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“You look good,” she said. She sounded slightly surprised. She probably thought I’d be drunk already, like at Thanksgiving.
“I always look good, Mother. Just like you.”
My mother did always look good. She’d been a knockout when we were younger—naturally blond, thin, smiling a large, fake smile. She currently maintained a regimen of just the right amount of plastic surgery, Botox, and tennis to keep her looking refreshed.
“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 f**k, 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.
