I love your laugh, doll. That voice again, reprimanding me. Don’t you change a fuckin’ thing.
I stood back from the mirror. Matthew wasn’t the only person who had ever called me perfect.
But in front of him was the only time it had ever felt like the truth. When I had had less sleep than this. When my face was tear-stained and blotchy. When my lips were swollen and hard-kissed.
To him, I was perfect. If only for a moment.
“Cancel the appointment with Dr. Raleigh, please,” I said to Moira as I straightened and picked up the coffee on the counter. “I’ve decided to see what life is like without the needle for a while.”
Moira nodded and made a note. “Very well. Do you have a preference for breakfast?”
I shook my head. I didn’t like much more than coffee before my trainer. “Just a poached egg and grapefruit, please.”
“I’ll be sure it’s in the dining room, Mrs. Gardner. After that I’m taking out the dry-cleaning and then making sure Patricia is available to nanny again this month and in August. We want to have everything in order before Miss Olivia returns this weekend.”
I smiled at the mention of my daughter. “It will be nice to have her home for a bit, won’t it?”
Moira smiled back. Olivia wasn’t just the light of my life. My assistant, the cook, the maid, the doorman—they all adored her as well. “Yes, it certainly will.”
She didn’t say, as she had years before, that she wished Olivia could stay longer, and why didn’t we just hire a nanny for the entire summer, not just for a few weeks. Moira never explicitly stated that she understood why my daughter attended school in another state or why she would go to a sleepaway camp in England. Instead, her eyes dropped to the bruise on my chest where my dressing gown had fallen open, then flickered back up when I tugged it closed.
I willed myself to look her in the eye. What would she say if she knew I’d given that one to myself?
Moira turned toward the door. “I’ll be on my cell phone if you need me, of course. Have a wonderful day, Mrs. Gardner.”
Her footsteps echoed my husband’s, as did the sound of the bedroom door opening and closing, leaving me alone again. I turned back to the mirror, pausing for a moment. And then, slowly, I pulled off my robe.
The bruise on my chest was flowering a bit more now, and the bottom of my lip was positively purple. I turned my hip out to examine my inner thigh—just a hint of color there, but the skin was tender and swollen.
You have to take care of yourself, doll.
My lower lip trembled. It had been nearly five weeks since I’d seen him. Seven since I’d toppled into the small brick house on the edge of Brooklyn and confessed the truth buried in the depths of my soul.
I love you.
And Matthew, of course, loved me too. For a few brief, shining moments, I had envisioned a future away from this plush jail. Seen myself living in that tiny townhouse, breaking bread with his raucous family in the Bronx. Fleeing the man I was chained to for the man who set me free. Since meeting Matthew, I had craved freedom. And for scant moments, I tasted it in his arms.
Until he told me I couldn’t. Until he had broken my heart. And told me I had to come back.
“Nina,” he said in a voice portending certain doom. “Baby, I don’t think you understand. You have to go. You have to go back home.”
My eyes popped open with shock. Disbelief. “What? Why?” After the night of passion—no, love—how could he be saying this?
“Because,” Matthew said. His head dropped. Shame emanated from his beautiful body like some sort of sick halo. “I can’t protect you from this investigation. But being married to Calvin…” He shook his head, looking ill. “That will.”
Suddenly, I was gasping for air.
The problem with addiction is that once you start, you physically can’t stop the wanting.
The problem with love is the same.
The course of the day seemed utterly impossible. I touched a finger to my swollen lip. The flash of my diamond—a gaudy, glittering lie—made me squint. I couldn’t do this anymore.
I just want to see him, I told myself. Nothing illegal about that.
Before I knew it, I had trudged back into the bedroom, sunk into the covers, and taken my phone from the nightstand. It took only a few more seconds to pull up his name—or the pseudonym I had given him—in my contacts.
I couldn’t.
I shouldn’t.
Just like last time, the text was short and sweet, and before I knew it, flying through cyberspace.
Me: I need you. Please.
The phone lay silent in my hand for a long time. But just when I was about to give up and shove my legs into Lycra like it was my armor against the world, the phone vibrated.
Maya: What time?
I closed my eyes in relief, my chest expanding at just the thought of his face in front of mine.
Nina: Two o’clock. Our room.
Chapter Five
Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise.
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby:
Rock them, rock them, lullaby.
Care is heavy, therefore sleep you,
You are care, and care must keep you;
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby,
Rock them, rock them, lullaby.
Peppe turned from the window, a smile playing over his lips as Nina finish reciting the poem. Thomas Dekker, one of the many assigned for his class on Renaissance literature and art this summer. Nina hummed the tune from The Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers.” Peppe loved The Beatles. She clung to these small details he offered like cellophane.
Still wrapped in sheets like one of Botticelli’s models, Nina preened in the bed, ignoring the crumbling plaster overhead. This apartment might have been falling apart, but it felt like a palace when her lover was in it.
“Very good,” Peppe said, ever the professor, even after sex. “Full marks for you, principessa.”
Nina stretched, allowing the worn linens to fall from her limbs, drawing him to her like a moth to a flame.
“All right, Professor,” she whispered as he returned to the bed and brushed the hair from her face. “Your turn to recite a little poetry.”
“There are many kinds of poetry, my principessa.” His voice was a hummingbird’s wing as it found the curve of her shoulder and set her skin aflutter. “Let’s explore another.”
The knock at the door, brisk and quick, shook me out of my daydream. I turned from the floor-to-ceiling window of the Grace Hotel penthouse, from which the Lower East Side spread, cooking with the rest of the city in the summer heat. The room was air-conditioned, but even so, my silk shell was sticking to the back of my neck. I needed to get these clothes off. I needed a cold shower
But I needed something—someone—else more.
“Nina?”
His voice pulled me to him, and before I could help myself, I was skipping over to the door and yanking it open like a child on Christmas morning. There I found the man who had stood in court and charged my husband with counts of racketeering, trafficking, and bribery.