You've Been Replaced, First Love novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Gap in the Gold
At Kendrick's unveiling, Ellory letters the name ANNORA in gold on his window, hears herself thanked for the rehearsal, hands him her invoice and walks out to find her key no longer opens his door.
On the night my boyfriend thanked me for the rehearsal, I was standing on a stepladder with gold leaf stuck to both forearms.
Sixty people were watching me through the window of his new restaurant.
I had been lettering that glass for three weeks.
The sign said THE, then a gap as wide as a door, then ROOM.
Kendrick had asked me to leave the gap empty until his birthday party.
"It's a surprise," he'd said, kissing the top of my head. "You'll cry."
I had assumed he meant my name.
My middle name is Ada, and he'd called the place "the A. Room" for a month.
I came down the ladder and the crowd made a path for me.
Kendrick stood at the bar in his camel coat with a champagne flute and his good smile.
He was twenty-eight tonight.
I had been with him since I was twenty-one.
"Babe, you did it," he said, and kissed me on the cheek.
He pressed a folded paper into my hand along with the brush.
"The name goes in the gap. Take your time."
I unfolded the paper.
It said ANNORA, in his neat capitals.
I read it twice, because the first time my eyes refused it.
A woman by the door lifted her chin.
She had long wine-dark hair and a white silk blouse, and I knew her face from a photograph in a shoebox he thought I'd never opened.
She smiled at me.
Kendrick tapped his glass with a spoon.
"Everyone, one minute," he said. "I want to thank two women."
The room went quiet and warm and expectant.
"Annora, you told me once that I never said anything out loud and never planned anything."
He turned to her with wet eyes.
"I learned. It took a long time, and I couldn't have done it without practice."
Then he turned the smile on me.
"Ellory, thank you for being the best rehearsal a man ever had."
Somebody laughed, the nervous kind.
Somebody else said "Oh my God" into a glass.
I stood there with the brush in my hand and felt my whole body go cold and exact.
I will tell you what I didn't do.
I didn't throw the drink in his face, and I didn't cry.
I finish things.
My father taught me that when I was nine and held the ladder for his first brewery truck.
"Can you read the paper?" Kendrick whispered, still smiling for the room. "It's a long name, I know."
"I can read it," I said.
I climbed the ladder again.
I loaded the brush with size and lettered every character of her name in gold.
A, N, N, O, R, A.
The letters came out clean and sharp, with the little hook on the R that I'd spent years learning to pull in one stroke.
It took six minutes.
Nobody in that room said a word.
When I stepped down, the window said THE ANNORA ROOM, glowing in the street lamp, the best work I had ever done.
I wiped my hands on my overalls and took an envelope from the bib pocket.
I had printed the invoice that morning and tucked it away for the happy part of the night.
I put it on the bar, beside the champagne.
"Eight thousand four hundred," I said. "Due on receipt."
Kendrick laughed, a small, shocked laugh.
"Ellory. We can talk about it tomorrow."
"Page two says the artwork stays mine until you pay," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow."
At the far end of the bar a big bearded man in a flannel shirt was watching me with his glass untouched.
He had built that walnut bar with his own hands, and the sawdust was still in the seams of his boots.
He lifted two fingers off the wood to me, so slightly nobody else saw.
I took that with me.
The walk to Prospect Avenue took forty minutes in the cold, and I did not once look back.
I had lived in Kendrick's apartment for three years.
His doorman nodded at me, because I was still a face he knew.
The elevator took me to the ninth floor.
I put my key in the lock.
It went in and would not turn.
I tried it again, and again.
Then I looked down.
On the mat sat a banker's box with my winter coat folded on top.
It had been packed before the party.
Under the lid, in his handwriting, I found a note.
"Thanks for the practice. K."
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