As Is Read online

  As Is

  Rachel Michael Arends

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 2014 by Rachel Michael Arends

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition May 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-294-9

  For Paul

  Chapter One

  Gwendolyn

  I rarely pass through a room without running into someone measuring something, or moving something, or setting up or taking down something. I have lived and worked in this mansion for four years. In the beginning it was quiet, sometimes even peaceful. But now that it’s known as the So Perfect house, this place feels about as calm and real as a circus.

  I am the face of So Perfect. That means I often have to be prepped for a video blog or television segment, or have my hair and makeup done for a photo shoot, or cook for the cameras. Or I may have to pose, sew, entertain, schmooze, upholster, or any other of a number of tricks the lion tamers crack their whips and tell me to perform. On television it can look glamorous, and perhaps some people would love this lifestyle. But I don’t. Whenever I can, I escape to my attic art studio; it’s off limits to everyone but me, and sometimes my partner, Armand. I don’t think I would have survived this long without it.

  “Time to clean in here now, Miss G.”

  I look up to see Alejandra enter my bedroom. Though I’m in my pajamas, I’m not startled by her sudden appearance. People come and go all the time around here. Sometimes even my bed is photographed if pillows or throws are going into the next So Perfect catalog. Not even my bed is really my own. Nothing is.

  “Are you excited for your trip?” I ask. Alejandra and her husband Miguel rarely take any time off. They plan to go out of town to visit relatives for a long weekend and I’m happy for them. I’m happy for me, too; the whole house will be clearing out and I’ll finally get to spend some time alone.

  “Yes! My sisters are planning a big party,” she says as she tidies the room.

  I take a bag of wrapped presents from the closet and give it to her. “I finished those little paintings for your nieces,” I say.

  “Oh, they will love them, Miss G.!” She hugs me tight. “Now hurry or Mr. Armand will be so mad.”

  “Good morning!” Armand says, smiling wide when I enter the kitchen. He always manages to look amazing, and he never fidgets with his clothes or seems to get tired of the limelight. It’s as if he actually enjoys being So Perfect all the time. He sent the hair and makeup people into my room because I was running late. They did the best they could with their few minutes, but I can tell Armand isn’t quite satisfied.

  The kitchen is already full of people and cameras.

  “Hi,” I say, waving to everyone. It’s embarrassing to meet fans because I know full well I don’t deserve their adulation. Whenever I see my photographs in the So Perfect catalog, it just seems wrong, incongruous, and unnatural. Like putting stilettos on George Clooney, or casting Miley Cyrus as a nun, or telling Matt Damon to hide his twenty-million-dollar smile. When I see myself making risotto or a key lime pie on television I can’t believe people buy it. The trouble is, they do. They really do. And I’m contractually obligated to keep right on selling.

  Armand glides over and pecks me on the cheek. “Wrong shoes,” he whispers.

  I pretend I don’t hear. The pointy toe pumps he left out with today’s clothes pinched too much so I gave them to Lily, the gardener. She happened to be working in the antique rose garden outside the window and she wears my shoe size.

  “Hello there, Gwendolyn,” Stuart Bolder says, air kissing me. He’s the reporter for the local station, WJKS, who hosts our weekly lifestyle segments that are edited to make me look like a pro. “Anyone who wants to, come on up and shake hands with Gwendolyn before we get started. She won’t bite!” he says.

  I shake hands with the people who file up. I smile at each of them warmly because it’s not their fault I don’t want to be here.

  Today we’re doing a kitchen segment, which means there isn’t enough room for a full live audience. Armand can fit fifty people on folding benches in the dining room for a decorating or entertaining piece, but only a handful in here. Though he likes to complain about its limitations, I know Armand adores this house.

  “Are you looking forward to your weekend alone here?” he asks when I join him at the granite island where little glass bowls of ingredients are impeccably arranged.

  “Nah. I changed my mind. I’m joining you in the Big Apple instead,” I tease, putting my hand lightly around his waist in our trademark stance.

  He shakes his head slyly. “Not on your life.”

  Armand has made himself at home in this historic southern town along the Cape Fear River where tours are conducted by horse and carriage over cobblestoned streets. He walks around like he’s the Lord Mayor, hamming for photographs, and chatting with anyone who recognizes him. He clearly loves it. But I know he’s also anxious to disappear into an anonymous city for a few days.

  Armand and I stand in our places for a lighting check and to review the script. We’re making seafood omelets this morning. We went over it all yesterday. Armand smiles confidently for the cameras; he’s an absolute natural. He should have been at the center of the So Perfect stage. That’s what we both signed up for.

  I’m the opposite of my partner. I find it scary and unnerving when strangers approach me as if we’re old friends. I don’t like to worry about what I wear, if my hair and makeup look good enough (according to Armand they never do), what I say, or how I say it. I prefer to stay at home behind our high fences, inside our security system. Whenever I can, I sneak up to the attic and lose myself in a painting.

