The Regulars Read online

  Evie slurped a mouthful of wine. “I have a sister.” It was so automatic it almost felt like the truth. “Evie.”

  “Evie,” Velma repeated. “Pretty name.” Evie felt an odd flick of jealousy—Velma hadn’t complimented Chloe on her name—but before she could untangle the feeling, Velma leaned forward and said, “Tell me about her.”

  “Okay.” Evie sat back, fluffing her hair with slightly numb fingers. “She’s twenty-three—”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-five,” Evie said.

  Velma’s face twitched in either relief or concern.

  “She’s a copyeditor for a magazine,” Evie continued. “She’s very responsible. She’s a good girl.” She rolled her eyes.

  “A good girl?”

  “Got a job, right out of college, at the place she interned. Said yes right away.” Evie remembered this desperation, so eager for the position at the bottom of the totem pole. “She was one of those girls who pretended being unpopular was a rebellious choice when in reality it wasn’t something she had a say in.”

  “Were you popular?”

  Evie pretended to look demure. Of course Chloe would’ve been popular. Popular and datable and powerful. “I did okay.”

  “What else?”

  “She’s sort of a snob.”

  “How so?”

  “She thinks she’s smarter than everyone else in the room.”

  “Is she?”

  Evie shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. She has a blog. Something Snarky; it’s not bad. She loves you,” she added, lowering her voice. “You’re her favorite writer.”

  “So she has good taste.” Velma sounded like she was only half kidding.

  “Oh, she has pretty good taste with stuff like that.” Viewed objectively, Evie felt this was true. “Relationships, not so much. She’s never been in love.”

  “Have you?”

  “Have I what?”

  Velma’s gaze traced Evie’s face slowly. “Been in love.”

  Heat rushed to Evie’s cheeks with an urgency that caught her off guard. But she didn’t break Velma’s gaze. “No.”

  “Ladies.” It was their waiter, bearing two plates the size of tires. Dinner was served.

  Evie hadn’t eaten duck in years. If she’d actually read the menu, she wouldn’t have chosen it. But as she dug into the tender pink meat, she was glad she had. She was having the same sensory experience as Velma. Her vegetarianism seemed like a distant silly idea in the face of both of them groaning about just how perfectly the chef had prepared their meal. It fused them even closer.

  Everything was going better than expected. Whether it was Evie’s wit or Chloe’s beauty, in this intimate restaurant, it felt less like she was Velma’s audience and more like they were on the same footing. Velma was embarrassed when she confessed she hadn’t read any of Joan Didion’s essays (Evie: “But she’s an icon!” Velma: “There’s just so many books!”); when she mispronounced Degas (“Really? That’s how you say it?”); and when the waiter came to clear their plates, she accidentally elbowed him in the side (“I meant to do that”). He presented them with dessert menus.

  “Interested?” Velma asked.

  “Yes,” Evie replied. “I am.” This time, she read the menu. “Ooh, what about the tiramisu?”

  Velma frowned. “Might be a little rich after the duck. How about the olive oil cake?”

  Even though this was the least interesting dessert on the menu, Evie nodded. “Perfect.”

  Velma asked for an espresso, so Evie did too. Velma excused herself to use the restroom. Even the way she walked was supremely confident, like Moses parting the Red Sea. And, Evie thought, let’s face it. The woman has an ass like a Georgia peach. She picked up her dessert spoon and met her reflection in the warped silver. Her eyeliner was slightly smudged, but in a way that looked rebellious rather than wrong. Her dark hair was mussed. Her lips were wine stained, bloodred against otherwise even skin.

  There was no denying it.

  She looked hot.

  Not cute. Not cool.

  Hot.

  The spoon clattered to the floor. Evie made no move to retrieve it.

  Evie Selby was dead.

  Long live Chloe fucking Fontaine.

  37.

  Mark was a good boy.

  Mark paid his taxes on time, helped women carry strollers up the subway steps, and cleared away the dirty dishes without being asked. He’d had exactly two one-night stands, both of whom he gave his number to: they were the ones who never called.

