yours for a song chapter 4

[figureofdismay]

Roman didn’t go to the memorial tea, not really, and he wasn’t missed. He lurked around the edges of the crowd in the hall, glanced along the buffet offerings, and listened to the comparative din. There were more people who had come to memorialize his dad by spending a weekend in a nice Scottish hotel than had fit into the church for the service. Many of them, Roman figured, were there to be sure the old bastard was really gone more than to mark his loss. It was part wake, part celebration, part barely muted break from the reality of the slow climb up from the recession, as much about who else was there as the man they’d lost. Fair enough, he thought, it’s not like many people had ever found themselves on Logan’s good side. Roman realized he didn’t want to stay and see it, though, and he checked in on Ken briefly – who was now somewhere between manic and mannequin, but was forming complete sentences and shaking hands so Roman felt safe to leave him – and slipped up to his room.

When he woke up again, he was face down in his eiderdown, shoes off but still wearing his coat. It was pitch black, and when he turned the bedside lamp on his eyes watered. The old fashioned carriage clock on the bedside table read eight-thirty. He was both overheated and starving. He shucked his overcoat and scrubbed the heels of his hands against his eyelids, willing his brain to give him something besides mush and the vague guilt of having overslept at a stranger’s house or missing some responsibility he’d been assigned. Slowly, seconds or eons in the rise from the sleep of snapped exhaustion, he realized that he’d awoken because there’d been a knock at his door, and it came again. Not a housekeeping clatter, or a sibling insistent pounding but a measured, furtive tap. He knew just who it would be when he opened the door, by instinct, and yet was surprised when Gerri was there peering at him with careful, frowning curiosity when he swung the door wide. Curiosity or worry.

“Hi,” he said, standing aside to let her slip discreetly in, “Is it possible I slept for a hundred years and crossed a dimension? Because that’s what it feels like.”

“It’s good that you slept, though. ​I know you haven’t been. But you’re still in time for dinner,” Gerri said. She was dressed for it, in fact, a dark crushed-blackberry colored pashmina wrap, with a starburst pattern picked out in subtle bronzy gold thread replacing the tailored coat over​ her black dress. She had paired this with dark green and gold enamel earrings in a square deco style and a lariat necklace with a matching pendant, highlighting the notched neckline of her dress, and the perfectly sculpted shape of her collar bones.

Roman became aware that he was staring dumbly, transfixed by the matte silk of her skin, the neat, smooth angle of her jaw. He’d never stood around and thought anyone’s ear was elegant before. It was distracting and probably not welcome. He cleared his throat and scratched roughly at the back of his neck, trying to wake from his wandering.

“Roman? Are you not awake?” she asked, arching a knowing brow.

“Awake enough,” he said. His voice came out a little high and rough.

She was fully aware he had been staring, Roman realized, his cheeks scalding. He didn’t mind being caught out, though. He didn’t mind squirming, or watching Gerri’s spine straighten a little, the tilt of her chin, her hand coming up to smooth a non-existent errant lock of hair behind her ear in a mirror to his own gesture, not preening but still knowing and not unhappy to be observed.

“Are you coming down? It’s just the family for this part, shouldn’t be too much of an ordeal.”

“Hmm. Not the traditional bloodbath? Appealing as that sounds,” Roman said, considering the formal settings, the high backed chairs, the siblings and their partners, Marcia and her son, Caroline and her horsey boyfriend William. He was ravenous but when he thought of too-rare or too-dry roast beef and new potatoes and salad that wilted on the long walk from the kitchen despite the chilled plates, he knew he wouldn’t be able to force down a mouthful. What he wanted was pizza. Pizza was maybe the only edible food in the world, he thought wildly, even though half the time he found the combination of tomatoes and cheese revolting. And Dundee was not New York, but they were an entire ocean closer to Italy than back home, so they had to have an Italian restaurant somewhere, probably. And he wanted company. He wanted Gerri to sit next to him again and speak levelly in her soft, sweet honey voice, with her gold hair and her wide, knowing turquoise eye and her bold jewelry, unflappable and gleaming. “Hey, Gerri. Feel like letting me kidnap you for a couple hours?”

“What?” She blinked at him with a slight quirk of confusion.

“I’m going to make a break for it and find peasant food. Well, not so much peasant, as the nearest five star bistro, but same difference. Come with me, I may be weird company but at least I won’t be expecting you to give a reverent toast.”

“I don’t know, Roman, it’s an important night. I’m pretty sure my absence would be noticed. I can make your excuses though. Say you have a headache?”

