But James just shook his head. “Davie, this is not optional. I love you and I love them. And we’ve got to figure this out. One night. That’s all I’m asking. Please.”
He looked at me. I looked back at him. And suddenly I didn’t want to be on the list of people giving James a hard time right now. In fact, I was sick and tired of being one of those people giving James a hard time.
“Okay,” I said. “When and where?”
TWENTY
Even though I was off from the club on Tuesdays, I had back-to-back Soul BunnyGrams on the Westside at four and five in the afternoon. The five p.m. asked for three encores, and rush hour traffic was terrible as usual; even though I got off the freeway and took surface streets, I didn’t get back to my apartment until 6:30. And then I barely had time to exchange my bunny suit for the only sundress that I owned and spritz on some perfume before I had to get back in the car and fight more crosstown traffic to get over to James’s place.
I was only fifteen minutes late, which, by L.A. dinner party rules, was actually a little early. But when Mildred guided me to the dining room, a section of the house that I had seen but never actually eaten in before, his whole family was already there and seated at a long ebony table. I guessed Southern dinner party rules applied here.
James and his father both stood up like good, old-fashioned gentlemen, but the other three sets of eyes went straight to my outfit. My sundress was bright yellow and a little wrinkled because I hadn’t had time to run my evening gown steamer over it. But I had worn it anyway, because it seemed more appropriate than a Strokes T-shirt or an evening gown or the Isabel Marant dress that James had given me, which was lying balled up on my dressing room closet floor, waiting for me to get around to dry cleaning it. Though now I was beginning to wish that I had worn the Strokes T-shirt and jeans, since I seriously doubted that James’s mother and Veronica could look any more disapproving than they did now.
Not for the first time in the last twenty-four hours, I wondered why I had agreed to this.
All three of the Farrell women were wearing well-tailored black dresses, which made them look like light-skinned Jackie O’s. And I wondered if they had all decided together to dress like they were going to a funeral.
James and his father were both wearing light suits, so I guess they hadn’t gotten the dressin-black memo. I felt very out of place in my twenty-two-dollar H&M dress as James introduced me around the table.
First came his father, who greeted me with a warm smile and a kiss on the cheek. “So good to finally meet you.”
At first I thought that he, like his son, didn’t remember me. But then his eyes held mine for a moment too long, and I realized that he was just being a politician. Playing the role as he wanted to be perceived. I understood then why he had won his first campaign by a landslide.
He had aged well. His hairline was a little farther up his forehead, and maybe the beard he now sported covered up a few fine lines, but all in all, he was still the gorgeous man who used to alight upon Cora’s doorstep every Saturday night.
Next came James’s mother, who I had seen pictures of but had never met or even viewed in the flesh. Her beauty, which must have been jaw-dropping when she was younger, was still in effect. And she wore her jet black hair pulled back in a bun that highlighted her patrician features: a thin nose, passed down from whatever white slave owner had decided to take her ancestor to bed, and high cheekbones, just like her children. She was not warm, but she wasn’t cold, either. I guess I’d characterize her as very, very Southern. She cupped my hand in both of hers, but seemed more polite than genuinely glad to meet me.