The Receptionist Read online

Bella came out slowly, shaking. I knelt in the dirt and opened my arms. She folded into me, trembling, not quite comforted. “It’s okay,” I whispered and smoothed her coat with long strokes.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to see another dog?” asked the woman.

  Bella rested her chin on my knee and glowered up at the breeder. “I have to take her,” I said. “No one else will want her.”

  I brought her home that night. Her muscles were tight, on high alert, as I walked her into the house. Doug bounded to the top of the stairs, calling, “How’s the dog?” and stopped short at Bella’s rumbling growl. I took hold of her collar.

  “Easy,” I said. “This is your daddy.” She went silent and sat up next to me in sentry position. “Here,” I said. I tossed Doug the treat bag. “Give her one.” He held out a bone-shaped biscuit. She crawled to him low on her haunches, like a stalking cat, and snatched it out of his hand.

  “She doesn’t act like a puppy,” he said.

  “She just needs to get used to things,” I said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was the beginning of summer, about two months before our wedding, when I heard Bella barking on the balcony. I yanked her collar and looked over the railing. The young blonde woman from a few doors down was on the beach, staring up at us. Her sunglasses were reflective, catching the glare of the sun. I put a hand over my eyes and said, “Hello.”

  She scowled and turned around, adjusting the side straps of her thong as she walked away. She spent the rest of the summer outside, lying on her balcony, her R&B playlist buzzing low over the beach like a mosquito. I asked her to use headphones once, expecting a scratchy response, a voice hoarse from too much partying, but she said nothing. She just switched it off and went inside.

  “I bet she’s a kept woman,” I said to Doug.

  “Do people have kept women anymore?” he said.

  “I came home early last Tuesday, and she was out there. Friday morning, she was out there.”

  “Maybe she’s rich.”

  “No one in Malibu spends that much time on their deck. This is a novelty for her.”

  He visited her late one Saturday when he thought I was asleep. I heard the front door open and shut, letting in a rush of traffic noise. I stepped onto PCH just in time to see him letting himself into her place, and I stayed there, barefoot, at the edge of our tiny driveway. The cars and trucks sped close, but I barely registered their blasts of air as a million understandings exploded inside me. I was outside. I was standing on gravel. The gravel wasn’t real. The gravel was real. It hurt my feet. Her house was in front of me. He was with her inside that house.

  My jaw locked into place, like it was tightening around an invisible rod of iron.

  “Mine,” I whispered.

  I went back inside and did a search of his drawers as Bella jerked on the doggy bed, the sound of my rustling invading her dreams. I went to his side of our walk-in closet and slid my hands under his folded sweaters.

  I ran down the stairs. I threw aside cushions. I flung open kitchen cabinets. I didn’t know what I was looking for until I found it: a lease for the ramshackle house. The agreement was in the office filing cabinet under Real Estate.

  Doug opened the sliding glass door. The tide must have gone down far enough for him to take the beach. I’d always thought his solitary walks were evidence of something soulful.

  He paused in the living room, taking in the mess.

  “Emily?” he said. He stopped in the office doorway. “What are you doing?”

  I held out the document.

  “Oh,” he said. He froze. His eyes darted, his pupils tracing the shape of a diamond, betraying the fact of some inner logic. If cheating equals lease in my hand, I could see him thinking, does lease in my hand equal cheating? If B then C and so on.

  “You don’t have some lie prepared?” I said.

  “Is that the bungalow lease?” he asked. “I need to double-check it. It was a studio, but I turned it into a one bedroom.”

  My head snapped back. I reached for the words. I reached for the facts. He kept talking.

  “I was just over there, by the way. She has a job at a nightclub. Not a kept woman.”

  “Are you sleeping with her?”

  “Anna? Jesus, Em, she’s our tenant.”

  I looked back down at the lease. No mention of Anna.

  “It’s one in the morning,” I said.

  “Her toilet was backed up.”

  I had the urge to flee.

