Work for Hire (20 page)

“Look at you! You’re pathetic.” He leaned towards her. “And you
stink
! To think, people outside our family have actually seen you in this state. Go find your coat or sweater or whatever else you had on when you first got to this God-forsaken place. You’re going home. The car is waiting downstairs. We’re leaving. Now.”

“What? W-wait!” I sputtered as Mr. Lamont turned to leave, obviously expecting Gemma to follow, sans me or … “What about Pam? We—you—can’t just leave her here. Alone. She’s still unconscious.”

Pam groaned, a sign of life. Mr. Lamont glanced at her, disgust and annoyance—whether at Pam or me, I wasn’t sure—painted all over his face.

“Her parents claim they’re on their way,” he shrugged.

I couldn’t believe my ears.

“But they’re not here yet!” I sputtered. “She’s Gemma’s friend. They both got into this together. You should at least call a relative of hers who can come and stay with her until her parents get back to New York. She’s only fourteen, and she will probably be very scared when she’s fully awake,” I finished lamely, out of arguments.

Could Mr. Lamont truly be this cold?

“If you’re so worried about her,” Mr. Lamont replied, “
you
stay.”

I gawked. Words failed me. He was decamping with Gemma, leaving Pam and me behind. The implications of that retreat raced through my head: Pam was barely awake. I didn’t know her parents. Aside from this one encounter, I didn’t even know Pam. Hadn’t actually spoken
to
her. And she sure as hell didn’t know me.

“I’m not going without Tekla,” Gemma declared with resolve, filling the sudden silence like a voice from the heavens. “And I don’t care how long it takes or who finds out.” She sat on the tub’s ledge, her arms crossed, her lips pouting. “Even if Page Six shows up.”

Mr. Lamont fixed his stare on Gemma. His nostrils flared when she didn’t respond to the threat.

“Fine,” he finally said. “If you insist. I’ll see what I can do.”

I couldn’t shake the feeling some form of retribution would eventually follow.

“I
CANNOT BELIEVE
you do something so horrible to me, your
Maman.
No?”

Monique Lamont lounged on the white leather sofa in the Lamont townhouse underneath her portrait, the two dogs at her feet. She was clad in her signature black Balenciaga—this time a pencil skirt and loose button-down shirt that looked anything but loose when it draped her generous body. She was cover-girl fabulous, revealing not a hint of the hurried eight-hour transatlantic flight anywhere on her person: no bags under her eyes, not a hair out of place.

Gemma sat—no, slumped—opposite her, freshly showered, with her hair groomed and face scrubbed clean. A fresh sweatshirt and pants replaced her stained outfit. She smelled like body wash and shampoo, like vanilla and almonds, all visible signs of the binge drinking—except for her pallor and drawn eyes—gone.

“I work so hard for you, and you hurt me. No?” Monique sighed. She fluttered manicured fingers in front of her daughter’s face before she let the hand drop back to the sofa. “And your poor father. He is so angry, so hurt by what you do. You, his
peu fille.
He is just devastated. Crushed.”

At that last pronouncement, I raised a skeptical brow.
Crushed
? Somehow I didn’t think so. Mr. Lamont was long gone. He had called Pam’s parents before he dragged
her
tutor out to the penthouse to babysit until they returned. Problem of Pam? Solved.

Then he herded us to the car and dropped us off at the townhouse—but refused to go in himself. In fact, he hadn’t uttered a word to either Gemma or me the entire ride. He just grunted at the driver, pointed us out to the curbside and sped away, destination unknown.

Devastated, my ass.

“And I try to work so hard,” Monique continued. “Now I have to fly back tomorrow just to finish the job.”

I peeked over at Julian. He stood slumped against the living room wall. Like me, he was probably too tired or annoyed to leave the unfolding Lamont drama. I imagined he had the headache of arranging the abrupt return trip home because, unlike Monique, he looked exhausted. The black of his irises contrasted starkly with the red in the rest of his eyes. His slim-fitting Prada shirt and slacks seemed wilted, too. He looked like a man who hadn’t had time to change in more than twenty-four hours.

