Paddy
Paddy Fitzgerald was in a spot of trouble. But let’s get something straight. He wasn’t bellyaching, wasn’t feeling boohoo sorry for himself, and wasn’t seeking any pantywaist’s sympathy. Not Paddy Fitzgerald, not then, not ever.
All right then.
About that trouble of his: right there, that’s one freighted term the Irish, according to legend rarely if ever tongue-tied, don’t casually invoke. If you ever hear them utter the word troo-bull, you would be wise to backtrack swiftly for the closest exit. But there are troubles and there are troubles. He had the worse kind, which ought not to be confused with the capital-T Troubles that once embroiled his ancestral hated homeland—beloved, far-off Ireland. But his homeland? He wouldn’t overplay his ethnic identity, such as it was. He would also not suffer to be compared to, say, his wretched immigrant of a father, man of unsainted memory: encrusted black fingernails, wobbly whiskey bottle on the rickety dinner table, child- and wife-beating belt buckle at the ready, venom dripping from his lips for the fecking Protestants and the fecking Brits, both sharing a seamy bed in the selfsame scummy bog. The son of a bitch was not in error in that estimation, but if he issued another truthful utterance in his not-foreshortened-enough life, his son missed it. Rest in peace. As if that were possible for a Fitzgerald.
“You hear the one about the Irishman who left the bar?” Paddy’s old man trotted out this one a hundred times. Two bilious beats later: “Yeah, it could happen.”
No wonder Paddy had zero tolerance for the loathsome shamrocky caricature and the Saint Patrick’s Day posturing, and the chances of his crooning “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” while pub-crawling were a long, long way to Tipperary. He supposed there was no escaping being typecast as an Irish American, whatever that augured, not with a name like Padraic Fitzgerald, though few knew how to pronounce the Irish. Paw-rick? Pah-drake? Pahd-ray-ack? So Paddy would do. But if Paddy swore any allegiance to anything it was to God Bless America—and he didn’t, not quite.
He had never been a tonsured monk and taken a vow of cloistered silence, but no thanks, he didn’t care to talk about any of his troubles.
—
Yet say he did, where to start? Family? Business? The new girl? Some kind of trifecta. And come on now, at his advanced age, what was he doing with a new girl? If you ever once laid your lucky eyes on her, the answer might seem thunderously obvious. For another thing, the deal he had been counting on swinging, selling a prime piece of property at a healthy profit, looked to be heading south. He didn’t need the money, not in the way most people need money, because he had more than he would ever use, but he needed to swing the deal. One scuttled transaction amounted to little on his balance sheet in the grand scheme of things, though it was also something because in the grand scheme of things there may be no such grand scheme of things, and certainly not for a man with his sort of pride—or for anybody else. Compounding matters, his mirror had broken the incredible news, that he had metamorphosed overnight into an old man. How did that happen? And now there was this new skirt, who made him feel older when she didn’t make him feel younger, and did double duty during the course of the same hour, while wearing or not said skirt. He had to ask himself how come, in the midst of all his troubles, when he had pressing, immediate business to tend to, he was also thinking about her?
He may have been outfitted in a midnight-blue dinner jacket, but this was no Michelin-star restaurant, and even if it were, nobody would mistake him for some suck-up maître d’ sticking out his hand, trolling for an Alexander Hamilton, an Andrew Jackson, a Ben Franklin. No, his fists were clenched and his arms drooped like an exhausted boxer in his corner waiting for the bell to ring, and he looked out across the city skyline through the penthouse window as if he were prepared to mix it up with an upstart opponent in the opposite corner ready to charge across the mat, exhaling raw onion, fists flying.
Lights glittered down below, and from high above the street he imagined enemies lurking in the shadows. The world had changed over the decades before his very eyes. As God was his witness, a world changed not for the better, and he had his doubts about his supposed witness. People had become harder to manage, downright truculent. Not that he was intimidated by anybody. An old-fashioned donnybrook makes the blood flow, and a soul-satisfying smack drains the sinuses, and after all that blood flows, you get your second wind, you stand taller, you see clearer, scales walloped from your eyes.
In the city vista, through undulating, sparkly sheets of rain squalls, he also glimpsed opportunity. The opportunity he sensed everywhere on the other side of the triple-pane safety glass was unrealized, untapped, unexploited opportunity, which was the worst kind.