  “I told you.” He hadn’t told me. “I stayed in that house before I moved in here. The rent was cheap, so I kept it. We’re charging her an extra thousand a month.”

  All I needed was my car keys. I didn’t need my purse. I didn’t need my shoes. I just needed to get out of there.

  “I know it’s shady,” he said. “Subletting like that. I couldn’t resist.”

  “I trusted you!” I screamed. “How could you?” It was involuntary, the way I went on, repeating the laments of the jilted throughout time and fiction. My crying did something animalistic to my vowels. He stood there quietly, letting me have my catharsis, confessing nothing.

  “You’re so fucked up,” I said.

  He shrugged carefully. I pounded my fist on the wall. Bella woke and came hurtling down the stairs with an explosive series of barks. She lunged at Doug.

  “Bella, nein!” I caught her by the collar and gave it a hard yank. “Sitz!” Bella sat.

  Doug put his hands up. Any other day, he’d have complained about the dog, about my decision to do Schutzhund training and the fact that he didn’t have time to learn German. He’d have said he hated feeling like an enemy in his own house.

  “Bleib,” I commanded. Bella stayed while I went to the pantry for a doggy treat. Doug followed me. Bella growled.

  “Nein!” I said.

  He leaned against the counter. His forehead was creased, worried. “What are we going to do?” he asked. As if it were up to me to figure out.

  “Are you a sociopath?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think?”

  “I took a quiz.”

  “She has to go.”

  He bit his lip and looked down.

  “Today,” I said.

  There is a space between the conscious and the unconscious, a space where you can choose things that aren’t really choices at all but more like pointing yourself in a certain direction, like how you steer a car without even thinking about it. It’s where you tell yourself things like, There is more than one definition of love, and you keep on the same way you were before.

  I know. I’m making it sound like I was brainwashed. Like I didn’t actually decide to marry a man who’d cheated on me so flagrantly. Like it didn’t take superhuman strength to bring all the bucking, rebelling cells of my body to heel.

  I had to choose: upheaval or status quo.

  The wedding was three weeks away, a destination wedding in Punta de Mita. Our guests had already bought their plane tickets. Dr. Maryn was giving a speech. I couldn’t cancel. It would have been a scandal. Doug was well known enough that it might have made the news. It could have killed my career.

  And the truth is I wanted Doug. Our life together, the money we were beginning to make, the compound we would buy, the space, the security. At least 90 percent of the time, Doug was exactly what I wanted. The other ten would simply require managing.

  You can handle this, I told myself. It was a short declaration and took only a second to say, with the same number of syllables as one Mississippi.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Doug was in top form at the wedding, playing emcee during the photo shoot on the beach in Punta de Mita, overruling the photographer’s suggestions. At one point, he had all his groomsmen lifting me like Madonna in the “Material Girl” video.

  Wally objected. “I’m not touching my sister’s hips!”

  “Then give us some jazz hands!” Doug shouted back.

  Eve
ryone posed with their joyfully splayed fingers in the next several pictures, and I pushed away my rising bursts of jealousy as Doug put his arm around Charlene, my sorority sister with the big boobs. A little later, I’d started over to him, to interrupt his side conversation with my anorexically thin friend, Magda, when a dozen or so young children in matching blue polo shirts came running onto the beach.

  “Em!” said Doug. “Let’s get a picture with them.”

  “Cute!” yelled someone in our group. “Genius!” shouted someone else. The photographer called the children over, and soon Doug and I were swarmed with adorable kids. I let a little girl of about five or six touch the raw silk fabric on my gown. “Bonita,” she said, smiling up at me, angelic. I touched her face and smiled back. The photographer clicked away and called out, “Perfect!”

  We heard the yelling before we knew where it was coming from. Some commotion on the edge of our collective vision.

  “Señor! Señor!”

  A man in a white polo shirt was running across the beach so fast he kept pitching forward, almost losing his balance. He waved his arms in front of him. “No! Señor, no pictures!”

