Chapter Two: The Party
Even the doorman looked down at Baz when he arrived at the building in the plainest tuxedo the tailor offered.
Baz preferred his black facepaint and split-toed shoes. Patent leather felt heavy and awkward on his feet. The odd layers underneath, the layers of the thief he was, only exacerbated how unnatural black tie formalwear was on him. He imagined himself walking around like a cat with tape stuck to the bottom of its foot. A cat dressed like a penguin. It felt comparable, though he carried himself passably no matter what the doorman's narrowed eyes implied.
Baz's invitation said enough. The doorman begrudgingly let him continue on to the elevator where a young uniformed man used a key to let guests up to the penthouse suite. The elevator was the first glimpse that the strategy of keeping plain did not serve the purpose he hoped. Boutonnieres dotted breasts, vibrant squares jutted from pockets. Cumbers were bunded. Shoes were brogued. One gentleman even wore a long-tailed jacket.
"Did you hear about Simmons?"
"No. Should I have?"
"He was hit. Thief knocked the whole security system out. Even the nanny cam didn't catch his face."
Baz looked up, choosing to look anywhere but at the elevator's occupants.
"His face? It couldn't possibly have been a woman?" a lady in lace piped up.
"Marjory, do you really think this is the time to argue feminism?"
The conversation very quickly devolved into an argument over when it was appropriate to bring equality into question.
Baz wondered the names of these people. Would ever have to slip into their homes in the dead of night to lift open their showcases? It was best not to wonder too hard.
He'd avoid their nanny cams.
"I haven't seen you around before," a woman said, and the moment Baz tore his gaze away from upper corner of the elevator, he recognized her.
Seeing her 'around' didn't quite explain their relationship, unless 'around' included billboards and department store ads for perfume lines and lingerie. In the most elaborate of Baz's daydreams, he didn't have the imagination to find himself in an elevator with a woman he had seen airbrushed and in high-end unmentionables.
"Do you talk?" Gwen Ferrero was not dressed in lingerie. She was in pearls and a floor length gown, a slit revealing the long line of her famous legs. In heels, she was slightly taller than he was, her green eyes nearly even with his. She raised a feline brow.
"I'm a newcomer. Basil. Baz, actually," Baz offered a hand out, keeping his grimace internal. Basil. So painfully English and so far from his name. It would've broken his mother's French heart. It might've struck her harder than if she knew what he did for a living.
"Gwen." For a lithe, graceful career model, Gwen's handshake was firm, commanding.
The elevator pinged before Baz made a fool of himself fumbling for words, the doors sliding open to the top floor. The guests spilled out into the landing, heels clicking against marble.
"These things are always full of old men talking business," Gwen whispered, "please entertain me."
When a model asked him to entertain her, it was not Baz's first instinct to deny her.
"If you hear me talking business, I'm bullshitting all of it," Baz whispered. Gwen laughed, the pay-off for the risk. Baz was definitely not lying.
She linked her arm in his and any fears Baz had of failing to interlope upon the party melted. No doorman could snidely up-and-down him now.
They walked into the penthouse.
Most of Baz's self-control was spent keeping his jaw off the floor.
Yes, he had spent many an evening as an uninvited voyeur into the lives of the well-off. Yes, there were expectations set for someone as talked-about as Rei Collingwood. He had envisioned the open concept layout, the floor to ceiling glass, the kitchen appliances he could see his reflection in, but there was a difference between expecting it and seeing it. No one needed walls when the art was out the window. The entire Temperance skyline was on display, lights glowing from the office buildings and street lamps.
There was a warmth to Rei Collingwood's version of chic minimalism. Her stairs floated, looking like dark driftwood leading upstairs. She picked rich leather for her furniture. A sitting room formed a balcony over the kitchen, women in evening gowns lounging above them, cradling flutes of champagne.
An enormous inked mountain hung over the fireplace, brushstrokes delicate even in their enormity, the ink wash painting spread out across several paper doors all hung on the wall.
He suddenly felt twice as small in its presence.
"I want to guess what you drink," Gwen announced, "scotch?"
"I shouldn't," Baz said, "newcomers need to make good impressions."
Gwen glanced from the bar to the banner strung between two upright showcases. A samurai stood within each, more like ghosts than warriors. The figures the armor hung from were nothing but featureless mannequins. The banner advertised the whole reason behind the party, something Baz had to keep reminding himself of.
