Twelve Months To Ruin You

The Performance

*He listens like he’s already three sentences ahead.*

The most dangerous part of performing a happy marriage, Anne discovered, was how easy it kept being.

She hadn’t expected that. She’d expected it to feel like work, the smiling, the standing close, the laughing at the right moments. She’d done harder things professionally. She could do this.

What she hadn’t planned for was that it wouldn’t feel like work at all.

****

The event was at one of those Dallas venues that existed purely to make people feel like their money was being respected. Everything was gold-adjacent. The lighting was doing a lot. Anne had been to three of these in her career and found them exhausting in exactly the same way every time.

She walked in beside Derrick with his hand at her back and did not think about the hand at her back.

Humphrey Brew was already there. Of course he was. He was standing with two other board members near the far end of the room, drink in hand, and his eyes found them within thirty seconds of their arrival. Anne felt it without looking directly at him.

“He’s already watching,” she said quietly, smiling at someone across the room who’d waved at Derrick.

“I know,” Derrick said, equally quiet. “Don’t look at him.”

“I’m not looking at him.”

“You almost did.”

“I was adjusting my gaze.”

“Same thing.”

She smiled at the person who’d waved. The person smiled back. Derrick steered them toward the drinks table with his hand still at her back and she let him because it made sense and for absolutely no other reason.

****

The first hour went smoothly. Anne had managed difficult clients her whole professional life, which turned out to be excellent preparation for making small talk with board members who thought they were more interesting than they were. She asked the right questions. She laughed at the right moments. She touched Derrick’s arm twice in ways that looked natural because she’d decided two touches per hour was the right amount and she was going to stick to the plan.

Derrick, for his part, was better at this than she’d expected. He didn’t overdo it. He didn’t perform devotion so hard it looked rehearsed. He just stayed close to her and paid attention and occasionally said something that made her want to respond, which was the most convincing thing he could have done.

By the forty minute mark, two different people had told her they made a lovely couple.

She’d said thank you both times and meant neither.

****

Midway through the evening she was in the middle of a conversation with one of Derrick’s investors when Derrick appeared at her side and leaned slightly toward her like he was going to say something personal.

She angled toward him. The investor watched with a small smile, very convinced.

“Humphrey,” Derrick said quietly, “has been watching you for six minutes. Specifically you.”

Anne laughed. The investor laughed too, assuming she was laughing at something sweet.

“Six minutes,” she said under her breath. “That man needs a hobby.”

“He has one,” Derrick said. “It’s us, apparently.”

“That’s deeply sad.”

“It really is.”

She laughed again. Not the performance laugh, something shorter and more real that she pulled back before it went too far. Derrick excused them both from the investor smoothly and they moved through the room toward the other side of it.

“He’s going to approach you at some point tonight,” Derrick said. “Alone if he can manage it.”

“I know.”

“You don’t have to….”

“I know how to handle Humphrey Brew.” She glanced up at him. “I handled Carlton and he owns half of Texas.”

“Different situation.”

“Same energy.” She smiled at someone they passed. “I’ll manage.”

Derrick looked at her for a half second. Then he nodded and let it go.

****

Nora was on the other side of the room near the bar, in her professional capacity, doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing. Anne had spotted her twenty minutes in and they’d exchanged a wave and left it at that because mixing the personal into the professional wasn’t something either of them did at events.

Nora watched them from across the room for most of the evening.

She wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was at a work event and her boss’s wife was also at the event and it was natural to be aware of where people were in a room. That was just being present.

A colleague appeared beside her. “They match well, honestly.”

Nora took a sip of her drink. “They just met.”

“You can’t tell.”

“Well.” She kept her eyes on the room. “They’ve had time to practice.” She whispered to herself.

The colleague said something else. Nora responded. The conversation continued normally and she smiled at the right moments and her grip on her glass was slightly tighter than it needed to be but nobody was close enough to notice that.

****

At the end of the evening Humphrey did approach Anne. He did it when Derrick was three feet away talking to two investors, close enough that Anne could have pulled him in but far enough that she was technically alone.

She handled it. She gave Humphrey exactly what she’d given Carlton, warmth, cooperation, and absolutely nothing useful. He walked away looking like a man who felt he’d learned something without being able to say what.

Derrick appeared beside her two minutes later. “What did he want?”

“To feel like he has information.”

“Does he?”

“No.”

Derrick looked at her. “What did you tell him?”

“How happy we are, mostly. How settled.” She picked up her drink. “He looked genuinely annoyed by the end of it. That’s how you know it worked.”

****

The car home was quiet.

Dallas moved past the windows in the dark. The city doing what it always did, completely unaware of the two people in the backseat not talking.

Anne broke it first.

“Humphrey didn’t look convinced.”

“He wasn’t supposed to look convinced,” Derrick said. “He was supposed to look uncertain. Those are different things.”

She turned to look at him. He was watching the road ahead.

“Uncertain is better than unconvinced,” she said.

“Unconvinced means he thinks he knows something. Uncertain means he’s still looking.” He glanced at her. “We want him looking. Looking people don’t act.”

Anne thought about that. “That’s actually smart.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I’m not surprised. I’m acknowledging it.”

“Same face.”

She almost smiled. Outside Dallas kept going. The car was warm and quiet and she looked back out the window and thought about the evening. About how it hadn’t felt like work. About how standing beside Derrick Cavell in a room full of people who believed they were a couple had felt less like performance and more like…

“You were good in there,” Derrick said.

Not a compliment. Just a fact, said the way he said most things. Flat and direct and entirely without decoration.

Anne kept her eyes on the window. “I know.”

The car turned onto the street that led back to the penthouse and she watched the city thin out into quieter roads and told herself that the warm thing sitting in her chest right now was professional satisfaction and nothing else. She was good at her job. This was her job right now. That was all this was.