Chapter Five
Name Your Price
As soon as school was out, they headed for the studio, all but sprinting to the car to keep from having another run-in with Varda, something that might have been pathetic at another time but only struck him as funny now. “Quick,” Hilary said as soon as they’d slammed the doors, “throw the salt.”
He laughed when Trenton fished one of those tiny fast-food packets from his backpack and sprinkled the salt carefully out the barest crack in the window.
The little ballerinas were just beginning to arrive for their lesson, but they still had a couple of minutes, and he used them to show his math exam to his mother, which made her ruffle his hair so hard he felt several follicles part from his scalp forever.
“Good enough to go on the fridge?”
“Fridge? I’m having this copied over in triplicate so we can send it out to be professionally framed.”
It felt good, even if it was embarrassing, to have such a to-do made over a single exam. His mother even called Albert to continue the shower of praise while all the beginners were warming up.
Annette stayed for the class. It would be a few weeks more before she could get the one for seniors off the ground, though she’d already put in a small ad in the local paper for it.
It was better with her there anyway, because it meant he could spend all the time one-on-one teaching Trenton, something the boy didn’t really need, but nothing less could be offered after all the efforts to help with the math.
It was fun to be in the class again, and to be “Mr. Hilary’d” by all the little ones.
It was less funny when Trenton tried it.
“Mr. Hilary—”
“You do realize I only need to push down a little harder to tear your hamstring, right?”
Trenton switched back to plain old Hilary after that, and was surprised to have his lesson extended after the others in the class had already left.
“But you already helped me,” Trenton argued.
“You’re in the class. I’m paid to help you, remember? That doesn’t count.”
“Does your mother pay you?”
“She pays for the Shitheap’s gas. And the insurance.” Granted, the insurance wasn’t much, but it was still more than he could afford with his allowance. “Did you have specific things you wanted to learn, or should we just work on some fundamentals?”
What Trenton wanted was to see Hilary dance—a request that had his guard up ten trillion percent despite being sure there had been no malice intended. It was an old habit that would probably never die. “And how’s that going to help you?”
“It would show me how to do it properly.”
“If you want proper, go see a real performance. Or ask mom. She danced professionally for more than a decade.”
“But she’s gone, and you’re right here.”
“Don’t get smart with me, genius.”
Somehow, Trenton ended up following him home for dinner, something the parents seemed to take for granted. “Can you set the table, darlings?” Annette shouted up the stairs to them when they walked in. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
It was Albert who was wielding the spatula, wearing his Mr. Good Lookin’ is Cookin’ apron. “Which one of you is the genius who got a hundred and three?”
Trenton had gotten a hundred and five—no careless mistakes on his exam—but when Hilary pointed that out, his father only added the boy to the hug without subtracting anyone.
“I never realized our mailman was so smart,” he said.
“I should have left him a bigger Christmas tip.” But soon Albert had another concern.
“Son,” he said to Trenton, “that can’t be all you’re eating.
Hilary will shoot right past you at this rate. ”
But Trenton declined a second portion, though he assured Albert that everything was delicious, and the nicest dinner anyone had ever made for him.
That earned him a couple dozen backslaps. “You just tell me what it is you want for Christmas. I’ll make sure to pass the word along to Santa.”
Annette tried to get Trenton to stay over again. “We can get a trundle that fits under Hilary’s bed,” she said. “Your legs dangle over the end of the couch, don’t they?”
But Trenton did go home, though not before announcing they’d be doing math again the next day. A hundred and three, apparently, was no reason to be caught slacking.
“Such a good boy,” Annette said, waving to Trenton long after he’d pedaled away on his bicycle. “You sure you don’t want to date him?”
“I think I’m good.”
“Maybe your father will nab him. I can hardly blame the fellow after all my infidelity with the mailman.”
Hilary could only glare through the door, unsure why he was watching the empty space along with everyone else. “This is why that stupid joke won’t die, Mom. Because you encourage him.”
“I’ve never encouraged him for a moment in all my life. Isn’t that right, dear?”
