Glass Houses Read online

  Her friends were too young to drive and Riley was too shy to ask to be driven home by their moms or nannies. Instead, she took the bus to the end of the street and walked the rest of the way on foot. I tried not to let on that I knew.

  “What, you have something more important to do?” she asked, doing a poor job of concealing her excitement.

  I shook my head. “Your mom’s out of town.”

  “She is?” Paolo quipped from the kitchen island. They hadn’t told him.

  Typical, I thought and nodded. “Santa Barbara. I’ll tell you later.” I turned my attention back to Riley. “If you want me to drive you, I can, but—”

  “No, I’ll take the bus,” Riley interjected. She had spent most of her childhood in a gilded cage. It was probably natural that she should be wary of freedom.

  “You have your phone. If you change your mind, you give me a call, yeah?” My phone was always charged and set to shrill loudly enough that I’d hear it over the sound of traffic.

  Besides, it wasn’t as though anyone else was about to call me.

  After the kids had finished their breakfast and washed their hands, I packed them into Mr. Hamilton’s BMW. I usually drove his car when he was out of town. Mrs. Hamilton needed her Audi available at all hours and I didn’t have the money for one of my own. If both Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton needed their cars, I was meant to call for a chauffeured town car, something I thoroughly disliked. I always felt that my drivers judged me for my clothes, my lack of makeup. I couldn’t help that I bought five-dollar T-shirts in bulk or that I never had time to put on any mascara. I think most of them expected to be called to Nob Hill for some glamorous socialite. No wonder I was a let-down.

  I was nearly out of the driveway when I saw that the mailbox was overflowing. Paolo usually took care of triaging the important mail from the junk that unflinchingly wound up in the Hamiltons’ box, but he must have forgotten. Or perhaps he just hadn’t gotten round to it yet. I don’t know why I felt compelled to pull the parking brake and dart up the steps between two prickly rose bushes, narrowly avoiding a bee sting, but I did. I had a feeling—it might have been just wishful thinking—and I let it drive me.

  Behind me, Riley leaned on the horn.

  “We’re going to be late,” she shouted at me through the open window.

  “All right, all right…” I didn’t have time to run back into the house with the mail, so I just lobbed it all on the dashboard in a haphazard heap and slid in behind the wheel. “Everyone’s got their seatbelt on?”

  “For the last time,” Riley sighed, “yes.”

  I really wanted to take her to task for the attitude, but much as I thought Riley was behaving unfairly, I knew what it was like to feel left behind. I tempered my ire. “You’re right. We wouldn’t want you to be late. You know, I’m really glad you’re so eager to get to school on time. When I was your age—”

  Riley thumped her head against the dash, the curtain of her chestnut hair falling on either side of her face to obscure her eyes. “Oh God, another lecture?”

  “—I used to cut class all the time,” I finished, as though Riley hadn’t interrupted. “And now look at me.” It wasn’t what I’d meant to say, but it was, unfortunately, the truth. Not that playing hooky in middle school was the reason I’d lost all sense of purpose, but the seeds of my dissolution had been planted early on.

  I wasn’t like Penny, who had a doctor for a mother and a lawyer for a father. I was the first in my family to even finish high school, never mind college. The rigors of traffic kept me from glancing away from the road to see how my little confession had gone down. Talk about being unprofessional.

  We were nearly at Riley’s middle school by the time either of us spoke.

  “You turned out all right,” she said, slanting a quick glance my way. “Didn’t you?”

  What could I tell her? “Duh. Point is, you’re gonna do better because you just love getting up early in the morning.” I eased the BMW to a stop, double-parking between a Chevy and a chauffeur-driven Aston Martin, both discharging their own uniform-clad students. Private schools guaranteed this kind of scenery. “Go learn cool things,” I said, shooing Riley out of the car. “And don’t forget your violin!”

  Phoenix trooped out after her, blue uniform shirt peeking out from his pants like a little tail. I wanted to call after them, but the bustle of students swallowed them up before I could open my mouth.

  I sighed. “Looks like it’s just the two of us, Z.”

  Zara met my eyes in the rear-view mirror, smiling as she chewed her Barbie’s foot.

