Taylor nods. “I bet you do.Anywho. Something else that’s interesting is how much information is out there that’s public record. Most people don’t know that, you know. Most people don’t know that all you have to do is ask for public information. Ask and ye shall receive, am I right?” Juliana says nothing. “Juliana? Am I right?”
“Yes.” She won’t bend; she won’t say more than she needs to. She’s made it through 100 percent of her bad days.
“So. The first thing I did was have my people in New York fact-check this name change thing.” She offers Juliana a conspiratorial smile. “I mean, Shelly is good entertainment, I’m sure you know that, having gone to college with her. I can only imagine what she was like back in those days. Part of me was wondering if she’d make something like that up, just for fun. She had a lot of those blueberry cocktails at my house.” She looks expectantly at Juliana.
“I bet she did,” says Juliana.
“So off they skipped to the courthouse, my people, to confirm the date of the name change. December 2014. After a little more digging, they learned that a person named Jade Gordon had been named in a will contestation case in October 2014, regarding the will of a man named George Halsey. I can see by your face that you know what will I’m talking about.”
Juliana chokes out a single, gutting word: “Yes.”
“And, guess what? Once that will contestation was filed, all of that was a matter of public record too! The children, talking about how you’d swindled their father out of five hundred thousand dollars. The concierge from the old man’s building answering questions about when and how often you visited him. The affidavit from the housekeeper detailing her observation of your relationshipwith an old man.Eighty, was it?”
“He was seventy-nine,” says Juliana.
Taylor hoots. “Ohhh! Okay, Anna Nicole Smith. That’s much better. And you were... twenty-one?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Ah. Muchmuchbetter. So you were twenty-two, and you met an old, rich man, and youdatedhim, and conveniently he died and left you money, and now you’re about to become a multimillionaire. Oh, I know about the IPO rumors too, by the way. I know a lot.”
“It wasn’t like that,” says Juliana. “It wasn’t like what you’re saying. He was an advisor. He was a sounding board. I talked out my ideas with him. He gave me feedback.”
“Ibethe gave you feedback,” says Taylor. She snorts. “If ‘feedback’”—she makes air quotes with two fingers on each hand—“is what we’re calling it these days.”
“There was never sex involved!”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, Juliana. There’salwayssex involved when there’s money like that involved. He didn’t leave you five hundred thousand for like bringing him vanilla wafers and milk. It’s all over the court documents. His daughter walked in on you kissing him.”
“I wasn’t kissing him,” says Juliana. “Not like you think.”
“You were a swindler, Juliana.”
“I was afriend.”
Taylor snorts. “Escort.”
“Companion.”
“So you never slept with him.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“That’s a yes.”
“That’s anIt’s none of your business. That’s twice now. Do you want me to say it a third time?” Juliana’s heart is beating rapidly but she ignores it and crosses her arms and fixes Taylor with a death stare. The fact that anyone is talking this way about George,herGeorge, with his dapper little hats and his habit of standing up from a table at a restaurant if she had to go to the bathroom—and also the fact that he never called itthe bathroom,he called itthe powder room—makes her feel sick to her stomach. George, who had an elevator that opened right into his living room. George, whose children rarely called, never visited, until he died, and then they couldn’t stay away.
“It was five hundred thousand dollars. He left it to me, fair and square. I didn’t ask for it. It was a gift. He had millions. It wasn’t so much to him. It was a drop in the bucket. It was an investment in me, in LookBook.”
“It was enough that his children contested the will.”
“Let me tell you something. His children are assholes.”
“Let me tellyousomething, Juliana. I’ve been around rich people my entire life. Rich people don’t get rich by thinking of five hundred thousand dollars as a drop in the bucket, no matter how much they have. There’s a reason he left you that money, and it’s all in those court papers.”
“He believed in me. It’s as simple as that. People are allowed to leave money to whomever they want. There’s nothing illegal about that. The contestation of the will didn’t make it past pretrial.”
“All of that may be true,” says Taylor. “Or none of it may be true. But here’s the thing. Here’s the dirty little secret. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.It only matters what it looks like. You’re—how many weeks from your IPO?”
