Julia and Mr. Page Read online

  Julia and Mr. Page

  Two Novellas

  by Serafina Conti

  © Copyright 2017 by Serafina Conti

  Smashwords Edition

  Contents

  Julia and Mr. Page

  1. The ad

  2. Dinner at Daniel

  3. Contract signing

  4. Dinner is served

  5. In Julia’s room

  6. The limits of punishment

  7. Friday night

  8. The break

  9. Mr. Hamilton

  10. Lunch with Eric

  11. Friday the thirteenth

  12. Valentine’s Day

  Julia on Loan

  1. In the lobby

  2. After the play

  3. Take a lover

  4. Playing for stakes

  5. A quiet evening

  6. Just us girls

  7. A wild ride

  8. A few friends

  About the Author

  Other Books by Serafina Conti

  Julia and Mr. Page

  1. The ad

  Julia Lindstrom dropped her suitcase and coat just inside the door of her apartment and paused, looking lost, as if not sure she was in the right place.

  On most days you would have said Julia was a beauty. Her face was perhaps a little rounder and her nose shorter than the laws of beauty, strictly constructed, permit, but the care she took with herself—regulating her diet to keep her body trim, skillfully shaping her eyebrows, maintaining her fair and unblemished skin with the best (not to mention the most expensive) makeup and skin care products—was more than enough to nudge her over the line that separates “cute” and “beautiful.” And of course there was her fabulous cascade of light blond hair that gave the impression of falling perfectly without having been tended, belying the time and labor she devoted to it.

  At this moment, however, Julia’s hair was lifeless and her makeup sloppy; her face was puffy and shadowed, her eyes red. Her outfit was fashionable, a loose-fitting knitted mocha top over tight bluejeans (showing just the right amount of wear) and high leather boots. She had decided against mourning. Black wasn’t her color; she wouldn’t wear it for that shithead. But her expensive clothing gave the impression of untidiness, and her light top was, if you looked carefully, a bit smudged.

  Having gotten her bearings, she kicked off her boots, pulled her phone out of her bag, which she dropped beside the suitcase, and flopped onto the sofa. She tapped the screen a few times and waited impatiently.

  “Julie,” said a solicitous male voice. “How are you? Where are you?”

  “Back at my place.”

  “I thought you’d be spending Christmas with your stepmother.”

  “Rachel and I aren’t all that close.”

  There was an awkward pause, and Julia said, “I wish I were with you in L.A. At least it’s warm there.”

  There was another pause—just long enough that Julia felt an ominous weight in her stomach.

  “Um, listen, Julie. I was meaning to have a serious talk with you, you know, about us. But then your father died, and obviously it wasn’t a good time. But now the funeral’s behind you, and you’re back—”

  “What do you want to talk about, Alan?” The weight in her stomach got heavier, and butterflies fluttered above it.

  “I’ve been thinking . . . things aren’t working all that well between us,” he said. “I think maybe it’s time for us to, like, go our separate ways.”

  “How are we not working, Alan?” she asked.

  “You’re beautiful and fun to be with,” he said, “but I don’t see us as intellectually simpatico.”

  This was such bullshit. “What do you mean, ‘intellectually simpatico’?”

  “Well . . . you don’t take things seriously.”

  “I take lots of things seriously!” Her voice, normally high and soft, had gone up an octave and taken on a screechy edge.

  “Sure. Fashion, status, being admired, having lots of money—”

  “Well, I don’t have any money now.”

  “But not having money isn’t going to change your essential self, Julie. There you are majoring in creative writing, and you write competent stories, but they’re shallow. You’re marking time, not trying to create things of lasting value.”

  “My stories are fine. My teachers love them.”

  “They’re great technically: vivid characters, competent plots. But they’re all about having the best stuff and the handsomest boyfriends. You’re not creating art, Julie.”

  “Jane Austen wrote about that kind of thing, and she did all right.”

  “When you start writing like Jane Austen, show it to me, and we’ll talk.”

  “I don’t think so, Alan. Because what you’re really telling me is you think I’m a brainless bimbo, and you were willing to put up with me as long as I was rich and respectable, but now that I’m poor and not a trophy anymore, you don’t want anything to do with me. To quote J. D. Salinger, fuck you.”

  “That’s not it, and you know it. I’m not into money and status.”

  “Keep fooling yourself, Alan. Maybe someday you’ll find a girl who’s as big a fool as you are. Fuck you.”

  He sighed. “Okay, Julie, have it your way. Fuck me. I hope everything turns out well for you.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “What are you going to do with yourself now?”

  “Get on with my life.”

  “I mean, how are you going to live?”

  “I don’t know yet. Find a job.”

  “That’s the spirit. Pick yourself up and all that.”

  “Fuck you, Alan,” said Julia, and ended the call. With a few petulant jabs of a manicured finger, she deleted him from her contact list.

