A doorman greets me. His eyes start at my feet and climb slowly to my face. I had seen this look a million times from Caleb’s friends. I was among them, but not one of them. Their eyes were tuned into Laboutin and Gucci, so when I showed up in my off-the-rack clothing, their looks glazed over like I bored them. Most of their conversations began, “When I was vacationing in Italy last year…” or “Daddy ’s new sailboat….” to which I would be the silent listener, having never left Florida, especially not on my dead beat daddy’s toy schooner. My daddy was the guy who threw his empty beer bottles at other men’s good fortune.
When I complained about it to Caleb, he tutored me on the art of snobbery.
“Look at them like you know their secrets and you find them boring.”
The first time I looked down my nose at an heiress, she asked me where I’d bought my shoes.
“Payless,” I replied. “funny isn’t it, that our shoes are identical, yet the price you paid for yours could feed a small country for a month?” Caleb had choked on his shrimp cocktail and the heiress had never spoken to me again. I’d felt a sick power. You didn’t have to be rich and important to intimidate someone, you just had to be judgmental.
I don’t look directly at the doorman, but I blink rapidly in his direction like he’s annoying me. He smiles.
“Are you visiting Miss?” Are you veeesiting, mees?
“Caleb Drake,” I say. “Can you tell him that Olivia’s here?” Just then I hear the elevator door slide open and Ricky Ricardo nods to someone over my shoulder.
“Olivia,” Caleb says, putting his hand on the small of my back. I jolt at his touch.
He smiles at the doorman.
“This guy cheats at Poker. Completely swindled me out of a hundred dollars last week.” The little jerk beams in response. Why was it that attention from Caleb turned people into living glowworms?
“Sir? It was the most honest hundred dollars I’ve ever made.”
Caleb smirks and leads me to the elevator.
“You hang out with the staff?” I ask as the doors closed behind us.
“I play poker with them on Tuesdays,” he says looking at me sideways. “What? I like them. No pretenses. Besides, I don’t remember any of my other friends.” He lets me step out of the elevator first and then follows behind me. I get the feeling he is looking at my butt.
“It’s beautiful—this place.”
He makes a face. “Not really homey is it? It’s a little macho-bachelor.”
“Well, you are both of those things, so it fits.”
“I’m sure I could have bought a house for what I paid for this.”
“And a minivan,” I grin.
He grimaces. “That I’m not so sure about.”
“This is it,” he says stopping at 749. “Do not be intimidated by the eighteen foot ceilings and the plasma televisions—they are impressive, but not to be feared.”
I follow his shoulders into the living room.
His condo is impressive. The foyer, as it turns out, is as large as my bedroom. It is bare except for the massive chandelier that hangs over the butter cream tiles. I feel classy by osmosis. He leads me into the living room which, just as he promised, has impossibly high ceilings. The entire main wall is a window, which shows a view of the ocean.“Now, tell me,” I say stopping to admire a painting, “did mommy help you decorate or did you just hire someone?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “But word is—I dated a decorator just to get the free swag.”
“Is that so?” I reach out and touch a finger to the cover of a giant atlas that was resting on his mantle.
“This is the kitchen,” he says leading me into a room full of stainless steel. He leads me into a hallway and pauses before opening the door.
“My office.”
I peek around his shoulder into a room that was cased ceiling high in bookshelves. My stomach clenches in excitement and I felt an urgent need to pee. Books. Wonderful, magnificent books.
“You read all of these?”
“I hope not. That would indicate I had absolutely no life pre-amnesia.”
“I don’t know,” I say, my eyes sweeping over the titles. “I think you’d enjoy a good classic…maybe Great Expectations.” I pluck it from his bookshelf and place it in his hands. He pulls a face, but doesn’t put it back, placing on his desk instead.
A framed picture of Leah sits strategically placed, probably by her, next to his computer monitor. I glare at it. It’s one of those posed studio pictures that the photographer painstakingly tried to make look natural. Leah was looking slightly to the left of the camera, and her mouth was pouty and slightly open. “Kiss me, I’m a beautiful whore,” it says in black and white.
“I want to have a huge office one day,” he says, following my eyes to a picture of Leah. “More books-that I don’t read- a fireplace, and one of those big, arched doorways with the heavy knockers.”
“Are you going to hang that picture up in your new office?” I ask. It hurts to see her there, so fixated in his life.
Caleb shrugs and looks at me in interest.
“Depends. The girl in the frame might be different. I do have a thing for brunettes.”
I pull a face at him.
“And my bedroom…”
His sheets are black silk and they lay rumpled and unmade. It makes me sick to think of all the women that have rolled around in his sheets.
“Where’s the bathroom?” I say in weak voice. He leads me to through the bedroom and watches me stare. There is a shower with six different shower heads and sunken bath that could easily fit five people. There is even a small wine bar built in the corner. He laughs at my expression.
“This is my favorite room too.”
“Wow,” I say.
“Well, if you spend the night sometime you can have the privilege of using it.” All the blood rushes to my head.
We land up back in the living room. I slump onto the couch while Caleb goes to fetch a bottle of wine from the kitchen. He comes back with two glasses balanced in one hand and a bottle of red in the other.
He fills our glasses and hands me one, his fingers brushing against mine in the process.
When he disappears from the room to start dinner, I pour the wine down my throat like a shot and refill my glass. I half expect either Leah or his memory to make an appearance at any second and I don’t want to be sober when it happens.