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This isn’t happening.
Cherise swung her unnaturally violet eyes towards me. “So, Gazelle said you’re Sterling Mortcombe’s wife. Something about a matchmaker?”
Two men in camel boots and work jackets moved up the sidewalk. The boots caught my eye, and I stole a second from Cherise, pretending to eye the paparazzi like a gape-mouthed idiot.
FryerVats.
They hadn’t been outside the apartment when I’d left. Had I missed them?
FryerVats and Companion slowed, squinting at the glass as they peered into the shadows beyond it.
The paparazzi herd shuffled to shoot around them.
FryerVats looked at me through the glass. Pedestrians flowed around them like they were rocks in an urban stream.
Eye contact made, he and Companion melted back into the crowd. The paparazzi herd clumped back together into their original spot.
I yanked my attention onto Cherise. “Yes. That’s right. A matchmaker.”
Cherise looked me up and down, and added up everything I was wearing, looking for a single mistake, then asked in a most dulcet tone, “How does that work? Just business, I presume? You’ve got an American accent so you’re not mail-order.”
The waiter set down my drink, and I took a tiny sip. “It’s optimism for pragmatists.”
Cherise laughed and tapped Hunter on the arm, and they sort of laugh-snickered. Hunter shook her head as if Cherise was wrong, but Cherise nodded emphatically.
Time to swing this to something else and do it quick. This was Gazelle’s show, so she could have the spotlight. “So, Gazelle, how did you meet Ronald?”
She launched into the tale, which eventually turned the conversation to prenups. Hunter revealed her prenup had all sorts of contingencies if they did or did not have children, and she had secured a certain monthly allowance by producing a son (which was larger than if she had produced a daughter, and I resisted the urge to point out that she hadn’t had anything to do with if it had been an X or Y and this wasn’t the court of Henry VIII), and got a tidy bonus every time the little one exceeded a developmental milestone, and those milestones were sketched out well into graduate school.
Cherise sighed over planning her two-year-old daughter’s birthday party, and told Gazelle, “Be happy you don’t have kids yet. You’ve got to book the preschool before they’re born, and I had to reserve the birthday cake last year!”
She showed us a picture of the cake, and it was fancier than the wedding cake Cye had made. Feeding the towering monstrosity to a herd of toddlers would have resulted in a sugar-induced stampede large enough to mow down half a city.
Cherise heaved a sigh, and gestured with one hand, her nails a demure shade of beige-rose. “Jason seems to think my allowance should also cover birthday parties.”
“No,” Hunter said in genuine dismay.
I tried to keep my jaw from hitting my chest. If someone mentioned religion, I’d win the Things You Don’t Talk About In Polite Company trifecta.
“See what you have to look forward to?” Hunter asked me. “Take it from me, your allowance seems like a lot at first, but it’s not. Start working those raises regularly from the start.”
What on earth was Hunter talking about? They were all on allowances? That made Sterling’s comment about allowances and spouses true? I thought he’d been sort of miserably joking…
“Hunter, Hunter,” Cherise mock-scolded her friend, one eye on me as she spoke with syrupy venom, “Winter is a Mortcombe. The Mortcombe men don’t put their women on allowances. And they don’t do prenups. She’s just been listening while we chatter, knowing it doesn’t matter to her.”
This wasn’t happening. My father had all but sold me, my brother was out to destroy me, my species was dying, and my pack counted how many times I had sex because they didn’t quite believe something sordid (of the wrong sort of variety) wasn’t happening behind closed doors, and I was stuck here, sipping drinks with a couple of overprivledged fluffheads who thought hardship was finding a socially advantageous preschool and coordinating a four-figure birthday cake for a toddler who’d put their face into it.
My temper snapped. “Oh, I don’t know. I find this very educational. I hadn’t a clue that professional wives existed, or that being a decent parent had to be incentivized with a bonus structure.”
Cherise’s lips moved in a sort of silent, indignant sputter.
Art galas fawning over bad fingerpainting was one thing. Husbands treating their wives like children incapable of participating in the business of the household another. Turning your toddler’s birthday party to a must-attend social event was rancid. A bonus for producing a male child with no deformities was medieval. Performance-based bonuses to incentivize child-rearing? Repugnant.
Sterling could just snarl and bark and sleep on the damn floor.
Gazelle’s laughter broke the silence. She waved her beringed hands at the waiter, beautiful face alight with mirth, and she told me, “Ronald was right, Winter!”
“About what?” I tapped my fingernails on my glass. I’d set fire to the deal, might as well kick it into a ditch and flip both middle fingers at it.