It was a fundraiser for the Temperance Museum of History and their partnership with Faraday University. It was very unclear how one was supposed to donate, but there it was. The guests seemed to prefer the bartender to the cases at the periphery of the room.
"What is it that you do, exactly?" Gwen asked, "are you one of Rei's history friends? Poor thing. She invited the curator of the University's Special Collection of something-something last year. I thought the old man was going to have a heart attack."
One of Rei's history friends. What a title. His intended guise was broader, built on a foundation of an interest in the art the museum displayed, all if it ancient rather than distinctly fine. Baz had been to the museum enough not to flounder when questioned. He knew enough about the university to lean on that. Any other details he planned were meant to be ones that no one would be able to dispute.
Gwen, however, offered him an extra facet. She gave him excuse for any awkwardness.
A history friend was definitely the thing he would be for one night. He rather liked the sound of that.
"Something like that," he said, "how did you meet Rei? You're not exactly a natural fit to this crowd, either."
"Our parents know each other. We went to the same boarding school," Gwen explained, "Rei went and got her Masters and I went a different direction. But it's nice, though, to have friends who do something completely different."
"Oh, I understand that." If there was anyone who understood the importance of keeping work life and personal life separate, it was Baz. Gwen also had a point about not talking business. Baz had a sneaking suspicion that many of the attendees were not there to support research or students. These were people who came because the name Collingwood was attached and that was enough. These were family friends and partners, not people who had published long papers in scientific journals. Gwen was strikingly out of place simply as a matter of age. So was Baz.
Well, there were other reasons why Baz was strikingly out of place, but that was another issue entirely.
"Where is Rei?" Baz asked tentatively. There was an allure to seeing the woman in the flesh, but if he did... well, she could very quickly confirm who Baz was and that his invite was ill-begotten.
Gwen shrugged, even her bare shoulders elegant. The strapless gown and dark hair tied up gave her a somehow regal silhouette.
"She hates these things. I'm sure she's hiding until she has to make a speech or something," Gwen offered, though nothing in her voice made Baz believe she was concerned, "let me give you the tour."
A tour could be very good or very bad. Baz did not want to put himself in a position of having to say no to Gwen Ferrero. The pain of it would be too much. Baz very much wanted to say yes to anything she asked.
"This is just for entertaining," Gwen waved a hand vaguely at the main room. She took a glass of champagne from a passing tray before leading him toward the floating stairs. Every step was a higher vantage point to view the city, like perching on the top of a mountain not unlike the massive painting above the fireplace.
"This is Rei's real space, when she's actually here, which she never is," Gwen explained between sips of her champagne. Some of the upper level was visible from the main, but not all. Through the glass railing, Baz could see across the divide to the mezzanine above the kitchen.
Walls were a slightly more popular feature of the upper level, one such wall dedicated entirely to a vertical garden, the full height of it lush and green. Gwen tugged Baz around it, weaving through walls that replaced the use of doors by simply blocking view.
The room knocked the breath out of him.
That was the kind of reaction he should've had to Gwen in the elevator, but maybe some part of him knew the room was coming and saved the gasp for the spectacle.
A library.
Floor to ceiling shelves of books. Shelves so high a ladder led up to a second inset walkway. Ladders on tracks for the first level. A standing globe in the center of the room. Leather arm chairs and a plush chaise lounge.
It wasn't a room. It was the edge of the universe, the expanse of Temperance's skyline around him, the vertical garden behind him, and books all around. It was impossible to decide where to look. It had to be chosen entirely at random.
He wanted to touch everything, run his fingers over every spine of every book. It would take all night. It would take months. Jasper's folder and the inlaid box were the very last things on Baz's mind.
The titles weren't even all in English. Baz traced a finger over Chinese characters, a whole shelf dedicated to them.
Gwen draped herself across the chaise, glass of champagne in hand, and Baz's gaze tore away from the endless walls of books. Even in real life, Gwen Ferrero looked like a magazine spread, except better because she was right in front of him.
Something stirred in him and it was not dedication to the job he had come to do.
"Shouldn't you have a pop star on your arm?" Baz asked. He was more and more convinced he was smack dab in the middle of the best dream he'd ever had. Lingerie model lying across a chaise lounge in the most epic library he'd ever stepped foot in? Definitely a dream.
She sipped her champagne, lipstick printed on the glass. The slit of her dress rode tantalizingly higher.
