Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
CAROLINE
Joe Sanford’s brother looks like a walking wet dream and no one thought to warn me about that? Not one single person?!
Was it too much to ask for a quick, Brace yourself Caroline ?
Chase Sanford was a lighter, and my scam was kerosene.
My building was a five-floor walk-up in a trendy part of town, on a block where millionaires bought lofts to cosplay being down-to-earth. It was an easy walk to nice parks, bustling brunch spots, and cool coffee places. All I had to do to afford it was share a ground-floor studio with an influencer whose mom owned it. Oh, and empty my savings.
“Nice five-dollar word.” I mocked myself. “Good one, Caroline.” I turned the key to the apartment and called, “Lyssa?! Are you home?”
There was no answer, but the bathroom door was shut and mournful jazz drifted under the door. Lyssa was having one of her Main Character Baths. She would put on a voluminous prom dress and sit in the water until it cooled, playing sad music and drinking prosecco from the bottle, feeling her feelings. When she emerged, her gown would be soaked through and she’d have mascara tracks down her face. Her theory was that romanticizing your sadness helped your brain process it as just one scene in your story—and those scenes always cut away to the glow up montage. Lyssa was a human glitter bomb who never did any of the shopping, cleaning, or laundry—she struggled to turn off her Main Character energy—but she was my closest friend in this country, and a fashion genius, and I loved her.
Tossing my bag, keys, and itchy wig on my bottom bunk—Lyss and I shared bunk beds—I made a cup of tea with the kettle I’d bought when the first half of Gerard’s money cleared.
The kettle was my third spend with my new windfall. The first was to put some money in the Café Levitate account to pay suppliers, the second was to pay five hundred dollars off my credit card (interest-free my ass), and the fourth was to stock up on the lashes I liked. Once the essentials were covered, I’d pulled a brown wig I never wore out of the suitcase under my bed, looked up some pics of Teddy, and painted my makeup like hers until even I could barely tell the difference between us. She was younger, but we did look similar: the same chin, the same—sparing—height. Maybe my figure was a bit more generous, my nose a little more snub, but those were things that could be achieved in a doctor’s office, were Teddy so inclined.
I hadn’t thought throwing a tantrum to embarrass a privileged little trust-fund bro was a big deal.
Just an easy night’s money and a way to get my career on the up. Joe Sanford was supposed to be defensive, then embarrassed, and slink off with his tail between his legs. Gig me, Gerard.
I had not accounted for Joe’s older, hotter, more morally rigid big brother.
Who had the gall to lecture me about virginity! Like I hadn’t been ruthlessly criticizing the patriarchy my entire career! I’d performed whole acts about it.
I guess Chase doesn’t know that.
And, he was right .
Still, boo, hiss . Allies who spent their energy explaining patriarchy to people who experienced patriarchy always got me riled. Leave it to men to mansplain men.
The only champagne flute we hadn’t broken was missing—in the bath with Lyssa, probably. I opened another prosecco and poured some into a mug. As I fed Root Beer, Lyssa’s big ginger cat, I thought about how Chase had raked his eyes over me and how his low voice had rumbled beneath his knitwear. I was a professional performer, but of all things, knitwear had made me break character. I’d started saying very Caroline things, like how good he smelled—a cinnamon stick stewing in a honey-based tea—and baiting him about the sexual repression that was practically emanating from him.
Lyssa came out of the bathroom in a fluffy robe, her long hair tucked in a microfiber towel. “You’re back, Care Bear! How did it go?”
I’d told her a million times I hated being called that and I didn’t have the energy to do it again now.
“Well,” I said slowly, “you know how we couldn’t find any pics of Joe’s siblings online? No social posts, no accounts, nothing?”
“Yes,” she said warily.
“The older half brother was at the gallery tonight. And he’s…” words failed me.
Lyssa’s brows went up.
“A lot,” I finished.
“Tell me everything.” She flopped back on my bunk and Root Beer jumped up beside her. He began circling, pretending he wasn’t going to settle into the same worn-out groove he always did. “Start with what he was wearing.”
Lyssa was a fashion girl.
