Odalisque

He didn’t know what was worse--her dismissive words or the fleeting censure on her face. Kai hadn’t told anyone about his lost children, not even his sister. This morning, he’d felt so close to Constance. Now she was back to pushing him away. His whole body went tight and he felt unreasonable anger. “I’m sorry I burdened you with my emotional problems. I won’t do it again.”

He turned away before she could answer. He got out of bed and went to the bathroom, scowling at himself in the mirror. I guess that’s why Bastien always warned us not to get emotionally involved. Fuck Bastien. That fucker. Even if it was true--even if he’d been thinking the same thing a few minutes before--he hated hearing it from her.

Kai listened to the rumble of thunder. The storm was getting worse, not better. The storm outside, and the storm in his soul. He walked back into the room. Constance was writing in her notebook, her face expressionless, blithe. She barely spared him a glance. She was so cool, so untouchable. He felt like an outsider beating on the window of a wonderland, peering through the glass at the marvels inside. Unable to get in.

Chapter Fourteen: New York

They had been in New York a week. Constance was getting used to spending each evening dolled up in glittering gowns. Diamond necklaces and earrings were delivered to the hotel each afternoon, and returned by courier the following day. Rentals, Kai said. She was afraid to ask what they were worth.

Constance wasn’t sure how she felt about all this charity business. Tonight they were at a fundraising concert at Lincoln Center. There was a reception and dinner first, followed by a performance. Kai told her the tickets cost between ten thousand and twenty-five thousand dollars each.

Kai wasn’t making a speech tonight, but he was still “working,” pulling off a combination of posturing, socializing, and schmoozing which he did very well. Constance’s job was easier. She just had to look pretty on his arm, and smile at all the very rich people filing by. She both admired and disliked these people. She couldn’t help but be impressed by their jewels and ornate gowns, and the air of richesse they communicated. It was so natural and effortless, it had to be inborn.

At the same time, there was something disingenuous about these events. The champagne, the caviar, the thousands of flowers decorating the ballrooms and tables. How much of the money they were donating went to pay for these things? Constance thought you could send a hundred inner-city children to private school for the cost of one party. Feed a hundred homeless teens for six months or even a year. When she questioned Kai about it, he only shrugged and said that was how things worked.

He’d been somewhat short with her since the night he cried. He still fucked her regularly, and even tied her up now and again, gazing at her with a thoughtful look in his eyes. But he kept an emotional distance. Of course, that was for the best. That was what she’d been trying so hard to accomplish herself.

She had never in her life seen a man cry, except on TV and movies. She thought hard, trying to remember, but she hadn’t, not in real life. It had frightened her to her very core, to see Kai lose it, even though she understood more than anyone how real nightmares could feel. And when he’d asked her for children, a little part of her heart had died.

Maybe he hadn’t even been serious. Still, like his ex-wife, she would never give him children. She didn’t want children, not her own. She wanted to help other people’s kids, the runaways and throwaways of the world, not fritter her life away changing diapers and arranging society playdates. One more reason to hold Kai at arm’s length. It was for his own good.

She watched Kai now--confident, smiling, rubbing shoulders with the glitterati--and she couldn’t place that falling apart man from the week before. Kai had a way of standing with his chest out, his chin up, his body moving easily and gracefully. He had that manner of richesse like all the others, but she knew he hadn’t been born rich. So perhaps it could be learned. Constance became highly aware of how she moved, how she held her head. She tried to trick the golden society around her into believing she fit in.

The rental diamonds probably helped.

Kai introduced her to everyone as Miss Constance Flynn. It sounded very retro and romantic. He didn’t specify if she was his friend, girlfriend, or work acquaintance. She supposed he was content to let everyone draw their own conclusions from the way he treated her, from his manner of remote affection. He returned to her now from a conversation a few feet away. He tilted his head, slid a hand down her bare arm.

“You have goosebumps. Are you cold?”

She nodded. Yes, she was cold. She missed her nakedness, her warm odella and saray back at Kai’s home. Kai slept restlessly, and she wasn’t used to having a bedmate. The diamond necklaces scratched her neck and the earrings were heavy at her ears. Her head ached because the stylist Kai had hired to do her hair used a thousand sharp pins for every up-do. But she couldn’t wear her hair down. No one here did. All the feminine hair in sight was twisted, pinned, and bejeweled into submission. All the eyes were fastidiously made up, all the lips pink or red, many grotesquely altered by plastic surgery.

Kai pulled her next to him, squeezing her a little. He was trying to warm her up, but his tux was silk and slippery and not warm at all. Then, with an abrupt movement, he turned her and tapped her chin. A shorthand he’d developed for Listen to me.

“Mason is headed this way with his wife. You have to pretend you never met him before.”

Constance was puzzled. “Why?” she signed. “I thought he had an open marriage.”

“He does. But she doesn’t know about you. It’s a long story. Just play dumb.”