"What can I say? Rei turned me on to educated men," Gwen smirked, "I don't think pop stars get that much studying done on tour."
Lord help him.
US Weekly wasn't Baz's first choice of reading material, but that aside, he still couldn't recall reading about her hooking up with some platinum artist or high-profile lawyer. If anything, she was famous for being single.
Or was it just that she really was more interested in 'history friends' who weren't worth reporting on?
Maybe it was an elaborate cosmic wakeup call that he wasn't built for the lavish lifestyle. He couldn't even handle being in the same room as a supermodel. A library flustered him. Tuxedos hung unnatural and heavy on him.
"You promised to entertain me." Gwen's full lips turned ever so slightly downward, pouting. She finished off her champagne, setting the empty flute on a side table. Her hand outstretched to him, her fingers elegant and jeweled.
Baz took it, suddenly self-conscious of his calluses and the scars from ripping his hands. The thought disappeared in the millisecond she pulled him in, her lips crashing into his.
If it was a dream, it was a very good dream and involved getting tangled in Gwen, finding her straddling him while the length her gown pooled in fabric puddled around them. The exposed line of her neck invited fleeting kisses trailed to her collarbone.
Her nails rumpled his shirt and the tuxedo he'd only bought two days before, but she didn't draw the buttons through their slits. His breath caught, heart stopping in a brief moment of imagining her finding the hidden layers, his true intent, the odd shapes of things that didn't belong underneath a tuxedo.
She gave no sign of knowing.
If Gwen was feline, she was a little feral, hungry for the furied contact, mouth against mouth. Baz gave her what she wanted. He couldn't imagine a lot of people in his position saying no to her.
He had to breathe, leaning back into the chaise just to unceremoniously pant just to catch his breath again.
Gwen's lipstick no longer kept just to her full lips. Baz suspected he was wearing the half of it that wasn't smudged around her mouth.
"You could tell everyone you know about this and they'd never believe you," she said, her grin a little wicked behind the smeared lipstick.
"You're not wrong."
Baz imagined having that conversation, just not with Jasper.
He still had to find the box. He had to make a smooth exit and not draw attention to himself. That was definitely going to go over well, a flattering shade of #106 red alert on his mouth. Probably his teeth, too. There had definitely been some playful nips in there.
"Is this why you offered a tour?" Baz asked.
Gwen smiled, the curve of it deadly. "No."
She gripped his collar and pulled him in for one more long, probing kiss.
He was going to have to lose her. There was going to be a second chance if he bombed this attempt. Even he wasn't good enough to stealth his way into the penthouse for round two. That thought was just enough to keep any primal urges in check.
Mostly.
The music on the main level stopped abruptly and the murmur of conversation died down to nothing but a whisper. Baz hadn't paid much attention to it, but it wasn't there and Gwen pulled back immediately, startled by the silence like it was a gunshot.
"It's a pleasure to see you all here this evening." A voice boomed, masculine and accented. Without even seeing him, he commanded attention. Maybe it was just the obvious, smooth English cadence.
Gwen swore under her breath. "Cheng."
As quickly as their tumbling began, it was over, Gwen climbing to her feet. The only thing that betrayed her grace was her lipstick and the strands of hair threatening to drop out of her updo.
"I have to make a speech," Gwen said, "after Cheng gives his introductions."
Cheng Collingwood continued beyond the library, unaware there was any reason to stall for time.
"You might want to..." Baz gestured vaguely, but between the two of them, he was definitely worse for wear.
"Yes, thank you," Gwen snapped, "you can find a mirror before you make a reappearance, can't you?"
Baz nodded, but Gwen straightened her shoulders and slipped out of the library without much more concern for him.
There was his opening. There wasn't time to do anything but attempt to straighten his bow tie and re-tuck his rumpled button-down.
He slipped out of the library, walking as calmly as he could while his heart pounded in his chest. The pulse of running water steered him away from the guest bathroom and Baz sidestepped that for another wall, another room cordoned into a false sense of privacy by strategic corners and angles. Baz lived in a warehouse, so maybe it wasn't his place to judge, but this open concept really went too far.
It did, however, lead him into a bedroom. It must've been the master. The sheer size alone gave it away. The second, more conclusive piece of evidence that it was much too personal for a guest room. A million shiny beetles and butterflies glistened behind panes of glass, hung in frames on the wall. The duvet lay in a sloppy pile on the bed, million-thread count sheets aside, there was something very relatable about that. A sweater hung off the back of the wingback by the window-wall. The minimalist desk, a solid slab of dark wood, faced the city. Books and paperwork cluttered it.
