Chapter 87

[ 1,238 words ]

Julian’s POV

Seraphina answered on the third ring, which meant she had seen my name and made me wait two rings longer than necessary, which was her way of establishing that she was doing me a favor and not the other way around. It was a small performance, and I had long since stopped finding it interesting.

“Julian.” Her voice was the particular warm-and-cool combination she had perfected for people she wanted things from. “It’s been a while p>

“Two months p>

“I know how long it’s been.” She took a moment that was designed to feel loaded. “What do you need p>

This was what I appreciated about Seraphina when I appreciated anything about her—she dispensed with the social architecture quickly when it suited her. We had a working arrangement that predated Delia and had continued alongside the marriage with the same clean transactional logic it had always operated on. Seraphina was a model, just like Chloe; a public figure; and a woman who understood that visibility was currency. I occasionally provided her with visibility in contexts that served both of us. She occasionally provided me with the particular social shield that came from being seen with someone the tabloids found interesting.

It was not a romantic arrangement. It had never been a romantic arrangement. Seraphina understood this completely and found it neither offensive nor complicated, which was one of the things that made it workable.

“The tech awards gala,” I said. “Thursday. I need you there p>

“As what p>

“As yourself. Visible. Something the cameras will want to follow p>

She laughed softly. “Something scandalous, you mean p>

“Something that generates coverage p>

“Same thing.” I heard the sound of her moving—heels on a hard floor, the acoustics of her apartment in the West Village that I had been to twice and found aggressively curated. “Who are we distracting p>

“My wife p>

She paused and then spoke. “Delia p>

“She’ll be at the gala. I need her attention directed somewhere other than certain questions she’s been developing an interest in p>

“Certain questions about what p>

“That’s not your concern p>

She took another pause, this one more thoughtful. Seraphina was not unintelligent. She was very good at reading situations and very careful about which ones she inserted herself into. “Julian. I’ll come to the gala. I’ll be visible. I’ll give the cameras what they want.” Her voice shifted slightly, still warm, but with an edge underneath. “But I want it understood that this is the last time I do this particular type of favor without a conversation about what I get in return p>

“The campaign placement,” I said. “WEG’s winter launch. Your agency has been asking for three months p>

A beat. “Done.” The warmth returned, professionally. “Thursday. What time p>

“Seven. I’ll have a car sent p>

“I’ll find my own car. It photographs better if I arrive separately.” She paused. “And Julian, make sure Delia is actually watching. I don’t do this for empty rooms p>

I hung up and looked out the window at the city and thought about what I was doing, which was using a model as a smokescreen to keep my wife’s attention away from the questions she was beginning to ask, in service of a situation I had created by agreeing to an arrangement that was never going to be what either of us needed.

The logic was clean. The execution would be clean. The part that wasn’t clean was the part I wasn’t looking at.

Thursday.

The tech awards gala occupied three floors of a building in Midtown and drew the kind of crowd that showed up to be seen as much as to celebrate anything. I arrived with Delia at seven fifteen, correctly timed, correctly presented, with the practiced ease of two people who had done this enough times that the performance required less effort than it once had.

Delia was in dark green. She looked, as she almost always did in public, exactly right. Her hand was on my arm, and her smile was calibrated, and she navigated the room with the fluid confidence of someone who had grown up understanding that events like this were games with rules you needed to learn before you could play them properly.

We were forty minutes in when Seraphina arrived.

She had worn something that justified the word “scandalous” a deep red, architectural, the kind of garment that required a specific kind of commitment to wear in public. She walked in the way she walked everywhere, which was as if the room had been waiting for her and she were graciously allowing it to have her. The cameras responded immediately. The tabloid photographers near the entrance, who had been patient and bored for the better part of an hour, suddenly had something to point at.

I watched from across the room.

Seraphina found my eyeline from thirty feet away and held it for exactly half a second—the acknowledgement, the confirmation that she was here and visible and doing what had been agreed—and then moved on into the room with the ease of someone who had never needed a map.

Beside me, I felt Delia’s attention shift.

She said nothing. That was the thing about Delia that I had underestimated in the early months; she processed things quietly, internally, without the immediate reaction that would have been easier to manage. She saw Seraphina. She registered what Seraphina’s presence meant or what it appeared to mean. And she did all of this without a single visible response, which meant she was either more controlled than I had given her credit for or more aware than I had accounted for.

The evening continued. I moved through it the way I always did, present, managed, saying the right things. Seraphina circulated and was photographed and provided the tabloids with exactly the content I had requested. Delia maintained the performance of the devoted wife with the consistency of someone who had decided, at some point, that performing it well was its own form of power.

At ten thirty, in the car on the way home, she spoke.

“Clever,” she said.

I looked at her.

She was looking out the window, her profile composed and still, the green dress catching the passing lights in the glass. She said it the way she said most things now—quietly, without drama, as if she were observing something rather than accusing anyone of anything.

“I’m sorry?” I said.

She turned. Her eyes met mine in the dim interior of the car, and they were, I realized, completely clear. Not hurt. Not angry. Clear.

“Seraphina,” she said. “The timing of her arrival. The way she looked at you once and then didn’t again. The cameras.” A slight pause. “Clever. But not clever enough p>

The car moved through the city. Outside, the lights slid past in the way they always did, indifferent.

I looked at my supposed wife. At the composed, clear expression on her face. At the specific quality of stillness, she had not the stillness of someone who had nothing to say, but the stillness of someone who had decided exactly how much to say and was stopping there.

I filed it away.

I said nothing.

We rode the rest of the way home in silence that was no longer the silence of two people with nothing to say to each other. It was something else now. Something that had edges.

Delia was no longer just background noise.

I should have understood that sooner.

If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.