The Scarlet Letter Scandal (19 page)

Kellie: Keep the cops off my tail?

Rachel: haha, good luck with that.

Kellie was annoyed. She’d thought she and Rachel were friends, but lately Rachel seemed too distracted by her college professor girlfriend to even give her the time of day. It had been obvious which couple they were at the masquerade party, and of course all the guests had been completely entranced by the two hot lesbians in matching pink outfits. According to Brandon, no one had suspected one of them was a mother who happened to be married to a man.

Her thoughts drifted to the Phantom. She hadn’t seen him since that night, or maybe she had, since she imagined he didn’t go around stopping at the pharmacy or coffee shop dressed in a Phantom mask and cape. She wanted to see him again, and in fact had become a bit obsessed with the idea. She’d gone over the Rocks Club membership list a dozen times and determined it was no one she knew. She had no idea how he’d known about the party that night—he must know someone in the club to have had access to the password-protected invite. That didn’t exactly narrow it down.

She looked down at her phone again and responded to the other text, from Chaz.

Chaz: Hey babe, are you ok?

Kellie: Well your cocksucker of a wife didn’t exactly brighten my day.

Chaz: That’s about the last thing I’d call her.

Kellie: Oh duh yeah bad choice of words. Anyway, HATE HER.

Chaz: I know, I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to back away from the homeowners association thing but she keeps insisting we need to stay a part of it.

Kellie: It’s complete horseshit. Am I supposed to be worried about your fake stupid boys’ club shutting me down?

Chaz: Of course not. I have it under control. I’m talking to the attorney today- our kids are on the same hockey team, no worries.

Kellie: but you don’t have HER under control.

Chaz: True.

Kellie: And you never will. I’m done with this drama, Chaz.

Kellie tossed her phone into her purse, annoyed. She didn’t feel like dealing with the bullshit of the newspaper story any more today. She was going to go upstairs to her treadmill and work off some anxious energy. She started undressing as she walked up the stairs. It never even crossed her mind to be modest in the house; no one was usually home in the houses around her.

She rounded the top of her curved stairway and something through the arched two-story window caught her eye—movement in the house across the street. Was that a figure in the first-floor side window? She peered out from the stairway landing and didn’t bother to try and cover herself. She was never modest.

She didn’t know the people across the street. They were almost obsessively private—she had seen a car with tinted windows go in and out of the garage, and nothing more. A lawn service did the lawn. No children or pets played in the yard. She knew nothing about them, which was strange in a place where normally people were out and about for one reason or another. She realized she didn’t know whether those people were home or not during the day—she didn’t pay attention to the timing of their comings and goings, which only involved the driveway door going up or down. She had never even seen them get their mail. So weird you could live practically right next to someone and not even be able to recognize them if they walked passed you.

And yet now she was sure she saw a shadowy figure in the downstairs window. The heavier curtain was noticeably pulled aside and the gauzier liner curtain revealed a man. She walked into the bedroom and over to the window that faced the house across the street. She detected the slightest motion at one part of the curtain, and suddenly she realized what she was seeing. There was a man in that window, and he was jerking off. She gasped a little, but she felt a tingle move from the center of her breast, spreading through the middle of her abdomen to her inner thighs. She could barely see the action through the filmy material, just a silhouette. That silhouette… it was familiar.

Could it be?
There was no way in hell the Phantom of the Opera was her neighbor from across the street.
Was there?
Her body softened with the rush of desire she felt as she thought of him once again. She fought an instinct to rush out the front door, even half dressed, run across the street, and bang on his door. “Are you the Phantom?” she would ask hysterically, before throwing him down on the hardwood floor in his foyer and fucking him senseless.

He saw that she was watching him, and he did not stop. She saw the rhythm of the curtain moving back and forth towards him. He took one small step forward, continuing to hold the heavier curtain behind him as his naked silhouette became more visible behind the sheer curtain.

He wanted to put on a show?
I’m in,
she thought, her concerns about cops and newspapers lost for now, continuing her fantasy that this was in fact the mystery man from the party
(could she be so lucky?)
and not some weirdo creeper. She didn’t even care anymore; her body had taken over. She bravely raised the blinds, so there was nothing between her and the glass. She removed her yoga pants, already having tossed off her T-shirt and bra on the way to the room. The near floor-to-ceiling window now revealed everything from her calves up. She looked each way for moms with strollers, neighbors walking dogs, or, God forbid, delivery trucks, and saw no one.

And then, oh God, for a second his heavier curtain fell and he disappeared. Going to call the cops?
Throw an indecent exposure charge on the pile of charges I already have
. She stepped back from the window for a moment, waiting, but then he returned to his slow but deliberate self-pleasure. Through the sheer fabric, she could see his fully hardened cock moving back and forth, back and forth. He ran a hand through his hair, quickening the pace a little, then slowing it, watching her. She returned the display, stepped toward the window, and allowed herself to fall into the fantasy that this was him, her Phantom. She stroked her nipples slowly, letting one hand trace down her abdomen and toward the place he had so expertly engaged on the night of the party. She closed her eyes, lost in the moment, and then when she looked back across the street, she saw the reason he’d left and come back. The slightest movement of the sheer curtain allowed her to see the pair of white gloves her mystery neighbor was wearing as he stroked himself.

