Ricardo #2
The private dining room is smaller than the main room and much quieter.
Paneled walls. A fireplace gone cold for the season.
Tall windows overlook the eighteenth green.
A few round tables set far enough apart to make discretion feel architectural.
The hostess leads us past all of them to a private room where the table is already being reset by a server who moves quickly when he sees me.
Julia sits first.
I wait until she is settled, then take the chair across from her.
The hostess leaves us with menus and a promise to send someone immediately.
Julia is still seething.
“You want to let it out now?” I ask.
“No,” she snaps. Then she jumps out of her chair.
“That little—” She cuts herself off, but balls her hands into fists as if to strangle the invisible man in front of her.
I lean back in my chair and say nothing.
She paces two steps toward the window, turns, then stops because the room is too small to contain the amount of fury in her.
“He looked at me like I was something that came with his lunch,” she says. “Like a side. And then, the second my father’s name registered, suddenly he remembered how to speak to me like I was an actual person.”
Her laugh is sharp and humorless.
“Not because I was one. Not because I was here professionally. Not because I was standing there doing my actual job. But because Judge Patrick O’Brien exists somewhere in the world as an important man, and apparently that makes me more legitimate than existing in my own right.”
I feel my jaw tighten.
Julia points toward the terrace, though Valecourt is well out of sight.
“He called me sweetheart twice. He asked what my poison was, as if I was there for his entertainment. He stared at my boobs when I was explaining the transfer terms. But the moment he placed me, the moment he could connect me to a man with power, he sat up straighter.”
She presses both hands to her hips and looks at the ceiling as if asking it for patience.
“I hate that I knew it would happen. I hate that I watched it happen, and that I’ve seen it happen so many times before. And I really hate that some part of me was relieved when it worked.”
“Because it got you what you needed,” I say.
Her eyes drop back to mine.
“That does not make you weak, Julia.”
Her mouth opens, then closes.
“I didn’t say I felt weak.”
“No,” I say. “You said relieved as if it were a confession.”
She looks away first, jaw tight.
For several seconds, she says nothing. Then, quieter, “I hate needing his name.”
“You did not need it.”
She gives me a look.
“You didn’t,” I say. “He needed it. There is a difference.”
Her expression shifts, not softening exactly, but the anger loses its sharp edge.
“He was going to keep playing with me.”
“Yes.”
“And then he stopped.”
“Because he realized the game had witnesses and consequences.” I sit forward, resting one forearm on the table.
“You were competent before he knew your father. You were prepared before he knew your father. You handled him before he knew your father. His failure to recognize that is not a strike against you.”
Her throat moves.
She looks toward the window, blinking once, hard.
“I know that,” she says.
“I believe you.”
Her mouth twists faintly. “You don’t sound convinced.”
“I think you know it here.” I tap two fingers once against my head. “I am not sure the rest of you has caught up.”
She lets out a tired breath that is almost a laugh.
“That is an irritatingly accurate assessment.”
“I have been accused of worse.”
“Yes,” she says, looking back at me. “I can imagine.”
The anger is still there, but it has changed shape. Less fire now. More ache.
She lowers herself back into the chair, smoothing her dress beneath her, still as dignified as ever, even after that firestorm.
The server chooses that moment to appear at the door.
“May I bring you something to drink?”
Julia looks up at him with the calm of a woman who was not just fantasizing about committing assault on a member of this very club.
“Yes,” she says. “Water, please.”
The server nods.
“And a Coke, the real sugar kind, if you have it.”
“We do,” the server says.
“Perfect. Thank you.”
He turns to me.
“Espresso,” I say. “And sparkling water.”
“Of course, Mr. Conti.”
When he leaves, Julia opens her menu with great purpose.
“I’m ordering fries,” she says.
“This club will survive the scandal.”
“I’m not sure I will. I saw the lunch menu on the way in. There are three different salads named after dead members.”
“I believe only two are dead.”
She looks up from the menu. “Still creepy.”
“The third is merely retired.”
“Even worse. He’s still lurking about.”
A laugh bubbles in my chest. “Then we should be careful.”
“I refuse. After what I just endured, I deserve potatoes prepared in hot oil and served with excessive salt.”
“A reasonable demand.”
“And a sandwich.”
“Now you are becoming reckless.”
She hides a smile behind the menu, but I see it anyway. “Good.”
The server returns with our drinks, and Julia’s Coke arrives in a glass bottle with a small tumbler of ice.
She looks at it for a second.
“Well,” she says. “At least they understand one thing.”
“Sugar?”
“Presentation.” She pours the Coke over the ice. “But sugar helps.”
The faint fizz fills the quiet room.
I watch her take a sip. Her shoulders lower by a fraction.
“Better?” I ask.
“Marginally.”
“High praise.”
“From me today? Yes.” She sets the glass down and reaches for the menu again.
The server waits with the discreet patience of a man trained not to react to anything said at a table.
“I’ll have the club sandwich,” Julia says. “With fries.”
“Of course.”
“And the tomato soup.”
“Very good.”
I hand him my menu. “The branzino. No fennel. Grilled vegetables on the side.”
“Yes, Mr. Conti.”
“And the burrata to start.”
Julia looks up from her Coke. “Are we sharing that?”
“If you would like.”
“I would like.”
The server collects the menus and leaves us alone again.
Julia wraps both hands around her glass, the earlier fury not fully gone, but contained now. “I’m sorry.”
“For ordering fries?”
“For snapping at you.” Her thumb moves through the condensation on the glass. “You didn’t deserve that.”
“No,” I say. “I did not.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
“But I understood it.”
“That is annoyingly generous of you.”
“I can be generous.”
“I wanted to be angry at you,” she admits.
“You were not subtle.”
“I was very subtle. I waited until we were alone before I yelled.”
“A remarkable display of restraint.”
She points one finger at me over the top of her glass. “Do not mock me while I am apologizing.”
“I would never,” I say innocently.
She narrows her eyes at me.
“Do continue with your apology,” I say.
“That was the end of it,” she says. “What do you want? A song and dance?”
I sit back in my chair and pretend to consider. “I'm intrigued… What would that look like?”
Despite herself, she laughs.
The sound is quick and unguarded, gone almost as soon as it arrives.
But I hear it.
More than that, I see what comes with it. The small drop of her shoulders. The ease in her mouth before she remembers to compose it. The way she reaches for her glass without checking whether she looks polished while doing it.
She is different here than she is at the office.
Not because the club has made her comfortable.
But because anger stripped away some of the carefulness.
At work, Julia moves through Mario’s floor with every edge tucked in. Pleasant. Efficient. Prepared. Buttoned down. She listens twice as much as she speaks and measures every expression before she lets it reach her face.