Magdalene (10 page)

Mitch toyed with the idea of telling Trevor
about Elder Snow, but instead of being a successful object lesson,
it would only reinforce the contrary opinions Sebastian had already
pounded into the boy’s head.

“Doesn’t matter why you come back early,
Trev,” he finally said. “If you say it’s medical, you’re either
lying, crazy, or weak. If you say nothing, you must have been sent
packing because of a girl. The worst is always assumed.”

“Maybe if I
did
go, Grandpa Monroe
would—”

Acknowledge my existence.

Trevor couldn’t even finish the sentence,
and Mitch felt the boy’s pain as he’d felt Mina’s, as he’d felt his
daughters’. Mina’s parents, who had moved to Philadelphia upon the
Hollander family’s return to Bethlehem, had never acknowledged
their grandchildren’s existence. Once Mina had had the temerity to
run off and marry a lowly steel worker, Shane Monroe had stricken
Mina’s name from the family tree. As far as Shane was concerned,
the Hollander family simply didn’t exist.

“He’s never going to, Trev,” Mitch said
simply. “Don’t do things with the idea that you can earn his
approval or love. Your sisters already tried that and it didn’t
work.”

Lisette and Geneviève lived picture-perfect
good-Mormon-girl lives: graduating from BYU with honors, serving
missions, marrying in the temple. Shane knew of it—they’d both
insisted on sending him invitations to their graduations,
pre-mission send-offs, post-mission open houses, weddings—but had
still never spoken to them.

They’d both cried for hours, inconsolable,
and Mina had cried with them. Mitch could only stand by and watch,
mop up the tears, listen to their heartbreak.

“’Cause you were a steel worker,” Trevor
muttered into his Gatorade bottle, half angry, half hurt. “That’s
messed up.”

A steel worker who’d deprived Shane of the
son-in-law he’d wanted.

Trevor was angry, hurt. He wouldn’t cry, but
his back molars might suffer some damage from the grinding of his
jaw. Either he was trying to control his normally even temper or he
was planning some scheme to get his grandfather’s attention. If it
were the latter, Mitch wished him the best of luck and prepared for
the emotional fallout.

“I’m not going to try to talk you into going
on a mission,” Mitch finally said, more to change the subject than
make his next point, “but think about this. If you don’t go and you
decide you do believe and you want to find a good LDS girl, your
options will be cut about in half. That probably doesn’t make any
difference to you now, but it will if you change your mind
later.”

“But Mom didn’t care.”

“Your mother was very young. All she wanted
was to get married and have children.” And escape an arranged
marriage. “I caught her attention and she caught mine, so it worked
out. But she had all these romantic notions of living on love, and
part of the romance is hardship and struggle. When you marry a guy
who didn’t finish out his mission and works in a dying industry,
you get an extra helping of hardship and struggle.”

“And you struggled.”

“I don’t regret a second of it, either.”

“Dad,” Trevor said slowly, “why
did
you and Mom elope?”

“Ah, well...” He took a deep breath, wary of
where this could go. “Her father wanted her to marry someone else
and she didn’t want to marry that man.”

Trevor shrugged. “All she had to do was say
no.”

“She did. She said it the only way she could
make it stick.”

“Huh?”

“She married me instead.”

“Oh, Grandpa Monroe wouldn’t have forced—”
He stopped short when he saw Mitch’s raised eyebrow. “
No
,”
he breathed.

“The wedding was planned. The rings and
dress were bought. She already had her temple recommend in
preparation. The flights to Salt Lake were booked. Honeymoon was
paid for. She was a good girl. She would’ve done what she was
told.”

“Running away was your idea?”

“Yes.”

But once Mitch had presented the idea, Mina
had been only too willing to let him rescue her. It wasn’t the best
way to start a marriage: two kids who weren’t as in love as they
should’ve been, getting married under duress, both of them with
questionable motives. He and Mina might have been young and
desperate, but they’d had a common culture and common goals, and
had worked hard to make their marriage a success.

So what if Mina’s crush on Mitch hadn’t
completely matured— So what if Mitch’s simple compassion for Mina’s
circumstance hadn’t completely matured— So what if they hadn’t been
completely in love on their wedding day—

They were by the time Lisette was born a
year later.

