I’ve come to enjoy this city, which is so different from the rolling green dales of my homeland. There’s nothing one can’t find. The energy, diversity and complexity of the people here are unrivalled.
My gaze darts back and forth from the traffic to the pedestrians. Ahead of us, a delivery lorry blocks the one-way street. On the left pavement, a bearded man takes a group of excited canines on their morning walk, deftly handling a half-dozen leashes. On the right, a mother dressed for a run pushes a jogging pram ahead of her towards the park. The sun is shining, but the towering buildings and thickly leafed trees choke out the light.
The traffic delay stretches.
Mr Black continues his business dealings with self-assured ease, his voice calm and assertive. The cars begin to creep forward, then pick up speed. We head downtown. For a short time, we’re blessed with green lights in succession. Then our luck runs out just before we reach our destination and a red light stops me.
A flood of people rushes by in front of us, most with heads down and a few with ear buds that I suppose offer some respite from the cacophony of the busy city. I glance at the time, making sure we’re on schedule.
A sudden pained noise sends ice through my veins. It’s a half-strangled moan that is vaguely inhuman. Turning my head swiftly, I glance at the back seat, alarmed.
Mr Black sits still and silent, his eyes dark as coal, his face drained of colour. His gaze is sliding along the pedestrian crossing, following. I look that way, seeking.
A statuesque brunette hurries away from us. Her hair is short and sleek, cut into a bob that skims her sculpted jaw. It’s not Lily’s luxuriant mane, not at all. But when she turns to walk down the pavement, I think it might be her incomparable face.
The back door swings open violently. The cab driver behind us yells obscenities out of his lowered window.
“Lily!”
That my employer should go so far as to shout out his wife’s name staggers me like the crack of gunfire. My lungs seize with shock.
The woman’s gaze darts towards us. She stumbles. Freezes in place.
The resemblance is uncanny. Eerie. Impossible to comprehend.
Mr Black leaps out just as the light turns green. His response is instinctual; mine is arrested by confusion. I know only that my employer is beside himself, and I am trapped behind the wheel of the Range Rover while the madness of New York City’s morning commute rages on all sides.
Her face, already pale as porcelain, turns bloodless. I read the movement of her lushly red lips. Kane.
Her astonished recognition is intimate and unmistakable.
So is the fear.
Mr Black glances towards traffic, then lunges between moving cars in an explosion of powerful physicality. The barrage of honking becomes deafening.
The harsh sounds visibly jolt her. She surges into a run, pushing her way through the throng on the pavement, her emerald-hued dress a beacon in the crowd.
My employer, a man who attains without pursuit, gives chase. A black town car reaches her first, driving too fast.
One moment Lily is a streak of green in the urban jungle’s unrelenting grey. The next, she is a jewel-bright puddle on the dirty New York street.
4
AMY
I smile at the waiter, a slow, easy curving of my lips. “I’ll take another manhattan.”
“Oh God,” Suzanne moans dramatically, rubbing at her temples. Her tightly coiled glossy black curls dance with the movement. “I don’t know how you do it. If I drank alcohol at this time of day, I’d have to take a nap.”
I cast a longing glance at her cocktail fork and imagine stabbing her in the eye with it. I use words to the same effect. “How’s the book coming?”
She winces, and I hide my smile. She’s going to start blathering about organic creativeness and refilling the well, and I’m going to picture her pretty face with a gaping hole where her eyeball once was and the dark void behind it where a brain should be.
“I’m such a huge fan,” Erika Ferrari gushes.
Is she fucking kidding? I had to work quickly to connect with Erika and invite her to lunch before Kane dragged her away from last night’s party to shove his cock into her. To realize Erika accepted my invitation solely to gain access to Suzanne makes me livid. The stupid cunt used me!
Erika leans forward as she kisses Suzanne’s ass for greater emphasis.
And just like that, Suzanne’s anxiety is gone, replaced with a bright smile. She has the most beautiful lips – plush and naturally darker around the edges and softly pink within, like natural lip liner. “Oh, thank you! I’m so happy you enjoy my work.”
My gaze skips across crowded tables to find the bar, hoping to spot the bartender making my drink. Another gulp, and I’ll be staring at the bottom of an empty glass. I cannot sit through a single minute of the Suzanne and Erika Mutual Appreciation Show without alcohol. Thank God I have a gift for deleting inanity from my memory banks. With any luck, I’ll consign this lunch to oblivion by dinnertime.
You know what you need, Amy? my mother-in-law once told me with her signature backhanded sweetness. Culture. Try finding some friends who can elevate you. Writers, artists, musicians ... People who can teach you something.
As if I don’t know anything. Yeah, I went to public school and did a two-year stint at a junior college before finishing my marketing degree at a university. True, I hadn’t known my water glass was to my right or that you set forks on the left. None of that makes me worthless.
Aliyah thinks I’m not good enough for her precious Darius. If only she knew – I’ve fucked all three of her sons.
So, Suzanne – who was born just plain Susan – is my dash of literary sophistication. She writes trashy romance novels about billionaires who fuck like champs and the women who tame them. She’s the perfect middle-finger response to my bitch of a mother-in-law.
Because of Aliyah – and Kane – I’m wasting two hours of my life with two women I can’t stand. Erika and Suzanne are presently discussing the sexual exploits of fictional people with the kind of excitement I reserve for reality. It’s obvious Ms. Ferrari is secretly recalling being fucked senseless by Kane and imagining she’d lived a scene out of a book. She tries to be discreet about checking her phone, no doubt having left her number behind before Witte showed her out the door with his oh-so-British aplomb.
How that scene would’ve played out is etched in my mind. The polite rap on the door. The perfectly polished silver tray resplendent with an elegant coffee service and a single white rose. A white silk robe waiting in a bathroom stocked with anything a woman might need to disguise the inevitable walk of shame. And when Erika returned to the bedroom after her shower, she would’ve found the clothes Kane had peeled off her body neatly laid out on the white velvet bench and her hastily kicked-off shoes next to the foot of the already stripped and remade bed.
Witte is nothing if not faultlessly efficient.
And Kane. So predictable. I’d known the minute Erika showed up that he’d nail her. She looks like his dead wife and me. She doesn’t know it, but she’s the latest subject in the exhaustive study I affectionately call Women Kane Black Screwed and Screwed Over.
So far, superficial resemblance seems to be all Kane requires to nail a woman six ways to Sunday. He’s a total headcase. Suzanne needs to write a book about him. In fact, I’d give her the title of my study for her next novel. I can be generous when I’m not sitting next to a lookalike who’s glowing, puffy-lipped and sleepy-eyed.