  That done, she sat on the sofa and thought about the conversation she’d just had. If she felt a sense of loss, it was the loss of a resource: she’d been assuming she could move in with Alan when she was evicted from her apartment. She wouldn’t miss him, though. There had been a time when she’d thought she might come to love him, and on the strength of that feeling she’d given him her virginity; but the relationship hadn’t taken off. Truth to tell, she’d come to think of him as a pretentious bore, and she’d been planning to break up with him as soon as she had someone better lined up.

  What really hurt was his disrespect. To his way of thinking, Madonna might have sung “Material Girl” about her. Sure, Julia liked nice things. Why shouldn’t she, since she could afford them—until a few days ago, anyway? Those nice things had found their way into her fiction, and why shouldn’t they? Her teachers said, “Write what you know,” and she’d done that.

  Well, soon she’d be qualified to write about poverty. She had enough money for one month’s food and rent: after that she’d be living on the street and dumpster diving. She was a college junior: how would she come up with the tuition for her senior year? Last week’s long phone call with the financial aid officer had been discouraging. Julia’s father, an alumnus, had been a major donor to the university, and because of that they’d let her in as a legacy admit, though her high school grades had been towards the low end of what they considered acceptable. But now that he was dead and disgraced, and all his money gone, reminding them of his generosity just annoyed them. Her college record was okay: she had gotten all A’s in English, but in other subjects she’d done just passably. With a record like that, she might qualify for a partial aid package.

  That wouldn’t get her through. It likely wouldn’t get her through even if she maxed out her federal student loan eligibility and moved into a smaller place with several roommates—an unpleasant prospect, but not unthinkable. Tuition at an elite university had seemed a small matter only a short time ago, a
nd so had rent on this Upper West Side apartment: her rich father had provided. But now the amounts seemed astronomical.

  Outside it was cold and dark. She heated up a can of soup, a meager Christmas dinner. She carried it to the dining table, opened her laptop, and browsed the job listings in the Times and on Craigslist while she ate. She started with editorial and writing jobs, but everyone wanted college degrees and experience—either that or they were offering unpaid internships. A job in food or retail would be a help, but that wouldn’t bring in enough to pay both tuition and living expenses. Any way she looked at it, she was screwed.

  To cheer herself up, she clicked into the “personals” section of Craigslist, which was sometimes good for a laugh. She smiled at the lame attempts to charm in fifty words, the penis pictures, the sad yearning evident in nearly every post. Maybe Alan had dropped her, but she had a long way to go before she was as desperate for love as these people. Money was another matter, though.

  Her eye fell on a link that simply read, “Mature gentleman seeks student.” The age tag was sixty-two. She clicked. The ad was short:

  Mature gentleman seeks part-time companionship with undergraduate woman. I can help with tuition and living expenses.

  She laughed, browsed a few more ads, closed her computer, and went to bed, where she tossed and turned, unable to sleep. After an hour, she got up, returned to her computer, and looked at the ad again. The idea was ridiculous. What kind of girl would answer an ad like that? What kind of man would place one? He’d probably be horrible: fat, drooling, greasy, smelly. She went to the kitchen and put on water for chamomile tea—just the thing to get her back to sleep.

  Of course, she thought while waiting for the water to boil, answering that kind of ad would be like buying a lottery ticket: it was all but certain that the man wouldn’t answer, and if he did, he’d probably balk at the amount of money she needed.

  So it wasn’t like she was risking a lot by answering the ad. Aside from the near certainty that nothing would come of it, she wouldn’t be committing herself to anything. If he wrote a reply she didn’t like, she could ignore it. Or if she wanted, she could email with him, talk to him, or even meet him in some safe place, and it would be a lark—something to laugh about later with friends.

  What if he did answer, wanted her, was willing to pay, and not repulsive? Well, maybe she’d do it. As a teenager, she’d expected sex to be this huge transcendent thing, but it had turned out to be just vaguely pleasurable, no better than masturbation, really, and freighted with no very great significance. For almost a year now she’d been having sex with a man she didn’t love or even like all that much, faking orgasms and feeling no guilt; the idea of doing it with a stranger didn’t disgust her.

  She carried her tea back to the computer, where the ad was still up on the screen. She read it again. There was something about it she liked: the way the man said nothing about himself beyond implying that he had a lot of money—he was too confident to feel any need to advertise his supposed qualities, to excuse himself, or describe his dream girl.

  Well, she could be terse too. She hit the reply button and composed an email:

  I am twenty-one years old, attractive enough, and a college junior. I am interested in discussing the possibility you raise in your Craigslist ad.

  She went back to bed and, after another half hour, managed to fall asleep. When she woke up at seven she checked her mail. The reply that was waiting for her had no name in the header. It simply read,

  Dinner at Daniel, 7:30 this evening. Do you know the place?

  Her father had taken her to Daniel on one of his visits. It was expensive and fashionable: the man was the real thing if he could afford that restaurant and get a table there on short notice. She wrote back:

  Yes, but how will I spot you? Will you be carrying a copy of Pravda?

