About Coming In Second (A Short Story: Parts 1-6)
Post 961:
Coming in Second: A Short Story
Grace Todd-Harper couldn’t believe how nervous she was. Everything was so perfectly glamorous. From the red carpet outside to the tastefully decorated foyer to the gorgeous sanctum of the Grand Bank Ballroom, it was breathtaking. Just breathtaking.
Everything, perhaps, besides her husband. She clutched his thick hand as a legendary old man bent over at a glass pulpit and read with great effort from a teleprompter above their seats. Christopher whispered something in her ear she didn’t hear; the ringing of anticipation had full sway over her senses now.
“The Clifton Sage World Humanitarian Award goes to: Seth Gilyard.”
Stringed music swept over everything. She pulled her hand from Christopher. Sweat was forming on her brow as she denied the results with her imagination. Everyone in the crowd looked for Seth Gilyard, but they looked in vain. He wasn’t there. Instead, his face appeared on three big screens over the stage. The message was clearly prerecorded. He hadn’t even shaved. He hadn’t combed his hair. He wasn’t even forty years old.
Gilyard said his thanks without passion, listing off some of the charitable things his foundation had been able to do around the world and how much it meant to him personally. It all came off as peremptory and void of passion.
When the message wasn’t even finished, Grace Todd-Harper told Christopher that they were leaving. They’d do it in the break when milling around was at its peak so the majority of people wouldn’t notice. He said it might look bad anyway. She told him that it couldn’t look any worse than it already did.
The Clifton Sage World Humanitarian Award was the top of the hill. It had overtaken the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel people handed a few too many laurels to dictators and warmongers over the years and the bad calls had piled up high enough to leave a permanent stain. All the stylish papers and the important shows and internet personalities covered the Sage. It was a New York event. For one night a year, everything else at the center of the world was competing for second.
Christopher tried talking to her in the limo. Her apathy toward him turned to rage with every one of his feeble attempts. At their building, she ordered him out and had the driver pull away before a protest could be lodged. “Take me to the Gilyard.”
“Of course,” said the driver. At this time of night it wasn’t far but it gave her time enough for a few drinks. For the first time in years she was feeling a buzz radiating through her body.
She laughed in the doorman’s face when he asked who she was and that he’d have to call up to ask Mr. Gilyard if it was “okay” to send her up. When he put down the phone and held out a hand toward the elevators, her face was pure contempt. She walked a semi-straight line and got in, calling the doorman “pathetic” and a “nobody” and even worse before the doors closed.
When she knocked on the door, it was clear that Gilyard wasn’t alone. It sounded like a party. For a moment she was better. At least he was celebrating his victory. At least he was giving the Sage World Humanitarian Award its proper due.
A pretty thing in her twenties answered the door wearing a shirt that seemed to bring attention to her lack of breasts. Grace Todd-Harper stifled a comment and asked to see Seth. There was awful music playing in the background, something wordless, like the score to a bad movie from the 80s.
Seth came to the door and kissed the flat-chested girl, saying something in French before smiling at Grace Todd-Harper. “You look lovely, Grace. That is… one heck of a dress.”
“It’s a beautiful color for your skin,” said the girl, accent delicate and light as a feather.
“That’s nice of you to say. I’m sorry to interrupt, Seth, but I was wondering if we could have a moment.”
He yelled across the enormous penthouse for someone to turn down the music and led her down a circular staircase to what he called his office. It was simple, mostly pale wood. He had a lot of pictures from his adventures around the world. She looked at them briefly but didn’t recognize anyone else of prominence and got bored. “Can I get you anything?” he asked, walking behind his desk to a small bar.
“Bourbon.”
“Good choice,” he said, turning around with two full glasses and a concerned smile. “Is everything okay?”
“I see you’re celebrating.”
He looked up and laughed lightly before sitting on his desk. “Oh, the people—we’re actually just doing a little thing for an old friend from the neighborhood. He got back from Afghanistan. Bit of a wild soldier, but a good man. We’re glad he’s home safe.”
Whatever anger she’d let go of was back twofold. This smiling prick with his jeans and shirt buttoned down so his chest hair could vent. He wasn’t proud or festive for the right reasons at all. It was like she suspected. The Clifton Sage World Humanitarian Award meant nothing to him. He was more concerned with some fucking loser back from the fucking war. Still, the good papers would write stories about him. The websites of repute would put up pictures of him smiling and looking happy and humble. Some would mention how she lost. Most wouldn’t mention her at all. All the shit she did to earn that award. The shit countries and shit people she had to be around. Endless piles of shit.
Gilyard set his drink down and leaned forward. “Grace, are you okay?”