“And so now you’ve met somebody else?”

“Yes. Not sure where it’s going yet. Or if
it is. Would it bother you if it did?”

Trevor shrugged. “I don’t know. I
don’t...remember Mom very well. I guess it would depend on the
woman.”

Ah, well, then, Mitch might as well get his
most pressing issue out in the open. “She’s from Blackwood
Securities, doing the reorganization.”

“I thought that’s what Sebastian does.”

“He doesn’t do as much of that anymore. He
likes the design work he’s doing for me, wants to dig into the
metal, learn the machining, see what he can get it to do. And he
likes being a stay-at-home dad.”

Trevor shuddered and Mitch laughed. “Okay,
so then the problem is she’s not a member of the Church?”

“Well, not that so much as her previous
profession.” He paused. “She was a prostitute. A
very
high-dollar one.”

“No
shit
,” Trevor breathed,
straightening up, all interest now. “She
told
you that? Just
out of the blue?”

“She wanted to shock me, to see what I’d do,
how I’d react.”

“Maybe she was lying.”

“No, she wasn’t.”

Trevor laughed. “Well, hell, at least she
was smart enough to get paid instead of giving it away.”

Mitch grinned. “There’s a certain honor in
that, eh?”

“Yeah. So...?”

...in my previous life, I wouldn’t have
taken him as a client.

“Doesn’t bother me.”

“What if she just wants your money?”

“Doubt it. She has her own and if all she
wanted was a meal ticket, she wouldn’t have stopped being a
prostitute. That’s a lot more honest than a woman who marries for
money.” He paused. “What I think she wants is to see if she can get
a Mormon bishop in bed. She sees me as a challenge. It’s a game for
her.”

“And?”

He slid a glance toward his son. “You know
me better than that.”

Trevor threw up a hand. “Of course. It’s why
you drag me out of bed at one o’clock in the morning to play killer
soccer whenever you’re horny, which, by the way, is seriously
fucked up.”

Mitch couldn’t disagree with that—

“When’d you figure that out?”

—but he wasn’t about to admit to the rare
occasion he was desperate enough to take care of it the usual
way.

“A while back. Dunno when.”

Mitch let that hang for a while, reluctant
to ask, not really wanting to know. “Trev? You, uh—?” He held up
his hand. “Not dad, not bishop. Just men talking.”

The boy said nothing for a moment, then— “I
don’t know how to answer that. If I say no, it’d make me feel
pathetic. If I say yes, you’d be disappointed.”

Mitch remained silent because Trevor had a
better handle on it than he’d thought.

Finally Trevor sighed. “No. I haven’t met a
girl I wanted that much. I mean, I think about sex all the
time.”

“Yeah. You’re seventeen.”

“But I look at what I’ve got to choose from
at school and it’s just not... Something’s not clicking for me. I
mean, I don’t like dudes, either, so that’s not it. In a way,
that’d be easier because at least I’d know why I’m not digging the
girls. And at church, well, the girls I like aren’t giving anything
up, and the only one who does isn’t interesting enough to make up
for all her bullshit.”

That was the most sensible thing Mitch had
ever heard out of a seventeen-year-old boy’s mouth, and he said
so.

“No, it’s not sensible. It’s a fact.”

Mitch snorted a laugh. After a couple of
seconds, he said, “So...if you did meet a girl...?”

“Yeah. I would.”

Mitch sighed. “Well, be careful. Watch out
for the girls with dollar signs in their eyes. Use condoms. I’m
sure Sebastian’s already given you the lecture. And if you do, you
better act accordingly at church. No public prayer, no blessing the
sacrament, no choir practice, no splits with the missionaries.”

Trevor nodded and took another swig of his
Gatorade. “So speaking of church. You gonna bring this woman?”

“Nope.”

“Heh. You can be embarrassed.”

“Nope. This isn’t a missionary moment,
Trevor. She’s a woman who has her own life and I find her
interesting, so why would I want to try to change her? If she comes
to church with me, fine, but it has to be at her instigation.” He
paused. “I know I don’t talk about myself this way much because it
makes me uncomfortable, but, Trev, I’m a powerful man and I didn’t
get that way without knowing exactly what I want and having a great
deal of cunning and patience to get it.”

