Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

Kyle kissed me. His hand slipped under my shirt, and I felt the ridges of his calluses against my rib cage. After a while, he said quietly, “Is your hotel nearby?”

I shook my head. “Let’s do it here,” I said.

“In my car?” he said. He turned, surveying the parking lot, which at 3 a.m. in November was empty except for us. When he turned back to me—my body against the side of his car, the prospect of gratification right there—he pushed into me and kissed me harder, his erection even more pronounced. It felt good. I thought, I made this happen.

After, as the car windows fogged from our breath and we twisted our limbs to pull our clothing back on, he said, “I’m so glad I met you, Stella.”

“Me, too.” I smiled at him, but a sadness seeped into the edges. The carriage was turning back into a pumpkin.

Kyle wanted to drive me home, but I couldn’t let him see my dingy, run-down motel. There was a fancy hotel in town, where I told Kyle to drop me off. He waited in his car, headlights piercing the darkness. I stood at the entrance to the hotel, waving at him, but he didn’t move. Only when I opened the door and went inside did I hear Kyle’s car pulling away.

The man behind the front desk seemed surprised to see me.

“Hello,” I said. “Uh, I’m staying at another hotel down the road, but it’s just not up to snuff. I may want to switch. Do you have any availability tomorrow night?”

The man believed me, or he pretended to. “Yes,” he said. “We do, in fact. Our deluxe junior suite is available tomorrow night. The rate is nine hundred.”

“Great,” I said. “Perfect.”

“Do you need a taxi?” the man said, as I headed for the door.

“There’s a car waiting for me outside,” I said. “Good night.”

Pete, one of the doormen in our building, nodded at me when I returned to the apartment.

“Did you have a good time in Florida, Miss Trapp?” he said.

I must have looked confused, because he added, “Mrs. Bradley mentioned it to me.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right. It was fine.”

“No sunburn.” He winked.

“Nope,” I said. “The sun is terrible for your skin.”

In the elevator, I felt a vague annoyance with Anne Bradley. She had a tendency to do this, to treat the most mundane details like breaking news. Why on earth would Pete the doorman care where I spent Thanksgiving? But people like Pete tended to indulge Anne, to feign interest. Doormen, hairdressers, manicurists, personal shoppers, housekeepers: Anne was a wealthy woman, and earning her tips or year-end bonuses required making her feel that her minor concerns were in fact major. In the past, when Stella chafed at her mother’s nosiness, I thought she was overreacting. Give her a break, I had said more than once. At least she cares.

Now I sympathized with Stella. To financially depend on someone—as I did, with the Bradleys—and to sense them tracking your movements, that was unpleasant. Money bought allegiance, and allegiance bought control. Money also insulated its possessors from what people really thought. Poor Anne. People like Pete the doorman never told her that she was boring them to death. They warned you about these things in leadership books, the danger of yes men. But so far, no one had written a leadership book for wealthy women who exercised compulsively and lived in waterfront mansions in Rye.

I shook my head as I turned on the lights in the apartment. That was a nasty, ungrateful thought. The Bradleys were generous. Take this apartment redecoration—so much effort, and I was the only one who’d get to enjoy it.

It was beautiful. The walls were painted ecru and cream, the floors overlaid with oriental rugs in pale shades. The couches and chairs in the living room were covered in subtly patterned fabric and accented with bright pillows. A glass coffee table held oversize art books. A chandelier hung above the long dining table. In the kitchen, the cabinets were filled with flatware and mixing bowls and wineglasses. On the marble countertop were white ceramic canisters, lids lifted to reveal flour and sugar and rice and pasta. The furniture and artwork I understood, but the thoroughness in the kitchen baffled me. Was this meant for Stella? For me? It was like I’d wandered onto the set of a movie in which I wasn’t starring.

I dipped a finger into the sugar. It was real. I’d wondered, for a moment.

The master bedroom was transformed, too. There was a king-size bed with a massive headboard, a vanity table in one corner, an armchair in the other. Lilacs in a glass vase on the nightstand perfumed the air. The flowers wouldn’t last longer than a few days. I felt uneasy. None of this was meant for me. It was meant for a girl who wasn’t here, and who had no plans to return anytime soon.

The door to the walk-in closet was slightly ajar. I opened it and turned on the light inside. It was filled with Stella’s clothing. High heels and ballet flats lined up on shoe racks, sweaters folded and organized by color, dresses on silk hangers. I was light-headed and dizzy. It was too perfect. It was like a diamond necklace in a glass display. It said, you want this, don’t you? It tempted you into smashing the glass and running off with the goods, even while the bloody shards in your knuckles reminded you that it didn’t really belong to you.

I turned off the light and slammed the door closed. My heartbeat was running wild when I sat down on the mattress in my room. The lumpy mattress without a bed frame, the thrift-store lamp and the particle-board bookshelves: they were hideous, but they were mine. If I stuck to this room, I was safe. No one could accuse me of theft. Of leaving fingerprints on another person’s possessions.

But over the following days, I kept thinking of those final moments in the car with Kyle.

Can I have your number? That was the last thing he’d said to me, looking eager. I had to remind myself that dismissal came naturally to Stella. In this movie, I was a rich girl visiting from the city, and he was a townie bartender. Rebuffing him gave me a satisfying rush of power. The feeling was so good that I knew it had to come with a price.

With Facebook or Google, it was easy to find out the truth. I waited for the lie to catch up with me, for Kyle to track me down. But days passed, and nothing happened. Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal, after all. I was merely channeling what I’d learned from Stella. Her confidence, her verve. Didn’t they say imitation was the sincerest form of flattery?

The week after Thanksgiving, I stood in front of Stella’s closet. I don’t know why this had spooked me so badly last time. They were just clothes. Stella was thinner than me, but some of her dresses had forgiving cuts and loose tailoring. Several of them fit me well. What harm was there in trying them on, enjoying the sight of myself in the floor-length mirror? What harm was there if, sometimes, I felt like sleeping in her king-sized bed instead of my own? Or if I took the occasional bath in her deep claw-foot tub?

It’s just stuff. That’s what Stella liked to say, when one of her uptight friends got a stain or spill on a piece of expensive clothing. Who cares about stuff?

And besides—she’d never know.

REBECCA CARTER HAD two reputations: that within the industry, and that within our newsroom. Within the industry she was blazingly competitive, never hesitating to flatten anyone who got in the way of an exclusive sit-down or a big get. She was a shark, our competition at CNN and Fox said with suppressed admiration. As ambitious as they come. If securing an interview meant that Rebecca herself had to camp out in the front yard of a subject’s home, groveling and showing obeisance, she wouldn’t hesitate for a second. How else were you going to get the ratings?