20. Delilah
DELILAH
The butler has my coat in his hands before I get halfway down the hall.
I take it and put it on and start doing the buttons. While I’m doing them, I try the last reasonable idea I have left.
“Okay. So here’s what makes the most sense,” I say.
“You drop me at the shop. I take a shower in the sink like the raccoon that I am. I put on the one nice dress I own, which is at my house, which I can’t go to, so scratch that, I put on the black one I wore Christmas Eve, which is in my trunk.
Then you pick me up at nine and we do whatever this is. ”
Kane pulls on his own coat. “No,” he says.
“That’s it? Just no?”
“Did I stutter?”
He holds open the door for me. The cold comes up the steps at us.
Outside, I see a car at the curb, sleek and black, engine running.
A man in a chauffeur’s uniform is standing at the back door with his hand on the handle.
He doesn’t look like any chauffeur I’ve ever seen, though.
He’s got a shaved head and a piercing through one eyebrow.
When he sees me looking, he inclines his head and says, “Ma’am. ”
“That’s Stepan,” Kane says.
I wave meekly. “Hi, Stepan.”
“Ma’am.”
Kane escorts me down the steps and then helps me into the backseat. It’s so warm and cozy in here, and— My God, are those built-in massagers?
Shut up, idiot, I snap at myself. This is business, remember? Nothing more. It’s basically a hostage situation.
But my body and my brain are not on the same page. My body wants to live here.
Kane gets in on the other side. The door shuts behind him with that expensive thunk and hiss that luxury cars do best. It’s the sound of money closing around you.
Stepan pulls out. I look out the window at the doorman still salting his stretch of sidewalk. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“You know, I don’t think it would kill you to provide just one—only one!—piece of information in advance. Try it! You might like it.”
“I’ll pass.”
I fold my arms. The stupid, magical seat keeps kneading my lower back with its stupid, magical hands.
Nineteen-hour days spent standing on rubber mats have given me a spine that pops like a glowstick when I sneeze, and this dumb Bond villain car is doing more for me in four minutes than the heating pad I bought off a pharmacy clearance rack ever has.
I wonder what Priya is doing. She’s at the shop right now, worried sick about me but probably working hard nonetheless. I bet she’s pulling the last of the Chelsea buns and keeping a careful eye on Zara, who I’m sure is parked on the office cot with her tablet and a broken snowman cookie.
Before I left, I promised her we’d be okay. All of us.
I don’t know if I’m “okay,” in the technical sense of the word. I guess I am right this second. I’m in a car that’s gotta be worth half a million dollars, getting my lumbar knots rubbed out and on my way to who knows where for who knows why.
But will I continue to be okay when we get to wherever we’re going?
Stay tuned to find out.
We go up the West Side. Stepan drives fast and smooth in a way that makes me realize how badly I drive.
Everything outside is lit up and crowded.
People in sequins and puffer coats, club girls in glittering dresses that barely cover their asses, a guy selling glowing plastic 2027 glasses out of a milk crate.
It’s a whole city getting ready to be happy at midnight.
I’d really like to be happy at midnight, too.
I turn to eye the man on my left. He’s the one who holds all the keys to my future. Will I be happy at midnight? How about in four months? How about in four minutes? I don’t know, but he does, and that’s really starting to irk me.
I keep pestering him the whole way, but Kane doesn’t even look at me. He just gazes out of the window with a half-smirk on, acting like my voice simply goes in one ear and out the other. Shockingly, it does not improve my mood.
We finally come to a stop on a side street off Madison. I immediately distrust the store we’ve arrived at.
It’s one of those places with no prices in the window. Actually, there’s almost nothing in the window at all. One dress on a headless mannequin, one pair of shoes on a little marble block, and a lot of empty space around them. It’s as if the stuff inside is too important to be crowded.
The awning is a very chic dark green. The name is in gold letters so thin I have to squint to read them, and even then, I’m not sure I’m pronouncing it right in my head.
MAISON D’HIVER, I think? I’m pretty sure that means “House of Winter,” but I got a C- in high school French, so I’m probably the wrong girl to ask.
More of those gold letters are etched on the glass.
HOLIDAY HOURS
DEC 31: 10 A.M. – 2 P.M.
