Michael cleared his throat. “They’re coming up on the eighteenth, so you’ll need to go.”
“Will I?” Alessandra said.
There was fear in his eyes. He was the one who had chosen poorly. “Baby, please.”
“I’m not your baby, Michael. I’m a grown woman whom you’ve treated like a concubine.”
“You knew what you were getting into,” Michael said. “You can’t tell me you didn’t understand what this was.”
He got everything backward. He was the one who didn’t understand what this was.
“I’ll go quietly the day before your family arrives,” Alessandra said. “On one condition.”
Alessandra walks from Michael’s house to the hotel with a knockoff Louis Vuitton bag in each hand. It’s a stylish walk of shame—or it would be if Alessandra felt any shame. What she feels most is regret. Michael Bick is the complete package. He has looks, money, intelligence, humor, and even a basic decency （if you ignore the obvious）。 He asks questions; he listens to the answers; he’s generous and curious and thoughtful. The sex was mind-blowing; Michael is the only man Alessandra ever met who didn’t need to learn a thing or two in bed. And they are so compatible. Oh, well. It has been Alessandra’s experience that men like Michael Bick get scooped up early, in college or the first years of living as an adult in the city.
She also feels triumphant. In her suede Bruno Magli clutch is a cashier’s check for fifty thousand dollars. Michael asked her to name her price and she did so judiciously, unsure of what she could get away with, but now she wonders if she could have asked for double. She won’t worry about it. During their first week of sinful bliss, Alessandra watched Michael punch in the passcode to his phone, and later, while he was sleeping, Alessandra copied Heidi Bick’s number. She also took pictures of herself in different spots throughout the house—in the pool, weighing herself on Heidi’s scale （a trim 105）， cooking in the kitchen, even sprawled across the master bed （although they’d never had sex in that room, Michael’s one nod to fidelity）。
If Alessandra doesn’t find another situation, she’ll simply text Michael the pictures and ask for more money.
As Heidi Bick is checking things off her packing list in Greenwich—Colby’s inhaler, Hayford’s putter, her Wüsthof tomato knife—Alessandra will be paying for a 1980 CJ-7 in “mint condition” that she found listed in the Nantucket Standard classifieds. The Jeep costs twenty grand; Alessandra will pay cash, then she’ll write the bellman Adam a check for twelve grand, which is her share of the summer’s rent now that she’s moving in with him and Raoul on Hooper Farm Road. She’ll throw ten grand at her credit card bills and still have a bit of a financial cushion.
Alessandra is growing weary of seducing men, then extorting them; she would far prefer to find a permanent provider.
She marches up the front steps of the hotel, trying to carry herself like a hotel guest checking in. Except she’s wearing her uniform, and Adam says, from his spot behind the lectern, “You look like a high-class hobo.”
Alessandra doesn’t respond. She pictures Michael frantically cleaning the house, sweeping up every strand of her hair, wiping her fingerprints off the wineglasses, checking the drawers for an errant pair of panties. But will he notice the Chanel eye shadow that Alessandra left in Heidi’s makeup drawer in the bathroom? （Heidi wears Bobbi Brown.） Will he check the shoe tree in Heidi’s closet, where Alessandra has left a pair of size 6 crystal-studded René Caovilla stilettos winking coyly among the size 8 Jack Rogers sandals and Tory Burch ballet flats? Will he find the positive pregnancy test that Alessandra tucked into the copy of Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed that sits atop the stack of novels on Heidi Bick’s nightstand?
He will not, Alessandra guesses, because men don’t pay attention to the way women live, not really. Michael will suffer for this, and for his hubris. He thought he was making a clean （if somewhat costly） getaway.
She wonders if Michael misses her. After handing over the check, he kissed her deeply, and when she pulled away, she saw tears glittering in the corners of his eyes. Torn between two lovers, she sang in her head, feeling like a fool.
“Raoul says he’ll swing by around noon to get your bags,” Adam says now.
“Kind of him, thank you,” Alessandra says, though she wishes Raoul would come right away so she could avoid the inevitable questions.