No One Knows Us Here(44)

I closed my eyes, raised my hands over my head, and danced to the music. When I felt a tug on my arm, I whipped around, smiling, thinking it was Margorie or William or Steele.

“Come with me.” It was Alejandro.

My smile disappeared. I felt temporarily displaced, the way you do when you wake up in a strange bed and can’t remember what time it is or where you are or how you got there. “What are you doing here?”

“You’re making a fool of yourself.”

“I’m out with my friends. I’m allowed to go out with my friends.”

“Don’t you have a little sister you’re supposed to be taking care of?”

“She’s at a sleepover—” I started to say and then stopped myself. I didn’t have to explain anything to him.

“Don’t make a scene.” Alejandro had to yell above the din of the band, but the song ended and the last word echoed out over the dance floor.

“Who’s this?” Margorie asked, looping her arm through mine.

“Just a friend,” I said.

The music started up again, and I was grateful for it, grateful for the noise that rendered us incapable of further communication.

“I have to go,” I shouted to Margorie. “Work emergency.”

“It’s Saturday night.”

I mouthed the word sorry as I followed Alejandro out the door and onto the sidewalk.

“What the hell?” I yelled at him as soon as we were outside. The bar was on a busy street. Cars rushed by. We were lit by streetlights.

“You think I want to be your goddamn babysitter?”

“So I’m not allowed to go out now? I’m not allowed to have a good time—”

“You can do whatever the fuck you want. Just don’t do it where there are Glasseyes all over the place. Don’t make Leo call me from Copenhagen and—”

“Amsterdam.”

“He doesn’t like seeing you like this.” Alejandro looked embarrassed now, like he did the day after my appointment. Like he didn’t want to be the one to deliver this news.

“Like what?” I put my hands on my hips. I knew what he meant.

“Drunk.” He waved his hand over my face, my clothes. They were ordinary clothes, the kind of clothes you put on when you want to have a good time. Tight top. Short little skirt. “The whole look,” he said vaguely.

“I’m not drunk,” I said. “I’m not that drunk.”

“All right,” Alejandro said. He bulged his eyes at me. His expression said, Please, Rosemary. “Do what you want.”

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s go.” It was too late to return to the bar anyway. Nothing I could tell Margorie would sound the least bit believable. I followed Alejandro to the black SUV.

I didn’t hear from Leo for almost two weeks.





CHAPTER 15


For two whole weeks, I paced around my apartment, convinced I’d blown it. Failed whatever crazy test Leo was administering on me. I waited. I waited to receive a phone call, an official notice in the mail, something, telling me it was all over, that Wendy and I needed to pack our bags and vacate the premises. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had nowhere to go. Even if I could get my La Cuisine job back, I wouldn’t be able to afford another place. Not even a dingy studio apartment in Gresham.

And what would happen to Wendy? I couldn’t just move across town, pull her out of her school, and put her in another one. She was finally settling in, making friends. She had joined the yearbook staff.

When he finally called, it was the middle of January, the dead of winter. “I’m back in town,” he announced cheerfully, as if nothing had happened. He was home, he said, and not for just a few days. For good. Or at least for a good while. He was sick of living out of a suitcase. He would be delegating. Scaling back.

He wanted me to meet him at his place, tonight. “Everything is going to be different now,” he said, which is how I got the idea that things were going to change—that tonight was the night. I took extra care in getting ready, like it was our first date, like I was up for anything. I wasn’t nervous or scared. I was relieved. Maybe he had just been stressed out all this time. Too busy to have sex with his paid girlfriend? Maybe. I was grasping at straws.

In his brick-lined hallway above the parking garage, I shook the rain from my coat. I’d bought the too-large raincoat at the William Temple House my freshman year of college. Forest green and covered in pockets and zippers, the coat was more suitable for a park ranger than a high-class escort, so I stuffed it in the corner, behind the console table. Underneath I had on a short, tight silvery dress.

The door rolled open on its heavy casters before I had a chance to knock. “You’re here.” Leo clasped both of my hands and pulled me in.

He looked handsome. Well rested for a change, no dark circles under his eyes. The curls on his head a little overgrown, softer and shinier than usual.

“I thought we were dressing up,” I said.

He was wearing his signature navy-blue hoodie, a white T-shirt, and charcoal-gray sweatpants. Granted, they appeared to be expensive sweatpants. “I said it was a special occasion.”

“Okaaay.”

“It’s a surprise.”

“What’s the occasion?”