Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
CAROLINE
“Chase!” Sonya greeted warmly, as if she hadn’t been talking shit about him seconds ago.
Despite myself, I liked Sonya. She was an outrageous gossip and privileged beyond measure, but at least she made zero effort to pretend she was anything else.
“Hello, Sonya.” Chase kissed her cheek, a real kiss, not an air one. “Teddy.”
The way he said my fake name dripped with disapproval, reminding me of what Gerard had asked me to do.
My account balance may have the decimal point on the wrong side of the zeros, and I may lie more than a mediocre man on a dating app, but if there was one thing I knew how to do, it was bombshell mode.
I raked my eyes over Chase, being as obvious as I was lascivious. I looked at him the way people always looked at me—although admittedly I was usually onstage for that express purpose. But I didn’t let that stop my eye fucking.
Chase was wearing his rich-boy sweater again, the sleeves rolled to show the golden hair on his forearms. His one concession to the costume theme was a peaked newsboy cap. Paired with his usual glasses, he looked like he’d just come in from slinging newspapers on the corner, but we all knew that in the 1920s, Chase Sanford would have been hobnobbing with the Rockefellers instead of hawking news.
Those forearms were a vision though.
Zap, zap went Mike’s flyswatter in my head.
“Nice to see you, Chase. What have you been doing with yourself since I last saw you?”
Interestingly, he flushed a deep red.
Sonya noticed too. “What’s wrong, Chase? Are there too many people here? Greta said you wouldn’t come if she invited more than fifteen, plus the actors make thirty. I thought that number was fine?”
“It is. It’s nothing to worry about, Sonya.” He looked at me. “Teddy, I’m glad you’re not holding a grudge after I resoundingly beat you at chess.”
Sonya’s eyebrows flew up.
“Who cares about chess,” I said, tossing my hair. “Where’s Terrarium?”
His eyes locked on my pink hair, and it was a second before he replied. “Sorry?” he said, sounding especially Canadian.
“You know. The other woman you invited tonight? I hear she’s planning a second date where you’ll be putting dirt in a bowl. Lucky boy. Does she know you invited me here tonight too? She might not like that you’ve double-booked your dates.”
“You and I are not—” He turned to Sonya. “We’re not—I would never date two people at once—” Looking back at me, he said, “I just asked if you were coming. This is not a date. I’m here with Anna.”
I leaned back in my chair to emphasize my curves and swerves. “Oh, Chase. If you have to ask your date if she’s coming, you’re not paying close enough attention.”
I thought he’d blush again. But his lips twitched, as if he didn’t want to find me amusing but he couldn’t help it. Fighting a smile made his cheeks bunch underneath the wire-rimmed glasses, pushing the frames up over his sandy brows.
A sudden, consuming thought intruded: if I were to ride his face, he’d have to take those glasses off.
“Your hair is different,” he said suddenly. “It’s pink. Like candy floss. I like it.”
I frowned.
“Sorry, cotton candy. Mom calls it candy floss, it’s one of her Canadian-isms.”
That explained why he didn’t sound or act very Canadian, other than the odd word or phrase. I was still a little fuzzy on the details of his life, but I understood his parents had married in Canada and he’d spent his early childhood there.
More importantly though, a compliment . I loved compliments, and squeezing one out of this rigid square was deeply thrilling.
“You like my hair?” I preened as he nodded.
Sonya made a disgusted noise, but I was thrilled.
“Well, I like your glasses,” I replied. “And your sweater.”
He leaned on the back of my chair, seemingly unaware that it brought those sexy forearms of his within licking range.
“This?” he said, plucking at the material. “I always wear this.”
“Yes, but paired with that hat it looks like you’re trying to summon everyone in a ninety-mile radius with a hot-professor kink.”
“Is that your thing?”
I winked. “It’s one of them.”
It was. But I’d slept with a professor once and it was awful. Stiff and rigid in a bad way. It had nearly killed the fantasy completely, hence I’d been on the eyeliner-man loop for a while now. But here Chase was, breathing new life into an old kink. Literally.
Sonya pushed to her feet. “OK. I can see where this is going. I’m going to go and find this Anna person and tell her to cut her losses. ”
Chase’s date! I kept forgetting about his date. Before either of us could break the tension that had driven Sonya away, a pretty actor in a russet wig interrupted us.
“Orright there luvs!” she said. “Begging your pardon for the impertinence, me just a ’umble flower girl an’ all, but if ye could find ye seats, dinner will begin.” The actor rose on tiptoe to point at the long table set up in the middle of the room.
I was about to go where she indicated when suddenly her hips pitched forward and she stumbled into me.
“Woah!” I steadied her. “Whoa! Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” a very Californian accent replied. “Thanks.”
“What was that?” Chase demanded. I was surprised by his tone, then I realized he wasn’t talking to the faux Cockney flower girl, now brushing my body glitter off her apron. He was looking at the murder mystery host standing behind her, his mouth smug beneath the fake mustache.
“Pe-poll, pe-poll!” the host said in a terrible French accent. “You must move to the tahh-bleh so the festeeevities can begin!”
With white-hot fury, I realized what he’d done. “You slapped her ass!” I accused him.
He tsked at me. “We are in character, mademoiselle! Tonight you dine with maestros and gentry, artists and wenches.” He leered at the actor he had slapped. “I am Monsieur Marchand, and togezzer we will unravel the mysterious murder of Edwin?—”
Chase cut him off with a raised palm. That never would have worked if I’d done it, but for Chase, the host shut up as if he were under a spell.
