The Pool House, page 20
In the event, it had been easy organising a night away from the city with Paul. David had a Hemingway conference in Illinois he had to go and speak at, and although he had invited Alice to go along with him, he hadn’t made a fuss when she said she should probably stay in New York and let him concentrate on his work. He hadn’t questioned it; after all, as Mark Berger had said in one of their joint counselling sessions, it was vital that couples trust each other.
Paul had suggested they go upstate to a little hotel he knew. ‘It’s basically off-grid,’ he’d said, ‘but it’s still very luxe.’ Alice was imagining a Ralph Lauren hunting lodge, although she didn’t much care as long as the bed was big enough for her planned itinerary. An itinerary that now included this. She held the vibrator up, feeling its weight. She smoothed her hand over the end, imagining how it would feel pushing inside her, Paul’s intense eyes on her face, seeing the pleasure he was giving her, turning the dial up another notch. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure Sandy wasn’t looking and twisted it on. Mmmm. It bucked in her hand, sending an electric tickle up her arm.
That’s good she thought. Really good.
Turning it off, she glanced at the price tag and felt her heart drop. How much? She looked at the card, then back at the vibrator. How could they charge that? She closed her eyes and tried to recalibrate. When it came to money, she had never been able to shake off her upbringing. Back then, whatever cash she had had always been like sand slipping through her fingers. Now that she was rich – or comfortable, at least – she had to keep reminding herself she could go into Bloomingdale’s and buy a lipstick without budgeting for months before and after. It was still an alien concept to her.
Even so, this purchase was different. She couldn’t charge it to any of her cards; David was thorough about checking the statements every month. So it had to be cash. Mentally she counted the bills she had in her wallet. It would be enough, but it wouldn’t leave much. She’d have to think of some scam to wheedle more out of David. Maybe something to do with the dinner party? Yes, that would do it – the caterers had submitted an additional invoice that had to be paid in cash. He wouldn’t question it; domestic affairs gave David a headache.
‘That one?’ smiled Sandy as she rang it up. ‘An excellent choice.’
‘I just had to have it,’ said Alice as she picked up the discreetly packaged gold bag and stepped out into the street. She had made it sound like she was making conversation, that she was happy with her purchase, but she meant it literally. She needed the vibrator, needed to give Paul something new, something he wouldn’t get anywhere else; certainly not at home.
She caught a glimpse of herself in a store window as she walked back up Madison and stopped, looking at herself anew. What did Paul see when he gazed at her with such hunger? Sure, she had curves where Rebecca was pretty much up and down, and she was sun-kissed blonde where Rebecca was pale and gothic-looking. Was that it? Was it just that Paul wanted something new? That was how Alice operated after all, her simple formula. If he’s unhappy with what he’s got, give him the opposite. If he has fat, give him thin. If he has quiet, give him loud. And even if he’s not unhappy, even if he seems content to paddle along with the familiar, men are always men, they all have the same flaw: hard-wired to their primordial urges, doomed to spread their seed as wide and as far as possible. Any man’s going to get bored with one set of tits: a pearl of wisdom not from her mother this time, but her friend Carolyn, comforting Alice when she had caught an early boyfriend going down on some slut after ball practice.
Sighing, she walked on, back towards their apartment, feeling the weight of the bag in her hand, swinging it as she went. Usually she would take a cab, but tonight she wanted to think, to plan. Alice had always been good at that. Plans, charts, maps drawn in her head. Perhaps she should have been a bank robber, she thought with a smile. It would certainly have played to her strengths: conspiracy, disguise and a desire to take risks, to name just a few.
So what about Paul? That was the strange thing. Usually Alice had planned her movements four or five steps ahead. With Paul, she was just reacting, taking it as it came. Which was why she had chosen to visit XD’Or – she needed to get back in control. But that was the other thing about Paul: she didn’t know how to behave. She became giggly and moon-eyed, like a schoolgirl in the first flushes of love.
