Chapter 20 Trading Material
NEW YORK CITY
I rent a short-term apartment from a little old man who brings me day-old flowers and snacks from his downstairs bodega.
He has three sons, and they’re all polite and funny and work around the clock at the shop, and after a week of trying and failing to connect with Mei’s designer collab list, the boys let me squeeze into a metal table in the back room.
They have a small television set up, constantly playing the news and Arabic dramas, and endless Lebanese coffee.
I explain to them that I’m working on the most intense project of my new and very short career, they explain to me what’s happening in Al Thaman, and by the second week, I have a pair of shoes lined up for Faust. And cuff links.
From a vintage store I found on my own. That’s it.
Renata stops by with Rowan when she isn’t maniacally plotting to win the “preschool lottery,” something she has to explain to me twice.
“But enough about me, how are you? How’s work?
” she says one afternoon as we watch Ahmed—the youngest son—sit through Rowan’s rendition of Special Agent Beagle Goes to Washington.
She’s sounding out some of the words on the board book pages, and for a four-year-old? Genius.
I stir my cardamom-dosed coffee. “He doesn’t have anything to wear.”
“What?”
“For the gala.”
“Oh.” Renata smiles, tickled by something she doesn’t explain. “Yeah?”
“I got inspo stuff, but how hard is it to get a designer to put a billionaire in a black suit?”
“I thought you said he wasn’t a billionaire.”
“Okay, multimillionaire.”
“There is a difference.”
“Ew.”
She laughs. “And how’s dating the dirtbag?”
“Fine. Boring.” I shrug. “We text.”
“Has he tried to…” She glances at Rowan and Ahmed, who might be twenty-one years old, collectively. “Get suggestive? Since you’re in a text-based relationship for the time being.”
I snort. “Weirdly, no. I kind of feel like his therapist. It’s a lot of F1 talk, when I’m going to meet his brother, how we’re going to announce our relationship on Instagram, blah, blah, blah.”
She cocks her head, curls bouncing. “Is that the plan?”
“At this point, yes. I’ve talked him into soft-launching—you know, a picture of my elbow in a mirror, two plates of spaghetti at the restaurant.”
“I know what soft launch means.”
“And then I think I can break up with him at the following race. I’m meeting the team in Miami, and then it’s Monaco after that.” I bounce my knee, my heel clicking against the floor. “It’s perfect. A Monte Carlo breakup.”
“Isn’t that like… the Formula 1 race?”
I nod. Renata frowns. “You don’t think he’ll crash out?”
I nod again. “Not literally, no. But mentally? Yeah.”
Her frown deepens.
And I know, there’s a slight risk of additional emotional devastation and all the masculine backlash that comes with the territory—but isn’t that what Imogen is paying me for?
Smashing his heart to pieces in the town that Formula 1 took over is poetic.
“He really, really, really sucks, Ren. More than most of the men I do this with.” My eyes drop to my coffee.
“And I might have a backup plan if he spins out on social media.”
“Which is?”
I press my fingers into the side of my coffee cup. “Faust?”
I don’t know why his name comes out like a breathy question. Renata’s eyes widen, and she leans forward so quickly that her elbows rattle the metal bistro table.
“The guy.”
“Yeah.”
“He knows?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you tell him?”
“No.”
“He found out?”
“Mmhm.”
Her mouth snaps shut. Opens. “That’s…” Shuts again. “Wow.”
I drop my voice to a whisper, though Rowan’s talking so loudly, I don’t think Ahmed will overhear me. “He said that he wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“And you believe him?”
“Yeah?”
A muscle in her jaw twitches, and my stomach curls in on itself.
We’ve never talked about this. Our past and who gets to know is our white whale conversation, and while I’m keenly aware that Renata would cry actual tears of joy if I quit my hard-boiled life of crime to join her in domestic bliss, not telling anyone what we do has always been our one most important, most unspoken rule.
A rule she still cares about, I’m realizing.
“He doesn’t know about you,” I whisper. “I mean—he saw your account, so he knows we’re friends, but he doesn’t know about you.”
Hurt flashes across her face. “Oh.”
I’d thought that’d be comforting. Clearly, I’d been wrong.
And this conversation isn’t getting any easier, the longer we have it.
How do I tell her how lonely it is to be a Robin Hood without my Little John, or how many times I’ve wished nothing between us had changed, even though I understand how happy her new life makes her?
We were like a fairy tale. Two single women against the world.
I think a part of me has been waiting for someone like Faust, desperately, though I never would’ve said that to her.
If no one ever knows what you want, then no one ever knows if you don’t get it.