Deals not cemented.
Men who needed to be brought to their senses, knocked off their high horses.
Obstacles that cried out to be obliterated.
People who ought to be shown in no uncertain terms the advantages of being reasonable with him.
Everybody should be more like me, he often remarked to himself. If they were, he had no question the world would be a much finer place. He’d make more money, sure, but so would everybody else. People would dress presentably, too. The ridiculous rags grown men and women threw on when they went out, it was embarrassing, it was disrespectful, they had to be kidding, at the baseball game, at the store, at the airport, looking like they had rolled out of bed for an early trade school class or their fry cook job at the greasy spoon. Snap to it, slackers, make the fucking effort: that was his summary judgment. And don’t get him started on the unsanitary flip-flop contagion.
Once while he was being chauffeured along on a beautiful day, his head snapped back witnessing a stomach-turning spectacle. From his back seat window he saw a shoeless man on a park bench clipping his toenails. The park was called Fitzgerald Green, because Paddy’s civic consciousness, and his money, caused it to exist: a safe place for children to play, for the elderly and infirm to stroll in the sun, for birds to take wing, for dogs to romp—in other words, no such place where a man could with impunity give himself a goddamn pedicure. Paddy told his driver to stop. He instructed his people to speak directly to the man, in order to have him immediately amend his ways. So they did. The self-groomer didn’t appreciate the attention they paid him, but he appreciated even less the actions they undertook to ensure he would not be able to resume his revolting regimen in Fitzgerald Green ever again.
Troubles, troubles. Who doesn’t have them? The one and only consolation strictly reserved for the departed: no more troubles, no more problems. Problems signaled you were still breathing, still yearning for air, still seeking a sliver of fading sunlight. Same time, when drastic measures were indicated in order to solve a problem, Paddy Fitzgerald had no qualms becoming somebody’s worst solution.
—
He wasn’t alone in the penthouse with his reflection in the window. “Baby, if I was a young man…” he started, but then hopped off that rattling, cow-catching train of associations.
The young woman on the other side of the great room was long-legged, lithe, and bright-eyed, and she was wearing without a single perceivable regret a shimmery kimono. She gave every mortal indication she had major plans in store for it. She took a stab at uttering some semblance of a thought: “Yeah, if you was a young man, we might’ve went to high school together. Go, Mighty Honkers. Never did pass algebra either time, but you could’ve saved me, let me see your answers on the exam.” She called herself Caitlindee and was channeling her inner scamp, all that champagne she solo consumed having gone to her breathtakingly pretty head.
He was amused. He was often amused around her, which was not the primary reason she was around. “Honkers? Get outta here. Honkers.”
“Mighty Honkers, my school mascot. Like, you know, ducks?”
“Which then you gotta mean geese, gorgeous. Ducks’d be the Mighty Quackers.”
She giggled, conceding in effect that he may have made a solid point and that she may have had a little too much to drink.
Paddy’s midnight-blue shoulders relaxed and his chilly, single-note, silvery laugh wanted to qualify as one. He enjoyed having the girl around, she partied like a pro, which in fact she was, and she took his mind off some of those famous troubles of his for a few minutes, and what a great few minutes they were. Long flowing red hair, creamy flesh, rosebud mouth, traffic light green eyes—she was certified to take any man’s mind off his problems, if only temporarily. Then again, temporarily was often all a man desired. And sure, in theory, sure it might have been nice to know her twenty, thirty years ago, but high school? He didn’t know about that. In his day, goals did not include caps and gowns in processional, and her name was never posted on the Honor Roll in the hallway, either.
And yet, if time bent back in a hypothetical universe or, say, in a strip mall somewhere across town, who knows, they might have locked up, a couple of mighty, mismatched Honkers. Stranger things have happened.
Before he showed up tonight unannounced at the apartment, Caitlindee had powered through most of the champagne bottle that was sweating on the high-modern, trapezoidal glass coffee table. It was a Friday evening, after all, and champagne was the ideal prelude to date night. But to judge by how she was dressed—and how she was not—she wasn’t going to be viewed in public soon.
Paddy kept staring out the apartment-wide floor-to-ceiling wall of glass, and he watched the brake lights and headlamps down below filtered by the driving rain. He did have affection for the girl, who—so far so good—appeared mostly uncomplicated in the way that he wished everybody to be and hardly anybody was, including his own adult children, who traveled paths antithetical to his, and including also their mother, his late wife, whom he remembered with fondness—until he recalled she was perennially one step ahead of him. He missed her, he did, but he also had to admit that he found it simpler to conduct his business free of her encumbering awareness.
