“How’s Russell?” Emmy asked Leigh, hoping to draw her out a little. They’d known each other long enough that Emmy accepted her friend’s fierce privacy, but she never stopped trying.
“What?” Leigh asked, clearly distracted. “Russell? Oh, he’s fine. Great. He’s interviewing Tony Romo this week, so he’s been really preoccupied.”
Adriana dunked a piece of yellowtail sushi into the soy sauce and popped it into her mouth. “Emmy said you guys were close to setting a date for the wedding, right?”
Leigh nodded. “April.”
“April? Really? That’s so soon!” Emmy was surprised. Considering they’d only known each other a year before getting engaged, she figured they’d wait until at least the following summer, but she was pleased to see that Leigh finally seemed to be getting into it.
“Yeah, it definitely wasn’t my first choice, but it’ll be fine.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know; I’ve always really liked the idea of a fall wedding, I guess. Plus, it seems a little soon. And Jesse’s book is scheduled to publish right around then, so it’s going to be crazy. But my parents are insisting that it’s the only free weekend in the next two years at the club because someone canceled, and it works for Russell’s family travel-wise, so we’re going with it. Doesn’t really matter.” She shrugged.
“Spoken like a glowing bride,” Adriana said.
Leigh shrugged again. “Why should I get all stressed out about a date? We’re going to get married at some point, so does it really matter when it happens?”
“Gee, Leigh, you’re making me swoon with the romance of it all,” Emmy said. She’d intended it to lighten the awkwardness, but the comment had come out all wrong. She quickly moved to change the subject. “So how’s everything going with Mr. Chapman? Have you met his wife yet?”
Leigh put down her chopsticks and folded her legs under herself, as though preparing to give a long talk. “You know, I haven’t met her. I don’t even know for sure that she exists—I’ve never read about her in a single newspaper or magazine—and I’d never believe it if he hadn’t mentioned one time at lunch that he’s married. It’s strange, though, because he doesn’t really even reference her—like, I don’t even know her name.”
“Has he hit on you yet?” Emmy asked. She wondered when Leigh was going to wake up and see what was going on here. It was obvious that she’d developed some sort of crush on this guy—who, by the way, sounded like a first-class asshole—and Emmy figured the situation could be nothing but bad news. Besides, it was irritating that Leigh had found such an amazing guy in Russell and didn’t seem to appreciate him nearly as much as she should.
Leigh looked up. “Hit on me? Emmy, he’s my author. Of course not.”
“And you’re engaged,” Emmy added.
“Obviously! I thought that went without saying.”
Adriana poured everyone another glass of wine and said, “Girls, girls, settle down. I’m sure Mr. Jesse Chapman has his lecherous hands all over Leigh. After all, he’s not exactly known for his chastity, and Leigh here is a beautiful woman. But that’s certainly not her fault. Now, can we please talk about me? I have something to show you both.”
She buried a hand inside her quilted Chanel hobo and pulled out a velvet box. “Check these out. They’re from Toby. Or should I say, from Harry Winston.”
Both girls leaned over to see the beautiful earrings.
“They’re stunning,” Leigh declared, touching them reverently with her left hand.
Emmy couldn’t help but notice the juxtaposition of Leigh’s sparkly engagement ring and Adriana’s sapphire earrings. While her friends seemed enamored with the baubles, Emmy wondered if they even realized how lucky they were to have the loving men behind the jewelry. She would happily forsake all the diamonds in the world if she could just find the one person who was meant for her. Or, really, keep the one who was meant for her. If everything had gone the way they’d always discussed, she and Duncan would have been planning their wedding right now.
“Toby remembered how much I admired them from an old picture of Salma Hayek at the Oscars. These are the exact ones she wore.”
Emmy whistled. “He’s a keeper, Adi. I hate that Leigh knows him and I don’t. When do I get to meet him?”
“He’s on location in Toronto for the next few weeks, but he wants to throw a big dinner party for my birthday next month. I told him thir—that age is no cause for celebration, but he insists. Where’s a good place?”