  Mrs. Hamilton insisted that all of her children attend school, regardless of age. It didn’t make a difference if Zara was too young or too shy. It didn’t matter if I was home and more than willing to keep her company. I could have taught her the alphabet just as well as any day care teacher, but Mrs. Hamilton’s orders were sacrosanct. She felt very strongly about early childhood development. I think she’d dug up the term from some book.

  Today wasn’t the first time I was tempted to take Zara home and spend the day coloring with her. Some of the nannies I talked to in the park, though, had warned me that St. Margaret’s had a policy of calling parents if the kids weren’t in before the appointed hour, never mind if they didn’t show up at all, so I quashed the urge. I really didn’t want to have to explain to Mrs. Hamilton why I hadn’t taken Zara to her mandatory day care.

  I put the BMW in drive and pressed on with the routine. I talked to Zara all the way to the day care, hoping that if she heard the sound of my voice enough, she would eventually start speaking herself. I had no basis in scientific fact for the attempt, only my own stubbornness and the hope that I was exaggerating Zara’s mutism out of inexperience.

  It always pained me to walk her to the door and hand her over to the teachers there. She always reached for me when she saw me leaving, like she was afraid I wouldn’t be coming back. It didn’t soothe her any if I spent an hour rocking her back and forth, and promising I’d see her in a little over five hours. I was trying to learn to let go.

  Her teacher smiled frostily. “She’s a little clingy, isn’t she?”

  I resisted the urge to take out my earrings and give the woman what for. It would surely get me fired—plus, what example would I be setting for little Zara if every time idiots pissed me off, I resorted to violence? I bit back the instinct and skulked to the car. It was a nicer day today. The sun was up, the birds were singing, and as I got back behind the wheel, I felt like a terrible person. The thought of Zara’s chin trembling as she struggled not to cry in public would haunt me until I got her home again.

  Maybe, if Mrs. Hamilton was willing to go to a shrink for her marriage, she could consider the same for her daughter. I doubted it.

  I turned the key in the ignition to get the AC running again. Rivulets of sweat already dampened my brow as I gathered the envelopes and plastic-packed magazines arrayed across the dashboard. Tidiness wasn’t in my nature, but this wasn’t my car and I didn’t want Paolo to have to clean up after me. It didn’t seem fair.

  As I leafed through the envelopes and advertisements that routinely got squeezed in through the Hamiltons’ mailbox, a small piece of paper, folded in two, fell into my lap. Written in black ink across one side was my name. I opened it.

  Coffee at 9? I’ll be at the Morning Fix, E.

  I read it twice then pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. The digital clock on the dash read 08:30.

  I was going to be early. I didn’t care.

  * * * *

  Elliot pulled up some ten minutes after I arrived. I didn’t recognize him at first. His bike was bigger than I had expected, but not being knowledgeable about motorcycles, I could only tell that it wasn’t a Harley-Davidson. I was too busy ogling my date—was this a date?—to check out the make and model.

  “You’re early,” I called out as I got out of the BMW.

  Elliot startled, but he was grinning when he turned to face me.
“Seems I’m not the only one. You got my message?”

  “I was waiting for a phone call…” I couldn’t resist the barb.

  He shrugged. “I prefer the written word. Shall we?” His gloved palm was warm on the small of my back. I could feel it through the thin fabric of my white linen dress. I forgot to wish I’d worn something with a little more sass.

  “You’re lucky I got the mail today, otherwise who knows who you’d be having coffee with…?”

  A look of consternation flashed across his face. “I thought Bridge and Patrick were out of town.”

  “They are,” I confirmed as we made our way to the counter, “but our housekeeper isn’t. Don’t worry He’s very nice. He’s about my height but blond and not a woman.”

  Elliot drew his bottom lip between his teeth. “Well. Shit. Sorry about that. I thought I was being creative.”

  “Just admit you lost my number and we’ll call it square.” I couldn’t account for my sudden willingness to get away with murder. I told myself that twisting the knife in the wound just wasn’t as much fun as I’d anticipated. I almost believed it.