  The answer came within five minutes:

  Ask for Mr. Page’s table.

  2. Dinner at Daniel

  Either Mr. Page had never read a spy novel or he didn’t do banter. If he had no personality or sense of humor, the dinner was likely to be a trial.

  Well, no matter: Julia had said she would go, and go she would. She spent a good bit of the afternoon restoring her face and hair and thinking about what to wear. She wanted to look appetizing but not easy, sexy but serious. She would not tease. She finally decided on a simple light blue dress, low cut but not too low; for her neck, a thin silver chain with a triangular pendant pointing down between her breasts and a matching bracelet. The outfit said something about her but made no promises. She piled her hair into a loose updo: it would look great but demure.

  Mr. Page was a lean, upright man with a dry, formal manner. He had short iron gray hair and sharp, rather severe features, not particularly attractive. He wore a conservative gray suit. He didn’t smile or get up; he gestured her into the chair opposite his and said, “You’re Julia Lindstrom.” His voice put her in mind of a sharp knife.

  For a moment she was confused: how did he know her? Then she remembered that her email would have had her name in the header. She smiled and said, “Call me Julie.”

  He didn’t return her smile. He said, “I shall call you Julia. You may call me Mr. Page.”

  She definitely wasn’t going to like him.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he said.

  “There’s not a lot to tell, Mr. Page,” she said, reluctant to give away too much information. “I’m a junior studying creative writing—”

  “I already know that,” he said, “and I know you’re the daughter of Nils Lindstrom, the hedge fund operator. His fund was discovered to be a Ponzi scheme, and he committed suicide to evade arrest. He had taken no steps to protect his assets, and everything was seized or frozen. The man was a fool: he left you penniless.”

  Julia’s heart sank. Was she that notorious? “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “You may say, ‘Yes, Sir,’ or ‘Yes, Mr. Page.’ Never speak to me without offering some gesture of respect.”

  “Yes, Mr. Page,” she said, wondering why she was feeling chastened rather than angry.

  A waiter came, and Mr. Page ordered a bottle of wine, a Cabernet.

  He said, “It was in the papers, but of course everyone is talking about it, too. Your mother found him?”

  “My stepmother, Sir,” she said. “He was hanging from a beam in the games room. It was the only room in the house with ceiling beams,” she added, as if this were significant.

  “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “Aunts or uncles?”

  “My mother’s brother lives in Stockholm. I only met him once, at her funeral a long time ago. I don’t have a family, Mr. Page, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  Mr. Page studied Julia with an expression she found impossible to read. It took some effort not to squirm under his gaze.

  Finally he said, “I determined before I invited you to dinner that your face and body type were pleasing to me. Now I need to know about your sexual background and your personality. Are you a virgin?”

  Julia stared at him for a moment. She’d expected him to ask about her sex life, but not so soon. The rules of conversation, as she understood them, required an expression of sympathy at this point, even if insincere. She was aware of heat rising in her cheeks. She said, “No, Mr. Page. I’ve had boyfriends, and I slept with the last one.”

  “Do you still have a boyfriend?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “When did that end?”

  “Yesterday, Sir.”

  “A lot has been going on in your life,” he said dryly. “Who ended it?”

  “He did, Sir. He said I was shallow.”

  “Yes,” he said. “When you say you slept together, what do you mean?”

  “I mean it in the usual sense,” she said, wondering what his “yes” meant and annoyed by his prying. “We had sex.” Mr. Page cocked an eyebrow, and she added, “Sir.” She reminded herself to tamp dow
n her annoyance: she was far from deciding to sell this man the use of her body, but she’d chosen to come here, and the least she could do was play along. And then, he was considering a purchase, and it was only natural to ask questions about the merchandise. Kick the tires. She hoped he wouldn’t demand a test drive.

  “Vanilla sex?” he continued. “Anything other than vaginal penetration?”

  “Um,” she said, blood rushing to her face, “some oral, Mr. Page.”

  “When you say oral—”

  “I did it for him, Mr. Page,” she said.

  “You sucked his cock,” he said matter-of-factly and without lowering his voice. She glanced around to see if anyone was looking at them. No one was. He continued, “Was that your idea, or did you do it because he asked?”

  She hesitated. She reminded herself that she could leave anytime she wanted: Mr. Page’s questions were embarrassing enough that she was considering it. But strangely, some part of her was enjoying the conversation: even her embarrassment was vaguely pleasurable. She decided to go on, reserving the right to flee. “He asked, Sir,” she said.

  “Did he come in your mouth?”

  She felt naked under his stare. “Yes, Sir,” she said, blushing furiously. Their talk was definitely having physical effects now, somewhere below her breasts.

  “Did you swallow his semen?”

  The question was like a finger touching her sex. “Yes, Sir,” she said.

  “And that was his idea too?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “No, Sir.”