The Winner, page 11
She giggled. “No, a pro writer. And he’s dead. But he has an essay about playing tennis as a teenager. I’ll send you a link.”
When he texted her to exchange numbers, it was 9:42. Emily was still dawdling. “Your place is nearby?” he asked, trying to speed her up.
“Up here on the left.”
He’d been immersed enough in the conversation that he hadn’t noticed where they were on the dark road: coming up on two houses on opposite sides, a hundred feet beyond which was the driveway to Catherine’s. If she left on time and was using the road, she’d cross paths with them in the next few minutes.
He sped up a little and stopped at the driveway to the house on the left side of the road, but Emily continued past him. Was there another house he hadn’t noticed between this and Catherine’s, a hidden driveway he’d thought was a path into the woods?
A horrible premonition seeped through his body.
“You don’t live in that big house, do you?” he asked as he followed her.
“No,” she said, as though the idea were preposterous, and he relaxed again, but only until her next sentence: “There’s a guesthouse I stay in.”
Conor stopped walking.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Do you . . . rent it, or something?”
“Rent? No.”
“So you own it?”
“Me, personally? Of course not,” she said. “Why?”
There went his kissing her. There went his seeing her again.
“I just remembered I forgot to call my mom back,” he said. “She’s going to sleep soon. I should head home.”
Emily took a moment to adjust to his change of mood. “Of course,” she said. “Gotta call Mom before bedtime.”
Conor couldn’t afford more banter. He said a quick goodnight, turned, and, when she was out of sight, sprinted home.
WHAT A MESS HE’D GOTTEN HIMSELF INTO.
If only he’d asked Emily her last name at any point, this all could have been avoided. But Catherine didn’t have children, and they didn’t resemble each other all that much. Maybe she was Emily’s aunt. Or an older cousin. That degree of relation wasn’t so terrible, at least for the short term, especially since Catherine had married into Cutters.
But even if they were third cousins-in-law once removed, what a fucking mess.
He made it back to his cabin with a few minutes to spare, which he used for a quick indoor shower to rinse off his newly acquired perspiration. When he came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, Catherine was sitting on his bed. The bedside lamp provided the only light.
“How’d you get here?” he asked, worried she’d run into Emily on the road.
“The path along the shore,” she said. “No one saw me. Take off your towel.”
This woman didn’t miss a beat. He dropped the towel. Catherine put an index finger on her lips, mulling her next order.
“My kitchen sink is broken,” she said. “Can you fix it?”
“I don’t know anything about sinks,” he said. “Can’t you call a plumber? Or are you worried about Covid?”
“Jesus, Conor. I’m role-playing.”
“Oh. So you want me to . . . pretend to be a plumber or something?”
She rolled her eyes. “My God, do I have to spell it out for you? Yes, go over to the sink and fix it.”
He walked over to his kitchenette sink in the nude.
“Get on all fours,” she said, “and look inside the cabinet.”
He did it, feeling defenseless from behind.
“What seems to be the problem?” she asked.
“It’s . . . broken.” He didn’t like doing this. It felt contrived and odd, more so than their high school reenactment in the Mercedes. He wouldn’t be a good con man, after all.
“Are the pipes clogged?” she asked, helping him along. The floorboards creaked in back of him.
“Yes. It’ll be expensive to fix.”
“Oh, dear,” Catherine said right behind him. “My husband will be so upset. I don’t suppose we can work something out?”
“Maybe,” Conor said, and as soon as the words were out, Catherine’s hand was between his legs.
“Good,” she said. “Because we can’t have any pipes clogged around here.”
It felt good to be back in her hands, and he temporarily forgot about the stressors of the past fifteen minutes.
“So you can unclog it?”
“I’ll try my best,” he said.
Her loosely caressing hand squeezed tight.
“You won’t try—you’ll do it.” In an instant she switched from damsel in distress to haughty employer. “It’s absolutely unacceptable if you don’t.”
Though spoken in character, the words absolutely unacceptable, along with her fingers’ constriction, had a tangible effect on Conor. It was as though the full force of her authority, of her social position—of, ultimately, her oceans of money compared with his dirty puddles—were knocking him backward, like a cop’s baton jabbing a protester in the ribs. Were this a real exchange, were he actually a plumber coming to service a rich woman with a clogged sink, he would have meekly offered to fix it at a discount. It was as demeaning as it was titillating.
“Why’d you want to do this here tonight?” he asked later, as they were having their strange, mute cuddle. It had to be because of the interruption the other night, which he now suspected to have been Emily, but he didn’t know if she’d tell the truth about who had rung her bell.
“I have someone staying in the guesthouse for the foreseeable future,” she admitted. “We won’t be interrupted here.”
“Who?”
After a pause she said, “My daughter.”
Not third cousins, not even aunt and niece, but mother and daughter. Mother and daughter. Good thing Emily hadn’t let him kiss her.
“You told me you didn’t have kids.”
“I don’t. I have one child.”
“That’s not how people usually answer that question.”
“Well,” she said, “it’s how I answer it.”
