Chapter 18 #3
He blustered for a second. “I pay them good money—”
“Oh, so you only support them financially? You’re not actually there for them, though, right? You don’t support them emotionally, or mentally, or physically, or spiritually, or socially, or in any other way that matters?”
“I pay them a lot,” he hissed. “That’s all that matters.”
“Put some extra aside for therapy, Monty. They’re going to need it.” I turned to Ming. “Congratulations,” I said to her. “How old is your baby?”
“A week,” she whispered.
My mouth dropped open. “A week? You gave birth a week ago?”
Montgomery gave a braying laugh. “She looks amazing, doesn’t she? We wanted her to get her figure back as soon as possible.”
The smile froze on my face. I tried to ignore him. “How are you healing up?”
“I am fine.”
“Did you have a natural birth?” Juliette drained her wine. “All my births were natural. No epidural, no gas, no nothing. Anything less just isn’t childbirth, am I right, Susan? Oh, sorry. You wouldn’t know.”
“I had gas for the pain,” Ming whispered. “So much pain. And then an episiotomy, as the baby’s head was too large.”
“I got the doctor to put in an extra stitch.” Montgomery winked down the table. “The husband stitch. Best invention since breast implants.” He threw his head back and laughed like a donkey.
I laughed along, louder than everyone else. “How embarrassing for you, Monty. Imagine telling the whole table that you have a tiny penis!”
Delia spat out her wine. The Saxby twins burst into hysterical giggles. Montgomery went purple and mouthed like a goldfish for thirty seconds. “I don’t— I have— My penis is perfectly proportioned, thank you very much.”
“Well, whip it out. Let’s take a look.”
He reared back, horrified.
“We need to know if you need surgery, Monty,” I said patiently. “I mean, we all know you made your wives get breast implants.”
“That’s different!”
“Is it?” I took a leisurely sip of wine.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Donovan suddenly stiffen.
He was still watching me, but his eyes flicked left, out the window, just for a second.
In the gaps of silence between the Saxby sisters’ giggles, I thought I heard a reedy, high-pitched cry coming from outside.
It sounded like a bird shriek. Or… a child’s scream.
Donovan rose, unfolding his massive frame from the table as elegantly as a panther getting up to stretch. He tossed his napkin on the table. “Excuse me for a moment.” He met my eyes, a silent order. Stay here.
I nodded, and he strode out of the room.
The second he was gone, Juliette leaned over the table. “Where did you find him, Sue?”
“He found me, actually.” I took another small sip of wine. “But it’s none of your business, Jules.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Come on, now. This can’t be a real date.
Someone like him would never go for someone like you.
You got lucky with Vincent because you trapped him while you were young and already high-up on the corporate ladder.
Now you’re old and poor, and, from what I hear, you’re living in a shoebox and working at some shitty call center. ”
I shook my head, exasperated. “How is this polite dinner conversation? Seriously, Juliette, in what universe do you think it is okay to talk to someone like this?”
She sniffed and refilled her wine glass.
“I’m just being honest. Honesty is virtue, Sue.
The truth is important. That’s the problem with most people these days.
” She put on a baby voice. “They’re always wowwied about hurting their poor widdle feewings.
” She snorted. “It’s bred a generation of weaklings who can’t handle the truth. ”
“Honesty without compassion is just cruelty,” I told her. “And we all know that with you, Juliette, the cruelty is the point.”
“You can’t talk.” She snorted. “You just literally dogwalked Monty. He’s not going to be able to open his mouth for fear of being humiliated for the rest of the night.”
I took a sip of my wine. “He was being a misogynist. I just flipped the script on him, that’s all. He learned something today.”
“And I’m just being honest! It’s a virtue,” she said, tossing her ponytail fussily. “I want you to tell me the truth.”
“You don’t want the truth. You just like to hurt people.”
“Bullshit. I just can’t stand fake people.”
“Oh, really?” I let my eyes drift to my right, where her best friend Dan Raine, with his fake tan, was tossing his fake hair, and smiling with almost all of his fake teeth, dazzling the Saxby sisters with a fake story about his vacation with an A-list celebrity.
Gladioli walked back to the table to clear the main course plates, paused, and rolled her eyes.
All the plates were stacked around Donovan’s spot.
All of them were empty. Somehow he’d managed to steal everyone’s lasagna and eat it without anyone noticing.
Muttering under her breath, Gladioli removed the empty plates, and returned with three enormous plates of tiramisu.
It smelled divine. One plate went in front of the professor. She studied me carefully, then placed the other two in Donovan’s empty spot.
Juliette scowled at me, ignoring Gladioli completely. “Look, we all know that your little ‘date’ is not what it looks like. If he is a real prince—”
“He is,” the Professor stopped talking to the Admiral for one second to chime in.
“Then just tell us the truth,” Juliette went on.
“He’s gay, and you're his beard while he's visiting San Francisco for business. Or you came into some cash, so you thought you’d pay him to pretend to be your date, so we’d all be dazzled by your new boyfriend, and let you back into our social circle.
Just tell us, Susan.” She smiled widely, a nasty smile.
“We all know that a man like that would never go for a woman like you. Especially not now. You’re used goods. Rejected stock.”
Everything she was saying was true. I knew it. It shouldn’t hurt—God knows I’d managed to withstand her barbs so far, but for some reason, her stating the truth penetrated the armor I’d wrapped around myself. I shrugged lightly. “Maybe it’s my magical vagina.”
“Your dried-up vagina, you mean. You’ve got to be almost ten years older than him, to start with.”
“I think he’s older than he looks.”
Juliette wasn't giving up. “Have you got dirt on him? Is that it? Did you bribe or blackmail him to come to this dinner so you could try and muscle your way back into the social scene?” She curled her lip. “It’s not going to work. The second you see Vincent, you’ll go crazy again.
They’ll cart you back to the mental hospital and leave you there.
” She grinned, tossed her ponytail, and waited for me to respond.
I couldn’t. The flash of memory smashed into me, plunging me back into the horrors of the past.
It was my biggest fear—the nightmare that plagued me every time I fell asleep. I felt the blood drain from my cheeks. My heart thudded in my chest, knocking against my ribs painfully, jerking as if it was suddenly trying to escape.
My biggest fear was to be stuck in that place again, with no hope of ever getting out.
Trapped in a beige prison with linoleum floors and no door handles.
The constant screaming of patients, day and night, shouting obscenities, recounting real-life trauma, true horror stories.
The terrible thoughts that escaped my fuzzy, drugged-up head, spikes of desperate panic, not knowing what was real and what was a hallucination.
Heavyset women with terrible hair who stood with their arms crossed, watching me use the toilet, every single time.
Bespectacled men with buck teeth asking me again and again about my deepest secrets, my most personal thoughts.
No chance of ever getting out. It was the fourth circle of hell.
I swallowed. Juliette grinned at me, delighted with what she’d done.
The door opened, and Donovan stalked back in. He saw my face, and his eyes iced over. “I grow impatient, Ahdeannowyn.”
“Fair enough.” The professor let out a long sigh. “I think that will do it, anyway. Come with me.”