Elin Hilderbrand - The Rumor

Eddie would pull a great vintage of Ponzi pinot noir from his cellar. Grace would be so happy with his choice that she would raise her face to him for a kiss.

When he got home tonight, Eddie decided, he and Grace would have a talk. They would start fresh. No more Benton Coe. And, for his part, Eddie would give up 10 Low Beach Road. He couldn’t ask Grace to end her affair until he cleaned up his own dirty mess. This week was it. The end. He would meet with his accountant, Frank, and they would decide which of Eddie’s two commercial properties to put on the market. Even with the mortgages, he could probably still clear a decent profit.

Money couldn’t buy happiness-except when it could.

He would figure it out. He just had to take care of this one last thing.

At ten minutes to ten, Eddie was sitting in his Cayenne outside 10 Low Beach Road. The air-conditioning in the car was on, but not the radio. Eddie had a cold bottle of water and a container of cherry Tums in the console. His hands were shaking.

A car pulled up behind his-Nadia’s Jeep-and Nadia and the other girls climbed out. Their hair was piled into high confections, with curled tendrils framing their faces. Their makeup was thick and bright; it reminded Eddie of icing on a cake. They wore short skirts and teetered in stilettos. They were giggling and teasing one another in Russian. They seemed… happy, bordering on joyful, and Eddie tried to let the sound of their voices soothe his hot, aching conscience. These young women were here to prostitute themselves, but at least they seemed to be enjoying it. Or maybe what Eddie was witnessing was bravado or giddy anticipation of what they might consider “easy money.” After all, it was better than cleaning toilets, right? Less demeaning? Eddie had no idea how the girls viewed it. In his heart, he knew this whole business was repugnant. Eddie’s parents would be so ashamed that it pained Eddie to think of it. He wished Barbie had offered to come with him tonight. But she never offered. She just sat at her desk with her pens and notepads from the exotic hotels where she met Glenn Daley, and she waited for Eddie to hand over her portion of the cash.

“I’ll leave my cell on,” Barbie had said before she left work. “In case you need to call me.”

“I don’t see any reason why I would need to call you,” Eddie had said. He wondered if Barbie had had a bad premonition about tonight or if she’d checked the tarot cards or tea leaves or her goddamned crystal ball. But when he asked her, she said, “No, no, I’m saying, just in case.”

Whatever that meant.

When the girls saw Eddie, they erupted in cheerful greetings. Eddie Eddie Eddie hi hi hi. Nadia kissed him on the cheek, leaving, he was sure, fat, juicy lip prints. Elise and Gabrielle linked their arms through his, and, although he desperately wanted to disengage himself, he couldn’t risk offending them or dampening their moods. He tried to tell himself that the girls were merely going to entertain the gentlemen in residence. Nadia would juggle; Julia would sing “Send in the Clowns”; Elise and Gabrielle would be a third and fourth in bridge.

Together, the six of them approached the side door of 10 Low Beach Road. The girls were quiet as Eddie knocked-two raps, then one.

A very tall, lean man with crooked teeth opened the door. This was Bugsy. He was wearing a blue T-shirt, jeans, and a Minnesota Twins baseball hat. He looked slightly less terrifying than he had on the Internet.

“Greetings!” he said. He opened the door wide and ushered them all inside.

Eddie let the girls precede him, and then he, too, entered. The side door led right into the humongous gourmet kitchen, which was lit only by ivory pillar candles. Set out on the Carrara marble countertops were a lavish spread of sushi and ice buckets holding bottles of Cristal champagne. The girls tried to contain their squeals of excitement. This was how it should be done-a proper wooing-although plenty of times this summer, they had walked in on pizza boxes and a tower of empty beer cans. And, one time, on a half-eaten chocolate cake that had been crawling with ants. Nadia had confided that sometimes the mess was so bad, the girls became distracted because they knew they would be coming back in the morning to clean up.

It kill the mood, you know, Eddie? Nadia had said. Thinking we the girlfriend tonight, but tomorrow, we the maid.

Sushi was the girls’ particular favorite, and they loved champagne. Bugsy said to Eddie, “Want to stay for a drink?”

“No, thank you,” Eddie said. He wasn’t comfortable being inside this house. He wanted to get the money and go.

“You wear that hat all the time?” Bugsy asked. “Even at night?”

Eddie nodded.

“You get it in Cuba?” Bugsy asked.

“Ecuador, actually,” Eddie said. He was used to explaining that, although it was called a Panama hat, it was made in the town of Montecristi, Ecuador.

