying to drown. It would take years for her to know for sure that Colin had raped her, but she knew someone had.”

“Rape?” Connie felt like she’d been doused in ice water. “Colin wouldn’t ... the Colin I knew...” Tears sprang to her eyes, “God. He changed so much in the time I was gone making that stupid movie. Anna never told me any of this. I swear.”

“She didn’t call it that until right before she died. And Colin had so many chemicals in his blood when they pulled him out of the river, he shouldn’t have been able to walk...” Ed shook his head. “That was his decision. It doesn’t excuse what he did. But, he’s gone. She’s gone. It’s buried with them.”

Connie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and saw that Ed’s were red as well. “Nick’s not like him, you know - not in the way that things went wrong. Colin was always alone, above the rest of us, even Lauren and me. We were visitors. The first thing Nick did was surround himself with his friends and get them to come live with him. He has a support network. Colin had an audience.”

“And he’s hardly a drinker,” Ed pointed out. “What happened to Anna had a terrible impact on him. He has a healthy respect for the things that killed her. He has her depression, but he takes his meds. She never did. Still, everything I see out there that reminds me of what this place became at the end gets under my skin. I did what I could to put a good head on his shoulders, but I’m not going to stop worrying any time soon.”

Connie sighed and closed her eyes. “So, are you still primed to forgive me now, Eddie? I’d understand if you hated me.”

“I don’t hate you. And I don’t feel like I’m in any position to judge you enough to forgive you.” He rose and turned on the bedside light, banishing some of the shadows cast by the moon. Sitting behind her on the edge of the bed, he collected his watch and strapped it on. When he spoke, his voice was heavy with emotion, “Whatever reason you had when you saved Anna, you did save her. You saved my son. The years we had together, we had because you were kind to her. That was the word she always used to describe you - how kind you’d been in giving her time to hide when she needed.”

“I tried to seduce her,” said Connie.

“Your timing was terrible. But you didn’t know.” Ed rose again. “I have to go. I can still hear the party going on and I don’t want to be crying when I walk to the elevator. People might think you broke my heart.”

Connie found her purse, extracted a business card, and wrote her private number on the back. Her fingers trembled when she offered it to Ed, but he took it and tucked it into his shirt pocket. “I’m leaving on vacation tomorrow. I’ll be gone for three weeks. My timing is pretty terrible, too.”

“Call me when you can.” said Connie.

He kissed her before he left and, when she clung to him, held her in strong arms. A weight Connie had been carrying for almost twenty years lifted a little off her chest.

Once he was gone, she stripped again and got in the shower. When she woke to find him leaving, she’d meant to head out with Ed, but where he could maintain his dignity by just not crying on his way out, her own artifice required a clean face and a fresh coat of makeup. She could leave her hair alone, though. She didn’t mind people knowing what she and Ed had done, She just didn’t want them to see that it had affected her in any way.

She put on her runner’s makeup, doing the calculus of sleep. She’d had maybe five hours and would like more, but her running partner would be waiting for her on the Upper East Side in less than an hour and she had an appointment with Emily to help her train around her injury at nine thirty. It was going to be a long morning.

By the elevator, someone had left a glass bowl with a sign over it that read “PLEASE LEAVE BORROWED KEYS IN BOWL. THANKS.” The key to Apartment I joined two others. Connie smirked, wondering if anybody at the party besides her or Ed would understand the optics of a bowl of keys. Randomness had never been Colin’s style when he could be in charge, but she certainly knew about key parties, even in the nineties.

A quick stop at her apartment to change into sweats and a sports bra and drop off her purse left her just enough time to arrive at Carl Shurz Park two minutes early. She needn’t have bothered to rush quite so much. She finished her stretching exercises and was still alone. She’d run three quarters of the way around the park before Lauren fell into step beside her. Without even a “hello,” she asked, “So, has it changed?”

“Completely. The kid’s a nerd. The Loft is all chopped up into apartments. And there’s no hot tub anymore,” said Connie. Every word felt like a betrayal, but Lauren had taken an unwholesome interest in every detail ever since finding out Connie was working with Colin’s son. She’d become very careful with her words, doing nothing to inflame her old friend and sometimes lover’s obsession any further.

