Under My Skin. Lisa Unger
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pressure. Just drinks?
The name on the phone gives me pause. Of all my recent assignations, he stays with me. I try not to think about the night we shared, but it comes back in gauzy scenes. His touch—gentle but urgent; his laugh—easy, deep. Sandy curls, like Jack’s. Something else just beneath the surface—what was it? There’s a little catch of excitement in my breath, but I quickly quash it. No. I’m not ready for anything more than we shared. I’ve told him as much. I briefly consider responding. It would be another easy night, an escape hatch from my life.
Layla’s text distracts me: I was just being ironic. I got the recipe from the internet—like everything else.
I hesitate another moment, remembering the feel of him, then delete his message without response.
Cold. I know.
* * *
Layla’s Central Park West address is gray and regal with a private motor court, multiple sparkling, marble lobbies manned by a small army of smartly uniformed doormen. It’s a fairy tale, a castle for the ultrawealthy. The towering lobby ceiling dwarfs me as I enter. The scent of fresh-cut flowers and the glitter of the chandelier above create a ballroom effect. Story-tall abstract oils, white leather sectionals, a twisting metal sculpture—there are museum lobbies with less grandeur.
Real people don’t live in buildings like this, Jack would say. He’d seen too much of the world in his lens—people living in poverty, children starving, cities ruined by war, nature decimated by corporate greed. Obscene wealth offended him. Me—not so much. I drift through worlds, as comfortable in a hostel as I am at the Ritz. Living in opulence or squalor, under the skin people are just the same. Everyone suffers. Everyone struggles. It just looks different from the outside.
My heels click on the marble, the staccato bouncing off the walls. Allegedly, Sting lives here. Robert DeNiro lives here. (Though I’ve never seen either of them.) Those mysterious Russian billionaires you always hear about live here. My dear friends Layla and Mac Van Santen live here with their teenagers, Izzy and Slade.
I still don’t completely understand what Mac does. Finance, of course. Hedge fund manager—but what does that really mean? I also don’t get how in the last ten years, he got so crazy-beyond-ridiculously rich. Something to do with “shorts” and the mortgage bond crisis of 2007. Suddenly there was a move from the perfectly spectacular Tribeca loft to the Central Park West penthouse. The monthlong summer trips overseas. The family driver, Carmelo. The private plane at an airport in Long Island.
Layla and I share a laugh over this now and then—mirthlessly—how much things have changed since we were kids together. How her mother worked two jobs. How my parents bought her prom dress when her family couldn’t afford it, how her parents fought in the kitchen over stacks of bills they couldn’t pay. How my dad and I would drive to her place and pick her up when she couldn’t stand the yelling and worse. Her parents are both dead now, having led, short, unhappy, unhealthy lives. But Layla still bears the scars they left on her, literally and figuratively.
The doorman, unsmiling but deferential, knows me and waves me through without bothering to call up.
“Have a good evening, Ms. Lang.”
The floral scent from the lobby follows me into the mirrored elevator. I drift up to the twenty-eighth floor as though on a cloud, silken and silent, emerging in the private foyer.
Pushing through the door into Layla’s penthouse apartment, I’m greeted by the sound of Izzy practicing her violin in the room down the hall. Whatever piece she’s struggling through is unrecognizable. The sheer size of their space, the thick walls, keep the sound from being unbearable as surely my early instrumental attempts were to my parents—the clarinet, later the flute. I remember their strained encouragement, their palpable relief, when I discovered that my passion was the totally silent artistic endeavor of photography.
Let’s just say that Izzy is no musical prodigy, either; I wonder when or if she’ll be told. She practices with gusto, though, attacking the same few musical phrases over and over. If it’s a matter of sheer will alone, she might improve. She’s a high achiever like her father, focused, unrelenting, a star student.
Slade, her younger brother, is at the kitchen island FaceTiming with a friend on his iPad while they play some weird world-building game on a laptop. Two screens are apparently required for this interaction. I plant a kiss on his head, am rewarded with a high five, and his megawatt smile. Slade’s more like Layla—or like Layla used to be. Easy, laid-back, distractible and artistic.
Layla’s at the stove; the table set with fresh flowers, cloth napkins, gleaming platinum silverware. There are only four places, which I take to mean that Mac is not going to be home for dinner. The usual state of affairs.
“Please put that away and tell your sister it’s time to eat,” Layla says to Slade as she comes over to give me a hug.
“Izzy!” Slade bellows, startling us both into laughter. “Dinner!”
“I could have done that,” says Layla, swatting him on the shoulder. “Tell Brock you have to go. Goodbye, Brock.”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Van Santen,” comes the disembodied voice from the iPad.
“Did you finish your homework?” she asks Slade when he’s closed his laptop.
He looks at her with Mac’s hazel eyes, an uncertain frown furrowing his brow. He’s a heartthrob, all big eyes and pouty lips, thick mop of white-blond curls. Fourteen years old and already towering over Layla and me.
“No more gaming until it’s done,” says Layla. “Now go get your sister. Clearly, she can’t hear us.”
More screeching from behind Izzy’s closed door as if to punctuate the point. Slade moves in that direction as slowly as a sloth, knocks, then disappears into Izzy’s room.
“That violin teacher keeps telling me that she has promise,” Layla says, moving back over to the stove. “Am I crazy? She sounds truly awful, right?”
“I heard that,” yells Izzy, emerging. No one ever says anything in the Van Santen house. “I am awful! Obviously. This was your idea, Mom!”
Layla rolls her eyes as Izzy tackles me from behind, kissing me on the cheek. Her hair is spun gold; she smells of lilacs. She’s lean and fit, but no skinny waif. I’ve seen her and her field hockey–playing girlfriends put away their body weight in pizza.
“Save me from all of this, Aunt Poppy,” she says. “Can I come live with you?”
“I know, darling,” I say, holding on to her tight. She used to sit in my lap, kick her chubby legs and laugh as I changed her diapers, and squeeze her tiny hand in mine as we crossed the street. Is there anyone dearer than the children of people you love, especially when you don’t have your own?
“How do you bear up under these conditions? It’s miserable.”
“Mom, please,” says Izzy. She walks over to her mother, picks a carrot out of the salad and starts to munch. “I’m just not musical.”
“It’s good for you, sweetie,” says Layla easily. She pushes a strand of stray hair from Izzy’s eyes. “To do something you’re not great at immediately. To work for something.”
“That’s—ridiculous.”
The teenager, so like her mother, blond with startling jewel-green eyes, casts me a pleading look. “Isn’t that ridiculous?”
Savory aromas waft from the oven and range top, making my stomach rumble. I used to cook, too. Jack and I both loved being in the kitchen. Lately, when I’m not here, I survive on a diet of salad bar offerings and maybe Chinese takeout when I’m feeling ambitious. I help Izzy get the water.
At the table, I let the chaos wash over me—Izzy going on about some mean-girl drama, Slade begging to add a robotics club to his already packed schedule.