8. The Artistic Temperament #2
“Turns out the whole thing’s legit,” I said with an air of this is normal. “They called my agent this morning.”
Roro was silent.
“Ro says those motherfuckers do nasty rich people shit,” said Nessa, speaking for both of them. Sometimes I did understand why she was Roro’s best friend.
“Jude has epilepsy,” I said, like a puppet of the de Witts.
“Epilepsy makes people almost kill people?” snorted Roro.
“I don’t think he’s, like, the paragon of epilepsy,” I said.
“Like, I don’t think it’s a monolith.” I knew very well it wasn’t epilepsy, but admitting so would undermine my judgment.
If anything, confirming that Jude’s condition couldn’t possibly be epilepsy just bolstered Roro’s appraisal of the de Witts—and I had thus far made herculean efforts not to consider anything about my employers that couldn’t be plausibly denied.
“Are you just saying internet words?” asked Nessa.
“I haven’t seen Alistair in at least an hour,” said JR, worriedly. This, I would learn, was related to Alistair’s size, the heightened possibility of his demise at the hands of non-pygmy predators.
“Maybe he flew south for winter,” said Roro.
“Ate, don’t,” JR pleaded. (She was older by two minutes, hence the title of respect.)
“He’ll come back,” I told JR. “Tita Linda said he’s going to save my life.”
“And why would you need saving if not for the rich people who eat faces?” Roro snapped.
There was a raucous flap of wings. JR breathed a sigh of relief.
“Damn, it’s like he wanted to prove a point,” Nessa commented lazily, her eyes still closed.
“Be nice to that bird,” I told Roro, rising to my feet. “It honestly might be Grandma.”
That night, when I went back to the de Witts’ villa, Genesis met me at the door.
She instructed me on where to put my phone, then informed me Jude was asleep.
I crept into his room, noticing the orange bottles beside his bed had increased in number.
I couldn’t discern anything from a cursory glance at the labels, certainly not without the almighty knowledge of the internet.
But I guessed they were for pain, and probably for sleep.
Downstairs, in the courtyard, Emmanuelle was having another party. Teddy was in the fray this time, and I was pleased to see him, though I held up the baby monitor to indicate that I was “at work.”
“What’s going on in this room?” Teddy probed playfully, peering at the screen. “Is that all the renovation stuff?”
“How long have they been renovating?” I asked, because it’s not like anyone had bothered providing me any clarity on anything. My job was solely to make sure Jude was alive.
“God, I don’t know. A while, I think, maybe years?”
“Years? Seriously?”
“Well, Will has another house in PV, and one in the desert.”
Ah, right. Rich people. “Of course he does,” I remarked dryly.
“Of course he does.” Teddy smiled. “I think there’s some kind of mold problem in the house, they’ve had me call a bunch of experts. There’s definitely water damage in some of the wood, and at some point I think there was a massive fire—”
“Really?” Not uncommon in the hills, and it would explain something about Emmanuelle’s cough.
“Yeah, parts of the house had to be completely rebuilt. It’s been a really cursed process I guess, I don’t know. But I gather it wasn’t completely livable until recently—the bulk of it was completed just before the summer.”
“But then where did Jude grow up?” I asked Teddy, who shook his head.
“Will doesn’t really get personal like that with me. I wasn’t sure he even knew my name until after you mentioned Emmanuelle calling me Edward.”
“Do you think he asks her to call him William?” I wondered where he was, and whether I might see him. I kept glancing around, not wanting to be taken by surprise, though of course surprise would be my only truly beguiling option.
Someday, I’d tell this whole story as if I’d never even heard of William de Witt—oh yeah, I worked for the de Witts, I had no idea until he told me who he was!
Mythology was a necessity. Nobody likes a scheming woman, a calculating one.
A diva. I’d have to be the girl next door, blissfully ignorant of my place in the world, its proximity to greatness.
As if I’d spent my whole life unaware that my destiny could walk into my life one day and place me gently where I belonged.
Teddy laughed. “I doubt he’d take to being called Billy.”
“So lowbrow,” I drawled.
