And Now She's Gone(88)
The friends, all eyelashes and baby giraffe legs, wore short dresses and clunky heels. With dewy skin and bright white teeth, they were lovely creatures excited about their future loves and their future lives.
“Okay, okay,” Clarissa chirped, flapping her hands. “Picture time!”
Gray inwardly groaned but acquiesced. This could possibly be one of her last moments with the only friends she’d had since before Sean.
At Bardot Brasserie, she devoured wood-grilled bone marrow, lobster bisque, and roasted Mediterranean sea bass.
“You’re eating like it’s your last meal,” Jennifer snarked, though she was not restrained either as she dined on plates of oysters, a gigantic wedge salad, and an enormous rib eye.
“I’m eating like Nick is paying.” Gray gasped. “Oh. He is.”
Later, from her tenth-row seat, Gray whooped as the divers of O did tricks off of diving boards.
Afterward, in the Bellagio’s lobby, Clarissa shouted, “Time to club!”
Entering the Marquee, it was as though Gray were stepping on hot coals. She winced at the produced commotion—lasers and loudness, girls dancing on perches. She sipped Kentucky mules and hoped that the bourbon would dull the edges now scraping across her heart and lungs. She squinted through lasers and smoke and searched for eyes that were lingering on her too long.
“You’re more quiet than usual tonight,” Zadie said. She and Gray were sitting in a booth while Clarissa and Jennifer danced with two gelled blond bros wearing cheap suits.
Gray smiled at the older woman. “Can’t remember the last time I was in a club. Guess I’m just trying to enjoy … this.”
Zadie eyed Gray’s cocktail. “No margarita?”
“Taking a break from tequila tonight.”
“You’ve been so careful.”
Gray said nothing, just looked at the old woman shining in the dark.
Zadie knocked around the ice in her seven and seven. “You two ever gonna just … go for it?”
Gray squinted at her. “You missed me with that.”
“You and Nick. Your relationship.”
Gray sat possum-still and hoped that Zadie would move on to kill something else. But Zadie stared at her, waiting for an answer. Gray said, “Nick’s my boss.”
“I know who he truly is to you, sweetie,” the old woman said. “Who he was to you before Rader Consulting existed. I’m employee number one, remember?”
As though that—employee number one—meant something to Gray.
Zadie sipped her cocktail. “I know that you and Nick are close. Closer than close. And I also know who you are … Natalie.”
48
Zadie kept her twinkling eyes on Gray. She drained her cocktail, then hid a burp behind her delicate hobbit hand. “I know you escaped from this place,” the old woman whispered. “I know that Nick helped you do that. And I’ve noticed that his mood has changed in the last two weeks.” She touched Gray’s wrist and squeezed. “He loves you.”
Gray’s eyes clouded with tears. “Who else knows?”
“No one.”
Gray slowly exhaled. “Can you keep it secret? All of it? About me. And him?”
“I have all this time, haven’t I?” Beneath that club light and with those reflecting sequins, Zadie’s eyes looked sharp as razor blades. “I’m old, not stupid.”
The air was tight around Gray’s head, and the bourbon from her cocktail gurgled in her belly. “Did Nick … He told…?”
“He didn’t have to tell me anything. I did all of your paperwork. You know Nick hates paperwork. But don’t worry. I’ll carry it to my—”
Clarissa staggered back to the booth. Her white veil was now stained with lipstick and grenadine and violated by little holes in the mesh that made it look like a worn mosquito net. “Are you gonna dance?” she slurred, waggling Gray’s shoulder.
Gray blinked away her tears. “Nope. Jim Beam is my baby tonight.”
Clarissa grabbed the nearly empty bottle of champagne from the silver ice bucket. Just like any dedicated drunk, she brought it to her lips and drank it through the veil.
Gray couldn’t care less—about the torn veil or the young bride-to-be drinking from the bottle. There was something more alarming happening: Zadie knew about her, and Nick had never mentioned the old woman’s role in Gray’s new life.
It was now too loud in here, and too close. People. There were so many people. A weather system was forming over the DJ booth from all the hot bodies and the hotter lights—low fog clung to the floor and clouded above the Exit signs.
“I’m drunk.” Clarissa scooted into the booth and placed her head on Gray’s shoulder. “I love you, Grayson.” It only took a second for her eyelids to droop, and soon she was snoring.
Clarissa’s college friends trundled over to the booth and took pictures with the passed-out guest of honor.
Giggling, Gray slipped an ice cube from her mug, then swiped it across Clarissa’s nose.
Clarissa snorted awake. “Huh?”
The women hollered with laughter.
Clarissa grabbed her purse from Zadie’s lap. “I need to go to bed.”
Jennifer waltzed over with her bad-suit bro. He had a buffalo’s head and wore as much cologne as Jennifer wore perfume. They’d combust if they rubbed their bare skin together. “This is Dylan,” Jennifer said, “and—C’mon, don’t tell me y’all are tired. It’s only one o’clock.”