  Our turn came up and I ordered a latte with an extra shot of espresso. I needed the pick-me-up after sleeping as little as I had last night. Elliot settled for some fizzy pop drink with a label I didn’t recognize. “Rich people soda?” I sneered. “Really?”

  Elliot smirked and asked the barista for an extra goblet. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” he said.

  “What makes you think I haven’t?”

  “Because if you had,” he pointed out, “you’d know it’s practically ambrosia.”

  We took a table just inside the door in the interests of maximizing what little bit of draft there was. The morning crowd was already thinning as San Franciscans hurried to their air-conditioned offices, homes, shopping malls. We weren’t in a touristy area, so there was some hope for privacy.

  I watched Elliot as he filled our glasses. “No date with your publicist today?”

  “Agent,” he corrected, without looking up. “And no. I told him I was taken.”

  “By all your legions of fans?” I couldn’t resist the quip any more than I resisted the strawberry-orange concoction he poured me. “Suspicious color,” I said as I sniffed the contents of the glass.

  “Chicken.”

  “Discerning,” I corrected. But what the hell? I thought, Might as well. I took a careful sip, barely wetting my lips, and immediately felt like I’d swallowed a mouthful of sugar. “Oh, dude—”

  Elliot laughed. “You should see your face!”

  “Did it turn blue and fall off? This is awful.” I watched, disbelieving, as he put the glass to his lips and downed half its contents in one go. “You can’t seriously like this?”

  “What can I say?” He snorted. “I have a sweet tooth.”

  “Yeah, but this is…diabetes in a can.”

  “My doctor doesn’t approve,” Elliot confirmed, shrugging while I tried to scald my tongue with the latte in hopes of erasing the awful saccharine sweetness. “I’m really glad you came,” he said after a moment. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “You’re hard to read.” That was an interesting thought. I was convinced that I was perfectly see-through as far as attractive men were concerned. I didn’t make a mission out of playing hard to get. Games took time I didn’t have.

  “You’re not the most accessible guy yourself,” I said, drumming my fingertips against the mug. “But I guess that’s part of the mystique. You write some weird shit. I mean, sorry to put it so bluntly—”

  “No, go ahead. Can’t be worse than those reviewers who suggest I’m the devil incarnate.” He seemed proud about this. I wasn’t surprised. As little as I’d known him when I was in college, he’d never seemed to lack self-confidence. Knowing that he’d traumatized some of his readers probably gave him a great sense of pride.

  “Devil’s a strong word. I’m thinking more…minor demon. Or an incubus.”

  “Are those the ones who have sex with women to steal their life force?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. Not my kind of fiction.” Then again, until this past weekend I hadn’t known randy robots were my thing, either, but I couldn’t pretend I didn’t feel a little disappointed that Bare Silence hadn’t ended with a happy ending. Social commentary was all good and nice, but I wanted my happily ever after, damn it.

  “What is your kind of fiction?” Elliot asked, tilting forward with both elbows on the table. I had the odd and slightly unnerving sensation that he was giving me his full attention.

  Oh great, I thought, remembering yesterday’s Vesuvio-Vesuvius disaster. Watch me put my foot in my mouth again. A college degree was no guarantee against a brain fart. I had a habit of sounding like an uncultured hick when I was nervous.

  I licked the milk foam from my upper lip, trying for nonchalance. “Right now? Winnie the Pooh. Zara loves that fucking bear.”

  Elliot grinned toothily. He had a nice smile. I liked how his whole face brightened when he laughed—even if he was laughing at me. “I hear My Pet Goat is pretty good, too.”

  “No doubt.” I huffed a sigh. “I think Mrs. Hamilton will have us reading My Pet Lentil first, though.” She was all about raising socially aware children, which I guess was why she’d hired me. It was very modern of her—a Middle Eastern nanny blew all the French and Chinese-speaking nannies out of the water.

  Elliot smiled. “Boy, you really hate working for her, don’t you?”

  That drew me up short. “What? No—” It was a knee-jerk answer, nothing to do with my real feelings on the subject. I had enough sense to stop there. I didn’t want to spew some bullshit about loving my job or appreciating that Mrs. Hamilton was in a difficult position.