Love. Was it really love this time? Was that it? Yes. That was what she wanted to say; she wanted to spread her arms and scream it at the sky. YES! She was in love. It was crazy, it didn’t make any sense, but it was true, as true as anything Alice had felt anyway.
She looked down at the golden bag. All the more reason to get this right, to hook him, reel him in. She felt butterflies at the thought. She knew it was a risk; up until now their lovemaking had been pretty vanilla. Sure, it had been frantic and dangerous and forbidden, but it had followed the basic porn formula: kisses, rushed foreplay, fuck. Sometimes she went down on him, sometimes he went down on her. Nothing adventurous, nothing kinky. And everyone had a kink.
She looked at the faces of the people passing her on the sidewalk. A businessman in a grey suit, a woman in low-slung jeans, an Asian guy with a back-to-front baseball cap. Ordinary people, the kind you’d see in any city, but what did they like when the lights went down? Did they go on top? Did they like to watch? Giving pain, taking it? Would they appreciate a silver dildo that cost more than a brand-new laptop? She smiled to herself. Who wouldn’t want a gift like that? Nothing says ‘I love you’ better than a steel vibrator.
She was approaching her building now and opened her purse to find her phone. She wanted to check her messages to make sure David hadn’t done something crazy like leave his office early. It would be just her luck to choose the day he was waiting by the door to carry a bag from XD’Or into the apartment. She didn’t want to have to waste it on her husband.
‘Hey, stranger.’
Alice jumped, and in her surprise she dropped her purse, sending the contents spilling across the sidewalk.
‘Oh shit,’ she muttered, bending to scrabble it all back into the bag.
‘Here, let me.’ It was only when the man bent down to help that she finally saw his face. And froze.
‘Nick?’
‘The very same,’ he grinned.
But it wasn’t. Or rather, it was the same Nick Vlautin she had known, but he had changed. God, he had changed. That Nick had been handsome, with a lopsided smile and unruly hair, a lean rock-star look to him. This Nick had got old. The leanness had turned to haggard, the hair still long but thinner, lank, the cheekbones hollow – the sign of someone who had done way too many drugs. He handed her the purse and they stood up, regarding each other, both lost in the past for a moment.
‘Well . . . surprise!’ he said, with forced levity. ‘Bet you didn’t expect to see me again, huh?’
No shit, Sherlock.
‘How are you, Nick?’ said Alice.
‘All the better for seeing you,’ he said, showing her his once-perfect white teeth, now uneven and discoloured.
‘What a coincidence,’ she said guardedly.
‘No coincidence,’ he grinned, rubbing his hands on his jeans like they were sweaty. ‘Thought it was time I looked you up. Catch up on old times.’
‘Look, Nick, it’s good to see you,’ she said, moving towards her building, trying to hide her panic. ‘But I have an appointment across town. Maybe you can give me a call and we can catch up next week?’
He looked awkward, embarrassed, his eyes changed then, his expression hardened, and she saw the lines the years had scored in his face. She saw the hunger, too, that determination to make a buck. Nick had been a friend, a champion for a while, but he had always been driven by his own needs, his own selfish agenda. And Alice immediately knew why he was here.
He stepped in front of her, shaking his head.
‘No, Alice,’ he said firmly. ‘We need to talk, and we should probably do that now.’
Chapter 23
The deli was almost empty and Alice could see why: the vinyl covering the booth seats was cracked and there were smears on the countertop where the tired-looking waitress had half-heartedly wiped it after the last suckers had left. The menu wasn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser either. Written on the grease-yellow whiteboard behind the counter, the specials were ‘eggs’, ‘eggs and ham’ or ‘meatloaf’. In a town driven by the organic, the fresh and the new, it was like an ink blot someone had forgotten to erase.
‘This place remind you of anywhere?’ said Nick as he slid in across from her. Alice immediately knew what he meant. The Pie Palace, 54th and 9th. ‘Fresh like Grandma’s House’ was the motto on the window. Alice had been seventeen, broke and scared, working twelve hours a day to scrape rent, when Nick had swung through the door, wearing Ray-Bans in the middle of November.