If there had been any doubt over how he might proceed, this snuffed it out. He hadn’t done anything wrong, hadn’t known who Emily was when he’d asked her out. He’d nip it in the bud with her tomorrow.
“So you want to meet here from now on?” he asked.
“Yes,” Catherine said. “I won’t take tennis lessons anymore, so when I text you about having a lesson, it means I’ll meet you here at the time that I say. You’ll respond only about that. Don’t initiate any texts or calls to me.”
Though Emily had been on the neck for a couple of weeks—hence, in hindsight, the requirement that he enter the main house from the shoreline path, out of sight from the guesthouse—her ringing the bell that time had clearly made Catherine decide her place was unsafe for them, and he presumed these regulations were in case her daughter ever saw her phone. She wanted to keep this from her, as would be expected. Not that it would matter for him, anyway; if Emily learned about them, it would be Catherine’s problem.
Catherine dressed without further discussion, took a check out of her pocket, placed it on his bedside table, and departed by way of the rocky shoreline.
Chapter 9
The next morning, Conor started a text to Emily similar to the one he’d sent to Georgia. But that message had backfired, and, besides, it would be even more excessive for a single date that had ended without a kiss. Emily lived all the way at the end of the neck. He’d just stay off the beach in the late afternoons, and if he ever ran into her on the road, he’d explain then that he was focusing on his studies.
He went all day without a text from her, either, so this could be easier than he thought. When he returned from a late-afternoon grocery shop, however, a paperback was lying outside his cabin door, with a handwritten note tucked inside:
I remembered there was another essay on tennis in this, so I went to the bookstore in town (curbside pickup!) and flagged the two tennis essays.
—E
P.S. Please don’t start wearing a bandana (sp?).
Conor didn’t really read books outside of those assigned in school; his little extracurricular reading was usually just the news. Touched as he was by Emily’s thoughtfulness, he now felt obligated, even if he wasn’t going to see her again, to take a look at her present. He had reams of legal data to memorize and didn’t have time for this. But he opened it to the first dog-eared essay anyway.
It was the one she’d talked about, how the author had learned, in his teenage heyday on the junior circuit, to exploit his knowledge of geometry, volatile midwestern winds, and the decaying, sloped tennis courts of Illinois. Conor nearly shivered with identification at Wallace’s description of how, to make up for a shortfall of God-given physical ability, he had become the consummate pusher.
The other tennis essay was a profile of a young player, ranked deep in the double digits, whose monomaniacal pursuit of athletic excellence had, in the writer’s view, stunted him in other areas; he seemed to have no additional interests, few friends outside the game, no romances. A small, cloistered life, despite traveling the world as a minor sports star. In the light of this essay, it seemed tragic: to devote your existence to a game at which you were better than all but eighty or ninety people on the planet but still be deemed somewhat marginal.
Was Conor also stunted? Not from tennis—he hadn’t invested nearly the number of hours as anyone on the pro tour—but from his dogged efforts at carving out a better life for himself? Like the player in the essay, he didn’t have any passions or hobbies. He’d been accepted by his teammates but had never truly felt like one of them, and now they’d drifted apart. Same with his law school classmates. And just the one real romance, with Ally, which felt less meaningful the more it receded in the rearview mirror. There was a whole world out there he hadn’t seen beyond the tennis court and the court of law. Literally—he’d never been out of the country except for a few college road trips to Montreal and Toronto.
Most of the girls he’d been with had been athletes, sorority girls, the kind who showed up in big, boisterous groups at bars and college parties. Artistic girls had never shown much interest in him, and he, in turn, had always been intimidated by them, their indifference to what he had to offer—even his looks. But Emily seemed to enjoy his company.
He reread her note. He liked that E she’d signed with. He couldn’t recall Ally’s ever sending him a note or a present outside of birthdays and Christmas. And no one had bought him a book since he was a child.
Want to get together tonight? he texted Emily.
I was going to make curry if you want to come over, she wrote back.
Forgetting for a moment where she lived, he almost replied yes right away—it had been a while since he’d eaten anything but pasta or canned food for dinner—but caught himself in time.
I have to study through dinner. Why don’t you come here after? he asked.
There was the telltale mark of indecisiveness from the appearing and vanishing bubbles before she texted a thumbs-up.
Let’s say 9, he told her, not wanting her to be seen around his cabin while it was light out, either.
WHEN EMILY KNOCKED ON HIS DOOR THAT NIGHT, SHE ASKED IF THEY could hang out outside at first. He suggested the big rock by the water beyond the main house; John was away for a few days, so he didn’t have to worry about being spotted.
As they started in on a couple of beers, Conor thanked her for the book and told her how much he’d liked the tennis essays. They chatted about them for a few minutes, though he didn’t detail the ways he’d felt like the player in the profile.
“So,” she said when the discussion petered out, “you should know ahead of time that I’m not really a booty call kind of girl.”
“What makes you think that’s what this is?” he asked.
“I invited you over to dinner, and you asked me to come to your place late at night.”
“I told you, I have to study through dinner.”