“Aw, c’mon, Ger. You were there for the tea thing, you’ve done your time. And who knows what I could get up to out in public on my own,” he pulled an exaggerated face, knowing that he was obviously not that up to pulling any mischief right then, but knowing she’d want to keep him in line. “You could let me sneak out all on my own on the day of my dad’s funeral, and sit through whatever ramblings my brother feels like subjecting you all to in memoriam, and the speeches, and Marcia and Shiv sniping at each other and whatever the fuck they’ll have down there. Or we could take a car and go into town and overpay for some pasta and garlic bread and pretend we’re human beings for a night, and you can blame me later. What do you say?”

“This is emotional blackmail, you are aware. But I suppose it’s not the worst idea, getting out of here. I absolutely will blame you later, if anyone asks, yes,” she smiled at him wryly. “But you might want to change your shirt,” she added, gesturing at his sleep-creased clothes, “If you want to be seen with me in public.”

“Right, yeah, yeah, that’s,” he looked down at himself and made a sour face. “Give me five minutes. Better yet, get your coat. Valet entrance, ten minutes, alright?”

*
Roman had the manic feeling of making a break for it. He’d changed quickly, a clean dark oxford shirt, fresh trousers, a clean face, back into his overcoat and scarf. If he’d ever learned to drive, he’d have bribed the concierge or the driver or somebody for a set of keys, take off for the restaurant on their own steam, taking full control. But on the other hand, he felt that night like, if he was in control of the car, with Gerri beside him or not, he might just keep going and never look back, until he ran out of UK. And there was the channel tunnel now, wasn’t there, he might never have to stop. So maybe it was good that no one ever put him in charge of a vehicle. All he needed anyway, was some carbs and some garlic and some company that didn’t view him as a slug or a business opportunity or a pity case – mostly he was sure Gerri didn’t see him as any of those.

He’d noticed her on and off, in his youth – if he’d had a youth, under all the lessons he’d had in brutality and failure and responsibility he could never meet, when he was shorter anyway, and stewing in hormones, with over-shorn hair and an oil-slick face and a dick on a hair trigger that even then wouldn’t talk to him about any specific person, dumb demanding organ making him twitch and overheat in pointless, aimless humiliation. Except that second summer on holiday from St. Andrews, home but not home because Logan dragged them all, kids, waystar inner court and their kids and a bevy of nannies, along on yet another all work vacation split between the Dubrovnik villa and the yacht. Ken had dragged him around the private beach as he made a sweaty shambles of trying to catch the eye of Karl’s kids’ nanny, a college girl who looked like Juliette Claire Daines’ bustier sister who was both too much older and too savvy to give Ken the time of day, and sometimes also on the beach, Gerri Kellman would be there. Not with her girls, exactly, they stuck close by their own nanny, too little to play with the other kids – in retrospect he can’t believe his father expected the Kellmans to come half way around the world with a fucking preschooler, except of course he can – but also not with the other WAGs, a small, solitary woman in a dark swimsuit and a pale green gauzy sarong and half-anonymous under an enormous soft-brimmed straw hat.

But not anonymous at all because no one else had that hank of golden waves, clipped back the way she used to wear it, or that small, stubborn chin, the confident stride and skeptical brow. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen he out of muffling office-garb, probably, but it was the first time since puberty, and he’d looked at her with adolescent eyes, stunned that his father’s left hand man, wife of his father’s right hand man, was actually an adult human woman with hips and breasts, cleavage, in fact, and the only real life example of an honest to god hourglass silhouette he’d seen in real life in her one-piece and modest wrap. Looking at her perfectly sloped shoulders and glistening pink-blushed arms made him sweat. Following the line of her sarong as it pulled across her hips made his brain white out.

He’d thought he might faint. He’d had to sit down on the sand, glad Ken had long since wandered on without him, knees protectively bent and furtive hand pressed over his trunks, praying for relief in either direction, his usual fruitless inattention or even making a mess in his shorts on the beach, if it meant his head was clear enough to watch her wade, the surf foaming around her calves, the soft wings of her shoulder blades above the dip of her swimsuit so feminine and almost painful, striking blows to his gut. His pulse pounded in his throat and his dick, armpits slippery with sun-heat and shame.

She didn’t notice him staring, and he’d been glad, relieved, near to tears. He’d looked suddenly away from her, out to the sun dazzle on the water at the edge of the bay, letting his eyes water with the shouting white brightness of it. There was a beautiful woman in his father’s court and she would never see him, he was a little boy, a rag doll, a scrap of nothing whose invisibility was his only feature, would never exist in the world where she strode around with effortless command, but he’d seen her. Wanted her with a power that shook him, that he later made himself forget, not ready. Was glad that he was counted among the kids, however insultingly, and not expected to go down for dinner with the grownups, to have to see Gerri again so soon after being thunderstruck, chatting with her husband, with Frank, with his father. He’d worked himself raw the rest of the trip, jerking off in the shower with his eyes shut hard, trying to remember the feeling of wanting a specific person while trying not to call up the actual image of his father’s lawyer glorious in the sun. The image danced persistently behind his lids.