‘Coffee, black,’ he had said, pushing the shades up to reveal dark-rimmed brown eyes. ‘And whatever you got, sweetness,’ he’d added, pointing at Alice, ‘sprinkle some of that on top.’
Nikolai Vlautin wasn’t like the boys from Indiana. The name was a giveaway of course: Russian Jewish via Ellis Island, he was brash, loud and opinionated, almost a checklist for things that would make you stand out in small-town Hicksville. Not that Nick minded standing out: he wore a biker jacket and a T-shirt with the word ‘Fuck’ printed on it. He always carried a camera with him, but put himself centre of the frame. He’d go shoot the bums on the subway, or the whores on Canal Street; even the grouchy cops in Times Square. Everyone loved Nick, called him a crazy kid. He had a charm, a persuasiveness that could disarm anyone. And Alice had been his easiest mark.
‘We’re a long way from Hell’s Kitchen, Nick,’ said Alice, ordering tea with lemon and ignoring the waitress’s sneer. ‘And you didn’t come here to reminisce, did you? Why don’t you get to the point?’
‘I’m disappointed,’ said Nick, tapping his pockets. ‘I thought you’d want to hear all about my life.’ He pulled out a nicotine vaporiser. The waitress made a ‘uh-uh’ gesture with a finger and pointed at the No Smoking sign, which had been amended with a sharpie to read ‘Vape Too!!!’ Nick held the tube to his lips and made a kissing noise. ‘It’s empty, sweetheart,’ he called. ‘Doctor says I got to keep using it, though. Says it’s a nipple substitute.’
That was classic Nick – always trying to shock, make an impression, bending the rules to suit himself. But still – it wasn’t the old Nick. His eyes were dark, sunken; he looked like he needed a decent meal. Plus he was nervous, jumpy, his knee constantly jiggling under the table. The old Nick would have been leaning back, both arms along the back of the booth, far too cool for school.
‘So tell me about your life, Nick,’ said Alice as the waitress brought their drinks. ‘I’m guessing you’re CEO of Microsoft by now.’
‘Hey, no need to be like that,’ he said. ‘What, because your life has turned out so goddamn peachy? Sure, I saw you in that society magazine, at some party out in the Hamptons, you and your stiff husband up at Columbia.’
Alice looked at him sharply.
‘What, you never heard of the internet, babe? It ain’t hard to find out anything about anyone any more.’
‘That’s how you found where I lived?’
Nick raised his eyebrows and leant across for the sugar. ‘I still have friends.’
Alice wanted to ask more, find out what he knew, whether he had been following her for years, but she knew it didn’t matter. The important part was that he had found her.
‘So what now? What’s the big plan this time, Nick?’
Nick had always had plans. Big, crazy plans that, coming out of anyone else’s head, would have sounded grandiose and unrealistic. But he made you believe. And for a girl fresh off the Greyhound, that was exciting – no, it had been more than that; it had been life or death to Alice.
‘You know what the plan is, babe,’ said Nick. ‘You’re a smart cookie, you always were.’
‘Not that smart, obviously.’
The day she had left Hawkins, her friend Chloe had handed her a map of Manhattan with a big red circle inked in the middle. That, Chloe said excitedly, was the Barbizon, on the Upper East Side. Some rich old woman had set it up as a sanctuary for smart, streetwise girls arriving in the city, a kind of safe house where they could crash while they found their feet. Its roll call of former guests – Liza Minnelli, Candice Bergen, even Grace Kelly – had appealed to Alice’s romantic side.
The circle on the map had been a forty-minute walk from Port Authority bus terminal, and when she got there, Alice had seen the dark windows, the polished steps of just another expensive hotel and known immediately it was a mirage, just some stupid story teenage girls told each other. There was no sanctuary. So she rented a locker and slept sitting upright at Grand Central, then hit the want ads, lucking into the job at the Pie Palace on the third day. If she lived on pie crusts and coffee, she found she could just about make rent at a hostel in Midtown sharing six girls to a room.
