Never Have I Ever Page 25
“Oh, do people often try to kill you?” I asked, deadpan. “Fancy that.”
“Well, I did mention I was married,” she said, and then added, “Rimshot!”
I didn’t think she was joking all the way, though. There was a serious edge to it, and I took it as another drop in my meager pool of knowledge about Roux. She was married. She’d once lived in my old neighborhood. She didn’t eat carbs. And now this: She’d known violence.
Her hands were lower now, feeling my waist. I sucked my stomach in. I couldn’t help it. It was easier to stand her hands on me when we were talking, so I talked.
“You don’t seem married. Hearing how you talk about men, I don’t think you like them very much.”
She shrugged. “Men are useful. I like useful things.”
She knelt then, running her hands down my right hip, then my leg.
“See, right there, that’s animosity,” I told her, and I wanted to make her uncomfortable. Wanted to invade her space, the same way she was muscling into mine. “Has it occurred to you that you’re raising a man?”
I felt a stillness come into her body, but it happened in her core. Her hands stayed in motion. “Luca is a boy. Boys are sweet.”
“What do you think boys grow up to be?” I pushed.
“Men. Mostly. But at that point don’t they also get the hell out of your house?” She grinned, tossing the remark off, but my dig had landed. She did have a soft spot. Her kid. Now she was checking my sandals. “You’re pretty fit, especially considering how big you used to be. You should dedicate a day to abs, though.”
I’d hit her and she’d hit back, immediately, landing a low blow. I closed my eyes, breathed in, as her hands swept up my other leg. Imagined I was underwater. Imagined her movements were waves and current pushing at me. It worked, too, right up until she put one hand directly between my legs. I cried out and stepped back, my eyes flying open.
She cocked an eyebrow. “Relax, Amy. People always think no one will look there. It’s the first place I think of and the last place I check.”
“Satisfied?” I asked, my voice tight, as she stood and stepped away from me.
“Not yet. But I mean to be.” She gave me a brilliant smile. She looked down at Oliver, snug in the stroller, sleeping in the abandoned way of secure and happy babies, both arms hurled up over his head. He’d kicked the blanket off, as he always did, exposing one perfect, pink foot. “See, now, boys are sweet.”
It was the first time she’d ever acknowledged him as a person existing around her, and she said it in an offhand manner. She reached down, and I thought she was going to fix the blanket. Instead she searched my boy as if he were a handbag, impersonal, her movements brisk and thorough.
I felt my own hands fist at my sides, and this was more an invasion than her groping me had been.
“If you wake him up . . .” I said, a warning whisper, but he was already stirring.
She didn’t know it, but this meet was over. Oliver was a monster baby if anyone pulled him out of a nap. He was beginning his high whine that would become a squall and then a howl. His gummy eyes fought to open.
Roux put her face close to his, then placed one hand on his chest, one lower. She bounced him in little pushes, like a gentle version of baby CPR, making a noise that sounded like a quiet train.
“Chicka-chicka-chicka.”
His eyes focused briefly on her face, then he slow-blinked once, twice. To my surprise he settled, going limp again.
“I’m a baby whisperer,” she said, peeping up at me with a sly smile. “They fucking love me.”
This from a woman who had acted like he was a houseplant every time she’d shared a room with him. She bent lower to check the diaper bag I’d stowed under his stroller. My cell was in it, and she pressed the button and swiped, powering it all the way down. When she was finished, she walked, brisk and businesslike, over to the sofa and sat. “All right, you asked what I want. I want the money from your college trust fund. After you liquidate and pay taxes and fees, you should clear around two hundred and forty thousand. You give it to me, all of it, and I will go away.”
It took a moment for that to sink in. I’d guessed that she was after money, but this was so specific.
“How can you know how much . . . ?” I started. But it sputtered out. That wasn’t even the question. How did she know about the trust itself? For the first time since coming up from the dive, I was truly off balance. She seemed to like it, a creamy smile spreading across her face.
“I looked you up on Boyce Skelton’s laptop.”
I straightened up. I knew the name, but it was so far out of context, it took me a moment to place. “My lawyer?”
He was an attorney at the investment firm that managed my family’s money. Not one of the important ones. He handled people like me, who had small trusts and relatives that mattered. He’d come to my parents’ house for cocktails a few times, trailing his bosses, just after we moved to Boston. I was turned entirely inward that year, focused on the live, wild hunger that I’d let loose inside me as a punishment. It was new, but minute by minute I could feel my big body dwindling in its grip. Boyce blipped on my radar only because Mom had told me he was handling my college trust. He’d been a podgy young man with a receding hairline. We’d spoken on the phone a few times over the years. He’d done his damnedest to talk me out of liquidating half to pay Tig’s mortgage.
“Boyce Skelton lives in Boston,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I took a little trip up there,” Roux said.
I shook my head. “Why would he show you my file?” I asked. He wouldn’t. It could get him disbarred.
“I helped myself while he was in the shower. His place, because Luca was back at my hotel. It was not a PG-13 kind of night,” Roux said, and showed me all her teeth.
“You went to Boston to have sex with my lawyer. So you could sneak a look at my investment portfolio,” I repeated, stupidly.
Boyce must be in his fifties now; I could not imagine that puffy little yes-man, grayer and podgier, having sex with Roux. But I could, I realized, imagine Roux cold-bloodedly seducing him to see a file. I was still taking this as personal, as if it were about me. It wasn’t. She was a professional.
She flirted one shoulder up, dipping her chin in an acknowledgment that was half nod, half bow. Her pink tongue came out to touch her teeth, and she smiled a conspirator’s smile.
“Do you know he keeps his password on a Post-it note? Right in the laptop’s carry case. I looked you up, and I did the math. I’m good at math,” she said. “He’s a missionary kind of guy. A traditionalist. A lot of those Boston banking types are into truly freaky stuff, Amy, but not your Boyce, you’ll be relieved to know. I always think people feel better knowing their money is in the hands of a man who doesn’t need to lick boots.”
I glanced at Oliver. He was still deeply out. Even so, I wanted to grab the stroller, run him from the room. I didn’t want this conversation touching air he breathed.
She was making me feel this way on purpose, I realized, and something akin to admiration pinged small at my center. She didn’t mean these things. She only thought saying them would knock me off balance. Just like at book club, just like at my house, earlier.
“Why do you keep trying to shock me? You’re blackmailing me. I’m shocked enough,” I said. I made myself sound calm and cool. If she wanted me shocked, she would get the opposite. It wasn’t even hard. I’d lived wild in California, unhappy enough to do almost anything to stop myself from feeling. I mimicked her little shoulder flirt, her offhand tone. “I’m not some medieval nun who’s scared of lesbians and never saw a show on HBO.”
She let out a startled bark of laughter, and that ping of admiration at my center found an echo inside her. I could see it. She leaned back, as if reassessing me, and I didn’t like the way we were positioned in the room. She was lounging, at ease, while I stood there like some naughty child waiting to hear my punishment. I should sit, too. I felt it on instinct. But I didn’t. I was in the room with a predator, and I could not bring myself to move away from Oliver.
She said, “No, you’re right. That shit doesn’t work on you.”
“I can’t imagine it works on anyone,” I said, like a criticism.