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He cocks his head. “Have you ever felt like folding?”
“Folding what?”
“You know, laying down your cards and packing it in.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just curious.”
“No,” I tell him. “I don’t feel like packing it in. I don’t like losing.”
“Touché,” he says. “What do you say we go somewhere for the weekend and forget who we’re supposed to be?”
I couldn’t have said it better myself, but I don’t tell Elliot Parker this. Instead, I say, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Well for one, you’re married.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t do weekend jobs.”
“Not even if the price is right?”
“Not even then.”
“I can’t talk to my wife,” he says. “It’s a long story. And discretion is key.”
I’d really like to hear that story. “We can just as easily talk here.”
“Listen, Vanessa—I’d like to level with you.”
It’s not a good sign that he’s referring to me that way when he asked to call me something else. It means he’s dropped the illusion. “I’m listening.”
“I need to get away. I have a decision to make, and I want you to come with me. And I think if you really didn’t want to, you would have said no. But you haven’t said that exactly, have you?”
“What makes you think running is the answer?”
“I’m not running,” he sighs. “Just considering a change of scenery to alter my perspective. It’s a business decision, actually. And you seem to know a thing or two about that.”
He’s wrong on so many levels, but I don’t say this.
“Fine,” he says. “Also, I need to make my wife jealous. She left me.”
“Okay,” I say, because it seems like the first honest thing he’s said.
Chapter Twenty
Elliot
She wants to go to New Orleans. Says she’s never been. It’s a dirty place, I assure her. She’s seen it on the internet, she says, and she doesn’t let up. She wants to walk through the Garden District, she wants to visit the museum. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, I say. But she disagrees.
She’s never seen a plantation, and she loves Gone With The Wind, and wouldn’t it be fun? It’s not my kind of fun. But there’s something interesting about her, something I can’t put my finger on, and this is the first time she’s really offered much of an opinion, and even now I get the sense she isn’t sure of herself. I don’t know whether I’m attracted to this quality or appalled by it.
After a bit of back and forth, I dial my assistant.
“What are you doing?”
