All i want, p.18
All I Want, page 18
Peacock-blue ink.
It’s her. Lindsay wrote the journal. The note.
Why hadn’t Emma seen the ink on Lindsay’s fingers before? Maybe Lindsay’s gotten sloppy. And why does this shock and sicken Emma more than anything, more than Lindsay being in the musical, more even than Ben sleeping with Lindsay? Unknowns get cast in Broadway shows, men cheat on their pregnant wives. It happens all the time. Even with Ben, even to Emma. But who writes a long, complicated journal, supposedly by someone who lived in the past, and leaves it to seriously mess with the head of the person she knows will find it?
Diabolical is the word that runs through Emma’s mind. She tells herself she’s exaggerating. Lindsay isn’t demonic, just ruthless and ambitious, and maybe a little crazy.
Emma stands. The weight pressing down on her feels heavier than the weight of her body. Something is pulling her, pulling her down.
* * *
THE CONTRACTIONS BEGIN, first slow, then faster. Like someone tightening a belt around her, not too tight, then very tight, spitefully letting her know how bad it’s going to get.
Emma needs a doctor.
Now.
Chapter Thirteen LINDSAY
WHEN LINDSAY’S DAD gives her the Hideaway Home listing, she posts it as a joke. Let’s see what crawls out from under a rock to take a look at this one. Some ancient longhair hippie ghost hunter, some secret cult with twelve half-starved kids. There’s a bit of that around here, but no one’s got the cash or the time or interest to take on the renovation of a semi-ruined dry-out clinic in the middle of nowhere. Not one Williamsburg hipster, not one ex-urban pioneer shows up. No one emails or texts or calls. No one spends more than fifteen seconds on the listing.
Maybe some rich cutting-edge hotelier, your Andre or Ian or whoever, will renovate the place and make this the new celebrity luxury destination. Sullivan County, the new Hamptons? Lindsay seriously doubts it. But it gives her a reason to bother, and it’s sort of fun, exploring the crazy wrecked house with Beth, snapping pictures on their phones while Beth, who’s better with words, comes up with the text of the listing. They even have sex on the cleanest-looking bed in the least disgusting bedroom. It’s creepy but weirdly hot.
Poor Beth has done nothing to deserve whatever Lindsay is going to do. Beth is a deeply good person who has no idea where any of this will be going. And what her role in it will be. All Beth wants is to settle down and have a nice life with Lindsay and find work she likes, maybe something to do with writing. Beth told Lindsay the joke about the lesbian bringing the moving van on the second date. Beth says she basically brought the van years before their first date. She’d had a crush on Lindsay in high school, but Lindsay hadn’t noticed.
Beth self-identifies as a gay woman, but Lindsay doesn’t. She doesn’t self-identify as a straight woman. She doesn’t self-identify as bisexual. She doesn’t self-identify as anyone but herself.
Lindsay had been living in New York, sharing a crappy apartment with a stoner trust-fund-baby roommate, waitressing at a sports bar in Chelsea, hefting trays of beer mugs through crowds of frat bros who grabbed her ass but tipped really well if they were drunk enough. She took acting classes she couldn’t afford and went out on auditions, and looked around the classes and auditions and thought, Not one of us is ever going to get an acting job. Now she thinks: Maybe her negativity was the problem. People smell it. She never got one callback. Not one. Most of the men she met were gay or married or both. Some of the more powerful guys had creepy sexual kinks, and that was a real acting challenge: getting out of the room without turning them against you forever.
If only to fight the boredom, she had two affairs. One, that lasted almost six weeks, was with a woman, supposedly some second-string producer’s PA. The woman was a redhead, pretty, and the sex was hot, but when it became clear that the woman, Rachel, wasn’t going to do any of the things she’d promised to do, things that would have helped Lindsay in her acting career, Lindsay broke it off. Rachel’s guilty quality made for great sex, but she was jealous and neurotic, and finally the sex wasn’t worth it.