  Which partly explained Willow. Willow was not a good girl. Not in that way. She could tell Mark’s parents didn’t approve of her. They couldn’t define Willow like they could define Mark, and it made them nervous. On the few occasions they’d gotten together for what always seemed like an interminably long meal, no one could say the right thing: Willow didn’t respond to being mothered and Mark became overly—painfully—aware of his parents’ parochial taste. Mark and Willow worked best on their own: a cozy cave of just us. Mark once told her she was a road trip without a map. For Mark, who never drove so much as a few blocks without GPS, she could see how that would be thrilling.

  She didn’t have a road map now.

  As usual.

  He buzzed her up without asking who it was. When he opened the door, she could tell he’d been expecting Willow.

  “Caroline?” Mark threw his gaze up, then down the empty corridor, as if expecting someone to jump and yell, “Gotcha!”

  Her words came in a nervous rush. “You left this. At the bar. It had your address on the inside.” She held out the small Moleskine he kept tucked in the side pocket of his bag.

  “Oh.” He flipped the notebook open. His mathematically neat handwriting confirmed its identity.

  She was wearing the same dress she’d been wearing when she saw him outside his office in Soho: a long floaty thing covered in tiny yellow flowers, something from the back of her closet, something pre-Mark. It was hard to remember pre-Mark. Wasn’t it? “You probably shouldn’t write your address in things like that. Maybe some psycho could use it to track you down.”

  He blinked at her from behind his glasses. “Maybe one has.”

  Willow felt her mouth become small.

  “I’m kidding,” he said quickly.

  “I’m not a psycho.” She backed up a step.

  “I know, I know, I was kissing, kidding. I was kidding.” His face was going red. “God, please, come in, Caroline.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. I was just—doing literally nothing, so I’m happy for the company. Please.”

  He stepped aside. As she passed, she heard him breathing in the smell of her hair and her mouth relaxed, unfurling into a smile.

  “This is really nice.” She dropped her bag on the couch and looked around the familiar apartment. “Great that it’s south facing.”

  Mark masked a double take. “That’s one of the reasons I took it. People don’t seem to realize how important that is.”

  “You save so much on heating if you can rely on the winter sun, right?” Another thing Willow had embarrassed herself over: Who knew the sun could affect heating costs? She took a seat on the end of the sofa, kicked off her flip-flops, and tucked her legs under herself comfortably.

  “Can I get you something to drink? I don’t have any wine . . .”

  “Beer’s fine.” She stretched her arms above her head and arched her back like a serpent. “Don’t suppose you have Sierra Nevada?”

  “You’re not going to believe this . . .” Mark disappeared into the kitchen to return with a six-pack of, yes, Sierra Nevada. He was grinning like a lucky door-prize winner.

  They sat at opposite ends of the sofa, sipping their beers and talking with a strange, easy familiarity about their respective days. Willow remembered Mark had given an important presentation that day. He seemed relieved to have someone to dissect the minutiae of it with. She told him about her day of classes: a wonderful
double life full of lectures, and assignments, and professors.

  They finished their beers and started on a second round without breaking stride.

  Willow told Mark about Caroline’s bohemian upbringing, a fiction that was as warm and comforting as it was untrue: a mother who painted, a father who cooked, both of them madly in love with each other and life itself. Houses in Tuscany and the Greek islands and an island off the coast of Australia: details plucked from travel magazines and the sort of movies where a divorcée falls for a suntanned young fisherman and learns to make pasta and love again. Nothing hard or painful or disappointing in this new life. Only warmth, and acceptance, and love, from a father devoted to his family and a mother who was as brilliant as she was unconventional. Nothing at all like Willow’s real mother, who had moved to Maryland after divorcing Matteo when Willow was ten to get quietly remarried to an inoffensive-to-the-point-of-being-dull insurance salesman called Phil. Willow could only manage long weekends at their prosaic suburban home: any longer and it felt like her very soul was being turned into a fake flower arrangement.