After a month of cold nights and cockroaches, the romance of the Big Apple had just about worn out. That was when Nick walked in. For Alice it had been like when Dorothy woke up in Oz: like someone turned the lights on.
Now she sipped her tea and looked at the man sitting across from her. He was grey, like a child had scribbled over all the good parts. Funny, wasn’t it, how life could do that to you. It made Alice feel desperately sad, even though he’d clearly come to shake her down.
‘I’ve often thought about you, you know,’ she said honestly. ‘Wondered where you were, how you were doing.’
‘And?’
‘What do you mean?’
Nick smiled. ‘You always had a hell of an imagination, babe. What did you decide I was doing? Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief?’
‘I guessed you were probably in jail.’
He flinched visibly at that, looked away. When he turned back, his eyes were blazing.
‘We do what we have to do, don’t you remember that, Alice? That was our code. Whatever it takes.’
He reached into a pocket and pulled out a slim black flash drive. He placed it on the table and slid it across to her with one finger.
‘You want to take a stroll down memory lane, it’s all in there.’
Alice looked down at the thumb drive. She didn’t need to plug it into a laptop; she knew exactly what was on it. She had told Nick of her dream to become a model, and Nick had told her he was going to make it happen. He was that certain. To say that there were stars dancing in front of Alice’s eyes didn’t even come close. She had spent her teenage years hearing she was trash, shit, a dirty whore no better than her mother, and now here was a handsome native New Yorker telling her she was going to be the next Cindy or Eva, or Lynda Carter from Wonder Woman. And he wasn’t going to stop at the catwalk; he was going to take her to Hollywood – ‘You can dance, right? And the camera already loves you. It’s a cinch, babe. I got connections in Century City, it’s all gold.’
But first they needed eight-by-tens, they needed a show reel. They needed to show the real Alice.
She closed her hand around the flash drive, the sick feeling spreading from her stomach as she remembered that hotel room, the camera already set up, the bed stripped. She could still hear the lock clicking, could see herself turning, the look on Nick’s face. Whatever it takes.
She still couldn’t believe she had let it happen. Then again, she wondered if her momma ever wondered how it had taken six short months to go from electrical store clerk to town hooker.
‘Whatever it takes,’ repeated Nick, disturbing her from her thoughts, clenching his hand around hers. The flash drive cut into her palm, but she refused to cry out.
‘You trying to guilt me up?’ he spat. ‘You trying to pull at the old heart strings? Well fuck you, Alice. You’ve done well for yourself, married that rich motherfucker, now you can pay me. Twenty grand or it goes viral.’
Twenty? Anger rose in Alice and she wrenched her hand away.
‘I’m only a goddamn yoga teacher! How the hell do you think I’m going to get twenty thousand dollars?’
‘I don’t give a shit. Sell your jewellery. Go turn tricks in the alleyway, for all I care. But if I don’t get my money, your face will be all over the World Wide Web. Your choice.’
She looked at him, shaking her head.
‘What happened, Nick? You were always so . . . so good. Why don’t you do real photography or film-making? Like you used to?’
He sneered, his face wrinkling.
‘You think I didn’t try? You think they hand a directing job to a junkie two-time loser? Grow up. The only people willing to let me roll a camera were down in the valley. Skin flicks. Same old, same old. Problem is, everyone does what I do now – everyone can. Anyone with an iPhone and a girlfriend willing to spread her legs.’
He looked at Alice, and she felt nauseous.
‘Twenty Gs, end of the month. Think of it as an investment in your future,’ he said with a casual shrug.
Alice looked down at the memory stick.
Otherwise I won’t have one.
This summer
Chapter 24
The pie sat steaming on the table, but Jem couldn’t lift her fork.
‘Not hungry?’
She shook her head and looked up at Michael.
‘It’s just so . . .’
She trailed off and looked out of the window. The diner was cute: all stripped pine and red and white checked tablecloths, which she suspected was genuine local decor rather than tourist-pleasing Americana. It sat at the end of Rivertown’s main street, giving them a view of the lit-up shopfronts as the sun dipped behind the hills. It was almost six already.