“Everything dies,” said Lauren dismissively. “Colleen’s gone missing again. And now that she’s eighteen, the cops won’t even try to bring her back.”

“That’s awful,” said Connie, not sure if she was lying. Lauren’s daughter had been running away with increasing success since she was twelve and Connie couldn’t blame her. While Lauren was one of the two great loves of her life, she’d never been the easiest person to live with. Connie had never managed to do it for more than a few weeks at a time and couldn’t imagine eighteen years. She just hoped the girl landed on her feet. An awful lot of people spent their lives waiting for beautiful young women to prey on.

“She’ll come back when she runs out of money,” Lauren put on a little burst of speed, forcing Connie to catch up or be left behind. “Did you at least get laid at this nerd party?”

Connie shook her head. “I couldn’t find anybody that looked old enough that I didn’t want to check their ID first.”

Shelby tried and failed to clear her mind as she stood under Simon Anderson’s shower and washed away the traces of the night before. It wasn’t the shower’s fault. The shower looked like it belonged in a high-end hotel, a glass and chrome box that Simon could, if he wished, stand in being pounded by high-pressure hot water and imagine he was the billionaire instead of Nick.

Undoubtedly, Simon wished that were the case. Contrary to his accusation that Shelby didn’t know who Max was before Nick got rich, Shelby knew everyone in their graduating class and most of the underclassmen. Brownfield Mills High had been a three-year exercise in constant threat assessment and Shelby knew everyone who could hurt her. Max, with his quick wits and sharp tongue could, in any moment, say something that would stick with you for the rest of your high school career.

She hadn’t chosen the right word when she said she thought Max was cool. Shelby knew far more words than she used, but she wasn’t sure she knew one to describe Max. Yes, he’d coined the nickname “Titstick” for her. But, he’d also apologized for it when he saw that it had spread so far. He even took the time to explain that he’d been trying to make fun of the guys around her, not her. Given their relative social status, he shouldn’t have known his apology would matter or thought it was necessary. But, she’d found it a kindness.

There was no kindness in Simon Anderson. Shelby had met him for the first time sophomore year when she’d been struggling to keep up with her math class. Everyone said Simon was a math genius and, as well as Shelby could judge such things, he was. But he was also a simmering cauldron of barely-contained, omnidirectional rage. He would have tutored her just for the pleasure of lording his obvious superiority over her and doing his best to make her feel worthless. Shelby got enough of that already and decided to settle for struggling through the minimum math requirements with barely-passing grades.

As someone who prided herself on knowing how the people around her could hurt her, Shelby always kept half an eye on Simon. There were a lot of malcontents in Brownfield Mills, but most of them had the good manners to dress in black and wear inappropriate amounts of eyeliner. Simon wore suits to school and seemed to revel in the taunting he got for it. He was, in Shelby’s opinion, the Class of 2015’s Most Likely To Go Full Columbine.

But, he was also the only one of Nick’s inner circle who’d accepted her friend request after the news of his good fortune started to get around. And he was the one who’d texted and invited her to the party. So, it was Simon’s shower she wound up in.

Shelby didn’t blame the rest of them for not responding. They were on top of the world now and she hadn’t given any of them much reason to love her. Only Simon had the temperament and disliked her enough to want to grudge-fuck her. She could work with that. It was an honest emotion and Simon, for all his flaws, was unfailingly honest. Shelby’s boyfriends had all wrapped their misogyny in cotton, going to great lengths to pretend she wasn’t just a turkey head on a stick they could hump for a while before moving on to more heads on other sticks. They knew to within a syllable and a cent what sweet words and pretty gifts to give in order to keep the sex coming. And if they forgot, Shelby was quick to remind them.