“Terribly lowbrow,” Teddy agreed.
The monitor had gone dark in his hand, the screen going to sleep. A pulse or two of comfortable silence passed between us and I remembered who I was supposed to be.
“Here,” Teddy said, taking out his phone and positioning me into the light, the monitor’s retractable stand hooked around his finger while he positioned me for a portrait. “Give me a look like, I’m already more famous than you’ll ever be.”
“I know just the one,” I assured him, and laughed demonstrably at nothing.
“That’s it, exactly.” He chuckled. “Stay still, it’s long exposure.” He took the picture on his phone, then passed the phone to me for inspection. “Good enough to post?”
I looked effortless, casually candid at a glamorous Hollywood party. I’d practiced this expression, of course, I knew my angles, but even so, Teddy’s lens gave me a bit of effervescence. He’d chosen exactly the right amount of light and shadow to give me a grainy, untouchable air.
“It’s perfect,” I said, handing the phone back to him.
His eyes met mine, and I felt a low intestinal flutter. Not quite butterflies. But I’d be open to the sex, should contrivances present themselves.
Unfortunately, Teddy must have caught a wave then from Emmanuelle, his eyes straying with a sigh over my shoulder as he hit share. Grid, I noticed. Not stories.
“That’s me on duty,” Teddy said, both of us turning to see that Emmanuelle had taken up residency behind the bar while signaling urgently, a matter of life and death. “See you later?”
“Sure.”
Teddy leaned over and kissed my cheek, passing the monitor back to me. I woke it up, just to check on Jude, who was presumably still sleeping.
For a second, the view flashed blindingly white.
Then a face filled the screen.
A pair of eyes. They looked right at me, an eerie white glow in the cavernous dark. They seemed hollow, almost laughing. Like they had just witnessed me for what I was: a fraud.
I was so startled by the image that the monitor tumbled from my hands, crashing to the ground. My heart was pounding.
There’s a devil on your back.
Ridiculous. Jude must have been standing directly in front of the camera. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know where it was. He wasn’t a devil just because a low-res baby monitor made him look that way. It was a cinematic effect, a trick of the light. Possibly he needed something.
But when I picked it up again, Jude was asleep in his bed.
I exhaled through the pounding in my chest. Just my imagination, then. I looked up as if to reassure someone, anyone. I lived so perpetually before an imaginary audience that I couldn’t bear the thought of acting strangely without an explanation, even to myself.
Emmanuelle had put Teddy behind the bar, ordering him around while she frothed champagne over a set of rainbow coupe glasses. Nobody was paying any attention to me. I checked the monitor again. Jude, asleep. In real life, the party went on.
I scanned the scene, intending to mingle. I looked for Atticus, for the faces of William’s production partners, people he’d worked with. Any writers he happened to prefer.
Then, from well across the courtyard—across the pool—I caught the unmistakable presence of William de Witt himself.
Something lodged in my throat, a choking swallow.
I looked away quickly, then back. He was talking to a woman, someone whose face I couldn’t clearly see.
Her hair was dark, with an ombre effect.
She was also enviably petite, one of those people who are just naturally very small, and she wore a black top with an open back, a little black skirt, tall boots I couldn’t have worn, not having been born with the proportions of a supermodel.
She reminded me of a bartender from TV—the woman who knows just what you want.
A dainty tattoo caught my eye from the back of her arm, above her elbow. A crescent moon, for new beginnings. Trendy. Or maybe she really did want to change her life. Based on the way she was dressed, I guessed her to be barely older than me.
William de Witt had one hand on his drink.
The rest of him was virtually on her. I’d seen that look often enough to know it—I’d been the subject of that energy many times.
I couldn’t fight the vision of them together later, curtains fluttering beside the open window, his hand engulfed by that tiny skirt.
He had beautiful hands, the hands of a craftsman. I shivered a little at the thought.
The woman kept walking, moving on to someone else. In her absence, William’s eyes strayed, surveying the crowd. Briefly, unexpectedly, they rose to mine.
I’d been staring. For something to do, I hastily checked the monitor.
Which was when I realized Jude was gone.