The headrush Grace Todd-Harper was experiencing didn’t allow her to process what Gilyard was saying. More than likely it was some simple anecdote he found to be nakedly charming and just knew everyone else in the world would find exactly the same. He was being self-effacing as well, surely, explaining to her with a tone made for children that he didn’t really fit in with the big shots and the suits or society or whatever other ridiculous title was at the ready for describing people that actually got things done and made the world a habitable place for the rest of the unwashed masses. There was something so utterly disgusting about a successful person who’d somehow forgotten their own distinctive nature and quality.
“Are you okay?” he asked. She heard. The words must have come with more force as it stalled her hot reverie.
The breath she let out was irregular. Ridiculously long, like she meant in no uncertain terms for it to be noticed and for it to make Gilyard uncomfortable. It did the job of shutting him up at least; he sat on the edge of his desk in his loose pants and untucked shirt with a vexed expression twisting the stubble. She pulled a piece of her dress to the side, allowing her to cross her legs. They were good legs, made sexier by maintenance. He noticed and made a sound like he had something in his throat; she noticed him noticing. Gilyard was beginning to show chinks in that carefully contrived carefree armor. “Seth,” she said, always more comfortable with cards to play, “what would the high school girl say?”
He made the sound again but tried harder to cover it. “I’m not sure what you mean, Grace. You never did say what brought you over here.”
She stood up and pushed her way neatly between his legs. He smelled good. Whatever a man was supposed to smell like plus whisky and some basic grocery store soap she hadn’t used in twenty years. “I came to say congratulations for winning the Sage.”
“Well,” he said, uncharacteristically fumbling, “I suppose that’s magnanimous. But—”
“But you’re wondering what I’m doing this close.”
“It’s a little weird.”
“You want me to back off?”
“It’s just. Like I said, a little weird.”
Grace smiled coyly and gave him a short kiss. It was the last thing she expected to do but it did the business of completely overtaking his tan with the red of confusion and embarrassment. She liked him on his heels, no matter the method.
After he pushed her away, they looked at each other, bodies full of ideas. In seconds they were back at it. Occasionally he’d say something about needing to stop. She’d smile and let up just enough to give him an exit that he wouldn’t take.
When the flat chest came round and round down the stairs and saw them sprawled on top of the desk, she made enough noise to be heard but not enough to make a scene. Seth got off and went halfway up the silly staircase, doing circles while he tried to secure the top button of his pants. Grace put her hands behind her head and watched, smiling on the outside and laughing on the inside. He stopped and sagged back down to the office, pulling his shiny, shaggy hair behind his head. “What the hell did I just do?” he asked.
Grace propped herself up on her elbows. “Will that French girl start talking? I have people that can muzzle rumors.”
“No,” he said, “it’s not that. Lucie is a wonderful person. I care about her.”
“Oh,” she answered simply, sitting up to fasten her bra and dress. “That’s nice. Something you should’ve thought about, though.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, looking out the window like he didn’t already know the answers weren’t out there.
“You don’t really care about anything. Not the way I do. You’re a child, Seth.”
When he didn’t respond or turn, she imagined what he was thinking. Probably about how he really did care and that it was just a stupid mistake and that he needed to give her time and then apologize. He probably thought if he pleaded enough or put the right amount of dedication into the relationship she would eventually trust him again.
He was a brilliant man. Innovative in business and technology. One of the people steering the future. And completely delusional about women. About a lot of things. They made her mad, his delusions. Even worse, the way people nurtured them. Not her. She wasn’t for nurturing.
“Lucie won’t.”
“Won’t what.”
“Trust you again. Ever. No matter what. I’ll be the one to say it. Someone has to.”
“Why you?” He said, turning with a smile that signaled his true lack of understanding.
“Because you’re the Clifton Sage Humanitarian Award Winner, and I’m here to pay respects.”
She heard him asking to be alone. There was sadness in his voice. He really cared about the girl. That or something else he didn’t have. Grace knew the sound of a man without. She’d listened to those sad tones coming out of her father for decades, maudlin about her mother’s memory. She endured Christopher’s whinging and whimpering as she ran off to get something else done. Maybe he wanted to talk about children. No time. Maybe he wanted to talk about them. No thank you.
She had a lot of notions about Seth Gilyard before arriving at his building. Negative thoughts and hostility. But Grace never thought she would come across another one. Another sad man.
“It’s disappointing,” she said, zipping up the back of her dress and making sure everything was in order. “This world can be so fucking disappointing.”
“Are you okay?” His tone was different now. Something to fix besides himself. God, men and their selective softness. She slipped back into her heels and went to the little bar for another tall bourbon.
“No,” she said, looking down at the award. It was sitting—leaning against the cabinetry behind his desk. He’d almost taken it all the way out of the box before getting bored. “No, Seth, I’m not okay.”