“Not for a minute,” Albert confirmed. “So long as you don’t count the first twenty or so years of our marriage.”
“But darling, we’ve only been married for twenty years.”
Albert pretended to be stumped. “You may be right. I’ll have to corroborate that with my son, the math genius. Forgive me—the mailman’s son, the math genius.”
Varda was sitting on the front steps when Hilary came out of the house the next morning—something that would have been alarming if his father hadn’t given him the heads up as he was heading out the door.
“I hope you’re not expecting a ride to school,” Hilary said to her. “I’ve only just gotten the smell out.”
Actually, the smell still lingered. The upholstery on the car seats was cracked, and smoke had permeated whatever cheap stuffing they contained.
She followed him to the car. “What can I do to make you reconsider?”
Reconsider what? It was more strange than flattering that she was pursuing him like this. He wasn’t stupid enough to think she was regretting her actions.
“You’re still fucking him, aren’t you?”
She ignored that. “I can pay you for the time you spend with me. You can think of it like a job.”
It was that rich girl’s entitlement that gave him the anger to finally ask. “Why do you even want this? You can’t stand me.”
“That’s not true.”
“You obviously don’t—”
“You’re better than any of the others. They all want to touch me, and I have to pretend with them. But you don’t make me pretend.”
Hilary was too baffled to be annoyed. “But why are you pretending at all? Just date the guy you’re fucking.”
“I can’t.”
“Not popular enough? Wait—does he not know your angles?”
“Dad hates him.” It was the way she said it that made Hilary pause. For maybe the first time, she was attempting to be honest with him. “He’s forbidden me from seeing him.”
It was all she had to say. The rest of the story fell into place easily enough. “So you used me to make him think you’d moved on from him while secretly continuing to date him.”
She reached for his hand. He jerked away from it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “About the necklace.”
“Only the necklace?”
“I won’t apologize for Axel.” Her eyes were fierce. “I love him.”
“Then you should have told me that. You should have come to me and said, look, I need you to pretend for me.”
“As if you would have agreed to that!”
“We’ll never know now, will we?” But he did know. He would have agreed to it. Would have been less anxious about the whole thing if he’d known she’d needed to use him like he needed to use her, actually.
And she saw it. In his face. Or maybe in his voice. It made her desperate. “I’m coming to you now. Please, I’m serious about paying you for your time. And we wouldn’t even have to do anything together. You’d only have to drop me off a few times a week and take some pictures with me.”
“No.”
It wasn’t what she was expecting, and that did piss him off a little. He knew he didn’t exactly look well-off, but did he seem so pitiful that he’d start salivating at the first hint of money?
“Name your price, then. If it’s about smoking in the car—”
“I’m not trying to negotiate, Varda. It’s just no. I won’t do it. I didn’t want to do it in the first place, and I should have listened to that feeling.” He opened the door of the Shitheap and slipped inside. “And that’s the last I’ll say on it. If you come here again, I’ll just ignore you.”
She grabbed onto the door handle and got it open before he could lock it.
“To you, to everyone, I’m this vapid rich girl.
And I am. I know I am. But he’s the only person, the one guy, who doesn’t look at me like a talking wallet or walking vagina.
You’re nice. A good person. So you don’t understand how rare a thing that is.
I need him, Hilary. And if I can’t have him, I’ll make sure you can’t have anything either. ”
Almost, for a moment, he was swayed by that.
And if he’d chosen compassion—if he’d taken one more breath and shown a little sympathy in that moment—he might have avoided everything that would come after.
But even if Varda was finally being honest with him, and perhaps even sharing a trace of vulnerability, she was still Varda.
There was no regret in her. Not for how she’d hurt him or for what she’d done.
Hilary remembered again that look on Aspen’s face and all those scattered pearls, and was only glad Varda had been sure to tack a threat onto the end of her entreaty.
It meant there would be no guilt in refusing her.
“It really sucks, doesn’t it?” And he knew for the first time the pulsing of vindictive satisfaction.
“Not getting what you want. Have a nice life, Varda.”