“And your poor brother,” Monique lamented. “Do you know the housekeeper says he spends the entire night crying because he thinks something bad happen to you?”

Surprised, I turned back to Monique. Xander’s eyes had been red and puffy when we first arrived at the house, yes, but the minute he saw Gemma, he hissed a, “You bitch, you’re dead!” under his breath and disappeared upstairs, probably to lock himself in his room doing God-knows-what.

“I am very disappointed in you, Gemma.”

Monique stared at her daughter, but Gemma seemed completely uninterested in her mother’s disapproval. Actually, she appeared uninterested in the situation as a whole. She sat staring at the wall, saying nothing, twirling a strand of hair around her finger, her mouth petulant—an angry teenager in full rebellious glory.
Whatever
, her expression screamed to anybody willing to listen.

“And I am very sad to say I will have to punish you for this … this drinking,” Monique said before she got up from the sofa. She ran her hands down the length of her skirt, straightening out nonexistent creases. “You cannot go out for all of this week. We talk about what will happen on the weekend later, when I return from Paris again,
oui
? Now please go upstairs and think about how you have hurt this family.”

Monique flounced out of the room. Gemma stalked after her.

That’s it?
My mouth gaped open as I watched the two leave. That was Gemma’s whole punishment for almost drinking herself to death, for upending everyone’s weekend and dragging her mother across the Atlantic? Staying home during the school week, with no other privileges taken away, and a we-will-see-about-the-weekend?

“Forget about it,” Julian advised as he tapped me on my shoulder. He shook his head. “That’s just how they are. I’ll take you home. Maybe we can grab coffee on the way. I need caffeine.”

W
E WENT TO
G
RUMPY’S
Café in the East Village because Julian refused to step foot in a Starbucks. “Corporate assassins,” he had called them as we passed three in the vicinity of two blocks and my mouth salivated over the possibility of a tall mocha latte with peppermint, no whip. “They destroy local café culture. Plus, their coffee sucks.”

So we had trekked twenty blocks and now sat over two steaming cups of
real
cappuccinos in downtown’s take on an old-school coffeehouse, tangerine walls and abstract portraits of naked women included.

I sipped my cappuccino. It really
was
good. And it smelled even better.

“What a day. What a nightmare.” I shook my head and contemplated the steam rising from the cup. “Poor Gemma.”

“
Poor
Gemma?” Julian tore his eyes away from his own cup and stared at me, incredulous. “You’ve got to be kidding me. She created the whole mess, and you feel
sorry
for her?”

I shrugged. Kind of.

“The drinking, you know,” I said as I took another sip of coffee, replaced the cup on its saucer and traced a finger along its rim, “was nothing more than a desperate cry for attention. It can’t be easy growing up with a mother who’s always absent and an uninterested father.”

Julian continued his staring.

“Give me a break,” he finally laughed, though the sound carried no humor. “Gemma and almost every other kid in America. The world.” He leaned across the table towards me, his face mere inches away from my own. I could read the lines of fatigue on his handsome features. “Tell me, did your parents work when you were little?”

I paused. I knew where he was heading with the question, but didn’t know how to answer without proving his point and undermining my own.

“Yes, but that was different.” And it was. My parents weren’t always present, but they
cared
. They were
interested
in what I was and was not doing. Unlike Gemma’s.

“How?” Julian sat back in his chair and took a hearty sip of coffee. “They probably had to work so you could have a roof over your head, so you could eat. And that doesn’t leave a lot of room for quality time with the children. Take my parents, for example,” he offered, rubbing his eyes before he rested one hand, palm up, on the table. “My father worked nights and slept days. I hardly ever saw him. Forget about having father-son conversations. And my mother? She worked two jobs, and in between raised three children. There wasn’t a lot of time there for individual bonding. They did all this just so they could support us. So tell me, where’s the difference. Oh, wait.” His hand on the table curled into a fist. “I have one. Unlike me, and probably you, the Gemmas of this world are filthy rich. So while their parents are gone, they have housekeepers, nannies and tutors to take care of them. Could you say the same about yourself? Because I remember plenty of days, and nights, when the TV was my nanny.”