  “Where did you go to school?” Mark asked.

  “Oh, everywhere,” she said with a light, lyrical laugh.

  Mark said that sounded wonderful.

  It did. It did sound wonderful.

  There was something about being Caroline that was so incredibly freeing. Caroline didn’t carry herself with an invisible shield. Sometimes Willow felt like she was always conducting two conversations with the world: the one that was spoken out loud, and the one she carried with her, inside her head. Caroline wasn’t like that. Caroline didn’t hide her body. Caroline didn’t double-check her statements to make sure they sounded smart. Caroline knew how to flirt. Caroline was liberated.

  And seeking, of course.

  That was why she was here.

  She drained her beer and held it up. “Another?”

  “Really?” Mark checked his watch. “It’s a school night.”

  “I don’t have to be at school until eleven.”

  “God, lucky for some.” Mark groaned, getting to his feet. “All right. But I’ll have to kick you out at midnight or you’ll see me turn into a pumpkin.”

  “I’d love that,” she called, and he chuckled. He popped off their bottle tops and offered a toast. “To new friends.”

  She smiled. “To new friends.”

  They clinked their bottles. She didn’t look away as she took her first sip. He didn’t either.

  “I’m always up for new friends,” she said.

  “Me too. You can never have too many friends, right?”

  They’d said the word friends so much in the last minute they’d robbed it of meaning and made it sound weird.

  Maybe it was time for things to get weird.

  Willow waved the tip of her bottle in a circle. “You never gave me the tour.”

  Mark shifted awkwardly, his eyes darting left to right.

  Willow stood up. “Show me.”

  “There’s not much to see—”

  “Oh come on.” She laughed, like she’d suggested a game.

  “Okay.” Mark got to his feet, looking around the neat apartment as if it was foreign to him. “This is the living room that we’ve been enjoying so much.”

  She smiled and tucked some strands of hair behind her ear. “Right, got it.”

  “Kitchen.” He led the way. “Fridge. Sink. Shelves. Uh, fruit basket, with a distinct absence of fruit.” He was treading water, tap-dancing. “All in all, small but functional.”

  “Not how you’d describe yourself, I hope.” She shot him a wicked smile, and it took him a full five seconds to realize she was making a dick joke. His face froze.

  She burst into giggles. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding!”

  “Um, right.” Mark was going red again. He crossed back quickly through the living room. “Bathroom through here. Featuring all the usual bathroom accoutrements.”

  “Mmm.” She gave the white tiles a cursory glance.

  “And then, there’s just . . . Well, the bedroom is just through here.” He paused in the doorway. “But it’s pretty messy, so I probably wouldn’t—”

  “Cool.” She pushed the half-closed door wide open.

  Mark picked up a towel and T-shirt off the floor. “Wasn’t expecting company.”

  Willow perched on the end of his bed and looked up at him innocently. “No late-night visit from your girlfriend planned? What was her name again?”

  Mark grimaced slightly. “Willow.” His eyes moved self-consciously to a framed photo of them, from a wedding in the Hamptons earlier in the year. Willow, only half smiling, in a simple silk slip and a crown of daisies. Him, grinning affably, black silk tie loosened at the neck, one arm slung around her neck possessively.

  “That’s right.” She nodded. “Willow.” Her voice was a murmur, quiet and curious. “I could never understand why you liked this picture so much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just—it’s just an odd angle of her.” She hated that picture. She wished he’d never had it framed.

  Mark’s voice sharpened. “Why would you . . .”

  But Willow leaned back on her elbows and Mark’s words faded away. All the simple fun of the evening was sucked away and replaced with something white-hot and electric, as sudden as someone flicking a switch. There were only three feet between them. Three feet between his mouth and hers. He checked his watch without reading the time. “I better call it a night.”

  She leaned back farther, opening her body to him. One of her nipples had almost edged out of her dress. His eyes kept twitching down to it. When she spoke, it was coyly. “Are you sure?”