  He reached us and didn’t even try to catch his breath. “No pictures, señor,” he said. “Security!”

  “Security?” said Doug. “What happened?” We looked around, matching the man’s alarm as four men in dark suits with machine guns flanked our party.

  “A government conference, señor, at the hotel. These are the children of the politicians. They are the rich! They are like you!”

  Doug got boisterous laughs out of that story for months afterward, across dinner tables, in the backs of golf carts, even speaking from a podium at a charity event. He’d always look to me for a moment of meaningful eye contact after each retelling. I never knew if our locked gaze was just for us or something more performative. Either way, we were our best selves in public.

  I turned my focus outward, toward some constantly shifting point on the horizon, accepting every invitation, going out four or five nights a week, sometimes with Doug, sometimes alone. There were dinners and concerts and benefit concert dinners. We showed up at movie premieres even though neither of us worked in film.

  We named ourselves Team Markham and ran the LA Marathon for children’s literacy. We did the AIDS bike ride from San Francisco to LA. We rode every Saturday morning, pedaling slowly, in unison, to the top of Topanga or Trancas Canyon. I always kept up with him, competing, forcing my burning legs to comply. We didn’t stop or even speak until we’d reach the scenic overlooks. Then we’d rest, sitting on the guardrail and watching the tourists in their rental cars and khakis like they were a separate species.

  Doug traded in his Porsche for a Tesla. I sold my condo and my Range Rover and bought a hybrid Mercedes. I also took charge of redecorating the house, making weekly trips to the Pacific Design Center. The showpiece was our sofa. I insisted on custom upholstery, a gray linen velvet threaded with real silver that glowed at sunset.

  I was determined to live my best life.

  Doug and I took Dr. Maryn and Stan out to dinner a few times a month. Those were magical evenings, a blur of blended silk and burrata salads with the outsize personalities of Maryn and my husband joining forces across the table, creating a supernova of frenzied charm. They’d lead the laughter, order one-last-rounds, ask nearby tables if they wanted a taste of the cult wine we’d brought in.

  Doug introduced Stan to biking. Stan lost weight and began outfitting himself in spandex and corporate logos. Normally, I would have tried to discourage a friendship like that, with my client’s husband. But I trusted Stan. I liked knowing where Doug was when he was with him.

  I didn’t notice or really think about it when Dr. Maryn began begging off our dinner invitations. She was a busy woman, a star. She still met me for lunch every few weeks.

  Most importantly, I had Bella. She let me cry into her fur at night when I was alone and wondering where the hell Doug was. Bella always took my side when he came home late. Or didn’t come home. I’d flinch at the sound of the garage door opening, and she’d spring into action.

  I started doing it on purpose. If he didn’t have a good explanation for why he was late or why he hadn’t answered his phone for five hours, all I had to do was tense my shoulders. Doug couldn’t see it, but Bella could.

  “Pfui!” I’d scold as she barked at him.

  At work I was promoted to vice president of client ventures, overseeing RFG’s expansion into gaming, AI, VR—any industry we could get our people into. Two weeks into my new position, Ron Faulman, one of the managing partners, called me in to meet with him. Ron was in his sixties. He wore a gray beard and dressed like a dandy in immaculate three-piece suits. His father had started the agency, the F in RFG. His office was a time capsule, lined in dark oak. He asked me to shut the door.

  “I want to give you a heads-up,” Ron said. He leaned back in his leather chair and interlaced his fingers. “There’s going to be a review of vendors, looking for improprieties, nepotism.” I moved to the edge of my seat. “It’ll be company-wide,” he said. “But I imagine we’ll take a look at Beyond the Brand.”

  I didn’t react. I couldn’t. I’d given a ton of work to Doug’s company. He’d been handling all the research for Dr. Maryn. His portable-EEG helmet was almost ready to launch too. He was practically a partner in the Dr. Maryn Store.

  “Did someone complain?” I asked.