It
was
him.
She savagely squeezed her own nipple with one hand while cupping herself with the other, fingers exploring for only a moment before she exploded in an orgasm. She pressed her nipples against the window for a moment, feeling the cool glass as she breathed heavily and tried to regain her composure. She had to get away from this window before someone (else) saw her. She looked across the street once more, and the curtains were returned to their normal position. He was gone.

E
va walked into the Plaza Hotel, accepting a warm greeting from the uniformed bellman who welcomed her back. She received additional friendly greetings from the front desk supervisor, and when she walked into the penthouse suite, she was overwhelmed by the smell and colors of the gorgeous bouquets of roses.

So much for sneaking back into town for a quick reacquaintance trip
, she thought, kicking off her Jimmy Choo black heels. She was pleased at the kind, welcoming gestures, but it still felt odd to be back here. After spending more than four decades with her life’s focus on work, taking time off to mourn her mother’s death and her own divorce was the first time she’d ever had time to breathe long enough to evaluate her life. College, then law school and marriage, the twins; those years all seemed to flash by in a moment’s time. Now her sons would be
(God willing)
graduating from high school and
(God willing)
moving on to college, from which they’d eventually
(God willing)
graduate.

Making decisions about what she wanted in her own life wasn’t something she ever really remembered doing. It was like she’d been on autopilot for the last quarter of a century. She had wanted to get far away from her father’s drunken, emotional abuse of her and her mother. So she’d excelled in everything during high school, gotten a full ride to college, then gone straight to law school, eventually paying back those exorbitant loans with nearly twenty years of hard work at a firm she helped build from scratch.

But for some reason, spending time on Matthew’s Island over the summer had made a question sneak into her mind:
what happens next?
It was her own annoying new internal voice; it came, she guessed, out of the pure silence and darkness of the island, the lack of
things to do
and
people to fix
and
work piled on the desk
. “What happened next” had never been a question for her—one thing always happened next after another thing in an orderly fashion. What was supposed to happen next was that she was supposed to work for another twenty years and then retire.

And twenty years seemed like a lifetime. She had a powerful, high-paying job,
the things you are supposed to want
, she reminded herself. Look at this hotel suite! It cost astounding amounts of money for her to have this place. She walked over and breathed in the scent of an enormous bouquet of blush-colored roses.

Her phone pinged. A new message from Charles.

Charles: Welcome back to The Plaza, Madame.

Eva: The flowers. They’re amazing. Thank you so much.

Charles: A small token of how much I’ve missed you.

Eva: So sweet. I have missed you too.

Charles: Drinks at the Rose Club at 7?

Eva: Perfect. And maybe a nibble…

Charles: I hope so.

Eva smiled. Their affair had gone on for so many years now, she couldn’t even remember the number. She thought back to the night Charles had closed the Palm Court restaurant and turned it into their private dining suite. She still thought of it as “The Pop Rocks Night.” Who knew candy could be so versatile? Every once in a while she’d see the candy in a store and grin at the cheery “Taste the Explosion!” slogan on the front of the package.

But then, not long after that lovely evening, her world had fallen apart. Simultaneous divorce and parental death isn’t something anyone should have to bear. She had gotten through it, thanks to the solace of the island, but she had lost her connection to Charles. Theirs was a New York City affair, complete with horse-drawn carriage memories, and although he had taken the time to travel and visit her once, it had been strange to see him outside his element, as it would be to see Nathan here in the city.

It would be good to see Charles again now, though, for old times’ sake if nothing else, she thought, shedding her travel clothes and heading toward her amazing antique golden bathtub.
The office was so weird
. She hated how everyone ran around treating her with kid gloves, like she’d fall apart at any moment. She had ruled courtrooms like a stern queen and would again, so she didn’t appreciate the overly sympathetic glances and comments.
Christ, it’s not like I had a nervous breakdown
. Though it sure as hell seemed so by the way people were acting.

But today in the office had been unusual for another reason. She had pulled out files, spoken with junior partners and tried to get up to speed on a few of the more major ongoing corporate cases, and she’d felt oddly detached. For all the years she could remember, the law thrilled her—the chase, the fight, the
adrenaline
of the courtroom. Perhaps it was because she had been away from it for a while, but when she was listening to updates about cases she found her new annoyingly Zen inner voice whispering
who cares?

“Well, I care,” Eva said to herself, stepping into the piping hot tub. “I care,” she repeated more quietly, as if trying to convince herself. She sank deeper into the water and let it ease the tension from her travel-weary shoulders.

An hour later, she walked into the Rose Club, about fifteen minutes early. She sat at the bar and ordered a Moët Imperial Gatsby, a signature drink offered at the Plaza Hotel to honor the fact that the setting was featured in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby
. She loved this place and its history, and this drink.