UnBound - Neal Shusterman Page 0,77
met her, though they do have some key mutual friends.
He announces himself at a street-side intercom and a wrought-iron gate slowly swings open to a semicircular driveway and the mansion beyond. It’s an ostentatiously pink Floridian palace with the requisite palm trees, balconies, and red-tiled roof. Lots of “curb appeal,” as a Realtor might say, although behind the gate you can’t really see the house from the curb—which, for residents in this kind of neighborhood, is its appeal.
Hayden is greeted at the door by a butler. An actual butler.
“Miss Skinner is expecting you,” he says in the mournful, lugubrious sort of voice one might expect a butler to cultivate. “This way, Mr. Upchurch.”
The house is as elaborate on the inside as it is out. Lots of marble and designer furniture and expensive art. It looks like something one might see in an interior-decorating magazine—and not in a good way. It looks more like a model home than an actual one. Cold and false.
The butler leads him all the way through the house and out a pair of french doors to a backyard pool. Grace Skinner isn’t lounging by the pool. Instead, she’s on the far side of it, in front of a little guest house. She sits there with an easel, painting. As Hayden approaches a step behind the butler, he can see her canvas. It’s a dog. Or a horse. Or a giraffe. He can’t be quite sure. It’s either avant-garde or just very, very bad. She is so absorbed in her work, she doesn’t notice that they’ve approached.
The butler politely clears his throat. Twice. She finally looks up.
“Oh, lookee lookee who came right outta the radio!” She stands up—as tall as Hayden, and he’s pretty tall. She reaches out her hand to shake, but then pulls it back before he can. “Bad idea. Not unless you want your hand covered in oil paints. Stuff’s a bitch to get off your skin. And don’t even get me started on clothes.”
“Shall I bring more lemonade?” the butler asks.
“Yeah, yeah, good idea,” Grace tells him. The butler takes a platter with an empty carafe and heads to the house.
“Sit, sit, sit,” she tells Hayden. He does, a bit bemused by her chummy manner. He likes her far more than he likes her house.
She points to her painting. “What do you think?” she asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer. “It sucks, right?”
Hayden smiles. “Yes, but with a rare kind of passion.”
“I do it because I like to, not because I’m any good. You want good art, go back in the house. The walls are full of it.”
“Yes, I noticed,” Hayden says. “I suspect it’s not your style.”
Grace shrugs. “I got some artsy-fartsy woman with high heels and some kind of accent to decorate the whole place, on account of I woulda filled it with sad clowns and stuff on velvet. Not the kind of ‘aht’ rich people are supposed to like.”
“But it’s your house—you should fill it with the things you like.”
Grace waves the thought away. “I might own it, but it’s not where I live.” She points to the guest house. “This is where I live. The big house is too cold and scary-lonely at night. I got it because I could. And because it’s supposed to be an investment.”
She tells him all about how her deal with Rifkin Medical Instruments for Sonia’s organ printer made her a king’s ransom, and how some highly strategic investments of her own parlayed it into a true embarrassment of riches. “I got these financial advisors who tell me don’t do this and don’t do that—but my investment strategies always pay off and make them look like morons—which is why I keep them. I like makin’ people who think they know everything look like morons. So anyways, now I got more money than God, as they say. Well, maybe not God, but his cousin at least. If he had one. Does he? Well, if he did.”
Hayden laughs out loud, and Grace looks a bit embarrassed—which was not his intent. He just finds her attitude so refreshing. “So what are you going to do with all of it?” Hayden asks.
Grace shrugs. “Play,” she tells him. “Maybe buy an amusement park or something. And give a bunch away to folks who deserve it.” She looks to the mansion. “I’ve been throwing parties for poor people in the house, to keep the place from being so empty all the time—and everyone deserves a fancy night out in