“What?” Jean finally asked.
“I’m thinking about your narrative. It would be odd if Sockless Tommy’s niece sounded like a Swiss goatherd or whatever you have in mind.”
“She could have studied abroad.”
“Simpler is better,” Hildy countered. “Eyes on the prize.”
Jean couldn’t argue with that. She hadn’t come all this way to do anything but win. “If he calls me out, I’ll tell them Jeanwas my fake alter ego, and I was actually this Eve person all along.”
“Huh.” Hildy tapped the steering wheel with the tip of a petal-pink fingernail. “Okay.”
Part of Jean had hoped for at least a little pushback.How could anyone think for a second you weren’t the original?Maybe Jean wasn’t as iconic as she liked to believe.
Turning her face to the window, she let the wind buffet her. The air felt eighty percent drier than she was used to, and the local colors looked similarly parched, like all the juice had been sucked out. Even the sky had a sun-bleached quality that matched the brittle brown and faded green of the grass. It was not unlike the way Jean felt on the inside, withered and desolate.
Despite its lack of lushness, there was an austere beauty that spoke to her artist’s eye. How hard would it be to capture the clarity of the light, pale and golden as it washed over the soft hillsides? The shadows were lengthening into late afternoon, the line of pine trees black in the distance. It was a landscape she’d only seen in the kind of movies where everyone was on horseback.
“I feel like any second there’s going to be a stagecoach robbery,” she mused. “Or a cancan line of saloon girls. Hey, barkeep, give me a whiskey in a dirty glass.” She squeezed the words out of the side of her mouth, like she had a toothpick between her teeth. Or a cigarillo. Something cowboy-ish.
“This won’t be like that,” Hildy assured her. “It’ll be super posh. While also trying to pull the younger demographic with some hipster frills.”
It seemed like a stretch for a beer company, until Jean remembered Smithson’s family, with their luxury cars and general attitude of slumming in their own hometown. “I can befahncy,” Jean drawled, with the merest hint of BBC. “What if I’m Lady Eve Sidgwick, who is terribly proper?”
“Sockless Tommy is from Detroit. He made his fortune incinnamon schnapps.” Hildy’s nose wrinkled. “Anyway, you don’t need any of that. You’ve got this in the bag.”
“I know.” Although the closer they got to their destination, the more Jean wished she’d lacquered on a few more layers of protection between her soft underbelly and seeing Charlie again.
Hildy rummaged in her tote, handing Jean a pack of gum.
“Thanks.” Jean glanced at the chunky cocktail ring Hildy had insisted she borrow, as that finger tap, tap, tapped the raw hem of the three-hundred-dollar denim shorts and twice-as-pricey lace-up espadrilles that were allegedly “music festival basics.” And that was just what she had on at the moment, not even speaking of the scads of outfits in the trunk. Hildy would undoubtedly make bank on whatever scoop Jean managed to score, but none of this would have been possible without the upfront investment. “It’s really nice of you.”
“Uh, you’re welcome? You can Venmo me the five cents or just, you know, pay it forward. Preferably sugar-free.”
“I’m not talking about the gum. It’s all of it.” Jean gestured at her clothes, the car, and the unfamiliar setting beyond the windshield, stretching to the horizon in a wash of sage green and toasted tan. “Were you always this nice?”
How well did she really know Hildy? They’d met, what, a month ago? Under weird circumstances? It happened that way sometimes when you lived in a travel destination. People waltzed into your life for a dazzling cameo before disappearing again. Though they didn’t usually vanish in the night. Or use a false identity.
Maybe that was another thing to lay at Charlie’s door. He’d given her trust issues. Emotional chlamydia.
“You know what they say about money?”
The lyrics of a dozen pop songs flashed through Jean’s head before she settled on “Can’t Buy Me Love.” “No,” she said, kicking that thought into the gutter.
“Easy come, easy go. Besides, it’s cathartic.”
“Buying stuff?”
“Teaching a man he can’t get away with treating you like that.” Hildy held out a hand, and Jean unwrapped a piece of gum and dropped it in her palm.
If only the rest of this adventure could be that easy.
Chapter 16
“Charlie!” His mother hurried across the foyer. “Why aren’t you wearing the outfit I picked out for you? I put a sticky note on it and everything. It says ‘Night One.’”
“I must have gotten sidetracked. Should I go change?” He looked hopefully at the stairs. Maybe he could forget to come back down while he was at it.
“That’ll have to wait,” his father said, taking Charlie by the elbow and turning him to face a man in a denim shirt with a handlebar mustache that didn’t quite match the reddish-orange of his hair. “Charlie, I’d like you to meet Haggard Jones.”