CLOSED JAN 1
I check the clock on the dash. It’s twenty after three.
“They’re closed,” I announce.
Kane doesn’t answer. Stepan is already out and coming around to my side.
“Kane. Look at the door. It says two o’clock. We’re over an hour too late.”
“They’re not closed for us.”
“Are you confused? That’s not how store hours work.”
“These do.”
Stepan opens my door and the cold crawls in. I don’t move.
“Then are we breaking in? I can’t do that.
I’m a good citizen. Never committed a crime in my life, not even a parking ticket.
Well, unless you count the time I told the health inspector our walk-in thermometer was new.
But that’s, like, a white lie at worst. ‘New’ is a relative term, you know what I mean? ”
Kane finally looks at me, and he’s got that little curl at the corner of his mouth that I’m learning to be nervous about.
“Get out of the car, Lilah.”
“Ugh. Fine.”
When we get close enough, I see that there’s a woman standing just inside the door in a razor-sharp black suit with her hands folded, watching us come up the sidewalk like she’s been standing there a while.
She unlocks it before Kane reaches for the handle.
“Mr. Makov,” she croons. “We’re ready for her.”
Up close, it becomes obvious just how jaw-dropping this woman is.
She’s very tall and very thin. Pilates-every-day thin, sparkling-water-and-a-single-almond thin.
Her platinum blonde hair is pulled back so tight and so glossy that it looks lacquered on.
Her lipstick is a brown-red I’ve seen in magazines and never once on a human face in Sunset Park.
Her cheekbones could slice a wedding cake into perfect even slices without a knife.
She’s gorgeous. Objectively, professionally gorgeous.
And she’s got that thing.
That thing my sister has.
It’s not the face, exactly. It’s the stillness of her hands, the total lack of apology in how she takes up space in a doorway. The bone-deep certainty that whatever room she’s in has been arranged around her arrival.
Vivian has been standing like that since she was six years old in a sash and plastic tiara.
And I know what happens when I come across women like her. I brace myself for The Shift—for the moment she looks past me at Kane and I recede into the background like the Ghost of Christmas Past.
“This is Ms. Dorsey,” Kane says.
Her eyes come to me, briefly, and then veer back to him. “Of course. Is she looking for evening wear, or something more day-to-night?”
I open my mouth. “Evening, I guess? I don’t really know what the—”
“Evening it is,” she says to Kane. “And what’s our budget this evening, Mr. Makov?”
“There isn’t one.”
“Perfect.” She turns and starts striding away, hips whipping from side to side like she’s on a Paris runway. “Let’s get her into the fitting room and I’ll pull some things I think will work beautifully on her.”
With a nasty taste brewing in my mouth, I follow her back.
We emerge into a fitting room. In the center is a low, crushed velvet bench the color of oatmeal, next to an oblong side table with a bottle of sparkling water sweating on a linen napkin and a tray with chocolate truffles.
A hyper-modern chandelier dangles overhead.
It looks like a fistful of needles frozen after God threw them down at the earth.
And mirrors. So many of them.
I see myself from every angle, the ones I know and the ones I’ve never gotten to see before.
I’m usually not such a fan of mirrors. I know which ones in my life are safe and which are to be avoided at all costs.
The one in my bakery bathroom is so chipped that it can’t possibly reveal all my flaws, so that’s fine.
Back at home—well, the place that used to be my home—I keep the closet door shut so the full-length reflection can’t horrify me without warning.
Here, there’s nowhere to hide. It’s Front Delilah, Side Delilah, Three-Quarter and One-Quarter and Seven-Eighths Delilah. All my many stains and imperfections are on crystal-clear display.
I look down at the floor to avoid the barrage of badness, but even that doesn’t spare me. It’s polished stone, and like the floor in Kane’s house, I can see myself in it.
The woman comes back with five garments over her arm and hangs them on a brass hook. As she works, she starts talking to Kane, who is standing in the doorway of the corridor with his hands in his pockets.
“So I’ve pulled a couple of options,” she says.
“This one’s gorgeous, very structured. It’s got a lot of internal engineering—” She turns a black dress on the hanger so he can see the back of it.