As she toweled off, she admitted that she’d crossed a rubicon last night with Simon. She’d always been a chameleon, picking up the characteristics displayed and desired by whoever she was with. She’d picked up the phrase “crossed a rubicon” and a certain detached air of noblesse oblige from Titus, her junior year boyfriend who overused the first phrase and got angry when she used the second one because he didn’t know what it meant. Sophomore year, she’d been with Corey and still had a closet full of Yankees-themed clothes tucked deep in a closet somewhere to show for it. Her nominally current boyfriend Beck was a pervert who liked to make her come while hurting or humiliating her. She was kind of amazed she’d gotten through a year of Beck without sleeping with another girl. If he’d pressed the issue, she would have. Once she was out of Brownfield Mills, she was never coming back. Nothing she did there really mattered. The whole town could burn to the ground the day she started college as far as she cared.

That thought, not untrue, told her she was already shedding Beck’s coloration and taking on Simon’s as she understood it. She hardly needed a reminder. In some ways, last night had been exhilarating. Her anger, normally so carefully folded up and shoved into the back of her mind, had risen to meet Simon’s and it had felt like finding out she had another limb she’d never used. It felt good to spar with him. Hell, it felt good to be honestly disliked. And it felt good to be told the truth. Simon didn’t like her, but he wanted to fuck her. Because he didn’t like her, he wanted to fuck her. And he wanted to fuck Alexis. It was a shame Shelby had dragged Alexis into this. If she could be said to have a best friend, Alexis was it. Shelby had negotiated bringing her here because she wanted to not be completely alone among the conquerors and because, if anyone deserved a chance to get out of Brownfield Mills, it was Alexis.

When she stepped out into Simon’s bedroom, Alexis was already awake and dressed in last night’s dress. She came over when Shelby emerged. “I have to go. They figured out I wasn’t at your house last night. I’m probably grounded for the rest of my life.”

Shelby shook her head and collected her dress and bra. “I bet they don’t. Just tell them Nick hinted he might contribute to your father’s next campaign.”

“I don’t think Nick even knows I was here,” said Alexis.

“So? He may be considering it anyway. He certainly splashed a lot of money around town on his way out.” Shelby let her towel fall to her waist so she could put her bra back on.

Alexis nodded, then bit her lower lip. “I guess I blew it with Dennis. Huh? He won’t touch either one of us now that we’ve been with him.” She tilted her head to the bed where a naked, face-down Simon slept the sleep of the shameless.

“I guess we got the order backwards if we wanted to do both twins,” said Shelby. Dennis would certainly have been a much better choice if they’d had one. “I don’t think we could have pried him off the surf goddess even if we’d joined forces.”

“She was so pretty.” Alexis sounded wistful. “No offense.”

Shelby started to ask why she would take offense. Emily was gorgeous. Then, Alexis was kissing her. It was a good kiss, maybe better than the ones they’d shared last night, mimicking real passion, desire, and maybe a little bit of pent-up yearning. It was a shame no one saw it.

Shit. No one saw it. They were alone in a room and Alexis had just kissed her - really kissed her. And Shelby had kissed her back. Her hands were still buried in her friend’s hair. She managed to extract them slowly without pulling. But, she had no idea what to say. What had they been talking about?

“I really have to go, but text me when you can,” said Alexis quietly. “Maybe I won’t be grounded all summer. It would be great if we could hang out in the Village together before we both leave for college.”

By the time Shelby remembered Alexis had said “no offense” and she’d meant to say “none taken,” Alexis was gone, out the door and on her way back to Brownfield Mills.

“Fucking shit,” Shelby muttered and mechanically got dressed in last night’s clothes. Where the hell had that come from? She scanned her memory for signs Alexis had been into her all along and immediately came up with about a dozen - cryptic statements that weren’t at all cryptic in hindsight, wistful looks, and a certain physicality she’d noticed, but not thought remarkable. There was a whole lesbian romantic comedy in her past that she hadn’t known she was a part of.

“I am such a fucking idiot,” she muttered, wriggling to zip herself back into her dress. She glared at Simon’s sleeping form. Jumping on the bed and beating the living shit out of him would probably condemn her to eight more weeks of Brownfield Mills before heading off to Wharton. But, she was sorely tempted.