“You self-conscious because you’re bald?” Bugsy asked. Bugsy was also bald. He touched the brim of his ball cap.

Eddie didn’t want to discuss with Bugsy the things about himself that made him insecure, but he feared that to deny the statement would only invite a rebuttal.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “A little, I guess.” He had started wearing the Panama hat in his late twenties, when his hair started to fall out.

Bugsy reached out to bump fists with Eddie. Then he put two fingers among his crooked, ruined teeth and gave a sharp whistle. Instantly, other men appeared in the kitchen, and within seconds, all of the girls were paired up-except for Nadia. Nadia, it seemed, belonged to Bugsy.

Eddie couldn’t bear to watch this strange courtship ritual. Already, Elise was kissing a man with black, slicked-back hair like a vampire’s. Eddie turned to Bugsy but found himself unable to broach the matter of payment. It was Nadia who came to his rescue. She said, “Why don’t you give Eddie money so he can vamoose?”

Bugsy tweaked Nadia’s nose as if she were his precocious niece, and then he indicated that Eddie should follow him out the side door. Eddie was only too happy to leave. He waved at the girls and said, “I’ll see you ladies tomorrow.”

None of the girls responded. They were working. He had ceased to matter.

As soon as they stepped into the mild summer night air, Bugsy produced a padded envelope about the size of a feather pillow. So much money. Eddie did his best not to seem grabby.

“They’ll come every night this week?” Bugsy asked.

“Yes,” Eddie said.

“Well then,” Bugsy said. “For services rendered.” He presented the envelope to Eddie formally, with two hands.

“Thank you,” Eddie said.

“Thank you,” Bugsy said.

There was a sudden strong grip on Eddie’s shoulder and a blinding light in his eyes.

“Whoa!” Eddie said. His Panama hat fell to the ground, and Eddie heard the unmistakable crunch of foot on straw, which made him wince. His third hat this summer. His final hat.

Inside, one of the girls screamed, and a second later, more girls were screaming. Eddie’s hands were wrenched behind his back. He was being cuffed. A man with a salty South Boston accent read Eddie his Miranda rights. He was under arrest.

The girls were screaming. Were they being hurt? Eddie wondered. Suddenly, Nadia popped out the side door and said, “Hello, Eddie, please, we need help inside.” Her voice was calm and casual, as if they had blown a fuse or required his assistance in opening a jar of pickles.

“Miss?” the Southie accent said. “Stop right there, please. FBI.”

FBI, Eddie thought. He wanted to run. He was Fast Eddie, the finest track star to come out of New Bedford High School in thirty-five years. If pressed, he knew, he could still sprint a quarter mile in under a minute. He could be halfway to Sankaty Head Lighthouse before anyone knew in which direction he’d gone. But then what? He lived on an island.

He closed his eyes and waited for the flames to start climbing the walls of his chest. He thought of Grace, asleep in their California king bed with the feather-top mattress. Grace. He pictured her washing the dinner dishes. He pictured lifting up her thick, dark hair and nuzzling the back of her neck, a move from early in their relationship that he had long ago abandoned.

He should have stayed home, eaten the steak and the fingerlings that she had made specially for him. He should have made love to his wife. Tried to make her laugh again. Tried to make her happy again.

But then he reminded himself that the only way he had ever known to make Grace happy was by giving her everything her heart desired.

“That’s why I needed the money,” Eddie said to the man behind him, whom he still could not see. “It was for my wife.”

“Save it for the judge,” the Southie accent said.

“If you let me go, I’ll figure out something different to do for Grace,” Eddie said. “Something better.”

“You can figure it out in prison,” the Southie accent said. “You’ll have plenty of time.”

The girls filed out of the house in a tight line, like they were being marched by Stalin. All of them were crying.

“Eddie!” Nadia cried out.

Instinctively, Eddie tried to free his hands.

“Easy, buddy,” the Southie accent said. He led Eddie toward the back of a black Suburban. Eddie thought of the Chief turning him down for drinks. I have plans tonight. Did the Chief know about this sting? He must have. Eddie had thought they were friends.

You’re a good guy, Eddie. A really good guy.

Realizing just how untrue this was broke Eddie’s burning heart.

Something about the article in the Boston Globe changed things for Grace. Seeing the photos of her and Benton and reading the text describing the wonderland they had created together had been so validating. It was a depiction of her private Eden. Grace knew it was crazy, but she felt as if she were the only woman on earth and Benton the only man. When Benton came to the house on Monday, Grace was consumed with a crazy, searing desire. For the first time ever, she pulled him into the garden shed. She kissed him and said, “I’d really like to marry you.”