He’d gone back to school and gone back to trading favours for favour with the bigger boys in the toilets, and pleasing himself aimlessly and quick beneath the covers on the rare nights he was the last one awake, and thinking of all of it as a meaningless rehearsal for some future self who would obviously have a hot girlfriend that he didn’t mind touching, or fucking, and maybe even had some kind of human emotions about. The next summer trip, Gerri Kellman was absent, moved to the London office, he learned. He was bored on the yacht and on the beach, and all his father’s courtiers were old and condescending. Shiv teased him with all the gleeful scorn she’d mastered by fourteen when he asked what happened to Gerri, and he’d shrugged off his curiosity in self defense.

The next time he saw Gerri close up, it was at Carolines for the Christmas holiday, his last year at St. Andrews. Logan kept the inner circle holed up working on dotcom acquisitions most of the trip. She was sitting almost across from him at the dinner table, next to Baird, while he sat between Caroline and the female pony club offspring who’d been invited by Caroline to try to catch Roman’s interest. He’d tried for charming and made a fool of himself to everyone involved, with Gerri’s dry amusement condescending to touch on him over her wine glass once or twice, alluring yet chastening, distant and austere from her higher sphere. Eventually he decided that that vision of her, sex-pot venus on the beach, white-hot caress of lust that it had been, must have only been freudian glitch long past.

He was aware of her all over again now, though, and not with a schoolboy’s hot-eyed reverence, or not only that. When he’d come to her office to get told to mind his brother – both of them knowing that he could badger all he liked but Kendall wouldn’t be minded if he wasn’t in the mood to listen – Roman had softened under the distant curiosity and concern in Gerri’s gaze. He had almost sprawled out on her couch and laid his head in her lap and begged for the protection of her cool inattention, the grace of that little quirk of worry on her brow, over him. And she had sought him out, kept seeking him out. Spoke to him, listened to him. Pursed her pretty pre-raphaelite mouth with thoughtful consideration. Gave him ice for his achy wrist and not tried to shut him up with any consoling bullshit about his father. Glittered appreciatively under his appraising gaze, like she liked him looking at her, liked it frankly and receptively, like a woman being looked at by a man with a mythical spark of attraction in the air. All in spite of muck of grief and uncertainty weighing on him – or maybe because of it, the shock paradoxically sharpening his awareness and paring away the white noise.

Roman waited by the side entrance to the castle, a service car idling outside in the drizzle, while he wondered about his own intentions with all this. Surely Gerri didn’t have any idea what kind of feelings she dredged up in him, rare, vile, and precious. A married woman 20 years older than him, with respect and a career and no particular compunction to be nice to the Roy offspring that he’d ever seen, yet she was giving him the time of day. That had to be worth his time, even if it went nowhere. Or nowhere more than this, quiet conversation and waiting in hope. Gerri was taking a long time to meet him, he thought. He gave her the ten minutes he’d asked for, and then another ten, and then fifteen, by that time shuffling forward and back and bouncing on the balls of his feet. Then he pulled his phone out of his coat pocket and texted: where r u? Still want to do dinner?

“Ran into Baird,” she texted back, not immediately but quick enough to be gratifying even as disappointment kicked through his chest. “Can’t escape.” then, “Will you make an appearance? Ken is asking about you.”

“Think not thnx. Ill be enjoying freedom without u ig. Sorry.” he sent back, “Dw ill find Ken later & face the music.”

He did still go out, on his own, to eat in a half-decent Italian place he found with the help of the driver and his phone. He rode the giddy sense of escape just ahead of the horror at just why Logan wouldn’t be able to berate him for missing the family meal ordeal when he got back. Ken would try to fill that role, too, he knew, because he thought someone had to, and he’d do it with a particular whining twang of perceived personal slight that would cut into his nerves like a barb. But Roman was good at putting off, good at ducking his head and making little escapes, long habit that sprung from necessity, and Kendall would never have the ability that Logan had had to cleave into him and tie him up back home on return.

He didn’t even try to stave off the resentment he felt for good ol’ Kellman, Logan’s cherished advisor and guard dog, for catching Gerri and keeping her from joining him in his runaway fantasy night. He had a sneaky feeling that she was just as tired of the old guard wolf pack rigid ritual, snarling comradery and enforced loyalty as he was. Probably a hundred fold more intensely than he was, since she’d been dealing with them for centuries. On the other hand she knew how to keep the whole pack dangling on a string while he mainly got kicked, so what did he know. It would have been nice to sit beside her while they played hookie from reality though, Roman was sure of that.

*