The salesman didn’t even wake up as I slid a note across his counter, plucked a plastic bag, and put the record inside.
Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. Underrated. Romantic. Different.
Jude.
I’d never introduced a woman to my parents.
Lily Davis had attended the same country club, same schools, and had a summer house right next to ours in Nantucket. They’d known her since she was a baby. Maman’s best friend was her godmother, and we were both expected by our families to make it work, since they could see the potential revenue of such a union.
Fuck helicopter parents. Mathias and Iris Laurent were private-jet parents. They’d wanted me to marry Newsflash Corp’s princess, Lily Davis, before I’d found out my dick was good for more than pissing.
I wasn’t nervous. There was nothing to be nervous about. As far as Judith was concerned, she wasn’t going to be assessed or judged. I’d told her my mother was under the impression that she’d come here to assist me with my professional duties.
My mother lived in a penthouse, of course. Rich people loved putting distance between themselves and grounded people. Golden marbled and palm-treed, the skyscraper did nothing for Judith, who was busy taking a picture of a colorful reptile with her new phone. We were ushered in by an entourage of staff the minute we arrived at the lobby. Judith wore a modest black dress and plain black Chucks, with her hair tied back. I was in my slacks and a casual shirt.
Maman would rather see me in a strap-on and ball gag than casualwear. Which, naturally, added a dash of sadistic pleasure to my state of underdress.
In the elevator—why did everything happen in the fucking elevator?—Jude turned to me and said, “If she starts talking to you about Lily, I’m leaving the room.”
“Hate to interrupt your guilt-fest, but you weren’t the reason I called off my engagement.”
“I know. But still.”
Still, you have more morals in your pinky than Lily has in her entire body.
Maman was sitting on her throne—a cream-upholstered David Michael sofa, still adorned with the dangling 10k price tag—atop her Persian carpet. The lingering tag was a horrendous mistake, I assumed, but not one I wanted to correct, seeing as she deserved the embarrassment of having her friends judge her for it silently.
My mother was beautiful in a superficial way. The same way I’d imagined Lily would be in about twenty years. Everything was too groomed and too tight, leathery skin on newly bleached hair.
I couldn’t fault her for wanting to look younger. My father treated his women like he owned a car dealership. A newer, shinier model rolled in every few years. Maman’s hair was blow-dried to perfection, and she wore a satin gown in silver.
“My beautiful son,” she purred, not bothering to get up from the couch. I sauntered over to her, placing a kiss on each of her cheeks. Jude stood behind me and offered a little wave.
I gestured to my companion. “This is Judith Humphry.”
There was no point in calling her my employee, because she was much more than that, or my girlfriend, because I wasn’t sure if she was. Maman’s lips curved into a secretive smile, and she hooked her forefinger in the air, motioning for Jude to come closer.
“I don’t bite, my dear.”
“But your son does…” I heard Judith mumbling under her breath as she made her way past me.
She shook my mother’s hand. A few minutes later, the housekeeper presented us with pistachio shortbread cookies and coffee, and we all sat down. Instead of fucking around, I decided to broach the subject I’d come here for.
“Have you listened to the recordings, Maman?”
“I have. How did you get them?”
“Irrelevant. Point is, Mathias is trying to kill LBC by selling ad space to questionable parties and cutting my budget even though we’re making clean profits. In other words, he is trying to weaken our product while injecting harmful commercial content into the channel.”
“Sounds like something my ex-husband would do.”
Iris Laurent was the sole heiress of LBC News Channel. An American-born royal with French roots, she fell in love with my father on the shore of St-Jean-Cap-De-Ferrat, France, under the swooshing trees and the influence of expensive champagne. He’d been a nobody trying to be somebody, a French punk with a thick accent and nothing but a bag of dreams and a lot of charm. A year later they were already married and pregnant with me. Mathias knew a thing or two about social climbing, but my mother still held most of the power in LBC—not enough to overthrow him, but enough to keep him on his toes.
I powered up my laptop, connecting it to the huge flat screen in front of us.
“Give me the skinny on things.” Maman alternated between puffing on a cigarette and sucking on a shortbread cookie without eating it. God forbid.
“Ratings are still strong for our main show, but we’re flailing in other time slots. The morning show is a trainwreck, and the political talk show is losing steam by the nanosecond, due to the fact that Mathias hired someone who cannot string two sentences without offending entire nations.”
“Your father has five more years in him, if he’s lucky.” Maman’s voice was sweet with satisfaction. “Can you not wait it out?”
“At this rate, the network will be dead in five months.”
“Well, it is quite unfortunate, then, that you broke off your engagement with Lily. The Davis family holds ten percent of the shares in LBC, and they and I would have made a majority. That’s why I pushed you into dating her when you were kids. I predicted this would happen with your father.”