Once, when they were showering together, Lindsay noticed that Rachel, who was always suntanned, had been covering the bare white band of skin around her left ring finger with makeup that washed off in the water. As if Lindsay didn’t know she was married.
The second affair was with a good-looking stagehand she met when she tried out for one of the parts she didn’t get. When she got pregnant, he ghosted her. Things did not go well. There was an injury, an infection. She terminated what was left of her pregnancy in a clinic in Murray Hill, walking past demonstrators who shoved posters of bloodied babies at her and tried to make her cry. They succeeded, but that was the last time she cried. She promised herself: No more tears. Not ever. The doctors told her she couldn’t have children. They told her that in no uncertain terms. The less she remembers about all that, the better.
That was when she began trawling AA meetings. It was where you could meet rich needy guys. They would take you out to good dinners, and when they started drinking again, which they often did, they even gave Lindsay cash. None of this was supposed to happen. She wasn’t even supposed to hang out with them outside the meetings, but once you started breaking the AA rules, anything was possible.
She’d been surprised to see Beth, whom she knew from high school, at one of the AA meetings. That night they went back to Beth’s tiny East Village apartment. The sex was amazing.
Lindsay has never told anyone how she feels about sex. Basically, it goes like this: You do things to a person that feel good, and then the person does things to you that feel good, and, as if that wasn’t enough, you get that great toe-curling electrical buzz and the little aftershocks. You’re grateful to the person who made that happen, but that isn’t love. Not that Lindsay has any idea what love is. She lets others assume she does. She even says “I love you.” It doesn’t matter who she says it to, if it isn’t true.
After a few months together, Lindsay and Beth admitted they were poor and unemployed and should probably move back upstate until they figured out something better. Beth got a job making pocket change at the historical society. When Ted took Lindsay into his real estate business—he was so nice about it—she couldn’t let him see how miserable it made her. She convinced herself that working for her dad wasn’t the end of the world, not the dead end of her acting dream or even a serious defeat, but just a stage she was going through. A time-out. A process.
Living with Beth is okay for now. Lindsay pretends to have been a vegetarian and gone back to being a carnivore to make Beth happy. Beth likes that, and Lindsay lets her think it. So what if it isn’t true? Lindsay has always loved a fat juicy burger.
The town is backward, but not so old-fashioned that anyone has a problem with Lindsay and Beth being a couple. Though Virginia, the Nibble Nook waitress and Lindsay’s second cousin, keeps asking Lindsay, right in front of Beth, when she’s going to find a nice guy and settle down and get married.
None of this is Lindsay’s destiny.
Something else will happen.
* * *
IF THERE’S SUCH a thing as destiny, and Lindsay believes there is, destiny chooses Ben to be the first and only sucker who calls about the house.
First she thinks of him as The Client, then as The Husband, and after a while it’s Ben. First it’s The Client’s Wife, then The Wife, then Emma. That’s what it means to get to know someone. Names are hard, though she likes her own name. Lindsay could be a girl or a boy. She understands perfectly when—later—Ben tells her that he and Emma can’t agree on a name for the baby.
It’s not a good sign about the marriage, which is just what Lindsay wants to hear.
During that first phone conversation with Ben, Lindsay gives the house the best possible spin. She plays the not-too-bright novice country real estate broker, which in a way she is, except for the not-too-bright part. She’s a trained actress, but you don’t need much training to know that if you put a question mark at the end of every sentence, guys will think you’re dumb.
Anyway, Ben will find out the truth about the house soon enough. One showing will do it.
She says, “Can I ask what you do for a living?”
He says, “I’m a producer.”
Her heart does a little trippy dance. “Can I ask what you produce?”
He says, “Why don’t you google me?”
Lindsay thinks that anyone obnoxious enough to say “google me” deserves everything he gets. Ben’s still on the phone when she searches him on her laptop, and when his bio comes up, she realizes this isn’t just a half-assed real estate inquiry.
This is destiny calling.
