Chapter 9
“You look like shit.” Viv passed me a tissue from the watermelon-patterned box on her desk on my return. “You’re meant to look ecstatic.”
I took it and wiped my hands, not feeling clean enough. Tossing my cookies… and bagels… and pack of Oreos behind dumpsters wasn’t a daily occurrence. Letting anything make me nervous enough to throw up wasn’t a normal occurrence either. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
She shuffled her chair over to the other side of my desk. “What happened?”
I can’t tell her. “Nothing. Maybe the takeout I ate last night.”
Her elbows leaned onto my paperwork. “Liar.”
This is why having a friend is annoying.
Aria and Clarissa stood at the coffee machine, whispering in short, frantic bursts. Viv followed my gaze. “What did she do?”
“Nothing I can’t handle. I’m going to go out and grab a bagel. You want one?”
She scrutinized my face. “Okay. You want to go out later? Celebrate? I’ve already picked out the Dior you’re going to buy me as a thank-you gift for having to listen to that pitch three thousand times.”
“We’ve got Aria’s open house, remember?”
“Yeah, but we could go out after.”
What if I mess up? Both our lives could go to hell.
“Rain check? I’m meeting Jack at the building tomorrow so the developer can show us around, and I cannot handle that man while nursing a hangover.”
She scooted back to her desk. “No problem. Make mine an onion bagel with tomatoes, pastrami, and cheese. Oh, and extra gherkins.”
Clarissa wiggled her fingers at me in a passive-aggressive wave as I passed.
I refrained from throwing up my middle finger. I will show you.
* * *
The blazing heat hit me square in the face as I stepped out of the building and turned right, engrossed in clicking out a reply to a seller wanting an update on their escrow.
“Sis?” a honey-coated voice shouted from across the street.
Not now. “What are you doing here?” I stopped dead in the street as my sister dodged cabs and cyclists to join me.
“You won’t return my calls.” She slid her aviators up into her hair like a tiara.
“Work’s hectic, and I’ve lost?—”
She interrupted me. “I called Denzel to find out where you were. He told me you split up?”
“You called Denzel?”
She nodded, her short black bob clipped at her neck. “Yeah, I’ve been worried about you. If you’d answered your cell, I wouldn’t have needed to.”
“Don’t worry—I’m fine. We wanted different things.” Like having offspring that I would need to be responsible for.
She tipped her head toward the food cart up the street. “Wanna grab some food and we can catch up?”
Hailey made everything seem so easy. Never mind that I held the fate of mine and Viv’s careers in my hands. I could go cry on her shoulder while I consumed a bagel. Or two. Let the blood spill out.
But now wasn’t the time to deal with the past.
“Scarlett, don’t be difficult,” Mommy chastised me, holding me by the elbow. “The lady’s going to take you for some ice cream.”
The box-shaped woman didn’t look as if she liked kids. Or ice cream. Her perm frizzed out around her ears, reminding me of a clown we’d seen at a circus. “No. I want you to come.”
“I can’t.” She bent down so we were eye to eye. “But Lesley here is a social worker, and she’s going to look after you. Right, Lesley?”
Lesley made a point of looking at her watch. “We better get going.”
Hailey was squeezing my hand and holding her bunny, Roger, in the other. “We’ll be okay, sissy,” she told me as a tear fell onto her freckled cheek. She was two years older and more aware of the tension.
“Promise you’ll come get us.” I grabbed a fistful of the jumper at Mommy’s shoulder and rubbed it against my cheek. I wanted to go back inside. I didn’t belong out here on the curb, like a garbage can.
Behind the screen door, I saw Billy hovering, observing. I didn’t like Billy. He smelled like Cheetos and beer. Hailey and I did our best to avoid him, but Mommy liked him, so he stayed.
He got to stay, and we didn’t.
Hailey stood waiting for my answer.
“I can’t. I have a showing to get to. Maybe next week?”
The corners of her mouth drooped like they used to when we were kids and there was no cereal left in the cupboard. “You promise?”
“Promise,” I confirmed.
“Double promise?”
“Triple promise?”
“And you’ll pay?”
“Yes. Is everything all right with you though? The kids?”
“Yeah, we’re all good. Don’t worry.” Like always, she pulled me into a hug, and I inhaled her lavender-and-cookie smell. My niece and nephew were so lucky to have a mom who baked with them and built Harry Potter Lego until bedtime.
