“Would you invite said candidates to your Bel Air estate, then send handsome men to flirt with them until midnight?” Caroline chimed in.
“Would you—”
“Oh, my God, is it midnight?” Suze exclaimed. “Shit, shit, shit…” She pulled out her phone and hurriedly typed into it.
“FingerLock match required,” her phone said. Suze touched a button with her thumb.
“FingerLock match achieved,” the phone said, and Suze heaved a sigh of relief.
“What the hell is going on with you, James Bond?” Janey asked.
“Is your phone about to turn into a pumpkin?” Caroline teased.
Suze blushed. “I was unable to investigate the owner of this house. It’s owned by a corporation with no other trackable assets. So I set up a remote alert in case I found myself in danger.”
Janey whistled. “Nice!”
“You are way out of my league,” Caroline added. “I’m so impressed. Now tell me this. Can your FingerLock technology keep my mother from reading my e-mails?”
“Most definitely,” Suze said. “It’s set for release in the spring, but I can add you to the beta list.”
“Would you? I’ll put in a good word for you with our future husband, whoever he is.”
A black Town Car pulled up to the house. The driver stepped out. “Ms. Ellis?” he said.
“That’s me,” Janey said. She stepped forward, then turned to the other two women. “Can’t we carpool? I, for one, am not done with you guys. Maybe we can get to the bottom of this.”
“Count me in,” said Caroline.
“Yes, in theory, but shouldn’t we at least confirm that we all live in the same direction?” Suze asked.
“You should win,” Janey said. Then, to Caroline: “She should totally win.”
Chapter 18
“I’m dragging you out of your way. It really doesn’t make any sense for either of you to come all the way to mid-Wilshire,” Suze said.
“Don’t even worry about it,” Janey said, stretching back in the plush leather seat. “We need you. What’s a gratuitous tour of Los Angeles when ten million dollars are at stake?”
“Especially if this car has beverages,” Caroline said. She tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Excuse me, but do you have any beverages?”
The driver wordlessly handed back three bottles of water, one at a time.
“Oh,” said Caroline. “It is a beverage, I concede. Not exactly the beverage I had in mind, but a beverage nonetheless.”
There was no traffic, and they flew east on the 10. Caroline snuck a look to her left, assessing the women next to her. If this was a beauty contest, she was definitely going to lose. Janey was long limbed and had an effortless, beachy beauty. There was nothing particularly exotic about her, but her features were perfectly even and appealing. Plus, she was very witty and confident. Caroline already wanted to be friends with her. Suze was even more impressive. She was clearly a tech genius, a nerd trapped in a bikini body. To Caroline, Suze seemed like a dream wife, as if someone had handed all the men of the world a wish list, and Suze was the universal ideal. If Suze was Prince Charming’s type, then Caroline knew she was out of the running.
“Check it out!” Janey exclaimed, pointing. They were driving toward a brightly lit billboard that said, LOVE IS HARD TO FIND BUT EASY TO RECOGNIZE. ARE YOU THE ONE? TENMILLIONDOLLARPROPOSAL.COM.
“Not to split hairs, but if we’re truly the final round, that billboard should have come down already,” Suze said.
“Maybe we’re not,” Caroline said. “Maybe we’re just tonight’s candidates. Or maybe we’re the LA contingent. Frankly, if this goes on much longer, I might bail.”
Janey held up a hand. “Wait, before we get to when and why we’ll quit, let’s pool our knowledge. Do we know anything about this guy? Who is he? What’s he looking for?”
The driver cleared his throat. “Is anyone getting out?”
“Oh! Here we are,” Suze said. They had no idea how long the car had been stopped. They were in front of a sleek, modern apartment building.
“I don’t want to be rude, but I’d love to talk with you guys more. Should we go get a coffee?” Janey said.
“Let’s,” Suze said. “This guy knows everything about us, and we know nothing about him. Let’s even the score.”