“And you want her?”

“I’m intrigued. But with who she is now, not
because I want to change her into something she’s not. I might go
ahead and play the game with her, but I’ll win.” He leaned over
then and got in Trevor’s face. “Because I
always
win.”

* * * * *

Steel in
Vase

December 27, 2010

Three weeks.

Well, that settled that, I supposed, but I
didn’t know why it bothered me so much. I should never have told
him something so outrageous, full disclosure be damned. I might
have been able to keep my prostitution from him for however long
our little flirtation would have lasted, but now it wasn’t
possible.

Maybe I should’ve immediately repudiated the
little prick who’d intruded upon our evening, instead of falling
into my act, conditioned by years of fucking people I wasn’t
attracted to—and some I didn’t like.

Qué será será.
I sighed and rubbed
away a strange stinging in my nose.

I swung around in my chair when my assistant
knocked on the door and my breath caught in my chest as the biggest
bouquet of the most perfect roses I’d ever seen preceded her into
my office—in vibrant orange. What the hell,
orange
? She put
the vase on my desk, her face a study in excitement. She bounced on
the balls of her feet and said, in a rather conspiratorial whisper,
“Three dozen.”

Three weeks.

Three dozen.

I might as well have been told point blank.
I reached for the card and opened it. I recognized the
handwriting.

Babbo
Tonight 7:30

“Who’s it from?”

Nobody knew of my evening with Mitch. Never
mind Jack would blow his top; I simply wanted to keep it to myself.
It was so...different from anything I’d experienced.

“The man’s a romantic,” I breathed in
wonder. I felt something warm and soft blossom in my chest and that
strange stinging feeling in my nose started again. Was this what
“to woo” meant? “To court”? Was I being courted, wooed?

I had never been that.

Gordon Rivington—a teenage crush cum
marriage cum property swap.

Nigel Tracey—my introduction to and
instruction in exquisite sex.

Lovers, miscellaneous—affection, fun, and a
few mutually beneficial extras.

Clients, by referral only—business
deals.

Mitch had come to Manhattan, but whether it
was solely to see me or not, I didn’t know. I doubted it
highly.

“I looked it up,” my assistant said, and I
started because I’d forgotten she was there. “Orange roses mean
desire and passion.”

Really.

“But orange means other things, too, so
maybe it’s not just that or not that at all.”

“What other stuff?”

“Enthusiasm.”

“That’s fairly generic.”

“And fascination and um, like, ‘I’m proud of
you’ kind of stuff.”

“I have a hard time believing a man would
indulge in rose language.”

Susan bent to take another whiff, but
stopped and said, “Oh? What’s this?”

From the center of the bouquet she plucked a
bright orange iPod Nano, its earbud cord tied in a bow. I stared at
it, my mind blank.

“Cassie?” Susan had been speaking and I’d
completely spaced. “I said, it must have something on it. If he
just meant to give you the iPod, he would’ve left it in the box.
And it’s not like you couldn’t buy your own.”

Oh.

I pulled the cord loose, plugged it into the
device, put the buds in my ears, then turned it on. In a second or
two, the smooth voice of Harry Connick, Jr. flowed into my brain
and straight down to the pit of my belly.

What are you doing New Year’s Eve?

“Cassie! Sit down before you fall down.
What’s wrong?”

I sat, relaxed back into my chair, and
closed my eyes, listening to Harry repeat the question while
envisioning Mitch. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew Susan
was tiptoeing out of my office, and I even heard the soft swish of
the door closing behind her.

Expensive gifts from clients were
de
rigueur
; it was ritual, simply part of the payment protocol for
a mistress. Jewelry. Collectible wines. Art. Favors I could call
in, occasionally worth many thousands of dollars, but mostly
priceless. Things neither I nor my client would have to account for
on a tax return. Occasionally the smaller gifts might arrive in or
with flowers, but they meant nothing.

No, I had never had this.

A bouquet and a song, to plead for a date on
a special night of the year.

My face heated up and I wondered if I were
getting sick, so I felt my forehead, but no. It was nice and cool.
I put my hand to my cheek, then had to find a tissue because my
skin was all wet.