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It is evident that I have interrupted something, and thanks to the video recording sent directly to my phone, I know exactly what. I couldn’t have planned the timing of our meeting any better, not even if I tried.
She looks radiant standing in the center of her kitchen. Barefoot, wearing jeans and a sweater, her hair is longer than I recall. Slightly wavy, it hangs loosely around her shoulders, accentuating the fact that her makeup is done tastefully. She belongs on the cover of a magazine.
“This is JC Clements,” Michael says. “The client I told you about.”
With a curt nod, I extend my hand. It’s quite the quaint affair, being here in their home, all of us together. I imagined this to be exciting, thrilling even, but it feels nothing like t
hat at all. Lips move, but I hear nothing, only a loud thrumming in my ears. My vision narrows, and all of a sudden, the air in the room seems insufficient to keep me alive.
“Charlotte,” she says, taking my hand. “A pleasure.” The warmth of her skin and the sound of her name forces air into my lungs. The room stops spinning. Her voice anchors me. Everything I’ve ever wanted comes into vivid focus. She is beautiful. I want to fuck her. I want to marry her. I want her to have my children. I decide it then. I love her with the kind of mad passion that I reserve for only one other thing in my life.
“Mr. Clements wanted to see the house, in person,” he says to her.
Her eyes crinkle at the corners, and she sort of tilts her head and smiles. She’s curious about me, but she doesn’t force the questions that need to be asked. She doesn’t say that she knows me, does not suggest that we have flown together several times. If she recognizes me, she does not let on. If she is surprised to see me in her kitchen, she is very good at not showing it.
“How wonderful,” she tells him with a tight smile, before turning her attention back to her phone. We could be great together, I think, staring at her nails. Unpolished, they’re trimmed neatly, rounded and filed, perfect in an unassuming kind of way. She looks up suddenly and catches me staring. “Wait…” she says, clicking her phone off. “I think we’ve met before.”
I look over at Michael Jones. His brow is raised.
“I think you’re right.” If there’s one thing a woman likes to hear, it’s that.
Her head tilts as her eyes narrow. The way she sizes me up feels like floating in the ocean on a warm day. “Where?”
“Um…in the air, I think…I’m a flight attendant.”
“Ah—yes,” I say, pretending to place her. “You were on the flight to New York…?”
“Geneva.”
“Oh—right. Forgive me. I fly a lot.”
Another tight smile. “Me too.”
She turns to her husband. “I’m giving an interview,” she says. “Here, in the kitchen. We’re on in five minutes.”
“An interview?” he echoes, brow furrowing.
“Yes.” She chews at her bottom lip. “I’m so sorry.” Then she glances my way as though she’s just remembered me standing there. “I forgot to mention it.”
“I see.” Michael Jones scans the kitchen. He stops when his eyes land on me, making it clear that he does not, in fact, see. “I’m afraid we might have to make this quick.”
Her eyes shift between the two of us. They contain entire universes. Unnamed galaxies I’d like to explore. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“JC is building. He thinks he might like something similar up on the lake. I thought I’d give him the grand tour.”
She sort of nods like she isn’t listening or she doesn’t care.
“It’s just a vacation home,” I say, and how does love even work? “Not my main one.” I should shut up, but she makes me want to talk.
I’m thinking— no—I’m hoping that she’s going to ask me what I do, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t get the chance. One of their daughters, the oldest, wanders in. She says something to her mother, which I don’t hear because I’m struck by how much the two look alike, now that I am seeing them up close, side by side.
“Shall I show you around?” Michael Jones asks, catching my attention.
“I can always come back.”
“Would you mind?” Charlotte asks, and I love that she’s extended the invitation. At the same time, Michael says, “We’ll be quick.”
The Joneses’ place doesn’t look much different in the light than it did in the dark. Although, with him in it, it looks worse than it does on camera. But maybe everything looks better from a distance, artificial and foreign. I follow Michael as he prattles on about features I don’t care about. The only feature of this home I came to see is in that kitchen. Narrowly, from the living room, I can see her getting mic’d up. “It’s terrible what happened,” I say.