“Can we do it tomorrow?” Caroline asked. “It’s already way past my bedtime.”
They made a plan to meet, then Janey turned to the driver. “Don’t tell him we’re conspiring, okay?”
“What if I’m your man?” the driver said. Three heads whipped around to check him out. He was middle aged, with a rakish grin.
“Oh, my God, are you serious right now?” Janey asked.
The driver laughed. “I was just kidding,” he said. But was he?
Chapter 19
Entering the apartment, Suze realized she was still hungry for something other than chocolate chip cookies. She made herself one of her killer grilled cheese sandwiches. She usually read a magazine when she was eating alone, but tonight she just stared out the window. Her view wasn’t much during the day, but at night she could see the lights of the city all the way to downtown. She was calm on the outside, but internally still wired with curiosity. She sat down at the counter and unpacked the gift bag, taking more time now to study the items she’d only rifled through. There were some bath products, elegantly packaged; a candle from the French perfumer Diptyque; a white cashmere scarf. She held the soft scarf to her cheek. Its whiteness seemed to embody the promise of this generous mystery man—a clean, perfect world of luxury might be handed to her just for being…the right one, whatever that might be. Lastly she took out the earrings. She removed the pearl studs that she had worn every day for six years and put the diamond daggers in. Sharp and brilliant, they seemed to transform her.
Before putting the pearl studs away in her jewelry box, she rolled them in her palm. Wow, she had been wearing these earrings for a long time. Craig had given them to her on their first anniversary. That night they were in New York City for Christmas, and he took her to the fanciest restaurant she’d ever been to. At the end of dinner he pulled out the small black box. She was instantly terrified—she wasn’t ready to get engaged, she was still in business school! But he quickly said, “Don’t worry—it’s not a ring.” She had been so delighted with the gift because, to her memory, it was the first gift she’d ever received that was completely out of the blue. Craig had just wanted her to know how much he loved her, beyond what he could ever say, and that night she could see it in his eyes.
Now she looked at the pearls, pale against the velvet of the jewelry box. When had they begun to look so tired? They still radiated a warmth and the sense of home that she treasured. She opened her computer and went to Craig’s Facebook page. She didn’t want him back. She didn’t want anything from him. But what was wrong with missing someone who had been the most important person in her life for so long? Should she never see or speak to him again just because she’d been too young and dumb not to marry him?
Craig hadn’t updated his page for three months, but his last post told her everything she wanted to know. It was a picture of him, hairline a little compromised, but as happy as she’d ever seen him. He was standing next to an attractive woman who was tagged in the photo. Natalia. The two of them beamed, radiant, and the caption said, I asked and she answered…yes! Craig was engaged. Suze could see in their photos that the affection that had once been hers alone now belonged to Natalia. She wouldn’t reach out to Craig, not now and not ever.
Suze closed her laptop and went to rinse her face, washing the tears away as soon as they appeared. The truth, which she would have told Brendan earlier this evening if she’d thought it through, was that her heart had indeed been broken before. It was just that she’d been the one to do it.
Chapter 20
The next day they converged at a low-key bar in Hollywood for an after-work drink.
Janey was late. Suze
and Caroline, waiting for her to arrive, fell into talk about their respective jobs.
Caroline said, “The gratitude I get for just showing up—you can see that these kids have never had anyone rooting for them. No adults who introduced them to the world and their place in it. Think what life would look like from that perspective. They just kind of floated out into this scary, unsafe environment and did whatever they could to survive. But they are hungry for direction. They are dying to learn any other way of life, especially one in which they aren’t fighting for their lives.”
“That is really heavy,” Suze said. “I spend all day meeting with innovators, and none of them are solving the real problems of the world. I mean, today I tried a prototype for temperature-sensitive clothing that heats or cools your body to your desired temperature.”
“Really? That’s so cool!” Caroline said.