He mourned his oldest son, as well, every single day, and there was no upside whatsoever to Anthony’s loss.
“Feeling low, Sweets?”
Saying that, she referenced Paddy’s street name, but he didn’t mind, which wasn’t the case when law enforcement or reporters rashly presumed otherwise. It was important, what you called yourself. For instance, she had been christened at birth Caitlin Cahill, and to her nothing was amiss with Caitlin, except how for some reason these days there was a gaggle of Caitlins milling about, not as many as the Jennifers and the Samanthas and the Heathers and the Madisons, but a virtual Calling All Caitlins Flash Mob Convention nonetheless. So when she ventured upon her specialized career path, she wanted a handle that was unique, memorable, Southern belle-ish, for coquettish brand appeal. She briefly contemplated naming herself Destiny. The name itself was fun to say, and she couldn’t wait to speak of herself in the third person and propose to a potential client, “Would you like a date with Destiny?” Accurate enough, but a little bit too darling to live. So in a burst of inspiration, she tacked dee onto Caitlin, hence the Caitlindee, and it stuck, like gum on the sole of her thigh-high black leather boots. To entertain herself she creatively varied spellings. On her driver’s license she was Catelindey, and on her checkbook it was Caitlindy and she entertained Cait Lindy, too. Katelynd didn’t cut it, however, a position she couldn’t defend, not that she was asked. Spelling, like algebra and bird calls, was not her strong suit.
“What’s eating you, Daddy Bear?”
He was feeling wistful and talked to his own face in the glass, his back to her. “Like I said, if I was a young man, I’d own this whole damn town.”
Her lantern-green eyes opened wide, and she didn’t know what to say, because along with every Caitlin and Jennifer and Samantha and Heather and Sarah and Madison around, she assumed Sweets Fitzgerald already owned the whole damn town, and then some.
—
Much as he liked the penthouse, and even more the girl he’d installed there, so far he had elected never to spend the whole night there with her. He made it a point to return home before sunrise, because that’s where he lived, and lived alone, and where he had not once taken her.
She never asked for an invitation and the topic never came up for discussion. Other smoldering topics, including the obvious ones, assumed primacy when it came to her. She deduced that his home was simply off-limits. She never assumed he was telling the complete truth, not that this disturbed her terribly. Maybe he had a wife, or something or someone else to conceal—how could she know? Men had their secrets. You should count on that. Oftentimes it was their most endearing trait, their predictable unpredictability. In that regard she thought she was not so different from him. Whatever it was, whoever it was, she could adjust. When it came to men, she was clever as a chameleon: she changed to fit circumstance.
As far as he was concerned, it was as if he would be betraying not someone but something precious he couldn’t identify. It had nothing to do with the memory of his late wife, either. Her memory was sacrosanct. Some fool might be tempted to call him a sentimental Mick—but unless you preferred the view of the sky from the horizontal plane, it wasn’t advisable.
The Family Fitzgerald house stood out on top of the lofty peak of Haymarket Hill, and Paddy loved to hunt the view from high up, instinctive as a hawk in soaring flight. This was the choicest neighborhood, and his secluded property constituted in and of itself an enclave, accessible by turning off the street, passing through tall iron gates, and going up the steep winding private road a quarter mile to the circular drive at the top. Records were not crystal clear, but the house seemed to have been originally constructed at least a hundred years ago. Shortly after he was married, before Anthony and the rest of the children were born, Paddy bought it from an aged onetime bootlegger who was down on his luck, who himself had bought it from an older wildcatter who was also further down on his luck, and with each passing year Paddy appreciated more and more what a sharp deal he had struck. From his front room, he could see out the bay windows to the headlands in the distance, and the forest of evergreens swaying beyond. At that altitude the wind seemed always to be blowing. He could spy the tiny ships down below inching slowly into port, and he could study the cottony cloud formations rushing by in the blue distance.