Obligingly, I recalled, “A caramel sweater that was as luxurious as it looked—I know because I touched it. The cashmere was soft, but his chest was firm in that way that makes you think about resting your head there, you know? ”
“Pillow pecs.” Lyssa nodded. “Yes, go on.”
“Underneath he had a white dress shirt, and the collar was peeking out. His neck and jaw were all stubbly, not on purpose, just like he hadn’t gotten around to shaving for a few days. And he’s blond so it kind of looked like glitter? Neck glitter. Am I making any sense?”
“None,” she said cheerfully.
“He was dressed way more casually than anyone else there even though they’re all rich.”
“Like a tech bro?”
I thought about it. “More like he doesn’t need to dress to impress; he is the impress. But he’s super uptight. Stiff. Even his hair was perfectly swept back, like no strand would dare break rank and tumble down onto his forehead. So, of course?—”
“You wanted to mess up his hair and make it tumble down onto his forehead,” she finished. “This tracks with your hot professor kink.”
“He had glasses, Lyssa.” I flopped down next to her on the bed. “ Glasses .”
“On a related note, you haven’t had any sleepovers with men in eyeliner for months.”
She was right on both counts. Sexually, men who looked like they didn’t have a 401k could deliver it the way I liked; and it had been a while.
“I was surprised, that’s all. Chase looks nothing like Joe. Or...Joe looks nothing like him. Whichever way you’re supposed to say that.”
“They’re half brothers. Chase was born in Canada, Joe here in New York. I’m not sure about their stepbrother.”
After I said yes to Gerard’s scam, Lyssa had helped me research the Sanfords. We found a trove of stories about Teddy and a few about Joe, but not much about the rest of his family. Before tonight, I hadn’t cared—I wasn’t getting paid to razz them.
I sent Gerard a quick text saying the deed was done and he could Venmo me the rest of the sum he’d promised, which was a cool ten thousand. He didn’t respond, but I didn’t expect him to. The Dragonfly would be in full swing at this hour and he always took ages to reply.
Chase and his slightly Canadian vowels were nothing to do with me. I’d done what Gerard had asked, and now I was going to get mine.
There was no reason to expect I would see either Sanford brother ever again.
CAROLINE
The next day, I’d cleaned away our dinner stuff—veggie nachos—and Lyssa and I were on her bed watching our favorite show when the intercom buzzed.
Root Beer yowled as I climbed over him and several baskets of Lyssa’s yarn to reach the panel.
“Teddy Bircher?” a familiar voice asked through the intercom.
Lyssa gasped hearing someone use my pretend name. Frantically, I made shushing motions at her.
“Is this Teddy Bircher?” the voice repeated.
“Why?” I said in a low voice, hoping the crackly speaker box and my natural accent would disguise me.
“I’m Chase Sanford. I’m looking for Teddy Bircher. I buzzed apartment five but that wasn’t right.”
Good Greta Garbo. I could have kicked myself.
Last night at the gallery, before Joe had arrived, I’d been talking to Sonya, the curator. I knew she was friends with Joe, so I’d feigned interest in a piece of art because I thought Teddy would, and I’d written down my building because it was the first address I thought of. The area made sense for a young heiress, although she wouldn’t be on the street level, she’d be in the penthouse, so that’s what I wrote.
Was there nothing a rich, handsome man couldn’t get just by asking? I bet all he’d had to do was turn a bespectacled gaze in Sonya’s direction and she would have fallen over herself to give him a potential client’s private details. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have the wig on and this apartment was not heiress chic. Lyssa and I always joked that our apartment aesthetic was cluttercore (her) and broke whore (me).
An idea struck from nowhere. It was a last resort, but all my ideas were these days.
“Teddy is apartment five,” I said into the box, fumbling for my phone. “This is one. Try five again.”
I was out the door and taking the stairs two at a time as my apartment door swung shut on Lyssa’s cry of, “Wait!”
A few weeks ago, my elderly upstairs neighbor had given me her number after her cheese-of-the-month box was delivered to our apartment by mistake. We’d struck up a friendship, bonding over a shared nemesis, the violinist in apartment four.
I mumbled a quick prayer to Dolly Parton that my neighbor was home as I raced up the stairs.
