Made in Manhattan

“I don’t think she wants Cain to change who he is as a person,” Violet said, instinctively defending Edith. She snagged a butter cookie off the china plate and took a bite. “She just wants to tweak the packaging.”

“Hmm. How does Cain feel about that?”

Violet grunted indelicately as she popped the rest of the cookie into her mouth. “About what you’d expect from someone whose idea of formalwear is denim without holes in the knees.”

“Ah. So an uphill battle.”

“You have no idea.” Violet dusted the crumbs off her fingers. “Clothes shopping wasn’t as bad as I expected. But then on Friday I took him to the Frick Collection, trying to teach him that in Edith’s world, the appreciation of art is nearly as respected as the art itself.”

“If not more so,” Ashley said with a grin.

“Right! You get it. Cain, not so much. He refused to even practice that appreciative but noncommittal murmur we’ve all been taught to perfect when asked our opinion of a sculpture that looks just like every other sculpture in the room.”

Ashley demonstrated the exact noise, a low, almost throaty sound of approval and enthusiasm, as though too moved and contemplative to actually speak to the nuances of the art piece.

Violet laughed. “If only you were my pupil.”

To say that Cain had been a poor student at the museum would have been an understatement. She supposed she should be happy he’d agreed to meet her at all, but he’d lasted all of thirty minutes before declaring he had better things to do with his Friday afternoon than look at “old crap.”

She hadn’t bothered texting him yesterday. She figured they could both use a break before more “training” tomorrow.

“It’s early days yet,” Ashley reassured her. “If anyone can turn him into the perfect Manhattan robot, it’s you.”

Violet looked quickly down at her tea to hide her discomfort at the assessment.

“Oh damn,” Ashley said, setting her saucer on the table with a clatter, startling Coco in the process. “I did not mean that like it sounded. It was intended as a compliment, I swear,” Ashley said, looking distraught.

“I know.” Violet reassured her with a smile. Ashley didn’t seem to notice that the smile was forced. Nobody ever noticed, not her best friend, not Keith, not even Edith. “You’re not wrong. I mean, look at my home.”

“It’s beautiful,” Ashley said, looking around at the ornate decor. “You know I love it here. It’s like stepping back in time.”

Her friend meant that as a compliment too, Violet knew, but it rubbed at a nerve, newly exposed. She’d never given much thought to the style of her home before; it was simply where she’d lived ever since her parents had died. And even before then, she’d spent a fair amount of time there visiting her grandmother. The three-bedroom unit was beautiful in a classic kind of way. The type of building with the original elevator and marble floors that had been installed a century earlier, the facade updated only as much as safety necessitated.

As an honor to the building and her grandmother, Violet had left the apartment alone, save for upgrading appliances and getting air-conditioning installed to better endure the stifling summer months in the city. But the furniture, the wallpaper, the artwork, even the dishes had stayed the same.

Most of the time, Violet loved living in an homage to another time, another generation. But increasingly lately she felt like she was the one living in a museum, and the people around her were the ones making noncommittal sounds of approval toward her, like she was aesthetically lovely but not all that interesting in her own right.

The apartment no longer felt old-fashioned; she just saw old. It didn’t feel so much elegant and timeless, as… stuck. And the more she dwelled on it, the more she knew the apartment was merely a representation of Violet herself.

Tired. Dated. Boring…

She shoved the thoughts aside, the way she always did.

“I’m already sort of regretting agreeing to Edith’s plan,” Violet admitted to her best friend. “I pride myself in being able to do anything Edith asks of me without question, but I’ve never met anyone like him.”

“How so?”

“He’s…” Violet blew on her tea, trying to find the words to describe Cain. “Angry. That was my first thought when I met him: he’s got a lot of anger coming off him. At Adam, and Edith, at the whole situation.”

“Can you blame him? He’s got to feel a little bit robbed, looking at what his childhood could have been if his biological father hadn’t been such an ass.”

“True. But it’s being handed to him now,” Violet said.

“With some pretty annoying caveats,” Ashley added gently. “It would be a tough pill for anyone to swallow.”

“I suppose,” Violet admitted. “Still doesn’t explain why the guy can barely be bothered to put on pants.”