Two six-day-a-week housekeepers and one Monday-through-Friday cook surreptitiously tapped the bottles of Irish whiskey throughout their shifts, but since the Chilean ladies were pleasant and respectful (they referred to him as Don Paddy, nothing he could do to discourage them), he turned a blind eye and a deaf ear. After all, the house had not burned down a single time under their watch, and the windows sparkled, and the floors gleamed, and the larder was invariably brimming. The cook hadn’t yet mastered Irish stew, but since he recoiled from the old country dish, he was indifferent. “Almost there, Hilda, almost got it, signora,” he would politely say, not quite savoring a forkful. “Grazie, Don Paddy.” His three full-time gardeners were born-again Christians and teetotalers occupied the year round. The domestic bustle didn’t diminish his sense of isolation, and if anything deepened it.
As for the groundskeepers, they manicured shrubbery and greenery and tended to two acres of olive, fig, and apple trees as well as the beautiful multicolored flower beds. Roses never took because temperature on the Hill plummeted at nightfall, including in the summer. The pious gardeners carefully tried to talk him out of planting them, but for a man without evident weaknesses, Paddy had a weakness for roses. Not having a green thumb, he assumed one day the roses would be intimidated, obey his command, take root, and bloom already. As a result, every other year or so new bushes would be planted, and every other year they would fail. You could call him mule-headed, but again, there was no percentage taking a risk like that.
In theory, he had neighbors beyond his property lines, but he wouldn’t recognize any of them if their paths should converge, which they likely never would. He literally looked down on them, but not metaphorically, not disrespectfully. Neighbors were by definition inconsequential. That sounds harsh, but they weren’t Fitzgeralds, his flesh and blood.
As for the Fitzgeralds, they lived in a world of their own on Haymarket Hill, though now there was only one Fitzgerald remaining who walked the echoing hardwood hallways not covered by dozens of Persian carpets dispersed throughout. The ten-thousand-square-foot Georgian could have modeled for a pretty postcard, complete with turrets and towers and stained glass windows, limestone floors, and redbrick chimneys, and tapestries big as schooner sails stolen long ago (not by him) from Irish monasteries. Mansard roof and half-round dormer windows and fireplaces big enough to roast a stag. Gothic was the darkness gathering everywhere inside, spooling in the mahogany bar, his favorite room, where he would meet with his crew when necessary. There was also a black-bottom swimming pool, which he occasionally forgot he owned, but though the gardeners kept it in pristine condition, it was rarely warm enough to swim, and nobody could remember the last time anyone was foolhardy enough to dip a toe in.
He may have lived by himself, but memory played its predictable, mundane tricks. His wife had possessed the designer touch, and she had executed all the decorating decisions, the impact of which lingered, and which sometimes made him feel glad. Once the house used to resound with the elevated voices of his four children, with the clatter of scampering dogs’ paws, with the music of Irish ballads playing on the turntable. His wife used to organize parties in the gardens, and the children and their school friends would squeal and the batshit Irish setters would bark, and for big occasions the diddly-aye bagpipes she inexplicably loved would bleat nostalgically across Haymarket Hill. When night fell, a more credulous man might have believed ghosts gamboled about. When Paddy heard thumps in the walls and creaks on the stairs, he recalled that his own father had no doubt about the existence of banshees, witches, and ghosts. So when he heard strange noises in the dark, he checked for the loaded handgun underneath his mattress. Paddy may not have believed in spirits, but if that were his old man, returned to pay a visit to square up accounts with his son, he had a high-caliber greeting at the ready.
As a thought exercise he considered selling, but that would have been nothing but a prudent business move. And where was he to go and why? Besides, the Fitzgeralds were sensible only as a last last last resort, when something else more compelling didn’t qualify. Truth was inarguable: he could not relinquish the family home, though the Family Fitzgerald wasn’t what it once used to be. He would clear millions by selling, of course, and some spec developer would subdivide the prime Haymarket Hill property into numerous lots and reap obscene returns. But that was money he didn’t need—even if money was money, and for his own family of immigrants who fled the famines, there never could be enough of it, and whatever you had was at risk. Nonetheless, odds were he would never sell. He’d leave the whole homestead to his three surviving children, equal shares to each. Let the remnants of the clan duke it out.
He did love his olive trees, how hardy they swayed and self-possessed they loomed. The Italians had a saying that resonated: plant vineyards for your children, olive trees for your grandchildren. He didn’t have a single grandchild, a fact that routinely rendered him downcast. His gardeners took delight in the harvest and the boutique pressings, and the spare cash they generated for themselves by pedaling it on the side, but Paddy never acquired a taste for the olive oil—too Italian. It was the rustling trees that meant the most.