  Trey Hammond, President of So Perfect, appears out of nowhere. He’s taller than I am even when I wear heels. He has a crazy amount of self-confidence, which I used to find incredibly appealing.

  “Can we talk after the taping?” I ask.

  “Absolutely,” he says. But I know from experience that he’ll try to leave before I can say a word. I want to discuss my contract. I have been attempting to negotiate my way out of the company since our first catalog launched. Originally Trey hired me for a very limited role, but he has since expanded what’s expected of me. He has said on more than one occasion that I’m lucky to have this job, that anyone in her right mind would want it.

  I would simply walk away and face whatever consequences Trey doled out if it were only my life on the line. I’ve had Armand to think of from the beginning, though. Alejandra and Miguel joined us soon after, and now there’s Lily, and many more good people who depend on So Perfect. I don’t want to let anyone down.

  “We should do an anniversary portrait,” Trey says, picking up a small, framed wedding photo of Armand and me from a side table.

  “That sounds fun! Right, Gwendolyn?” Armand puts his arm around my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. I try to smile but only manage a wince.

  The idea of a lifestyle guru couple wasn’t the original premise of So Perfect, but it came along soon after I was hired to do original art for our product line and to appear in the catalog. Armand and I apparently had great photographic chemistry, and we cert
ainly had a good time together. Trey pitched the idea for us to pose as a married couple in the debut catalog: setting a table for a dinner party, making dessert, having a glass of wine on the patio… whatever showed our wares to their best advantage. That catalog turned into an unexpectedly big hit. We were asked to do some interviews about our products, and Trey said that because everybody assumed we were married we should just play along. I didn’t like the idea, and Armand didn’t either, but Trey talked us into it. I know it sounds insane now, seeing how huge the lie has become, but back then it didn’t seem so bad. It honestly didn’t.

  Trey winks at us and puts the photograph back on the table.

  It’s mortifying to remember the day that damn picture was taken. Armand had chosen an outfit for me consisting of a pencil skirt, white silk blouse, and heels that still kept me shorter than him, always important. Trey had suggested that Armand put me in a wedding dress for the portrait, but I refused. I feared it might jinx me from ever getting to wear one legitimately.

  Later I found out that Armand sent a copy of the photograph to his mother, and he actually pretended to her that we’d gotten married. It was the first real red flag that I was in way over my head, that our marriage of convenience was a surreal cover story for Armand on more levels than one.

  “Are we ready to roll?” Armand asks.

  We get right down to business. Armand sits on a stool at the granite island, playing his role of adoring husband while I make an omelet for the cameras. I describe each step along the way, smiling and trying my best to seem competent. Stuart asks casual questions and the three of us banter. Armand gently corrects me when I do something wrong, like overheating the pan or adding ingredients in the wrong order. We get through it. Stuart eats the omelet like it’s the best thing he has ever tasted, as usual.

  Trey slips out a side door just as taping wraps, and Stuart’s producer won’t let me run after him since I’m still tethered to their microphone. I’m beginning to fear that I’ll be trapped in this mansion forever.

  “What are you going to do with yourself this weekend?” Armand asks while we make our way from the kitchen after bidding adieu to the staff and audience.

  “I’m going to paint,” I say.

  “Duh. But won’t you be lonely?” he asks.

  I used to live by myself in an apartment over a small gallery. I worked and slept in one room while I tried to make it as a painter. It was a very, very quiet life. Occasionally whole days passed when I didn’t use my voice at all, when I didn’t see another living being, when I wasn’t seen. It was a small white space with a tall ceiling, filled nearly to the brim with canvases in various states of completion. Sometimes I miss it so much I could cry.

  This weekend will be the first time in over a year that I’ll be here alone. I can’t wait to experience the peace, the quiet, and the soul-replenishing work made possible by seventy-two hours of uninterrupted studio time.

  “Want to watch an episode of House Hunters International before I catch my flight?” Armand asks.

  “Are you luring me to the TV to critique my performance today?”

  “Oh no, there’s not nearly enough time for that!” He laughs and points to my bedroom door. “Change out of your nice things and put on one of your scary Cinderella before ensembles. I’ll meet you at the TV in twenty minutes with a batch of caramel corn.”

  Caramel corn is my favorite.

  Cozying up together on the sofa, Armand and I watch two episodes of his favorite show and finish off the popcorn. Then he takes me up to his room and tries on several outfits he plans to wear in the city. Armand looks good in anything and he knows it. He still likes to hear me say it, though. So I do.

  The house grows quieter and quieter throughout the day as people depart for the long weekend. When Alejandra and Miguel are the last ones left Alejandra hugs me very tightly. “Don’t forget to eat,” she says.

  “I won’t,” I tell her. I wave as I watch the door close behind them.

  I wake with the birds and climb the stairs to the attic. I plan to commune with my canvases for three days straight, breaking only to eat and sleep.

  I think I might hear the doorbell ring around eight, but when I pause for a moment with my brush in the air I don’t hear it again. I figure it’s my imagination because Miguel said he’d lock the gates when they left last night. I never answer the door anyway.

