He Will be My Ruin

But this diary, with its black, soft suede engraved letter C . . .

I need to stop now. To catch a breath, calm my shaking hands.

CHAPTER 10

Celine

July 12, 2012

I awake to a banshee’s screech.

“Not again,” I groan, stumbling as my legs get caught up in my sheet. I grab my winter boot on my way out to the living room. “Which way did it go?”

Patty points to the far corner of our kitchen, but makes no move to climb down from the piano stool wobbling beneath her weight.

I toss the shoe to the doormat, knowing it’ll be useless. The cockroach has sought refuge within the crack in the wall.

“That’s the third time this week. I’ve had it!” Patty cries out.

Last year we battled a mouse infestation. Now roaches. Between the two of us, I’ve somehow become the assigned vermin killer. I still haven’t figured out how that happened; I’m no less skittish. “You should get down off that stool before you break your neck.” I salvaged the claw-footed antique from someone’s trash a few weeks ago and replaced the missing screws, but it’s far from “good as new.”

She complies, wiping the light sheen off her brow with her forearm. We’ve been living in a constant state of sweat for the past three weeks, thanks to a scorching summer and a broken air-conditioning unit in our sixth-floor bedroom window. Our landlord said he’d take a look at it.

He also told us he’d get exterminators in, back in May.

“Hey Celine . . .” Patty bats her full lashes at me from her new spot, curled up on our couch—a corduroy hand-me-down from her older brother Gus that’s splitting along the seams and has no doubt seen college guy things we don’t ever want to know about.

Heaving a mock sigh, I drag my feet toward the kitchen.

“You’re the best!”

“I know.” Patty and I have been roommates for almost four years. Long enough to know that she gets up once a night between the hours of one and three for an ice-cold glass of milk, without fail.

“How am I going to survive in London without you?” she wails, accepting her drink.

“You won’t.” I flop down next to her. “So don’t go. Please.” I give her my best sad face.

“I have to. I can’t turn down an opportunity like this. It’s what I’ve been working toward.”

I pick at a loose thread in one of the cushions. We first met in college. She had a job lined up before she even graduated, at one of those up-and-coming advertising agencies. The kind that bounces your meager paycheck every once in a while and works you to the bone. But in just a few short years, and with Patty’s help, that ad agency landed enough key clients to make a real name for themselves. She’s been promoted to a director’s role and asked to relocate to London to help the fledgling office over there get their bearings.

While I’m ecstatic for her, I’m going to miss her terribly. The likelihood that we will drift apart when she’s gone is high. Patty lives for the moment and strives for the future; she’s never been good with keeping connections to her past.

“So come with me!”

My head flops back. We’ve had this conversation at least half a dozen times. “I’ve got a job at Vanderpoel.”

“As a gopher.”

“And plans for my master’s.”

“You can rack up seventy grand in debt getting a piece of paper over in England. They have schools there, too.”

Just hearing her say that number makes me cringe. I’ve been setting aside money every paycheck for over a year now and I barely have enough to buy textbooks. If I manage to squirrel away even half of that by the time I’m thirty, I’ll be surprised. “But Hollingsworth wants Hollingsworth Institute graduates.”

“That’s what Hans told you. You hope he’s right. Just like you hope he can actually get you a job.” I feel her knowing glare boring into the side of my face. Sometimes Hans likes to paint himself in a very fair light, to the point that you’d think people bow in his very presence. In this case, I hope he’s not stringing me along and that he can actually get me a job at one of the world’s top auction houses. They gave him one because he graduated at the top of his class, with impossibly high grades. He’s an actual genius on paper. It probably doesn’t hurt that his uncle is a renowned curator who currently works for the Guggenheim, and he comes from a long line of archaeologists and historians.

“I belong here. In New York City. In the same country as my mother.” Rosa Gonzalez would lose her mind if her twenty-five-year-old daughter moved across the ocean. It’s bad enough that I’m on the opposite side of the country, but she knows how much I love it here, so she doesn’t guilt me about it. Too much.

Patty doesn’t have any rebuttal for that, as I expected. “Yeah . . . I guess.” She pauses. “Have you decided what you’re going to do about this place? We have to give notice next week if you’re not staying.”

“I’m not sure yet.” I can’t afford the rent on my own. It’s almost my entire month’s take-home salary. And I’m not going to find a cheaper one-bedroom, or even a studio, unless I leave the city completely. It already takes fifty-five minutes each way from this shitty apartment in Brooklyn to my office in Manhattan as it is.

“I can ask around. See who might be looking for a roommate,” Patty offers.

“Thanks.” I eye the one bedroom. I hope I don’t have to resort to sharing it with a complete stranger.

“Or . . .”

I turn to find her watching me with that look. “I can’t.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that it’s not that bad. Honestly!”

“I can’t.” The conviction I had in my voice the first time she suggested it eight months ago has faded. I’m afraid that desperation may finally be winning over.

“Yes, you can! Celine! Wouldn’t it be nice to not worry about how you’re going to pay bills? Wouldn’t it be nice to not go into major debt, just for school?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“Okay, look.” She shifts until she’s facing me head-on, her hair a mess of tendrils from the top knot she didn’t bother to take out earlier. “All I’ve ever had to do is wear a beautiful dress, eat delicious food, and drink martinis. You don’t even have to talk, really. You’re just arm candy, and then they drop you off in a town car at your door with a pile of cash. Nothing more. Nothing that you don’t want to do. I promise!”