Page 25 of Fallen Angel

“Great. I need that by the end of the day tomorrow. “

“I know—I’m on it,” she said. “Good luck with Klein.”

He smiles. “Thanks for all your help on that one. You never know with Judge Draver, but I think we’re going to get good results.” He looks at her strangely. “Is that a bruise on your arm?”

She looks down. She’s been trying so hard to not think about what happened Saturday night, she forgot to remove the painted Varga girl.

“Oh—no … it’s paint. A temporary tattoo. Just a … it’s a private joke.”

Gavin smiles at her, shaking his head.

“Why do I get the feeling there’s a lot about you I’ll never know?”

She starts to say something to contradict this, then realizes he’s just joking. At least, she thinks he’s joking. She’s a little paranoid since she was fired from her last law firm when they discovered her moonlighting as a burlesque dancer. The smartest thing right now is to keep her mouth shut, and her expression neutral, nothing to see here …

His phone rings, and he takes the call and gives her a quick wave before heading out.

Relieved to be alone, she turns back to the depositions on her desk. But now her concentration is broken and unwanted images from the weekend rush in: She can smell the slight muskiness of the Plaza hotel corridor. She feels the tickle of the paint brush against her skin, and Violet’s warm breath between her legs.

She thinks about Alec underneath Jocelyn.

There’s no one she can talk to about this. That’s the worst part. Julie and Allison are conversationally off-limits, because what are they going to say except Told you so! And they’d be right. Maybe there is something inherently flawed in her relationship with Alec, or maybe it’s just that the world they’re in perpetually reduces them to their worst instincts. Whatever the reason—fundamental, environmental, or both—her great love seems doomed to fail.

Mallory turns her attention to a file marked Klein v. Klein. Working in divorce law makes it had not to be cynical about love. In this case, Gavin is representing a woman named Marcy Gold Klein. Marcy is a successful producer of fashion shows, and her soon-to-be-ex-husband is a hedge fund guy. They have the town house, the Hamptons house, the A-list party invites from coast to coast, and beautiful twin daughters. But theirs is one of the nastiest divorces Mallory has ever witnessed, not just at the firm, but even in the tabloids. It amazes her that people who at one time pledged their lives to loving each other and making each other happy could then turn around and spend a lot of money trying to destroy that person. When she expressed this to Gavin, he said that he’s no longer surprised nor particularly affected by anything he hears from clients, but he did concede that the burnout rate for matrimonial attorneys is high.

“How do you keep any kind of open mind or positive attitude toward relationships when you deal with this every day?” she once asked.

“It would be easy to become cynical. But I’m trying to remain an optimistic. A romantic, even.” He said this wistfully, and now, after a decidedly unromantic weekend, she couldn’t help but recall this conversation a little wistfully herself.

Her phone rings. She’s sure it’s Alec calling to check in from the airport on his way to L.A. All day yesterday they both tried to act like everything was normal, but even a casual observer would have noted the tension. It was clear they both knew they had to talk about what happened at the Plaza, but also that it was probably too much to get into the day before he flew to the West Coast for a three-day work trip.

But the call is not from Alec. Instead, it’s the one person she actually wants to talk to—even if she hadn’t consciously realized it until that moment.

“Bette, you have good timing,” she says.

“Hey, gorgeous. Where am I catching you?”

“I’m at work—the law firm I told you about.”

“Ugh. I thought I’d rescued you from the clutches of corporate America.”

“Yeah, well, living la vida loca doesn’t exactly pay the rent.”

“It does for me.”

“And that is why you’re an icon,” she says affectionately. “Are you in town?”

“I will be for the Halloween show.”

That’s in two nights. “Okay, well, let’s make plans this time. I need some quality time.”

“We’ll do that,” Bette says. “But in the meantime, what do you know about the new girl?”

A hot flush of anxiety makes her damp with perspiration under her button-down: Has Bette heard about what happened Saturday? How would she? Unless Violet talked. And the truth is, Mallory has every intention to tell Bette what happened. But she doesn’t want it to be out there like that. Gossip is to the burlesque scene what coke was to the disco scene.

“Violet?” she says, barely able to push the name through her lips. “Nothing. Why?”

“I’m just hearing bad things about her through the grapevine. I know Agnes doesn’t trust me since I left, but maybe you can warn her.”