  At nine-thirty I head down the wide, wooden staircase to make a pot of coffee. On the landing halfway to the foyer I look out the window and freeze.

  There’s a television news van parked out front, with WJKS emblazoned on the side. Stuart Bolder is standing on the lawn. He’s wearing a black wool overcoat and red scarf on this overcast January morning. He’s talking to a cameraman a few feet in front of him.

  I duck into the living room and try to think. Nothing is scheduled today. If there were, I wouldn’t be alone here; twenty other people would be milling around. Something about the situation feels very wrong—even more than usual. I notice a few tourists gathered at the wrought iron fence, looking in. I quickly close the plantation shutters on the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  I turn on the TV and tune to WJKS.

  I see a live video feed of the front of this house, with the words SO PERFECT SCANDAL scrolling underneath in red letters. The remote shakes in my hand and I drop it onto the sofa.

  Stuart fills the frame. He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head, as if he’s personally outraged. “A few hours ago this story looked like a simple yet salacious case of adultery: Armand Leopold was caught cheating on his wife and business partner, Gwendolyn Golden.” Stuart holds up a newspaper with a photo of Armand passionately kissing someone.

  Oh my God.

  Armand usually wears a disguise if he’s going out: a cap over his short brown hair, some stylish dark glasses to cover his striking gray eyes. In the photo he’s exposed, right down to his tongue.

  “But our trusty WJKS investigative reporter, Shelley Simon, has done some digging.” Stuart motions his thumb toward the house like a hitchhiker. “For the past four years, Gwendolyn Golden and Armand Leopold have lived here, in what everyone refers to as the So Perfect mansion. The supposedly happily married couple’s So Perfect catalog, as well as their television cooking and decorating spots, prominently feature this restored beauty on Third Street here in Scenic, North Carolina.”

  Stuart frowns severely, apparently reminding everyone that although he might have chatted with Armand and me on air yesterday, and he may even have complimented our omelet, today we are not his friends.

  “We here in Scenic embraced Gwendolyn Golden and Armand Leopold as our own. The ‘happy couple’ lived among us, dined, shopped. They influenced our meals and our homes. Our children recognized them, perhaps asked them for autographs. Occasionally the couple invited tourists and locals inside this house to make a live audience. I personally have interviewed them many times, and I was just as fooled as you.” He shakes his head like he’s torn between crying and lighting a torch to set the house on fire. “As WJKS exclusively reports this morning, So Perfect is a scam. From the marriage, right on down to the talent, it has all been lies, lies, lies.”

  Stuart has thanked Armand and me several times for helping to make his career. Due to our popularity, he said, he has landed several guest spots on national shows. I consider going out and reasoning with him, pleading our case in a civilized way. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve got hostages in here!

  I probably shouldn’t be seen LIVE in my pink flannel pajama pants and old Friends t-shirt, though, with my hair piled high in an ancient scrunchy. Armand would have a fit if I were photographed this way, especially today, when our downfall is suddenly broadcast live. I notice aquamarine paint on the remote and furiously wipe it with my shirt hem.

  Stuart recaps the story for viewers tuning in. “So Perfect? WJKS’s Shelley Simon has confirmed that Gwendolyn Golden and Armand Leopold have never been married. According
to exclusive interviews with their housekeepers this morning, WJKS has discovered that the pretend marriage was only the quicksand foundation for their house of lies.”

  Most of the staff members who work on site believe that Armand and I really are the So Perfect couple. Granted, I’m sure they think we oversell ourselves in several ways. We can’t hide the fact that I’m hopeless in the kitchen, have to be prompted at every step in the cooking segments, and mispronounce even the most rudimentary French terms. I’m similarly decorating disabled and couldn’t accessorize a room to save my life. Armand and I have separate bedroom suites; I say that he has sleep apnea and snores like a chainsaw, and he probably says the same thing about me. Trey has made the few people who know the whole truth sign confidentiality agreements.

  Including Alejandra and Miguel.

  I can still smell the cinnamon rolls that Alejandra baked before she left last night. “So you don’t starve, Miss G. You’re too thin,” Alejandra had wrapped the cinnamon rolls individually, and told me to put one in the microwave for twenty seconds when I wanted a treat.

  I wonder how the WJKS reporter got Alejandra and Miguel to talk. I feel protective of them, and I know they wouldn’t hurt me on purpose. During the past four years I’ve spent more time with them than anyone except Armand. They’re more like family to me than my family.

  I feel woozy at the realization that people watching won’t know what’s real and what’s not. I feel woozier as it sinks in that I’m probably the last person in the world who should complain about that today.

  I turn off the television; I don’t want to see any more. I press a button and the large, flat screen above the ornate fireplace is hidden by red Chinese doors that slide into place.

  Armand designed it, like everything else in this restored mansion he calls the Grand Dame. The first time I met him he said he even had a vision for a “signature Gwendolyn Golden style.” Apparently it didn’t strike him as odd that the signature on me would be his.