Susan shrugs, still smiling, and she finishes with her hair and squeezes Jacqueline’s arm before shouldering the door open as she heads back to the party. “Find me later, if you get bored.”
The music gets loud, before muffling again when the door shuts behind her.
Claire can’t quite parse their interaction, but Jacqueline and Susan must be getting close already. It makes that hot and uncomfortable thing in Claire’s stomach expand even further.
That’s what Claire gets for being late—Jaqueline is already making fast friends with other people.
“I’m sorry about her,” Jacqueline says, watching Susan disappear through the swinging door with a strange expression. She rubs at her jaw, managing to swipe away whatever pink smudge was there. She’s fidgeting with the fingers of her right hand, but she stops when she sees Claire looking.
Claire waves her off. “Oh, don’t be silly. She seemed nice.”
“That’s one word for it.” Jacqueline fiddles with her hair, now, which is loose and cascading over her shoulders. “You know, I wasn’t sure if you were going to turn up.”
“You weren’t?”
“You practically ran away when I invited you.”
Claire winces. “I’m sorry about that, I just—I remembered that I had a cake in the oven, and I didn’t want it to overbake, you know? Pete hates dry cake.”
It’s a terrible excuse, and an outright lie. Thankfully Jacqueline takes it at face value. “Pete is your husband, right?”
Jacqueline steps towards the door to the living room, like she’s expecting Claire to lead her to him for an introduction, but suddenly the idea of introducing her to Peter sounds like the worst idea in the world. With a sudden ferocity, Claire wants to keep Jacqueline to herself. Her own private acquaintance. One small thing in her life that Pete can’t influence.
“No,” Claire blurts. In a wild burst of panic, she reaches out to touch Jacqueline’s arm before she gets to the door. Her forearm feels searing hot, in the moments before Claire snatches her hand back and clenches it into a fist.
Jacqueline frowns. She doesn’t seem bothered by the inappropriate touch, but instead understandably puzzled. “No?”
“No, I mean—I mean, yes, he is my husband.” Claire swallows hard, digging her nails in until her arm starts to shake. “I think he’s busy.”
Claire has no idea what kind of hysteria has gripped her. She feels manic, like she’s completely untethered from what’s appropriate—she only knows that she doesn’t want to go back out to the party, and she wants Jacqueline to meet Pete even less.
Jacqueline merely nods, rubbing her arm where Claire touched it.
“Sure,” Jacqueline says softly. “Do you want to go get some drinks instead?”
Claire gnaws on her lower lip, but she lets it go quickly before it ruins her lipstick. In truth she’d rather stay here, but she shouldn’t be bossing the hostess around in her own house.
“You know what, it’s a bit loud out there,” Jacqueline says, glancing towards the door as if she can sense Claire’s thoughts. Music and voices are audible through it and, distantly, a raucous shout, but Jacqueline doesn’t seem bothered by it. “Not a great place to talk. Follow me?”
She leads Claire instead to one of the other doors at the end of the hallway, beyond which looks to be the beginnings of an office—there’s a desk and chair, and a long table stacked high with cardboard boxes. It looks like Jacqueline threw a lot of her things in here to make room for the party.
Across the surface of the desk are scattered several expensive-looking cameras and film canisters, along with what looks like a disassembled tripod. The canisters are each labelled with a name and date. Claire picks one up, reading ‘Jacqueline Callas—16March,1969’. The day before Jacqueline moved in.
Jacqueline Callas. A lovely name, and perhaps a clue as to her origins—is it Spanish? Italian? Claire isn’t worldly enough to guess. She files the information away, setting the canister down.
“Do you really know how to use all of this?” Claire says, hovering awkwardly until Jacqueline pulls out the desk chair and indicates she should use it.
“I should hope so. It pays the bills.”
Claire sits, carefully arranging her skirt. “So you’re a photographer? No wonder you look so fashionable all the time.”
Jacqueline smiles. Since there are no other chairs in the room, she perches on the edge of the desk. She straightens out her socks, and then her feet swing back and forth; there’s a dark freckle on the smooth skin in the middle of her left knee. “That’s sweet of you to say.”
“I don’t know many women around here who work,” Claire says. She tears her eyes away from that freckle. It’s like a magnet for her eyes. “Or who can buy a house on their own.”
“I was lucky. I paid in cash, and the family was looking to sell quickly to the highest bidder,” Jacqueline says, with a wry smile. “It took ages to find a realtor who would even look twice at me. And photography is more like a hobby I sometimes get paid for. It hardly feels like a job sometimes.”
Claire presses her sweaty hands into the starchy material of her skirt. Jacqueline is being perfectly polite, volunteering information and asking questions, but somehow that doesn’t calm her nerves.