Mrs. Clarissa answered her phone on the second ring as I heard her intercom buzz in the background.
“Don’t answer that Mrs. C!” I panted. “I lied to a man and said I lived in apartment five!”
My neighbor’s voice, thin with age but sharp with intelligence, cut to the chase. “Why? Are you scared? Or trying to impress him?”
“Impress!” I heaved. Fff… Fanny Brice these stairs suck . “I’m not scared, Mrs. C. Just chronically single.”
The intercom buzzed again.
“I was just about to head out, I’m meeting the girls for drinks downtown…”
“Please, wait!”
Giving up wasn’t in the Holliday DNA. If it had been, I would have left this city months ago, Dad would have sold the café, Mike would have let me suffer through my credit card bills alone, and I wouldn’t be embroiling myself in an identity fraud. My behavior was unhinged. I knew it was. An intelligent person would give up. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I’d come too far.
Even if a dim, seldom-consulted corner of my brain recognized that the Never Give Up gene was the same as the Always Make Things Worse gene, I ignored it and kept scaling stairs.
When I rounded the last corner, Mrs. C stood in the open doorway of her penthouse apartment, her phone in her hand. The intercom buzzed again, two short buzzes that had an air of finality.
If I didn’t catch Chase now, he’d leave, and I’d be left with a massive plot hole in the hands of someone who could ruin me. Could you go to jail for impersonating someone? Someone like Teddy? I hadn’t stolen or cheated. I’d just been a bitch for cash. Was that so bad? I was often a bitch for cash—I’d built entire burlesque routines out of it. Or was this a double standard that was OK in sticky cabaret bars but not in shiny art galleries? Similar to how living at a hotel was classy if you were rich, but trashy if you were poor.
“Please, Mrs. C.” I begged. “Please.”
Mrs. C stepped aside and gestured at the intercom on the wall. “Talk to your boy, Caroline.”
“Thank you!” I darted past her and hit the button. “Hello?” I said in my Teddy voice. If Mrs. C noticed the change in accent she didn’t comment.
“Teddy? This is Chase Sanford.”
Before my brain caught up to me, I hit the button again and said, “Come on up.” My stricken eyes flew to my neighbor. “I’m so sorry Mrs. C! I panicked! Fuck, he’s coming up now. Fuck, I said fuck . I’m trying not to say fuck as much,” I explained, though she hadn’t asked. “I said it in front of a casting agent once and it cost me a job I really wanted. Although, honestly, if the F-word freaks you out, you’re not ready to see my nipp—uh, never mind. Ffff… red Astaire, he’s coming up.”
I dragged my hands down my face as I thought. “I know. I’ll meet him on the stairs and tell him to walk with me. That sounds like a good thing to say, right? Very New York. Walk with me . I’m sorry Mrs. C, I swear I’m not trying to let a strange man into your home.” And still, I kept talking because of that gene, that wonderful, awful NGU gene that meant I would always go down fighting. “His name is Chase Sanford; his family is very well-known. Which is not to say well-known people can’t be murderers, but I don’t get those vibes from him.”
Lecture you to death, maybe.
“Caroline, dear, get your shit together,” Mrs. C said calmly. “Go inside. Splash some water on your face. Bathroom’s first on your left. Pour yourself a drink, there’s a drinks cart by the sofa. Have your boy in for a drink or two then lock the door when you’re done. Minnie is asleep upstairs. She may snore, but if there was anything I could do about that, I would have done it years ago.”
“But Mrs. C?—”
“I trust you, dear.” Mrs. C grabbed her purse from the little phone table and slung it over her arm. “No mess, and don’t stay too long or Minnie will rattle the sense out of your head with that busted septum she won’t admit is a problem. Now, I’ve got to go, Lin has finally left her limp leech of a husband and we must toast her. I want to hear all about this man tomorrow.”
With that, my guardian angel pulled her fur collar higher around her neck and disappeared down the stairs.
I couldn’t believe my luck.