The girls chatted straight through the entire Grey’s episode, an Entourage rerun, and bits and pieces of Dateline’s To Catch a Predator. They were just about to get sucked into Notting Hill on the Oxygen Network when Emmy announced that she was exhausted and had to be up early the next day, and as much as she appreciated everyone coming over, it might be time to wrap things up. Leigh and Adriana looked surprised but not overly concerned, and after a few minutes of gathering their things and hugging good-bye, Emmy was blessedly alone.
She just wasn’t in the mood for the usual chitchat tonight. She was cranky, and a little bit sad for no good reason. That’s a total lie, Emmy told herself as she bobby-pinned her bangs back and haphazardly washed her face. Izzie had called a couple hours earlier with the news that she and Kevin would be having a baby boy. When Emmy gushed with excitement (genuine) and asked if they were still thinking of the name Ezra, Izzie laughed and said Kevin seemed stuck on Dylan for some reason. Dylan with a D. D like Duncan. Duncan, who—if you could ever get him talking about having children—insisted that his would be only boys, and only boys named after him. She’d been so good for so long, had resisted every single previous temptation, but tonight she felt her willpower slackening. The combination of Izzie’s baby announcement and that look she’d seen Leigh and Adriana exchange at the mention of Duncan’s name, and Emmy couldn’t stop thinking about him. She realized he could have eloped with the trainer or, worse, gotten her pregnant, and Emmy would have no idea. How had this happened? How had she ended up single at almost thirty and Adriana and Leigh—neither of whom particularly seemed to care—were both going to get married any minute now? It was so unfair. Duncan may not have been a famous director or a superstar TV anchor, but he’d been good to her, most of the time. Emmy wasn’t an idiot; she knew he liked to flirt, and she heard him all those times he swore he wasn’t ready to settle down, but who could have ever foreseen this?
She inched closer to the computer.
Her mind willed her not to open the laptop, screamed, No! No! No! You’ll regret this. Bad Idea! Bad Idea! and for a moment it sounded so realistic she wondered if Otis was actually shrieking the words, but she could only hold out for so long. Four seconds later, her fingers were flying across the keyboard. Ten seconds after that, she was face-to-face with Brianna’s MySpace page.
And seventeen high-definition inches’ worth of pictures of Duncan and the trainer. On vacation. In bathing suits. Looking absolutely outstanding.
Emmy rapidly glanced through the pictures of the happy couple sunning on a white sand beach, lounging in what looked like a private patio pool, and smiling over heaps of devoured crab claws and empty cocktail glasses. There weren’t any captions, though, which was maddening. Where were they? When? Was it a honeymoon? She skimmed the e-mails down the right-hand side, perky little missives from Brianna’s friends, chock-full of emoticons and ellipses and too many exclamation points to count. One of the insipid messages included a link to the Kodak Gallery Web site, and Emmy sensed her torture was only beginning.
“Oh, god, no,” she moaned aloud, stretching backward in her chair and staring at the computer warily, as though it might explode. She knew she shouldn’t click on it, but there was no turning back. She sat up straight with her shoulders down and her chest jutted out, took a deep breath, and moved the cursor to the link. She was just about to click when, thank god, she remembered the dreaded guest book. Had she clicked the link, Kodak Gallery would’ve automatically remembered her from
last time and saved her name in Brianna’s guest book, right along with a helpful date and time stamp. Nightmare! Relieved that she had averted disaster, Emmy quickly went to the general home page, logged herself out, and logged in under the pseudonym and fake e-mail she used for such e-stalking activities. When she opened the link this time, the album greeting read, “Welcome, Lucy! Click here to see pictures from Brianna and Duncan’s Mexican Adventure.”
Mexican Adventure? Please! They’re lying on a fucking beach, not climbing Kilimanjaro. With another deep breath, which was not the least bit calming, Emmy clicked.
Before the screen went into slide-show mode, Emmy saw that there were dozens, possibly hundreds, of thumbnail shots. She knew this was a very bad idea, that it was stupid from an intellectual standpoint and toxic from a sanity one, but by now it was out of her control. Frames one through six passed by in a flash; it wasn’t until the seventh that Emmy collected herself enough to adjust the speed. The slower pace satisfied her for another half-dozen shots, but her compulsion to study, to examine, every square inch of every single photograph consumed her, and within seconds she had turned off the automatic slide show altogether. Now she could do this properly, at her own pace.