Just play dumb. That was a really insulting phrase to someone who chose not to speak. Long ago, Constance would have been described as deaf and dumb. No one used dumb anymore, except as a synonym for stupid. Constance knew Kai didn’t know any of that, but she still seethed inwardly as Mason approached with his sexy, glamorous wife. Constance knew who she was, of course. Jessamine Jackson had a big film that had just come out, about some mistress of international intrigue.

Up close, the starlet looked smaller than she did on screen, more brittle. She had tiny lines beside her eyes. Constance thought she was probably already conferring with the plastic surgeons. Mason looked suave and haughty beside her. It annoyed her, the playacting. His eyes swept over her, feigning polite curiosity. Constance frowned back.

Kai greeted them and introduced her the same way he’d introduced her to everyone else. This is Miss Constance Flynn. They both shook her hand. Mason was a consummate actor. He acted exactly like someone who’d never met her before. Who’d never fucked her or spanked her or fixed her with nipple clamps to a huge iron bed. Jessamine sized her up openly and then gave Kai an assessing look. Kai deflected it with a question.

“How long are you two in New York? I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Jessamine rolled her eyes. “We were bored.” She said more, but it was hard for Constance to read her lips. She had a pinched way of talking, and a lot of flirty business going on with her mouth that obscured the syllables Constance needed. Instead, Constance looked at Mason. He might have been blushing a little. Constance sidled closer to Kai, wishing she was anywhere but here. It bothered her that Mason was sneaking around with her behind his wife’s back. Constance had assumed it was all in the open. It bothered her more that she was forced to play along now, right in front of his wife’s face.

Kai nudged her. Jessamine had asked a question. He asked it again, signing at the same time. “Jessamine asked if you come often to New York.”

Constance shook her head. “Just tell her the truth,” she signed to Kai. “You dragged me here.”

Kai chuckled and told Jessamine that Constance had come along on the trip to support him. Jessamine made some more flirty remarks about Kai having a new love and keeping secrets from her. No, thought Constance. It’s your husband keeping secrets. Through all this, Mason stood in silence. Before long, Jessamine turned her attention to him, and in that

moment Constance knew that, despite Mason’s acting, his wife suspected something.

Jessamine looked back at Constance, who tried her best to appear rich and blasé. Constance turned to Kai. “Tell them whatever you want. I’m going to the ladies’ room.” She escaped the little pow-wow with a sense of relief. She stayed in the bathroom until it started to empty and then found Kai as everyone sat down for dinner. To her relief, Mason and Jessamine were a couple of tables away. Constance gave Kai an arch look.

“Did Mason keep himself out of trouble?” she signed.

Kai gave her a harried smile and flicked his napkin into his lap. “I had no idea they’d be here. I’m sorry if that was awkward. They have a...complicated marriage.”

“It would seem so.”

Constance let Kai do all the introductions at the table, and all the talking. Sometimes being deaf came in handy. None of the other eight people at the table were brave enough to draw her into conversation. She got painfully awkward smiles whenever she looked around, so she kept her eyes on her plate. Of course, then she started wondering, how much did this gourmet lamb cost? How much for this china and silverware? How much for this gold-dusted dessert?

After dinner they filed into the adjoining Metropolitan Opera House, a confection of a theater with tiers of balconies like some wedding cake. The whole auditorium glittered when everyone was in their seat. Mouths moved everywhere. Constance thought it must have created a din, all that talking, but then the lights went down and all the heads turned to the stage. Constance tried to read the playbill by the dim glow of the runner lights. Faust, an opera about a successful man making a deal with the devil in order to gain unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Ironic. She searched the theater for Mason and Jessamine, but it was impossible to pick them out from all the other people in the dark.

Constance turned her attention to the stage instead, following the action with the help of the opera summary. It wasn’t easy, since a lot of the time people were just standing around singing. There was some bit with jewels. Faust trying to seduce a lover, Marguerite, with gifts and diamonds. Hmm.

By the fourth act the opera descended into melodramatic craziness. Marguerite got pregnant and killed her child, and some other nonsense went on, with Faust going to hell in the end and Marguerite to heaven. The two main characters sang a long, histrionic duet to close the opera, and Kai gave her a sideways look from beneath his lashes.

“You’re so lucky you can’t hear this,” he mouthed.

Constance had to smother her laughter behind her hands.

*** *** ***

Ugh, Faust. Kai had spent his irritation with the bloated opera in Constance’s arms afterward. He’d left her sleeping, curled up in a nest of pillows, and was headed down to the hotel bar for a much needed drink. Kai thought he was a lot like Faust, only he hadn’t made a deal with the devil for worldly pleasures. He’d made a deal with Sebastien Gaudet, and Constance Flynn, of course. She was Marguerite. She would go to heaven at the end, with his money, and he’d be left in hell.

Such thoughts. He was turning into an ass, wallowing in self-pity. He had to pull himself out of this slump. Kai headed across the bar to find Mason already seated at a table.

“What are you doing here?” Kai slid into a seat across from his friend.

“Same thing you’re doing. Trying to get that opera shit out of my head.”

Kai laughed and leaned back in his chair. “Where’s Jess?”

“With some female she knows in Tribeca.”

“Ouch.”

“It’s better than her being here, asking a lot of questions.”