Lindsay says, “Can I tell you the truth? It’s a major reno project? But it’s the craziest, most beautiful house you will ever see in your life?”
She’s betting a lot on this one.
“When can I come see it?”
Bingo. She used to play baseball as a kid, before the idiot Little League coach told her that girls didn’t do that. Hearing the client rise to the bait feels like that fabulous thump when the ball lands square in your mitt.
This guy could be an end run around everything she has ever tried and failed at. All that time and money she wasted taking drama lessons and auditioning when all she had to do was sell a house to the right producer.
Ben tells Lindsay that the first time he comes up to see the house, he’ll come alone. He isn’t sure his wife will like it, and he doesn’t want to waste her time.
Something in his tone tells Lindsay that she should wear something… minimal… to the showing. Her flimsiest, shortest summer dress, though it’s still chilly. A leather biker jacket for warmth.
* * *
BEN DRIVES A Volvo. A good sign. And he seems charmed by her sad little Prius, not that he’d want to drive one.
He notices and appreciates how she’s dressed. She’s shivering for his benefit. Does she want to borrow his scarf?
He’s not bad-looking, not good-looking. A little nerdy for her taste, but fine. He’s not repellent. Not an obvious pervert or creep. Basically, he’s not a bad guy. A potential cheating husband, but whatever. She can work with what’s here. Right now she doesn’t want a man who’s smarter or thinks faster than she does.
From the moment he drapes his deliciously soft cashmere scarf around her neck, it’s more up close and personal than your typical house tour. He trails behind Lindsay through the wreck of the house. He looks at her. He looks at the house. He looks at her. He looks at her ass. He looks at the house.
He likes what he sees.
The noises he makes from the moment they enter the hall—little grunts and moans of pleasure—make Lindsay wonder if those are the sounds he makes during sex. She doesn’t want to find out, but she senses that if she wants things to go her way, she may have to. It’s positively orgasmic, his reaction to the house, and—just as she expected—when she brings him into the theater, that does it.
He basically comes.
“A theater! And old-fashioned theater, in a private house. You do know I’m a theater person?”
Has he forgotten that he told her to google him?
“Sure! Congratulations. On your big Broadway hit.”
“It wasn’t an overnight success,” he says. “First came years of work, years of failure.”
He thinks he knows about failure? Lindsay could teach him a thing or two, and maybe she will, before this is over.
“It’s just so romantic,” he keeps saying, as they drift from room to room. Did he mean the house or Lindsay? He goes on about how amazing the house could be with just a little work. She lets him talk. She listens. She smiles. He’s doing her job for her. Personally, she thinks it’s bad luck for a guy in the theater to buy a place that’s soaked up years of the bad vibes of Broadway burnouts. But she’s not going to say that.
Lindsay says, “I always tell clients that the renovation is going to take three times as long and cost five times as much as they imagine.” She’s never told any clients any such thing. She’s never actually had any clients.
“So I hear,” says Ben.
So it must be something Realtors say. Lindsay’s thinking of all the acting classes she took. She’s playing the good-girl country Realtor.
And soon she’ll play the bad-girl country Realtor.
“Oh… and one more thing.” Lindsay’s operating on pure instinct now.
“What’s that?”
“If you buy this place, you’re probably going to want to get a pickup truck.”
He lights up, his face just lights up. Lindsay thinks he’s going to grab her and kiss her right then and there. Okay, that might be a bit premature. But the thought is in his mind.
“I’ve always wanted a pickup.” Of course he has.
“If not now, when?” Lindsay’s smile beams freedom, promise, and the assurance that he’s the macho pickup-truck guy he’s always dreamed of being. His dumb grin makes Lindsay realize how easy this will be.
“You mentioned… you’re married,” she says.
Is he hesitating? Does he think this is that scene where the husband stashes his wedding ring in his pocket and picks her up in a bar? No married guy buys a house without consulting the wife.
“Actually… she’s pregnant. She’s been kind of busy with that.”