“—and then these three are cut with a bit more forgiveness through the middle. Very flattering to Ms. Dorsey’s, ahem…
” She offers a little smile. “Unique proportions.”
Nobody says anything for a second.
I’m not bothered. It’s a poke to the usual emotional scar tissue.
After all, I’ve heard variations of that phrase since I hit puberty and all the other girls got boobs, but I just got a pooch belly.
My mother’s version was about “your figure.” Vivian’s version was about jaws and jeans.
This one has a dainty little cough in the middle of it, which is new, but it’s the same old barb no matter how you slice it.
My hands go straight to the tag on the black dress. I flip it over and…
It’s a size six.
The next one is a six, too. The next two are eights and cut like potato sacks.
If this woman thinks I can fit into a size six, she either has glaucoma or a time machine.
But that doesn’t seem to be the biggest issue. I look up and realize there’s a sharp animosity in the air—and it’s coming from Kane.
“Delilah’s what?” he says. His voice is stripped of all emotion, almost to a scary extent.
The saleswoman hesitates. “I’m sorry?”
“You said her proportions were ‘unique.’ I want to know what you meant by that.”
“Oh—I just meant that she’s got a really lovely shape, and there are certain silhouettes that—”
“Because it sounded like an insult,” Kane says, straight over the top of her. “But not even to her. You said it to me. As if she isn’t standing in the room.”
“That’s not—”
“You brought her two garments she can’t get her arm through.” He nods at the hook. “You know it and I know it. And then you brought three designed to make her disappear. Unique. Tell me what that meant. Say it now.”
“Mr. Makov—”
“I’ve heard this exact conversation before,” he snarls.
He pushes off the wall and advances on the woman, who seems to be shrinking more and more with every passing second.
“Word for word. From women who looked like you, in places like this, about a woman who was worth ten of you. So on second thought, don’t finish what you were saying.
I know how it ends. And I don’t want to fucking hear it. ”
The saleswoman’s face has gone blotchy. She looks at me for the first time like I’m a person, and what’s in her face is less of an apology and more of a terrified panic that she picked the wrong customer to be a snooty bitch toward.
“We’re finished,” Kane says. “Take your things off the hook.”
“I can absolutely pull other—”
“You had one chance to see her correctly. You failed.”
He turns and storms out. I stand there for a second, holding a size six by the tag, wondering what in the hell just happened.
I think he was defending my honor? But there were maybe also some other things involved?
I don’t know. I really don’t.
So, with one more glance at the humbled woman, I let the dress go, pick up my coat, and follow him out.
Outside, Kane is holding the car door for me. “Get in.”
I stand my ground. “Are you going to tell me what that was?”
“Get in the car, Lilah.”
“No. Not until you explain yourself. I’ve had enough cryptic stuff for one day, thank you very much.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” Kane says. But he’s looking over my head, not at me, and there’s a stiffness in his jaw that argues the exact opposite.
“You just ripped a woman’s head off over the word ‘unique.’ I’ve been called worse than that by my own mother in public. I don’t need somebody swooping in—”
“I won’t fucking tolerate it.” His jaw thrums. “Nobody disrespects you like that. Not while you’re with me.”
I recoil, not in shock or horror, but simple, dumb surprise.
I meant what I said: Mom has said worse to me plenty of times, in front of prying eyes and gawking onlookers. Hell, she said worse at my own wedding reception, and I just laughed along. When Vivian said my jaw looked fat over the counter last week, I laughed along with her, too.
But this strange force of nature just swept into my life and said, No more.
“It’s fine,” I mumble. “It’s not a big deal. It happens.”
“Not anymore, it doesn’t.”
“You can’t just…” I sigh and let it go. Snow is starting up again, little dry flakes that don’t stick. I hold out a hand and watch as one lands on my fingertip and melts. “Okay.”
“Get in the car, Lilah.”
I get in the car. He shuts the door and comes around the other side, and the seat starts kneading my back again like nothing happened.
Kane pulls his phone out, types something short, and puts it away.
“Where now, sir?” Stepan asks through the partition.
“Sunset Park,” Kane says. “Forty-Fourth.”
I look at him. “That’s my neighborhood.”
“No, sladkaya,” he murmurs. “It’s mine.”