“I told Charlie I was going out with my parents again and would sleep over at their house in Bayonne. They live so close, Charlie never finds it surprising when I stay at Mom and Dad’s.” She stands up, raises her glass of orange juice toward me in a mock salute, and walks to the master bedroom. My day looks brighter already.
I duck into the shower in the master suite bathroom. Tess has a secretive lilting smile on her face when I come out, toweling my hair. “What?”
“Soundproof bathrooms? Really, Roscoe, you think of everything a woman could possibly want to find in a house.” I climb onto the bed with her, “Actually, most Bridges Buildings have soundproofing, triple glazing, and solar. It helps keep the utilities in check. I’ve never met a millionaire who doesn’t bitch about energy prices. It also keeps out the noise of roadworks when yet another cable company decides to lay down more wires.”
“This is one of your buildings? Is that why you are so proud of the interior and exterior architecture?” Her eyes roam over the walls and ceiling as if she expects to see a trademark. “Yeah, it’s mine. The building exists outside Bridges Investment Holdings, so I can do whatever I like with it. I okayed the blueprints about fifteen years ago, so it’s like my baby.”
She settles herself back against the pillows. “You started young.” Fact, not a question. I reply in an offhand manner, “Right. I sold my own portfolio of shares when I was eighteen; I bought the original building with the proceeds, knocked it down, and built this. Cut the ribbon on my twenty-first birthday. Dad was proud.”
She takes a sip of juice, looks at me over the rim in a speculative way. “That’s nice…” The sheets are pulled over her chest so I can’t see her nipples through the transparent damp shirt. Tess Jolliffe is taking her time, sizing me up in her own way. I break her concentration, “What did your parents think when you went into fashion?”
Her eyes brighten. Her favorite subject. She bites her lip, wondering where to start.
“Oh Roscoe…I’ve been obsessed since I was a little kid. It was the website and blog boom of the noughties and Mom would allow me one hour on the computer after I finished my homework every weekday. I found a few fashion blogs and I was sold.”
Her enthusiasm when she describes her passion and when it developed makes me feel old. The twelve-year age gap that separates us gapes wider for a split second. I lay on my side, head propped up with one hand as I watch her face light up as she speaks. My hand slides under the sheet and holds her foot as she sits cross-legged, emphasizing certain points in her narrative with her hands.
“So then, I got into the Fashion Institute and spent all my time—every single moment—immersed in the world of fashion. My goal was…isto create drop-dead gorgeous clothes for the work environment that are affordable and flattering.”
“Men and women?” I interject.
“And unisex,” Tess says. “I want a wife or a husband to be able to delve into one another’s closets and pull out whatever they like, but only up to a point, because I want most of the clothes to be tailored to fit the form.”
That makes me smile. “I can see that you believe in doing that,” and point to my shirt she’s wearing. “Only, you make it look so much better.” She has the grace to blush. “Thank you, Roscoe. I didn’t feel like putting on a cocktail dress this morning.” I give her toe a squeeze, saying, “Hey, my closet is your closet.” We laugh as she slips under the sheets and lies down, her hair spreads out over the pillow like a spray of gold.
“So, what happened to your first collection?” The question had to be asked and this time, she answers.
“My best friend at FIT, Sarah Blakely, didn’t have a concept. Each student has to put on a mini catwalk show at the end of their Fashion Design degree, but Sarah kept stressing, she had no idea what she was going to do. All the top buyers attend the final runway shows. They pretend it's no big deal, but it is. One day, Sarah seemed to stop stressing, but insisted on keeping her concept hush-hush. One of my lecturers kept giving me funny looks and emphasizing the necessity oforiginality in fashion. I didn’t get it until the day of the runway show. Her surname comes before mine in the alphabet, so Sarah’s show went on first. It was a carbon copy of mine, with the theme ‘elegance in the office on a budget.’ My theme was ‘mid-price work clothes can still look good.’ By the time my runway came out, all the buyers had already bought Sarah’s collection.
“That lecturer even wanted to fail me for copying because Sarah had lied to her about who came up with the idea first, but my Dad stormed in there with a lawyer, and the dates I began sketching out the concept on my tablet were logged on the cloud. So, I got a first class pass and was offered a lot of help getting my next collection off the ground, but I have to knock my student debt down before I can get back to the drawing board.”