Unfortunately, the first frame that remained frozen on the screen was one that must have been taken by Duncan. It featured Brianna frolicking in knee-deep surf, leaning forward to splash the viewer and simultaneously looking up, a movement that caused her back to arch almost pornographically. Emmy moved closer to the screen. Could her ass really stand up like that, all on its own? And those breasts! Even though the girl was leaning forward in a string bikini and appeared to have solid C cups, they were barely hanging at all! Emmy peered at them for a full minute and arrived at the regretful decision that no, they weren’t fake, they were just really young. Besides, twenty-two-year-old virgins don’t get fake boobs, do they?
Click.
Duncan filled the screen. He was lying on a pool float, a tan, newly muscled arm draped over his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun. He was wearing an unfamiliar pair of Hawaiian-print board shorts (Emmy had pleaded with him to trade in his old-man bathing suit with the alligators stitched into it, to no avail) and, wait…was that a six-pack? She squinted. It was! Formerly doughy, pale, I-sit-at-a-desk-all-day Duncan had morphed into a goddamn beach Adonis right before her very eyes. Emmy pressed her eyes closed and rubbed them, but Duncan still looked fit—downright hot—when she opened them again.
Click.
The happy couple again…on a dive boat! Together they sat on a wooden bench, hands on each other’s knees, looking sporty and adorable in wetsuits unzipped to their waists. They were surrounded by the debris of a recent dive, racks of tanks and regulators, discarded masks and fins, and, off to the side, a Mexican man in a white shorts uniform preparing to serve them fresh fruit and juice. Emmy had begged Duncan—literally pleaded, she now remembered with growing rage—to try scuba diving with her one year in the Bahamas over Christmas. He’d flatly refused, reminding her that he sure as hell wasn’t going to spend his precious vacation time in a pursuit as active and challenging as scuba diving. He wouldn’t even go snorkeling, that bastard, because he “wasn’t into the whole floating-prey thing.”
Click.
Brianna sitting atop the covers on a four-poster bed, reading a magazine, wearing very skimpy and nonvirginal boy shorts and a barely-there tank top. Click. The two of them in workout clothes and iPods, all sweaty and rosy-cheeked post-run. Click. Duncan making a silly kissing face at the camera, even though Duncan didn’t make silly kissing faces ever, while wearing the Cornell T-shirt Emmy had bought for him at her fifth-year college reunion. Click. Dressed up for a candlelit dinner on the sand, where they appeared to feast on whole grilled fish, lots of fresh vegetables, and white wine. Click. Click. Click. Emmy finished clicking through the entire album, briefly surveyed her level of nausea, and hunkered down to start again from the beginning.
It was going to be a very long night.
friendly really means available and desperate
“Adi, the doorman just called to say your car is here,” Mrs. de Souza announced from the doorway of Adriana’s room.
“Okay,” Adriana mumbled, summoning her reserves of patience to keep from being aggressively nasty to her mother.
“What was that, dear? Did you hear me? I said the doorman—”
“I heard you!” Adriana said more tersely than she intended.
Her mother sighed, the long, extended, dramatic sigh that almost always preceded a long, extended, dramatic conversation. “Adriana, I’ve tried to be understanding—really, I have—but the situation has become untenable.”
Adriana felt her entire body clench, but before she could even react, the curling iron had slipped from her hand and landed on the floor, making a brief but painful stop on her thigh.
“Fuck!” she screamed, bolting to her feet and rubbing the top of her right thigh.
“Adriana! Language! I won’t have you speaking like that in this house.” Mrs. de Souza lowered her voice and approximated a soothing tone. “Come here now. Are you all right?”
“I burned myself. There’s going to be a blister!”
“I’ll bring you a little Neosporin in just a minute. But first I’d like to discuss something with you. I understand that you’re—”
“Mama, please, please, please can we have this conversation when I get home? I’m already late, and as you can see, I’m not even close to being ready. I’m sorry for the language. Really, I am. But can this wait?”
