“Honestly, Mom. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Yes, you do,” she said tightly. “It’s all the boards I chair. Keeps me on my feet and dressing up.”
I snorted. “You know that’s not it,” I said.
“It is if I say so,” she said. That was a classic Celia Preston statement if I’d ever heard one.
I decided to pace myself and not give my mother and all her charitable activities a hard time right away. She’d run around for decades for her boards, pretending to be a saint, while one Guatemalan nanny after another had raised us.
Oh, the irony of my mother’s charities. The Boston Public Library Children’s Room. All that crap she’d done for the importance of healthy meals and fresh vegetables for kids. The woman had never even cooked me a processed chicken nugget. The nanny was the one who taught me the words to Goodnight Moon.
“So,” said my mother, clapping her hands together and breaking my brief reverie. “I’d ask you how your flight was, but I couldn’t care less. Tell me about your new girlfriend!” She slipped her arm through mine and led me to the formal sitting room. In typical Preston fashion, she poured a before-lunch bourbon for me and a larger one for herself.
I gripped it as if it was one of the few life preservers left on the Titanic.
“Tell you what?” I asked.
“To start with, I’d like to at least know her name,” my mother said. “So that we can let Todd and Evie know.”
I winced at the mention of Evie—she was Todd’s fiancée. She was just like my mother. Thin as a rail, all collarbones and wrists, with a perfect outfit for every occasion. I was not looking forward to seeing her.
I took a sip of my bourbon. Oh fuck, I realized, I don’t even have the escort’s name. “You get to meet my girlfriend tonight. All secrets will be revealed then,” I said.
“James, don’t be ridiculous. Tell me about her. We’re all going to be spending the next two weeks together. I’d at least like to be prepared. And since you neither call your family nor return your family’s phone calls,” she sniffed, “this is the one opportunity I’ve got. So stay right there. Don’t look like you’re going to feign an important phone call and run out of here.”
Shit, I thought, and took my hand off the phone in my pocket.
“She’s young, and very pretty,” I said, making an educated guess that both of these things were true. “She’s…in school, still,” I said, trying to remember the story that Elena had come up with. “Grad school.”
My mother raised her artfully waxed brows at me. Grad school was a pretty amorphous category.
“How long have you been seeing her?” she asked.
“A few months,” I said. I’m picking her up on the way home from here, I thought, and making a one hundred thousand-dollar deposit with her madam. And signing a waiver that says I won’t sue the service if I happen to contract chlamydia, genital warts, etcetera, even though they’ve signed a contract that states my escort’s vagina is pristine and sparkling.
Not that I was going to sleep with her.
“So, her name?” my mother asked, expectantly.
Just then, my phone buzzed. I smiled at my mother in triumph. “I have to get this,” I said and picked up. “Molly. Wait one minute.” I knocked back the rest of my bourbon and leaned down to give my mother’s papery cheek a quick kiss.
“See you tonight. I gotta take this.”
Then, happier than I’d ever been to get bad news from Molly, I hustled out of the house without a backward glance.
Audrey
My luxury wardrobe was packed and ready to go. I was sitting in the office, crossing and uncrossing my legs, waiting for Mr. Preston to pick me up.
Elena clicked around the corner in her heels and frowned at me. “You look nervous—don’t be. It’s going to be fun,” she said.
“I really appreciate you giving me this opportunity, Elena,” I said. I sprayed my mouth with breath freshener for what was probably the tenth time in the last fifteen minutes.
“Well, you’re perfect for this job. Beautiful, smart. You’re able to hold your own in a conversation. And I have a guarantee that you’ll behave this time.” She gave me a look that I understood instantly.
“That guy was a creep, Elena,” I said defensively. “If I hadn’t run, I would probably still be his sex slave, shackled up in his scary basement.”
“We’re lucky he didn’t press charges against us,” Elena said. “And I don’t blame you for wanting to get out of there. But if there’s ever a problem, you call me. You don’t pepper-spray a client, handcuff him to a wall in his underwear, and then run away.”
“What if he was going to kill me, huh?” I asked.
“He wasn’t going to kill you,” she responded, rolling her eyes at me as if I were being dramatic.
“Elena, he told me I was going to be his lifelong prisoner. And he’d already done some scary stuff to me at that point,” I said. “All I kept thinking was, who was gonna help my brother? Who was going to take care of him if I never came back?” I was traumatized more by the memory of that worry than by the creepy John himself. I could handle him. But Tommy being left all alone?
That I could never handle.
“There, there,” she said, coming over and rubbing my shoulders. “Don’t get all blotchy.”
I knew she was being nice and cooing over me because I was her prized show pony of the moment. But I smiled at her anyway. She’d given me this assignment, and I was going to be able to set things up for Tommy now. So that if a John ever did decide to keep me as a permanent-resident sex slave, my poor brother would at least have a roof over his head.
She cupped my face in her hands and clucked her tongue in approval. “You’re perfect looking even when you’re upset,” she said. “And all your body parts are real. James Preston is going to love you. And then he’s going to love me, too.”
After staring off into space for a second, probably counting all the money she was going to make, Elena came back to earth. She looked at me. “Back to the pepper-spray incident. I do not want my girls getting hurt. Not ever. You call me if there’s a problem. If it’s bad, I’ll have you call 911 immediately. After I screen the issue. But that guy telling you that he wanted to lock you up and hate-fuck you every day for the rest of your life? Honey, you haven’t been around that long. That’s nothing. Really, that’s not so bad.”
I looked at her, indignant. “He had a basement filled with handcuffs and shackles, permanently affixed to the walls,” I said. “It seemed pretty bad at the time.”
She squeezed my face as if I was an insolent child. “I forgive you for running,” she said, even though I wasn’t asking for her forgiveness. “But I want you to make this James Preston thing your triumph. Your return to good graces. You remember that you owe me for giving you another chance. If you make him happy, I’ll be sure that you only get the best clients from now on. The normal ones, who just want to pretend that you’re the perfect girlfriend. And maybe jerk off in your face.”