He did harbor one fantasy, one he would share with no one as long as he was alive, a fantasy of being buried on Haymarket Hill, in a clearing beyond the olive trees. That prospect almost cheered him—at least to the extent that any thought pertaining to mortality could cheer anybody. He went to the lengths of adding a codicil to his estate plan, specifying where he wanted to be laid to rest, assuming rest was ultimately conceivable for somebody like him. He added another set of terms for good measure including: Bagpipes at my funeral, I’ll haunt you forever. To which his children, reading that one day, would likely nod and say in one voice, Even in the afterlife you’re consistent.
In his advancing years, Paddy remained busy, busy, and as a result he spent much less time at the house than when he was a new husband and father. When he indulged himself in a vanquished mood, he’d sit for hours ruminating in his Moroccan red easy chair under the forty-foot high beams and listen to scratchy vinyl records cut by classic tenors from the Emerald Isle, sipping tumbler after tumbler of Jameson’s top-of-the-line, Midleton Very Rare, each bottle of which cost more than his own miserable da earned for a month of backbreaking labor at the ironworks. When his whiskey glass clinked on the table, the echo seemed to bounce all over Haymarket. Over time he had come to regard his solitariness the way the lighthouse keeper on some remote cape views his isolation—as his single confidant.
—
Caitlindee and her penthouse existed on another, altogether rarefied plane. So did that short black silk kimono of hers, one with a red dragon coiling up her spine and reaching over her shoulder to paw her breast, a garment that in the moment was hanging tenuous and shimmering as a burnished autumn leaf. That’s one very fortunate dragon, Paddy considered.
She untied the belt, as if it were a ribbon wrapped around a surprise present, and she shimmied out of her auspicious kimono, letting it fall in cascading folds to the white carpet, and stepped in her heels beyond the dragon, impatiently waiting for Paddy to come over to her. She quivered like the plucked string of a guitar.
She hadn’t expected him tonight. Not that he ever cleared his calendar with her—why would he? He did mention he was going to some splashy benefit—and not with her in tow. She liked to believe she didn’t take such decisions personally. After all, men didn’t first make her acquaintance at the symphony or a poetry reading or the environmental fundraiser. And true, men had an unblemished record of disappointing her. That’s what men were used to doing around somebody like who they thought she was, which she wasn’t anymore and never would be again if she could help it, and for the first time in her life she believed she could. Because thanks to Paddy, she now believed she was exempt from disappointment when it came to men.
As for him, he did not disapprove whenever she cast off that kimono. He did wonder why she was wearing it since he wasn’t expected.
“Champagne?” she said, to get his attention. Pilates, yoga, kickboxing—she was committed to working out every day, toning her body, her inflation-proof asset. She picked up the bottle on the coffee table and struggled to read the name on the label of what Paddy had left in her refrigerator along with five more bottles of the same. She mangled the pronunciation of Veuve Clicquot, but she gave it her best shot.
If it were imperative that a mistress also be talented linguistically, Paddy would have insisted. Mistress, he said to himself. Who says the word “mistress” anymore? He didn’t care, and in any case he only did what he wanted—and whom he wanted. And he wanted her available when he wanted: the benefits of his advancing years and his status and his wealth—and the terms of their arrangement.
“Enjoying the bubbly?” he said to the window.
She certainly did, and she had a follow-up suggestion: “Should I lift up your mood?”
Her purring tone of voice aroused his attention. “Just having you here, just you living here and being here whenever I come over, that cheers me up.”
Paddy Fitzgerald turned away from the window and walked across the vast expanse of the living room. “You’re kinda gorgeous, aren’t you,” he said, and it was true. He presumed you needed to state the obvious to a woman, even one as young and dazzling as Caitlindee, on the off chance either of them forgot. And nobody like her doesn’t like to be reminded anyway. So far he hadn’t called upon the services of a blue pharmaceutical when it came to her. That day would arrive, he figured, soon enough.
“All for you, Sweets.”
He fanned a set of hundreds on the glass coffee table like the winning hand in a casino. “Enough pocket money, get you through the week?”
She nodded. The man took care of her, as promised.
“No drugs, baby, right?”
“Clean as a whistle, since you.”