She wondered if Nick had any idea what he was unleashing on the world by giving Simon Anderson access to large amounts of wealth. Simon with money was like Caligula waiting to happen.

Before the fantasy of caving in Simon’s skull with a tasteful, expensive-looking torchere lamp could go too far, Shelby made a sharp turn on her heel and headed out into the lounge. She still had groundwork to lay. The sex last night hadn’t been Shelby’s best. It had been too immediate and emotional to draw out or finesse, particularly since that emotion was anger. She probably got some extra credit for betraying her friend, but she couldn’t guarantee Simon wouldn’t choose to just send her home and never invite her back for the simple pleasure of doing so.

If she wanted to guarantee herself access to the loft, the city, and the incredibly wealth centered on Nick Coyle, she needed Simon to be more than someone who liked fucking her. She needed him to be an ally. To do that, she needed to find or create a common enemy for them. Unfortunately, there was only one obvious choice.

At the end of the hallway leading into the residential wing, she took a deep breath, straightened her clothes and her spine, and strode forward with her head high. If Simon were going to be a new Caligula, she would shape herself into his Drusilla, no matter how creepy that particular metaphor was.

She spotted Max pouring himself a cup of coffee and headed over, thinking that she never really had properly thanked Titus for sharing his half-assed knowledge of ancient Rome with her.

By the time Max and Paige dragged themselves out of bed and into the lounge on the morning of the fifth, the staff of the loft had removed all but the human indications there had been a party here the night before. Every bit of detritus had been cleaned up. The couches were in their original configuration. The small, four-person tables that had dotted the room were gone, replaced by a single long table big enough to seat about a dozen - twice the loft’s putatively normal complement.

Only Max and Paige and a girl he didn’t recognize, still wearing the previous night’s dress, gave away the secret. They all looked post-coital to one degree or another. At least Max assumed anyone seeing the giant smile he couldn’t seem to wipe of his face would know only one thing could have put it there. Paige, drowsing at the breakfast table, was sporting classic Just Been Fucking hair. The girl in the black and white dress and high heels still had wet hair, which was its own JBF signal. Plus, she kind of looked like Shelby Carson, who brought sex to mind even when she was fully dressed and made up.

“Hey, Max. Pour me a cup. Would you?” Shelby asked.

May handed her the cup he’d just decanted from the fifty-cup pot before catching on. “Shelby, what are you doing here?”

“Party dress, high heels, wet hair first thing in the morning, Max.” Shelby turned to add milk to her coffee. “You tell me what I’m doing here.”

“It looks like you standard issue Saturday morning walk of shame, a post-mating ritual frequently performed by the promiscuous American female.” Max poured himself another cup of coffee, then one for Paige. “My question was really why you’re doing it here in Nick’s clubhouse.”

Shelby smirked. “This is where the popular boys hang out now. Where else would I be?”

In school, Max had mostly avoided Shelby and her crowd. But, her crowd wasn’t here. Shelby by herself wasn’t as dangerous as the cluster of grunting, testosterone-laden brutality monkeys that had perpetually circled her waiting for her to become either available or vulnerable. “Are you staying for breakfast?”

Shelby lowered her head for a moment. “I thought I might stick around.”

Max tilted his head. “Join us.”

Shelby looked surprised. “Ok. I’m just going to grab some food.”

Back at the table, he placed Paige’s coffee in front of her. Paige said, “Who’s the pretty girl?”

“You are,” said Max automatically, still half awake.

Paige laughed. “I wasn’t playing parrot. Who was that you were talking to? I haven’t met her.”

“Ah.” Max considered his new words carefully. By having sex with a real, live human girl, he’d undoubtedly set up a tent in a minefield he didn’t know any of the paths through. “That’s Shelby. We went to school together. She provided a valuable public service by keeping some of our biggest potential date rapists out of the dating pool.”

“Ok.” Paige sipped her coffee. “Now, give me the version that doesn’t have a rape joke in the middle of it.”