“Cool, sure, but these are MIT engineers, supersmart, and they’re campaigning for VC money that could go anywhere in the world.”
“You can’t think of it that way,” Janey said, sliding into the booth and the conversation. “Rich people invest to get richer, and they give to charity to help the world. That’s how it works. If they invest in the charities, it all goes haywire. Trust me.”
“I think there’s another way.…” Suze said.
“The divide is so big—I don’t know if there’s any way to bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots,” Caroline said. “Unless I win this marriage proposal. In that case, there will be a very long bridge connecting me and Prince Charming.”
“For ten million dollars you can build a pretty long bridge,” Janey said.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Suze said.
“I haven’t really stopped to think about the money,” Caroline said. “Who has ten million dollars just sitting around? It must be the tip of the iceberg.”
“Well, assuming he marries the woman, it comes right back to him anyway, right?” Suze said.
“I would like to take a vacation somewhere,” Janey said dreamily. “Hawaii. I’ve never been there. Or maybe the Galápagos. People like that travel to exotic places all the time, because their houses are so luxurious that it takes more than a nice hotel and a beach to motivate them to leave.”
“I wouldn’t mind vacationing in that house we went to. A weekend there would be the nicest vacation I’ve ever had,” said Caroline.
“Vacations sound nice, but also think of what it would do for our careers!” Suze said. “I could make my own investments instead of making recommendations to my bosses.”
“I could rebuild the learning center,” Caroline said. “I would definitely do that.”
“I would love to never think about money again. I wouldn’t have to keep track of whether there was enough money in my account to pay my bills or to go to a certain restaurant. I would be completely free of that. Maybe forever,” Janey said.
“I’m worried that we’re jinxing ourselves by just having this conversation,” Caroline said.
“We don’t even know what the reality is,” Janey said. “But we’re all smart women. Let’s figure this out. What do we know about this guy? Why is he doing this? There has to be a hitch. Does he even have the money?”
“Now, that’s a good question. Maybe it’s all a scam,” said Suze.
“Is he hot? Is he a sexist pig looking for a high-end mail-order bride?” Caroline asked.
Suze pulled out her phone. “I did do some research. The house we just visited is registered to a privately owned corporation called Estes Realty, but I couldn’t find any other information about it. It was just incorporated last year, right before purchasing the house for a little under six million dollars. As far as I can tell, it was new construction and it was purchased before being listed on the market.”
“Wow, you’re good,” Janey said.
“I guess mansions cost that much,” Caroline said with awe. “I never thought about it.”
Suze continued, “So that speaks to someone with considerable resources and connections. Unless he’s renting. Or being financed.”
“I did some sleuthing, too,” Janey said. “In my old job—which, by the way, sucked—the Marketing Department bought space from the billboard company he used for those ads. So I had my friend Joey, in Marketing, give them a call to find out who leased the space for the ten-million-dollar billboard. Joey couldn’t get anything out of his contact there. And Joey is, like, the most skilled gossip in all of West Hollywood. He thinks there must have been a nondisclosure with penalties attached. Apparently, that’s the only thing that can keep people in Hollywood quiet. So again, our man’s definitely got some power and connections. And a good lawyer.”
“That’s what makes me nervous,” Caroline said. “How come there’s so much secrecy? It can’t say anything good about a person that he has to be so private.”
“Well, he’s rich. And he’s publicizing that he’s rich and single. I can see why he wouldn’t want to release his name before he’s made his choice,” Suze reasoned.
“But say you’re picked,” Caroline said. “Then what? Does the elaborate hunt end all at once?”
“Or will we have further challenges, with ongoing incentives?” Suze speculated.
“Scavenger hunts,” Caroline said.
“Slaying of Medusa,” Janey joked. “In all seriousness, if we’re attracted to the mystery, we’re gonna be let down. There’s a man behind the curtain, and he’s no wizard. Once he picks someone, I bet dating the dude is the same old crapshoot.”
