Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [75]
“I’m sorry,” I told him, poker-faced. “I just don’t know how you manage in such a small space.” Inside, I was whooping, dancing with glee, with the Jeffersons theme song playing loudly in my head. Movin’ on up. Yes, I was.
The deluxe apartment in the sky came with staff: maids and a cook and a tall, silent, broad-chested man named Paul who introduced himself as the majordomo. His actual job, Marcus explained, was to serve as a combination butler and bodyguard. “He’s got a gun?” I’d asked. “Look,” Marcus said, squeezing my shoulder. “There’s a lot here to protect. You can never be too careful.” Paul scared me . . . but I hardly ever saw him. His quarters, along with the maid’s and the cook’s, were on the lower floor, where I rarely went. I stayed upstairs, where I had my dressing room, my office, a walk-in closet that was easily twice the size of my old apartment, and a butler’s pantry, with its own refrigerator and sink and two-burner stove and coffeemaker.
The cook and his assistants were just for me and Marcus, and for his children, who came to dinner once a week and always wanted the same thing—grilled steaks and baked or mashed potatoes, served with some kind of green vegetable that they’d move around their plates without actually eating. When we entertained, whether it was dinner for eight or cocktails for twenty or a holiday party for two hundred of Marcus’s employees, we’d hire a caterer, and a half-dozen cooks plus uniformed waitresses and bartenders would take over the kitchen, preparing all manner of delicacies, little bites and sips of things, shot glasses of sherry-topped cream of mushroom soup, spoonfuls of risotto, bacon-stuffed dates, and curried shrimp on skewers. They’d leave every dish and countertop spotless at the end of the night. I had no idea how much any of this cost. Since my marriage, I’d never seen, much less paid, a bill.
I was a rich lady with a part-time job, a job I kept just to have something to get me out of the house each day. I had the life I’d always wanted, with all the trappings and the trimmings: the personal trainer who charged two hundred dollars an hour to hold a stopwatch while I ran, the hairdresser and makeup artist, similarly paid, who would come at any hour of the day or night. I had a car and driver—I’d send a text, and ten minutes later I’d walk out the front door, and there’d be a Town Car idling by the curb. I could buy whatever I wanted—art, clothes, jewels, a car of my own to join the half dozen that Marcus kept in a garage uptown. What I was learning was that having felt, sometimes, less satisfying than wanting ... that dreaming of all this luxury was somehow better than actually possessing it, because once you had it, it could all be taken away.
Another troubling development was that at some point, I’d actually fallen in love with my husband. I hadn’t planned on that happening; had, in fact, suspected that I no longer had the capacity to love anyone at all. But there it was. I’d wake up some mornings while he was still asleep, curled on his side in the plain white T-shirt and white boxer shorts he wore to bed, and I’d be overwhelmed with a wave of tenderness so strong it made me dizzy. I wanted to protect him, to tuck myself in his pocket and go with him when he traveled, smoothing his way, cuddling up with him at night.
I loved feeling his hand on my arm, guiding me into or out of the backseat of a car. I liked his company at dinner, the nights he was home or the times we went out. I could talk to him, joke with him . . . and if he was a little in love with the sound of his own voice, if he was already starting to acquire an old