Stone Cold Fox (5)
Well, just.
Like Collin, she didn’t have to work for a living but subjected herself to the corporate grind regardless. Gale was an editor at Spartina, a modern art book publisher, a vanity career if I ever heard of one, and something I was certain she’d be ill-suited for considering she didn’t seem to possess any taste whatsoever. She couldn’t have been making considerable money from such an endeavor, but she had a generous trust to dip into at any time and thus could afford to take a low-paying job with perceived prestige.
Collin invited me to his friends’ weekly trivia night at an Irish bar downtown—it doesn’t really matter which one, they’re all the same—and I was instantly turned off, not by the bar but by their chosen activity. Collin and his ilk thought they were so cheeky and clever and cool for associating with the plebes like that, all out in the open, over happy hour pints of Guinness and red baskets of french fries and potato skins dripping in cheese and sour cream, topped off with bacon bits from a plastic cylinder. They exchanged brief glances when a guy their age would walk by the table, sporting a Timex instead of a Rolex. They chuckled when the waitress asked if she should keep track of their orders by seat, in case they wanted separate checks later. They raised an eyebrow after sipping a cocktail made from the well, shrugging their shoulders with a smile, continuing to drink it anyway. What the hell! Down the hatch! When in Rome!
I noticed that Collin participated, too, but never initiated anything himself, which offered some relief. He was just fitting in, and how could I fault him for that, since I was guilty of doing the same? So Collin’s loathsome friends thought it was entertaining to pretend they were just like everyone else in a humdrum bar, all while knowing they had the kind of access and money the others knew absolutely nothing about, and probably never would. Was it gross? Sure. But what kind of behavior did I expect? There wasn’t anything normal about them. Besides, having to suck it up being with them would always be preferable to being with anyone else. Follow the money.
Henry Ogilvy’s mother was literal Spanish royalty, disgraced after an exposed affair, unfaithful to her first husband with a much younger footballer, but still a princess all the same, now married into the Ogilvy American banking empire. Evan Burkhart was to inherit the storied candy throne from his family, well-known in the continental United States for their classic varieties, especially favored at Christmastime, but often joked about how he didn’t touch the stuff, since the only chocolate worth its salt was imported from foreign lands, not to mention he also had a well-known problem with the candy of the nose. Recreationally and generally harmless, unlike Marty Knox, whose ancestors essentially invented the framework for modern American publishing, and he went to rehab three times on their dime, which must have been the charm because now he and his wife were regularly lauded in the society pages for their philanthropic efforts, like rehab never even happened.
These were people with a family net worth in the actual billions of dollars.
That said, most of Collin’s friends were innocuous enough on a personal level, never having to really cultivate strong personalities in any singular direction. Sure, I suffered daggers from the eyes of their respective romantic partners, but that was par for the course in my experience with women. Hannah Ogilvy, Elizabeth Scott and Paisley Cooper-Knox were completely interchangeable as far as I was concerned, all vacant eyes peering out of their sunken faces, birdlike bodies clad in Ralph Lauren and Tory Burch for such a casual outing, but with Birkins slung on the interior of their elbows, making the obvious social statement no matter how objectively hideous the bags actually were. Despite their palpable disdain for me, I pressed on with the introductions alongside Collin, smiling sincerely and kissing their cheeks adorably, ready to speak their stupid language that would win them over just enough to keep me there without any fuss. They didn’t smile back at me, they sneered. They didn’t embrace me, they held out a flaccid hand. They didn’t say my name, they just called me Collin’s girlfriend, because I was an outsider. To those women, I didn’t deserve to congregate at the same table, much less have them address me directly. Why wasn’t Collin keeping it in the club, they must have wondered, and certainly discussed amongst themselves later. But when they watched their partners take me in with their eyes that night, it made them sit up straighter. More aloof, yes, but also more alert. Good. I’d just have to be sweet as pie to make their chilly behavior toward me look even worse. I wanted those men to do missionary to those shrews that night with their eyes closed, thinking of me. All of them.
“It’s so lovely to finally meet the group.” I beamed at Collin’s friends after he announced my presence.
“We’ve heard so much about you, Bea.” Gale Wallace-Leicester smirked openly, unlike the other women, who barely spoke and at least had the decency to take a sip of their drinks when they wanted to purse their lips at me in disapproval. Gale did not seem bothered to keep up appearances, not even for Collin’s sake.
“Only good things, I hope.” I chuckled in a way that chilled my bones, expertly mimicking the type of woman expected to be alongside Collin Case.
“Collin tells us you’re an ad woman. What’s that like?” Gale put a hand up to her face, playing at fascination, when she was actually condescending to me. She wasn’t wearing any polish at all, and a set of gels would have made a world of difference on those hooves of hers. Squat fingers. Short nails. Unfortunate. A pale pink or nude would have offered the illusion of extension, but I wasn’t about to give her an unsolicited beauty tip in mixed company. In fact, all of the women had underwhelming manicures with little in the way of length. Men love a long nail with a French tip. Surely their mothers told them so or at least made a passive-aggressive comment about it once or twice. Nothing outrageous, just enough to deliver the right amount of scratch during sex. How silly they all were to not put in the effort. It’s not like they worked with their hands. Didn’t they want to keep their husbands?