At that particular moment in time, Richard Campbell Gansey III was ninety-two miles away from his beloved car. He stood in the sun-soaked driveway of the Ganseys’ Washington, D.C., mansion, wearing a furiously red tie and a suit made of tasteful pinstripe and regal swagger. Beside him stood Adam, his strange and beautiful face pale above the slender dark of his own suit. Tailored by the same clever Italian man who did Gansey’s shirts, the suit was Adam’s silken armor for the night ahead. It was the most expensive thing he had ever owned, a month’s wages translated into worsted wool. The air was humid with teriyaki and Cabernet Sauvignon and premium-grade fuel. Somewhere, a violin sang with vicious victory. It was impossibly hot.
They were ninety-seven miles and several million dollars away from Adam’s childhood home.
The sweeping circular driveway was a puzzle game of vehicles: tuxedo-black sedans, cello-brown SUVs, silvery two-seaters that could fit in the palm of your hand, sweating white coupes with diplomatic plates. Two valets, having exhausted every parking solution, smoked cigarettes and blew smoke curls over the fenders of a Mercedes beached on the curb beside them. Rose blooms rotted on the bushes beside them, sweet and black.
Gansey snaked between cars. “Lucky thing we didn’t have to trouble ourselves with parking.”
The helicopter ride still rested uneasily in Adam’s stomach. He didn’t care for flying or for being seen arriving in a helicopter. He’d spent thirty minutes scrubbing grease from his fingertips before they’d left. Was this the dream, or was his life back in Henrietta?
He echoed, “Lucky thing.”
Two men and one woman stepped out of the front door of the house. Hands chopped at air; bits of the conversation exploded off the gutters overhead. Already been passed — legislation — damn idiot — also his wife is a cow. A murmur of guests passed through the open door behind them as if the threesome had pulled the sound out with them. The view through the doorway was a collage of pants suits and pearl necklaces, Vuitton and damask. So very many. So very, very many of them.
“Jesus Christ,” Gansey said tragically, his eyes on the gathering. “Oh well.” He flicked an invisible piece of lint off the shoulder of Adam’s suit and placed a mint leaf on his own tongue. “Good for them to see your face.”
Them. Somewhere in there was Gansey’s mother, stretching her hands out to the hungry D.C. off-the-rack suit crowd, offering them treasure in heaven in return for votes. And Gansey was part of the sales package; there was nothing more Congressional than the entire Gansey family under one roof. Because those dripping necklaces and red ties were the captivated retinue who would fund Mrs. Richard Gansey II’s run for office. And those shiny oxfords and velvet pumps were the nobles Adam sought squireship from.
Good for them to see your face.
A laugh, high and confident, pierced the air. Conversation swelled to accept it.
Who are these people, Adam thought, to think they know anything about the rest of the world?
He must not let it show in his eyes. If he reminded himself that he needed them, these people, if he reminded himself it was only a means to an end, it was a little easier.
Besides, Adam was good at hiding things.
Gansey greeted the guests standing outside the door. Despite his previous complaint, he was completely at ease, a lion on the Serengeti.
“In we go,” he said grandly. And just like that, the Gansey who Adam had befriended — the Gansey he would do anything for — vanished, and in his place was the heir born with a silk umbilical cord wrapped round his blue-blooded neck.
The Gansey mansion spread out before them. There was Helen, now deliberately effete and decidedly unattainable in a black sheath, her legs longer than the driveway. What shall we toast to? Toast to me, of course. Oh, yes, my mother, too. There was ex-Congressman Bullock and there was the head of the Vann-Shoaling Committee and there were Mr. and Mrs. John Benderham, the largest single donors to the last Eighth District Republican campaign. Everywhere were faces Adam had seen in newspapers and on television. Everything smelled of puff pastry and ambition.
Seventeen years before, Adam had been born in a trailer. They could see it on him. He knew it.
“What are you two handsome devils up to?”
