Falk flicks the cigarette into the street and pulls out the papers. He lets out a low whistle as he reads what’s inside. “Wow, man, thanks.”
He tries to respond, but the words are caught in his throat as he turns and walks away, toward the park, his eyes cast toward the ground, a hard pit of shame in his chest.
Chapter Seventeen
Day Ten
To: May Mothers
From: Your friends at The Village
Date: July 14
Subject: Today’s advice
Your baby: Day 61
Not to alarm you, but you should start to pay attention to the shape of your baby’s skull. While “back is best” is the preferred method of sleeping, too much time on her back can cause your little one to develop a soft spot, known as positional plagiocephaly. You can address this by making sure she’s getting the required amount of tummy time a day. If the flat spot seems pronounced, be sure to talk to your doctor.
“Ellen! Ellen! Give us a smile!”
“Ellen, do you know what happened to Midas?”
Sebastian blocks their cameras with his arm, pushing roughly through the crowd, shielding Nell.
“Any comment on the photo of you at the Jolly Llama? How drunk were you and Winnie that night?”
“You look great, Ellen! What do you think of Lachlan Raine’s Nobel nomination this morning?”
Nell grasps Sebastian’s hand, stunned by the flash of the cameras and the constant whir of their shutters. She ducks into the back seat and Sebastian closes the door, waving good-bye from the sidewalk, as she gives the driver the address of her office. He glances in the rearview mirror as she holds her purse in front of the window to obstruct their view, her sunglasses cloudy with tears. “You an actress or something?”
“No. Please go,” she pleads.
As they pull away from the curb, the screen on the seat back springs to life, tuned in to a morning program. Three women sit at a table, coffee mugs at their elbows, their faces amused. Nell hates these asinine TVs, recently installed in the back seat of every taxi. How is it, she wonders, that people are too afraid to be alone with themselves to endure even one goddamn car ride through New York City without the distraction of inane “entertainment”? She hears her mother’s voice last night on the phone. Breathe, Nell. Everything is going to be okay.
Nell reaches to silence the television, just as she hears her name.
“Ellen Aberdeen is back in the news this morning,” says one of the women, her hair bleached Barbie blond, her forehead as still as glass. “Last night it was reported by Elliott Falk at the New York Post that Aberdeen, now thirty-seven, is living in Brooklyn, working at the Simon French Corporation. She’s going by the name Nell Mackey. I guess she’s gotten married.”
One of the other women chuckles. “That must have been an awkward first date. ‘Aren’t you the one from the Aberdeen affair?’”
“Can we hang on a minute, please,” the third woman says, raising a hand in protest. “She was a twenty-two-year-old intern. He was the sixty-six-year-old secretary of state, and a candidate for president. Why have we named this affair for her?”
A photograph bursts onto a wide screen behind their table: the image of Nell from that night at the Jolly Llama. “There’s more,” the first woman says. “You’ll never believe this, but she’s the woman who was at the bar the night—”
Nell hits the mute button, pressing her eyes with her fists, feeling the panic swell inside her. No, no, no. Please don’t let this be happening again.
A photograph of Nell and Secretary of State Raine comes next—the original photograph: the two of them on the fire escape, a bottle of tequila between them, Nell’s bare feet resting on his thigh. Then others, the same photos that decorated the front pages of newspapers and magazines around the world fifteen years ago. Nell, standing beside her mother on the day she graduated from Georgetown. Alone in the back seat of a taxi, after the news of the affair broke, the hunted look in her eyes on the cover of Gossip!
She descends into the darkness, allowing the memories to flow. The lingering regret that she’d fallen for it—for the way Lachlan spoke to her, the way he looked at her the first time they met, when he went down the line, shaking hands with the new interns. The gifts he left in the top drawer of the desk she was given down the hall from his office, beginning a few weeks after she started working for him, after being awarded the State Department internship. She’d applied for it on a whim during her last year at Georgetown, which she’d attended on scholarship. That was the only way she ever could have gotten there. With the money her mom and stepdad made, they never could have afforded the tuition.
“You did it, Ellen,” her mother had said when Nell called to tell her she’d been chosen from more than eight thousand applicants. “There’s no limit to what you’ll do, I know it.”
It started with a rare coin from his recent trip to India. Then it was a jewelry box, with a note attached saying he’d seen it in a store window in Paris and thought of her; that he couldn’t help but notice how the peridot jewels on the lid matched her eyes. Finally, it was a thin, gold necklace, hung with a pendant E.
For Ellen, that card read. I’ll be at the office late tonight. Stop by around 8.
There were plenty of reasons to say no. He was three times her age. He had a wife and four daughters, his oldest just one year younger than Nell. Kyle, her kind, devoted boyfriend of four years, had recently proposed. But Nell didn’t say no. Lachlan had recently announced that he was running for president. She was twenty-two, afraid of not following his instructions, curious about what he wanted.
He was at his desk when she knocked, inviting her inside, telling her to close the door, that he needed help trying to figure out how to print to the new network. He was casual, charming, laughing at his embarrassing lack of technical skills; he was about to order in Indian food, did she like shrimp korma? They ate on the floor, leaning against his desk as armed men in dark suits with the Diplomatic Security Service shuffled back and forth outside the closed door. Raine gave her a taste of his rice pudding and told her stories of being on the mall for the “I Have a Dream” speech, of his recent meeting with the British prime minister, how they’d shared two bottles of wine over dinner and fallen asleep afterward in the private theater at 10 Downing Street, watching Zoolander.
The Nose. That’s what they called her after their short affair was revealed, after a high school student sold the photograph he’d taken from his roof—Nell and Lachlan sitting on her fire escape. Kyle was away that night, and Nell said yes when Lachlan offered her a ride home in the back of an unmarked sedan. She said yes again when he invited himself inside for a few minutes. “It’s always so interesting to see how young people like you live these days,” he said as he walked through her small apartment in Dupont Circle, unwinding his tie.
She can still see Kyle’s face, the look in his eyes when she returned home the evening the photograph appeared on the front page of the Washington Post. Kyle sat at their small dining table in the kitchen, sipping bourbon. Beside him on the floor was a suitcase. Hers.
“You have to leave.”
“No, please. Can we talk—”
He held up his hand. “Ellen, stop. I don’t want to hear it.” His eyes were filled with disgust when he looked at her. “Here? In our bedroom?”
“No,” she said. “Never. It happened just once. I didn’t know how to say—”
“I don’t want to hear it. It’s over with us.”
She sat down across from him. “But, Kyle. The wedding invitations. They just went out.”