“Busy?” says Lindsay.
“Preoccupied.”
“That’s too bad,” Lindsay says.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY Ben calls to ask if Lindsay can have lunch in the city. Sure, sure she can. No one comes into the city to talk about a house upstate. She dresses up, puts on makeup, wears hot underwear. Just in case. There is no just in case.
It’s on.
Driving into the city, Lindsay thinks she should feel guilty about sleeping with a married man with a pregnant wife. Not that she’s slept with him yet. She means in theory. But thinking you should feel guilty isn’t the same as feeling guilty. Lindsay tries, but she can’t.
They meet in a hotel restaurant on the far West Side. Dark. The kind of place where nobody Ben knows would ever have lunch.
She orders a burger. They split two bottles of wine and don’t finish their food. He talks about his musical. She tells him she read the awesome reviews. He says she’ll have to come see it. He’ll get her a ticket. Tickets?
“One ticket’s good for now.” She smiles. That settles it. The waiter sees Ben’s hands shake as he signs the credit card receipt. The waiter’s seen lots of shaking hands. That’s the kind of place this is.
Lindsay and Ben make out in the elevator, and her hands are all over him as he finds his key card. He pushes her lightly onto the bed, pulls down her sexy underwear.
“Wow,” he says. He enters her from behind. He holds the back of her neck, not hard enough to hurt her at all, but so she knows he’s in charge. He’s better than she expected. This could be not just financially and professionally helpful. It could be fun.
The room faces a courtyard. They lie there in the dim light from the window. Ben asks if she has to be back home soon. She has no plans. He doesn’t either. They don’t have a lot to say, but it doesn’t matter.
When Ben goes to take a shower, Lindsay checks his laptop. He’s visited the Hideaway Home listing many times. He’s also been watching old horror films in which houses drip blood and the walls heave with spirits. He’s watched The Shining twice. If Lindsay were his wife, she’d think a million times before she moved to the country with a guy who’s been doing that.
She closes the laptop before he returns to bed where they lie, pressed close. Neither makes a move to get up. After a while Lindsay grabs the remote and flips through the cable channels on the TV till she finds TCM.
Luck is on her side.
It’s The Masque of the Red Death.
They watch a man in a gorilla suit climb a chandelier made of burning candles and catch fire as the gorilla and the guests scream and Vincent Price cackles hysterically.
“I miss this,” says Ben.
“Huh?”
“Lying in bed watching movies. Emma and I used to do it all the time, but now she’s so tired from being pregnant, she just drops off to sleep, and I’m left all alone.”
That’s the first time he’s said her name. Emma. Until then it was my wife.
His wife is pregnant with his kid, and he’s blaming the wife for being sleepy. He deserves what he gets.
“Poor baby,” says Lindsay. “You poor thing.”
This is going to be easy.
* * *
BY THE TIME Ben brings Emma to see the house, he and Lindsay have spent three long afternoons in bed at the hotel. They never talk about what they’re doing. Ben prefers that, obviously. And what would Lindsay say?
On the third afternoon he says he’s worried that Emma won’t like the house. It needs so much work, and she’s pregnant and… He’s silent for a long time. Then he says, “Has it ever happened that someone installed a stove before they know they’re going to buy the house, before they’ve even made an offer?”
How would Lindsay know? But what she says is, “Just because something hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it can’t. As long as it’s legal, and you can pay for it… and we’re all consenting adults.”
The main thing Lindsay needs to do is make him think he’s the director. He’s said to her, a few times, that he’s always wanted to direct. But really, it’s Lindsay who is the director. Every actress secretly wants to direct, right? And she’s got her own play in mind. A cross between performance art, Macbeth, Real Housewives, and Candid Camera. Lindsay watches a lot of TV, reality shows and dramas, and her ultimate dream is to star in a series that gets renewed forever, like ER, until the stars age out. She’d be happy with her own reality TV series, but what would it be called? Million Dollar Listing Sullivan County?