“Sorry. I’m not mad. I knew, if you ever met someone, that—you like honesty.” Renata’s mumbling into her coffee. “And it happened. I did do that stuff. But… please don’t tell him, until I’m ready.”
I’m stuck on you like honesty, but I move past it for her. “Of course. And you don’t ever have to be ready. I get it. I really do.”
Over in the reading corner, Rowan snaps her board book shut and slips from her barstool toward us. She goes straight to Renata’s bag, a beat-to-hell Land’s End tote stuffed with toddler life essentials, and unearths another. Inspector Paws: Working Together Is Fun!
All this time, I’ve seen Renata’s life in two pieces—then and now.
Cat burglar to mom. But she’s still her, she’s been her, and I’ve been an awful friend, compartmentalizing her life because I’ve assumed everyone else likes that, too.
Like I do. She might not’ve told her husband everything she did in her twenties to survive, but she never changed her name and kept her two lives separate.
Once Rowan’s re-settled with her story-time victim, I twirl the ends of my hair around my finger and say, “It kind of sucked, didn’t it? Modeling in New York was maybe not great. I think I have, like, baggage.”
Renata snort-laughs in surprise. “You think?”
“I still eat french fries. All the time.” Our comfort meals, after the agencies told us we didn’t book another gig. A large fry and a Coke.
“Me too.” A second passes, and then she smiles. “You must really like him.”
“Who?” I stare at her, and she stares at me, and then I’m saying, totally incredulous, “Faust? I don’t—it isn’t really… what I feel is unimportant.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, if he doesn’t really like me, too.”
She laughs, but quietly, like she does before she disarms my worldview. “That’s what you think?”
“Okay, Mrs. Married Woman.” I take a stubborn sip of coffee. “How did you know Bryce was interested in you?”
Her gaze shifts to the television. On the screen, a couple is yelling at each other, subtitles racing. The boys had turned them on for me. “I knew I was interested in him when I put all the traits on him.”
“The traits.”
“Yeah. Like, I like him because he’s nice, and no one else is nice. I like him because he’s funny, and nobody makes me laugh like he does. I don’t think any of that was true, you know? But I liked him, so I was rationalizing it.”
That doesn’t count, though. Faust is genuinely the only man I’ve met who gets off on playing my brand of psychosexual cat and mouse. Also, he’s just more honest than most people, when he isn’t doing—all that. And giving. And loyal. And handsome. That face. “What else?”
“Bossy. So those were my signs. But with him, I kind of picked up on… subtle stuff. He’d know things about me that were important to me before I realized they were important to me. He seemed actually excited to help me do stuff that meant a lot to me.”
My mind flips back to Faust and my’s night together, me on his lap. How quickly and enthusiastically he’s agreed to my rules. “But that’s being nice, too.”
“There’s a line between being nice and being in love, and it’s about a mile wide.”
A breath punches out of me. In love. That’s such a big phrase. Ludicrously large for a conversation about Faust and me.
“Cat?”
“Hm?”
Renata taps my mood ring. “It’s okay if you break your rules for someone. That doesn’t mean that the rules weren’t important. It just means that they have less power over you now.”
A lump forms in my throat. “I know, mother. But no chance.”
That night, I text Faust.
We’ve talked some over the weeks I’ve been in the city. Chess games. A few forwarded memes from the drivers’ group chat. But I’ve put off nailing down our schematics, mostly because I’ve been putting off this conversation.
Good morning :)
According to the internet, he’s in Azerbaijan.
Eight hours ahead. And it’s eleven p.m. here, so it’s seven a.m. there, and he might be busy—he’s always busy.
I click mute on the TV remote as I wait for his reply.
My room hasn’t aged a minute past 1999. Tube television, red-and-white-striped ruffled bedding, green floral wallpaper.
My phone buzzes.
Hi.
Stupid, excitable heart.
Hiii
How is Baku???
Also: Should we talk about Bernard
Like the plan.
Bernard
Destruction
Etc.
Yes.
Shuold we have a code name?
should*
Sorry
No, I’m sorry, I type really fast and like
A train
That’s what my friend says
Yeah lol we can use a code name
Hm
You pick.
Cyrano?
Like the play
Yeah like the play
Wouldn’t I be Cyrano?
Are you Cyrano-ing Bernard?
wait
ARE you Cyrano-ing Bernard???
Do you mean, am I in love with Bernard, so I’m helping you win him
Yes
No.
That’s not why you had a falling-out?
No.
I hesitate. Should I say this now? I kind of have to.
What DID happen with Bernard?
I should probably know.