I sat looking at Julian, uncertain what to say. He seemed so angry, so frustrated, all traces of the charming, cover-boy-perfect Mr. GQ completely dissipated.

After a moment of silence, Julian exhaled a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m tired. I’ve spent the last God knows how many hours running around trying to get us all back to New York just so we can fly out again tomorrow, and all because of Gemma.” He closed his eyes and pinched their corners. “But, honestly, aside from that, I’m mad, and jealous, because these kids, they have opportunities you and I will never have. They fly on private planes, dine with royalty and party with celebrities. They flunk school, but still get the best jobs when they feel like working. Meanwhile, I’ve worked my way through college, graduated with the best grades—and all I can hope for is a position as an assistant. I do Monique’s dirty work while she gets the credit. And all the while, I have to kiss her ass just so I can have the opportunity, the exposure, to network so I can eke out a decent future for myself. Gemma will never face that problem. She has it made, so forgive me if I save my pity for those kids who grow up in abusive homes, or have no homes at all. They’d probably trade places with Gemma in a heartbeat.”

I nodded and drank more coffee, the taste now stale on my tongue.

Julian was right, of course. But I wasn’t entirely wrong either.

CHAPTER 15

T
HE LAW LIBRARY
was mostly in the basement of the school’s main lecture hall.

Oh sure, the visitor’s desk, the guest reading rooms, and the body-sized portraits of major donors occupied the sunny ground level, with its floor-to-ceiling arched windows. But everything else—the stacks of legal reference texts, the computer lab and the rows and rows of student study desks—was in the pits.

No natural light ever reached this part of the library. Students toiled away under giant florescent light boxes, which obliterated any indication of day or night. Of course, that didn’t bother the few bodies napping on the beat-up sofas positioned throughout, their snores reverberating in the church-like silence.

“Shhhh,” I hissed at one such body snoozing two feet away from me. His snores buzzed in my ear like a mosquito that just couldn’t be swatted away.

Not that he was disturbing much. I had been staring at a blank computer screen for the past fifteen minutes, itching to slam a fist through it and destroy the cursor that seemed to jeer, “you can’t write squat,” with every blink.

It was right. I couldn’t write squat, at least not about Constitutional Law.

I had come to the library in a vain effort to catch up on my
Law Review
assignment: cite check every quote and every paraphrase—virtually every word—of a seventy-five-page article by a rising professor, to be published in the next issue. So I had pulled out books and journals and settled at a desk to do the fact-checking, a privilege I’d earned by out-competing four hundred other law students vying for the coveted spot of a
Law Review
staff editor. And as reward for this academic accomplishment, I got to search for needles in the reference book haystack, all for free. No paycheck waited at the end of what surely would be a thirty-hour job, minimum.

These law schools had quite a thing going.

Instead of hiring paid editors to man the school’s most prominent scholarly journal, they had students
fighting
over the opportunity to do the labor—free of charge. Brilliant! Only a legal genius could come up with such a scam. And I was a complacent victim who’d been eager at the opportunity. After all, this was the
Law Review
we were talking about; the very name would give my otherwise meager legal resume hefty weight. It could mean glorious future jobs. Or so I’d been told—no, promised. So I tried, really, really tried, to cite check every word and fact.

But when doing so proved just too tedious, I’d decided to get a head start on the Constitutional Law competition brief instead. We had two weeks to finish it.

“Two weeks, ladies and gentlemen,” Professor Johnson had announced during class. “And not a day more.”

He had walked around the podium and stopped in front of the lectern. I could’ve sworn he was looking straight at me when he made the warning, as if he anticipated my brief being late. So I’d elbowed Markus:
See, I’m not paranoid. He is singling me out.
But Markus had shrugged, clearly unimpressed with my keen perception.

“I want them on my desk, in my office by nine a.m. at the latest. Not 9:05, not 9:01,” Professor Johnson had commanded. Again, his eyes had seemed to rest on me. “Nine sharp. And be warned,” he’d threatened, pitching his voice low like a judge about to pronounce a death sentence, “I’ve been known to fail students in the past when they did not meet this deadline.”