“Did you give him permission to do that?” Chase asked the actor.
She scowled. “No.”
Chase turned back to the host, his mismatched eyes furious. The flower girl stopped him with a hand on his arm. She reached up and murmured something I couldn’t hear in his ear. But I knew what she was saying, because it was exactly what I would have done in her position, what I had done hundreds of times before.
She was asking him not to make a fuss because it would blow back on her.
White knights were all very well and good, but they often acted to soothe their own feelings and made everything worse.
Chase sighed but nodded, and the actor patted his arm before sliding off to shepherd another cluster of Greta’s friends to the main table.
Watching her familiar resilience made my skin prickle.
Eighteen months after I moved here, I’d burned through my savings and the pay from all the odd jobs I worked around auditions—nannying, pouring coffee, washing dishes, flyering—left me short one month. I’d auditioned for an emcee slot at a comedy club that was part of a popular chain. I wasn’t a very good emcee, but they brought me in for an audition anyway. The guy in charge of casting had leered as he’d flipped through my burlesque book in front of me, then made a gross comment about getting freebies. I’d reported him to management who said they would deal with it, but I never heard anything back. And ever since, every application I made for an audition with that franchise had gotten mysteriously ‘lost’.
But tonight, I wasn’t at the bottom of the food chain.
Monsieur Marchand was.
I was here as an invited guest, looking wealthy, surrounded by powerful friends. For the first time my rage wasn’t impotent when confronted with a man like this. I was Teddy motherfucking Bircher. And I was going to make this count. For me, and for all the performers like me.
I opened my mouth to rain hell, but before I could get the words out, the host stepped closer to me, deliberately crowding me with his height. “Would you like to assist me with zee mystery tonight, mon belle?” he asked. “Handle everything that comes up?” Just in case I wasn’t getting the innuendo, he canted his hips, pressing his crotch into my side quickly enough that if I called him out on it, he could pretend it was an accident.
An accident was drinking a whole Jamba juice before a show with no intermission and having a bit of pee slip out. An accident was forgetting your steps onstage and having to do a jazz square. An accident was not forgetting where your dick was and pressing it into strangers who hadn’t asked for it. No one ever asked for it.
A hand landed on my shoulder and Chase tugged me backward, putting himself between the host and I. Monsieur Marchand straightened.
“Oh, sorry man.” He apologized to Chase without any trace of an accent. “Didn’t realize this was your girl.”
“She’s not my girl. Step back anyway.”
“It’s nothing personal, man. This is my character! The monsieur is a dirtbag, but the ladies love him! Tonight’s mystery is an immersive experience?—”
“If you want to go and find your seat, Teddy, you can,” Chase was trying to sound casual. He wasn’t succeeding, but I could see the effort. “I can deal with this. Or you can stay. It’s up to you.”
I looked at the host, who was starting to look nervous as he realized Chase wasn’t going to play bros with him and that he might have pissed off someone important. The distinction between Chase’s experience in the world and mine was stark.
Did I need a man to fight my battles?
No.
Was it nice when men stepped up to deal with other men’s shit?
Yes.
“I promise I’ll be discreet,” Chase said, looking me in the eyes. “You can trust me.”
Could I?
With this—yes.
“All yours,” I replied, patting Chase on the shoulder.
I turned on my heel and didn’t look back.
CHASE
I didn’t have the right word for the feeling that had come over me in response to the murder mystery host’s provocation.
Maybe it wasn’t in my vocabulary.
The teenagers who played at the games shop I financed, Roll for It, were always using words I’d never heard. I liked to think of myself as a cool big brother to them all, but after turning thirty-four, a few of the Rollers started to do things like shift tables to give me the best seat or take my laptop off me to make it run faster. Which was offensive, but videos did load better now.
Out on the curb, I watched the murder mystery host get into the cab I was paying for—it seemed the right thing to do since he was now unemployed—and I wondered if my reaction was what Alex, one of the Rollers, would have called Big Mad .
I’d kept my word to the actor—I hadn’t mentioned her when I’d called the host’s employer for a quick chat about my lawyer’s enthusiasm for harassment cases, to ensure the monsieur would be dropped from the company. But I had to keep reminding myself he’d been inappropriate twice in a row and that each instance was equally deplorable, not just when it was my scammer on the receiving end.
My scammer.
Joe would have a field day with that—when he finally got here. Thus far, he was a no-show and avoiding my calls.
I took my time lingering on the sidewalk, willing the Big Mad away before I had to go back inside and have an overdue conversation with Anna.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the host’s contrition when he thought the woman impersonating Teddy had a boyfriend or husband. His apology took the respect one human being owed another and redistributed it to the closest man. I’d blogged about this symptom of patriarchy before— The Moral Fix “Letter 131: I Tell Girls I’m a Feminist Because of My Mom, Isn’t That What They Want to Hear?”
But my first thought when that asshole had stepped too close to Teddy’s impersonator hadn’t been the insidiousness of patriarchy, or my duty as a man to call other men out (or in).
It was simply: Mine, fuck off .
Did lust make a hypocrite of every feminist ally or just me?
I let out a long exhale.
When I was confident I could appear calm—or as calm as was possible at a social event with thirty bodies—I went back inside to find Anna.