It was kind of a mess. Baz hadn't expected real evidence of a living person after walking through the immaculate penthouse from front door to open concept not-door.
"And without further ado, I present the lovely Gwen Ferrero with a few words from her family." Cheng announced and applause erupted from the attendees.
Baz hoped her family had a lot to say.
There wasn't time to inspect every species of insect on Rei Collingwood's walls. There wasn't even really time to look for an inlaid wooden box.
"Only illness could keep my father away from this event. The fundraiser is always a highlight of his year..." Gwen said to the crowd.
There it was. On the nightstand. Baz froze, dumbfounded that it would be that easy. Cheese probably looked just as easy to a mouse right before it tripped the spring to break its back.
Baz crept. Dress shoes were not cobbled for creeping, but he tried anyway. At the head of the bed, a photo loomed over him. More Temperance, but a different angle over Faraday Park. It wasn't the same distant view that turned the city into faceless office buildings, only window lights and specks of cars in the streets giving signs of life. Faraday Park was close enough to see the cyclists on the paths and the shoppers perusing all the locally owned businesses at the perimeter. And, of course, the university at the far end of the park, opposite of the photographer's vantage point.
Footsteps outside the room snapped Baz back into reality. He grabbed the box off the nightstand.
Stupid minimalism and open concept design theory left Baz exposed. The bed sat on a solid platform. No room to dive underneath it. The desk wouldn't do anything but cast his reflection into a double of him for someone to see.
The closet, though.
The closet, like every other godforsaken room in the penthouse, didn't have a door. It just had a bend. Two openings on either side of a wide full-length mirror. Good enough.
Baz slid into the closet, turning the corner of it to find himself in a jungle of discarded pantsuits and blouses. Clumsily, pushing clothing aside, he managed to squeeze himself onto a shelf, above the drawers of shoes and below the hanging designer tops and jackets. Or, more accurately, half-obscured by the tops and jackets.
All while still clutching the inlaid box, dazedly running his fingers over the patterns in the wood.
The footsteps entered, clapping over each other. Two sets. A pair of heels and a pair of heavier men's shoes.
It wasn't just a really good guess. A mirror in the closet offered Baz a sliver of a view.
"Have you honestly been up on the roof this whole time?" There wasn't the boom to Cheng's voice that he had a moment ago, thanking rich folks for their contributions.
"They'd much rather hear you talk." The reply came in a matching subtle English accent, but from a woman. They stepped into the frame of the mirror. Rei Collingwood and her older brother Cheng, both crossing their arms over their chests.
She looked defiant enough to be the kind of woman who would eat a rattlesnake out of spite. Tall in heels, dressed in wide-legged pants and a menswear vest.
"Stop being a child. It's your fundraiser."
"It's my charity. It's your company. These people are... they're competition," Rei said, "I dug up remnants of ancient civilizations. You know whose shelf they're sitting on? Not the museum's. Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Delburne's."
"You were on the excavation, though. Who do you think funded the excavation? Who do you think pulled the purse strings?"
Baz could practically hear the grinding of Rei's teeth.
"And didn't you bring home plenty of other broken plates? What harm does it do, Rei? You get what you want, they get what they want," Cheng replied, "it's our company on paper and the only interest you have in it is putting these on so you're funded for one more expedition. You don't care about anything but yourself."
Her eye flicked away and for one heart-stopping second, Baz was sure she'd managed to catch him in the mirror.
"I suppose it's so much better to only care what Mum and Dad think," Rei scoffed.
Silence permeated the room for one brief moment, Cheng smoldering.
"When you grow up and remember where your privilege comes from, come speak to your guests." Cheng stormed out. Rei could handle a rattlesnake strike, but family was different. Maybe more venomous.
Baz watched, the reluctant voyeur, as Rei collapsed onto the bed, staring up at Faraday Park on the wall. She muffled a growl of frustration into a pillow. She wasn't the only one in the mood to scream.
Baz wasn't supposed to see any of it. It felt too personal. More personal than Gwen's lipstick finding its way onto his collar. Loneliness was meant to be a private thing.
Of the many things Rei Collingwood might have been, one of them was definitely lonely.