  “Emily, come on. We’re living in a new climate.”

  I raised my eyebrows. It was always a new climate. There was always some crackdown, some whack-a-mole righting of wrongs, happening somewhere in the entertainment industry. I’d successfully dodged most of them. I allowed my underlings to claim their overtime. I made no sexist or racist comments. But RFG had spent a massive amount of money on market research for the Dr. Maryn Store. I knew how it looked. The money went straight to my husband and straight back to me.

  “This sounds like score settling,” I said, trying to think of who had issues with me, who might be an enemy. “Can you tell me who said something?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t bother trying to find out. You’ll drive yourself crazy. Just assume everyone is gunning for you right now, at least until you’re settled in the new position.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen this coming. I rose to leave. “Can I just ask one thing?”

  “Shoot,” said Ron.

  “Is Dr. Maryn aware of this?”

  Ron held up his hands. “See? You’re making yourself crazy. Fix the problem. Then you won’t have a problem. Okay?”

  I got home before Doug that night. I waited on a stool at the breakfast bar until I heard his car. I poured him some bourbon as he came downstairs.

  “Thanks,” he said. He looked at me, curious. “Is it my birthday?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m trying to soften the blow.”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “I’m going to be a little less hands on with the store now,” I said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I won’t be in charge of hiring research companies like I used to.”

  He shrugged. “You’re vice president. You can do what you want.”

  “Someone said something,” I said.

  He looked up and took a step back from me. “Emily, RFG is one of my biggest clients. From before I even knew you.”

  “The climate has changed,” I said. “It looks like I’m self-dealing.”

  He grabbed his highball glass from the counter and made like he was going to throw it at the wall. Bella grunted from her spot next to the couch.

  “Nein,” I shushed her. “I don’t know who complained.”

  Doug dumped the drink in the sink. “You’re gonna let some punk bully us?”

  “If I fight, I’ll be swinging blind. It’ll make me look powerless.”

  “Jesus, Em. Show some loyalty.”

  I stood. I met his eyes. I’d sacrificed so much for this rela
tionship. “You want to talk about loyalty?”

  Bella stood, alert, but I didn’t need her tonight. I played the wounded-wife card sparingly. When I did, it was effective.

  Bella went missing the next week. I came home on a Tuesday night, expecting to hear claws scampering across the tile-floored entryway.

  “Bella?” I called.

  I checked to make sure the bathroom doors were open, that she wasn’t trapped. I walked down the stairs to the living room.

  “Bella?”

  The house was empty. I went onto the balcony, an indistinct worry gathering, tightening around me. She wasn’t there. The gate to the beach was open. I ran down the stairs to the sand.

  “Bella!” I yelled. “Bella!”

  I looked under the deck, at the pile of belly-size stones the ocean had dumped against the house foundation. I didn’t see her. I looked up the coast, hoping she hadn’t found her way to the road. The homes all blocked access to PCH, except for a state-mandated walkway about ten houses north. I ran to it. The gate was locked from the beach side, an illegal padlock placed by some anonymous neighbor. The people who lived here didn’t like intruders.

  I peered down the coast. I could see for a half mile at least. There was no Bella, but there was no way off the beach. She had to be somewhere. I ran down the shoreline.

  “Bella!”

  The older couple next door joined me on the sand. They hadn’t seen her. They offered to look farther north. I ran south. The tide was coming in. Doug appeared on the beach just as the water started to lip the houses.

  “She’ll come home,” he said. He tried to put his arm around me.

  “She’ll drown.” I rolled up my pants and let the ocean swirl around my calves.

  “How did she get loose?” he asked.

  “The gate was open.”

  He ran home. I didn’t follow. I checked under more houses, maybe she was hiding, taking shelter beneath a stairway. A tall, solitary wave pelted my thighs. I braced myself against a pylon. I could hear Doug, just barely, shouting over the ocean. I looked back to our house, a quarter mile away. He was at the railing, motioning with his arms for me to come in.