  Mark backed away from the door, speaking to the hallway. “Yeah, I have a start. Early start.”

  “Okay.”

  She heard him take their four empty bottles to the recycling and tip what was left in the two others down the sink. She slid her feet back into her flip-flops, swung her backpack onto her back. By the time he came out, she was standing by the door. “Thanks for the beer, Mark.”

  “Thanks for bringing the notebook back.” He unlocked the front door, subtly sweeping his gaze into the hallway. “See you later.”

  Willow cocked her head to one side. “Don’t I at least get a hug?”

  “I’m not sure if—” he began, but she was already moving toward him, circling her arms up. One hand snaked around his neck. The other found his back, and then she was pressing herself, all of herself, to him. She sensed resistance; a tensing of his muscles into a physical barrier. But she kept her arms around him, around his familiar, subtly athletic body. And then he gave in. He hugged her. Held her. Let himself melt like butter in the sun. When she moved back, so slowly, so dangerously slowly, Mark looked drugged. For a second their lips hovered inches from each other.

  She could pull away.

  Wrench them apart.

  But he was so impossibly close. She was almost there. She could almost feel it.

  Her mouth connected with his. Everything inside her collapsed and was constructed, simultaneously. It lasted one, two, three seconds before he stumbled back. “No, no, no. No. No.”

  “It’s okay,” she whispered. “Be unsafe.”

  “Go. Please.”

  Willow moved into the hallway, holding the feeling close to her chest, cradling it like a baby. “Caroline.” His voice was scratchy; he had to clear his throat to take control of it. “We can’t see each other again.”

  She looked back at him now. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes felt as bright as stars ripped from the night sky. When she spoke, it was soft but certain. Playful, and almost a threat. “That’s just not possible.”

  She ran lightly down the hallway. The stairwell would work. The lighting there was strangely flat, appropriately somber. Mark wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. From her backpack, the tools. Camera. Tripod. Remote control.

  She faced the lens.

  She summoned everything sh
e had, everything the past few hours had created.

  And she started to work.

  38.

  Naturally, Velma paid for dinner, sliding a silver credit card into the leather booklet. In the past, this was Evie’s cue to fumble for her purse, peppering the moment with, “Wait, are you sure?” “I don’t mind.” “Thank you so much, that’s so generous, are you sure you’re sure?”

  But the idea that someone might want to pay for her dinner did not fill Chloe Fontaine with such uncomfortable nervous guilt. After Velma signed the check, Evie just smiled, and said, “Thank you. That was lovely.” And that was all there was to it.

  When Evie suggested they split a cab, Velma admitted she only lived a few blocks away. Oh, really . . . She insisted on walking Velma home. They wandered down the quiet street in easy silence, hands swinging inches from each other, each passing swish as palpable as a paint stroke. Happiness coursed through her, and she was drunk, deliciously drunk: with the wine, with the night, with the city, with life, with women, with Velma. The sky looked like a Van Gogh painting, the air smelled like honeysuckle, and anything was possible, everything was probable.

  Of course it wasn’t a real date because she wasn’t really herself, but somehow, that didn’t matter. Chloe’s wide smile and deep blue eyes had kept Velma transfixed. But it was Evie’s jokes that made her laugh, Evie’s insights that caused the author to furrow her brow in surprise. Velma made her feel clever. Bright. Fascinating. Evie was reminded of how Willow used to make her feel this way, years ago. But this was different. She didn’t want Willow to kiss her.

  “This is me.” Velma stopped in front of a beautiful redbrick building with classic molded window edges towering down over the cobbled street. The foyer was awash in yellow light, hung with artwork.

  Evie nodded, smiling, and waited for Velma to open the door for her.

  “Chloe. Miss Chloe Fontaine.” Velma wrinkled her brow and put both hands in her pants pockets. “I don’t think you should come up.”

  Evie felt like an actress who’d forgotten her lines. “Oh.”