Darting into the apartment, I skipped the bathroom Mrs. C had indicated; no time for splashing. The apartment was a split-level loft, and there were stacks of books everywhere. Some were on tall shelves, but many were stacked in towers around the room. This was the kind of space I had dreamed of back when I thought you could buy apartments like this on an entertainer’s income. A month’s rent here would have easily bought us a year for Dad’s café, which I tried not to be bitter about. I’d met people far richer than Mrs. C throughout my career, or lack thereof, and none of them had ever been as kind to me as my upstairs neighbor.
In the main space there were huge paneled windows along one wall, a full kitchen, and another stairwell up above the lounge that led to a set of stained-glass doors. I assumed that was the main bedroom where Mrs. C’s wife, Minnie, was asleep. I’d never met Minnie. Hopefully she slept as soundly as Mrs. C said, because now wasn’t a great time for introductions.
Luckily, my pink hair was wrapped in a vintage headscarf because I was trying a new no-heat-curls method. I checked my reflection in the massive windows to be sure every pink strand was tucked out of sight.
A knock thudded at the door.
I swung it open. “Hello Chase.”
“Teddy,” he replied.
My brain, frazzled from all the running and the panicking, was slow to remember that was me. I wondered what it would be like to hear him say my real name in that deep, sometimes Canadian lilt.
Hello, Caroline, I imagined him saying.
I think you’re beautiful, Caroline.
Can I cup your breasts, Caroline? (Yes.)
“Come in.”
He followed me up the steps to the main living area, his cinnamon-stick scent curling in my nose again.
The unfortunate truth was Chase Sanford was no less magnificent under apartment lighting than he had been in the gallery. No one person should be this beautiful, it wasn’t fair to the rest of us. One encounter with angel face here, and a person would be walking around stunned for the rest of the day, unable to notice any of the perfectly presentable sevens and eights that passed them by because their retinas had been seared to shit by the perfection of a ten.
“Are you here to sell me something, Chase? Or do you stalk all of your brother’s ex-girlfriends?”
“I want to talk.”
He wasn’t voicing outright suspicion, but his standoffishness was suspicious enough. Not to be a big-head, but men never looked at me this impassively. I was used to seeing admiration, lust, or even just friendly indulgence.
Chase’s expression was inscrutable.
I motioned to the drinks cart. “Do you want a drink?”
“Just coffee, thank you.”
Chase still wore a beige sweater. It looked fresh, so it was either a copy of the same thing he’d been wearing yesterday, or he was too perfect to sweat. He’d undone the collar of the button-up underneath and there was a light smattering of golden hair at the base of his throat that, in the light from Mrs. C’s lamps, looked ginger.
This could be as much as he ever dared to loosen up. He probably only had sex in the dark, preferring to keep as much of his clothing on as possible. Unexpectedly, the idea of this man unzipping for a quick and clandestine fumble had me feeling hot under the collar. He’d probably come in record time; the uptight ones usually did.
That wasn’t a sexy thought, but it still sped my heart.
Between the shoulders and glasses and manners, this Canadian was making scrambled eggs of my mind. Only one of us in this room was supposed to be a professional smokeshow, and it wasn’t him.
“Let’s make coffee then,” I said.
The universal rule of kitchens was that the top skinny drawer should hold cutlery, but when I pulled this one, I found only a bunch of quirky coasters that said things like ‘ I like my coffee like I like my men: I don’t! ’
Under Chase’s watchful eye, I tried to pretend I always started making coffee by finding coasters. Meanwhile my mind was spinning with possibilities. Does he suspect that I’m not really Teddy? Has he already called the police? And, annoyingly: Why did I put on sweats today instead of a sexy camisole set?
Finally, I located the coffee in a cupboard alongside ten different kinds of bread.
“Bread?” I offered, as if that was what I had been searching for.
“No. Thank you.”
It was a minor stumble, but it unnerved me. I was sick of failing. I’d failed to make it on my own terms as a burly in this city, the thing I’d spent my entire life working for; and now, because of this persistent man, Gerard might not give me the second half of the money he’d promised me.
I needed to get back on familiar ground.
An idea came to me.
Chase might not be susceptible to Teddy, but there wasn’t a woman-liking man alive who was immune to Summer. And how hard could it be to fluster a prude?
Taking a deep breath, I sank into a more familiar character. I would either frighten him or flirt him into complicity, Summer-style.