  I didn’t understand her position and there were days when I didn’t love my job at all, but I hadn’t forgotten that Elliot and the Hamiltons were friendly.

  “Did you want to meet to talk about my employers?”

  “No,” Elliot admitted with a headshake. “I was hoping to talk about what you do when you’re not working. Or more specifically whom.”

  “That’s a little impertinent.”

  Elliot smirked, his lips slanting sharply upwards. He seemed about to say something naughty when a pair of girls—college-aged, I guessed, though they might have been younger—stopped at our table.

  The taller of the pair was clutching a notebook. “Sorry to bother you, but—are you who I think you are?”

  “Not Brad Pitt, I’m afraid,” Elliot answered with a winsome grin.

  I rolled my eyes as the girls tittered, their freckled cheeks flushing pink. “N-no, I meant. Are you Elliot McFarland? The author?” When Elliot confirmed that he was, it practically cut them at the knees. “Oh my God! I knew it. I’m a huge fan—oh my God—Rewind, like, changed my life…”

  “That’s very kind,” Elliot said. “If you’d like an autograph—” He was so relaxed about it. I might have been in awe if I didn’t know he had a certain flair for impressing young women. I hung back as he took a cell phone picture with his young admirers, relieved when they didn’t pay me any mind. I wasn’t made for the limelight.

  It was maybe ten minutes before we were left alone again. “That must happen to you a lot,” I mused. Though he had his back to them, I could see Elliot’s gushing fans through the window. They were practically skipping for joy.

  Elliot chuckled. “Hardly. Only at conventions. What were we talking about?”

  “You wanted to know if I was fucking anyone,” I recalled. There was no helping the frankness. I was a little ticked off by the interruption and I was annoyed at my own reaction. I had no reason to be envious.

  “Let me rephrase,” Elliot offered, his smile turning rueful. “Are you seeing anyone, Miriam?”

  “At the moment? No,” I said, “I’m not. Not regularly, anyway…” Other than my trusty vibrator. I tried not to let my imagination run away with me. I’d
pried into Elliot’s private life at the bookshop and been none too subtle about it. This could just be his way of paying me back in proportional discomfort.

  “Haven’t found the right guy, huh?”

  “Or maybe he hasn’t found me,” I quipped, slurping my latte. I rejected the idea that just because I was a single young female I was supposed to be out on the lookout for eligible men to make an honest woman of me.

  “Maybe he lost your number,” Elliot shot back.

  I nearly choked on my coffee.

  “I’m in town for a couple of weeks,” Elliot went on. “I’d really like to see you again… Perhaps not for coffee?”

  My heart was going a mile an hour. I was glad I was sitting down. If this had been a fantasy of mine, this would have been the perfect time to reach across the table and pull him in for a kiss. It wasn’t. And I wasn’t the kind of girl who greeted the slightest show of interest from a guy by surrendering my pride.

  “If you’d rather not, I understand—”

  “I want to,” I interrupted. He had disappointed me once. This was foolish, just a repeat performance of that memorable heartbreak. And still I leaned back in my seat and cocked my head, letting a smug smile play across my lips. “We had fun last time, didn’t we?”

  To my great satisfaction, Elliot huffed a laugh, his glass halfway to his mouth. “Yes. Yes, we did.” I wondered if he thought about it as much as I did. Did he think about me when he touched himself late at night? Did he let his mind drift back to that night—my fingers raking down his chest, nails scratching his flushed skin?

  I cleared my throat in a desperate attempt to get myself under control. “You understand I work from noon to eight in the morning, yeah?”

  Elliot nodded unflinchingly. “I intimated that your schedule isn’t exactly a piece of cake. Luckily, mine is somewhat more flexible. We could work something out…”

  I tried not to dwell too much on the thought of sneaking out to meet him. I had done enough of that in high school. I was supposed to be a grown woman now, entitled to make grown-up choices. All the same, I didn’t want to push my luck. I needed this job, and keeping it meant keeping my employers happy. “Mrs. Hamilton can’t know that we’re seeing each other.” I needed that to be clear or we might as well call the whole thing off before we went any further. “That means you don’t tell Jana and Terry… Or any of your shared friends. You don’t come by the house to see me. Ever.”