The Nest(2)
“Mariah was discovered by Tommy Mottola when she was a waitress,” she said, half joking, half trying to justify her behavior.
“Is that right?” Leo hustled her toward his car, scanning the windows of the beach club above the parking lot. It was possible that Victoria could see him from the side terrace where everyone was gathering and quite probable she’d already noticed his absence and was stalking the grounds looking for him. Furious.
Matilda stopped at the car door and slipped off her black-canvas work shoes. She took a pair of silvery stilettos from a worn plastic shopping bag.
“You really don’t need to change shoes for this,” Leo said, resisting the urge to put his hands around her tiny waist right then and there in plain sight of everyone.
“But we’re getting a drink, right?” Matilda said.
Had Leo said something to her about a drink? A drink was not possible. Everyone in his tiny hometown knew him, his family, his mother, his wife. He finished off his martini and threw the empty glass into the bushes. “If the lady wants a drink, we’ll find the lady a drink,” Leo said.
Matilda stepped into the sandals and gently slid one slender metallic strap over the swell of her left heel, then her right. She straightened, now eye level with Leo. “I hate wearing flats,” she said, tugging her fitted white blouse a little lower. “They make me feel flat all over.” Leo practically pushed Matilda into the front seat, out of sight, safely behind the tinted glass.
SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT OF THE CAR, Matilda was stunned to hear her tinny, nasal voice coming through the car’s obscenely high-quality speakers. She sounded so different on her sister’s ancient Dell. So much better.
As Leo listened, he tapped his hand against the steering wheel. His wedding ring glinted in the car’s interior light. Married was most assuredly against Matilda’s rules. She could see Leo struggling to summon an interest in her voice, searching for something flattering to say.
“I have better recordings. I must have downloaded the wrong version,” Matilda said. She could feel her ears flush with shame. Leo was staring out the window. “I better get back,” she said, reaching for the door handle.
“Don’t,” Leo said, placing his hand on her leg. She resisted the impulse to pull away and sat up a little straighter, her mind racing. What did she have to sustain his attention? She hated waitressing, but Fernando was going to kill her for disappearing during dinner service. Leo was boldly staring at her chest. She looked down at her lap and spotted a small stain on her black trousers. She scraped at the spot of balsamic vinaigrette with a fingernail; she’d mixed gallons of it. Everyone inside was probably plating the mesclun and grilled shrimp now, squeezing the dressing from bottles around the edge of each plate into a pattern that was supposed to approximate waves, the kind a child would draw to indicate a sea. “I’d like to see the ocean,” she said, quietly.
And then, so slowly she wasn’t sure what was happening at first, Leo took her hand in his (for a foolish moment she thought he was going to kiss it, like a character in one of her mother’s telenovela shows) and placed it on his lap. And she would always remember this part, how he never stopped looking at her. He didn’t close his eyes or lean his head back or lunge in for a sloppy kiss or fumble with the buttons on her blouse; he looked hard and long into her eyes. He saw her.
She could feel him respond beneath her hand and it was thrilling. As Leo held her gaze, she applied a little pressure with her fingers and the balance of power in the car abruptly shifted in her favor. “I thought we were going to see the ocean,” she said, wanting to get out of sight of the kitchen. He grinned and put the car into reverse. She had his pants unzipped before his seat belt was fully fastened.
YOU COULDN’T BLAME LEO for the rapidity of his climax. His wife had cut him off weeks earlier, after she caught him fondling a babysitter in the back corridor of a friend’s summerhouse. Driving toward the water, Leo hoped the combination of booze, cocaine, and Wellbutrin would stall his response, but when Matilda’s hand tightened with resolve, he knew everything was happening too fast. He closed his eyes for a second—just a second—to collect himself, to stop the intoxicating image of her hand, her chipped blue fingernails, moving up and down. Leo never even saw the SUV barreling down Ocean Avenue, coming from the right, perpendicular to their car. Didn’t realize until it was too late that the screech he heard wasn’t Matilda’s voice coming from the sound system, but something else entirely.
Neither of them even had time to scream.
PART ONE
SNOWTOBER
CHAPTER ONE
Because the three Plumbs had agreed on the phone the previous evening that they should not drink in front of their brother Leo, they were all—unbeknownst to one another—sitting in separate bars in and around Grand Central, savoring a furtive cocktail before lunch.
It was a strange kind of autumn afternoon. Two days earlier, a nor’easter had roared up the mid-Atlantic coast, colliding with a cold front pushing east from Ohio and an arctic mass dipping down from Canada. The resulting storm had dropped a record-breaking amount of snow in some places, blanketing towns from Pennsylvania to Maine with a freakishly early winter. In the small commuter town thirty miles north of Manhattan where Melody Plumb lived, most of the trees were still shouldering their autumn foliage, and many had been destroyed or damaged by the snow and ice. The streets were littered with fallen limbs, power was still out in some towns, the mayor was talking about canceling Halloween.