“Uh-huh. The old ‘I’m busy till really late at night’ move.”
“You’ve seen me on the beach—I’m studying every waking moment.”
“Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately?” she asked.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“Well, if you haven’t noticed this about yourself”—she let out a puff of laughter—“you’re a very conventionally handsome guy, and you very much give off the impression that when you tell a girl to come over, she drops everything and does it. And don’t be so pleased with yourself. You look like someone on a dating show who, I don’t know, sells condos in Florida and likes jet-skiing and uses the word badass. Or like a guy who’s running for office mostly because he looks the part. I’d be embarrassed to be seen with you. People would think I . . . paid you, or something.”
“Thank you,” Conor replied coolly, stifling the discomposure from her last remark. “That’s very kind of you to say.”
“I just mean, don’t think I’m slobbering over you. I actually see it as a detriment. Usually guys who look like you never had to develop a sense of humor and have no interior life, because they’re used to getting whatever they want without even trying.”
The only area of his life this applied to was with girls. Everything else worthwhile he’d always had to scrape for.
“And you think I’m the kind of person who gets whatever he wants without trying?”
“Yes. You’re clearly a . . . a winner.” She spat out the word as if it were an insult. “Which is not at all my type.”
“What is your type?”
Emily bit her lip in concentration. “Losers. Funny, charmingly self-loathing losers.” She looked at him. “Any thoughts?”
He took a long drink to buy time for a response.
“None,” he said. “Because I have no sense of humor or interior life. And I hate myself for it.”
“All right,” she said. “That’s not bad.”
“The reason I asked you to come here is because John Price made me promise not to get involved with anyone on Cutters over the summer.”
“C’mon, you’re kidding. Why would he care?”
Conor had prepared for this. “He said he was concerned about a #MeToo-type situation with one of the younger cousins here and that he’d be held responsible as my employer and landlord.”
Emily laughed. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m twenty-three years old, not a teenager. I can tell him I won’t hold him ‘responsible’ for anything.”
He doubled down on his lie, which was the only plausible-sounding excuse he could come up with that would also ensure she couldn’t investigate its veracity. “I think it was even mentioned in the contract I signed. Please don’t say anything to him.”
“So you invited me here to tell me you can’t see me because John Price has contractually forbidden it?”
“No—to tell you I do want to see you. But that it has to be, you know . . . in secret.”
“Oh, in secret,” she said. “Of course, of course. So stupid of me to think you’d tolerate being seen with me.”
“I know how it sounds. But, look—I really need this job. My mom’s on unemployment now. I don’t know how she’ll pay the rent if I lose this.”
This convinced Emily—or, more powerfully, she seemed humbled by the invocation of a money problem that wasn’t about the trauma of inheriting too much of it.
“But . . . why would you want me to come to your place if you’re worried about John finding out? Wouldn’t my place be safer?”
“Don’t you live with your parents?”
“Just my mom. They’re divorced. Didn’t I tell you that? And anyway, you saw I have my own separate house there.”
“Still, if your mom saw us together, maybe she’d tell John, or she’d tell someone who’d tell him.”
“She can’t see my front door or into my house, and she absolutely never goes inside—she’s terrified of Covid and thinks it’s lurking in every room she walks into,” Emily said. “Besides, I can just tell her not to say anything. She doesn’t give a shit what I do.”
“Don’t do that—she might let it slip.” If Catherine really did avoid Emily’s place, though, perhaps it was a safer meeting spot than his cabin, where she could potentially make an unbidden appearance. “But I guess I could see you there sometimes. If it’s late enough.”
“You really know how to make a girl feel special,” she said. “‘As long as it’s pitch black, I suppose I could deign to—’”
Conor kissed her. She kissed him back. Her mouth tasted of toothpaste, no hint of cigarettes; she’d been ready for this.
The ocean rumbled, nearly as dark as the sky salted with stars. A cool wind blew in, followed by plunking raindrops, then the roll of distant thunder. Despite himself, he got the feeling something consequential was happening, a tectonic shift. There was a spasm in his chest—not just arousal, not just anticipation, but a warmth that buzzed through him and wanted to leap out of the confines of his body. He’d had countless first kisses; this was different. This, finally, was what he was supposed to feel. This was what people talked about.
This was life—life far beyond the stifling perimeter of the tennis court. Of all the girls, there had never been anyone like Emily; no one as smart, as funny, as artsy.
No one as rich.
Aside from her mother.
“I’m gonna tell John Price on you,” she said. “John! Oh, John! Look what Conor’s doing! He’s breaking the law! Your employee’s a sex offender! You’ve got a hardened criminal in your—”
“Shh—shut up,” he said, half-jokingly, as he covered her mouth, even though John was out of town.
THEY FLED INTO HIS CABIN TO DUCK THE GATHERING STORM. SHE LOOKED around the bare-bones interior. There wasn’t anywhere to sit besides the desk chair and the bed.
“I’m not sleeping with you tonight,” she said. “Just FYI.”
“Okay,” he said.
“I mean it. You’re not getting everything you want.”
“What makes you think I even want that?” he asked.