“It’s not just the language, Adi, it’s that tone you’ve been using lately with your father and me. I don’t have to remind you that this is our apartment, and we’re welcome to use it whenever we’d like. Now, you’ve made it very clear that you’re not happy about our presence, but have you thought how that might make us feel?”
“Mama…”
“And of course there’s the spending. I assure you, I’m every bit as tired of this conversation as you are, but nothing changes. It’s simply unacceptable.”
Adriana could feel the knot in her throat begin to grow. Determined not to cry and ruin forty-five minutes’ worth of careful preparation, she breathed deeply and walked toward her mother.
She had every intention of taking the older woman’s hands in her own and explaining calmly why this wasn’t a good time—really, she did—but the anger and frustration consumed her. Nothing on earth could inspire such rage in her as that patronizing look on her mother’s face. So she did what she had done her entire life when she felt cornered by her mother: She screamed.
“WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO RUIN MY LIFE? I ASKED YOU NICELY IF WE COULD HAVE THIS DISCUSSION ANOTHER TIME AND YOU REFUSED TO LISTEN!” She moved closer to her mother, who was slowly backing into the hallway. “I AM GOING TO FINISH GETTING READY AND I’M GOING TO LEAVE AND YOU ARE GOING TO DEAL WITH IT. NOW LEAVE. ME. ALONE!”
She punctuated her diatribe with a hearty door slam and immediately felt a wave of release. Of course it was ridiculous to yell and scream and slam doors at her age; it was positively sophomoric. But that woman could be so incredibly annoying, and her sense of timing was horrific. It was unbearable that her parents had arrived yesterday out of nowhere, with no more notice than the time it took to get to the apartment from JFK, and planned to stay through Thanksgiving, a holiday they didn’t even celebrate! The only solace was that Toby hadn’t also arrived yesterday as planned (the horror of having them all mingling in the foyer was unspeakable), so he had adequate time to find a hotel.
“A hotel? Really?” he’d asked, sounding surprised when Adriana asked if he’d like her to make the reservation or do it himself.
“Why yes, querido, of course a hotel.”
“I can understand why they wouldn’t be comfortable with me staying in your room, per se, but do you really—”
“Toby, please!” Adriana had interrupted in frustration. “You staying here with them is out of the question.”
> He’d complied, naturally, and checked himself into the Carlyle; Adriana couldn’t bring herself to explain that her beautiful apartment was really their beautiful apartment, a fact he would most certainly uncover were he to stay under the same roof. No, that simply was not acceptable.
Determined to calm down for the sake of her complexion, Adriana took a seat at her vanity and brushed her cheeks and forehead with bronzer. She carefully outlined her lips with a nude pencil, filled them in with a slightly darker matte lipstick, and slicked a clear gloss for shine on top. A single tissue pucker and she was finished.
The outfit was another issue entirely. What was one supposed to wear to a business dinner? Oh, how she dreaded it! It was an unusually warm November Saturday night, and all the restaurants would surely put their tables outside, and everyone would be excited at the unexpected Indian summer, racing to hit the dance clubs and loft parties that night, and she was going to some stuffy apartment on the Upper East Side. It was sure to be chock-full of musty antiques and precious little collectibles, the mere thought of which was nauseating. Antiques made her sneeze. And Limoges! Just looking at those little boxes made her want to vomit. She’d complained as much as she dared when Toby announced the evening’s plan, but she wasn’t inclined to push it; Toby might be a tad boring in addition to being ever-so-slightly dorky, but he was her boyfriend and she planned to soldier through it like a dutiful and adoring girlfriend if it killed her.
With significantly less effort than she usually spent, Adriana quickly chose a clingy, short-sleeved cashmere wrap sweater and paired it with an extremely fitted pencil skirt. Seamed stockings—Mrs. de Souza had advocated their timeless sexiness since Adriana was a girl—and a pair of four-inch pumps completed the look.
She felt like a nun.
“I’m leaving,” she called to no one in particular.