Gansey laughed: ha ha ha. Adam turned, but the speaker was already gone. Someone grabbed Gansey’s hand. “Dick! Good to see you.” The unseen violin wailed. The acoustics gave the impression the instrument was imprisoned in the chesterfield by the door. A man in a white shirt pressed champagne flutes into their hands. It was ginger ale, sweet and fraudulent.
A hand slapped the back of Adam’s neck; he flinched badly. In his head, he fell down his father’s stairs, fingers grabbing dirt. He could never seem to leave Henrietta behind. He could feel an image, an apparition, looming behind his eyes, but he pushed it away. Not here, not now.
“We always need young blood!” boomed the man. Adam was sweating, flipping between the memory of biting stars overhead, the fact of this present-day assault. Gansey took the man’s hand from Adam’s neck and shook it instead. Adam knew he was being rescued, but the room was too loud and too close for gratitude.
Gansey said, “We’re young as they come.”
“You’re pretty damn young,” the man said.
“This is Adam Parrish,” Gansey said. “Shake his hand. He’s more clever than I am. One day we’ll be throwing one of these shindigs for him.”
Somehow Adam had a business card pressed into his hand; someone else gave him more ginger ale. No, this one was actually champagne. Adam did not drink alcohol. Gansey smoothly took the champagne flute from him and placed it on an antique desk with ivory inlay. With a finger he slicked off a single drop of red wine that stained the surface. Voices wrestled with one another; the deepest voice won. Eight months ago we were in the same place as this on that campaign, a man with an enormous tie pin said to a man with an enormously shiny forehead. Sometimes you just throw funds at it and hope it sticks. Gansey shook hands and clasped shoulders. He talked women into confessing their names and then made them believe that he’d known them all along. He always called Adam Adam Parrish. Everyone always called him Dick. Adam gathered a bouquet of business cards. His hip smashed into a piece of lion-pawed furniture; Irish crystal jingled from the lamp sitting on it. A spirit touched his elbow. Not here, not now.
“Having fun?” Gansey asked. It did not sound as if he was, but his smile was bulletproof. His eyes roved the room as he knocked back his ginger ale or his champagne. He accepted another flute from a faceless serving tray.
They moved to the next person, and the next. Ten, fifteen, twenty people in and Gansey was an embroidered tapestry of a young man, the hoped-for youth of America, the educated princeling son of Mrs. Richard Gansey II. The room adored him.
Adam wondered if there was a true smile among this herd of wealthy animals.
“Dick, finally, do you have the keys to the Fiat?” Helen came close to them, eye to eye with Gansey in a pair of black pumps that were sensible on every other woman in the room and unreasonably sexy on her. She was, Adam thought, the sort of woman Declan was always trying to obtain, not realizing that Helen was not the obtainable sort. You could love the sleek, efficient beauty of a brand-new bullet train, but only a fool could imagine it would love you back.
“Why would I?” Gansey asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Every car is blocked in except that one. Those idiot valets.” She tipped her head back and looked at the tree-painted ceiling; to Adam, the intricate branches seemed to be moving. “Mom wants me to do a booze run. If you come with, I can use the HOV lanes and not spend the rest of my life getting wine.” She noticed Adam. “Oh, Parrish. You clean up well.”
She meant nothing by it, nothing at all, but Adam felt an ice chip pierce his heart.
“Helen,” Gansey said. “Shut up.”
“It’s a compliment,” Helen said. A server replaced their empty drinks with full ones.
Remember why you’re here. Get in, get what you need, get out. You’re not one of them.
Adam said evenly, flattening his accent, “It’s all right.”
“I meant that you two were always in your school uniforms,” Helen said. “Not, like —”
“Shut up, Helen,” Gansey said.
“Don’t PMS on me,” Helen replied, “just because you wish you were with your beloved Henrietta.”
A fleeting expression passed across Gansey’s face then; she’d guessed right. It was killing him to be here.
“Why is it, again, you didn’t bring the other one?” Helen asked. But before Gansey could reply, someone else caught her eye and she allowed herself to be swept away as swiftly as she’d appeared.