“She ... uh, dated some of the most popular guys at our school - a different senior every year, I think. Last year, it was the star running back. This year, it’s the intense, brooding vampire-looking guy who pulls the wings off of flies for fun and doesn’t understand why the dissections we do in biology class don’t involve live animals.”

“So, did you go to a really small high school or did you just stalk her?” Paige asked. “I don’t have that kind of dossier on the people I went to Riverwalk with.”

“Small school,” said Max. “I tried to avoid Shelby in high school. The guys she dated were part of the bad crowd - or as we called it in Brownfield Mills, pretty much everybody. Everybody we grew up with was either planning to get out of town or become a career criminal.”

“Seriously?” Paige raised an eyebrow.

“With some exaggeration,” said Max. “Brownfield Mills was a mob town during Prohibition and somebody still gets busted for making meth there about once a year. It was a vacation town for a while, but only until the lake turned green in the early sixties. There’s an animal hospital and a marina, but it’s not really anywhere people mean to live. It’s just kind of close to a lot of places that are less terrible.”

Paige gestured with her head. “So, what’s the Queen of Thunderdome doing here then?”

“By all evidence, she hooked up with somebody here last night, but I don’t know who. She wasn’t really friends with any of us ... which means it must have been Simon.” Max tapped his forehead at the realization.

“Is Simon the one with the hair?” Paige asked.

“Simon’s the one who always wears suits. He’s twins with the one with the hair. That’s Dennis. They’re the world’s least identical identical twins,” said Max.

“So much new information. Explain, Captain Exposition.”

Max smiled. He was smitten so badly with Paige, but this was a much better version of smitten than he’d had in the past - the kind where he got affection back for affection given. “Dennis and Simon really are identical twins. Simon fell off his bike and broke his ankle when he was like eight. While he was laid up, he got pneumonia and spent most of the summer in bed. Fast forward ten years. Dennis is a mellow, would-be rock star. Simon is an intense young man and a math nerd. Before Nick invited us all to Neverland, Simon was going to Stanford and Dennis was thinking about starting another band.”

Shelby sat across from them. Max introduced her to Paige, who moved in closer to Max, pressing herself against his side as she greeted the newcomer.

Shelby shook her hand across the table. “Now, I get the joke.”

Paige stiffened fractionally. “Sorry?”

Shelby looked at Max. “Simon tried to convince me you’d slept with Taylor Swift. I see the resemblance ... in the face.” Paige relaxed. Max tensed. He smelled a put-down coming.

If it was coming, it was interrupted by another young woman coming to the table holding a tray with coffee and food. She sat next to Shelby, pushed her hair back out of her face. “Hey, Max.”

“Tiffany. You stayed the night?” Max asked.

“Kind of. I got about two hours of sleep in one of the guest rooms,” said Tiffany. “I just wanted to refuel before I took off.”

Paige stared. “You are Tiffany Glass. Right?”

Tiffany gave a sleepy smile. “Tiffany Patton, actually. Glass was just a stage name.”

Paige looked at Max. “You didn’t tell me you knew Tiffany Glass ... or Patton.”

“We just met last night. She was playing guitar with Dennis in the theater corner.” Max introduced Paige and Shelby to Tiffany, then added, “I guess I should know who you are. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said Tiffany. “Imagine me with too much black eyeliner and messy ... err, messier blonde hair.”

Max shook his head. “I...”

“You’re really not up with the times. Are you, Max?” Shelby said.

“It’s cool,” said Tiffany. “I have a band. We do all right.”

“Didn’t you win a Grammy?” Paige asked.

“Nominated,” said Tiffany. “Lost to Taylor Swift ... quietly.”

“Sorry,” Paige winced.

“Don’t be,” said Tiffany. “It wasn’t the album I should have made. I like what I’m doing now better.”

Max just watched the interaction. Apparently, on this side of the looking glass, he could meet a Grammy-nominated musician in his living room and assume she was just a girl with a guitar. The name “Tiffany Glass” was starting to ring a bell, but he didn’t pay much attention to pop music.