Underneath It All Read Online Free PDF Page B

Who else would be presumptuous enough to assume that she would know it was me except for me?
    “Your sister, Jacquelyn.” I roll my eyes and run a red light. “Is Mom around?”
    “ Mom isn’t here. Mamá is running errands,” Yolie says. All of a sudden I am reminded how wonderful life can be when you’re not her.
    “Whatever. Tell her I called.”
    “Sure.” Click.
    “Hello?” I make sure we’re disconnected. “Talk to you soon, you miserable bitch.”

9
    Mr. Mayor
    I pull into the Mayors’s cavernous garage, behind Mr. Mayor’s new silver Audi, but leave the Neiman Marcus box in my car, underneath some of my own dry cleaning, as if trying to suffocate the poor, innocent bag for my guilt at not having the will to decline it. I try to do this casually. This place is wired tighter than the White House and I never know who’s watching or from where.
    Last week, I was casually checking out the Audi and noticed it was open so I slid into the driver’s seat. I put my hands on the steering wheel and imagined I was driving up to Bodega Bay wearing sunglasses and wrapped in that luxurious cashmere coat Mrs. Mayor had me pick up from Neiman Marcus last week (where I spied the bag that I mentioned to George, which is now in my trunk). I was about to trail my hand out the window, letting the cool Pacific wind slip through my fingers when Danny sprang up behind me, cackling like a madman. I almost peed all over the buttery leather seats.
    I hurry up the stairs and into the Kitchen. And this is a Kitchen with a capital K. Miles of polished concrete floors and marble counters and rich wood everywhere. Even the fridge has wood doors. Julia Childs could be interred in this Kitchen.
    My parents’ kitchen back home on Idell Street is all about bleached linoleum and scuffed Formica. I thought that my flat’s kitchen, with its tile floor and Corian countertops, was pretty spiffy. But now I know better. I have seen the light gleaming off polished marble. It turns out a kitchen can be more than just where you cook and store food. It can be a place you want to hang out in, not one you avoid at all costs because your father will yell at you to wash the dishes because you happen to be dumb enough to get caught grabbing a Pepsi out of the fridge.
    The Mayors’s Kitchen gets used only when they throw a dinner party or when Mr. Mayor pours his morning bowl of sugared oats. Mrs. Mayor doesn’t cook, big surprise, but has all her meals scientifically prepared for optimal nutrition and minimal fat by her diet guru, who delivers them several times a week. When they do throw a party, a caterer brings in the food already cooked. Seems a shame to waste such a beautiful space. Don’t even get me started on the master suite.
    I can go to the suite one of two ways: through the foyer, past the library and up the main staircase, or up what Mrs. Mayor calls the butler’s stairs, which are right off the Kitchen and past Danny’s room.
    I shift thousands of dollars of chiffon and silk onto my other shoulder and head out to the foyer. I’m in no mood to tangle with Danny right now. I hurry past the closed library door, trying to silence the clicking of my heels on the vast marble floor that covers the foyer leading to the upstairs staircase.
    “Jacquelyn?” Mr. Mayor is standing in the open door, wearing his tuxedo with his bow tie undone. I almost let the miles of silk fall to the floor and puddle around my suddenly sweating feet.
    “Yes, Mr. Mayor?” I ask with my stomach in my throat and flakey mascara on my cheeks.
    “Can I trouble you for a moment?” he asks in his clipped, prep-school tone. He’s a weird but intoxicating mixture of Mel Gibson (pre-pre-pre- Passion of the Christ ), with the suaveness of Jude Law and a dash of a young Robert Redford all rolled into one hunky man package with a brain the size of Minnesota.
    “Sure. No trouble. What’s the matter?” Please let it be your loveless marriage and the lack of me in