Page 7 of Gifted & Talented

“I’m not a fraud.” Her breathing had suddenly become very labored. She realized that over the course of his rant, Jamie had stepped closer to her in the shadows of the darkened room. “It’s not all a lie.”

“No, it’s never all a lie, is it? But it’s a lie nonetheless.” She could see themotion of Jamie’s chest rising and falling, or maybe she could just chart it like stars, like navigating there from memory.

She was aware of everything. His closeness. The way it was punitive, wrathful in some way, an intimacy meant for suffering. (From my point of view: deserved.)

“You know, you’ve always had a tell,” remarked Jamie, after a moment.

“Do I?”

She’d meant it to be mocking. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Either way, she felt her eyes drop briefly to his mouth.

His smile took on a blatant lilt of arrogance.

“Told you,” he said.

Just then the door beside them opened, followed by the flickering buzz of the conference room lights being switched on. Meredith, who was temporarily blinded, took a moment to register exactly who it was.

Then it became gradually, karmically clear. The casual brown-black swoop for which she knew precisely which pomade he used. The Tom Ford tortoiseshell frames paired with the effortlessly tactile, preppy oxford. The towering height—which exceeded Jamie’s, for the record. Not that it mattered, or that anyone asked.

“Meredith,” said her boyfriend, Cass, spotting her first before his eyes traveled slowly to Jamie. Cass’s brow twitched with apparent calculation as he registered their positions in the room, followed by the disheveled way Jamie’s shirt had been left undone. “I thought I heard your voice. Is everything…” Cass flicked a glance from Meredith to Jamie again, and then lingered there overlong as Jamie began to quickly and efficiently button his shirt, only a faint tightness in his mouth to reveal any evidence of shame or embarrassment. “… all right?”

“Cass Mizuno,” said Meredith with an air of forced elegance, “Jamie Ammar. Jamie is a reporter for—” She broke off, realizing she hadn’t the faintest idea who he was a reporter for. “Jamie’s a journalist. And Cass is—”

“VP Operations for Tyche. I know.” Jamie’s mouth was still unreadably stiff. “Congratulations on your recent promotion.”

“Congratulations on being alone in a dark room with Meredith Wren,” replied Cass.

“Oh, grow up,” said Meredith with a sudden wave of exasperation. “He’s just threatening to destroy my life and career, Cass, we’re not fucking. It’s apparently deeply impersonal.”

“I wouldn’t say deeply impersonal,” said Jamie under his breath, with the light, playful tone of insouciance that made her remember the man he had been at twenty-one, when that particular tone was reserved for dealing with customer service representatives and/or diffusing her temper.

“Well then mazel tov to me,” snapped Meredith, glaring at him before realizing that Cass was still in the room. “What? Cass, I swear to god, if you’re going to make a scene—”

“I wasn’t, actually,” said Cass with a neutrality that was—fucking Christ—nearly the same tone Jamie had just weaponized against her moments before. “Your father’s assistant just called me. Apparently she’s struggling to reach you.”

“I’m busy,” said Meredith. “Whatever it is, it can wait until—”

“It’s your father,” said Cass. “He’s dead.”

5

As far as orgies went, it was a success, or maybe a failure. Largely because Arthur had only had eyes for his lovers, and though he had twice as many of those as the average person, it still seemed antithetical to the principles of an orgy to limit himself to the usual fare.

“Darling, you’ve been away from us for ages,” said Philippa, tutting a little in the matronly way she seemed to affect only when she was feeling sexiest. “I hate it when you’re gone so long.”

She had her hands on his chest, Yves’s hands traveling Arthur’s hips, guiding him gradually up the stairs. They seemed to be shedding what few garments remained as they went, or at least Yves seemed to be. He’d long since done away with his mask, which made sense, as Yves became very sensual when he was aroused. Every moment called for a slow, pliant kiss, which Arthur quite liked, as it felt unhurried and primordially luxurious, as if true wealth could only be meaningfully defined by this kind of excess of time.

Arthur’s shirt had already been unbuttoned, but now he felt his arms lock behind his back, Philippa’s attempts to fully disrobe him providing a not-unwelcome service of restraint. “I’ve been very foolish indeed,” he said, adopting the British musicality of diction that was so temptingly in reach whenever he was cross-faded and two orgasms in. “I suddenly can’t think what could have possibly been more important.”

Philippa smiled radiantly at him then, or a smile that was not very radiant on a normal woman—it was a little too smug, something Arthur only noticed when Philippa was around the many others who did not understand her—but on Philippa was as good as spraying him with molten gold. “You should give up your silly little game of politics. Don’t you ever get bored with it, all the infighting and do-gooding?”

Arguably there was very little do-gooding. Ask the internet. “Where else would I keep up with the latest trends in dinner conversation?”

Philippa laughed, tossing her arms around his neck and clinging to him like a sexy little koala. Yves, too, laughed, his tongue busying itself somewhere below the waistband of Arthur’s trousers.

Arthur realized belatedly that he had forgotten to take off the tiny American flag pin that Gillian had bought him when he’d won his first election. “All the important ones have one,” she’d said matter-of-factly, “and now you do, too.” It had felt to him as solemn as a proposal, like sliding a ring onto the finger of his beloved, but he knew Gillian lacked that kind of sentimentality. To her, all of it—symbolic jewelry, patriotism itself—was a tactic. He himself was a tactic of sorts, though for what he had never actually understood.

The pin tumbled to the floor, lost in the floorboards, in the shuffle to the bedroom. It was abandoned in the God-given pursuit of happiness, among other things.

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