She’s extremely frail from this angle. Her backbone protrudes like a Rhodesian Ridgeback’s. I’d seen her entire back from a distance on the Academy Awards show, but here, in person, it seemed to belong to a different person. She stumbles and nearly falls into the wall. I sit up, preparing to rush over to help her in case she’s about to faint, but she regains her footing and steadies herself against the doorway of her closet.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She laughs. “I’m terribly clumsy. Promise you won’t tell!”

Her breathing seems shallow and irregular and I wonder if it had been this way the whole time and I simply hadn’t noticed till now, having been so caught up in the experience.

“There it is,” she says, and takes a couple of steps into her closet. She bends over and picks up a briefcase, and brings it back to me.

“Your money,” she says.

 

Chapter 17

 

I’m in the limo with Thomas Jefferson, heading back to the airport. He’s tapping his fingers.

“She paid me the million dollars out of her own money?”

“It appears she did,” he says.

We sit without speaking. The tapping grows louder as Jefferson seems totally consumed by the challenge of moving his fingers faster and faster against the armrest. He’s preoccupied, fidgety, and very possibly angry, which seems completely out of character for the smooth, confident businessman I’d met in the bank.

“Is something wrong?” I say.

“Is something wrong?” he mimics, derisively.

“Is there?”

He stops tapping his fingers and gives me a hard stare. “Was she a good fuck?”

He practically spat the words at me. I’m shocked by his demeanor, which has turned confrontational. I’m trying to decide if Thomas Jefferson is jealous, unstable, or both.

“It wasn’t like that,” I say.

“Care to enlighten me?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“It was…”

I look at Jefferson’s face. He seems to be fighting to keep his anger in check. He repeats my words: “It was…what?”

“It was…like magic.”

The anger leaks out of him slowly, like a balloon with a small nick in it. His lips press together in a flat line. “Well, how nice for you.”

I nod. “But why would she give me a million dollars?”

“What did she say?”

“Something about paying back into the system that helped her become a star.”

“Makes sense.”

“Who are you guys?”

“Who indeed?” he says, with a heavy sigh.

He closes his eyes and doesn’t speak again until we’re on the tarmac. As the limo pulls to a stop near the jet he says, “You need to use the restroom before we take off?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Then, let’s get you back to your car.”

It’s a quiet flight back to Louisville. When the jet comes to a stop, I remain seated so Jefferson can get out first, but he makes no effort to move. Instead, he gestures at the briefcase in my lap. “You get it all counted?”

He’s referring to the way I opened and closed the briefcase several times during the flight, picking up one brick after another, riffling through them.

“You think the money’s real?” I say.

“I guarantee it. Everything about the Wish List experience is real. Except that I’m going to decline the twenty million dollar loan.”

“Why?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

I pat the briefcase and laugh. “In that case, how long do you think it’ll take me to quit my job on Monday?”

“I doubt you’ll do much thinking about the bank from here on out.”

“Why’s that?”

Instead of answering, he says, “Does it even bother you that an hour ago you were with another woman, and now you’re heading home to face your loving wife, pretending you’ve been hard at work all afternoon?”

His words don’t hit me as hard as he probably thinks they should. Yes, technically, I cheated on my wife. But it’s not as though I deliberately set out to cheat. In fact, it was Jinny who talked me into actually doing it. And there’s this: I’m holding a million dollars in cash on my lap!

I respond by saying, “How many guys on the planet do you know who’d refuse a million dollars to have sex with Jinny Kidwell?”

Jefferson shakes his head.