“I mean, drugs, you know, pretty girl like you, be an unfortunate development.”
That was his only stipulation, that she stay clean—and also that she entertain no other men here or anywhere else on the planet. And keep the kimono handy and disposable.
“This apartment, should I get you a different one?”
The stunning penthouse was a dream come true for her, how could she not like it? She sidled up to him, who towered over her. She put her arms around his waist. She once asked him if he wanted her to get implants, because she worried her demure breasts were a little too understated, and she would gladly go under the knife for him or do anything at all he wanted, but that was unnecessary. A girl with breasts that filled his mouth didn’t require the services of a surgeon. To him, she was perfect and those were deadly excellent toys in her sachet.
“Might see you later. Watch your TV shows, don’t wait up.”
She pretended to sulk. She didn’t sign on any dotted line, and taking contract classes in law school did not loom in her future, but she grasped the nuance-free message.
“Daddy Bear always gotta work,” she pouted. She placed her head against his pristine ruffled white shirt but he didn’t mind. She no longer wore lipstick because Paddy did mind that. To him, that made women look cheap, like dolls. Besides, her full lips didn’t require cosmetic enhancement to brighten the room.
“Work’s how come you can drink Veuve Clicquot anytime you want in your penthouse.”
She looked baffled, but he was sympathetic.
“That’s the name of the champagne you been downing. In my sad French, named for a widow.”
When she laughed she sounded like a child on a roller coaster, unleashing a series of delighted and frightened musical notes. What a weird name for champagne. Was she the luckiest girl who ever lived, or what? Drinking what she considered fabulous champagne, living in a fantastic apartment on top of the world, her bank account flush, diamonds on her fingers, the most powerful man in town in her bed—now and then, when he said he could.
Her cell phone rang on the coffee table. Paddy glared at the thing as if it were a personal antagonist, which it was except for when he called her. He had instructed her to turn off her phone when he was around. He would remind her more pointedly when he got the chance. His eyes darted toward hers and he saw something he wished he hadn’t seen. Fear. And not for the first time. He would figure all this out. It was relatively early in their relationship—if relationship was the word for their arrangement. He’d known her five or six months. He could make a few guesses as to what might account for her uneasiness about a call coming in. Maybe she was tying up the loose ends of her previous life, where he found her and from which she had been scooped up by him. But he was a realist. He had a little patience. But as his business associates, and especially his rivals, would testify, that was a commodity in limited supply.
“Like my cufflinks, the bow tie?”
She rallied, as he went in that direction, away from the telephone complication. “You look good enough to eat, Sweets. Fancy Dancy in your pretty tuxedo.” She stepped out of her shoes.
He explained tonight was all about business, couldn’t be avoided. For a minute he had contemplated taking her to the big Catholic benefit, but in the end determined no, he had work to do before, during, and after. More to the point, he wasn’t ready to go public, and a good chance he never would be. Besides, he was having nothing but difficulty with regard to the big real estate deal he had been offering the diocese, and tonight he would take advantage of the opportunity to move the right people in the proper direction: his. He didn’t have unbridled high hopes on that score, and that recognition bleakened his mood tonight. The Catholics were playing hardball. How did they ever imagine they had leverage over him? They would learn sooner or later nobody enjoyed leverage when it came to Paddy Fitzgerald. To be clear, they might indeed possess leverage, but they wouldn’t enjoy it, certainly not without paying a price. He had no alternative but to school the Catholics.
“You and them Catholics,” she said. “Like, you religious?” She had never asked.
“Like I said, all business, doll baby.”
“But your son, he’s a priest, for real? Can I meet him?”
He shrugged. That rendezvous would never take place if he could help it.
“Is he going to be there tonight?”
“Usually is, events like that.”
“Some of them priests, they’re up to funny stuff.”
“You know any? Talking about priests?” That was an offhanded question that was anything but, and part of him wished he hadn’t asked.
“Didn’t grow up no Catholic, never been much to church, except a wedding one time, funeral couple times.”
He waited three beats. Then he shot her a look to make it clear she knew precisely what he was asking, and what he didn’t want to know.
“No,” she said, “don’t think I ever.”
“Tell you what, week or so, we jet to New York, spend a few nights at a nice hotel, Upper East Side off the Park, catch a show, some restaurants, have fun, buy you new clothes. You seem to be running out of things to wear.”