When she turned to wave back at me at the end of the block, guilt nipped at my insides until I quashed it down.
I made the right call saying no to lunch, I decided while waiting for my bagel order. The conversation always came around to our mother, and she needed to stay in the past where I’d left her.
Sharks don’t swim backward. Do barracudas? Note to self: Google it.
* * *
Viv was ready and waiting outside at 7 p.m. that night. “Heard from your favorite person yet?” she asked as I folded myself into the car.
The black corseted dress I’d wedged myself into made it difficult to bend. Tonight, we were checking out Aria’s open house in Brooklyn Heights, a ten-minute journey from my apartment. I’d insisted we take a cab so Viv could enjoy some free drinks, but she liked bringing the car in case of an emergency call from the babysitter.
Jack’s business card had haunted me from its place on the kitchen counter as I’d scarfed down a bowl of Lucky Charms for dinner. “He doesn’t have my contact details.”
“But you said David told you to get in touch to talk about some provisional stuff for tomorrow?” She licked a smudge of cream from her top lip. Her Starbucks obsession reached frightening levels. Rolling around the back footwell were seven empty cups.
“I will. The night is young.” Let me have a few hours to black out what tomorrow will bring.
“Man, I wish I’d known Lacey was going to announce that in front of everyone today so I could have captured it on camera. Clarissa’s face? Fucking priceless. That picture would be my screensaver.”
My lip curled. “Couldn’t pay me to have that face on my phone.”
Viv pulled down the visor to check her lipstick at a stop light. “You two really have a thing, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t call it a thing. She despised me the minute I set foot in the office, and I hated her from the second she opened her mouth. She asked why I showed up on my first day with a scuff on my shoes and wearing pink. In her world, that color is assigned to toddlers.”
Viv snapped the visor back up. “This whole grudge is over some comment about your shoes and a color?”
I tried to venture back in my mind, but it hurt too much. “More the way she said it. Like, ‘You are a commoner and you do not belong here with us effervescent beings.’”
We pulled into the street and nabbed a parking spot up from the building. “Well, she’s gonna rue the day she said that. Can you upgrade me to a Lambo after you make partner?”
I tried to laugh it off. “No pressure.” But I could feel the pressure everywhere, drilling into my skull. “Anyway, you’ll be able to buy your own when you hurry up and get your real estate license.”
She pouted. “I’m working on it, but I have a boss who keeps me pretty busy.”
I slid off the seat until my black YSLs connected with the sidewalk. My toes yearned for the comfort of my three-year-old fleece-lined slippers. “Sounds like a demanding bitch.”
“You got it, honey.” She clicked the car alarm and pocketed the keys in her emerald-green blazer. “Time to get to work.”
“Since when are you so eager to get to an open house?” I asked, taking in the street as we approached the building.
“I’m not, but I hear there’s sushi.”
“Thank God. Those Lucky Charms didn’t fill me at all.” I’d invited the Columbia couple from the bar the other night to come by and check this place out. I needed the energy to pull it together.
Aria’s listing turned out to be a four-bedroom glossy white box with gold finishes and cream furniture sitting on herringbone white-oak floors. The crush of people in the hallway felt almost claustrophobic. Viv shouted greetings to people she knew as we made our way to the kitchen and the sushi. These moments were when I could see snippets of how good Viv would be as an agent. People gravitated to her.
Aria’s slow, even-keeled voice carried over the background music as we entered the kitchen. “Stainless-steel appliances, book-matched marble from Italy and hand-cut here. The wall tiles are Venetian, and the light above you cost over fifteen grand. Real crystal.”
A petite woman in a green beret looked up to where Aria pointed and wrinkled her nose as if to say, “I don’t believe you.”
The black-framed doors in the kitchen led out to the wraparound terrace, where the Manhattan skyline twinkled in the distance. I grabbed a plate of sushi and made for the open space and summer breeze.
Viv appeared next to me, crunching on a cucumber roll. “What do you think?”
I took in the view. “Overpriced. She’s asking four million. It’ll go for around three.”
“Nice finishes, from what I can see,” Viv pointed out. “Do you want to look around?”
The Columbia couple were due here in twenty minutes. I had to at least know the basics about the property. I threw back two Advil I’d fished out of my purse to stave off a potential headache. “Let’s go.”