She pauses and fiddles with her fingernails for a moment. “I’m struggling for inspiration, because I discovered my boyfriend was cheating on me last year at Christmas, so I moved out…and it’s hard to pick up the pieces and start all over again as if nothing has changed.” Her hoarse little voice goes gruff, and she seems to be fighting back tears. Her ex must be brain-dead to let a woman like Tess go. I give her toe another squeeze and it seems to bring her that tiny bit of courage and comfort she needs to put the past behind her again. “Have you ever had your heart broken, Roscoe?”
I shake my head firmly, my lips pressed tightly together. “Not since high school, which doesn’t count because everyone acts like an ass in high school. Show me a couple of high school sweethearts and I’ll show you a couple of co-dependent obsessives with fear and jealousy being their major motivators.”
She hits me lightly over the head with one of her pillows. “You cynical bastard, Roscoe!” but she is laughing. If it’s not spraying me in the face with pool water, it’s this. Tess Jolliffe definitely makes me feel young again.
My phone vibrates, and I’m tempted to throw it against a wall, but I don’t because there is a code, a certain set of rules billionaires play by, and being accountable for every minute of the day is one of them. “Hey,” I drawl into the speaker.
“Roscoe. I only got your message now. I can have the yacht ready in the morning, but I’m not sure what time you want to take the Ishida guys out on Saturday, and where you want to go to.”
It’s my captain. I hesitate because the arrangements I made last night are a blur. “Er…hold on, please, Simon. I’m still in bed at the apartment. Drank a vat of sake last night.” I don’t bother muffling the speaker because it would confuse my staff if Ididn’thave a woman in bed with me at this time of the morning. “Tess, can you remember what we said to Mr. Ishida about the yacht this weekend?”
She doesn’t answer me, but shoots daggers at me out of her eyes. Then she gets out of bed, stalks to the bathroom, and slams the soundproof door behind her.What the hell?“Si, I’ll get back to you on that.” I disconnect the phone, swing my legs out of the bed, and run to the door. Damn this soundproofing! “Tess!” I’m shouting with my mouth pressed to the crack, “Tess! What’s wrong? What did I do wrong?” Silence. I don’t even know if she can hear me. Then the door opens a crack. “Bring me my phone and my dress, please.”
I don’t push at the door. I stand back and give Tess her space. “Please tell me what’s wrong.” I’m begging and I might even sound as stupefied as I really am. I don’t want her to leave yet. I’m having too much fun. I thought we were both having fun.
She opens the door a bit wider. “Please bring me my phone and my dress, Roscoe.” I head to the guest bedroom and walk around it, scanning the floor for her dress. Eventually, I find it scrunched up at the foot of the mattress under the sheet. It takes a while to find her purse. It’s in the living area next to the Eames chair. I don’t bother taking out her phone, passing it, along with the dress, through the crack in the bathroom door. “Thank you,” Tess says, and then the door clicks shut again. Fuck! I pace from one side of the room to the other until she comes out. She’s dressed and tapping words into her phone.
“What have I done wrong, Tess? I thought we were-” I stop. I don’t know what we are. Friends, co-workers, enemies? All I know is she makes the heaviness that has followed me around for as long as I can remember disappear for a while.
She looks at me. “You don’t even know, do you? You said my name to a member of your staff or work colleague, or whomever it was on the other end of that call after mentioning you were still in bed. We both agreed this was a one-off, Roscoe. A favor. I don’t want anyone who works foryougetting the wrong idea aboutme!” She mocks my voice, “Teh-ess, what did Mr. Ishida say about the yacht for this weekend…” She’s mimicking the drawl in my voice with scary accuracy. Her face shows anger as she continues berating me. “Zero discretion, zero forethought, zero accountability!” Tess puts her hands on her hips and waits for me to justify the casual way I handled her privacy, her bare foot tapping on the carpet. I go into instant damage control.
“Look. I’m sorry! Simon would never discuss the names of the women who happen to be in bed with me in the mornings with anyone else.” Shit! I’m digging myself into an even deeper hole here. “What I mean to say is this, I don’t want…I don’t think this can end yet!”
She doesn’t even look at me as she walks out into the corridor. I’m frozen in place as my mind spins to think of ways to make her stay. When I follow her out, Tess is sitting in the Eames chair, strapping on her shoes. She searches in her purse, finds a few pins, and ties her hair back up. Piece by piece, she’s erasing her encounter with me from her appearance. And I find that I hate it.
“Our agreement was only for one night,” she says, standing up and moving to the mirror in the entrance hall to check her face. “One dinner. Please tell Ishida-san I am so sorry for not attending the yacht trip, but… what was our cover story again? Oh, right. I have to go to Europe.”