The Gilded Life Of Matilda Duplaine

“Thank you. It’s my father’s jaw. I grew up hating it. It was too big for the rest of me.”

“But now you love it I bet.”

“I grew into it. Now I tolerate it.”

She smiled. She then rubbed the back of her right hand on my reddish-blond stubble—at first tentatively, as if she wasn’t sure if it was off-limits, and then tenderly, in a gesture far too intimate for a first meeting.

“It’s prickly.” She smiled with curiosity. “And coarse.”

“By this time of night that’s what happens,” I said.

I felt the back of her hand down to the tips of my toes. It didn’t feel like an experienced touch, one of a woman who knew exactly how to hit the right nerves, at the right time of night. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I pegged her as an amateur at the sport of seduction, but it was refreshing.

She finally dropped her hand to her lap, and she left it there, as if not knowing what to do with it next. It was then that I made my first mistake of the night—well, second, if you count missing a party at David Duplaine’s beach house honoring the governor of California. I fleetingly glanced at the wall clock to check if we had time for another set. The girl’s eyes followed mine.

“You have to leave,” she said. “They’ll be back soon. They can’t know you’ve been here.”

“Who will be back? The party’s going to go late.”

“You have to go.”

“Can I see you again?” It sounded like begging. I didn’t know if it was her naïveté, off-kilter beauty, crooked smile or all three, but I was enchanted. “Can I get your name?” I asked, when she didn’t answer the first question.

“I need you to promise me something,” she said. “Promise you’ll forget you ever met me. Please. Because if you remember, it’s likely to get both of us into trouble.”

I didn’t answer because it was a promise I was unwilling to make.

The girl clenched her fist and then uncurled her fingers quickly, as if they were fireworks or a blooming flower. Then she said:

“Poof. See, you’ve forgotten me.”

“We’ve gotta work on your magic tricks,” I said. “You’re still here.”

She smiled despite herself, but then she set her eyes on me seriously.

“I don’t want you to get involved with me, with all of it. No one can ever, ever know you’ve been here. And as lovely as our tennis game was, you may never come back.”

I could tell that by nature she was a fanciful girl, which made the gravitas of her tone even more foreboding. She had presented me with an opening when she peered up at the tree, but now she had closed the door for good.

I nodded, because there was little else to do but leave her as instructed. I climbed to the top of the canopy, hoisted myself up onto the wall and then swung my way into the oak tree.

I watched from the oak as she eliminated all traces of me. She emptied my glass, clumsily washed and dried it, and put it in the kitchenette cabinet. She fluffed the pillow on my leather chair, slid the racket back in cellophane and swept my side of the court in the awkward manner of someone who was learning a skill for the first time.

Once satisfied that she had effectively made me disappear, the girl abandoned the tennis court, leaving the gate to crash back and forth in the wind because she didn’t trouble herself to latch it. She walked up the lawn toward the manor, tightly squeezing her arms around her.

Halfway along the well-lit path to the grand house she turned around and looked up at the oak tree. She extended her right arm as far as it would go and she spread her fingers out in the tree’s general direction, as if she were reaching for something on a high shelf, something so fragile it might break into pieces if she grabbed it.

Seven (#ulink_265c91a6-6092-55ba-bdbd-fc88df2eadab)

I drove out of Bel-Air, crossed Sunset Boulevard and ended up in the parking lot of the mini-mall I had been at just hours earlier renting my tuxedo. It was empty, storefronts dimly lit from the interior with single lightbulbs. That was what was interesting about Los Angeles: its great glory and its gritty underbelly were often walking distance apart. I think the city planners created it that way on purpose. Los Angeles is a recycle bin for dreamers, and the dream needs to be always visible but just slightly out of grasp.

I had stopped there to check my voice mails, of which there were many, and then call Lily, but I lit a cigarette instead of doing either. A street lamp above me flickered a few times with a buzzing sound. It made a go of it, but then went black.

It felt like autumn in Cambridge. Or maybe it felt like Milwaukee. I couldn’t remember anymore, because those cities felt like lifetimes ago. I wondered sometimes if it was the same Thomas Cleary who had lived there or if it was a different man, one I had met in a bar and who had told me his story over a couple of pale ales.

And as for Manhattan, well, that definitely couldn’t have been this lifetime.

I stopped and realized it had been two hours since I had thought of Willa. I hadn’t thought of her once on that tennis court. Relief—or was it sadness?—crept into my heart.

Sure, I had been on dates after Willa, but inevitably, sometime around the appetizer, the comparisons would creep in, and the date would end in a promise never kept.

Willa.

I had lived with an imaginary lover for so long, and it was becoming almost impossible to believe that at this very minute she still existed, in a place so different and far from mine. In the first days without her she was as vivid and clear as a photograph, and I knew where she would be at any moment, or I could have guessed.

In those first weeks without her it was the nights that were the worst. I lay in bed begging for sleep; and if not sleep, the morning, because at least the morning brought the sun. In those black nights I would feel her forgetting me, and somehow that was the worst part.

I began to forget her eventually, too, and it was both my blessing and punishment. After two years her face finally started to blur, and soon after, the fruity smell of her shampoo and the scent of the jasmine behind her ears stopped haunting me. Her eyes became a vacant place, a blackness from which someone had once looked at me lovingly a long time ago. The same went for her arms and her toes, the lips I kissed past midnight, the slender long neck I whispered into in Central Park.

I was lost in thought when my phone rang. The number was private.

“Hello,” I said, tossing the stub of my cigarette to the ground.

Lily skipped salutations. “My goodness, Thomas. We were worried sick about you. You never showed up to the fund-raiser.”

“I went to the wrong house. I went to David’s house in Bel-Air by accident.”

“Kurt did give you the address, didn’t he?” Lily asked. In fact, Kurt hadn’t specified an address. I barely knew Kurt, but I already didn’t much care for him. He always lurked around, like a prison warden searching for an excuse to use his club. And then there was that handshake. Never trust a man whose grip is too sure, my father had always preached.

Could Lily have manipulated events to send me to the wrong house?

I paused before answering. I could lie to Lily and tell her Kurt gave me the address, or betray Kurt and tell Lily he had called me to confirm but hadn’t told me that the party was in Malibu. I was under the early impression lies were passed around this group like hors d’oeuvres at a cocktail party. But I suspected loyalty was deemed a valiant trait.

“He did, but I forget to check my messages and only received it a minute ago. I apologize. It was a stupid oversight. How was the party?”

“I hate political parties—they’re terribly boring. You didn’t miss a thing. Even the filet was tough.” Lily paused then asked offhandedly, “Was anyone at David’s?”

I didn’t answer right away. The girl had made me promise to keep our meeting a surreptitious one. And, besides, it was such an enchanting evening that sharing it would feel like marring its perfection.

“No. There was no one home.”

“What a terrible coincidence,” Lily said, sounding genuinely disappointed. “David has more security than royalty. They must have all been at the governor’s party. This had to have been the only night of the year the house was vacant. Otherwise, someone could have driven you to Malibu or at least pointed you in the right direction.”

“I’m sorry I missed the fund-raiser.”

“I knew it had to be a mix-up, because Midwestern boys are so typically reliable. David said it would be possible to arrange a short interview for you tomorrow with the governor.”

I skipped forward and imagined what Rubenstein would say when I told him I’d landed an interview with the governor. He had been my salvation after my fall from grace, and I still wanted to make him proud.