Hidden Seams by Alessandra Torre

Author:Alessandra Torre
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 27

MARCO

Friday nights used to be reserved for orgies. It always started in the basement grotto, around and in the pool, the blue stretch of sexual perversion, the cool depths filled with Manhattan’s most beautiful bodies—men and women alike, their naked figures glowing in the pale lighting, their playful shrieks growing more carnal as the night progressed and more champagne popped. Vince loved it all, the beauty of a woman’s body, the strength of a man’s—and he would drink and flirt and swim until the moment when we would move upstairs and leave them all to their debauchery.

I hated Fridays, grew bored with the constant buffet of naked bodies and men, the offers, the pressures, the harassment that comes with having a body and cock that no one is allowed to play with. Tell a woman or gay man they can’t touch something? Might as well dip it in gold and dust cocaine over it.

And I was always untouchable, that rule established from that first moment in that bathroom. I was Vince’s, no one else’s. And he was mine. We were not a couple that swapped or shared. And it was, as he so often told me, none of their fucking business what we did with each other when we were alone.

Now, I step into the pool area and try to remember the last Friday party we had. It was before that France trip, the one where Vince got dizzy, and I got worried, and we visited that clinic in Paris. That was the trip where a cautionary MRI delivered bad news, and we came back home with a ticking timeline. A timeline that had been wrong, overly optimistic, his expiration date one that all the money in the world couldn’t extend.

Ten months ago? Was that all that it had been? The door behind me opens and I see Paul, one of the house butlers, pause in the opening. “Will you be taking a swim?” He hesitates. “I can heat towels and prepare the sauna.”

“No.” I shake my head. “I’m going to head to bed.”

“Certainly. Shall I close the kitchen for the evening?”

I nod, turning back to the pool and watching the water lazily spin. Vince had loved this pool, used to swim laps each evening in it. We’d often settled painful decisions with a race, our talent closely matched despite the differences in our age. He had called it his ‘fountain of youth’, a phrase always delivered with a wry smile, the joke as much about the parties as the health benefits.

Now, the joke falls flat. I look up and think of the six floors above me, the staff on every level, plumping pillows, dusting surfaces, and waiting for their next service opportunity.

Live well, he had said.

I think of Avery, and wonder what she is doing.

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