“But at least we’d have a lot to talk about on the first date,” Caroline said.
“I have to admit I like the process,” Suze said. “I appreciate his analytic approach. And his house is exactly to my taste. I know that’s superficial. I’m not saying I’d marry the guy, but he’s already got a few points in his favor.”
“You liked that house, seriously?” Janey asked. “It’s fine, I guess. But I can tell a designer did it for him. There were, like, ‘vignettes’ on every flat surface. A vase, a sculpture, a stack of books. Totally contrived.”
“I like that it’s a house. And that my mother doesn’t live there,” Caroline joked.
“Hey, did you have cute guys interviewing you last night? I was seriously hoping one of mine was him,” Janey said. “But I know they weren’t.”
“You know? How?” asked Suze.
“I have my ways of getting information,” Janey said. “I had Rory and Tony. They were both superhot. Good candidates for my soon-to-be-launched reality-TV contest. I’m thinking I’ll call it The Ten-Million-Dollar Marriage Proposal.”
“So original,” Caroline said.
“I had Brendan and Miguel,” Suze said. “It’s strange. The minute Miguel walked in, I was sure he was the bachelor.”
“Why?” Janey asked.
“Frankly, it was because he wasn’t as model-perfect as everyone else involved in this project seems to be. But he was so easy to talk to. We somehow ended up discovering that we have a lot in common.”
“Like what?” Janey asked.
“Well, we both fantasize about going on long-distance bike rides with our children one day.”
“That’s really random,” Caroline said. “And I’m kind of impressed. I didn’t peg you as outdoorsy.”
“Oh, I’m not. That was the best part. We both want to bike all day and stay in five-star hotels at night. We’re thinking France.”
“It sounds like you had an actual date! Forget the ten million. Run away with Miguel!” Caroline said.
Suze laughed. “We may or may not have discussed that.”
“Whoa. Miguel is so fired,” Janey said.
“Unless he’s the millionaire, which is entirely possible,” said Caroline. She had met with only one person, a pleasant-looking guy named Nicholas who had been particularly interested in her work trying to change the school-to-prison pipeline. So often people glazed over when she talked about what she did. Almost everyone in LA was i
n “the industry” and preferred to talk about TV shows, movies, and celebrity scandals. Caroline had cancelled her cable three years ago when she found herself spending far too much time watching junk, and she hadn’t looked back.
For once Caroline hadn’t tried too hard to be a perfect date, to be whatever he might want her to be. There was something about this process that made her feel like she might as well risk being herself, for better or worse. There was nothing to lose.
Now she was glad to keep the conversation focused on the men who had interviewed Janey and Suze. Ridiculous as it was, she wanted to keep her encounter private. She found that as soon as she talked about an experience, she became more removed from it. Overanalysis took the spontaneous and imperfect moments in life and categorized them.
In the past, as soon as she put them in the hands of her girlfriends, her dates had been reduced to a critique of his clothes, his manners, the awkwardness with which he’d said good-bye. After that kind of judgment, how could you possibly be excited at the prospect of a second date? Caroline felt the same way about this process. Judging it too much might ruin it. So she asked the girls questions about themselves and their experiences, all the while wondering, but not deciding, what her own night meant and what might come of it.
Chapter 21
Janey had a pile of scripts to read that night, and each of them proved to be some variation on the fish-out-of-water theme: a misfit with supernatural powers; a big-city lawyer moves to the country to follow her dream of becoming a farmer; a former beauty queen takes a job as a bounty hunter; and so on. It was well past midnight when she finally threw the last script to the floor and turned out the light.
Exhausted though she was, Janey couldn’t sleep. She swept her arm across the empty bed next to her, wishing she had company. But this man of mystery, if he ever revealed himself—would he deign to sleep in her bed? Could a man who lived in a house like that ever be comfortable in her Craftsman bungalow, with its low-slung ceilings, rough floors, and single bathroom? With bad water pressure?