What had he meant by that?
—
After her meal, Sylvie sat on her porch swing. Every time a person walked by, Willie barked and barked. Some people looked annoyed or scared, but Willie was on a leash. Simon called and then Florence called, but for some reason, Sylvie didn’t answer. She just wanted to be still. She was exhausted. Even joy, it seemed, made her tired.
But in the bed she’d once shared with Alexander, Sylvie couldn’t sleep. She took half a Xanax, but a familiar fear flooded her body anyway, competing with the pill’s velvet calm. Willie, who would tear apart anyone who tried to hurt her, curled beside Sylvie, breathing slowly. The Florida moon cast a beautiful blue light on her coverlet. Eventually, Sylvie slept. She did not dream.
PART TWO
FOLLOW THE MONEY
1
Cleo
“Gin?” asked Isaac, Cleo’s best friend from law school. He was now a journalist and a professor at Columbia, and had summoned Cleo to his Upper West Side apartment to discuss what he had found out about Sylvie’s fiancé’s money.
“Is it five yet?” said Cleo.
Isaac peered out his window. “Looks sort of dim, don’t you think?”
“Could be rain,” said Cleo, her lips curling into a smile.
“Nah,” said Isaac, not taking his dark brown eyes off her. Isaac, forty, was a former squash star who still played a few times a week. He was tall—over six feet—and balding quite a bit. He often touched the remains of his ash-colored hair, ran his thin fingers along his temples and around his ears to the nape of his neck, where he let the hair grow a bit long—his sole affectation. Isaac’s lips were full and he had thick eyebrows and permanent five-o’clock shadow stubbling his cheeks.
He was very handsome, objectively, and Cleo did sometimes think of Isaac during sex with her boyfriend, Danny. She alsothought of Isaac’s lips more than was normal for a friend to think about a platonic friend’s lips.
Isaac’s mother, Hannah, loved Cleo like a daughter, she had told her years before. But her only child, Isaac, had to marry a Jew. “You got that, Cleopatra?” said Hannah.
“Sadly, yes, I’ve got that.”
“It’s a pity,” Hannah had said.
Cleo glanced at her watch: 5:01. She narrowed her eyes and evaluated the dimness of the evening. “Yes, give me gin,” she said.
“You’re going to need it,” said Isaac.
“So this Simon guy is sketchy,” said Cleo. “Iknewit.”
“Simon’s ex-wife is from a very interesting family,” said Isaac, pouring gin into what appeared to be a glass from a 1970s Happy Meal. “A family that needs to put money into things like…for example…an ancient castle in England.”
“Money laundering,” said Cleo. “From drugs, or what?”
“Remember the class ‘Oligarchs and Thieves’?” said Isaac.
“I always wanted to take that class,” said Cleo.
“Why didn’t you?” said Isaac, handing Cleo her drink.
“Didn’t seem like it would be applicable to my life,” said Cleo. She lifted her drink. “Guess I was wrong.”
“When Simon divorced, he got a massive payout. We’re talking many generations of wealth. So what is he being paid for, exactly? By the way, his ex-wife lives on Madison now, with Simon’s daughter, Penelope.”
“Sylvie mentioned that Simon had a daughter,” said Cleo. “I had no idea she lived on Madison Avenue!”
“Where else?” said Isaac.
“So who owns this castle Sylvie’s planning a wedding in?”