That made her smile. “I dress up for you.” Or not, she didn’t bother to elaborate.
“Find you another kimono. You look fabulous in yours, or out of it. Where’d you get it?” His own probings tonight surprised him. He could tell from the blankness in her eyes and the immobility of her lips she was thinking hard. He appreciated she was not a gifted liar, which was one sterling character trait they did not happen to share. And if you couldn’t find a girl who had a weakness for telling the truth, at least get one you could tell when she was lying. Paddy didn’t play poker anymore, a younger man’s game, but he could read in faces what cards people were holding when they weren’t holding any.
She concluded this was a moment, perhaps a test. “Some swank consignment place, downtown, can’t remember, long ago. Wait, wait, no, no, my crazy aunt got it for me in Japan.”
He directed his manicured right hand between her legs, and leaned in to cup his mouth around her taffy-sweet ear to inquire in a throaty whisper if she liked that. She reflexively elevated to the tips of her toes. He considered himself a gentleman, most of the time. And he might have congratulated himself on that score, because a guy like him, he didn’t have to be a gentleman unless he wanted.
“What’s her name, crazy aunt, Japan?”
“What? What?” It took her a second, the question rattled her but not as much as his hand, and it required concerted effort to speak. “Sarah,” she said, which sounded like she was exhaling, which she also was, “Sarah, Aunty Sarah…”
“You like this?”
His cologne intoxicated her, lemon trees and spices, but the expensive kind, not off the drugstore shelf. Older men splashed on cologne, she learned from past experience, and it worked like catnip. She gasped when her phone rang once again and she whispered yes, she did like what he was doing, but then he pulled back his hand, tantalizing her.
“Sure whoever’s calling will leave a message.” The implication was obvious as to how pleased he would be over that development.
“I don’t care.” He couldn’t tell for sure that she didn’t. That was okay, for now. If the girl became a problem she wouldn’t remain a problem for long. He knew how to conclude arrangements that turned sour. And yet that made him ask himself if he did have feelings for her, after all. He’d file that under bizarre complications, which he also knew how to deal with.
With two hands she guided his back to where it had been and shut her eyes as her mouth rounded into an O.
“You want to go out tonight—with a girlfriend? If you have one of those, I mean. Do you? Have a girlfriend?” Every so often it would occur how little he knew about her, and how minimally that mattered.
Words were halting, and she leaned weak-kneed into his chest. “No, Pad. Stay here, be here. You come back. Af. Ter.” She wasn’t complaining and she wasn’t explaining. She had learned from the jump that was not the thing to do.
“I would like to trust you to be here, when you say you will be.”
He’d keep her out of the limelight. For a man like him, that’s what having a low-maintenance beautiful mistress was useful for—as long as she remained low-maintenance. He pulled back his hand once more and she opened her eyes, communicating with some intensity that she preferred where it was before.
Her voice dropped two octaves. “Have to leave so soon, Sweets?”
She had a point. Liars, including beautiful incompetent liars, are capable of a good point. He took out his phone and advised his driver he’d be downstairs eventually, but not to hold his breath. His driver expressed concern as to timing.
“Jonesy, I have a watch, and a nice one, too. If we’re a little bit late, so be it. Why don’t you read your book of poetry?”
His driver, Jonesy O’Dell, was more than his driver, and a man whose reading predilections were opaque to his boss. Nothing wrong with being a chauffeur, according to Jonesy’s radical democratic inclinations, but his job profile was multifaceted and his assignments were limited only by the range of Paddy’s problems and needs and wishes. Only thing Paddy wished for is that Jonesy didn’t attempt to micromanage him.
Paddy sighed, indicating he might wish to continue the phone conversation—but not now. “Jonesy, later. My biscuits are ready to come out of the oven.”
Paddy slipped off his midnight-blue jacket, folded it precisely, and draped it on the arm of the white leather couch.
“Biscuits in the oven?” she said. “Really?”
“You know Jonesy.”
She couldn’t say that she did. “It’s coming down pretty good outside. Got your raincoat in the car?”
It was indeed bucketing down, but the tilt of his head indicated the weather failed to elicit his slightest interest.
“What’d you have in mind before you go, besides those famous biscuits of yours,” she said. “Cards?”
“Yeah? Keep thinking, little Honker.”
“That’s Mighty Honker to you.”